164 Adoptees Off Script with Carrie Cahill Mulligan

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/164

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Before we get started, I want to let you know how much it means to me that you are showing up here to listen to adoptee voices. I remember when I was first in reunion with my dad and we hit the inevitable rocky patch after the honeymoon period faded.

I felt so alone. I believed I was absolutely unlovable because my first mother had ghosted me after a few months into our reunion about a decade prior. And for me, creating this podcast has been a tremendous labor of love so that adoptees like me who were feeling alone or struggling in reunion or coming out of the fog would have a connection so we wouldn't feel like we were crazy.

The wildest part of all of this is that it succeeded. Adoptees On has become our show. [00:01:00] Our show to connect and share what the adoptee experience is really like, and I'm asking you today to support the podcast and make it sustainable for me to continue doing this work.

I'm Haley, the host and creator of this show–our community’s show–and I'm also a wife and mom to two little boys who are sleeping in their bed as I write this. When you sign up for Patreon or donate via PayPal, you are helping me, Haley, contribute to my family's needs. What I didn't expect when I started podcasting was that this would become my full-time job.

I'm showing up for you and saying yes to adoptees, and I would love for you to show up for me and commit to support Adoptees On. For three weeks only, I have a sale on for yearly membership to the Adoptees On Patreon, and you're going to get one month free. After that, it's going to go back to regular price.

I'm honored by the support I've already gotten from the community and, truthfully, pretty scared to make this ask, [00:02:00] but if I am going to continue to make this show, I really need your help to make it sustainable and to have the ability to meaningfully contribute to my little family over here. Click the link in the show notes or go to adopteeson.com/partner to sign up right now.

Okay, let's get to the show.

On today's episode of the podcast, I am giving you a peek behind the scenes to Adoptees Off Script, which is the second weekly podcast I produce for my monthly Patreon supporters. So here it is behind the scenes. You can take a little peek behind the paywall curtain to see if it's something that you want to join for 2021.

And as I mentioned, there's a sale on and the sale is ending on November 30th, so you have a couple more days if you're listening to this when it drops to make sure you join us; adopteeson.com/partner has the details. Okay, let's listen in. [00:03:00]

Welcome back to Adoptees Off Script. I'm Haley Radke, and with me today is Carrie Cahill Mulligan. Hi, Carrie.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Hi, Haley.

Haley Radke: I want to start out with a big thank you, because I have gotten so many new supporters over the last couple weeks. I just want to say thank you so much and welcome here. You guys all get to hear this on Monday. Everyone else is going to join us on Friday for this episode, so it's a big group show for us.

So thank you and welcome, welcome into the Off Script family. Just for one day we're gonna give you a taste of what it's like. No pressure. Carrie, no pressure. Do you feel pressure?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I do a little. I'm gonna do my best.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. Yep. Throat clear, stretches, okay.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: That's right.

Haley Radke: Carrie and I have been leading everyone through the Adoptee Reading Challenge over on Off Script all year, and [00:04:00] it's been really fun. How about you, Carrie? How has it been for you doing the Adoptee Reading Challenge?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I've loved it. I haven't done so much focused, adoption-related reading and specifically adoptee-written reading ever. And this was challenging to keep up with the pace, honestly, because you and I did extra, I don't know, maybe a third or a half of the months.

Haley Radke: How stupid was that? I mean, sometimes I was like, “Oh, you know what? I found four books that fit the theme.” That was really, really not smart. Anyway–

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Nope. But at the same time, it was exciting. Yes, it's been really wonderful and there's been great feedback in the group. A lot of inspiration and conversation going on there. So I have really loved it and I'm so looking forward to–are you gonna say?

Haley Radke: No! No, they have to hold out a little longer. You're gonna say, we're looking forward to the 2021 plans. That’s the teaser.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yes.

Haley Radke: [00:05:00] Okay. I want to introduce everybody to you just in case they haven't met you before, which would be a big surprise because Carrie was my very first guest all the way back in Season 1, Episode 1. So if you want to hear some of Carrie's story, you can go back and listen to that.

We have a lot of similar reunion experiences and lots of different reunion experiences. So on the Off Script podcast, we talk all about those things and what's going on for us right now. And Carrie shares lots of wisdom with me, you know, being the older, wiser one.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Oh, we're going this way. I see how we're playing this.

Haley Radke: I do a lot of throwing her under the bus. Vice versa. No, it's probably more me, which is sad.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: No, it's fine.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. Anyway–

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I think what Haley's trying to say is that we have a similar and yet divergent, diverse set of viewpoints between the two of us that we enjoy, I think.

Haley Radke: And friendly banter [00:06:00] with lots of good-hearted teasing.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I think so.

Haley Radke: Mostly it's fine. I don't know, maybe you might tell me later that I hurt your feelings, but hopefully not.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: No, and I would tell you.

Haley Radke: I know you would. We're the friends that have had those hard conversations. Okay. The next thing I want to introduce people to is our reading styles. Can you give us a picture? I'm curious, I don't know all of the answers to these, but where are your favorite places to read? What are your favorite ways to consume your books? Give us a little picture of how Carrie is a reader.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I love this. Thank you. This is a great question. I generally am reading through audio books because of my hands being busy making hats and masks and all the different things I do in my fiber business. [00:07:00] But so many of our adoptee-written and related books are more niche and harder to find, and so a lot of those are hardcopy and I have to make sure that I'm reading paper books every day as well. And so that has helped me set up a routine where I have, in the morning while my tea is steeping and, if I'm good, I'll do it before I get into social media or email and just get my 20 to 30 minutes of reading done in the morning.

But I'll usually be on the couch by the south-facing window. And, yeah, usually paper copy for us. But I really do like audio books because then I can be multi-tasking. I am just that type of personality that likes to have a story with me wherever I'm going so it makes mundane tasks a lot more enjoyable.

What about you?

Haley Radke: First of all, that's a very, like, aesthetic situation.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Very cottage corn.

Haley Radke: Setting up with your tea. Yes, it's very cottage corn.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: The wood fire is going, yeah, yeah.

Haley Radke: Well, this may surprise some [00:08:00] of you. Not if you've heard the Off Script podcast. I really don't drive well with audio books. I love podcasts, but audio books has been my stumbling block. So I much prefer reading hardcopies. Occasionally. If I maybe was a little slow on the ordering, I might have to resort to getting it on my Cobo or even worse on the Kindle app on my phone. I've had to do that a few times, which is rough, you guys.

It’s rough reading a book on your phone. That's not my style. I love a nice paperback or hardcover, and there's a lot of good places to read in my house. I just love having a blanket and my little Lucy curled up next to me, my dog. That's totally my thing. I don't plan out my reading time. If I am ready to sit down and [00:09:00] read, I will usually read for an hour or two, kids permitting, and if a book is really good, I will do it in a sitting

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Oh wow.

Haley Radke: I'm a binge reader.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Wow, that's so fun. If there’s a series, do you try and read all the books in a series right away, or do you pace yourself on them?

Haley Radke: I know you're asking me this because of Louise Penny, who's not an adoptee, but we've talked to you about her books before, and we love her. Yes. Once I find a series that I really love, I will read all the way till the very last book, and then I'll save the last book because I don't want it to end.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yeah. Yeah, I totally relate to that.

Haley Radke: So there's a lot of series where I've not even picked up the last book for whatever reason. Just those endings. I don't know. I don't wanna deal with the endings.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yeah, I wonder if there's anything there to dig at.

Haley Radke: Uh, not everything's adoption related. Maybe it is. I don't know. [00:10:00] Oh, that's so funny. Well, just to give you a little background, if you didn't join us for the 2020 Adoptees Off Script Reading Challenge, we read all kinds of different books. We read memoir, fiction, artsy-creative, and nonfiction. And in those categories, we wanted to read books from late discovery adoptees, from foster youth, from transracially adopted people. We forced ourselves, Carrie enjoyed it very much to listen to audiobooks, and we read short stories and poetry. We read middle grade and YA; we did graphic memoirs and then we did anthologies, essays by one author, anthologies by multiple authors. And we also did some nonfiction reading on the history of adoption, which was [00:11:00] a wild ride also. So we had the whole gamut.

Now I'm curious if, after reading all these books–I didn't even count them. I wonder how many books we read?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Oh, good question.

Haley Radke: We must have read close to 30 books between us.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yeah, I would think so. Yeah.

Haley Radke: And I'm wondering if you figured out your favorite types of books by adoptees or this was the grand winner of them all? Did you have any thoughts on wrapping up our year’s Reading Challenge, even though we have a month left while we're recording this? We're not quite done.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I really enjoyed finding particular authors. Like I was really enjoying a couple books by Jeanette Winterson and those couple books by Jackie Kay. And I was surprised to find how deep their catalog was and that I found multiple selections interesting. I think that probably [00:12:00] I could do a reading challenge on just memoirs and be happy. Like I just love memoirs. I really do. And particularly if it's a reunion or messy reunion collection of memoirs. I just really love memoirs. I was wishing for more of that, but listening to you talk about all the different types of books we read, I am proud of us for branching out and hitting all those different genres and types of books because I was surprised to see adoptee authors in all of those, which I think reflects my own close-mindedness. But it was really fascinating and it broadened my horizons about what's out there. And now I just want to read. There's so many more books to read. What about you?

Haley Radke: Well, I am going to agree on the memoir front. I thought maybe I was getting sick of them, but it's not true. I love reading people's stories, and it's incredible the diversity of adoptee memoirs available. [00:13:00] It's really quite stunning. And the ones that we read in particular, there were some amazing ones, like My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay. It was recommended to us by a Patreon supporter, which was fantastic. And she sent us a bunch of podcast episodes he had been interviewed on, which was really interesting.

The other one that Carrie and I both read together was From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle. Yes. And it was so good. I have all my tabs still sticking onto that book. Those ones were really powerful and just so well done. And I agree, too, that reading all those different genres really stretched me and surprised me, really surprised me. In my non-work-related reading life, I love psychological thrillers. I love scary books, and those are the ones I most [00:14:00] gravitate towards. But it was pretty amusing to me that I read my most scary book ever in the Adoptee Reading Challenge.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Who knew?

Haley Radke: Who knew? Scary, creepy. And it was an audiobook. It was all the things. So Dan Chaon really just brought it. So if you are into really gross, really scary, ill will, it may be the book for you.

The other thing that kind of surprised me was the poetry and short stories. Sometimes I think I was like, “They're so short and I'll be able to just get through them quickly.” And that's good especially since I committed to reading three or four books in a month. But I really found myself slowing down and enjoying and just being amazed by the skill [00:15:00] and the language. Especially the poets we read really have this immense grasp on – just, see, like words. Words are hard for me, but not for poets. What's the word I'm looking for?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Uh, sorry, I was counting up how many books we read.

Haley Radke: Thanks. Thanks, co-host. Just leave me out to dry. I'll let Carrie keep counting. I can't even pick a favorite book over the whole year either. There were so many that were wonderful. But what I did figure out is it's really hard for me to tell you that I didn't like an adoptee book. Yeah.

Because. I feel like I understand the cost it takes to put yourself out there and be really vulnerable, and I've never written a book, but I can imagine the amount of time it would take. [00:16:00] And so sometimes I would read a book and be like, this is not my favorite. And that's probably for someone else, just not for me.

I really struggled giving critical reviews. Yeah. Yeah. But it's I think that there are so many different kind of readers and just I don't know, I never felt like you bashed any books, but I always felt like you were honest when you, when a book wasn't for you. And so it's helpful for readers to know, there, there's a lot of books out there

but when I go on Good Reads or Amazon.

I still give five stars

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: every adoptee.

Haley Radke: Can you imagine if I don't know how to say this. This is not meant as a humble bride. Can you imagine if you listened to my show and you wrote a book and then you went and saw that I like gave your book three stars. Ouch. I wouldn't wanna do that.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: No. Do you want to know how many books we read? I'm sorry that I was counting

Haley Radke: while you were talking. Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm gonna guess I'm gonna guess 33. [00:17:00]

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Really? That's right.

Haley Radke: No.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yeah. I think so. I got a little distracted when you caught me counting, but I think it's 33.

Haley Radke: Crazy. I know. I'm so proud of myself.

I promise. I promise I did not do that ahead of time. No, that's pretty good. I cut and past my spreadsheet and then I realized, oh, I don't even have all the titles on there. Perfect. 33, go off. That's awesome. And I know that were so many of you reading along some of the same books and some different ones, so that's fantastic.

I'm curious if there was anything that you were like, oh, I wish we didn't really read that genre after all, or I wish we had leaned more into, I dunno, anything like that. After reading all of these books.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: No, I was really happy. Like I said I think going into it, I was wishing we could do a memoir every other month or just like a memoir companion in each category.[00:18:00]

But I was really enjoying being pushed to every different genre. Poetry is hard, but I was just tonight before we were talking, looking up another collection. 'cause I remembered, oh, looking at the spreadsheet, there was that one that Hailey read, Alice and Melee. I never did find that. So I'm, putting that on my wishlist.

Christmas is coming.

Haley Radke: Yeah, that's a good idea. Another question I have for you, I'll answer first is if you. Found any genres particularly difficult to read? I am gonna say the nonfiction history of adoption, which is what we're reading this month for November, was really hard. I. Focused my reading on the Baby Scoop era and Wow.

It's just so hard to read. It's so depressing. It's important to know, but it's just so depressing. I don't even know what else to say about it. It's. It's just really especially when I [00:19:00] think, how long, how far have we come? Like not that far.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I would have to agree that the history of adoption, even though my book the Georgia Tan history was really gripping and.

Super readable. I had in mind that I was gonna read two history of adoption books this month, and I'm not, I'm just not. We, I don't know us, us listeners. We had a lot of other upheaval in November and it's national. Adoption awareness month and one history of adoption, focusing on a bad mean person is enough for a month, so I can't do it this year.

Haley Radke: That's fair enough. Fair enough. And one thing we did talk a little bit about on off script occasionally was that Eve when these books are really. Hard to read. It's so important for us to know these things, and so we can't stick our heads in the sand. We cannot do that. It's [00:20:00] very important.

We know it. So I, even though it's hard, we still have to do it, in my opinion.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: And I agree, and I think that's why the challenge was so useful to me because I would've been reading a memoir. And never getting around to that book. And it was really good. And it's important to know and I think I'm gonna be thinking about a lot.

So thank you for the nudge to read the hard books.

Haley Radke: Awesome. Awesome. Alright. Now you may all be thinking, man, where did they even find all these books? I can't believe it. Can I even think of 33 Adopt written books? One of my very favorite places to find adoptee authored books, of course, is our favorite website.

We have mentioned it so many times. Adoptee reading.com, Karen Piel curates that and it's excellent. She indicates whether a book is. Merely adoption related, or if it's adoptee authors, you can tell right away on each book and you can sort by all the [00:21:00] genres we mentioned and more. And you, there's even a page where she has a list of every single author that's represented on her site, and you can click through and just see.

All the books that particular author has either written or contributed to or edited, and it's really a tremendous resource, and so I would definitely recommend that. But I want to know, Carrie, where you find. Your books, because I know you use Adopt Rating, I know you use that, but Carrie brought so many books to the show that were no, I don't wanna sound ageist.

That were older know. They were backless. Thank you. Thank you. She found all these books from years and years ago that I've never heard of, and they were just so good. And you described them, and I've read some of them since and I'm like, how did you dig these up?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I don't know. I think I might have just gone sideways.

I don't know. I might, I don't know. [00:22:00] Like I I might have started with books that were recommended on Karen Patel's site. But then, like I said, I found some favorite authors and just burrowed along their bibliography and got lucky. Found some really good books. And, oh, I just wanna say the Jackie K book trumpet that I.

Read and reviewed and really loved that was based on a real person I read today. I was looking up more Jackie k stuff and so

Haley Radke: man, when you go down a rabbit hole, you're just like all in. Hey,

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I know. So I can't tell you exactly which part of my rabbit Warren. That I dug up some of these resources, but definitely rabbit.

Holy. Yeah.

Haley Radke: I'd love to know because even before we got on the call, you were texting me book after book. I'm like, oh my gosh.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: You asked if I had any ideas what I wanted to read next year. I definitely, I've got ideas.

Haley Radke: She's, she has all the ideas. Actually, maybe this is [00:23:00] a new service we can offer. If you need a book recommendation, Carrie is gonna be the one to

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: tell me what you've read.

Haley Radke: If you tweet her yes. She may give you a recommendation.

I don't know. Maybe.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Absolutely. Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's so good. I am really excited about 2021. We have some really fun things planned and for 2021, we want to be reading the books together. And so what we did in 2020 was sometimes Carrie and I would read the same book, but most often we were reading different books, different multiple books, and we'd come back and we'd give you a book report on our books we read.

But my most. Favorite parts of the reading challenge were when we read the same book and we could discuss it, and we had both, been on the same page and you would highlight things to me that I missed and vice versa. And so [00:24:00] we would love for you to come and read with us. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna announce our first book for January, 2021.

So you have time to get it in your hands and read it before we do a group book club. So that'll be really awesome. I'm very excited about that. And then we're going to be asking you a couple months ahead, every single month, what do you wanna read? So we will make the decisions as a community. We will do polls on Patreon and in the Secret Facebook group.

And so we'll include you and we'll also include you on. How we're going to be doing the book club, so we're going to give you guys a couple of different options. We may do a Zoom call where everybody can chime in if they'd like to for a q and a period, or we may do the more traditional panel where we may ask a couple of readers to join.

Carrie and I, [00:25:00] and you guys can submit questions in the chat. We're going back and forth on that, what it looks like. But I'm very excited to tell you what our first book is. I feel like we should have a drum roll, but I literally don't have that sound, so can't do it. Just imagine a drum roll in your head.

We are going to be reading Alice Stevens novel, famous, adopted people. Yay. Yay. And. Alice is going to be joining us for our very first book club. Really? And q and a. Yes.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yay.

Haley Radke: Yes, in January. So I'm so stoked we arranged that just today, and so I'm so excited to announce that for everyone. Yeah, what do you think about that?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: That's amazing because you were just, you're just mentioning you were hoping it could happen and that's the last I heard from you today. So

Haley Radke: Carrie loves Twitter. This is why this happened on [00:26:00] Twitter ah, love that. Yes. Alice was very responsive and excited to join us. So the, we are going to be doing this in the.

Adoptees off script for Patreon supporters. And so it'll be a small group and we'll be able to ask her questions about the book and just chi chat with her, so it's really exciting. All right. What do you think? I think that's a pretty good kickoff to the 2021 Adoptee Reading Challenge.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yeah, I hope that people are as excited as you and I are.

Haley Radke: It's just gonna be us, us and Alice.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Even if it's I'm still gonna be pretty psyched because this has been so fun and I agree with you that the most fun has been when we did, it was wonderful to be challenged and we each had piles of books laying around, so we were a little scattered and making up as we went, but like fine tuning it to make it an actual book club where we can, yeah.

Look at it from all our different own points of view. [00:27:00] I think this is gonna be awesome. And, we're growing and learning. We're this is the first time we've hosted a book club. I guess you did a couple different,

Haley Radke: I, we have done a couple book clubs for the adoptees on listeners. Yes.

And they were all really good. We had some amazing authors. And so I'm excited to continue that.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: But yeah, this is the long term commitment that you ha we haven't made before. So a full year of book club is very exciting. Honestly, there's more books than looking at the 33 between the three, two of us that we read

Haley Radke: and.

We only have to read one book a month.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yes. And it could be some books that people enjoyed hearing us talk about that want to read in community. And that would be fine too.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: We wouldn't mind repeating. Let us know where there's gonna be polls and you'll have the plenty of chance to chime in and let us know what you would like to be reading.

Otherwise, we'll just fill in with what we wanna read and assume and trust. That works for you.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. The polls will be up for [00:28:00] everyone. You don't have to be a patron to vote in case you're thinking about joining. You can. You can come and have a look at what's going on over there. So if you go to adoptee on.com/partner, you'll find the adoptee on Patreon page and we are going to have a couple polls up what genre we're gonna read for February, 2021.

So we'll have that up for a little bit. Pick the genre and then we'll do a vote on what book we wanna read for February. And we'll see depending on the author, hopefully I can get a few more authors to join us through the year.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: That's just so cool.

Haley Radke: It just depends on what year the book was written also.

So keep that in mind. And then we'll also have a pool on what style of book club you would like to participate in. If you want to be able to have a chance at. Sitting on a panel with us for one month, or if you just wanna see the author's face and never see me and Carrie and just pepper them with [00:29:00] questions we'll see.

We'll see what we can do.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Or if you just wanna lurk and you just wanna listen to the book conversation without participating you don't need to. There's no essays required. There's no minimum level of participation required. Lurkers are fully welcome.

Haley Radke: Yes. And people that haven't read the book.

You know what, yes, there's always time for conversation and you can always get something out of it. And I also wanna say we'll be recording these and releasing them into the adoptees on Patreon feed. So even if you can't be there with us live, you'll still be able to watch or listen to the recording. Alright.

That is the exciting news. I am very. I don't know. I just, I love learning together in community. That's what's so powerful for me about book clubs. I think I am a really fast reader and so I often miss things be totally transparent. So I love needing to slow down to make sure I absorb everything [00:30:00] and. How many times have people come to us after and been like, oh, did you notice this or that?

And I'm like, no, I didn't notice that. Thanks for pointing it out. So I love that part of reading in community. How about you, Carrie? What are some of your favorite things about book clubs? Book discussions, like processing after the fact.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I don't know that I read quickly because I'm listening a lot of the time, but it's definitely yeah, people, readers just bring their own experience.

S to books. And so I, I find it fascinating and there'll be times when I'm caught up in language, but there's a plot thing that I'm missing or, vice versa. So it's just wonderful to have other people, and particularly other adoptees to read these sorts of books because I just, I value each of.

You all who are here listening and supporting us and giving us feedback in the Facebook group about books we could read and things to be thinking of. So thank you for being there and reading along with us. I'm excited.

Haley Radke: Yes, [00:31:00] community. It's just one more opportunity and it's also if you're not sure about joining a group, this is like one of those safe ways in, I feel like, 'cause you're discussing a book and we may, of course, adoption will.

Likely come up as themes, right? But then you're not necessarily all about your personal story, you're learning as a group about broader topics and that can feel a little bit safer than going to a support group and sharing all your personal stuff, just a thought.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Great. Totally. No, that's good point. Yes.

Haley Radke: Alright, another thing that we do every single week on adoptees off script is we always wrap up and share something we are loving right now. And I always make sure it's not adoption related. But today I am gonna break that rule

because I can,

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: for sure.

Haley Radke: Okay. I am so excited because the adoptees [00:32:00] on merch store launched. Oh, really? Really? And so it's been so special for me to see people starting to get their orders. Ann Hein posted a video of herself in a sh in the adoptees on the fall T-shirt. So there's autumn leaves and these beautiful roots.

My friend painted it for me. It's gorgeous. And so she made a commercial on her Facebook page. Oh,

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I'm gonna have to check it out.

Haley Radke: So that is so delightful. And seeing people with their mugs, I don't know, I, what else could make me happier except for. Can I tell you, I want you to guess how much merch I have from my own store at this moment.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: What? How much?

Haley Radke: None.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: None.

Haley Radke: None. You guys are getting it first. Thanks for being in Canada, Hailey. Yeah, I know, I'm serious.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Where do we [00:33:00] find the shop? Is it on the adoptee On,

Haley Radke: if you go to the adoptees on website there's a tab. For shop or you just go to adoptee on.com/shop. It is a tea public store. I researched a lot of different places that you can have drop ship merch, which is the most helpful for me 'cause I didn't wanna have something in Canada that would have to cross the border to all of you.

Most of my listeners are American and Tea Public has the most inclusive sizing I could find ethically sourced. Products. And so they're very conscious about those things and so I really was hopeful that they were, most of their products were in that direction, so it seemed like the right choice for me.

And they're also very podcaster friendly. There's a lot of other podcasts that Uhhuh have their merch there, so that's fun. And there's a lot of cool stuff in the de public store, including celiac [00:34:00] shirts that are very funny. So I have celiac disease, so that's another thing that people find out more about on off script than they ever wanted to know about celiac disease.

So that means I can't have wheat and other things that have gluten in them. So there's like all these shirts that are like this giant, like no wheat sign or rowdy things about how terrible gluten is. Those kinds of things.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: That's

Haley Radke: so

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: funny.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Wow. Just in time for the holidays and for.

Gift giving and Thanksgiving and I mean us Thanksgiving

Haley Radke: coming. I know. And this now, this is, now this is coming off like I'm making a commercial. I'm really, I'm just telling you. 'cause I'm so excited. It's really happy is pretty cool. And I'm waiting on my mugs to get here and my shirts and the boys were like, where's our shirts?

And I said, I didn't put kid shirts in the shop because I don't want little adoptees wearing adoptees on shirts 'cause I don't feel that's appropriate. [00:35:00]

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I love you.

Haley Radke: Okay. Tell me what you're loving.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Okay. Besides you, which I am loving the other book club that I've been part of, and I have mentioned,

Haley Radke: are you serious?

You're gonna promote somebody else's book club when all we talked about was our book club.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I just wanna give a nod to the. What should I read next? Modern Mrs. Darcy book club that I have recently become a member of, and I've been reaching out to adoptees there, so I'm having a really good time being a little subversive a little bit.

Haley Radke: There's other adoptees in her

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: proselytizing.

Her

Haley Radke: book club?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yes. Oh, cool. Super excited. But what I'm specifically loving is this past month, the book that we read was. Silver Sparrow by Tari Jones, and she wrote American Marriage, which I might have mentioned as being a really powerful book that I loved back in the spring, specifically why I loved.

[00:36:00] Silver Sparrow is the first line of the book is my father is a bigamist, so it sets up,

Haley Radke: whoa

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: that's not a spoiler. That's the first line of the book. And it's told from two points of view of the two half sisters and one knows about, there's the family that was the first family, and then there's the one that comes secondary.

And the author in the author chat, which we had with her just last week, was, she was very specific not to. Really believe that out of wedlock means illegitimate. But in the context of the story, the one sister's legitimate and one is illegitimate. And you get to see each sister's point of view, and then their storylines overlap and there's a big dramatic conclusion.

And just the issues of family and identity and legitimacy and presence and absence of parents. And, here's, you could see this could have been an adoption situation given other pressures. A mother who became pregnant with a married band's [00:37:00] child in a lot of stories, that's somebody else's adoption story, the beginning.

So here's a story where the mom kept that baby in that complicated relationship. And so just a really fascinating book by an author who is talented and. Lyrical and just thoughtful. She does this thing where she I don't think anyone's really a bad guy. There's no real black and white. Everyone's got some motivations that you can relate to and understand, and so it's a very human and humanizing look at a complicated family relationship.

Story. So Love Ditch.

Haley Radke: Interesting. That sounds, yeah. Silver Sparrow really good. That's one thing from us reading all of these adoptee books this last year and I don't think we mentioned this, but lots of them are not necessarily about adoption. But then they are in below the surface.

And so now when I'm reading other books, I'm finding that theme in so many places. And I [00:38:00] don't just mean the adoptee tropes of Oh, they're the surprise. It's an adopted person at the end, that's the murderer. I just mean there's so many themes of adoption and family separation and trauma.

All of those things that we're so familiar with, and. I think we learn a lot from books that are like that.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yes. Yeah. The, like, where there's just enough similar but a little bit different. So that you can tease out Yeah. Some of the themes that, that we all have in common with this, but complicated family stories.

Haley Radke: Yes. That's it. That's totally it. And and I don't I won't throw modern Mrs. Darcy under the bus. I have very much enjoyed her podcast. What should I read next? I used to listen all the time. I just could. Not keep up. There's so many good recommendations and if you want your to be red pile, to be like, the size of a skyscraper.

I actually, I remember for a while I would just put every book that sounded good on [00:39:00] hold till I literally maxed out. My. Wishlist on my library app, and that's 40 books I think, before it maxes out

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: wow.

Haley Radke: Yeah. If you're an avid reader, that's a fantastic podcast. And Carrie is working hard to make sure that they read more adoptee own voices over there.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yes. Thank you First. Supporting me in that. Now that I say that, will you tell us what own voices is? Oh, own Voices is a hashtag, but it's also a point of view of in publishing, of wanting to publish books by minority authors. If you're gonna show a minority point of view, then those stories hopefully could be shared by the people whose voices are being depicted.

And so many times in adoption or orphan stories, it's just a fascinating setup. Fiction is premised on bad things happening as an inciting incident. And adoptee stories are just like perfectly ripe for [00:40:00] fiction. But it can be really damaging when people are just writing with stereotypes in mind and no real understanding of the adoptee experience.

And in our case, reading own voice books would be reading books about the adopt experience by adoptees, just so that we are not being drowned out by industry platitudes or feel good stereotypes or cultural norms. All the rest

Haley Radke: are the adoptive moms who email me 'cause they wanna come on the show 'cause they wrote a book from the adoptee perspective.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Oh no.

Haley Radke: Did that happen again this week? I don't know. Thank you so much, Carrie. I can't wait for a book club with you. Before we go, can you please let everyone know where we can connect with you online and ask you for. Book recommendations?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Yeah, sure, please. Mostly I'm at [00:41:00] my initials and the word hats.

So CCM hats except for Twitter, where somebody else had that handle. And so I'm CCM felt hats. But I think all the other places are CCM hats and including my website and I've got all the links there as well. And I've I'm on Goodreads if you're there. I used to have a library thing that, those are both CCM hats.

I would love to talk books with you. Please come say hi.

Haley Radke: I will link to all those places for Carrie in the show notes. And now Carrie mentioned earlier, but I'm going to just highlight this for you. Carrie is this amazing, talented fiber artist. She makes the most gorgeous winter cozy hats with beautiful embroidery on, and she's been making.

Masks. I don't even wanna ask you. How many thousands of masks have you made?

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: I think that I've made just over 2000. Oh my gosh. I started making hats again, so I slowed down on the masks. Okay. But yeah, I'm picking back up on both.

Haley Radke: Oh, she's made these banks stunning [00:42:00] masks and she sent me a few and they were like.

Favorite to wear and yeah. So I will also link to Carrie store in the show notes for you if you are in the market for either of those things. Thank you, and I would welcome you to come and join us on Patreon to make sure you're included in our adoptees off script. Book Club for 2021 and make sure you go grab a copy of Famous Adopted People so we can read along with Alice Stevens and I'm excited.

We will announce dates very soon for. The actual live book hub with Alice and remember, we'll record it. So even if you can't be there with us live, you'll still be able to hear it. Thanks so much for chatting.

Carrie Cahill Mulligan: Thank you, Hailey.

Haley Radke: Hey, you know what? Thank you for indulging me. I hope this did not come off as a gigantic sales pitch for the [00:43:00] show. Truthfully, we do want you to join us. Over on Patreon. That's how the show, is sustainable and continues to grow and support more adoptees around the world. So if you go to adoptees on.com/partner, join us there.

But also I really, it's so fun. Adoptee off script is so fun for me. I get to be a little bit more casual and a little more myself and in my regular interviews. I really try to highlight the guest and have it. Be all about them with a few exceptions. I'll insert myself here and there, but on off script you get to know me a little bit better, so I would invite you to join us.

And the other fun thing is the shop really is cool. It's open, there's lots of cool stuff in there. Adoptee design.com/shop, and it may sound like a giant sales pitch. I apologize for that. And also that's the way the show can keep going and become self-sustaining and I guess it's my full-time job now.

So who knew that [00:44:00] would ever be a thing. I am so glad you stuck around. Thank you so much. I'd love to have you in the book club and if that's not on your radar No problem. When we, that's. Awesome to support the show is share one episode with one friend that you know that's adopted. It makes a huge difference.

It might really impact their life. I was really humbled a few days ago when I had a friend say they knew someone who literally was contemplating taking their life. They listen to an episode of the Healing series and reached out for help and has. Really come around to addressing some depression that they had going on and some of those underlying adoption issues.

Honestly, guys, just share the show so people know they're not alone. There's so many adoptees that are hurting and lonely. And you can help them to know they're not alone, just by sharing an episode of the show with 'em. [00:45:00] Like it's such a gift. It's such a gift. So thank you for doing that.

I really appreciate it. And I thank you for thinking adoptee voices are important and for honoring them. Whether you are an adoptee and you are listening to your peers here and you're welcome and you feel like you're sitting with us having a cup of coffee with us. Or if you are a first parent and you wish you had a relationship with your child that has been taken.

Or you are an adoptive parent and you're really hoping that your adopted child will grow up and still feel loved and whole, and you're trying to figure out how to do that. You're welcome here. We welcome you to eavesdrop in on adopting Voices. And so thank you. Thank you for honoring my work and my guests work, and it's, it's a real honor to serve here in this way.

Alright, that's it. Thank you so much for listening back with a regular episode next week. So let's talk again next [00:46:00] Friday.

163 [Update] Maeve Kelly

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/163

---

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'm your host, Haley Radke. Before we get started, I want to let you know how much it means to me that you are showing up here to listen to adoptee voices. I remember when I was first in reunion with my dad and we hit the inevitable rocky patch after the honeymoon period faded.

I felt so alone. I believed I was absolutely unlovable because my first mother had ghosted me after a few months into our reunion about a decade prior. And for me, creating this podcast has been a tremendous labor of love so that adoptees like me who were feeling alone or struggling in reunion or coming out of the fog would have a [00:01:00] connection so we wouldn't feel like we were crazy.

The wildest part of all of this is that it succeeded. Adoptees On has become our show. Our show to connect and share what the adoptee experience is really like. And I'm asking you today to support the podcast and make it sustainable for me to continue doing this work.

I'm Haley, the host and creator of this show, our community’s show, and I'm also a wife and mom to two little boys who are sleeping in their bed as I write this. When you sign up for Patreon or donate via PayPal, you are helping me, Haley, contribute to my family's needs.

What I didn't expect when I started podcasting was that this would become my full-time job. I'm showing up for you and saying yes to adoptees, and I would love for you to show up for me and commit to support Adoptees On. For three weeks only, I have a sale on for yearly membership to the Adoptees On Patreon, and you're going to get [00:02:00] one month free. After that, it's going to go back to regular price.

I'm honored by the support I've already gotten from the community and, truthfully, pretty scared to make this ask, but if I am going to continue to make this show, I really need your help to make it sustainable and to have the ability to meaningfully contribute to my little family over here. Click the link in the show notes or go to adopteeson.com/partner to sign up right now.

Okay, let's get to the show. This is Episode 163, Maeve Kelly. One of our favorite guests is back. Maeve Kelly. She is a good friend of mine, and she is here to share her story of a trip to Ireland to meet some of her extended family on her maternal side. We have shared some major ups and downs in reunion with Maeve, and this is a really special episode. She dropped some really incredible wisdom towards the end. I really appreciate her candor and honesty. As always, let's listen in. [00:03:00]

I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Maeve Kelly. Hi, Maeve.

Maeve Kelly: Hi, Haley.

Haley Radke: I made my husband guess who I was interviewing today and I said, “It is the third time she's been on and she was Episode 3,” and he said, “Maeve.” So he knew it was you.

Maeve Kelly: Wow. How many times has he listened to the podcast?

Haley Radke: He gave up a while ago. He for sure has heard your episode, but maybe he gave up in the fifties. But yeah, so you have been on, and then you were also on Episode 102, giving us another update. And you had some interesting things happen in the last while, so I'd love to hear about them. [00:04:00]

But first, do you mind giving us the little short version of your story just to remind people if they haven't heard your episodes for a little while, all about Maeve.

Maeve Kelly: Okay. So the Cliff Notes version would be that I am an adoptee from the Baby Scoop Era, a domestic adoptee, and grew up not knowing anything about my first parents or anything about my first family in a closed adoption and had always been really wanting to find out who I was and where I came from.

And later in life after I had my children, I started looking in earnest and I made contact with my first mother and then experienced some secondary rejection. I was sent a cease-and-desist letter from her lawyer after we'd had that one phone call, which I describe in detail in the first episode, which is the first time I'd ever told anyone that story. [00:05:00] And after a couple of years of shoving my feelings back into a box, I wound up making contact with her other children, my siblings. I think I discussed that in the first episode, no, I think I left the first episode with, I had not made contact with them, but I wanted to.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I think we talked about that. And you've been on Off Script, too.

Maeve Kelly: I'm a little overexposed. I hope people aren't sick of me.

Haley Radke: Well, I guess if you're friends with me, just, people just keep getting on. I don't know.

Maeve Kelly: Right, so let's see. Okay. And then in the Cliff Notes version, I made contact with them, and then my mother would not tell me who my father was. And I was desperate to find that out and I resigned myself to perhaps never knowing and was in a really dark place for a long time. [00:06:00]

And suddenly out of the blue, I got a hit on Ancestry and found out who my father was in the course of about a day by Googling and doing some other sort of internet sleuthing. And I have since reunited with him, and that's been a really wonderful, unexpected discovery and development for me.

So I think that was where we left it the last time we talked.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I was so excited for you. And we've talked a little bit since then about how there's still challenges, even in a nicer situation, I would say with your bio dad. But can you tell me about connecting with some of your extended family on your maternal side?

Maeve Kelly: Sure. So I had only made contact with my two siblings at first, and that didn't go very well. I met them both one time and I didn't do anything else in order to meet anyone else because I just felt really low about those meetings. I did not really feel accepted. They didn't really share much. [00:07:00]

I knew that there was a very large extended family in Ireland. I did a little research on my own, but I didn't try to make contact with any of them. I really just didn't have it in me. I had felt so rejected for so long, first by my mother and then by my siblings. I just didn't have it in me.

But I had my information out there on Ancestry and 23andMe, and in October of 2018, about a year and a half after I had first reached out to my siblings, I got a note from a first cousin on my maternal side. She was the first of my maternal-side extended relatives who had ever tested on any of the commercial DNA databases. That was a pretty big moment

Haley Radke: Because to your knowledge you were a secret and from a very large family.

Maeve Kelly: Yes, so it was definitely a secret. I knew that from my siblings who told me that my mother had never told anyone about me, including them, including her husband. She was planning to take it to the grave. [00:08:00] So no one knew it, not any of her siblings, not her parents. Nobody ever knew that she had been pregnant and had placed me for adoption.

So, I was sort of waiting. I knew this was going to happen because I knew what a large family she was from, and it was just gonna be a matter of time. And I'd even tried to raise it with one of my siblings to say, you know, it's gonna come out. My DNA is out there and at some point someone is going to test and it's gonna be out there. And I really don't want that to be the way that people find out.

I don't think that's a good way for them to find out. I think it's really jarring. It could be really upsetting and I don't think it's a great way for our mother, for this stuff to come out. It's terrible for me. And I really wanted her to tell her siblings and her extended family about me, but she wouldn't do it. [00:09:00]

And so sure enough, what happened was my first cousin, who actually lives in England, got a DNA test for her birthday, as they normally do, right? Isn't it always like a gift? And she had no expectation that anything exciting was gonna come out of this. She fully expected that her results were going to be 100% Irish, and they were. But I popped up in there as the only first cousin that was on her list, and she was actually in Crete celebrating her 50th birthday.

And she saw that she had me as a match, and she emailed me and she actually thought that I was my sister because she just couldn't understand. And I said, “I'm so-and-so.” And she's, “who are you?” And I said, “I'm so-and-so’s daughter.” And she said, “Oh, you're so-and-so” And I was like, “No, I'm actually her first child. She didn't raise me because of what I said.” And we took it from there.

Actually I was rereading some of the texts that she had sent me before we spoke this evening, just reminding myself of what that was like. [00:10:00] And she sent me a text very soon after we had made contact and she said, “I believe I'm the only member of the entire family who knows about you.” And then she said, “I really don't know what else to say except welcome to the family. I cannot wait to meet up with you. We will never let you go.”

Haley Radke: Wow. I have goosebumps hearing that, even though I think you've told me that a while ago. But did you believe that because you've had some not-so-great receptions?

Maeve Kelly: No, but I tell you, it was the opposite of the reception that I had gotten from everybody else. In any other time I had ever tried to reach out to anyone, it was always with a lot of distrust and they responded to me with some hostility, and I felt like I had to prove myself. It was very uncomfortable and not pleasant. [00:11:00]

And to get this immediately from someone who didn't know me at all. I clearly was breaking some kind of code, and she's writing this from her restaurant in Crete during her 50th birthday holiday with her husband. And that was her immediate reaction. I couldn't believe it. It blew me away. It really did.

It was the first time anyone had ever really been kind to me, either on the adoptive family side or on my birth family side as regards my reunion or my attempts to search or anything. It was the first time anyone had ever really said anything nice to me. So I was blown away. And that's who she is. I came to find out that she is that person. She's as kind and lovely and as wonderful of a person as I've ever met. And she doesn't know anything about adoption. Nothing. She really has no experience with it. She had a couple friends growing up that were adopted, but certainly never read anything about it. [00:12:00] She doesn't know anything. And for her to come out with it like that was just miraculous to me.

So we started off our relationship from there, and within about 24 hours of my making contact with her, she sent me over email the first pictures of my mother that I had ever seen. In the time that I had made contact with my siblings, we had texted a couple of times, and we met one time each, but they had never sent me a picture of her. And so my cousin is the one, she sent me what pictures she had on her phone and then she went home to her home and she took photos of pictures that she had on her mantle and she sent them to me. Immediately, without any reservation, without looking me up or investigating me, sent me these really lovely pictures. And it was incredible. I couldn't believe it.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Like, that's what you hope for, right? That's the dream. To have it extended from a cousin. It's pretty special.

Maeve Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, it was unexpected.

Haley Radke: So she lives in England? [00:13:00]

Maeve Kelly: She lives in England. She was born and raised in Ireland, and she married an English guy, and she's lived in England for the last 20 years. But she goes home to Ireland every couple of months because she wants to see her dad, who's in his nineties. And he's living alone, although close to her brother who cares for him, but he's still living alone in his nineties in a big modern farmhouse in County Mayo. So she goes home to see him every couple of months.

So, after we'd been in contact for, I don't know, about a year and a half, she said, “Hey, if you want to come to Ireland and meet more of the family, I would be glad to arrange for that for you and we can just meet there, I'll plan it around a time I'm going to be there to see my dad anyway. What do you think of February, 2020? Or April, 2020?” So I jumped on it and I said, “February, 2020.” Even though I knew the weather was going to be terrible, but I really wanted to do it as soon as I could. As soon as I had the opportunity. I didn't want to wait around.

Haley Radke: [00:14:00] And at the time we're recording this, we're still in the delightful pandemic of 2020, so it seems like you have picked the good time.

Maeve Kelly: I know, right? Who would've known? If I had waited, I wouldn't have been able to go. We were shut down here in March of 2020. Yeah, it’s really fortuitous that I did push it to February. So yeah, I went there in February.

Haley Radke: So what were you feeling when she asked you that? Like I'm just thinking, okay, am I gonna go to a country around the world and go meet some strangers and hang out with them?

Maeve Kelly: Exactly. I was exhilarated and terrified. In equal parts.

Haley Radke: But you just said yes. You just knew in your gut: of course, this is what I want. Wow.

Maeve Kelly: And, you know, I've always been that way. I am just hit the gas pedal and get to 70 miles an hour. I'm just, yes if I have an opportunity to meet someone with the exception of one person, which we'll probably talk about later, I'm all for it. So I was an immediate yes, and book the tickets. [00:15:00]

Haley Radke: Okay. So when she invites you and she's planning this around the timing to visit her dad and everything. But we're talking about your extended family. So has she been telling people about you? Did she contact your first mother? Do you know what was happening behind the scenes there?

Maeve Kelly: Ugh. Yes, I do, unfortunately. Like I had said, she's the first person in the extended family that knew about me because my siblings didn't tell anyone and my mother didn't tell anyone. She reached out to some of my aunts, the ones that she's closest with. And it started to sort of get around the family.

At that point, when my mother found out that it was getting around the family, she sent a letter out to the oldest child in every family group. She's one of nine siblings, so there's 10 total in her sibling group. [00:16:00] And of those 10, there's 39, including myself. So she sent out 10 letters to the 10 oldest, and I did hear about the letter. My cousin actually read it to me because she is the oldest in her sibling group.

So she got it, and it was like a one-page letter. It said, “Some of you are aware that I gave this child up for adoption. She may be contacting some of you. This woman”–she called me this woman–“has a family of her own.” It ended with something that was pretty bland. It was, “If she makes contact with you, then I would ask that you welcome her” or something like that. But it certainly was no resounding “this is my daughter and I'm so thrilled and she's a wonderful person.” Because at the end of the day, she'd never even laid eyes on me. [00:17:00]

I still haven't met her. And we have this very tortured history where she had sent me a cease-and-desist letter five years prior, telling me she was going to sue me if I ever made contact with her again. So it was a very tortured letter. And it made me out to be a bad guy. It was really distressing. It was a very sad letter. I was very upset about the letter. It was very cold.

So at that point, you know, it was out there, for sure. Now everyone definitely knew who I was. Then my cousin could talk more freely about me. And when I decided to come out in February of 2020, she started making plans a couple of months ahead of time to set up meet-and-greets for me.

Haley Radke: And did you have second thoughts when you knew that everybody got this letter blast, or were you still just like no, I wanna know some of these people. I don't know. I, it just feels so scary to me. You're so brave. I just, sometimes the things that you do, I'm just like, wow, [00:18:00] I'm in awe of you.

Maeve Kelly: I had so many second thoughts.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. So you're human Good.

Maeve Kelly: Third thoughts, fourth thoughts and fifth thoughts. Yeah, I really did. It was really difficult. Yeah. My cousin was really honest with me that she'd had some very tough conversations with two of my aunts in particular, who just couldn't understand why I wanted to meet any of them and just couldn't understand why I couldn't just go away.

One of them said to my cousin, “You know, she has a family.” Meaning my adoptive family. So I'm glad my cousin was really honest with me about that. I would much prefer the honesty. I think I'm like a lot of adoptees in that I need truth. I really need truth, I need honesty. I cannot stand it when people act like they like me when they don't or what have you. Like, I can deal with honesty and truth. So I was glad she told me all of that. I was more prepared and I didn't try to win them over. So when I went over there in February, there were two aunts who didn't want to meet me. [00:19:00] And that's fine. That's up to them. I can't do anything about that. I think that story was written 50 years ago. It's sad. It's really sad. And my cousin didn't try to press it.

Haley Radke: Yeah. This is sort of an aside. I don't wanna go down the rabbit trail, but did you find out, like, did any of them have any clue about you?

Maeve Kelly: No.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Maeve Kelly: No one had a clue, which is really, well, yeah.

Haley Radke: Because she was in the States already.

Maeve Kelly: Right. So long story short, she was in the States when she gave birth to me, but the entire family save one sibling was in Ireland and remained in Ireland. And she also moved in order to hide the pregnancy. So she was living and working in Manhattan. And her brother was also there in Manhattan, so she saw him every so often. But when she got pregnant, she moved to Philadelphia to hide it from everyone, even him. Never told a soul.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So she was fully successful, like, almost her whole life.

Maeve Kelly: Completely successful. No one had a clue. [00:20:00] And in fact, it's really funny. My cousin and I have had some jokes, because she said that, when she was speaking with a few of my cousins about it, they were joking about it. Like, my mother is the last one anyone would've expected to have this secret child because she's very proper. Everything is just the way it needs to be.

Haley Radke: Did you ever see that show, Keeping Up Appearances?

Maeve Kelly: No, I don't know that.

Haley Radke: It's a really old PBS show from the UK and the mom in that show is very proper and her name's Hyacinth and it ends up everything is always a big fail. But yes, it's the keeping up appearances part.

Maeve Kelly: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's pretty funny. And it is amazing when you think about it, how someone could keep the secret like that. She was absolutely going to take that secret to the grave, including from her own husband. [00:21:00]

Haley Radke: I'm reading The Girls Who Went Away in the Baby Scoop Era right now. And they went away, but people kind of knew, right? They still knew, they gossiped. Some of them were successful in hiding. Some parents were successful in hiding their daughter's shame, etc. But that's wild that she was gonna take it to the grave.

Maeve Kelly: She was a little different, too; she's not the typical girl who went away in that she was 30 years old when I was born. This was absolutely a choice of hers. If she had wanted to raise me, she absolutely could have made it happen. She could have gone back to Ireland. So many of her sisters were having babies at the exact same time, and I think I probably just could’ve slid in there and maybe no one would’ve even noticed, “Oh, there's another one!”

Haley Radke: Do you know what order you are in the 39?

Maeve Kelly: Oh my gosh, no. That's a really good question.

Haley Radke: Are you in the middle there somewhere?

Maeve Kelly: I think I'm right in the middle.

Haley Radke: Okay, that's there. I've done my rabbit-trailing. You went to Ireland, right? [00:22:00] I wanna hear about that. I just can't believe you did it.

Maeve Kelly: I can't believe I did it either. And again, like, harken back to the fact that my entire childhood all the way up to the time I was about 40, I had no idea about any of this. And I was never encouraged in any way to ever find my family. Ever by anyone. So when I found myself on that plane, I just couldn't believe it. So I flew out–I worked all the way up till Wednesday. The thing is, when I was preparing for this call tonight, Haley, I realized I have not processed this at all. Haley Radke: Oh no, I'm not supposed to bring up stuff people haven’t processed.

Maeve Kelly: No, but I mean, my counselor, she was like, “Listen, you need to write everything down. You need to really take this all in. You need to take some time off, before you go, after you go, you really need to think about it.” I didn't do any of that. I worked until Wednesday. I got on the plane on Thursday, then I came back and I went right back to work and I didn't write anything down when I was there, I was too tired. [00:23:00] I was so emotionally blown away every day that I couldn't write anything or reflect or think about anything.

So this is really the first time that I sat down the night before to get ready for this interview and I started looking at some of the pictures and stuff and thinking about what had happened. But, so anyway, I flew out on a Thursday. I spent the night at a London airport hotel on Thursday night, and then on Friday morning I flew out to Dublin. And my cousin and her husband picked me up at the airport, and the first thing that we did was we went to my other cousin's house for lunch.

So right from the airport, here we go. And my cousin had set up this sort of weekend itinerary where every day we were meeting with new groups of cousins, new family groups that she had set up perfectly, like to the hour. And they were prepped and primed for me to be there. So I would walk in and it's just, “Oh, [00:24:00] hello!” It's everyone's waiting for me. She knew, they knew exactly what time we were getting there, it was so organized. She did such a wonderful job.

Every day I was there, I had different groups of people I was meeting with, different relatives. So my first day I met right away with our mutual cousin and her husband and daughter. And we stayed at my cousin's dad's house. I have said that her dad is in his nineties. And he lives alone. So we all stayed in his house. Which was fantastic. It was so much fun. He's such a gentleman, and that was such a great place to stay. I had the whole sort of upper floor of the house to myself, which was really nice.

Haley Radke: Had you ever been to Ireland before?

Maeve Kelly: I had. When I was 14, I went there. It's a really painful memory. Very coincidentally, my adoptive father, his entire extended family from many generations ago is from the same county, County Mayo, as I am from. [00:25:00] And my adoptive father was really into genealogy and Irish history, and he brought us to County Mayo when I was 14, and we looked at graveyards and we went to cemeteries. And he walked into restaurants that had my adoptive father's name, last name, trying to find relatives from hundreds of years ago.

So his family had come from Mayo hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Little did I know that, at that time, my entire extended family was in the same county and I probably crossed paths with one of my 36 cousins during that timeframe. My grandmother was living about 10 minutes away from where I was when I was 14 years old at that little bed & breakfast. So I had been back there and it was a very painful trip for me. And then going back brought back a lot of those memories. Of course, I had no idea that I was from Mayo, but I do now. [00:26:00]

And I actually, when I was there, everything came back to me about being there and all that.

Haley Radke: Did it redeem anything for you or was it more just, “Oh my gosh, I can't even think about that right now?”

Maeve Kelly: I couldn't think about it. It was so painful. I couldn't think about the fact that there I was trailing, I have a distinct memory of trailing behind him and my adoptive brother, who was their biological son, as they were looking at cemeteries and dusty old books in churches to try to find some evidence of their ancestors, when in reality, my grandmother was 10 minutes away. Who's dead. And I will never meet her and she never knew I existed. It was very painful. It was really painful to think about. Yeah, but anyway, back to the good part.

Haley Radke: Yeah. [00:27:00]

Maeve Kelly: So then, Saturday morning my cousin brought me over to Foxford, which is where my entire family lived, including my mother being raised. And I met with her oldest sister, who's in her nineties, and she has six children and three of them were there to meet me, which was really amazing, including the oldest of the grandchildren. So the oldest of my cousins, a guy named Francis. I think he's like 60 years old now. And he is a very soft-spoken introvert, I could tell, and definitely not a gregarious kind of guy that's gonna be the life of the party. He was kind of standing away from me a little bit, and at one point he took me by the elbow and he took me into the next room. He looked at me, like, straight in the eye and he said, “I want you to know that you are welcome here.” It was crazy. I was like, “What is happening?”

Haley Radke: Did you cry? I'm crying.

Maeve Kelly: Well, I cried. I did. I held it together for that. I did cry when I met my aunt. So this would be the oldest of my mother's siblings. She's such a lovely lady. And it's a tiny house in Foxford, right? [00:28:00] She's lived there for 50 years, and they put her right next to the stove in the kitchen so that she could be warm because again, remember, it's February in Ireland. It's really cold. So she's sitting there next to the stove with the stove on to be warm. And they had left a chair there for me, for me to go sit there right next to her in the kitchen.

And I walked in and she's 92 years old and she pats the chair and she's like, “Come over here to me.” And she just looked at me and she was like, “You are the image of your mother.” And it was so sweet. And the thing was, I remember when I first made contact with my cousin. She was like, “Oh, everyone's really afraid of Auntie May. What is she going to think about you? What is she gonna think about this situation?” Because she's really the head of the family and she's gonna be the tough one. [00:29:00]

She was not the tough one. She was so sweet and loving and gentle. And I just sat there the whole time next to her, and she held my hand. It was so incredibly meaningful. And again, this is the first aunt or uncle I've ever met. It was this moment, and it was just incredible. It was so, so meaningful. Such a gentle lady, who grew up in a time where, you know, having a child out of wedlock is basically, you're doomed to eternal damnation, right? And she was able to step out of that. And just look at me as a real person and as a member of the family.

So it was really beautiful. And then each one of my cousins, actually, who were there, they all, Francis started it and he took me aside, and I said, what he said to me. And then the others also, individually, they each took me–they didn't just stand back and be in the conversation, but they each took me individually–into the next room to have a conversation with me. Which was, again, so unexpected and so meaningful. [00:30:00] So that was such an emotional time for me.

Haley Radke: Were you just like a wreck every night, like crying in your pillow?

Maeve Kelly: I was a wreck every day and every night. It was so hard. It was so hard. Then I went, I won't belabor it, but then I went on a funny murder mystery excursion with five of my women cousins. We had a blast that night. Just went off and I spent time as me and five cousins. And the whole time I'm like, “I cannot believe this is happening to me. Here I am with all these cousins, like I'm related to them. I'm just as related to them as they are to each other.” I couldn't wrap my head around that. Like these are my actual cousins. These are not my adoptive cousins. These are my actual flesh and blood cousins. I had to keep telling myself that because I just couldn't believe it. [00:31:00]

So the weekend went on and it was the same thing where my cousin would set me up with these meetings at the various family homes, and I would hang out with people, and then I would go back to the house. And collapse. One of the great things, actually a unique thing, that she arranged for me was a tour of the mill where my grandfather had spent his entire career. He worked in the Foxford woolen mill for his whole life. And she arranged for us to have a tour there. Which was just fantastic. And again, I just could picture him being there and it was very grounding to actually walk the walk, see the streets, see where he lived, where he spent his whole career, look at the buildings. It really put it in perspective for me.

Haley Radke: That's amazing. And when you were talking about just being with your cousins, I just kept thinking, most people just take that for granted, that they know that they're related to the people they see at family gatherings and stuff. [00:32:00] And then juxtapose to you following your adoptive dad looking at gravestones when you have no connection. That's really poignant for me because one of the major fights I had with my adoptive parents was showing me this folder full of genealogy stuff and I was like, “This is not my history.” There's no recognition: this is so important to me, but yours shouldn't be important to you. That's interesting that those things would come together, of course, on a trip like this.

Maeve Kelly: Right, yeah. So I met my only living uncle, who lives in Foxford. He, again, was as gracious and as polite and welcoming as I could ever hope. I met another one of my aunts. So I met my oldest aunt and my youngest aunt of the 10 siblings in that group. There's one in her nineties and one in her seventies. So the last aunt that I met was in her seventies and that was where I saw the most resemblance to me, sort of on the last day when I met that aunt. For sure, a lot of resemblance, which was really, really fun, actually. [00:33:00]

Haley Radke: Did anyone tell you anything about your mother when you were there? Did you even ask or was that kind of not really on the table?

Maeve Kelly: So people would make it a point of showing me pictures of her when I was in their homes. One thing that they did was each one of them, whether it was one of my actual relatives or whether it was an in-law, would show me family pictures and they'd always point out my mother and say, “There's your mother.” In a very nice way, a very loving way. They didn't really talk too much about her personality. A little bit here and there, but no, they didn't really tell me that much. No, I didn't ask either. I just wanted to be there for me.

Haley Radke: Yeah. [00:34:00]

Maeve Kelly: I didn't want to make it about her at all. I really wanted to be about me. And the whole story didn't really come out. If anyone asked too much about it, I just tried to keep it really light because, you know, I had been warned that I was making people uncomfortable or what have you, and that people felt like they needed to choose between me and my mother, and all of that. And that's like the last thing I wanna do is make people feel uncomfortable. So I just made it about me. And I just was so happy to be there and thanking people profusely and stuff like that. Just trying to have fun, trying to keep it light, right? You know, making jokes about, “Well, surprise, another cousin here!” And of course being American, I can always joke about that as well, apologize for whatever the Americans have done lately that's embarrassing the world.

**Haley Radke:**Wow. So I don't even know how many people you met. It would be hard for me to keep track of that many names and faces day after day. How did you wrap up and end the trip? And I know you went right back to work after, but there must have been some processing on the plane home. [00:35:00]

Maeve Kelly: Oh my gosh. I think I just collapsed on the plane home. I was so exhausted. I was so unbelievably drained. Because the other thing was, I am very much an introvert and it is really difficult for me to be in those situations. And I really felt like I needed to perform. I really felt like this was it. I've gotta do this. Like I've got to get these people to like me. I need to show them that I'm not crazy. I need to show them I'm not out for their money and they don't need to be afraid of me. I'm just a normal person. I need to be likable. I need to be smart. I need to be the kind of person that they are going to want to continue to have a relationship with.

It was exhausting and I did it for four days straight in several different environments with all of these people who were gathered in order just to meet me. And I collapsed. I just collapsed after that. I had nothing left in the tank. And then I came home and I just went right back to work and I haven't thought about it that much since. I mean, of course, I thought about it, but I haven't really sat down to be like, “Wow, what just happened there?” Like, “Okay, I can't believe that just happened.” [00:36:00]

Haley Radke: I really appreciate you saying all the things you were trying to hold together because I think so many of us hold that in reunion. And it is another reunion of sorts, right? Even if it's extended family, it is still completely legitimate, it counts, whatever you want me to say about that. But, to try and prove yourself like that, that feeling is always with us, “You still like me, right?” And, especially, I don't know, did you hear anything after the trip, like, from your mother? I keep asking about that because I know it was such a huge conflict.

Maeve Kelly: Not after the trip, but I did hear before the trip. I went in February of 2020. In December of ‘19, she got wind of the fact that I was planning this trip, and she emailed me. This is the first time she's ever initiated contact with me. [00:37:00]

She emailed me and suggested that we should get together in January, the next month, that we should meet. And she sent me some dates that would work for her for me to travel to meet her. She also indicated that she felt like it would be better for the family, that they would be more comfortable with me if I met her before I went and that wouldn't I agree that it would be better for them that I would do this.

And it ruined my Christmas, Haley, because this came in like the middle of December and I was already so worked up about this trip, thinking about it and stressing about it. And really just beside myself thinking, you know, the anticipation of it. And then I get this email outta the blue. I had really made peace with the fact that I was never gonna meet her. [00:38:00] And then she sends me this. I spent a lot of time reflecting about it, and I talked to my counselor about it a lot. And I came to the conclusion that I wasn't gonna do that, and that there was nothing good gonna come out of that for me.

And it was really, really clear that the only reason she wanted to meet me was because I was going to Ireland. And she thought that would reflect badly on her if we hadn't met before then. She didn't want that to be the story, and it also was really clear to me that it was going to be a one-time deal and I just wasn't willing to do that to myself. She had said some really hateful things to me on our one phone call, and I was picturing her say those hateful things to me in person, and I was picturing myself not able to recover from that.

And so I wrote her a long email back–I probably spent like a week doing this email–but I sent her a long email back in which I said something to the effect of I appreciate her reaching out to me and I would love to continue our communication, but I'm not ready to meet right now. [00:39:00] But I would love to hear from her again. And I explained that I'm very afraid of what she would say to me if we met in person, and I'm very afraid that she only wants to meet me one time, and I didn't think that I could handle that.

And she never replied. Well, no, I take it back, she did reply. She said something like, “I can understand why this is not a good time for you. Maybe we can meet some other time.” That's what she said, and then I never heard from her again. So I was right, she didn't want to meet me for me; she wanted to meet me because I was going to Ireland. That's why. So it wasn't about me. So that was really hard. That was really, really hard. It was yet another holiday that had been ruined by adoption. I dunno about you, but like every holiday is ruined by adoption for me and for some reason or another, you know. I was like, “Darn it, I wanted to have a good Christmas.” I was really angry that Christmas, I was like, “She did it again!” [00:40:00]

Haley Radke: We may have talked a little bit about this situation, and I recall it quite vividly, in fact. Okay, now I'm gonna put you on the spot here, I think. I wonder if you have any advice coming out of this for other adoptees because, if you'll recall in our very first call, I think we both said to each other, basically, our mothers could do anything and we would run back to them. And yet, these years later you had that opportunity, but now you have these extra supports in place and you can read between the lines a little. And it sounds like you made a really wise choice for yourself and had really good boundaries about it all. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you, I guess maybe, extend that advice? It was so cool that you [00:41:00] still got some answers about your history and some connection and you didn't need to have the “pity visit,” I guess–I don't know what else to call it. It was gross the way that came about, so, I don't know, thoughts on that or advice?

Maeve Kelly: I can't give advice to anyone. I'm barely–I have no idea what I'm doing. The only advice I would have is just that you never know what's coming around the corner and you really can't predict what's going to happen in this bizarre life of adoption.

I never would have anticipated that my cousin would've reacted the way that she did. Never. I never could have anticipated that I would be at a place that I would decline to meet my own mother. I guess just to be ready for anything and not to put too much pressure on yourself to ever handle anything perfectly. I do think a lot of these things are put in stone before we're even born. [00:42:00]

I think two things have come out of my experience over the last several years. One thing really hits me. I think that sometimes we're presented with situations that come out of the blue. And the way that we respond to those situations shows what kind of people we really are. And I think the way my cousin reacted to me in that moment, when she's sitting there and getting that email from me and realizing who I am, it shows who she is as a person at her core. And I think the same is true of my mother. I think she's shown the person that she is. And you just can never know how any individual is going to react to these situations.

And you have to be ready for anything and not put pressure on yourself to try to control the result or control how other people are going to act. [00:43:00] Because the second big learning that I've had is: we can say the most perfect things in the most perfect way and explain things and just perfectly, and write the most perfect letter and be the most perfect person. And the people who were meant to reject us are still gonna reject us. And the people who were meant to accept us are still gonna accept us.

It's not our fault. None of this is our fault. This is just the way people are and the way the story was written well before we were born. So I've taken a lot of pressure off myself, I think, and realized that this really isn't about me and I can't control the way people are going to react to me or not react to me.

Haley Radke: I think that's very wise. [00:44:00] Something I've learned from you, and I'll just check if this is how you've reacted in the times you've had an opportunity to do so when you've received communication or information, you have paused and really decided how you're going to respond versus –I know some of us, especially if we're communicating by email, digitally in some format, and we feel like we need to give that instant response. I feel like you're really good at the pause and considering before you responded. I think that really helped you, Do you think so?

Maeve Kelly: Yeah, I do. I think I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, for sure. I think part of that is just my personality too. It’s a little bit of self-preservation. Yeah, I always think it's good to pause and, of course, we need help with this stuff. Trying to go about these sorts of monumental, life-changing, incredibly emotionally impactful events without help is impossible. We need each other, right?

We need other adoptees in our corner. We really need people, we need our adoption-competent therapists along with us. I did make that mistake early on, when I first made contact with my mother. I was completely alone. [00:45:00] I had no idea what I was doing. I was not in therapy. I did not know a single adoptee. I hadn't read anything about adoption. I had no idea what I was doing. I made so many mistakes. But, you know, now that I've grown up a little bit, I've learned a lot and I realize we really need our people along the way. So I've learned that.

Haley Radke: Yeah, we really do.

Maeve Kelly: We can't do this alone. We can't. It's too big. This is way too big. This is more than one person can bear. It really is. It's overwhelming.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing about your trip. I'm so excited, we're gonna do recommended resources and this is only one good thing I can think of right now about the pandemic, is that there are so many awesome online things happening for adoptees. I finally got to see a play I have been dying to see, The Good Adoptee by Suzanne Bachner. I don't know if you've ever had a chance to see it in person, Maeve? [00:46:00]

Maeve Kelly: I have not, but I know I've seen pieces on it or write ups on it, and I've always wanted to. I was planning, actually, on going to see it and then the lockdown happened. But I know what you're talking about.

Haley Radke: I'm sure a lot of us have seen the playbill for it. Anyway, it has been recorded and I was messaging Suzanne a little bit back and forth, and she told me they are going to do another online adaptation of it, as well. But I was able to rent it and watch it and I just loved it.

It's a one woman show and one of the most interesting parts of the play, I thought, if you like the tea spilling, I love that [00:47:00]. If you listen to any of the things I share on the Adoptees Off Script on the Patreon podcast, you'll know that about me.

She talks about hiring a search professional who probably a lot of us have heard her name before. She doesn't say her whole name, but she gives all the hints that you need to figure out who this is. And about the drama behind the scenes of that. And I found that really interesting because I never needed help searching, and I know there's so many people that use Search Angels or do hire a private investigator, and what that looks like.

So, yeah, if you want a little tea, that, I feel, is one of the bonus parts of the play, but I really enjoyed it. It was really well done, and of course I would love to see it in person and I hope I will be able to sometime. But I really think it's a great way to support an adoptee who's doing some really amazing creative work. [00:48:00]

So I really enjoyed that and I'll link to where you can watch it in the show notes. You do pay to view it. Of course, we should pay adoptees for their art just like other artists. And then when there's a new version, I will let you guys know as well. I'm not sure the timeline on that, but I really loved it and highly recommend.

What did you wanna share with us?

Maeve Kelly: If I could do two quick ones. I had meant to bring up this piece that I just read today in Medium by Mindy Stern. I don't know if you know Mindy, but she's on Twitter quite a bit. I follow her, and she does this really great piece about how she met her birth father and coming out of the airport, what that was like to see him in the baggage claim. And it is exactly what it was like for me when I met my birth father as well, and also when I got off the plane in Ireland to go meet my cousin. I just think that she's such a great writer and the stuff that she writes about really resonates with me. [00:49:00]

And the second one, if I can give you a second one, is of course, Jessenia Parmer. She has the I am Adopted website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And this month for National Adoption Awareness Month, she is posting just about every day a different story or an account by an adoptee, giving each person the floor to talk about their adoption experience in their own words. And I'm finding these pieces so moving, really moving. So well written. And I find when adoptees can just talk about their experiences in their own words without interruption, it's the most powerful method of communication there can be. So I can't recommend that enough. What Jessenia is doing.

Haley Radke: Yeah, it's such a good series. [00:50:00] And she started another Instagram account, and it's (at) adoptee mental health stories, so she's curating them there as well. And I don't know about you, Maeve, but I love that she has the photos of the authors. Because you're seeing their face and their story. I love having that connection. That's the special part of Instagram, right? The extra visuals. It's really well done, very well curated of course, by Jessenia, who does all the good things for our community. She's amazing.

Thank you for sharing those. I'm so glad we got to highlight them. Thanks for sharing your story with us. Again, if you want to go back and hear Maeve tell her other stories from the beginning. She was in Season 1, Episode 3 and back again in Episode 102. And she has a couple episodes on Adoptees Off Script. If you want to tweet to her, what is your Twitter handle, Maeve?

Maeve Kelly: I am (at) MaeveKelly11.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much. [00:51:00]

I'm so grateful for adoptees like Maeve who are ready to tell it like it is, the hard stuff and all. I think it really helps prepare the rest of us for what reunion and search can actually look like and what's going on behind the scenes of our mind while we're in the moment. I think it's really helpful to help prepare us if we ever get an invitation like that. Anyway, I'm so thankful for Maeve and for the other connections I've built from making this podcast. It's been really special to see how we have changed and our opinions have evolved over the last few years, and I'm grateful I get to share that with you

I want to thank everyone who has signed up so far on Patreon. There's been so many of you signing up for the yearly membership and getting one month free and others that are signing up for month-to-month membership, which is awesome also.[00:52:00] And I've received several donations and I'm just really thankful for your support. I don't know how many times I can say it, so I'll just say it one more time: Thankful for your support, for your ongoing support of the show.

And if it's not in the budget right now, literally one of the best ways you can help the show is to just share it with one person. So if you know an adoptee who would really connect to Maeve's story, you can share this episode or share your favorite episode, maybe a Healing Series episode with your adoptee support group, or another one of your favorites.

And, the best part about podcasts is that they're free and you can teach other people how to download them. Because you're listening to this. So if you grab their phone and show them how they can listen to Adoptees On, it's a huge gift to me and to them. So thank you. Thanks for sharing the show.

Thanks for your ongoing support in so many ways, and thanks for listening. Let's talk again next Friday. [00:53:00]

162 [Healing Series] Anger

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/162

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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'm your host, Haley Radke. Before we get started, I want to let you know how much it means to me that you are showing up here to listen to adoptee voices. I remember when I was first in reunion with my dad and we hit the inevitable rocky patch after the honeymoon period faded.

I felt so alone. I believed I was absolutely unlovable because my first mother had ghosted me after a few months into our reunion about a decade prior. And for me, creating this podcast has been a tremendous labor of love so that adoptees like me who were feeling alone or struggling in reunion or coming outta the fog would have a connection so [00:01:00] we wouldn't feel like we were crazy.

The wildest part of all of this is that it succeeded. Adoptees On has become our show. Our show to connect and share what the adoptee experience is really like, and I'm asking you today to support the podcast and make it sustainable for me to continue doing this work.

I'm Haley, the host and creator of this show, our community’s show, and I'm also a wife and mom to two little boys who are sleeping in their bed and as I write this when you sign up for Patreon or donate via PayPal, you are helping me, Haley, contribute to my family's needs. What I didn't expect when I started podcasting was that this would become my full-time job.

I'm showing up for you and saying yes to adoptees, and I would love for you to show up for me and commit to support Adoptees On. For three weeks only, I have a sale on for yearly membership to the Adoptees On Patreon, and you're gonna get one month free. [00:02:00] After that, it's going to go back to regular price.

I'm honored by the support I've already gotten from the community and, truthfully, pretty scared to make this ask, but if I am going to continue to make this show, I really need your help to make it sustainable and to have the ability to meaningfully contribute to my little family over here. Click the link in the show notes or go to adopteeson.com/partner to sign up right now.

Okay, let's get to the show. 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 revisiting one of our most powerful Healing Series episodes. We're talking all about anger with Pam Cordano.

We recorded this episode all the way back in April, 2017. Let's listen in.

Pamela Cordano is a fellow adoptee and psychotherapist who specializes in helping you to discover meaning in your life. [00:03:00] Welcome back to Adoptees On, Pamela.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Thank you. I'm so happy to be with you today.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad to be speaking with you.

We are tackling a big one today: anger. And I bet everyone listening has at some point in their life been told, “You sound like an angry adoptee.” So that kind of triggering for me and probably for a lot of the people that are listening. So would you start out by just talking a little bit about what anger is and why adoptees get accused of being angry all the time?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Oh my gosh, yes. This is a huge subject and I am excited to be talking about it, even though it's so big, because it's one of my favorite subjects, actually. And I definitely grew up very angry. So anger's been something I've had to look at a lot over the 52 years I've been alive.

So what I say to clients about how to define anger is, anger [00:04:00] simply means I don't like this. There's a lot for us adoptees to not like about what's happened to us or how the culture is with adoption, or how the system is or contact with our adoptive families and biological families, and how we feel inside about ourselves. There's plenty of that for us not to like so there's plenty for us to be angry about.

Haley Radke: Definitely, I'm an angry adoptee, too.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Hello, angry adoptee! So anger and fear are closely linked and I would then say that there's also a lot for us to be afraid of as adoptees.

So, if you think about a bear in the woods who has cubs–this is a bear who's keeping her cubs, by the way. Sorry, that's an angry thing to say but, if someone comes and threatens her cubs, she doesn't like it, right? And she's afraid that her cubs are gonna get hurt. So she growls and gets fierce, and her anger is saying, “I don't like this.” And she's also afraid.

So fear and anger are closely linked and, in fact, anger is often considered [00:05:00] to be a secondary emotion that follows a primary emotion. And the primary emotion could be fear, or it could be shame and humiliation. It could be sadness. Some people really are afraid of getting sad or despairing because they can sink into a pit and feel like they can't come out again. And anger, at least, is more bolstering and can make us feel like we have some power.

So anger is often thought of as a secondary emotion. So anger means “I don't like this,” and anger and fear are closely linked. And, like I said, there's a lot for us adoptees to be afraid of and to not like.

One of the things about adoptees and anger is that I believe in the primal wound and I believe that when we're born our brains are not formed yet and that when we change mothers families, environments, it's a trauma to our brains, to our developing brains, and that we go into the fight/flight/freeze mode in our brains. And [00:06:00] that's very, very stressful for us.

And so rather than just basking in a nice nap or nursing with our mother or whatever happy, content safe babies do, we're in a trauma already making this adjustment. And so our brains are not developing the same way as the brain of a baby who feels safe is developing. The stress just has gotten going right away.

And so our bodies are emitting stress hormones and there are new ways our brains are being wired because of the stress. And it's just like the beginning of our brain development is done. I feel this on the inside of me. I don't know if you can relate to this, but I feel like deep, deep down in me there's a chaos and a fight/flight thing just ready to happen very easily.

And I look at my friends who are from intact families who are not adopted. Some of them have later traumas and I know what their traumas are like, but there's something in me that feels [00:07:00] like it's just from the very beginning and I don't say that because I know it, I say that because I feel it.

Haley Radke: I think one of the ways that shows up for me is that I startle so easily and it's a big reaction. That's really interesting.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yep, me too. Yep. And a lot of adoptees have sleep problems. One time a teacher said to us–it was like a development class–that when babies don't feel safe, they have a really hard time sleeping the way that safe babies sleep.

So a lot of adoptees have sleep problems. And I just think that this primal beginning lack of safety is with us throughout our lives. I just happen to believe that. I don't need people to agree with me, but that's what I believe, and it's the basis of where some of this anger comes from–or maybe a lot of the anger comes from–in us, living in a state of [00:08:00] biological neurological fear and it being very easy for us not to like how things are going or for things not to feel right to us with what's happening.

Haley Radke: I'm just nodding along and thinking, “Yes, you're describing me right now.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, it's really sad, isn't it? Can I read a quote to you by a doctor named Bessel van der Kolk?

Haley Radke: Oh, absolutely.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I'm not sure if you've heard of him or not. Here's a quote about trauma. And this is about anybody, it's not directed toward adoptees:

“Trauma is much more than a story about the past that explains why people are frightened, angry, or out of control. Trauma is re-experienced in the present, not as a story, but as profoundly disturbing physical sensations and emotions that may not be consciously associated with memories of past trauma. Terror, rage, and helplessness are manifested as bodily reactions, like a pounding heart, nausea, gut-wrenching [00:09:00] sensations, and characteristic body movements that signify collapse, rigidity, or rage. The challenge in recovering from trauma is to learn to tolerate feeling what you feel and knowing what you know about being overwhelmed. There are many ways to achieve this, but all involve establishing a sense of safety and the regulation of physiological arousal.”

So that's a big quote, but I think what I'm trying to say is that I really believe that the deepest basis for anger in us has to do with our trauma.

Haley Radke: Okay, so to address the anger, then, we're going back–because you said it was a secondary emotion, also–then we're going back one level. And so there's that sadness, fear, shame, and those things are coming from the trauma.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, that’s actually living in us in a neurological and biological kind of way.

Haley Radke: Let's talk a little bit more about anger. So we, you defined it as, “I don't like this.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Right, and so it's [00:10:00] powerful, necessary. We need anger. Animals need anger. Humans need anger. We need to be able to draw lines and express ourselves when we don't like something, when something's scaring us and we don't like it. So it has a very healthy component to it, and it preserves us and it defines us.

So I just want to name a few polarities of anger. There's connected anger where, let's say, an adoptee is talking to their adoptive parents about their experience and what they're frustrated about. And if the adoptive parents can make space for what's being said, for their child, the adoptee might feel connected in the conversation and connected in the anger they're experiencing. But there's also disconnected anger. And I grew up being angry in a very disconnected way. Like I would just rage at my mother and I would say, “You're not my real mother.” “The courts decided this.” “My number came up when your number came up” and “This is BS and I can't stand it.” And she would [00:11:00] just be crying and be feeling helpless, but we weren't connected. There was not a conversation happening. It was one-sided: I'm raging, she's collapsing. And then,10 minutes later I'm feeling terribly guilty and whatever happens.

But so there's connected versus disconnected anger, and connected anger can be a very satisfying and healing experience. And hopefully if people see therapists or have supportive partners or friends, when they express what they're angry about, they feel connected and they don't feel like they're saying something and they're just being stared at like they're an alien or they've committed blasphemy or something.

Haley Radke: I think that's a part of what was so healing for me when I was in the room with other adoptees, because we can be angry about the same thing and, just like you said, you feel connected,

Pam Cordano, MFT: So it actually settles us down, if we talk to other adoptees who understand about something that really makes us angry or we have a take [00:12:00] on something that isn't gonna fly, culturally, very easily, and someone can hear us. It really settles our nervous system down so it's healing. And so as far as a practical thing, finding people that we can share our anger with, who can stay connected to us and make space for us and care for our experience is a very healing thing.

Haley Radke: So the disconnected anger is what we often get because we will talk about something that we're upset about. And then people are like, “Well, you can't feel that way. You should be happy.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Right. And so we get judged or blamed or pathologized for our experience. And then we're angry in a disconnected way and the response to us actually harms us. And that makes me mad.

Haley Radke: Me too. Are there any other kinds of anger you want to talk about?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, there are others, too. This is sort of saying the same thing, but there's grounded anger versus ungrounded anger. [00:13:00]

So there's anger where we feel like we have our feet on the ground, we know who we wanna to talk to about whatever and we know what we wanna say and we have room for the other person to have their own experience. We have room for the conversation to be maybe a little difficult. That's grounded anger.

Ungrounded anger is when we're flying off the handle, and that's more like the disconnected anger. So that's just another way I was describing a healthy kind of anger, grounded, versus an unhealthier kind of anger, ungrounded. By unhealthy, I really mean there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with the charge of the frustration and the rage or whatever we feel, but if we're gonna express it in a way when we're not balanced and we get a bad response, it's gonna hurt us. We're gonna be hurting ourselves in getting the bad response or bringing it to somebody who's not really capable of caring for our experience.

So it's a bit dangerous when we're ungrounded and we take it somewhere unsafe. And then there's [00:14:00] integrated anger where we know what we're mad about, we know why we're mad about it. We also have other emotions. We have our sadness, we have grief, we have fear.

Whatever we're feeling angry about is integrated in a larger way into us versus when people express anger in a sideways kind of way. One sideways way of expressing anger is addiction. So rather than being straight with anger: smoking, drinking, eating, shopping, gambling, whatever. Another way of doing sideways anger is being passive aggressive or indirect with what really is being brought to the table.

So does that make sense? Sideways anger?

Haley Radke: Yes, guilty.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, of course, I'm sure many of us have anger so big it's hard to keep it all. It's a daunting challenge to be connected, grounded, integrated.

And then the other one I [00:15:00] wanted to talk about is, there's anger that comes from our internal child that can be very chaotic and overwhelming. And we can feel overwhelmed when we feel it. It's just like a tantrum, almost, where there's not even words. Sometimes it's just this physiological rage that something feels so terrible versus anger that comes from our inner adult where we might know we have that huge charge, but we also know we have choices about how we manage it.

Haley Radke: That is so interesting because in reunion that came up for me, the inner child rage, which I bet is common.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, I think one of the hardest things about reunion is that the adult “us” is in Reunion–if we're lucky enough to be able to make a reunion–and then we're bringing along this hurt, disconnected child who hasn't been heard or seen or understood, hasn't had her or his say yet and doesn't [00:16:00] even know if there's room for the say to happen. So, it's two of us are going into the reunion: the young one and the older one. And it's very complicated. Parenting ourselves while we're in reunion is an overwhelming challenge.

Haley Radke: Oh, it's all so fun.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. And the last one I was gonna say is that there's also a social justice kind of anger, and this is really coming from the adult. Often. It's not always coming from the adult, but often it’s in the people who are the most effective at social justice, who want to go and change laws and petition and fight the system. It's a very useful kind of anger, the push to change things that are unfair and discriminatory. It's a very important and useful kind of anger in society for justice and equality. But that works best when it's coming from the inner adult and not the inner child. It's the most effective.

Haley Radke: That's so helpful. Thank you, [00:17:00] Pamela. I want to start with that societal concept of adoption and how we can be so angry at that.

Pam Cordano, MFT: There's a quote by Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, and he says, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” And I feel like, Thank you. Like, my anger at the societal concept of adoption is huge. I just feel like I'm furious about it, and the idea that it's so hard to shift the cultural perspective and to just get blamed or knocked down when we try. It's so hard.

Haley Radke: So I would say that the societal concept of adoption is this happy fairytale thing where these poor babies who don't have a home get picked–scooped up–by loving homes and sheltered and are happy forever, [00:18:00] and it's the best thing ever. That's what I think society thinks of as adoption.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yep. Yeah. It's almost like we should be getting all these congratulations cards. You know, “Congratulations, you were adopted.”

Haley Radke: You should be so grateful. How could you be unhappy that this happened to you? It's awesome. Like, where would you be if your parents hadn't adopted you?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yep. I don't think I mentioned this in our last conversation, but I got a letter from one of my mom's friends when I was seven, and it said: “Dear Pam, you're so lucky to have been blessed twice so early in life. First by a mother who loved you enough to give you up for adoption, and second by parents who loved you enough to take you in as their own.”

And I just remember being completely confused.

Haley Radke: I mean, what? Oh my gosh. I'm sorry. I feel like I'm gonna throw up right now. That is–oh my gosh. “I loved you so much, I don't wanna keep you.” Oh my goodness. Ugh.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yes. [00:19:00]

Haley Radke: And how old did you say you were, seven, when you got that?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, and it was on this really pretty paper with, like, a moon and a little bunny rabbit. And it was supposed to be this letter that I was, I don't know, lucky to get. Like, maybe I was blessed three times because I got that letter.

Haley Radke: So, yeah, so probably a lot of us have this anger at this concept, and we hear it from all sorts of people who have nothing to do with us, had nothing to do with adoption even. How do we deal with that?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Well, can I read you a quote about this that is a bit edgy. Because this is the anger day. So I saw this in the Huffington Post, and you might've seen it, but it was written by Mirah Riben, and it's a quote by somebody named Desiree Smolin, and she said:

“An abducted child is [00:20:00] expected to retain fond memories of and long for reunification with their “real” families of birth, and reject the abductor raising them, while adoptees are expected to bond unquestioningly to non-related strangers and, in some cases, are expected or encouraged to abandon any thoughts or talk of seeking out their roots.”

And I just felt like, wow, someone said that. And furthermore what she was saying was that to the child it's really the same. And so this is a really provocative thing to say, and I have friends who have adopted babies and I would never wanna hurt them. And this is the bind we get into. I don't want to hurt anybody I love. And yet my truth is probably hurtful to the culture, to the society's view of adoption.

Well, what do we do about that? You're asking me the question, what do we do? And I'm saying it's very difficult because it is like zipping my mouth shut. Because if I say what I truly think about adoption, I'm gonna hurt people. [00:21:00]

And so then I have to circle my anger in on myself or, I don't know, eat Ben and Jerry's ice-cream or something, because I don't know how to make room for it.

Haley Radke: I think that's so true for so many of us that we've been invalidated so many times that it's too scary even to say anything negative about adoption in front of anyone that's not adopted–even happy adoptees, right?

Pam Cordano, MFT: I know. And I understand there's a variety of experiences. And my goal is really more for inclusion of all the voices. I feel really clear about mine, deep down inside.

I have a new friend named Kathy, and we were having dinner together and we were talking about adoption. She's not adopted and she's Italian, and I'm married to a guy who's Italian. She said, “Oh, I get it! I know why you're married to an Italian.” And she said, “Italians never give up their babies. They find a cousin or an aunt or someone from another village because the baby's precious. The baby's a nephew, the baby's a niece, the baby's a grandchild. The baby's a great nephew. We Italians don't give up our babies.” [00:22:00]

And I don't know if that's empirically true, but I just loved her saying that to me like she culturally got it. Like I was a baby that didn't wanna be given up. I wanted my biological family, whoever they were, to have that passionate, you know, “She's mine, she's ours, she belongs to us. We'll do anything for her to keep her. No one's taking her.” So it was very refreshing to hear my Italian friend’s take.

Haley Radke: That's so nice. And unusual.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah!

Haley Radke: So I don't know, I guess I'm just thinking, what's the antidote to this one? Is it the social justice anger? Like, we have to be pretty strong to be out there. I feel like my podcast is that sort of expression of social [00:23:00] justice anger. But, yeah, lots of people in my family don't know about this, so I'm not quite brave enough to be really out there.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I think it probably is. I think the Flip the Script movement is really powerful. I think what you're doing, helping people's voices get out there so that the collective can hear it. Even the collective of adoptees and adoptees with different experiences can try on new ways of thinking and maybe for some people that feel like–I felt like my life was happy and my adoption was fine until I was about 21.

And then I went through a process and realized actually it was entirely different than I thought it was. Not that everyone should or has to do that, but I think that, yeah, I think you're right. I think it's the social justice, and the writing and expressing oneself and putting ideas out there. But ideally from a grounded and connected place. Like, we're not trying to make enemies. I'm saying “we.” I'm not trying to make enemies, but I wanna [00:24:00] continue to try to make more and more room for myself inside myself and in the world.

Haley Radke: No, and I think that's a really good point from the grounded perspective, because I see Twitter fights quite a bit from adoptees that are angry and they're trying to get the truth across. But it has to come across in a certain way for anyone else to hear it. And when we're just shouting that's not getting heard. Yeah, I really appreciate that thought.

Okay, so another kind of anger that a lot of us have is just anger at the money-making business of adoption and the agencies that are preying on mothers in crisis, and see that infant and see dollar signs. So let's talk a little bit about that kind of anger.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Oh, it's just such a terrible–the system is so corrupt. It's so upsetting. And I think that, in a way, this is where the first topic and the second topic are connected because I think each of us has our own strengths and the things we're comfortable doing and less comfortable doing. [00:25:00] Some people are really good on the political front. They're good with legal language, they're good with gathering people together or communicating in such a way that it's influential. And other people are better at speaking about their own experience and putting it out there in memoirs or in articles or in blogs or podcasts.

I just think we each have our different talents and our different inclinations about how to engage with this. But I think many of us just live with anger at this. I live with this all the time. I'm angry at this all the time. There's never a moment I'm not angry at this.

Haley Radke: I just got to sit in front of two different birth mothers who told me their stories and told me what the agencies had done to them, to essentially trick them to relinquish. I mean, that's the simplest way to say it, but some of the things they were [00:26:00] saying, I was like, “You cannot be serious. This did not happen to you.” And their children that were relinquished, we're talking about a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. This is happening right now in this decade. I'm not talking 60’s Scoop. This is right now.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yep. It's just, it's just hard even to find words about how horrific it is.

Haley Radke: Oh I was so mad. If the person that took their baby from them was in the room, I would probably be in jail right now. I was–I still am–I'm just furious just thinking about it and I want to find a way to make an impact in that area now. It's so real to me. I knew what was happening, but to hear, to see those women right in front of me and I can touch them and hold their hand–

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, so when you're even speaking about this, Haley, what I feel in my body is I feel like a column that comes from the bottom of my abdomen all the way up my [00:27:00] chest to my throat. I feel like a column of energy. And the good thing about anger is it's energizing and it's moving. It's heat, it's life, it's energy.

So that's where you are feeling called to do something about this. And that’s where, you know, before anger comes out of the body, when it's in our bodies as an experience, it's not yet in the camp of connected or disconnected, grounded or ungrounded, the adult part of us, the child part of us.

And that's where we get to make decisions about what we do with this energy and this fury and this rising. What do we want to do with it? And what do we feel called to do? And that's where our adult selves need to come in and make some decisions with our younger parts, like, “What do we do? How do we do this? How do we be most impactful? How do we be most responsible and effective with this so that we make the maximum benefit of this anger, this righteous indignation?” [00:28:00]

So, I'm Caucasian and I'm a 5’10” redhead. And my adoptive mother was a 4’10” Jewish woman, dark brown hair. We looked nothing alike. And I always got the question of where did you get your red hair? Or whatever. And that was hard, that was hard enough. When I think about international adoption and some of the things that go on with corruption abroad, too, it's just so upsetting to me.

I've been to Ethiopia three times for reasons unrelated to adoption, and to see babies being flown out, it's just hard, you know? It's just painful for me. And again, that's where there could be some adoptees from Ethiopia listening to this and saying, “Hey, I'm happy. I'm fine. I'm glad I was adopted.” And I understand there's a multitude of experiences, but for me–I guess, this is more the sad subject, not the anger. I feel sad when I see a decision not being made for these babies. It just really upsets me. [00:29:00]

Haley Radke: No kidding.

Okay. We've looked at the broad scope of things that a lot of us are angry at, and then there's, like, a person standing in front of us or tweeting to us saying, “Why aren’t you grateful?” What does that bring up in us?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Or even people who say to me, “I wish I were adopted because my mother was” whatever. I think this is a common thing that, I'll just speak for myself and assume that many people will relate to this, but I have such a deep, profound experience of not being seen for the whole of me and only being seen more for maybe the outer two, three inches of me. And I'm just used to living this way, and it's part of what makes me strong and capable. [00:30:00] And it's also part of what makes me feel really lonely and alone and isolated, is that the whole of me isn't understood on a cultural level and that people can have such a profound misunderstanding of what adoption can be like–or is like for me.#

And so the pressure to adjust to the outside, whether it's to fit into the family that's adopted you or to comply with the new family so that they don't also abandon you, since you know in your bones that you're abandonable. Or to just fit in with society when you're, like, this “bastard child.” Like we talked about last time, something's wrong with you, that you were given up by your family, or at least a child can feel that way.

The pressure to comply inside of me was so huge. And what I did is I went the other way and I became the rebellious adoptee because I couldn't handle the pressure to comply. [00:31:00] And I think that we tend to do one or the other.

Haley Radke: I'm the compliant adoptee.

Pam Cordano, MFT: With your podcast!

Haley Radke: Well, I used to be compliant. Not anymore.

Pam Cordano, MFT: So I just want to say that the pressure to comply, which then can flip into rebel from not being seen by others, and being misunderstood and in these overt ways like that we should be grateful or we're lucky or whatever–I experienced it as a huge force that I feel really angry about also. And I guess that what to do about that is to just keep learning about how to take that middle road of having the choice of, “This is when I want to comply here because of this, and I don't want to comply here because of that.” And having that inner adult in charge of the decisions, not just being the tail wagging the dog kind of a thing where it's more of a reaction to comply or a reaction to rebel. [00:32:00] It's more of a choice, a grounded choice with time and with healing, to comply or rebel or do neither.

Haley Radke: Right. Moving inward, from friends or acquaintances or even strangers who are telling us these things, to feeling angry towards adoptive parents, first parents. Let's talk about that a little bit.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Well, there's just so much to say, right? I mean, there's so much to be angry about, about, right? There's a million stories about what people are angry at their adoptive parents for, their biological parents, or biological extended families.

Haley Radke: What I really struggle with is feeling angry that my adoptive parents adopted me. Yet I was adopted in the early 80’s, ‘83, I was born, and it was just totally normal. They didn't know, like, “the system.” They were infertile and this was just a normal thing. So I feel guilty for feeling angry about that because they didn't know any better. [00:33:00]

And then I feel angry at my birth mother's parents–my maternal grandparents–for making her give me up and feeling like I was disposable enough or inconvenient enough that they couldn't support her to raise me. But again, it was early 80’s, it was just on the edge of maybe teen pregnancy becoming somewhat accessible, like it's still early. But those are the things that I feel angry about, and guilty because I'm like, “I'm not allowed to be angry at that. They didn't know any better.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: I think that what I could be helpful with here is what to do about this kind of thing, because anybody could have a long list of things they're angry at their adoptive parents about, and their biological parents. Me too, of course. [00:34:00]

What's important is that if we, inside ourselves, negate our anger right away with that adult loving perspective of, “Well, they didn't know better”–which may be true or is true. Or that “They did their best” or whatever the forgiving, kind, compassionate response is, we're negating our own anger right away. So our anger never gets a chance to just have its own say.

So what's really important to do–and this could either be done in a, with a therapist or could be done in a journal, or could be done talking to yourself in your car or in your room, or in your closet or wherever–is making a defined space for your anger about a specific issue and just letting it happen, letting it exist on its own and not coming in with a “But they did their best.” “But they didn't know better.” “But what we know now, they didn't know then” type of a thing. Because otherwise the inner adopted child never has a chance to be heard in their anger. [00:35:00]

And we're probably the most powerful–we're the pioneers inside of ourselves leading the way about trying to unravel all of this jumble of trauma, fear and anger and sadness inside of us. So the “this, but that” negates it right away. And then we're in a bind: we can't feel this because of that, or we can't feel that because of this. And we're just stuck in a bind.

One activity would be, for example, to have a journal where, let's say you're right-handed–this is a little cliché, but it's effective–if you're right-handed, then with your left hand write from the child adoptee perspective: “I'm so mad, I can't believe they bought me do they not care about me at all? They changed my name, they participated in this.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just let it have its whole say. Then with the dominant hand–let's say it's your right hand–respond just by listening to yourself like, “Gosh, I hear how angry you are. Everything you're angry about is so legitimate. You deserve to have your say. You deserve to express yourself. You deserve to finally be listened to.” An internal space being made for your anger and leaving this whole other adult, compassionate, can-see-both-sides part out of it completely. It's not gonna be helpful. It just gets in the way. It can come back later, you know, because you and me, we're compassionate, reasonable people.

And that's where, Haley, have you ever heard of the expression called spiritual bypassing? [00:36:00]

Haley Radke: Yes. But would you explain that please?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. So spiritual bypassing: it doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with religion, but it's a way of taking the high road before the low road has been fully explored. And that's where I think we adoptees can make ourselves sick, like, literally sick. Like stuffed with feelings and trauma that really never gets worked out.

So we have to be careful with ourselves not to take the high road until it's really, really, really time to take the high road. And I think I mentioned Nelson Mandela in our last conversation, but recently I was reading this book by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and they were talking about Nelson Mandela being imprisoned unfairly for 27 years. [00:37:00]

And one of them, I think the archbishop, said that it’s great in a way that he was imprisoned for 27 years. Because it gave him 27 years to transform himself into an authentically mature, grounded person who could help heal the country, and run the country, and heal the division in the country. And that he had to go through, like, a transformation, really.

And so we can't jump to the high road just because it's nicer and it's more comfortable and it's more adult and people like it better. We have to really go through the guts of our own trauma and let it have space and be with ourselves in it, and connect to the world from that place as much as we can–even if it's only one or two people–before we go to the high road. The high road will come with time naturally. We don't have to bypass the hard part to get there too early, or else we really hurt ourselves in the process. [00:38:00]

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. I feel like I'm having therapy with you here. Okay.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Me too.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, that is so big. Oh my gosh, that’s so– I'm gonna start crying again. That's so perfectly– like, I've never heard that before. I've never heard that before. And that is so important for us to hear. When we are told to be grateful, we just feel like we gotta be at the other side right away. Like we have to be on the high road. Oh my gosh.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Right, and it fuels our anger because we're not really fully there. We may be 10% there.

Haley Radke: Well, that's a big light bulb moment. [00:39:00]

Pam Cordano, MFT: Okay, good. Good. Yeah, spiritual bypassing is a real problem. And it makes me really angry that there's even a pressure, that we have a pressure on us to spiritually bypass our true lived experience. Or biologically bypass or academically bypass or whatever bypass.

Haley Radke: I really have to spend some time thinking about this. That is so powerful. And do you have any other thoughts on this section?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Two things. One is that I wrote down a note that it's so hard being treated as an extension of somebody else's dream. And a lot of adoptees talk and write about this, not being a person in one's own right with the beginning of one's life story and lived-out life story, but being an extension of somebody else's dream. That makes me really angry.

And also there is a book by called Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by an adoptee and her name is Jeanette Winterson. [00:40:00] And I read an excerpt from one of her books and she said that once she had a reunion with her biological family, she realized that she's not fully, really in either family. Like she's really her own person in a way. And that she didn't really belong fully in either place, and that was herself saying that not society.

I found that really powerful and it gave me a sense of permission that I don't have to pick and I don't have to fit into my biological family fully. I can really be my own person with my own distinct history, and that's honoring all that I've been through. I can't just slip in as if I'm, you know, the ugly duckling and the geese and I'm suddenly a goose or whatever. So I really liked that and I feel less angry when I think about how I get to chart my own course. [00:41:00]

I have an adopted client who says she's a child of the universe, and I think there's a lot of freedom in that way of thinking, like the outside then has less power to be something to comply with.

Haley Radke: Coming around to our last point here: anger with ourselves, what I'm guessing you're gonna talk about is there's that root in shame. “What was wrong with us, specifically, that we got given away.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, there's that. And then, you know, as time goes on, something that I've gotten angry at myself about a lot is my own standards for myself. Like when I as a child and as a teenager, and even a young adult, buying into the cultural narrative that adoption is just a good thing and it's no big deal. “Why am I so triggerable,” you know? And “Why do things get in the way of my progress that don't seem to get in the way for other people?” [00:42:00] And “And why do my insides not match the outsides of other people?” And like, “What's wrong?” “Why can't I do it well enough?” Sort of like the basis of “What's wrong with me?” “What's my fatal flaw that caused all of this in the first place?” morphs into this older version of like, “Why can't I do things the way I want to?” or “Why can't I do things well enough?”

And trauma can actually present a lot like ADHD or ADD, with or without the H. I certainly operate that way, like my attention can feel split in a hundred different directions and it can be hard for me to focus. I don't actually believe I have ADD; I believe I'm just a bit fragmented and a bit traumatized. I'm saying “a bit,” I don't know why I'm saying “a bit.” I'm traumatized. And so I do have trouble with things that other people don't seem to, or that I have thought, “Why should I have trouble with this? “Why am I not more competent?” Or “Why am I not able to follow through on this better?” [00:43:00]

And then becoming a parent, oh my gosh. I mean, all of this trauma, my history, even though I did not want it to, leaked into aspects of my parenting. And we have a very transparent household so my kids are adults now and they understand about my history and they have an ability to look into themselves and see where they think they were affected by my trauma and my husband's different kind of trauma.

It's just really hard, you know, to make mistakes parenting, or to not be that perfect parent that does everything right, you know, keeps the babies and does it all right. And I can get really angry at myself there. I find parenting very challenging, and I think things are pretty good, actually, in my house, but it takes more work than I could have ever imagined to be a good enough parent. For me.

Haley Radke: Well, and there's so many adoptees that just repeat the same cycle: adoptees that become first parents that relinquish. [00:44:00]

Pam Cordano, MFT: Statistically, right, there's a very high incidence of abortions and relinquishments by people who are adopted. As a therapist, it makes sense to me that we tend to repeat unconsciously what's happened to us and act it out. That's one of the reasons why becoming more conscious of our pain, which includes our anger, is so important because the more we take care of inside of ourselves with our anger and our hurt and our fear and our anxiety and our despair and grief, the less we act out. Whether it's with society or with our own children or with partners.

And that's one of the things that drives me to heal, is I felt so much harm from my experience. I don't want to be harmful to others if I can help it, and I have been harmful to others. [00:45:00] And I'm just, I was going to say I'm a slow learner, but that's just that self-deprecating, cultural talk. It's like, “No, I'm actually not a slow learner at all. I've actually worked my ass off to heal as much as I can over 52 years.” As long as I can remember, I've been trying to regulate myself, learn how to regulate myself and not blow up or cut people off, or do whatever angry things I have done.

Haley Radke: And I think for me my anger has been more like simmering in the background and just now in the last couple years it's really coming out more and more. And so I'm really realizing that there's definitely some things I need to address. Because I don't want this to eat me up inside. I don't wanna have that sideways anger.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Right. That same guy, Bessel van der Kolk, that I read the quote from, he says that emotion is meant to be acted on biologically, like in our species, or even among animals. So when we're angry, our body is organized to take action towards something to address the anger, whether it's a fight, or drawing a line, or whatever we have to do. [00:46:00] And when we don't feel we can act on our anger, when we feel like we have to keep it inside, we pay a terrible price because all of our stress hormones and our muscle tension and our heart rate and everything is organizing toward anger. But we're shutting the door on any action and then we're curling in on ourselves, and I honestly feel like it makes us sick to do that.

Same with sadness, same with well grief, which is related to sadness. We actually have to find ways to uncurl these things and bring them out so that we don't pay the price physiologically and psychologically.

Haley Radke: Well, that's a pretty good call to action. What are the next steps for someone who is identifying with the things that we're saying here? [00:47:00] “Okay, Pamela, I'm ready. What's my next step?”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Well, I don't know that I could have done a fraction of what I've done without the help of a really good therapist. But I think that trying on the idea that we have a younger part of us–it's like arrested development–that got stuck in different places, even on the baby level. That we might not be at all conscious of, but our nervous system knows, and the alarm bells go off. That we need to make space for the younger parts of us who have been either stuck or silenced or immobilized, to find expression and mobility and connection to others. [00:48:00]

And that unwinding of our feelings and our experiences is what's healing. We need to connect with ourselves and with others, including those parts of us, even if they're not sophisticated and they don’t have that adult, compassionate and reasonable quality to them. They don't have to, that'll come later. That can get integrated later, but we need to make space for our truest, deepest experiences, even if we feel like we're being outrageous. Actually, sometimes, those are the most fun. If we can find someone who can be with us, those are fun to unravel because it's like a relief, you know, to let some of these things out that are being held in. And we finally get to be a bit of a troublemaker with select trusted people.

Haley Radke: Well, I found it funny that you said it was cliché to write with your non-dominant hand as a child. I was like, “What? I've never heard that before. It's amazing. I'm totally gonna do that!”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, it's kind of nice. What's really cool about that is because, you know, we have our two brain hemispheres and if we're right-handed, our right hemisphere crosses over to the left side of our body and our left hemisphere crosses to the right side. [00:49:00] So our emotions are in our right hemispheres. I mean, that's simplified, but basically, when we write with our non-dominant hand, we have more access to our emotional writing. And our dominant hand has more access to the logic and the “distinguishing this from that,” the linear thinking. So it's useful to write the emotional stuff from our non-dominant hand, even biologically it's useful.

Haley Radke: Oh, thank you so much. There's, like, 30 amazing takeaways in here, so many. Thank you. Is there anything else that you want to say to us before we wrap up?

Pam Cordano, MFT: I'm just really so appreciative, Haley, that you have this podcast. I just feel like it's such a gift to people for us to have a platform to share experiences and thoughts and healing and to resonate with each other. I think that it's very powerful, and I'm grateful, so thank you. [00:50:00]

Haley Radke: Aw, thank you. Thank you. I'm so, so thankful for how you've prepared for this today. It is gonna help a lot of people.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I hope so.

Haley Radke: I know it. I can tell you right now, it's gonna help a lot of people. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Thanks Haley.

Haley Radke: Since we've recorded this episode, Pam has a book out. It's called 10 Foundations for a Meaningful Life (No Matter What's Happened), and I actually got the opportunity to interview Pam about her book a couple of times. So if you go back in the feed, you can find Pam's other episodes. Her new website is yourmeaningful (dot) life. And you can find all the other ways to connect with her over there. [00:51:00]

Another really fun way to interact with Pam, and also Anne Heffron, is their weekly Flourish classes. I had the opportunity to take one a few weeks ago. It was wonderfully both challenging and grounding, and they share the times of those classes over on the Beyond Adoption: You Facebook page. And I've seen them post about it on their Instagrams, so I'll have links to those in the show notes for you.

I want to thank you again for listening to adoptee voices and invite you to support the show and help keep it sustainable and going over on adopteeson.com/partner. And I want to thank all of you who have already signed up and have already helped me to pay my editor and pay the other cost of posting. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday. [00:52:00]

158 Amanda Medina

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/158

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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 158, Amanda Medina. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today we are talking with Amanda Medina, creator of This Adoptee Life. Amanda and I talk about how she came out of the adoption fog in the past few years. She shares what adoption separation from our ancestors looks like via a beautiful and heartbreaking symbol of a broken legacy, and we discuss her commitment to building community among adoptees. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

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

Amanda Medina Thank you, Haley. I'm so happy to be here. It's such an honor.

Haley Radke Oh, I'm so excited to be chatting with you. I'd love it if you would start and would you share your story with us?

Amanda Medina Absolutely. So I was born in Columbia and the story that is in my adoption papers is that in November of 1984, an unknown woman came to a police station in Medellín and she handed me over, saying she had found me in the streets and couldn't find my mother. She claimed to have had me for about a month, and at the time I would've been about four months, and the police takes me to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute. I'm placed in an orphanage/transit home and my photo is published in the newspaper. It says I am an unknown baby. Name unknown, parents unknown. There's an address [00:02:00] where if somebody would like to come claim me, they can, but nobody comes. So this way the authorities in Columbia can claim that they have tried to locate family, and now they can label me abandoned and I can be entered into the adoption program. Also around this time I was examined by doctors that estimated my age, 'cause again, they didn't know. So they say I'm about six to eight months and they give me my birthdate and I don't know where in this process or by whom I'm given my name. That's not mentioned in the papers. I'm placed in a foster family where it says that I catch up developmentally and physically, and there's also a note saying that I'm doing so well because this is an emotionally stable environment for me. Before it had said that I was exhibiting the typical signs of an [00:03:00] abandoned or institutionalized child, the biggest one being that I was not attaching or really accepting any adults to come close. In October of ‘85 (so now we're about a year after I was handed over to the police) I am matched with a Swedish couple for adoption. They fly to Columbia from Sweden. They adopt me. The papers are signed. The civil registry in Columbia is changed so that my last name becomes the name of my adoptive parents. And with that, all the legal ties to any first family that I have is essentially done, broken and cut. Then I am taken to Sweden and that's where I grew up. Until I'm about nine, I would say I had a very happy childhood. I always knew I was adopted. I never thought about it. It was almost something I was a little proud of, made me unique [00:04:00] and made me special. But when I'm about nine, my parents were starting to have marital problems and with that everything shifted for me. I started feeling less safe emotionally. I almost felt like this wall coming up and I was like, okay, I need to protect myself here. I can't attach too much to this. I lost trust in our home and in us as a family and I decided to distance myself mentally, emotionally, and even physically. At a young age, I decided I was gonna leave Sweden and I was just gonna go and live my own life, and I did. When I was 20, I moved to the US and I've lived here since. And, yeah, that's the adoption story.

Haley Radke So you can look back at age nine and already feel like this is the time I made a plan that I'm not even gonna be in [00:05:00] Sweden anymore.

Amanda Medina Yeah, it was. For many years I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that it was because I realized my parents had problems in their marriage, but I definitely have come to terms with that's just a fact. I don't have to feel guilty about that. I don't have to feel ashamed over that. But for many years I did and I think that's a thing for us adoptees. Many of us carry this guilt because we have these feelings, these thoughts, questions, emotions that we don't know where they come from. We don't know that it makes sense, the trauma we've been through and all of that. So that's very much what was happening to me for many years.

Haley Radke What was it like growing up in Sweden? I'm Canadian, so I don't know. I feel like we have a few things in common with the Nordic countries temperature wise-

Amanda Medina Yeah, I grew up very much the [00:06:00] compliant adoptee, deep in the fog. I would tell you well into adulthood, “Oh, I'm like the success story of adoption.” Meaning it hasn't affected me. “I'm totally fine. Sure, whatever questions you have, no problem.” I'm gonna answer them. Search for family? “No. Why would I wanna do that?” All those kinds of standard phrases that we tell ourselves, or at least that's how it was for me.

Haley Radke Did you know anyone else from Columbia when you were there? Like was adopting from Columbia common there? Did you know other adoptees growing up?

Amanda Medina There was my brother, my adopted brother. We never talked about the adoption experience. His was more tumultuous, I would say. He was acting out more, and I was just keeping myself in check, which I think it's in The Primal Wound, Nancy Verrier, she talks about how a lot of times if you have two adopted children in the same family, they can take opposite roles. And that's very much what [00:07:00] happened for us and we just never fully connected. I would say with my adoptive family, all in all, it's not bad relationships, it's just very shallow and I'm okay with that today. It just is what it is. But growing up it was hard. And you asked if I knew other Colombian adoptees? No, I did not. There was one kid in a different high school that I knew of. We did have mutual friends at some point, but there was never a thing where, “Oh, you're adopted. Oh, me too. Oh, cool. How's that for you? How do you feel?” No, it was more like, oh, you're adopted. Oh, okay. Yeah, let's not talk about that because that's just too heavy. That's too uncomfortable or whatever the case was at the time. I don't even really know.

Haley Radke Okay. What's it like coming to the States at age 20 on your own?

Amanda Medina Yes, well the first time I was here, I was 18. So to backtrack a little, I lived in Spain for a year when I was 16. [00:08:00] There was a Swedish school where my parents let me attend for a year and live with the Spanish family. So like a guest student with the purpose of learning Spanish. And while there I met this guy and we became really good friends and then he moved to the States and I went back to Sweden and then we reconnected later. And so I went to visit him and you know-

Haley Radke Oh, the rest is history.

Amanda Medina The rest is history. We are today married with two kids and it all worked out pretty well.

Haley Radke Okay. Interesting. So how many languages do you speak?

Amanda Medina Fluently, comfortably: three.

Haley Radke Okay.

Amanda Medina Yeah, I just did a podcast that released yesterday in Spanish. That was the first. But Swedish was the language I learned, like that's my native tongue.

Haley Radke Yes.

Amanda Medina In the sense that's the first one, that's my first language. And then English and Spanish.

Haley Radke So were you learning Spanish even as a child or was that something that you [00:09:00] learned as a teenager?

Amanda Medina Yeah, as a teenager. I did not know any Spanish growing up, and in the beginning I would speak like a Spaniard, not like a Colombian at all. And to this day, I don't really have the Colombian accent. So yeah, I got the language, but I still wouldn't fit in. If I went to Columbia, I would be made on spot as soon as I open my mouth.

Haley Radke Oh my word. I'm just picturing in Canada, we have a province, Quebec, and they speak French there. And so when they go to France, it's like, well this isn't French. This is not right. There's that barrier. So that's so interesting. Wow. Sweden. Okay. But you were outta there. Now, I've seen a photo that was shared on a blog post, and it's the photo of you as a baby in the newspaper.

Amanda Medina Yeah.

Haley Radke Where did you get that and what's it like for you when you see that? [00:10:00]

Amanda Medina My adoptive mom, or my mom, gave it to me. She gave it to me, so now I have it. But she had the original newspaper, like the actual page, and then it's also copied into the adoption papers that I've been given. Since I asked for it. They gave it all, so they're very supportive in that sense that my adoption papers were always available to me. I just never wanted to look at them. I never wanted to read them until I was starting to dig into it. But yeah, when I see that picture, I look very sad. There's two girls sitting next to me and I think they look neutral or I don't think any of us are smiling, but I definitely look very sad, like ready to cry. And in other pictures too, from that time, I feel like there's this serious face and then I try to look at it and I wonder what I was thinking 'cause I was obviously going through a lot in that period.

Haley Radke It's quite a stark, shocking image. [00:11:00]

Amanda Medina Yeah.

Haley Radke There's two adult hands.

Amanda Medina Yeah.

Haley Radke Propping you guys up 'cause you're babies.

Amanda Medina Yeah.

Haley Radke You can't even sit up. So yeah, it's quite a shocking photo. So you said something there. What does that mean when you're starting to unpack things, starting to look at what's happening for you?

Amanda Medina Yeah, so like I said, well into adulthood I was very fine with everything. And then, as is true, I think for many of us adoptees, once we have our own biological children, something happens, there's a little switch. At least it was for me, where all of a sudden, this is the first time I can feel and really understand the importance of a biological bond. That it is truly unbreakable. Like it doesn't matter if we have a fight, it doesn't matter if we say we will never speak again. That bond is there and it will never, [00:12:00] it cannot be physically broken in a way. Just seeing so clearly my daughters. Like this she got from me, that she got from her father. And just over time realizing there are people out there, there are people in Columbia with whom I share that. And then I never shared it with my adoptive family, obviously. And so that contradiction and that kind of just weird place to realize that. And then also I think what really bothered me was not being able to provide medical history for my daughters. That's where I realized that my story isn't just mine. I can reject it for myself. I can say I don't have an interest in knowing, but in doing so, they won't have access to half of their story. And I'm not sure still to this day exactly what I will do, whether I'm going to go full mode searching one day. I haven't yet. If it will be enough that we reconnect with just learning about food and music culture, [00:13:00] going to Columbia. That's still a decision in the making, but just realizing that. And then my husband had around the same time started saying, “There are these DNA tests coming out. Would you want one?” And I said, “No, absolutely not.” And he could not wrap his head around how I would not wanna know. “There are people out there. You don't wanna find them?” And said, “No, don't even ask me anymore.” And he didn't. He respected that. But then little by little, like I said. And there was a specific interaction in a text message with a person who I was connecting with on Facebook over something completely different, but I told her I was from Medellín. I told her my last name in Medellín and she says, “My best friend is from Medellín and that's her last name.” And we're leaving Ikea as I get this message. I'm in the parking lot about to load my kids and all this stuff in, and it just clicks. I go, “Oh, I have real biological [00:14:00] family.” There are people in Medellín that have my last name, whether it was my last name for real or not. But just in that moment and I go home and I say to my husband, “Okay, buy the DNA test. Let's do this and also-

Haley Radke Can I just stop you?

Amanda Medina Yeah, for sure.

Haley Radke It had to happen in the IKEA parking lot. That’s just very-

Amanda Medina Oh yeah, that is funny. I never even thought of that. But yeah, that is definitely a funny point to the whole situation. And then, yeah, in the same process, I found a group on Facebook. So I was like, you know what? There must be other adoptees out there. I looked for a group on Facebook, adopted people from Columbia or something, and I found one and there were 1500 members and this is where I was introduced to adoption with language like trauma, corruption, first mothers. I heard stories of fellow adoptees that had reunited with their family [00:15:00] in Columbia and found out that the mothers were lied to. The baby was either kidnapped, the mother was lied to in the hospital, told that it was a stillborn girl, and then it turned out it was a boy, and that was said just to erase traces and make it harder to look and all that stuff. And reading my own adoption papers, realizing there were no names in there, and starting to doubt is this actually my story? How come they didn't bother to put details? It's a very generic story hearing from others having very similar, if not the same story. And so, Pandora's box flew open.

Haley Radke Once you see that stuff, you can't unsee it right? Can you make broad sweeping generalizations, sorry to put you on the spot there, but I know you are connected with a lot of adoptees that are adopted from Columbia and I'm curious if you've seen a pattern. How does searching happen over there? I've heard [00:16:00] both DNA stories and I've heard like hiring a private investigator kind of stories. Just curious, if you did wanna search and you wanted to go that route, just in generic kind of terms, what do you see most people having success with?

Amanda Medina Depending a little bit on which era you were adopted in, so seventies, eighties, there will be more stories like mine where there's no identification of a mother. There might be a very generic story, lacking details, and so for us it would be DNA, possibly a private investigator. I know a lot of people do that and combine the two. They might find somebody and it seems okay, the story matches, let's do the DNA test to confirm. If you were maybe adopted later, like in the nineties and on, I think they did put stricter laws, stricter regulations on needing to have signatures or at least like it's called cédula, which is the identification number of a person [00:17:00] for the mother. There tends to be more information and some people have even been able to just find via social media relatives and then confirm with a DNA test. Yeah, seventies and eighties, it's, for us it's harder. It's definitely harder. And it was a time in Columbia without going into politics or history, it was a time in Columbia where things were tumultuous and there was a lot of corruption. And then Sweden has one of the biggest adoption agencies in the world, I think it's the second largest that they facilitate. Sweden is the country with the highest number, from what I've heard, the highest number of international adoptions per capita. And they didn't necessarily do their jobs, so you can't just blame the first country. So there's definitely, there's a lot there to unpack, but yeah.

Haley Radke Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What a tangled web we weave. Okay. So going back to you, your personal story. Did you buy the DNA kit?

Amanda Medina Yeah, we did, but I have not been able to [00:18:00] find any close matches. The closest is second to fourth cousins, which, once you find that, if you've never had that before, that is, I have a cousin, I'll take it. I don't care if you're like 1%, but it's that one little percent of drop of blood that we share. We're cousins, we're primas, we're primos. So yeah, I connected with a few and stay in touch with some of them.

Haley Radke Okay. I wanna ask you about another part of your story that you mentioned, that you were literally guesstimated how old you were and given a birth date.

Amanda Medina Yeah, so that I always knew. I can't say how or when, but that was always just a matter of fact. And I think it's one of the things my parents did do right because it meant that I actually got to claim that day. So I [00:19:00] never wondered, oh, is it that day? Is it not? I didn't have that. Some adoptees, once they read their papers, having thought their birthday was a set date and then they realized it might not have been that date, or in fact it wasn't. And then that's adding to the identity crisis of coming out of the fog and the grieving. Now it's yet another thing to grieve. I didn't have to go through that. So for me, it's worked out in my favor in the end. But yeah, it's definitely growing up and being a teenager and everybody's reading horoscopes and, oh, what sign are you? And it was still there. It was still something that on some levels, a reminder or something that bothered me a little bit, but not so much adding to the coming out of the fog dilemma. And in that sense that other adoptees, I know many struggle, really struggle with their birthday.

Haley Radke I don't know why I'm just stuck on it, like just knowing that oh yeah, the date on my driver's license, it's just like an estimate of [00:20:00] my birth date. Like it's just kind of like, I don't know-

Amanda Medina Yeah. If even that, because honestly, at this point I don't trust a thing, a single thing in my papers. It's just, that's the story I was given and that's why I always, I've started adding that when I introduce myself and when I tell the story it's like, “In my papers it says-”

Haley Radke I noticed that. And interestingly, sadly, I guess you're not the only person to share their story that way now. Just because of what you mentioned, all the corruption and things that now we've come to learn about how they were doing things. I shouldn't say were. How things are sometimes done.

Amanda Medina Yeah.

Haley Radke Okay. So you have this kind of epiphany like, okay, there's things happening. I am connecting with other adoptees online, and oh my goodness, there's trauma and all this stuff. What led you to starting your blog and actually talking publicly about adoptee issues and sharing your story and other adoptee [00:21:00] stories?

Amanda Medina I had always wanted to, I had always written my entire life. Poems, letters, diaries, song lyrics, like I've always been writing. That's how I process, that's how I make sense of everything. I write. And so I always knew I wanted to, for many years I said, I wanna write a blog. I wanna share my story, but I didn't know what my story was until that adoption piece came in. I wrote my first piece on adoption that was shared on Dear Adoption. I think that's now two years ago, two/three years ago.

Haley Radke Oh, I love Dear Adoption. One of my very best friends runs that. Hi, Reshma.

Amanda Medina Yeah. Oh, she's awesome. Yeah. Hi. I think I wrote that before I even had started the blog, and the things that I shared in the group were received very well. People were saying, ”Wow, you express yourself so clearly in ways that you're validating what I felt like. Thank you for putting words to my feelings.” And I just [00:22:00] decided to go ahead and see what would happen if I just started sharing my story in a blog. I didn't share my name at first. I was hiding behind This Adoptee Life because I didn't know where it was gonna go. But then I realized quickly that by sharing my story, by telling my own story, I got to own it. And I realized how empowering that was to do that. To get to choose the words. To get to decide from which angle. And there was, like I said, so much empowerment in that, that I wanted to give the same opportunity to fellow adoptees. So that's when I started inviting fellow adoptees to share their story on the blog as well. And then I shared some of my writing as I processed coming out of the fog and all of that. And that's how that went. And I think at some point it also became, because I grew up feeling so alone, never talking to anybody about what I felt, always [00:23:00] feeling very guilty for wondering why was I adopted to this family and not another, feeling guilty for not feeling connected to my family, but never feeling like I could talk about that with anyone because nobody would understand that there was probably something wrong with me for feeling that way, but then realizing later on that that made perfect sense. Once I knew what I had been through, and then just wanting to say to other adoptees like, you're not alone. I'll share my story so that if you are reading it, you know at least one other person out there who feels like you, who has been through the same. And that's really it. Just none of us should have to feel alone. Whatever it is you're going through, adoption or not, but specifically because I'm an adoptee, that's what I can speak on.

Haley Radke You glossed over this and I don't want it to get missed. You really do give other adoptees the opportunity to share their stories, and I'm curious why that part of blogging also is so important to you because there's so many [00:24:00] adoptees that their blog is specifically about them and their specific story, and it's very focused on just the one individual. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Why did you want to give others the opportunity to share your space?

Amanda Medina Because I grew up feeling like I didn't have space to express myself in. Because again, I felt like I was alone. So in a way, not in a selfish way, but it's like I am giving others what I needed, what I would have wanted. So I'm trying to validate, support, and give that space, be it on the blog where you share your story or on social media where you can come in and comment. And if you are an adoptee, I got your back. If you're contacting me and you're an adoptee, I prioritize replying to you before non-adoptees and that kind of thing. Because having pushed our feelings aside for years and years, feeling like either we're gaslit or we're not validated, or we're told to just feel differently, [00:25:00] I'm here to say, “No, you don't have to feel pressured for anything and I got you.” Basically. That's what I try to do.

Haley Radke That's wonderful. I've also seen you share that family preservation is very important to you.

Amanda Medina Yeah.

Haley Radke Can you talk a little bit about that? Why things shifted for you there?

Amanda Medina I think a lot of us, adoptees and society, we cling to this positive narrative of adoption, not realizing that a lot of times adoption is not the only, if even a necessary, alternative for children who find themselves, be it in foster care or whatever it may be. Adoption is, what is it they usually say? Adoption is a permanent solution to a [00:26:00] temporary problem. A lot of times there might not be a need to cut ties to your actual family or your first family. I try to put into question and really let's examine adoption, the concept, how it's carried out. Is it really such a good thing? How can it be harmful? Because it can be, what's the support that's needed out there? And so family preservation was presented to me, and now later on, legal guardianship I've heard about where a lot of adoptees will say, when people ask what's the alternative? Well, legal guardianship can be an alternative. I have to look into it more. I can't really speak on it, but that's come up a lot of times.

Haley Radke When people connect with you to write on your blog, I'm curious if you have any adoptees that you might say, “I think you're still processing a little bit of foggy things.” What are your thoughts on sharing [00:27:00] space for all the adoptee voices? Because, we do sometimes talk in generalizations about, oh, most adoptees feel this way, or most adoptees feel, but really everyone has had a completely individual unique experience and has thoughts and opinions in all kinds of matters that are different.

Amanda Medina Yeah, no, for sure. And that's why I am actually very careful not to use absolute language. I don't say, “Adoption is-” I do use language like, “Many times.” It may very well be, “Many of us,” or I'll base it on my own personal experience and just say, “Hey, but I know I'm not the exception here. I know there are others like me.” So that's one thing. And then most adoptees that have shared, I haven’t not shared anyone who has reached out, obviously, because I stand by my word that it's for all and every adoptee. But so far I think I am very clear in where I [00:28:00] stand. And so it's been adoptees who feel like, okay, here's someone who will listen to me, validate me, and will share my story. This is a space where I can, and I've had some say this is the first time I share my story and that they've read the blog or seen my social media posts and say, “You've helped me feel like I can tell my story,” which is such an honor and so humbling because that is exactly what I hope to do. So it's a mutual thing where we're in this. That's what I say right in my post, to all my fellow adoptees, “PS we are all in this together.” But yeah, then there are some who contact me and well, you said this and I don't feel like that. And I say, that's okay. I can't ascribe an experience to all. I'm not invalidating your happy story with my struggle. But, there's room for all of us to share our truth. We have to respect each other though, all around. That's how I look at it.

Haley Radke No kidding. I think [00:29:00] some people might need reminding that we should all be respecting each other, especially lately. Whew. Seen some nasty things.

Amanda Medina Yeah, there's a lot going on. All around.

Haley Radke All over. Yes. Yes. I know we're not always gonna all get along, but I do feel some respect is missing occasionally.

Amanda Medina I can just say super quick just what my thing is. 'Cause people have heard, how do you reply so calmly? Or how do you not, and I rarely, if ever, reply in my reaction. I'll read these things and things will trigger me left and right. I'll get upset, I'll get angry. I feel I wanna just throw my phone out the window. That's how angry I get it at what I read sometimes, but that's not when I type my answer. That's not when I reply. Instead I'll process it. I'll think on it. I might write something and then I might go and edit. Not to silence myself, but if I want my message to come across, I don't know [00:30:00] about you, but I don't respond to attacks very well. If somebody comes at me, I won't necessarily be, oh, okay, yeah, sure, we'll do it your way, but if you wanna introduce some ideas, sow some, throw out some seeds and watch the plants grow, that's how I look at it. The change that's gonna happen over a longer period of time. It's not gonna happen overnight as much as we want it to.

Haley Radke I will often ignore that stuff. And that’s-

Amanda Medina That's so great. And that's just what it works for me.

Haley Radke Oh, totally. But that's my method of self preservation to keep me in the work, because from past experience, I have seen that I can put a lot of effort into replying to someone, and I think I am being as gracious as I can summon up and filled with facts and all the things and bring them to the table and be shut down again. And I’m-

Amanda Medina Oh, absolutely. [00:31:00]

Haley Radke I'm, I don't know if you can tell this I'm super sensitive sometimes, a lot of the time, and so that's what works for me, but I do appreciate that you are willing to have those hard conversations, and I've seen that in a lot of adoptees lately that are, especially, we will talk a little bit more about this during recommended resources, but adoptees that are open to having a conversation with adoptive parents or with first parents.

Amanda Medina Yeah.

Haley Radke Prioritizing the adoptive voice, but yet still teaching out of your adoptee experience. And if you're gonna listen, then I'm gonna teach you. And maybe we do have a conversation back and forth. So I appreciate that because not all of us are willing to do that.

Amanda Medina It's been a learning process too because, when I first came out of the fog, having gone through what I had gone through, having realized what I had realized and just essentially having just completely [00:32:00] broken down to, I call it, I had my eat-pray-love moment where I was just on the kitchen floor crying and just ran out of tears. And I was like, I don't know how I will ever come back from this. This is it. Like I'm sitting in this dark hole and I'm gonna be stuck here. I've lost myself, the person I was before, and I don't know how I'm gonna build her back up in any kind of way, but I did eventually. But having gained that strength, at first, that was, you mentioned adoption. I'm ready to give you a two hour lecture on everything that's wrong and just, “You think you know? No, no, no, no. I'm gonna tell you about this and this.” So I've been there too. I definitely have. I've been anything from kicked out of groups to blocked from people and I've gone at it that way and it didn't work. So then I had to reevaluate and I also learned when is it even worth answering? It's not always worth answering. There are comments on my social media that you'll see I actually did not reply because maybe it's, [00:33:00] “Are you really trying to engage in the conversation or do you wanna just tell me that I'm wrong?” And I've had times when I have replied and then no conversation is happening. So you learn as you go what works for you-

Haley Radke Whether or not to take the bait?

Amanda Medina Yeah. Basically.

Haley Radke I don't know. I think there's so many conversations that happen on social media and a lot of the public ones I feel like don't necessarily go places but I know there is a lot of hard work also being done in the DMs where-

Amanda Medina Absolutely.

Haley Radke There's some really amazing conversations and changes of opinion I think happen when it's just that more one-on-one personal connection. And no one else is jumping in to give their 2 cents and I know you're having those conversations, so thank you for serving in that way.

Amanda Medina For sure.

Haley Radke I watched a piece on YouTube that you posted [00:34:00] not too long ago. It's called A Piece Broken Off, and you describe feeling like you were broken off from a chain. You talk about the richness of the history that now your link is broken away from. And you're really talking about the loss of a family legacy of adoption. I thought it was really powerful and-

Amanda Medina Thank you.

Haley Radke I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about that and what led you to the chain metaphor and if you could just speak to that a bit.

Amanda Medina Yeah, for sure. So I had said in one of my early posts, I remember saying that I realized that as the adopted child of a couple who were not able to have biological [00:35:00] children, I will not be carrying on their family line. And also, again, being an adoptive child with no information about my first family, it also falls on me to start a new family like I am now the roots of a new family tree. So feeling very in between there. And then this specific piece that you're referring to came out of, somebody shared in a group that I was in a poem read out loud by two Mexican American girls who had written a poem celebrating the rich heritage of the Latina women before them, their mothers, their grandmothers, and you know how they were these strong women in their Latina culture, in their origin, in all of the ancestry. And I just felt like [00:36:00] that should be mine, right? I was born in Columbia and I know there's so much richness in that country in terms of culture and heritage and ancestry and all of that stuff and I have no access to it. So that's where I felt like I had been just plucked out of the ground and placed somewhere else, somewhere where there is no tree for me to attach to, touch my branch to. So that's where that poem was inspired by and came out of.

Haley Radke Beautiful. Before we do recommended resources, when I ask guests on, and we always have like a few minutes ahead of time before we record, and one of the questions I ask, and I asked you before we started, is do you have preferred adoption language? Because I like to be respectful of the guests and, oh my gosh, first/birth/bio/natural. I don't know, I'm probably missing a few there, but I always do that to be respectful. And one of the things that you had mentioned to me earlier is [00:37:00] that there is a difference between positive adoption language and honest adoption language. And what I said was, do you have preferred adoption language? I'm curious if you would like to share a little bit about that 'cause we've seen some kind of hot button topics on social media in the last few months about positive adoption language.

Amanda Medina Yeah. Yeah. So I love linguistics and I love sociology, and so language is extremely important to me. I say that one of the ultimate ways to control people and shape their reality is via language, right? You tell them what words to use, and that then reflects in their mind. So when people talk about positive adoption language, first of all, we gotta see who is putting out positive adoption language. Who is that for? It's not necessarily for the adoptees. We are not the ones that say, oh, we wanna be called blessed. We wanna be called chosen. We wanna be [00:38:00] called loved. That comes from the agencies, that comes from the adoptive parents because that fits their narrative. That allows them to feel that they're doing a good thing, that everything is to be celebrated, and there are no problems. Meanwhile, I made a post, again early on, on Instagram, saying, no, I was not chosen. My parents were chosen. It even says in the adoption papers, we have the pleasure of informing you that you have been selected to adopt this child. I was available. And I'm okay with that language because that actually reflects the truth. So that's where honest adoption language comes in. This way, I don't have the pressure on me to feel lucky or blessed or fortunate or grateful. So I think it's really important for adoptees because that's where we will find the space to explore our true story, our true experience, and own our feelings. Because we should. We deserve to process [00:39:00] what it is that we've been through. We deserve to know that losing your mother, doesn't matter what the circumstances are, losing your mother at any age is traumatic and that's something that needs to be processed, healed from. However you wanna put that. But so that's where I feel it's so important to talk about honest adoption language. And that's not gonna be easy adoption language, that's just gonna be honest. That's all that I'm saying with that. Truthful and honest. And that's where we will hopefully be able to make change and actually approach the adoptee experience for what it is for many of us, not all, but many of us who need that support, who need to know that it's okay to struggle.

Haley Radke Thank you. Okay, let's move to recommended resources. And we've already mentioned, Amanda, that you have the blog, This Adoptee Life, and I love that you are sharing your own story. You've got like a whole ton of posts sharing your story, going more in depth than we did here today because of [00:40:00] time. What is that? But I've attended some of your lives on Instagram and what I really appreciate about you is what your commitment looks like from the outside to community building and really connecting with other adoptees, bringing them in. There's pockets here and there, we see lots of different Facebook groups and things, especially the really huge groups. It's hard to connect really in person with adoptees. And so I really am thankful that you are building your own community and gathering together adoptees.

Amanda Medina Thank you.

Haley Radke It's really important work. The other thing I wanted to mention is Amanda has a mantra.

Amanda Medina Oh, you got it.

Haley Radke I'm showing it to her on video. You can't see that, but you can hear me crinkling the paper. Maybe not. Maybe my editor's just too good. I'm just gonna take it out. [00:41:00] I'm doing it extra for you, Jen. I'm not gonna read it out 'cause I want you to go to Amanda's Instagram and she's got it there in a couple places and I think it's also on your blog. But the very last thing you say is, “I belong on this earth.” And to me, even as you share it through the interview, and I got stuck on the fact that your birthday is fake, and you have no idea where you were for your first months of life. I just thought, man, to ground yourself in that thought: I belong on this earth, is just so powerful. Is there anything you wanna speak to about the mantra or your blog that you wanna share with us?

Amanda Medina So I could just say about the mantra that there is a video where I introduced it on Instagram and Facebook. But just for anybody who's listening here and hearing about the first time, it's essentially a set of phrases that I've realized so many adoptees struggle with, and I've been one [00:42:00] of them for sure and still do, but it's just realizing that where I have been wanting for other people to tell me, I can tell myself and I can find strength and confidence in just claiming that for myself. And so that's why I wanted to share it with, again, I wanna share it with fellow adoptees so you can order it and I will be so happy to send it. And people have bought it and they send me pictures. It sits on their bathroom mirror or by their bed or some have it in their office and just a daily reminder that you deserve this. You can say that, yes, I exist and yes, I deserve to live happily.

Haley Radke Powerful. What did you wanna recommend to us?

Amanda Medina My recommended resource is a page on Facebook, and they are also on YouTube. They're called Trauma Informed Parent. And while it's not adoption [00:43:00] specific, for me as an adoptee, seeing their posts and what they share, it is definitely relating to the fact that I have been through trauma. And I think a lot of adoptees can find information on there and specifically adoptive parents because adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents need to know about the trauma that the adoptee child has been through.

Haley Radke And I think, you know what I've learned so much from the therapists that have been on the show is that we can re-mother and re-parent ourselves, especially when we have an understanding of trauma. I don't wanna talk down to us, but sometimes it is easier to learn about it from an adult looking at a child's perspective, at first, when we're first learning about it. So I really like this. I'm really excited to check it out. I'm so glad you brought it too. I hadn't heard of it before, but I'm gonna go check that out as well. Thank you. Where can we connect with [00:44:00] you online?

Amanda Medina I have the blog, which is This Adoptee Life, so www.thisadoptteelife.com. And from there you can also find me on Instagram, Facebook. I am intending to become more active on Twitter. I'm still figuring that one out, but I'm on Instagram a lot.

Haley Radke Yes, Twitter is a whole beast and you gotta have the right timing to join Twitter as well. That's an inside joke for if you knew when we were recording this. Yikes. Anyway, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate it. And thank you for also making a space for adoptee voices. I think we share that passion. It's so important and we really wanna hear each other's stories.

Amanda Medina Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It's been such an honor and a pleasure to speak with you and share my story here. [00:45:00]

Haley Radke One of the things I really appreciate about Amanda and so many other adoptee bloggers is that they are willing to share their platforms with us. And so if writing has been on your heart and you haven't built up a platform for yourself yet, you wanna just dip your toe in and try things out. That's what Amanda did to start. She wrote a piece for Dear Adoption like she shared with us, and there's so many adoptee bloggers who are sharing their space, sharing an opportunity to have your words go to maybe a wider audience than you would have if you did a Facebook post on your own, or there's a lot of places that will let you share anonymously also, if that feels safer. We've got November National Adoption Awareness Month coming up, and I always feel like adoptees are [00:46:00] working their hardest to be louder during November than everyone else. And our voices often get drowned out. So if you've been thinking, maybe I have an idea that I wanna share with the adoptive community, or maybe you just wanna get some feelings out, this is a good time. There's a lot of different people that are accepting guest posters right now, so I'd encourage you to look around, see who's accepting posts, make a connection there and write something. We wanna hear from a variety of adoptee voices and maybe we haven't heard from you yet. So if you want to, I would really encourage you to do something like that. And I've always said that one of my most sad things about making the podcast is that I couldn't possibly interview everyone who listens. I just would run out of weeks and time and so this is a really great opportunity for you to share a part of your story, perhaps. Maybe it's something that you've really wanted to come on the podcast and [00:47:00] weren't able to. This is a great way for you to start out sharing what the adoptee experience has been like for you. So there you go. There's your little push. If you needed a sign, should I write something? Yes. Yes. You should write something.

Okay. I really have enjoyed talking to so many really incredible adoptees lately. It's just been wonderful. Now, our next two episodes coming up are a little bit more of somber topics. We are gonna be talking about Adoptee Remembrance Day with Pamela Karanova, and there's going to be some opportunities for community input. I will be putting some details out on Facebook, Instagram, but my Patreon supporters knew about it first, and some of them have already gotten on and gotten to work on their submissions. So if you want to hear about those things first, you can go to adopteeson.com/partner to find out the details of how you can join Patreon. And there's lots of bonuses over there. There's another weekly [00:48:00] podcast called Adoptees Off Script that is unfiltered-Haley, much to the chagrin of my co-host sometimes. No, we have a lot of fun over there. There's a secret Facebook group just for adoptees. There's other levels with other bonuses, and there's some really fun things coming up. I know I keep saying that. It's coming. It's coming. I promise I'm working on it very hard, but I'd love to have you over there. Adopteeson.com/partner helps sustain the show, helps keep the show going and growing and supporting adoptees around the world. Okay. I thank you so much for listening, and let's talk again next Friday.

157 Damon Davis

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/157

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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 157, Damon Davis. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I'm excited to welcome a fellow podcaster, Damon Davis, creator and host of the Who Am I Really? podcast. Damon gets a turn to share his story of search, reunion, and loss.

We also chat about why reunions get held up as this mythical gold standard of heartwarming six o'clock news bait and what we've learned from talking to hundreds of adoptees over the past few years. 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, Damon Davis. Welcome, Damon.

Damon Davis: Thank you so much, Haley. How are you?

Haley Radke: Good. Podcasters unite. I got a chance to be on your show. I don't know, it was your big episode 100, which is a huge milestone and now you're well past that. And anyway, it was time. It was time. I would love to introduce you to my listeners and to have you share your story with us.

Damon Davis: Thank you so much. It was such an honor to have you on. When I started my show, I started looking around for other podcasts and you were one of maybe two that I found. So I thought it was really appropriate to have you on for show 100, so thank you for being my guest. I appreciate it.

Haley Radke: Absolutely.

Damon Davis: To start my own story in terms of being an adoptee in reunion, I began my search after several things happened, and it was a confluence of about three different things. The first of which was, well, I should probably start back at the beginning and just talk a little bit about myself as a child. [00:02:00]

I was perfectly comfortable in adoption. I had no worries, issues or complaints. My parents were great people. I'm African American in descent, and my mother is lighter skinned black than I am. My dad is darker skinned than I am, and I'm in the middle. So for all intents and purposes, we looked like we could have been family if you had mixed their genes together and produced someone in the middle.

So I had a great upbringing in Columbia, Maryland, and I really didn't have any issues with adoption. And I was told I was adopted from an early age and I came to accept it. So I could speak very openly and freely about it with other people, which is something one of my guests said was eye-opening for him.

This is my best friend Andre, who was my very first show. He said, you were like the first dude that I knew that would speak openly about adoption and that was freeing for me. So just as a sidebar, I think that's why part of our shows are important because it allows other people to speak [00:03:00] out and it's freeing for a further network of adoptees.

Haley Radke: Totally.

Damon Davis: I didn't really have any desire to search. People would ask me about it from time to time and I was like, nah, I'm good. I've got parents. I don't need two more parents. I'm fine. But the birth of my son was a real eye-opening experience for me because this little person that we created out of love and after some challenges, we tried to do in-vitro fertilization and assisted conception.

And it didn't work and he was conceived naturally. And so I, I abbreviate that piece of the story, but you can imagine the breadth of emotion that probably happened for us as we traversed that whole assisted conception sort of path. Then for him to be conceived naturally thereafter was just magical.

And then, you stop and you think, wait, this is the first biological relative I've ever known in person and I made him. It was really, really impactful.

Haley Radke: How old were you?

Damon Davis: I was in my early thirties, so he's 12. I was about 36. [00:04:00]

Haley Radke: Okay.

Damon Davis: And, just being at home with him, I was, I like to say fortunate to have been laid off. So I was lucky to be at home with him as an infant and I bonded with him tremendously, both, as my first born, but for the importance of who he was as a biological child. It was just unbelievable. That was one factor.

The second factor was my father-in-law came to town from the Caribbean and he would come into town and he would sometimes stop and sometimes he wouldn't stop by and this particular time he said he wanted to go see one of his relatives in Baltimore. And this guy was really into family and really into sort of the connections that you can make around the world. He's a very big philanthropist in every way.

But he was also a family person in terms of holding the family together. So we go see this person whom I've never met before, and this elderly woman answers the door, greets us, brings us into her home, and as she's sitting there, she's spreading out all kinds of artifacts [00:05:00] from their lives, my wife's life and his life, and other members of the family.

And it was just this stark moment of realization that there's a historian in my family, someone who knows all the facts, all the stories, all the pieces that I don't know in my biological family I'm referring to. And I say, if that person, my family historian in my biological family is elderly, like this person who by the way is dragging an oxygen tank behind her, like she's clearly in the autumn of her years, I might miss out on these kinds of stories being spread out on the table before me if I don't look and search.

So that was thing two. Thing three was I was going through some challenges with my adoptive mom. My adoptive mother was starting to show signs of mental deterioration. She was hallucinating things, accusing me of things. We had a very tumultuous relationship around the time that my son was born, and it was really difficult for me.

And one of my best friends, [00:06:00] Kelly said, maybe you should search for your biological mother. And I wrote it off like why would I insert someone else into this position when I'm trying to fix this relationship over here? But she told me later, I asked her why she recommended that course, and she said, because I just felt like you were lost. Like you were looking for something and you needed some grounding and that potentially finding this other woman and some answers might be helpful for you.

So that was the third thing. So with all of those things coming together and having the knowledge that I was born in Baltimore, I reached out to Baltimore’s city social services and I asked, how do I go about search and reunion? I was connected with a lovely social worker. Her name was Lee Burress, and Lee was able to help me down the path of what it takes to do a search, and she set expectations for me, which I thought was really important.

She said, look, this thing doesn't always go fast. It's not a rapid process. It could take some time. [00:07:00] And she asked me some questions about why I was searching to make sure that there weren't any, for lack of better words, red flags for her about what my expectations might be, what I thought I needed out of the process.

And I was able to tell her, thankfully, look, I'm good, like I've got two great parents. I admit my mom and I are going through some challenges, but I'm not doing that, for any reason. I don't have any medical issue, thankfully. I just want these answers.

And so she helped me to go down the path of writing an introductory letter that so many of us have done, and really crafting a message to my biological mother that would help me introduce myself. And I went to work. I tell you, I joked in my book, I was working for the federal government at the time and I went to work that day and I spent the entire afternoon writing this letter. And I feel like I owe the American public a couple of dollars back because y'all paid me to write my letter at my desk. I did not do your [00:08:00] work that day but I tell you I made up for it in spades, by the way.

But I crafted a letter, sent it off to Lee. Lee held it for a while. Lee sent it off. And then, I'm walking through the building that I worked in, the Department of Health and Human Services, downtown and I get this call on my phone. I'm looking at the caller ID and it's Lee, and I was like, that's weird. Why would she be calling me unless she had news?

And sure enough, she said, I found her. And I was just flabbergasted. I just could not believe the news I was getting. It was really unbelievable. And so through a series of back and forth with Lee, we ended up coming to Ann, my birth mother, writing an introductory letter back to me.

And then after she received that letter back at her desk, she read it to me over the phone and I remember I sat on a park bench in the park outside of the building I was working in, and I just cried as I listened to this sweet [00:09:00] voice of Lee reading my mother's words to me for the first time.

And it was as if she was a surrogate for my biological mother, and she was just so kind in reading that letter. And I'm hearing her name for the first time, I'm hearing about her history. For the first time I'm hearing her express herself. I heard the words that she used and it just all felt really good.

After she finished reading the letter, Lee said, look, I can connect you guys, and then it's up to you. And so I sent her a text at that moment, and I wanted my biological mother to know that was the moment that we were in touch, that I knew who she was and that we were ready to move forward.

And she called me that night and, it was funny, I missed the call initially, but I got a message from her because I missed the call and it was so sweet. She says, this is your birth mother Ann. [00:10:00] She said, I don't know what to say to you, but I'm so excited to get in touch with you and you can call me any hour of the day or night, which was really cute.

And she was like, you could hear her holding back tears of joy and confusion and excitement at the same time. It's just the sweetest little message.

Haley Radke: I love that and I love that you texted her so she can have like concrete, this is from Damon and then you have this voicemail that, I don't know, maybe you played it more than once, I'm guessing.

Damon Davis: Yeah, it was a really great moment. I wanted her to know right then, you and I are now connected. And it worked out in spades. We had a great conversation after I called her back and, it was funny, I picked up on some of the nature in that conversation. We talked about our dispositions in life.

Like I told you before we started the show, I'm a glass half full, like more than half full kind of person, and I'll do little random acts of [00:11:00] anonymous kindness for people. Things like that. And we talked about some of that stuff in that very first call and it all resonated and it was just amazing to hear what her disposition in life was as it compared to mine.

So we maintained our own individual relationship at first. So we talked by phone that night. I texted her the next morning because I’d learned in that first letter that her birthday was the next day after I was being read that letter by Lee Burress.

So Lee is reading me my mother's words, and she's telling me in that letter, tomorrow's my birthday. So I called her the next morning as I went to work and I said, happy birthday. And she was like, oh my gosh, the best birthday ever. And it was just so cute because I literally hadn't done anything but shown up. And my presence back in her life was a gift that she [00:12:00] appreciated and I thought that was so cool.

But what she didn't know was that she had told me the night before that basically she worked around the corner from me also as a federal government employee. She was two blocks away and we were sharing the same metro station when I chose to get off at that station from time to time.

So she didn't know, but I was planning to surprise her at her office that day, and that's exactly what I did. I left a meeting, jumped in a cab, went over to her building, and I cleared building security. And it was so funny. I'll never forget, I told the security guard. She says, who are you here to see?

And I said, Ann Sullivan. And she says, and what's her number? And I was like I don't know. I've never met her before. I'm in my own head. I'm thinking, I'm here to reunite with my biological mother, and I thought to myself, I've never met her before. That sounds weird. You should tell her what you mean by that. Don't be a weirdo.

So I said, it might interest you to know that she's my biological mother and I'm [00:13:00] meeting her for the first time right now. And the guard, this person who's like churning people through these turnstiles with zero emotion, looks at me with bright eyes, smiles and looks her up in the computer and dials the phone. Like her whole demeanor changed and she points me to where I'm going through the turnstile and wished me luck.

And I'll just never forget that day. I stood there on that elevator going down and I'm looking in the reflection of the elevator doors and I'm fixing my tie. I am tugging at my suit. I'm trying to look my absolute best. And the door opened and this woman is standing in front of me and she looks at me, like holy….. And I said, oh my God, that's gotta be her.

So she had gotten up from her desk to come receive me at reception. Meanwhile, I'm coming downstairs to go to her desk. And a piece that I left out, I had put [00:14:00] in my introductory letter, a photo of myself, my son, and my wife so she knew what I looked like. I had no idea who I was looking for. So when she saw me, her jaw dropped, and it was just a jaw drop that was unmistakable, like we are here in this moment together.

And I practically dove out of that elevator onto her shoulders. I wrapped her in a big, huge hug and I cried on her shoulder and she cried on me. And it was just an amazing moment. And I whispered in her ear, happy birthday. And it was just. I'll never have a moment like that again. It was just absolutely incredible and it was so fulfilling to then build a relationship based on what I feel is a very fortunate unfolding of my own reunion story.

Because as you and I both know, having interviewed hundreds of people, they do not always go that well. And so I feel extremely fortunate for her receptivity, her close proximity, for her openness in telling my story to me about how it was that I was conceived, who she thought my birth father was, and the whole shebang. [00:15:00]

I was very, very fortunate in how that all went down.

Haley Radke: Can I pause you there? Because I saw that you had even some news coverage about your reunion and we've all seen those stories and Damon's was like that. It was the happy reunion, the picture-perfect kind of thing. The heartwarming one that gets shared across social media.

And I don't know if it was shared on socials, it was a few years ago now, but you know what I'm talking about. And I am curious what your thoughts are now, knowing what you do and having talked to so many people, what do you think is going through that security guard's mind when she hears that story and the people that read that article and have that heartwarming oh my goodness, this is like so beautiful?

Thinking of the reunion moment, what do you think is going on [00:16:00] in their mind subconsciously that this is such a heartwarming thing?

Damon Davis: Yeah. I think they have, you know, we make the joke about Hallmark made for TV movies that are intended to tear you down and build you back up with heart-wrenching stories that end in bright lights and roses and all kinds of warm, heartwarming stories.

And I think that this is the challenge with that kind of publicity for a story like mine and others is that it perpetuates the narrative that adoption reunions are awesome, and you and I and our listeners know they are not always awesome. Even mine did not have ultimate awesomeness all throughout it.

They all have their ups and downs, and I think that this is part of the value of your and my show, is that it's real, it's reality. It's stories told by the adoptees about [00:17:00] how it perhaps didn't go so well. You'll never see a story on the news that played as much as mine did. Mine was on the next morning at 7, 9, 11, 12, 5 and 7 o’clock. They played it the whole next 24-hour news cycle.

Now, if my story had been, I reached out to try to find my biological mother and my social worker Lee found an obituary or reached out and she said she was summarily uninterested in speaking with me. That's not gonna make the news, but that is, I think, a significant portion of the stories that you and I help to tell that don't get told more broadly on the news, on social media and stuff like that.

I've never seen a tweet that says, hey, I just reached out for my biological mother and I wanted to share the story of finding her obituary. I mean, you do, but it's not in a celebratory manner.

Haley Radke: That's not going viral.

Damon Davis: Exactly. That's not the [00:18:00] positive news story that gets shared broadly. You're right, you've helped me to articulate what I was trying to say.

Haley Radke: I always struggle with words for this part. Like deep down those people that are reading it and thinking this is just super heartwarming. There's gotta be something underneath that's like, huh, I don't know if this was the way it was originally supposed to be and now they're back together. There's some kind of hint of that.

Like what's so heartwarming about reconnecting if there wasn't a brokenness in being disconnected in the first place?

Damon Davis: Yeah, that's a really good point and it's a great question, and I think that also is part of the value of the platform that you and I have chosen is it helps people to understand everything that happened up until that moment of reunion, right?

So you and I, we've had guests on our shows that have expressed true gratitude, immense love and appreciation for the adoptive [00:19:00] parents that they were reared with. And many of us will often say, I can't imagine my life a different way than what I went through. However, there's a great many people who before that reunion moment went through immense adversity, almost inhumane treatment.

Some stories that we've covered just make you look at other humans and go, how could you be like that to a child, another person? Even if it was an adult, how could you treat somebody that way? And that's the part that doesn't get covered in the five o'clock news heartwarming story. And it's the kind of thing, like what's the documentary that many of us saw? Three Identical Strangers.

That is a classic example of that kind of thing because on the outside, people across New York and that whole area up there, we're seeing these three brothers brought together starting a restaurant and bar and hanging out all the time and joking and [00:20:00] living it up. But it wasn't until more recently when these stories started to come out in their entirety that you start to see that those brothers were actually pretty troubled by the fact that they were separated at birth as part of an experiment.

They were challenged to make some of their successes continue, and challenged to think through what would it have been like had I lived with my brothers, of which there were two others that I didn't know until I was an adult. These are the kinds of things that have an initial wave of warm feeling when you only get the headline. But it's not until you get to dive into the entirety of the story, which you and I facilitate, that you really get to see the full picture.

And it's just like so many other stories, they have their ups and downs. It's like a marriage; it's like raising a child. It's like trying to navigate your professional life. It has its ups and downs. And adoption is a prime example of how you [00:21:00] can start off on one end of the spectrum and potentially end up on the other. You could have a great adoption and a terrible reunion. You could have an awful adoption and amazing reunions.

You just never know how any of this stuff is gonna unfold. And I talk about that a lot. I did a blog post where I talked about the adoption journey, almost like you know the control board that you have there for your sound, your mixer thing, and it's got all these dials on it, right? You could turn any one of those dials on the adoption board and get a completely different story, right?

You could take myself and put me into a family, a white family, and put me in the Midwest. So you change locality and you change the ethnicity of the parents. And I have a totally different story. You take me and you put me in South America or Africa, and you adopt me internationally into a new name, the family type, and you change the dial on the geographic area and you've got a totally different [00:22:00] story.

And I think, that's one of the things that I enjoy about being the host of a show that allows for the cultivation and the extraction of those stories, is that you get to hear the richness of what happens to a variety of people, of different religions, of different socioeconomic backgrounds, from different geographic areas, etc., telling their story about how it unfolded for them.

So it's just, it's really fascinating. But you're right, they don't all make the news in a heartwarming way.

Haley Radke: Okay. I am gonna dig some more. Damon. You've said you're a really positive person. You exude gratitude even in your book you're expressing some of that right at the beginning. And you do talk about coming out of the fog, and I know you know what that lingo is. I'm wondering if your perspective on adoption has shifted over the course of doing more and [00:23:00] more interviews with adoptees?

I don't know if a lot of people know you are actually an adoptive parent yourself in an in-family circumstance. And I don't know, there's a lot of things in adoptee land where we have big feelings about lots of different topics, but I'm curious for you how things have morphed and changed if they have.

Damon Davis: It's a great question because I'm influenced by multiple different factors. As you've said, I am an adoptee myself. I have adopted two children within my in-law family, so I raised two kids from their preteen years. Each of them came to us when they were nine years old, respectively, and we've raised them through adulthood.

I will admit that they have struggled. There are reasons why children are in need of a home and that was how they came to live with us. They had needs that the family wasn't entirely able to fulfill. And [00:24:00] we were in a strategic position to do that. And we took on the challenge gratefully, willingly, because I'm an adoptee and I was open to it anyway.

However, I will admit that I've heard stories from some of my guests and I just think to myself, geez, I wish that person could have stayed with their biological mother or father, right? But on the flip side, I'll admit that personally, one of my kids has a child and the child, my child, is not doing that great.

And it's now putting their child in a really tough position. And so adoption is on the table and I can now see why a parent who is in a bad place and is not able to care appropriately for a child, might need to place them somewhere else for that child's welfare. So I will admit, I remain very confused by the whole thing because [00:25:00] I'm just being honest with you, I can see why there are some people who are very fervent in our community that are like, no adoption. Never, ever.

And I respect the position that they come from and the experiences that they have. But I will say on the opposite end of the spectrum, I think there are some children out there who will be in grave danger if they are not extracted from the places where they currently live to potentially have a better or alternative chance at their life in a different place.

So I don't think there's any one answer. I think it's literally case by case and it should be devoid of opinion. It should be based on facts. It should be based on what is in the best interest of the child and that child's safety. And those are the only blanket statements I'm willing to make about it because it's just too hard. It's too hard.

Haley Radke: It's so complicated. I totally get that. And I've heard recently [00:26:00], I was watching a discussion about adoption versus legal guardianship and how that can impact and all the complexities in the foster care system and how systemic issues of racism and injustices keep being perpetuated.

So it is terribly complex and it's very hard to make a blanket determination, I think. But I appreciate you addressing that because I think some people like yourself will be stigmatized by other adoptees who are not grateful whatsoever, and nor do they need to be, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that.

Damon Davis: Yeah, I appreciate it.

Haley Radke: Okay. I paused you. We took a detour. Let's go back to your story.

Damon Davis: Yeah, no problem. So we've talked a lot about my biological mother, and I think it's only fair to speak about my biological father too, because there's a fascinating story on that side. And that's kind of the interesting piece of all of these [00:27:00] biological reunion journeys is that they don't necessarily unfold the way you think.

I'll have guests on the show and I'll think to myself, I know where this is going. This person found their biological mother and then they found their father and blah, blah, blah. And they will throw a curve ball, and I'm just like, oh my God. That's what you get for settling in and getting comfortable and thinking you know everything, genius, 'cause you don't.

Haley Radke: I've made some similar assumptions, just so you know.

Damon Davis: Yeah, and I'm glad you can admit that too. It's just crazy. You start to settle in and you think, I can see where this is going, and they just take a hard left turn and you're like, whoa.

So mine had an interesting story along those lines as well. So I had a phenomenal relationship with my biological mother. We were in reunion for six years before she passed away, sadly. She bought a house, retired from the federal government, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. And, I'm not even kidding you, within several months she was gone.

So it was an interesting time for me because [00:28:00] obviously the woman who carried me, brought me into this world, had passed on and we had only just had several years of relationship. We hadn't even gotten into double digits. So it was sad to have lost her, but it was phenomenal to have ever known her in the first place, which is something that many adoptees don't get.

And I feel incredibly fortunate for having ever spoken to her, come face to face with her, gotten a chance to hug her and talk to her about my story. It was just amazing. But what happened after she passed was I realized I have an opportunity here to seek out this biological father whom when I would speak with her about my story, I could sense the pain in her voice of how it unfolded.

So I said, you know what? While she was alive, I said, I'm not looking for this guy right now. I'm good. She's good, I'm good. This is good. Let me just stay right here. But after she passed away, I said, I can't hurt her if I find this guy. And I decided to do it. So I did the classic thing. I [00:29:00] started internet searching and trying to find this guy's name, and he had a very basic name that brought back thousands of guys across all social media platforms and stuff.

And I was just like, I'm never gonna find this dude. So I was finally able to track him down based on some characteristics that she told me about him, that he was a Detroit police officer. I think she gave me his name. So I was finally able to find some archives about a police officer with this guy's name. And I tracked him down and I wrote him a letter and I said, I think you might be the guy.

And it was such a weird experience because I gave him all my contact information and he called me on the phone and it's this loud, booming voice. He is very dramatic in his speech and all this other stuff, and he's really overbearing. And I was just like, ugh, this doesn't feel right at all. I just [00:30:00] couldn't feel any of the same kind of connection that I had when I spoke with Ann.

And so I was immediately standoffish with him and through a series of different phone conversations it just got weirder and weirder. And I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna let this die. I don't really feel like I need to meet this guy at all. And probably a year or two went by and it just hit me. You know what, man, if you don't see your biological father face to face, he could pass and you will have lost this opportunity.

You might not like him, but you might have to suck it up and go out there and meet 'em. And you meet 'em one time and you don't have to ever meet 'em again. And right about the time that I made that decision, I texted him and we talked about it for a minute, and he was like, are you sure I'm the right guy?

And I said I know how this whole thing works and she said you were there. So I have an eye-witness to your presence. And so he said [00:31:00] have you seen my name on anything? And it started to put questions in my head like, you're right, it's possible that we're not right.

And so he suggested that we do a blood test, and he called me back and he said, I got a great idea. Let's do it on the Maury Povich show and do a big reveal. And I was just like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life.

Haley Radke: Yikes.

Damon Davis: So shortly after that little exchange he sent me a note in the mail and it was very definitive. I'm sorry Mr. Davis. I'm not the guy. And I was like, how does he know this and how can he reject me? I said he was the guy. How could you? That's not cool. And I had some feelings about it for a while, and then I just said, you know what? I didn't really like that dude anyway, so I just have to try to get over this and let it go.

And it was in that moment that my immediate family was doing some DNA testing of our own, because my wife's [00:32:00] mother, my mother-in-law, is also an adoptee from Canada. And she never had any desire to search for her story at all. And so we are now in this era of a lot of very easily accessible, consumer-friendly DNA testing.

And so we were like, hey, let's spit in some tubes and find out about some people. And I'm thinking to myself, it's also gonna give me some additional information about Seth, my son, because I only know a piece of my family tree and so I only know an even smaller piece of his. Therefore, knowing something about my mother-in-law and her lineage is going to help me fill out his story and beyond.

So we submitted our Ancestry DNA tests, and they came back. Mine came back first and I didn't even really pay that much attention to it because when I met Ann, my biological mother, I had already done 23andMe with her. So the whole gravitas and [00:33:00] surprise and deep interest in what the DNA test was revealing had already washed away six years ago when I first met her.

So when I got my Ancestry DNA test, I didn't pay two seconds of attention to it. I was more interested in my wife's and my son’s because they had pieces that I didn't know at all. When theirs came back. I saw some really cool stuff that Ancestry did, like global migration patterns and this is where your people come from.

And it was just so fascinating that I decided to dig into ancestor DNA on my own record, and it was there, where one night I'm sitting in bed digging into my own record, not even thinking about any of the relationships that I wanted, because again, over on 23andMe I had four or five sixth cousins, whatever, reaching out, saying, hey, and it just was too far off in the distance to really build any meaningful relationships.

So I started getting those relationship connections again, and I didn't look at it at all on Ancestry DNA, but then [00:34:00] I just peeked in on it and I had a very close match and it said parent-child relationship. And my jaw dropped and I'm staring at the screen like, you gotta be kidding me. Who?

So I'm clicking on this thing and it says, extremely high confidence. Parent-child relationship, this person is your father. It doesn't say anything like you might wanna check into this 'cause this seems pretty interesting, in print, like close. They were definitive in their proclamation that the person I was connected to was my father.

And it was not the initials of the man's name who Ann had given me and I had connected with in Detroit. It was a different dude, which lent itself to even more confusion 'cause I'm like, wait. She said it was that guy, but science says it's this guy. And so I'm going round and round in my head.

So I message them, they don't [00:35:00] reply. I message again, they don't reply. I sent another message and I'm like, look, I don't want anything, but I'm an adoptee. I've got nothing. And this guy's popping up on my screen, you gotta tell me something. We don't have to say anything to anybody else in the family, but I would like to talk about this for a few minutes.

And lo and behold, a couple of days later on a Saturday, I'm driving along and I get a call from a family member who is, interestingly, this is a white descendant of mine in the South, and they were slave owners back in the day. They had done a very extensive sort of family search for all of these people that were connected to them because while doing their own Ancestry DNA.

They started to see that their DNA heritage was bringing up a lot of black people as connected to their family. So they started reaching out, trying to learn more and more about how far this went. [00:36:00] And among them was my biological father, Bill White. So to cut a story a little bit short, they finally agreed to connect me with Bill White, who lives out in Las Vegas.

And coincidentally, I spoke with him by phone the night before I'm leaving for a family trip to Los Angeles and I was like, look, I'm gonna be in your neighborhood. I'm in Los Angeles tomorrow and you're in Las Vegas. And he said, yeah, let's see about connecting. He was really receptive, which was refreshing because the other guy was very confrontational, I don't know how to put it. It wasn't like a warm, fuzzy fit.

And Bill was like, oh, wow. Huh, I had no idea. Wow. This felt like it was an interesting, cool development for him. And he was 80 plus at the time. And he's still alive. I don't mean to talk about him in the past tense, it was just the past tense of the story.

So we took a day-trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and I meet this guy, and I tell you, I looked at him and [00:37:00] I thought I looked like my biological mother when I first saw her. But then my wife took a picture of myself and Bill next to each other with Seth in the picture as well. And I'm looking at the way we smile and squint our eyes and all kinds of stuff.

And I was like, I look just like this dude. It was crazy. And we ended up developing a great relationship. It turned out he was a genealogist, which Ann had also been. So between the two of them, never having met them before in my life, within a very short time of meeting each of them, they were both able to hand me an entire family tree, full lineage with stories about every person in it, almost.

It was just astonishing to make this connection and we continue to have a good relationship. I called him a couple of weeks ago when I was in LA and we had a great chat and it's just really great to find connectivity, reach a place of peace that you didn't know you [00:38:00] were actually needing.

And to hear the stories about yourself and your own bloodline. You accept the stories of your adopted family because that's the story you grow up in. But when, as you alluded to earlier, you come out of the fog and you acknowledge what adoption actually means. That you are a child of a different family's lineage. I don't think there are that many people who don't have some level of curiosity about that.

I think the folks who don't search are likely suppressing that curiosity. And you can get really good at it, especially if all of your needs are met. If you've got a great loving home, you are not wanting for anything, you've reached to some level of what you decide is success in your life, whether that's building your own family, your own career, traveling the world, whatever those things are, and you're not really feeling like that is an answer you need. It's easy to suppress that. [00:39:00]

And I'm not saying that people have to resurrect it and dig deep to search. I'm simply saying I do think it is within everybody to some degree when you reach that realization, that adoption means you came from somewhere else. And it has been an incredible journey to find these adults that I came from, hear the story about what they were doing when they were adults and how this whole thing came to fruition to bring me into this world.

And it's been incredibly enlightening to then turn my story into a passion for hearing other people's stories, starting the podcast and writing the book. It's just been amazing.

Haley Radke: Oh, wow. Thank you for sharing your story. You go into it way more in your memoir. And I love hearing those little excerpts from your voice. It's so good. I love that you addressed that feeling that some adoptees might be suppressing that desire. Because I was [00:40:00] gonna ask you about that.

Your show really does focus on the search and reunion, or if they're finding someone, like finding a grave, or those kinds of things that happen, too, which is very sad. I was just challenged recently on asking everyone, when did you decide you wanted to search? And just being challenged on that not everybody wants to and that's okay.

So thank you for saying that. I think that acknowledges that part of our community that just doesn't have that desire for whatever reason. I think it's time for us to do recommended resources, but that is gonna give me a chance to ask you another question. So of course, I'm gonna recommend your podcast.

You have almost 130 episodes already and more coming and there's just so many different stories. I love how you've covered all kinds of different topics. And so if you like Adoptees On, you're gonna love Who am I Really? [00:41:00] because it's more adoptee stories. And you have a really beautiful way of producing the show, and I really enjoy that.

I also wanna talk about your memoir, and I bought the hard copy in my hands. And I started reading it. And here's how you know that I have listened to a number of episodes of your show because I started reading it and you were talking in my head. I was reading it in your voice, and I will admit I got a little bit irritated and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna read it in audiobook. So I bought the audiobook instead.

So I listened and that was such a great experience. I loved hearing your voice tell me the stories and not all adopting memoirs are available in audio. You can get it on Audible and I just really enjoyed that. And another special thing about Damon’s book in audio is you have a section where you [00:42:00] give the eulogy after your adoptive father passes, and you actually have the audio of you sharing that and it's so powerful.

Damon Davis: That was the moment, boy, I tell you. It brings me to tears right now, man. I tell you, I had the foresight to when my father passed in, I think, 2017, I knew that I was gonna be the focus as his only child of giving the speech at his celebration of life.

And so I was the final speaker and I put my phone up on the podium and I just said, you wrote it, you should record it 'cause you can't be in the audience to hear it and you're gonna want to hear it later. And I didn't listen to it for years and I'm glad that I did record it because as you've said, in doing the audio book, there was a moment when I talk about losing my father.

And it was really powerful to be able to bring back the very moment in my own words, when I laid him to rest, for all intents and [00:43:00] purposes, in front of an audience and to hear the things that I said and the expression of gratitude for his life as it applied to mine.

To put that in an audiobook is just absolutely amazing. I feel so fortunate that I had the foresight to think to put my phone up on the podium. And if you listen closely at the end of my speech, you'll hear my son say, great speech, dad. It's the cutest.

Haley Radke: Okay. I have to go re-listen for that. Okay. I did not think we were gonna have a cry today, and it wasn't me.

Damon Davis: I'm an emotional dude, man. There's no question about it. And I cry with my guests too. I don't know about you, but

Haley Radke: Oh, gimme a break. I'm a disaster half the time. Anyway, I thank you for sharing that. And again, there's something about the power of audio for me. That's of course that's what I do. But I've always been like that.

And so to [00:44:00] hear you read your words and to hear your eulogy, all of those things are just really powerful. So if you have been listening to Who Am I Really? And I'm not converting you to be a listener, then, and you haven't got Damon’s book on audio, you gotta get it. There, because you'll for sure love it.

Okay. My question for you. That was a long lead up to this question. I want you to address what the words “Who am I really?” mean to you?

Damon Davis: When I crafted the idea for the podcast, I was driving down I-95 and it just hit me that I've spoken to so many adoptees before I had even recorded a story.

They all had this thematic piece to them of the search and reunion component where the people were wondering who they actually were as it applied to their biological family, to their natural relatives, and it just jumped out at me that that was what I was asking myself. [00:45:00] Who am I really in this world of an adopted family and a family out there that I don't even know?

Who am I really as it applies to them? And so it just seemed like such a natural fit for any adoptee who may be out there wondering to themself where they fit in the entire mix. And I thought of that title and I never looked back. There was no list of titles or anything like that; it just hit me and I ran with it.

Haley Radke: I love it when that happens. Okay. Do you have a specific episode that you think you could recommend to people? Or is there a search? This is gonna sound a little bit out there, but you and I both have a lot of episodes. So sometimes to a new listener, it's a little bit overwhelming where to start.

So do you have one or two that you're like, oh, you should listen to this one, or search on my website for whatever, late discovery or something like that?

Damon Davis: Yeah, no, it's a great question. I'll tell you, for [00:46:00] folks who haven't listened, you should definitely listen to Episode 100. Haley tells her story on there, and I was grateful to her for being a guest. And it sounds like I'm playing up to the host here, but I'm being serious about that because oftentimes the person behind the camera, the person who is the writer, the person who is the interviewer or host, doesn't often get out to tell their own stories.

And so I wanted to make sure that I got to hear who Haley is and how she got to where she is doing this podcast for herself. So if you haven't listened, we're gonna exchange show guests here, and I'm gonna say definitely listen to Haley's, but there's such a breadth of stories on my show. It's hard to pinpoint them.

I will often tell the story of a recent guest. She is an Ethiopian descendant who was brought to this country, terrorized as a child, sent back to Ethiopia and came back again and found her sister. And is finding her way through adulthood after just tremendous [00:47:00] adversity. I think that her show is highly impactful.

There was a guy who tells this great story of searching for his biological mother and as he's sitting in the public library, internet searching or microfiche searching. I think it was a long time ago. This image starts to unfold very slowly on this old computer. And you can just imagine the line going up as the computer generates this image. And it was a picture of his mother in her wedding dress. And he said, I'd never seen her before. And here's this beautiful, angelic woman appearing before me for the first time. There are so many episodes: one where a woman is reunited with her biological father and she had been married in the prior years, but her father was not able to walk her down the aisle, nor do a father-daughter dance. So she invited him to do a father-daughter dance in her backyard, which was so cute to me.

And another guy who went [00:48:00] on this journey to try to find his biological family. And he ends up searching through records and he ends up contacting the hospital where he was born. And he said he slipped the lady in the records room, this is 30 years ago. He slipped the right lady in the records room a sum of money and said, I want all of the names of all of the women who gave birth on my birthday. And she slips him a list and he ends up contacting his birth mother and he decides I don't want to actually meet her and let her know who I am.

I just wanna meet her and not let her know who I am. So I'll cut his story short, but he knocks on her door and after a couple of conversations there, she invites him in and they're talking in her kitchen and he's freaking out. He's standing in his birth mother's kitchen and her back is turned and he reaches for the calendar on her wall. And he flips it up and he sees his own birthday circled on her calendar.

The stories are just unbelievable. And those are [00:49:00] just a couple of the ones that stand out for me. I could go on and on. So you know, I say to anybody who's listening to your or my show, just pick one, dive in. Because they're all so vastly different. All these different lives and different experiences.

Haley Radke: And it's just about hearing adoptee voices. Adoptee voices matter. And I love that you're highlighting that so, thank you. What did you wanna recommend to us?

Damon Davis: I wanna recommend a different resource. There's a guy online, his name's Greg. What's Greg's last name?

Haley Radke: Luce. L-U-C-E. Luce.

Damon Davis: Yeah. He runs the Adoptee Rights Law website and I find it to be a fascinating resource because he has all of these different maps. For one, the “United States of OBC” talking about where you can find your original birth certificate. He's got an interactive map of OBC access. So he can tell you things about whether your state has unrestricted access to your OBC, whether there are [00:50:00] some restrictions, and he calls it compromised in terms of your access, or completely restricted as in you're not getting your OBC in that state.

And I just think it's a valuable resource because there's a lot of questions about where to start in the adoptee search and reunion journey. And starting with knowing the laws for either the state where you were born or the state where you live, the state where you think you were conceived, whatever that thing is, having some kind of resource that you can go back to, I think, is incredibly valuable.

So I would highly recommend the Adoptee Rights Law Center, and it's at adopteerightslaw.com. Lots of valuable information there.

Haley Radke: Awesome. I love Greg. I met him at a conference a little while ago now and he's a great guy, a very amazing adoptee advocate, so that's a great recommendation.

Thank you so much, Damon. I just really appreciated hearing your story from your own voice and I'd love for you to share where people can hear the podcast and connect [00:51:00] with you online.

Damon Davis: Absolutely. You can find the podcast online at whoamireallypodcast.com. You can follow the show on Twitter at waireally and you can follow me there. I send out tweets with quotes from each of the shows. There's so many different ways that you can express how a show goes down and I try for getting the shows to live on in perpetuity.

I've been recording them to YouTube as well. So I now have a library, a channel on YouTube where you can listen to any one of the shows. There's nothing visual. You're not gonna see me or my guests, but it's just a straight slideshow with the audio. And you can find the podcast anywhere you get your podcasts.

They're all over Amazon, Apple, any podcast platform, it's out there. So check it out and let me know what you think of the show and feel free to reach out if you would like to be a guest. There's a form on my website: whoamireallypodcast.com/share. You can write in to [00:52:00] be a guest on the show if you would like to tell your story as well.

So, thank you so much, Haley. It's been great to be here with you today.

Haley Radke: Wonderful, my honor.

One of the best things I have found as a podcaster, an independent indie podcaster, is that there is a real spirit of community and helping share resources, education, and I have always found that to be true, that it's not necessarily this big source of competition, but it's more collaborative and I really appreciate that about Damon.

And there's other adoptee podcasters that I've had on the show before. We've recommended each other's shows. And I think that you've seen that and I really appreciate that about the adoptee podcaster space, which in itself is very niche. [00:53:00]

But, like I said, there's so many adoptee podcasts that you can listen to. There are people sharing their own personal story. There's other interview shows. Anything you can think of that is adoption related, there are some really talented adoptees leading conversations in that area, so I'd encourage you, if that's your thing, to branch out and look for some other adoptee-led podcasts. I think that you will be greatly blessed by doing that.

And the other thing is, this podcast and so many adoptee podcasts would not be possible without your support. So if you love Adoptees On, if you want it to grow and reach more adoptees, to connect to the community and do all of those things that I strive to do, be educational and entertaining and a support in your earbuds.

So we can hang out every week. I love doing that for you. If you want that to continue, one of the best ways you can do that is sharing [00:54:00] the show with one other person that you know is adopted, especially picking one episode that you think they would enjoy and showing them how to listen to it.

And the second is becoming a monthly Patreon supporter. If you go to adopteeson.com/partner, you can find out details of how to support the show. You get bonuses. There is a bonus podcast every single week that I do, mostly with my friend Carrie Cahill Mulligan, who's also an adult adoptee. And we talk adoption topics. We talk nonsense, we talk things that we would never share ever in a million years on the main feed.

But we do share them with our closest friends who have been, some of them have become close friends, supporters of the podcast. So adopteeson.com/partner has details for that. And there's a couple other levels of support where you can access a private Facebook group for adoptees only. You can schedule a call with me, which has been really fun. [00:55:00] And I've been doing Zoom calls here and there, which I'm gonna be continuing.

So if any of those things sound good to you, go to adopteeson.com/partner and sign up today. I'd love to have you as a supporter. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.