187 Dr. Liz DeBetta
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/187
Haley: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 187, Dr. Liz DeBetta. I'm your host Haley Radkey. We are coming to our summer break. What better note to end on than this encouraging episode with Dr. Liz DeBetta. Liz has been on the podcast before and shared her story of coming to her late thirties before examining the impact adoption had on her life.
Today, though, we are strictly diving into one of her areas of expertise, which is using writing as a tool for healing. Writing is accessible. It has physical, emotional, and mental health benefits. Writing can help us create a new narrative for ourselves. Liz recently led a group of adoptees through a transformative writing group, and she shares with us some tools we can use to start our own writing practice.
We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, www.adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On Dr. Liz DeBetta. Welcome Liz.
Liz DeBetta: Hi Haley. So good to be here.
Haley: I'm so excited to talk to you. The last time we talked was episode 118, so you can scroll back. You were still working on your dissertation, so I was so, like, pumped when you put “Dr.” on your paperwork because you're done. Woo!
Liz DeBetta: Yes, it's true. I got done in, you know, in the midst of the pandemic.
Haley: So you're still planning the party then?
Liz DeBetta: Yeah, we had a Zoom party with a bottle of champagne and some takeout sushi and a few friends on Zoom and that was pretty much it. So yeah, there hasn't been a big in-person celebration yet, but a good excuse to have one.
Haley: That's right. Absolutely. I'm going to point people back to that episode to hear some of your story and the background on how you got to doing some of the things we're going to be talking about today. But I would love it if you just give us a little intro into who you are, and how you got to the point where we are now for adoptees to be writing as a method of healing.
Liz DeBetta: I have been writing since about the age of 14. I had a really smart, insightful teacher and coach who knew that I was going through some stuff. I can't, I don't recall if at the time he knew that I was adopted.
I'm pretty sure that he did. But either way, he knew that I was dealing with some really big feelings, and so he suggested I start writing poetry, which at 14 years old, I really thought was the dumbest thing in the world. Because poetry, like, who writes poetry? Come on. And then one day, we were sitting in his office and he read me this poem that he had written for his college girlfriend and the poem was called “Blue Fire.”
I'll never forget it. It was a poem that he wrote while he was on a date with his girlfriend. He had taken her to see the ballet, which was her favorite thing. And he spent more time watching her watch the ballet than watching the ballet himself. And he wrote this poem about it. And I was profoundly moved by this experience of this man sharing this poem with me.
And then from that moment I was like, oh, maybe this isn't so dumb. So I got a little colorful journal notebook and I started writing. And at the time I didn't know why I felt the way I felt. I didn't know why. I was depressed, I was sad, I was angry, I was confused, I was scared.
All these things. And I just wrote, and it was for me. I never shared any of that with anyone. And so I did that for a lot of the years. Any time the world got too much for me, or my own feelings got too much for me, I would just go to my notebooks and I would write. And stuff just sort of came out.
It wasn't anything that I was ever really super conscious of. Yeah, I mean, it is a conscious process, but I also feel like there's something really unconscious about a lot of the writing that I was doing, especially early on. And I have a theory about that, which I'm still playing with just from an academic, theoretical, scholarly standpoint.
But anyway, I did all this writing and, in retrospect, it really helped keep me balanced. It helped me organize the really intense feelings that I had. And gave them some place to live other than inside me.
And so, fast forward, all of these years later, when I got into my PhD program, I didn't really know where that journey was going to take me, but I did know that I was really interested in continuing to pursue creative writing as one part of it.
And one of the courses that I got to take in my program was Poetry for Healing. And it's a whole field. There's a whole field of poetry and writing for healing that I didn't even know was a thing. And I was like, this is the thing I've been doing my whole life. I've been using poems to help myself manage the difficult stuff.
And so then, when I learned about all of that and I learned that there are actually physical and emotional and mental health benefits to writing through grief, writing through pain, writing through trauma. Writing about it and making sense of it. I was like, oh, this is so exciting. And again this is the thing I've been doing.
And so then, as I moved toward thinking about my dissertation, which was a creative dissertation, I decided that I wanted to do an exploration of some of my early writing. And as I looked back through some of my first poems,
Haley: Because you kept all your journals and things, right?
Liz DeBetta: Yes, of course I did. And I will tell you something. Not one of them is finished. They are all from different parts of my life and I have never completely filled one of them. And I think there's something really telling about that, because I think we're always on a journey and we're always unfinished, right? So it's a metaphor for that, I think, in those notebooks.
But yeah, so I started going through these early poems and I could very clearly see all of my pain and my grief and my trauma and my loss and my confusion. It was all there, right? I started looking at the language and the images that I was constantly using and the mood. And the tone of so many of those poems was really dark and just a lot like a feeling of being lost and having all these questions.
So there was an implication of all these questions, but never finding any answers. So it was really interesting to start to look at that and then to look at how to take those early poems and create a new narrative. So a big part of my dissertation project was a one-woman show where I incorporated some of my early poems and then some newer poems where I was rewriting parts of my story that were still unknown to me.
So like questions about the circumstances of my birth, for example. I didn't have any answers about that. I didn't have any information about that, right? So many of us don’t. And so some of the more recent poems were about just me reimagining what the night I was born was like.
And so I created this whole narrative that was punctuated by all of these poems to tell a story about what it's like to live with the trauma of being adopted in a patriarchal society that's disadvantageous to women and children, right? That says that two parents are better than one, and that a young single woman is irresponsible and shouldn't be able to keep her baby, right? And of course, lots of these things are generational, but they're still happening. So it was really important to use art and the creative process to tell a story publicly that people need to hear. So I guess that's it in a large nutshell.
Haley: I've heard you speak about writing as a public testimony and it's interesting that your project was this one-woman show where it's literally giving a public testimony. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I don't think, of course, not all of our writing will be performed and you are an actor. You have got a theater background as well. So there's that piece for you.
Liz DeBetta: So in some of the research about creativity, using creativity to heal trauma, Dr. Sophia Richmond writes about creative transformations of trauma, and one of the things that comes up in her work is this idea that the art, whatever it is, whether it's a poem or a piece of personal narrative writing or a painting or a drawing or a piece of music that is composed. Whatever form the art takes becomes a container for the artist to put the trauma into and to reshape it and to fashion it into something.
And then that's one part of the way that we start to heal, when we can put our feelings into something outside of ourselves. So the poem, the one-woman show, the whatever. And then the other piece of healing, at least according to her, is having that art witnessed and sharing it publicly.
And that also comes up a lot, there's a lot of connections to that in lots of the other research. It is this idea of not only writing or creating, but then giving it to someone else and saying, here, witness this. Because I'm heard and I'm seen, and also the act of public performance is, I don't want to get too theoretical, but it is another way of creating empathy, right?
Because when you are a performer or a speaker, when your body is in physical space with an audience, the audience members are part of that experience with you for the time that it's happening, and they can't turn away, right? Like they've chosen to be there. They've chosen to sit there in this live experience, to take in what is happening, right?
And to engage with my body as it tells the story. And what happens is then that space, that theatrical space becomes a container for empathy and for critical thinking. And so part of the process for me then was also a couple of audience talkbacks where people got to ask questions.
Not only about the writing and the performance process, but like my own experience, and why I chose to tell this story. And what it ended up doing for a lot of people was shifting their perspectives and having many people say, I had no idea. I never thought about adoption this way.
I had one woman who grew up with adopted siblings and she said, I have this much better understanding now of what was going on, like why my family dynamic was the way that it was. It's probably because my siblings were going through some of the things you described in this performance and none of us knew.
Haley: How does that feel for you personally to know that you got to shift someone's narrative.
Liz DeBetta: That's exactly why I do this work. That's the thing that became really important to me. The more that I worked on my PhD and my dissertation study was like, okay, I can take all of these parts of myself, right?
I can take my background as a theater artist and my background as a writer and a teacher, and a thinker, and I can smash them together in a really unique way to do something positive in the culture of adoption. Because the more that I studied all of the literature, the scholarly literature, I was like, nobody's telling these stories.
And we know in the adoptee community, we know how often we're silenced. We know how often, “but what about…”; and people speaking for us and about us. And so it was part of my own healing process to do this important work, but also I look at it as an act of cultural mediation and cultural healing, right?
If we don't start to tell these stories and make people listen, then nothing's going to change. So it's really affirming to have people, multiple people, after they've watched my show say, Wow, I have totally changed my perspective. So that's why this work is so important, and that's why every opportunity that we have to get adoptees’ voices centered and telling our stories, we should. Because I think the time is well past when we should be paying attention. It's 2021 and, like, we gotta get comfortable talking about trauma. Like we can't. Sorry, but sorry, not sorry.
Haley: It's time.
Liz DeBetta: Yep. Yeah,
Haley: I have this Adoptees On Healing Series where I'm always talking with therapists about various things related to trauma and healing and things.
And, you've used the word healing and I'm curious what that means for you. What things have shifted for you or changed for you as you've written poetry and literally studied this and performed and all of those things. Do you feel like healing happening? What is “healing,” what does that mean for you?
Liz DeBetta: I think, healing, one of the things that I wrote and I say in the show is that healing is not a linear process. For me it's been concentric and twisting and turning in on itself. And because it's a journey, right? And it takes different paths at different times.
But for me, what I've come to realize, especially over the last couple of years, is that healing is about finding wholeness. About finding ways to feel whole and to feel real and to feel grounded. To not feel like I'm gonna fly off in a million parts, which is another thing that I wrote. This constant feeling of I'm gonna fly away into a million parts. If I don't keep control, right?
And yeah, a lot of the healing comes through owning these parts of my story and really sitting with the feelings, I, and I think a lot of adoptees, can relate to dissociating and not feeling, and not wanting to feel, and being afraid to feel or being taught our feelings aren't valid. And so we just shove them down and pretend everything's okay, and then we don't know. We don't know what's okay and not okay. It just becomes a mess. And I have that experience of really not feeling and sort of existing in a numb but overactive space for a long time.
In terms of my experience of my body. So a big part of healing, too, for me has come in having a new experience of my body. And learning to stay in my body, to be present, to feel safe, to not want to escape all the time. And that was a big part of why the performance aspect of my dissertation project was important because the performing and the living through the words that I had written and through the story I was telling and really experiencing all that in my body through the rehearsal process and through the performance process helped start to move trauma too.
I started to feel different, like I would finish rehearsals and things would hurt. And yes, it was a very physically active show. I did a lot of movement and breath work and stuff, but, like, things hurt. My hips hurt. And that's a place where we know that trauma gets stored. And I started to notice the places, the sort of what I call holding patterns, right? Like my default holding patterns where I was like, oh, I have held my hips and my gut and this whole center of my body really tightly for my whole life.
And now I can start to release that. I can let it go. So it's also feeling those physical changes that tells me that I'm healing. And then I guess another big thing that's happened is I've been doing EMDR, too, for the last couple of years, so that's been a really good companion to all of this other work.
But the way that I don't have my recurring nightmares anymore, and I know that a lot of adopted people have these sort of very similar recurring nightmares around searching for something that we never find. And that's certainly been my big recurring dream of looking for someone or something and spending the whole dream panicking and not being able to find whatever it is or whoever it is I'm looking for.
Or starting out the dream with my partner and then getting separated and then never being able to find him again. And now when I have this dream, it resolves itself and by the end of the dream, we're back together. And to me that's huge.
Haley: That is huge. Wow. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing all those things.
I am doing EMDR again, like I'm really in depth right now, but I feel often scared of writing. Even privately because I am worried about the things that are gonna come out, it's like admitting things to yourself. But that’s just my personal note. I know that you ran a group for seven weeks with other adult adoptees and were leading them through all of these different writing prompts and different exercises, and I would love it if you would talk a little bit about that because I think it's such an amazing thing to talk about, writing on your own. But then you've brought in this other aspect of writing in community and what that could do for people.
Liz DeBetta: Yes, I think it's really important for people to write and writing is scary, right? You're not the first person. You know, yes. You have to confront things, right? But it's also a way of getting it out. And so for the group that I just worked with for seven weeks, I was really interested in creating a space, an adoptee-only space, and creating an opportunity, as you say, to write in community. And what we, I called the group migrating toward wholeness.
Because, like I said, that's healing. I think, for me as an adoptee and for a lot of other adoptees, especially as adults, is to try to move toward a sense of wholeness. And so the group was comprised of 11 other adoptees. Aged from their mid-twenties up through their sixties. So we had multiple generations represented.
I specifically chose domestic closed adoption adoptees for this first group because I was interested in seeing what the commonalities in our experiences might be despite the age differences. Just from a researcher’s standpoint.
Haley: And that's your personal experience as well.
Liz DeBetta: Yeah, exactly, that's my personal experience. And I am a creative person and a facilitator, a sort of guide. And this aspect of social justice, like this is real social justice work when we can create spaces for adoptees to come together and find ways to tell their stories and to heal in community.
Whether the writing that gets done gets shared publicly or not is a side bonus. But there was the act of writing and sharing in the small group, because we were witnessing one another for those seven weeks. We got together every Saturday for seven weeks for two hours. The first week, people just shared their stories and we just listened to each other.
And from that first session everything was really emergent. I didn't really pre-plan a lot because I wanted to work with who was in the room with me. Who was there and what was I hearing and what did I think people needed to start to think about and write about.
And so the prompts came out of things that people were saying, the questions that I posed to them. Each week we had two sets of questions. There was a set of writing questions and then a set of writing prompts. So those were just some direct quotes followed by ellipses that they could just finish the sentence and keep going.
Or, several questions that came up related to things people said, related to the experiences that were shared. And then I also offered them each week four questions for reflection, because one of the important things to do is not only to write about the experiences and start to discover what you need to say, but also to reflect on it. Like what's happening as I write, as I'm working through this process, like, what's going on in my body, right?
Am I sleeping better? Does my breathing shift? Things like that. And also there were some things that were really hard for people to write about. Because for some people this was the first time they were giving themselves permission to write about being adopted and their feelings and, like, go there, right?
So to your point, Haley, like some of them were like, I saw this and I was like, this is scary, but I'm gonna do it. They jumped in and what happened was incredible. It was an incredible process and we wished it didn't have to end. We ended up adding an additional session because by the time we got to six weeks, we were like, okay, we need more time.
We need a little bit more time together. And for some people, this was the beginning of creating space to feel what they need to feel. What they've been told has not been okay to feel. And many of us know that something really special happens when adoptees come together in adoptee-only spaces. It's automatically a safe space.
So, I think I talked a little bit about this in the presentation that we did after the seven weeks with the group, but it is this idea of reflective resonance, which we as adoptees do automatically. When we listen to one another's stories we're not listening to respond.
We're listening to hear. And to be supportive and to be empathetic and say, yeah. What I'm hearing you say is, this is really hard for you. Or, this has been a really challenging way to go through life. What happens, usually, because we're socially conditioned to listen, to respond, which is not reflective resonance.
And so this happened so much as adoptees, when we try to speak in other spaces that are not exclusively adoptees, we get spoken to, we get spoken over. People are not listening to us and reflectively resonating with us. They're not going, “Oh wow, that sounds so hard.” They're going, “Oh, but not all adoptees.”
Or, “but what about the adoptive parents?” And this is something that comes up a lot, like in conversations I have with my own parents, which is incredibly frustrating at times. But I give my parents a lot of credit because they've also been on this journey with me for the last couple of years, and they're trying. They're really listening and they want to know, and they want to understand, and they feel bad that they didn't know 40 plus years ago what they know now.
And I know that it's incredibly difficult for them to listen and to hear. Anyway, back to my point about this idea of reflective resonance. I think we do this instinctively as adoptees where we just listen. We're here and we can be mirrors for one another.
And so I think a lot of this work, part of the healing comes in the more that we can create adoptee-centric spaces, I hope that there will be a shift in this to more widespread reflective resonance where people can start to receive the stories. But the first step is creating spaces where we feel safe together, and that creates that community of braveness.
Right? And the ability to explore the feelings. Knowing I'm sitting here with 11 other adult adoptees whose experiences very closely mirror my own, despite the fact that we're in different parts of the United States, grew up in very different circumstances, in different decades. But here we are saying so many of the same things.
That gives me permission, or anyone who participated in the group, the permission to really go there and to have the opportunity to not be afraid to dive in. And that's really powerful.
Haley: I was just asked about this and the person challenged me, or adoptees, asking what is this adoptee activism thing? Are we just in an echo chamber? And my response was I feel like we're practicing on each other and building up the muscles. And I love that you said bravery because it takes courage to share our story wholly. That is against the traditional narrative. Knowing that the responses we've gotten in the past may continue, the “but what about” and “I don't believe you” and all those kinds of things.
So building the muscles in order to share outside starts out with having the safe space. I love this reflective resonance, I love that term. It's so perfect. And could you speak a little more on having an intergenerational group? Because when we share stories on this show and there are younger adoptees or older adoptees and some of them will say I was in the Baby Scoop. Or you identify yourself by that sort of generation. But what was it like to have people from different decades participating and speaking to each other in that way?
Liz DeBetta: I think it was really important. I think what it did was it showed us that we are not the problem. Right? It showed us that we are not the problem. That the culture of adoption and the system of adoption as it has existed since the mid-1940s is the problem. Because we had adoptees who were in their mid-twenties who were still products of closed adoption.
And adoptees in their sixties who were definitely part of the Baby Scoop who had been really effectively silenced by their generational guilt and the shame. But all of us talked about this guilt and this shame and this needing to fit into a mold. And someone else's idea of who we should be, right?
There was so much crossover in what people said and shared and parts of stories and just the internal experiences. I guess that’s really what I'm talking about is having this multi-generational group of adoptees talking about internal experiences that were very similar.
Haley: And you had only closed domestic adoptions represented in your group. And even when I think of some of the younger adoptees that I've spoken to who were products of an open adoption, that thread continues. So I love that you said that. It's not us. It's not me, it's you, system.
Liz DeBetta: Yeah, exactly.
Haley: Yeah.
Liz DeBetta: And I think it was really empowering and affirming for us to come together and for the younger adoptees to connect with the older adoptees. And again, I think the most profound thing was that for several of the group members, this was the first time they were doing this kind of thing.
And so there was a tremendous amount of trust that they placed in me and in each other that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't adoptees only. And hearing each other share different parts of their stories or pieces of the writing that they were doing from week to week gave other people permission to keep writing and to keep sharing.
Haley: So we've both talked about doing EMDR and various therapy at other points in our lives. And you mentioned your social justice activism, and I'm curious if you have thoughts on the accessibility of writing. And if you think it's accessible and if that makes it just another reason why it's such an important tool. Because of course we can, I've said this on the show before: therapy is inaccessible to a lot of people. It's just very expensive and it's inaccessible sometimes. So can you talk about writing and what your thoughts are on that piece?
Liz DeBetta: Yeah, I love that. And it's so (beep) that therapy is inaccessible for so many people. When so many of us need it, not just adoptees, but so many people in the world. It's a part of our physical health, right? Taking care of our mental health. So we need to do better about that.
But yeah, I do think that writing is accessible to anyone regardless of circumstance or situation or ability because you can get a notebook and a pen or if you have a computer, you can open a Word doc or a Google Doc and type if that's accessible.
If you have some physical limitations, you can speak to text, right? Like you can speak and the technology will type for you. And so I think that recognizing that writing can also be a very private act, right? It doesn't have to be something that you choose to share, but it can be something that you do for yourself because it is therapeutic. Because it helps you give shape to things that feel chaotic. That's in some of the literature about why writing is a therapeutic thing. It’s that when we create a narrative for ourselves, we're giving order to something that formerly felt chaotic.
When we use something specific like poetry, we're getting right to the heart of the emotions, right? We're taking out all the unnecessary language and we're using images to connect to the really deep, intense emotions. That can then help us make sense of them.
An image that I work with a lot has to do with ghosts and tombs and bones and things, and I think that it's really important to not just write the things but then go back and like what? Why did I write this, right? What are the ghosts? And for me, like I know the ghosts come up because we know there are ghosts in the adopted family, right?
Most people hopefully know about Betty Jean Lifton and her work specifically on ghosts in the adopted family. But that actually came up in the group. One of the group members was like, I just learned about this and I was like, yeah, here's the article. But it's true.
We live with these ghosts and so I, as a writer, have to pay attention to what's coming up and what that tells me about my internal experiences and things that maybe I still need to process. But the writing is a process and an act of processing too.
Haley: You've taught us a lot during this whole conversation, but I just want to double down on it, and I think you'll talk to this when we're doing our recommended resources as well, right away, but it's a process. It can be a tool for healing. There's research and it's proven. And even as you were listing off the things that “healing” meant to you and the impact doing this work has had on you, you were mentioning physical, emotional, and mental things that have come about. So it's not “Oh, I'm just gonna scribble in my notebook.” There's meaning behind it and there's things that come out that are really beneficial.
Liz DeBetta: Yeah, I think one of the important things about using writing as a tool for healing is that we're not just word vomit.
We're not just writing that all these terrible things happened. We're describing them, right? Specifically, we're using really deep, detailed descriptions of experiences, and that can come out in, like I said, in the images, in the details that you used to talk about who was there, when was it, what did it feel like?
But then we're also thinking about not only what happened, but how did it make me feel? How did it make me feel then, and how do I feel about it now? And so always like having that sort of conscious process of checking in with ourselves and saying, okay, I am writing, and I need to write about this.
And often that's what happens, right? Is like the feeling, or at least for me anyway, the feeling gets too much and I have to do something with it. I can't keep holding it inside me or it's going to eat me up. I don't want to hold that. I don't want to sit there for a week feeling (beep) inside.
I want to do something. And it comes out as a poem usually. I did this yesterday. I was having a really complicated set of emotions surrounding Memorial Day. My brother, who's also adopted, is a vet. Severe, complex trauma from both being adopted and his time on active duty.
And there's a lot of really complicated stuff going on with him and my family. And we watched Da 5 Bloods on the night before. And that story is about a group of Vietnam vets and one of them said things that were so close to some things that my brother has said, and it hit me really hard.
And I woke up yesterday and I was feeling all of this stuff and I was like, I gotta do something with it. So I wrote a poem to help move some of that stuff, and so that's an active agency too, right? That I can do. That I have control over the things that are going on. I can choose to do something about it.
So I chose to sit down and feel what I was feeling and write it. And that's another reason why writing is both powerful and accessible for everyone. Louise DeSalvo in her book Writing as a Way of Healing says that writing is an act of freedom we often felt we didn't have. She also says that through writing we change our relationship to trauma because we gain confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle life's difficulties.
Through writing and changing our relationship to trauma, we come to a feeling that our lives are more coherent rather than chaotic and that we can solve problems. And she says also that because our writing, our work of art, is a concrete object, it becomes a memorial and a testimony to the resolution of the mourning process.
And so that sort of connects back to what we were talking about earlier with the container, right? Like the poem is the container. And so I'm going through a mourning process of not having a relationship with my brother anymore because he's really damaged and it's really sad.
And he's really angry. And so that poem became the concrete object where I could memorialize and create a testimony to my own grief and that sense of loss around that relationship, but also where it's coming from.
Haley: Thank you for sharing those things. So powerful. Before we do our recommended resources, I'm wondering if you would give the folks listening, a writing prompt or two if they're new to this, if it feels scary to me. One or two things that we could start doing. What's beginner level?
Liz DeBetta: The thing that's popping up right now is two things. I often like to find inspiration in other things. So sometimes like a word or a phrase or part of a sentence from something else that I've read will inspire me, and I'll start with that. So if you have a particular line or quote that speaks to you for some reason, that could be a good way in. Another thing I like are letters. You can write letters to yourself, and this was actually one of the really hard activities. So maybe this is not great, but I'm gonna suggest it anyway.
Like we can write a letter to our younger self. For some of us as adopted people, that's really hard because we still haven't really fully embraced that little person. But it can be really helpful to do that as an exercise, over a week or two weeks or a month. Take 10 minutes every day and engage with that part of yourself and say the things that you needed to hear. Things that maybe never were told to you that you, as your adult self in your full power now, have the ability to say, “Hey, I see you, I'm sitting with you and we're okay.” Or just letters to people that you need to say things to. And you don't ever have to send them. And if it's hard to write in the first person, shift that and write in the third person.
Because then it puts you outside. When you shift.
Haley: You're the observer.
Liz DeBetta: You become the observer instead of in the story, right? And then as it gets easier, then you can shift back. And you can rewrite it in that first person narrative when it feels more comfortable and when it feels less intense.
Haley: I love it. All right, so we got the beginner level and intermediate level.
Liz DeBetta: There you go.
Haley: Oh, that's so good. Okay, what do you want to recommend to us today?
Liz DeBetta: Okay, so there's so many really good books, but what I chose today to share with everyone is a book called Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo, who's a writing teacher.
And the book is based on 20 years of research that she accumulated in teaching writing and also connected to some of the stuff I talked about earlier. She pulls in a lot of the research, but also her own experience. And what I like about the book is that it's both about the way that writing can help us and it's backed up by the research.
But also she makes sure to continually discuss the idea that we need to have balance when we write. If we're just writing about negative experiences, that's not going to be good for us, right? We need to write both about the negative and the positive and create what she calls balanced narratives.
Each chapter is followed by some writing activities and exercises, so for people that want to start writing and aren't sure how to do it, this is a really nice kind of overview of all the things that we've talked about today, like this idea of using writing for healing and how we do it and why we do it.
Haley: I like that. I like that balanced approach. Because I could see how, if you're just constantly writing all the horrible things, that's what gets stuck, right? You're not shifting anything.
Liz DeBetta: Exactly. Yeah. And that can actually create negative health outcomes. But it's because you get stuck in a negative feedback loop when you’re just focusing on the bad. But actually there's good too, right? There's always good.
Haley: Yes. Thank you. That's great. Fabulous recommendation. You mentioned earlier that you had presented on your seven week group and the outcomes, and I think I've mentioned before on the show this year that the Rudd Adoption Conference was virtual, and so their focus was adopted adults. Connections across generations. And so your presentation was the last one to wrap up this year for 2021. And so I'll make sure to link to that. So you talk more about the group and what's really special, and Rudd actually linked both videos you have. There's two participant videos.
There's a shorter one and a longer one where people in your group are reading some of the work they did with you and some of the writing. It's very powerful. And then they're also a part of your presentation and talking about some of the things you shared today about the impacts and I was there live, on Zoom. I think I was making dinner, but I was listening and it was just wonderful and accessible and really interesting.
And I highly recommend you go and check that out. And the other presentations that Rudd offered are also on their YouTube channel, so I'll link to those things. Then the other thing that you and I have in common, is we're both Adoptees Connect facilitators. And now that, I was just gonna say, now that Covid is wrapping up, I don't know, it's not really everywhere, but a lot of the Adoptees Connect groups are meeting in person again, we're still doing online here in Alberta because, yeah, that's just how it is.
But the founder of Adoptees Connect, Pamela Karanova just announced that they are now planting more groups. So if connecting with other adult adoptees has felt important to you, and if anything, what Liz was sharing about the power of community today felt important to you.
I would encourage you to go to the Adoptees Connect website and see if there's a group near you that you can join. And if not, you're the person. Tag you're it. You can start it. You don't have to be a therapist. You don't have to have any credentials. You have to be an adult adoptee who's willing to connect with other adult adoptees.
And that's been one of great gifts in serving the community and I've felt very blessed by doing it. Meeting new members and we have new people coming all the time to our group. We're still really small, but it's really cool to connect with other adult adoptees, especially people that haven't been in the community before and have no idea about the impact adoption has had on them.
And they're reaching out for resources and you could be the person that starts a group in your area. So I'd recommend you go and check out Adoptees Connect. Do you have any thoughts on Adoptees Connect, Liz?
Liz DeBetta: Yeah, I think that, again, we talk about the importance of adoptee-only spaces and adoptee-centric spaces and Adoptees Connect is one of the really important opportunities that we have to come together in community. It's about building a community where we can just come together and share ourselves and our stories in a non-judgmental, social way.
And we, my group in Salt Lake City, just got together a couple weekends ago for the first time in person after hosting on Zoom off and on throughout the pandemic. And we had two new members. It's been a slow grow for us here over the last couple of years, but people are finding each other and people are coming. I think the more opportunities we have to create community together, I think it's another tool for healing.
And why it's been important for me is that I can bring more people together.
Haley: Absolutely, yes. Thank you. So speaking of that, where can we connect with you online and where can we sign up if we're interested in doing this writing experience with you?
Liz DeBetta: Yeah, so I have a waiting list is the best way to put it. So lots of folks are interested and in order to keep myself sane and organized I will send you the link to the original Google form that folks can add their info to. They'll just have to skip through the part that says, are you available for all sessions? And just say no. Because it's from the Rudd, the original Rudd writing group that is already over. But for everyone that is including their information on that Google form, I will have your contact info and then as things develop, I will be able to keep in touch and let you know what's coming next. Things are still a work-in-progress, but I hope to do much more of this, as much as I can.
Haley: Love it. Wonderful. And what's your website? And I'll make sure to link to that form and your other contact info in the show notes. But where can we find you?
Liz DeBetta: So my website is currently not live. It's a work-in-progress, but it is my name: LizDeBetta.com. So easy. In the interim folks can look for me on Facebook.
Haley: Sounds good.
Liz DeBetta: And if it's okay, I would love to leave you all with a poem.
Haley: Yes. I can't wait.
Liz DeBetta: I also think about poems as gifts. And so this is for you and for all of us who might need to hear this right now.
“I am here, finally, fully, frightfully aware of me, myself, and I. I who has been afraid to be here, afraid to be me, afraid to present myself, my flaws and my imperfectly perfect self. I am here now knowing nothing is impossible because I am possible. I am me moving through grief, moving through pain, moving through fear to find peace in myself, with you, and in my circumstances. I am here unapologetically. For the first time the fog has lifted. I am free. Free from shame, free from guilt, free from my own self-doubt. I am free to be me, myself, and I.”
Haley: Thank you for that wonderful gift.
Liz DeBetta: You're welcome.
Haley: Oh my goodness, I cannot believe this is the last episode until the fall. It's our summer break and normally I would go to the end of June, but just because of COVID and having the kids at home, I know I've told you about this in the last couple episodes. This is just how it worked out. So I am taking the break.
I'll be ready and refreshed to come to you with new episodes in September. And there's a huge back catalog, so I am sure you couldn’t have possibly listened to all 187 episodes, have you? Scroll back if there are things you haven't checked out yet. There's so many good episodes. I'm sure you can find a gem or two to listen to during the break.
And there's still going to be new episodes for my monthly Patreon supporters. So if you go to AdopteesOn.com/partner. You can find out details of how to join us there. We are still hosting our monthly book club. This month we are talking about The Guild of the Infant Savior with Megan Culhane Galbraith, which is a fabulous book. So excited to be reading that with her this month.
We have Barbara Sumner in July. We are going to have a round table in August. So many good things coming up, even during the summer break. So if you can't get enough and going through the back catalog is not gonna do it for you, come join us on AdopteesOn.com/partner for the Patreon bonuses.
There's a weekly podcast there called Adoptees Off Script, and they're all ready to go for you. There's over a hundred episodes there. So if you really want to go back and binge listen, there is more. I am so grateful for each one of you for listening. I am truly honored that I get to do this for you, to be in your earbuds and on your hikes and walks and commutes and when you're doing the dishes.
Thank you for allowing me into your ears and I know it's so annoying that I say thank you a lot. I'm sorry. It's a Canadian thing. It's an adoptee thing. It's a people-pleasing thing. It's just my quirk, I guess. Anyway, thank you so much for listening and I look forward to talking to you again very soon.
In September, we'll be back with brand new episodes of Adoptees On so make sure you're subscribed or following wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's talk again soon.
