238 Lora K. Joy (Part 2)

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/238

---

Haley Radke: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.

You are listening to adoptees on the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption. I'm Haley Radke. Lora K. Joy returns to the podcast today to share about the process of legally changing her name and being adopted back by her biological mother. We talk about all the healing work and therapy she's persisted in to find acceptance of herself and about how it feels to own the truth around her story.

Lora is the author of three illustrated books about hypervigilance, self attunement, and genetic mirroring. Though of course, we touch on those topics too. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adoptee AdopteesOn.com/community. Which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to adoptees on Lora K. Joy!. Hi Lora.

Lora K. Joy: Hi Haley.

Haley Radke: Oh, it's so good to talk with you again. You shared your story. Really some really hard stuff with us about estranging from your adoptive parents the last time you were on. That's episode 185. If you wanna go listen to that before you we're gonna do like a part two and talk about some of the other aspects of your story about Reunion and some really exciting choices you've made in adulthood in reclaiming your identity and power back.

So, yeah, do you wanna start there? Let's share a little more of your story.

Lora K. Joy: Okay, well it, just a quick recap. My maternal side, I was, been in reunion for over 15 years now, and during the time of my estrangement and that episode I was also doing DNA and searching for my paternal side. So those things were happening simultaneously.

I had always known my father's name because my mother told me and it was in my paperwork, but when I Googled him, I didn't know, which one he was. And so I decided I needed to d do DNA and be sure who he was. So I did DNA 23 and me and Ancestry and hired, not hired, but found a Search Angel and she very quickly found him.

And when she found him, we realized that he had lied to my mom and told her that he was born in 1940, but he was really born in 1931. So it was part of the reason I couldn't find him when I was searching myself because his birthdate was wrong. His year. So we found him, and I knew also from the paperwork that I had two siblings; brother and a sister.

And that was really my goal. I had two goals in finding him, and that was: one, I wanted to hold him accountable because he walked away from my mom when she told him and I wanted to find my siblings. I didn't, I, I expected that they did not know about me, but I wanted to let them have the opportunity to know that I existed and see if they were interested in a relationship.

So the search Angel found him, she found his niece, my first cousin, and it was because I had a high first cousin once removed match, and it was her son. So when she built out the tree, that's how she kinda triangulated everything. I did reach out to that cousin on Facebook, but it was, we weren't friends and it was the secret message that she didn't see and I didn't expect her to, to see that and respond.

And ultimately I wanted to talk to him first anyway, because I wanted to try. I wanted to say that I had tried to, to reach out to him. So I sent him a packet. I sent him a letter, pictures of my kids, how I had found him also, there was a certified letter in my file that he had reject, like not signed for, had been returned from my adoption in 1978, '79, and I made copies of these things with his name and address and things like that, and made a packet to like, here's my proof.

You're, I know you're the man. And I sent that FedEx tracking but not certified again cuz I knew he wouldn't sign for it and didn't hear anything, of course. And then called him, got a voicemail, wasn't prepared to leave a voicemail message, sat with that, called again and got him on the phone and....

Ultimately I talked to him for seven minutes and the whole time he tried to convince me he wasn't the right person. Oh, I only have my two kids. I only have.... I left Indiana in nine in the, in 1980. I'm like, yeah, I was born in 1979. You know, he even tried to tell me he had a vasectomy and that, you know, he wasn't the right person.

And I'm like, so everything he's telling me is just reinforcing what I already know. And ultimately at the end he said, you're just bringing up the past and I have to get off of here. And like hung up on me. And I'm like, okay. At the end he gives himself away. So yeah, that was my experience with my dad. So secondary rejection, but I kind of expected that.

Haley Radke: Do you think he actually has lied to himself and ....

Lora K. Joy: Yes.

Haley Radke: And like actually believes, like, no, that wasn't really like , like

Lora K. Joy: Yes, I do, I do because I started off by saying like, I took a DNA test and I matched and with, you know, your niece's son and, 'well, I didn't take a DNA test'. Like he was like so con, he didn't understand.

I do believe after meeting my cousins and siblings, knowing the type of person that he is, that he has just convinced himself that it wasn't the truth or he believed his own lies or. . Like he was just trying to play it off.

Haley Radke: Well, and I think folks from that era, like they really haven't, well not all, but of course they haven't kept up with the technology so they literally don't know.

Lora K. Joy: Sure.

Haley Radke: How these secrets are ag, they're gonna come out, whether or not you like it. So, oh my gosh. Seven minutes. I'm sorry.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. . So he, you know, and my search angel had found my cousin and him, and other members of the tree, but she could not find my siblings. And it was super strange because they're so good.

Search angels are so amazing at what they can find. And it was perplexing to me why we couldn't find my two siblings. And I knew where they were born. I knew the area, like once we knew where he had lived and stuff it, it was just perplexing. And, and remember I thought I was looking for a man who was almost 80 and he was almost 90.

So that was another thing that kind of pushed me forward in the search. In fact, my son, who's, who was 15 at the time said, I think you need to reach out to him before he dies. And I'm like, you're right. I do like, I need to get on this. So I let that sit, you know, for about a month after that conversation and decided I would write a letter to my first cousin. And I sent the, I sent the letter.

It ended up being postmarked on the birthday of her son that I had matched to. So like all these universal signs. A couple weeks went by and she didn't respond. And I thought, okay, that's it. I'm not gonna hear back and, if I don't hear from her, I am going to just have to watch the obituary. That was my plan B, to find my siblings and their names.

So couple weeks went by and I, the phone rings and I can tell who it is by the name of the city and the town, and I'm hopeful that it's gonna be a good conversation. And I, I answer the phone and it's her and her brother. And her brother happened to be on a road trip, and his RV, just retired, and was visiting her when she got the letter.

So they called me together and they were not surprised because of the character of my biological dad. And they said that basically he had made a lot of bad life choices. He was not in my siblings lives for over 20 years after they, he and their mom divorced. So I was born when they were 17 and 12, and he had essentially walked away from them.

They, they had moved to Texas, so they moved from Indiana to Texas after the divorce. And from that point on, the cousins really lost contact. And, and our, our dad was not in their lives either. And they said, so you've kind of got some things in common and don't take it personally. He's kind of a jerk to everybody.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. .

Lora K. Joy: So they were wonderful and sent me photos right away. Spent hours, you know, on the phone, video calls. And because they, they had lost touch with my siblings as well, they were facebook friends, but they hadn't really seen each other in almost 40, 50 years. Like my sister was four and she's now mid fifties.

So they were essentially not in relationship either. And they said, we will, we wanna talk to your, your brother and we'll tell him about you if that's okay. And I said, oh, yes, that's, that would be wonderful. So it took some time because again, they hadn't had this established relationship and they were, you know, trying to do it in the, a delicate, the most delicate way, you know, that they could.

And so it took a bit. But that was fine. I kept in contact with them, kept sharing photos and calls and things like that. And so then they talked to my brother and within the week he emailed me and said, and the subject line was: wow, hi sister. And we did a, a three hour zoom call the next day with my sister and him.

And it was, it's been really, really wonderful since then. It's been a couple years of reunion, two years now almost. Exactly. And when I met my mom, I resembled her and I resembled that side of the family, but I look like my brother and my sister. So the mirroring happened really, really fast, and it's sort of an instant connection in that way.

So things, things were healed almost immediately with, with just seeing them and, and then, and then hearing their story and their experience with our dad. And so that's been, that's been really wonderful. And, and part of that, that was unexpected, but shouldn't have been surprising to me, was the effect it had on my kids because they, they, they look like my husband's side of the family, but they just look like they're related right to that side of the family.

But my daughter looks like my sister. And in some photos my sister and I look like from our same ages, like if pictures taken of us at the same age, like we could be twins. It's crazy. To see my kids' faces light up just over a zoom screen of seeing them. It was it, that was pretty amazing. And, and healing for, for me and them.

Haley Radke: Because your children were teenagers when they first would've connected then, right? Yeah.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. Right. They're, yep. Teenagers with meeting my paternal siblings. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Lora K. Joy: They were babies when I, when my mom came into the picture, but, mm. and so they've been on this journey with me as well, and they've been some of my biggest supporters. So it's been, it's been really wonderful to watch the healing that happens for them too.

Haley Radke: That's amazing. So did they, did your kids know you were doing DNA testing and searching for a paternal side as you were going along? Like how, how did you have those conversations with them?

Lora K. Joy: They did know and they were excited and you know, they've always known my mom, they've always had their grandma in their life.

But I think I hadn't talked about my paternal side to them before this, but it was just like, well, just like with grandma Maggie, I have a dad and I have this whole other side and I have his name and this will also help me with some health information that might be good for you too, if I don't find him or connect with them.

So it was, you know, I just, I don't know, I just, I, I'm very straightforward with my kids and honest with them, so I just, it just seemed natural.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. And my son ended up doing 23 and Me too.

Haley Radke: Oh.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. He wanted to do it too. So we did a kit. He did a kit as well. Okay.

Haley Radke: Do you think being the youngest had any impact or, you know, sometimes when it's like you're the oldest that was given up and then there, it's, it's like the usurping of the older role.

Lora K. Joy: Mm-hmm.

Haley Radke: Do you think that has had any like. benefit. I mean, not that we get to choose that one way or not , we, we are where we are in the lineup. But being able to have siblings that are older, more life experienced, they get it. Things are complicated and it takes work. I don't know. Do you have thoughts on that?

Lora K. Joy: You know, I have thought about the age order and the fact that I am the youngest on both sides. Yeah, I think it probably has helped a little bit, like with their understanding and their maturity. Right? I don't know. And they were in their fifties, you know, when I met them. So, yeah. And they're both open-minded and also they weren't su-, that was one of the first things they said was, we are not surprised about this and ...

Haley Radke: I just, that's so strange. And yet so telling like Yes.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. Well, and I told him, I said, well, he told me he had a vasectomy, but whether he was telling the truth or not, I don't know. So every time I get a 23 and me notice of a new relative, I. I ca I, at first I was getting a little panicky, but like, oh, it could be another one.

But,

Haley Radke: So far just the three of you

Lora K. Joy: So far. It's just me, , and them. Yeah. So it's, yeah, but it could happen. It could happen, but...

Haley Radke: wow. Yeah. So you have sort of the unicorn situation, although you worked really hard for this. I know you've done lots of work and therapy and healing to make sure you know how to set up healthy relationships, but a positive experience with your maternal side and then with your siblings on your paternal side, that's really tremendous.

Lora K. Joy: It is. I consider myself pretty lucky. I've, you know, I listened to other stories and, and I, I will say that I went into both searches with no expectation that this would happen, and I think that's really important that you be prepared for anything, any outcome. And I was in therapy both times when I went through search and reunion and....

That was the other thing. At the same time of, of my estrangement and the starting the DNA search, I entered into therapy again. And so I had the support of a therapist. So I think that's really, it's really key. And I know it's hard because it's so expensive and I know that it, it is not available to everybody, and that's why I appreciate your show so much.

The show, listening to the show has been as much, you know, guidance and therapy as well. For me. I've taken, I, I have listened to every episode of Adoptees On, every single one, and also every single off-script. And I take something from every episode regardless of my, if my lived experience is the same as the guest.

I, I learned something from every episode, and I appreciate the healing series, and I think that's what you're doing is so helpful because I know I, it was, I don't wanna say easier, let's put that in air quotes... to go through the process. Because I had the support of the community. I had listened to everyone else's stories.

I knew that anything could happen. And I had the support of the therapist and my family, my husband and kids. So yeah, it's, I also think both times I was ready.

Haley Radke: I, I just had an episode go up a few weeks ago with Marta Sierra, and she said something to the effect of, The response she got from her mother when she was talking about some, disclosing some things that she wasn't sure what her mother would think either way was like, I'm gonna be okay either way she reacts, and if we're going into it and we are strong enough in our person in that moment, like that's how we have to come into it because, so you literally don't know either way, and it sounds like that's how you were.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah, I, I definitely was. I, I. I have done a lot of internal work and that's part of why I wanted, I, I wanted to come back and share because I hope it's empowering for someone else to hear my story or at least part of it, just as every other episode has been empowering to me.

So I hope that... cuz I've, I've learned and grown from every, every guest. So I hope that I can contribute back a little bit with my story.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I appreciate that. And you have been like a very faithful supporter of the show and a reason it continues to exist in this world. So thank you. So coming out of doing these, this therapy, choosing estrangement from your adoptive parents and then having these reunions, long-term in a few years, what are some of the choices that you've made since then to like become even more your self.

Lora K. Joy: I have always, I think from both search experiences and the therapy work I've done, it's all been around, centered around finding my truth because I think that's where most of our healing happens. We can't, we can't heal, I don't think, unless we have the full truth. And even if your truth is rejection, secondary rejection from a bio family member, that is still truth, right? That's still information.

And living as an adoptee, until I started finding that truth and finding that power and finding my voice, I wasn't living my authentic self. I didn't know who that was or what that looked like, and just by untangling the grief and untangling the trauma, I've been able to sort of integrate that authentic self. And the same time lots of things were happening at the same time; estrangement, paternal search, and I was also writing and thinking of sharing my story through a memoir or something. And then the idea of the first Illustrated book came up and my husband said to me, I'm not really comfortable with us using your last married, last name for the book.

And I said, okay, but this is my truth. This is me. It has to be who I am. I can't make a pseudonym and be claiming that I'm speaking my truth, right? So I sat with it for a moment cuz I understood his concern and why? Because we live in a small community that is, people know us and whatnot. Even though it has nothing to do with his family, I just thought I, under, I, I, I can respect that boundary. So I started thinking about my birth name, which is Lora, which I would not have known had I not met my mom because she did not put it on my original birth certificate cuz she felt like she didn't have the right too.

Haley Radke: So she told you at some point, how did that come?

Lora K. Joy: Pretty quickly and early because on my adoption decree, my name was Kimberly. And then I had this other piece of paper that just had the last name and her name on it. And I honestly didn't realize, Haley, that I was holding my original birth certificate.

Haley Radke: Uhhuh, Uhhuh ,

Lora K. Joy: That's what it was. But the adoption paperwork had Kimberly and then it also had, that's where my dad's name was, plus a packet that she had filled out, the adoption agency.

And so when I met her, I said, oh, you named me Kimberly. And she said, no, I didn't. I said, oh, you didn't? No, I named you Lora. And I said, oh, well, who named me Kimberly? And she's like, I don't know where that name came from. So

Haley Radke: Someone just wrote it on the . Oh my gosh. Yeah. This is, this is, this is the second thing you've shared in this episode to just remind folks you cannot trust what is in your paperwork. Like Right. Period.

Lora K. Joy: Exactly

Haley Radke: You just cannot.

Lora K. Joy: Nope. Nope. No. And, and I think, I think that a lot when I hear people talk about their, their paperwork. So then my, my adoptive name is Joy, so my biological mother's last name also starts with a K.

And so I started playing around with the Lora and the Kimberly and the Joy, and then I came up with Lora K. Joy because, K represented both things, Kimberly and and her last name. So I said, you know what, that's like a progression of me. I was Lora, and for five weeks I was Kimberly, and then I was named by my adoptive parents, Joy

Haley Radke: I've never connected that, Lora and I, I know this story was so oh my gosh. That makes me love it even more.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. So I, I decided that Lora K. Joy could be my name, that I am publishing a book under writing a blog under. And so that's how that came about. And I started showing up in the Flourish Group and in other adoptee spaces as Lora K. Joy and I started sort of trying on Lora. And after my estrangement, which was early in the year, I continued to be Lora in the adoptee space. And by the end of that year, I thought one day I've just like, I'm I am Lora. Like, I like that ghost had come to the surface and sort of integrated. I thought, you know, I have listened to other people on this podcast talk about changing their name, and I thought, I could never do that.

I could never do that. And I, I think it was because I had the restraint of the pressure of my adoptive family or society. And so the estrangement gave me the freedom and the space to explore that and to try that on and to really accept it when it became sort of my truth.

And always I had hated my adoptive name. I, it felt like a lie. I hated answering to it, and I thought, I'm, I'm Lora. Okay. Now I don't wanna go through this process of changing every bit of paperwork in my life, with my new name, but that's my truth, and I'm going to. I'm, I'm gonna change my name. And so I told my husband one day, I just said, I'm, I'm Lora now, and I'm going to, I think I'm gonna change my name.

And he was like, did a little head spin, but he, he was fully supportive and so I did it in my birthday month. And my birthday month was like two months later and it's January, so my birthday's in January. So I was like, I'm gonna get through the holidays and then, I'm gonna do that for my birthday. So like initiate that.

So I didn't tell anyone. I told my husband, my kids, and like two friends maybe, because I didn't even tell my mom. I just said, when it's official, then I'm gonna tell people. Because what if something happens? Because in, in, in the state of Washington where I live, I had to go to the courthouse and the judge had to approve it.

And I thought, well, what if he doesn't approve it? Like I, I don't know, seems like a shoe-in thing, but you know, what if there's something that goes awry here? And I don't wanna get, I don't want other people to be disappointed. So I went to the courthouse, filled out the paperwork, and a week later I went in and my son actually went with me, and 10 minutes later it was official.

Haley Radke: So do the people in your real life call you Lora?

Lora K. Joy: Yes, now they do. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Does your husband call you Lora?

Lora K. Joy: He does, yeah.

Haley Radke: Was that strange?

Lora K. Joy: Yes. Yes. I mean, cuz we'd been married for almost like almost 19 years at that and we'd been date, you know, we dated for a time before that.

So yeah, everybody was a little bit shocked, but also understanding and supportive. And it, it was kind of funny because in the beginning if he would get flustered with me or be like, grumpy with me, he would call me my old name and I would say, that's not, I don't have to answer to that anymore. That's not my name. Just kinda joke.

And, and really it was like maybe a week or two of adjustment for him and he has been the most consistent. . And it didn't matter for my kids cuz they don't call me my name anyway. They call me mom. Yeah. But when I told my kids they were very excited and supportive.

Yeah. Super, super excited about it.

Haley Radke: What does it feel like to claim I was gonna say a new name, but your old name back, your original name, and have people in your real life call you that? What does it feel?

Lora K. Joy: I will say that the next day after it was official, I felt Lora sort of sink into my chest like it was real and who I had always, who I was always supposed to be, who I was meant to be.

And at first I thought it won't bother me if people call me my old name. And of course I'm gonna give people an adjustment timeframe here, but it really did start to bother me kind of quickly if they messed up. It, it did, it did bug me. I, cuz I felt like once I tell people, you should know and that's it. We're moving on.

But it's not that easy I guess for, for, for some people, but it just, it feels like I've integrated that ghost of Lora, that person I should have always been. And it's, I think at the beginning I was still a little surprised when people would call me Lora, like, cuz it was new to me too. I was adjusting to that.

But also I had been in adoptee spaces where people called me Lora. So I think it's just reaffirming and reassuring and to know that I took control and had agency over that. Empowering. Yeah, I think empowering is the biggest word to describe it.

Haley Radke: What did your mom say when you told her you were changing your name?

Lora K. Joy: So I called her that day after it was official.

Haley Radke: Did she, did she know?

Lora K. Joy: No.

Haley Radke: Oh my God. So she wasn't even in on it.

Lora K. Joy: Okay. Okay. Nope. She wasn-. She wasn't in on it. So I called her, and let me just say that through this whole experience, she is even keeled. Like it is what it is. Whatever makes you happy like you are, like, she's just not emotional.

She doesn't get, she's not excitable. That sort of thing. And I called her and I said, well, I have some news, and I said I wanted to wait till it was official, so it was done, but I changed my name to Lora and she went, you did? Like, she got so excited. Like the first time I heard excitement in her voice.

Haley Radke: I'm, I'm picturing being her and thinking, oh my gosh, Lora is like choosing me. Like, because that's what she named you. I don't know can you... has, has she expressed more of what that meant to her?

Lora K. Joy: No. No. No, just, just that she was excited and happy for me and happy for her. Like just, yeah. Like I said, she's just kinda right here all the time and yeah. So she's, yeah. Well, well, as a result of changing my name, I got to go through every piece of paperwork in my life and update it.

Haley Radke: So just like a warning if people are like, that sounds fun. I should change my name. Yeah. It's not fun.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. Like actually changing my name was easy, right? 10 minutes at the courthouse, done . Then I got to come home and think about every thing my name is on, and honestly, I'll... here's a tip, I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I went to a wedding website and it listed all the places a bride should remember to change her name if she changes her last name at marriage.

And I'm like, oh good, this is good. I need all, I need to go to all these things. So I wrote, I kind of printed off that list and, and then remembered other things that weren't on it that I needed to take care of. So yeah, that's a tip. If you do change your name. Print that list off first before you, you know, make sure you, you know, where you gotta go. Social Security, passport driver's license, all the things.

Haley Radke: Lora, I, spoiler alert, you have a blog. You should write the blog post for that.

Lora K. Joy: Oh, I should. You're right. Well, I did write a blog post about changing my name.

Haley Radke: Perfect. And just add the checklist on there.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah, I should. Yeah, because I felt like, and, and I'll tell you, I told people individually after I changed my name, like my mom. And then I had people that I called. I had people that I texted, and then I just changed my name on social media. I didn't make an announcement about it, I just changed it. And I'll tell you, not one person said anything to me about it. It was bizarre.

So I thought I also wanted to write a blog post for the adoptee community, and also, it also explains why I did it. And the conviction of it. And, and so then I shared that so that people would understand the importance of it. And I think too, when people were struggling with remembering to call me my new name, I thought, well, this will be a good, like once they read this, it's a.... important. So I'm going through all my paperwork and everything is changed except my marriage license and my amended adoptive birth certificate.

So I have this amended adoptive birth certificate here with adoptive parents' names on it that I no longer have relationship with, and I have my old name and it just feels really gross and like, I don't want this piece of paper anymore and I do not want this to be my birth certificate. So I start thinking about how can I get that changed?

And I called a lawyer, a family lawyer in Indiana because that's where I was adopted, and I said, here's the situation. I'd like to get my original birth certificate reinstated. Like, can I get my mom back on my birth certificate with my new name? And they said, well, the only way we can do that is through an adult adoption.

And I'm like, oh, that's gross. I don't wanna be adopted again. She's my mom, like, sh, she shouldn't have to adopt me back. But legally that's what we have to work with here in the States. So I thought about it for a while and, and in that conversation it was with a, a gentleman, an older gentleman, and he said, well, we would have to send letters to your adoptive parents just to let them know that this was happening.

They wouldn't be involved, they wouldn't be asked to say anything or whatever, but they could fight it if they wanted to. And I said, well, they aren't gonna fight it. They don't, they can't, they're not gonna pay a lawyer to do that. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna think about this for a, a minute and kind of let it process.

And with kind of both my name change and this process, I wanted it to be organic. I didn't wanna force it. And so about three months later I thought, you know, I think, I think I wanna go, go through with this. I, I, I really want to be my mom's daughter. Again, I really want my name to be correct. I really want my original birth certificate sort of reinstated.

So I talked to my mom. At that point, I talked to her. I hadn't talked to her yet. I just thought, I'm gonna, again, I don't wanna, if I back out, I don't wanna like get her excited about it or whatever. So I said, I called her and I said, here's what I'm thinking. And she goes, that's weird. I gave birth to you, like why do I have to adopt you?

I said, I know it's weird. Think about it. Don't- no pressure. If you don't wanna do it, it's totally fine. No rush, whatever. And so we talked for about an hour and at the end of the conversation she said, oh, just it's fine. It's just putting things back the way they were. Let's do it. And I said, okay, great. So I called the same, like a law office, back and this gentleman that I'd spoken to a few months.

Had left cuz he, I think he became ill or something. He retired. And so they assigned me to this new female lawyer. And in our first meeting with her, she's like, this is easy. Like super, super simple. Like you're both adults. You're both consenting. You're not doing anything. You're not, you're not doing it for nefarious reasons.

Like this is a 10 minute court thing. And like we're, this is super easy. And I said, okay, wait, you know, the, the previous gentleman I spoke with said, we have to a notify my adoptive parents. And she goes, no, we don't. You're an adult. You don't need anybody's permission for this. And I said, oh, awesome.

Like that's even better . So I, I was a, we were able to move forward with just the two of us. And a story within the story is that she was adopted from foster care, this lawyer. and her sister was adopt, like she and her sister were adopted together from foster care, and she was so sympathetic and empathetic to my story, my situation, our situation, and just super supportive of, of it.

So we get the court date, we, we do the thing, it's over Zoom and the lawyer says, Now can you send me the statute that says we don't need to notify the adoptive parents and we were all sort of like surprised and so the lawyer was like, oh yeah, of course I can send that right over. Like, she should have approved it in the 10 minute, 12 minute court hearing. Right. Zoom.

Haley Radke: Sorry, it's the who asked for it? The judge asked for it. The judge?

Lora K. Joy: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay.

Lora K. Joy: The judge. Yeah. And so the lawyer's like, of course I can send it right over. And then it was sort of a really abrupt ending to this Zoom court session. And we hang up and I called her right away. I was like, what?

What just happened? So it wasn't approved right away. And so the, the lawyer had to like kinda work through it with the judge. Like, yeah, here's the statute. Like she's an adult. She doesn't need anybody's approval or permission. No one needs to be notified. She's not a minor. It's a completely different situation than if she's a minor.

So it was about five days later that we got the official approval. So in, yeah, my mom just legally reclaimed me. It was a, it was a little bit of a scare in the court session with the judge, but it, it happened and so yeah. Now I'm, I'm legally my mom's daughter again and I'm awaiting my new air quote, birth certificate in the mail.

Haley Radke: And so, congratulations. So thank you. That was, that happened in the state of Indiana because that's how your adopt where your adoption was.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah, I was born and adopted in Indiana.

Haley Radke: Okay. And is your biological father's name going to be on your new birth certificate?

Lora K. Joy: No. No, no. We actually had the, I, I guess if we had chosen to put him on there, we, I don't know if we would've had to include him or not and get his permission, but we decided not to.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. My mom and I decided not to.

Haley Radke: Okay. Very interesting. I've heard from so many people since we released the Grace Kelly episode in Australia.

Lora K. Joy: I love... awesome!

Haley Radke: When she talks about annulling adoptions, and that's possible in Australia. And so I had lots of people reach out and it, it, it's, it is as of right now as we're recording, as you say, I don't think it's possible yet in the United States to have an adoption annulled or undone in some way. Instead, it's this re adoption adult adoption process.

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. It is what it is. I mean, it, it is, it's kind of, I don't like the name of it, but I kind of just refer to it as being reclaimed.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. So before we do recommended resources, is there anything else you wanna say to adopted people? I, I, I remember you saying before, like, oh, I heard all these people change their names, and you're like, I didn't, I never thought I could do that. How has this progressed for you in all the years of doing therapy and being in the adoptee community, the impacts that's had on you? Any thoughts on, on that as we wrap up?

Lora K. Joy: Yeah. A, again, you know, a few people have changed their name, right. That you've interviewed and even fewer have been unadopted or reclaimed or, and, and when I would hear those stories, I felt the same way.

Like, whoa, never, I could never do that. And it was a natural process for me, but knowing other people had done it helped me know that I could do it too if I wanted to. And I, as a part of the previous episode on estrangement, it was like I wanted agency in my life and I wanted agency. I wanted to continue that, and that was, these were sort of the just next natural steps for me.

And as I continued to do that internal work, which we haven't talked about, but it's like those are, that's, that was the point of my illustrated books and then the adoptee community book from the Flourish Experience. That is how I was able to grow and heal and sort of an accounting of that and listening to this, this podcast and others, and having the strength from this community is what has allowed me to go through the process myself, and I hope that by sharing my evolution and my healing and my growth, that I can empower someone else. Because even if it's just a nugget from this conversation that sparks something in you, I hope that it's helpful because that's what has everyone else has done for me.

Haley Radke: Hmm. Well you have, you know, shared on the show before and you're sharing again today, and I know you've guested on another podcast telling different parts of your story. And as I was re-listing to all of those things to prepare, I , this is gonna sound silly, but I finally was like, oh, these stories you've written, the illustrated books, they're... it's your story.

Lora K. Joy: It's my story.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Like , which sounds so silly as like your friend, to like not have gotten it until that, but. I remember when you announced you were, you were writing these books and you were, you had published and shared, and so I ordered them right away and then you gifted me copies, which was so kind of you, cuz mine are signed.

I, I gifted all of the copies I purchased to my psychologist because she works with lots of children and, yes, my psychologist works for children and me and . .

Lora K. Joy: Oh my god, I didn't make that connection. Uhhuh.

Haley Radke: Yeah. No, but she , she works with adults too. But she was so excited cuz I was like, oh my gosh. One of my listeners wrote these and my friends said like, it's just, yeah. So anyway, I've been bragging on you, but they're so lovely, so beautiful. The, I dunno, I don't know which one to go to. I'll, I'll go to your, your newest one. The self attunement, an adoptee superpower. There is this drawing of you curled into yourself as a little one, that is so powerful.

It says; Little Sarah curled herself into Sarah. She was finally safe and where she belonged.

And I don't know, something about that just hit me like so deeply because it the impact all of the years of therapy. All of your work in your healing journey to culminate in things that can empower other adoptees to know, okay, I can care for my little self too.

I can look into IFS and, and research what that means. And, and I can like, take care of myself and love myself and accept myself and, and find empowerment, is just like huge. So I love that you've shared these in such an accessible way and they're so beautiful and cute and fun. I wish I could show everybody the pictures.

But as you wrap in the, I'm still, this is still the self attunement one. " Sarah was attuning to herself. Sarah knows the trauma from adoption is real and difficult, but Sarah also knows she has the power to heal and take care of herself."

Like isn't that just it. Lovely.

And you also mentioned, well no, I think I mentioned that you blog to on MyAdopteeTruth so people can hear more from you about all the things that you've done in this work on your journey.

And I'm so proud of you. Like I've seen, I came in at the tail end, but I've seen so much from you in these last few years. So is there anything you wanna tell us about your books or your blog or anything like, I don't know. I'm just, I'm, I feel, I feel some sort of motherly pride, even though like, I'm not your mother.

Lora K. Joy: Well, you should take some credit because, you are in inspiration to all of us and what you are doing with the podcast in helping other people sharing their stories in the healing jour, the healing series and all the series that you do. It's like, you know, what you just made me think of right now is like, oh, I was talking about how therapy is not accessible to everyone, and you provide this source and like, oh, I have basically put into three books My Healing Journey, and two of them include, like, two of them are like visits to my therapist and like what she told me and how I was able to work through it from that perspective. And so they, they are my truth, they are my true lived experience and that is exactly what I hope that they can do is help other adoptees.

Adult adoptees I think can read these and hopefully see something like you did, they do present as children's books, but I think they need to be guided.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Lora K. Joy: With a therapist. Yeah. Mm-hmm. . I will say I did like, I consulted my therapist before I published them. I'm like, do are these any good? Like, do you think they're gonna be helpful? She's like, absolutely.

And then, I've had other therapists say back to me that they use them. Multiple therapists. So I hope that they are a good tool for other adoptees to heal and maybe a little bit faster than I did.

Haley Radke: Well, this might sound sacrilegious to some readers because I do not dog ear my books, but I have been tempted to slice out a page to frame it. So I may order another one so I can do that. The illustrations are so good.

Lora K. Joy: They're beautiful. So Lora Foot is the illustrator and she, she is not adopted. But Haley, when I tell you, I gave her the, the written text for the book and she nailed the drawings on the first try. She gets it. And when I was super nervous when I was introduced to her because I thought, oh, what if she doesn't like this?

What if she like, what if it's uncomfortable? And she said, the first thing she said to me was, this is important and I am gonna be proud to help you bring this to life.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm.

Lora K. Joy: So I just adore her. And yeah, I think the drawings are just perfect.

Haley Radke: I think the last time you were on, I don't know if you had one out or two, but now your...

Lora K. Joy: Just one.

Haley Radke: ...trilogy is out and yeah. It's such a beautiful set together. Speaking of books, what did you wanna recommend to us?

Lora K. Joy: Okay. I'm very excited to talk about this because it is a result of a year in flourish. It's called the Flourish Experience, the power of adoptee healing and community, and revelation that we had in that year with Pam and Anne was so profound, and at the end of that year we said, how can we sort of commemorate this?

How can we help other adoptees achieve this? Because they weren't continuing flourish. And so we decided to write about our experience in community and the power of that and how we were transformed through it. So another adoptee and I sort of quarterbacked, to use sports reference, this project where we had any member of Flourish who wanted to write, contribute, and we asked them to write about their experience in Flourish.

And most do, but also they tell some of their stories as well, their adopt- adoptee stories. And because it was from and about our community, and because you started that, we wanted to contribute back to Adoptees On, because if it hadn't been for you and the podcast, we would not have ever met.

And Pam and Anne based this class on their friendship. And they wanted other people to have a friendship like theirs, adoptee, friendships, and they would not have met if it hadn't been for you. And most of us wouldn't have found them if it hadn't been for you. So the proceeds from this book go back to Adoptees On.

And, the artwork on the cover, which is stunning. It was created by three members of our group, and there are three very different pieces, but their interpretation of their experience in the class. We put the three together into a, a beautiful cover, and we auctioned off, the auction's already done, but we auctioned off the original pieces. We've sold prints and the prints are still for sale on the Flourish Experience website.

Haley Radke: I have Have one.

Lora K. Joy: Yes. Yes you do. Which one do you have?

Haley Radke: I have Michelle's piece.

Lora K. Joy: Okay. It's a mirror. It's a mirroring piece. It's beautiful. And so the prints, the print sales, and the auctioned original pieces that benefited Savings Our Sisters, because we're all passionate about family preservation.

Haley Radke: Yes. Fabulous charity in the United States run by Renee and helps mothers who are in crisis, parent their children and prevent unnecessary adoptions. Yeah. Tremendous.

Lora K. Joy: We, the book is, I believe it's powerful because it's 23 people speaking up about the power of healing. And it's not just adoption, it's not just reunion, it's about the grief that we all experience and what it's like to be in community with other adoptees.

We mirror each other like no one else can, and being with other adoptees is, is just so healing and we wanted to share that with other people and we, we hope that the book encourages you to find your own flourish family. In the back of the book is all of our writing prompts and our monthly themes so you can sort of recreate if you'd like.

And also as many resources as we could think of. We put a resource list in the back of other adoptee resources and books and blogs so. That, I can't recommend it enough because. I know how much it transformed me and I hope it helps other people grow and heal too.

Haley Radke: Thank you. It's so, it was so kind of you all to donate the proceeds to the show and I'm so grateful. And we did an episode on the Flourish Experience as well. It's 219, so if you wanna go back and you wanna hear from some of the authors of the book or. Just curious more about building adoptee community and what that could look like for you, I encourage you to do that. Thank you so much, Lora. What an honor to speak with you again and share more of your story and I know you hope it will empower. I know it will , like I know it will bring a sense of agency back into our lives that we can make these choices and, and it could be a year's long process. Right?

Lora K. Joy: Right. It's not overnight is it? You know, give yourself time and just know that you're allowed.

Haley Radke: You're adult. You can do what you want now.

Lora K. Joy: Exactly.

Haley Radke: Yes, you're allowed. I love that. Thank you.

Lora K. Joy: Thank you so much, haley.

(Upbeat music)

Haley Radke: I really enjoy talking with Lora. She has been a longtime supporter of the show. We've become friends and I think the things that she's sharing are just really inspiring and motivating to like dig in into our stuff, right? It's so easy to let things lie and just sort of accept the status quo, I guess I'm trying to say.

And she is one that does not do that. And so she's very inspiring to me. So thank you so much, Lora, for coming back and talking with us.

I am really, really pleased about all the great things Adoptees On patrons are getting. So we have the weekly podcast, and this month in February, 2023, we are reading Shannon Gibney's new book and we have book club at the end of the month with her.

And so, yeah, we'd love to have you join us for that. You go to Adopteeson.com/bookclub. You can find out details of our reads for 2023 or Adopteeson.com/community for the other Patreon details. Would love to have you as a part of our community. Thank you so much for listening, and let's talk again next Friday.

237 [Healing Series] Attachment

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/237

---

Haley: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.

You are listening to Adoptees On the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. This is a special episode in our healing series where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today on Adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also this show to support more adoptees around the.

On today's episode, we are discussing attachment theory, attachment styles, and a new model To me, the nested model of attachment. Let's listen in.

[upbeat music]

I'm so pleased to welcome back to adoptees on Marta Sierra, welcome back, Marta.

Marta: Hi Haley.

I am really excited to talk to you. We've, we've unlocked so many things for folks in our conversations. I always feel like you have some super, super wise things to say to us. And today we're going to talk about attachment.

So can you go into that a little bit about, you know, we hear the, like attachment styles or, you know, I don't know, they're a little bit of a buzzwordy thing in the last what, decade maybe.

Mm-hmm.

Haley: Can you talk a little bit about what that is and why it's important for adoptees to understand that?

Marta: Absolutely. I, in the episode we did on romantic relationships, I presented heavily from the book Attached, which I still love and still promote around attachment styles. In kind of a really one dimensional way, you know, and I, I think that we humans, when I say that we human beings, we love categories, right?

We love astrology categories. And are you an introvert or an extrovert, right? All, we love labels and we like to box things in. And so I think identifying with one attachment style and kind of trying to figure out that can get kind of limiting and, I wanted to come back and talk more about attachment. A, to talk about the things that I've learned since we last recorded, and also to kind of offer this more both /and vibe versus either/ or.

Really that this is so layered and complicated and doesn't have like a one thing that like, okay, I'm this and so then I have to do this. It's what that means. Because our attachment style, my definition of that, my like loose definition of that is, how our systems function in relationship. What parts of us show up in relationship, and what's challenging about being in relationship? Because again, as adoptees, our wound is relational. It happened in our first relationship, and so relationships in and of themselves become a very unsafe place. That's a lot to heal. And the more we can understand about the wounding, the better we can support our own healing.

Haley: Oh, that's really impactful. I, I think, I mean, there is something to the labels that helps us understand, so coming to it from a place of both, and I really, I love that you said that because even, even as we're first kind of processing adoption and what the impact it's had in our life, right. One of the first things is coming to "Oh. It was like such a blessing. Also there's some loss", right? And then we, you know, some of us move past that to, oh, I just see the loss or whatever. But coming at it as a multifaceted approach, so this is really interesting that you're bringing that to attachment.

Marta: You know, and of course, like the big kind of polarity it feels like if we're just going from this categorization lens is avoidant people on one end and anxious people on the other end, you know, and the avoidant people run away and the anxious people run towards. Super binary, right? And, and, and opposing that, that the anxiously attached people are mainly concerned about connection and that the avoidantly attached people are mainly concerned about autonomy.

But we, we all have both of these needs. We all have dual needs for both connection. I'm gonna read a quote in a moment. She also uses the word communion for connection, communion, and for autonomy. And it's just how our systems functioning in a given moment is more about what feels more important to our nervous system maybe.

But we all have both of these needs. So she talks this both/ and. Sorry, I'm saying she and I have not introduced what I'm teaching from today. There had never been a book about attachment in polyamorous and non-monogamous relationships. But this book came out last year by Jessica Fern. It's called Polysecure.

It's an incredible resource. The first half of the book, she's teaching about attachment in general, and the second half of the book, she's applying that specifically to polyamorous and non-monogamous dynamics. Of course, I sought this because I am polyamorous, but as soon as I read this material, And even before that, I bring the values that I've learned from living Polyamorously to all my clients now. I disclose often my relationship style just to be transparent about it. And I say, you know, I'm not trying to convert you anything, but I'm gonna bring you the things that I've learned because the things that I've learned living this way and loving this way have benefited all of my relationships.

Friendship. Familial. Acquaintances even, like, it's really changed the way that I approach a relationship. And so I am bringing this to your audience today because I believe these learnings about attachment benefit you no matter how you're choosing to live in love. So this is Jessica Fern that I'm reading right now from Polysecure around holding these two aspects as a both/and.

"When I began working with these aspects of autonomy and connection within myself, I came across the dilemma of how to bring these two poles together. Initially, when I conceived of these drives as existing on a spectrum, they often felt in opposition to each other with only one need or drive being attainable at a time, usually at the expense of the other.

How could I inch myself more towards communion without compromising my integrity? And how could I move more towards my independence without compromising my connections? So when in doubt I've learned it can be useful to switch to metaphors. Instead of seeing these needs and attachment expressions as existing on a continuum, two dimensional space in which you can only occupy one position at a time, what if we conceive of the needs for autonomy and connection as the two reigns of secure functioning. When riding a horse we two rains to control and direct the horse. If we want to turn left, we tighten our grip to tug on the left reign simultaneously loosening with the other reign we do the opposite to move right.

The terrain ahead is constantly changing and so the rains in our hands are constantly readjusting. With time and practice, we gain the ability to simultaneously tighten and loosen reigns without tightening so hard that we hurt or jerk the horse or loosening so much that the communication and direction are lost.

Whatever, to best respond to whatever arises in front of us day to day or even moment by moment, we sometimes need to tighten up on the reigns of autonomy while loosening the reigns of connect. In other moments, we tighten the connection reigns, moving in closer to our partners while releasing the autonomy."

Right? That all of this is ultimately about attuning to ourselves first, and then responding accordingly with how we're interacting in our relationships.

Haley: It, it makes so much sense that this would apply to any relationship, romantic or otherwise and I can see why you have been teaching this to your clients. Yeah. Wow. So specifically for adopted people, we have all these relationships with maybe 2, 3, 4 families. I mean, there's

Marta: Yes!

Haley: So many different people that we are trying to build connection with or remove connection. Yeah. I could totally see why you think this is so impactful to know.

Marta: And so my view of attachment styles has really shifted to this more idea of like flexible states of being, reflecting how a person's system is functioning moment to moment, and also relationship dynamic to relationship dynamic. So one thing I love that of course, Jessica Ferns bringing in, is you can be securely attached in one relationship and anxiously attached in another.

And again, right, if we like release the romantic piece of this too, that's true about families. That can be true, you know, you could see in families, every kid has a different attachment to mom. It's the same mom, but it's different kids, so the relationship dynamic is different, and so I love that expansion of ...that I'm not just one thing, and that how I'm responding in different situations is also important information for me about if I feel safe in this or what I might need for support, and that it can just be this really fluid thing versus a concrete thing that we can't change. If it's fluid, then we have power and control and we can be in control of our healing and lives in a different.

Haley: If it's fluid, we can have control. That's, oh my gosh, that's really interesting to think about because I, I don't know. I keep picturing on like, in talking about reunion, like holding on for dear life. Don't leave me again. Oh my God. Don't leave me again. Again. Yeah. Okay. And the push away, right?

Yeah. The like, we need a time out. It's too much we, it's too much to process. We need, okay. I could see both of them. Mm-hmm.

Marta: Right. Right. So in that relationship where the stakes are super high, your system is responding from that stress response more, meaning your attachment style might skew more toward the extremes versus, you know, your primary relationship with your husband right, might still be in a very different place because it's totally different dynamic and your internal sense of safety is different. So the way that you function in your attachment style will be different.

Haley: I've heard from a lot of a different adoptees who just struggle in romantic relationships or in just friendships.

Marta: Mm-hmm.

Haley: How can understanding this. Help those folks who really struggle to maintain friendships, let's say.

Marta: I, I think the more, again, we know about what we need, right? So if it's not my fault, you know, if I'm not completely broken, then how my attachment system is functioning, it's just a reflection my feeling of safety, right? So the question then becomes, what do I need to feel safe in relationships? Like what do I need from friends, family, partners, and how can I advocate for that versus without any of this information, right? We're just kind of along for the ride.

Haley: I think a lot of. Scared of that part, speaking up and advocating for ourselves.

Marta: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Because then once we've said the thing that we need, if we don't get it, it's like it's official rejection. Not just, oh, maybe they just didn't cure me properly. I don't know.

Marta: It has to be wrapped in compassion first, right? That why this is hard for me is not my fault, and I. Am worthy and deserving of rich relationships in my life.

It has to start from that, which I think maybe understanding the depths of the wound, ideally bring in compassion, which can lead me into talking about the nested model of attachment. Jessica presents us this nested model of attachment that I had never seen before or heard about before I read her book.

Haley: Because everybody else has that binary that you were sort of talking about right at the beginning.

Marta: Right.

Haley: So we're either on one or the other or in the middle.

Marta: Yes. And this model, this nested model of attachment isn't, it isn't about categorizing, it's about looking at what are the factors that affect our experience of attachment? What are all the layers. Versus the old attachment models just looked at child and early childhood and infancy. What happened here? And then it's defined and that's it, right? All of this concreteness where there's actually incredible depth and complexity and just so many factors.

So I'm gonna read what she says about the nested model and trauma, and then I'm gonna take us through like, what does that mean for us as adoptees?

"Attachment unfolds over multiple levels of the human experience. When referring to different levels of experience, I am pointing to the different dimensions or aspects of our human experience; self, relationships, home, local communities and culture, societal and the global or collective. These different levels may seem separate and different from one another, yet they are all interconnect.

With each level acting as an important ingredient to our experience and informing any given moment as well as the decisions we make. To offer a simple example, if I'm looking to buy a new car, there are several different facets or levels of my life that can influence my decision. At the self level, I might think about which car most appeals to me based on my individual preferences, likes, dislikes, needs, and what I can afford.

If I expand beyond my personal perspective to the relational level, I will consider which car would be best for my family, including my son's needs. Additionally, the cultural level informs what kind of car I would consider purchasing based on how I do or do not want to be perceived by others. The range of cars I have access to in the US falls under the societal level, and considerations such as electric versus gas come under the global or collective level.

In discussion of the nested model of attachment, I'll refer to the different facets, dimensions, or perspectives of our lives that coalesce into the whole of our experience, even if we're unaware of them."

So, right, even we were just talking about identity in the last episode. And so even though we don't, of course, everything I'm about to say, we don't understand as kids all of these layers, and yet it's effecting us every day, every minute, nonetheless, with or without our conscious understanding. Right?

So, okay, from an adoptee lens, the self level of our attachment wound, very obvious, right? The personal separation. The separation trauma, the severing of that, that relationship. Relational includes all of our other relational wounds, right?

Which we've named a little bit before, but that there, any other, so any other relational wounds that we accrue after birth- that's complications in family relationships, that's when your best friend at school says she doesn't like you anymore and she won't sit with you in second grade, right? And you cry all the way home. All of these relational wounds are compounding that first wound.

And then we go to the next level out of the home level where we know we can experience right neglect and abuse and that's gonna contribute to our sense of attachment and and security in the world.

And then we go one bigger local communities and culture. You know, I've talked a lot with you last time about transracial adoptees, especially, right? How our bodies are at risk in white communities. These pieces. And also, we know church culture can sometimes be perpetuating the savior narrative. That's something some of us were raised in and that that affects our sense of attachment to community.

And then we balloon out from there to societal level, right? Which is where we get the happy sunshine adoption narrative from every angle, right? So we have societal level denial, gaslighting, erasure of our experience, of our lived experience.

How does that not severely affect a person?

And then we go up bigger to global collective where we have the upholding of worldwide selling of babies. And colonialism and capitalism and white supremacy, right? All of these large systems that intensely affect the adoption industry. And so we have been in living with all of that every day.

Haley: How do we make it, honestly?

Marta: Because we're badass fighters.

Haley: Oh my gosh. Okay. I see the nest.

Marta: So without this, yeah, the nest exactly right. You see the nest.

Haley: We're gesturing wildly and no one can see us. Very good on audio. Very good.

Marta: I'm colombian. I talk with my hands. They're always missing my hand gestures. So ideally, right. Knowing all of this allows us to have an incredible amount of compassion for why it's hard to trust.

Haley: Okay. I'm connecting the dots now.

Okay, so moving from blaming our attachment on like, oh, we're somehow wrong in attaching cuz we're too far to this side or this side. Now we're looking at it from, there's these multiple layers of attachment. We've either learned are safe or not.

Marta: Yes.

Haley: And at every level there are unsafe messages given to us.

Marta: Yes.

Haley: Okay. Makes sense.

Marta: Makes sense.

Haley: Have I connected the dots?

Marta: Yes. You, you connected them beautifully. So you know, after all, saying all of that. And how challenging relationships can be for us as you name, not just with romantic partners, but in friendships and with family. Why on earth would I choose to have multiple relationships at the same time? Would be an understandable question. You know, why? Why would an adoptive person with an attachment wound want to be polyamorous? And. That's a valid question and it's, it's not for everybody. You know, whenever I speak about this publicly, I always highlight this is not for everybody. It's, it's a lot of work and it is more inherently insecure.

So the structure of monogamous relationships is inherently secure. And, you know, she talks about this in the book and the structure of a polyamorous dynamic is inherently insecure. So it is absolutely an added level of risk and fear and leap- taking, and I believe, well, because the only way to do that in a healthy way is to be deeply rooted into yourself.

I think what I like about it, because, I like being backed into a corner healing wise and being like really forced to like walk into the center of my wound. That's just who I am as a vibe. You don't have an option to not do your work. The only way to be successful living in this relationship style is to be really securely attached to yourself first, and that's the piece that can benefit everybody no matter your relationship style or the structure of your life.

Haley: So are you a procrastinator who needs the time pressure of the paper is due at midnight and so I'm gonna start when I know this is the only amount of time I have.

Marta: Never started a paper before 6:00 PM the night before. That's correct.

Haley: Okay. Okay. I see you. I see you. Okay, so, this is so funny to, to look at relationships that way. Your, you're, you said, backed into a corner of you have to do the work. Okay.

Marta: You have to do the work. So I, I believe that there's a potential for even more healing, right? If, if developing a secure bond with one romantic partner has the potential to create a lot of healing for us, then multiple relationships ideally hold even more healing. The capacity for more healing because of the expansiveness, and it also really just requires you to be accountable to yourself. And so what that means, I think in good times, right? In good times is really easy to argue why, why polyamory? Because in good times, I'm receiving so much love, so much connection, so much comfort, so much community.

You know, I believe that adoptees have these deficits for love and care. We went without so much for so long and whatever that is for you individually. But I know that we just generally as a community, carry a long history of unmet needs. I sort of have a visual of my own unmet needs, and I don't think I'm ever gonna fill in that hole, and that's okay.

But this is a way for me to kind of get, get more filled in. In the undetermined amount of time I have on this earth to pursue healing. It's an, it's a way to influx my system with love and support and learning.

And in bad times. Is it brutal? Yeah, it's super brutal. Going through multiple breakups at once or I don't know. There there is the capacity for triggers that are on a level that you had not previously known. And still in the bad times, I'm working with my wound so directly and there are, I've just learned so much. I, I can't say I regret anything. Even the most painful things I've experienced since living and loving this way.

It's tilling the soil. It's, I can feel that I'm transforming again and again into more of my authentic self.

Haley: Can you extend that out for folks who it's not, they're not interested in that, it's not for them, into how do you decide to do that, like on a friendship level? Because you know, I think we've talked about estrangement before and sometimes I think I've heard people be like, oh yeah, I heard that. And then I was like, great, I'm gonna cut everybody off. And it's not really what we were going for with those conversations, because sometimes it is easier to just be like, okay, you're dead to me.

Marta: Right?

Haley: So how can folks take on this level of like learning about their wound and leaning into those things when it becomes difficult in relationship, be it friendship or familial or romantic, but we'll just take it out like a level. What do you think about that?

Marta: I, yes, I would love to share about that. I, I really enjoy talking about, again, I, the ways that this has shifted how I approach all of my relationships. So my, my oldest person in my life that that's, In my life the longest is my best friend. We met when we were 13 years old, so we've been in friendship for, oh God, 26 years, something like that.

And, and we're very different in, in a lot of ways, and we're similar in other ways, and we've made very different life choices other than we're both therapists. Shocking. And our friendship has hit different rough patches over all of those years that we've always moved through and we hit another one last year.

And instead of shutting down and feeling rejected and walking away and losing this person, you know, I don't have many people that have been with me that long because of all of my transformations personally, and she holds some history that nobody else does, and she's incredible also. But we decided to really look at all of the hard stuff and have a long dinner and long conversation about what's our relationship now?

What do we want it to be? What do we both have bandwidth for? Really clarifying those things, you know. What do you really have time for. What can you commit to? What do, what do we want this friendship to look like now at this stage of our lives? And what does it mean to each other? And are we being clear with each other about what it means and what we have to give and what our expectations are. We don't have these conversations in any of our relationships. And again, this is something polyamory has trained me into to have these conversations with new partners, but I've learned to have them also with family, with friends, with coworkers, maybe even, about what are we doing here?

Is it working for both of us? Is this what we want it to be? What do you need from me? What do I need from you? And we just shifted the whole thing. We like pulled it apart and we put it back together in the way that works for us right now. And we're not talking about this, we're not talking about how long-term friendship also requires work and effort and vulnerability and boundaries.

Haley: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's much easier to walk away than to do the work, right? So yes, I've done it. I've done it. Not pointing fingers, cuz I've definitely been there. So if folks are hearing you share about this and thinking, okay, I'm kind of interested in that, I don't know, like I'm really new to understanding anything about polyamory.

So forgive if I'm not using the right language. I guess like would someone know ahead of time, like they would know they were queer, that this was something they're interested in? Or is it something people just go into and explore? I dunno. I'm struggling, Marta. So help me.

Marta: I think I've got you. Or, and if I don't have you, you're making me think of something else I wanted to say anyways, which is okay.

Haley: Okay.

Marta: If we were to go through the nested model of attachment around queerness or around polyamory or alternative relationship styles, right. We would find a similar level of wounding on every level. From self to all the way to global, right? And so again, I think it, it's so hard to discover these truths about ourselves when they weren't even presented as options. And maybe still are not being presented as options depending on where you live and the culture you live in still now in the, the community that you live in. You know, it's not safe to be either of these things in a lot of parts of the world still. And yet, I think it's sometimes it's, you know, hearing this, I mean, there'll be people listening to this that go, "Uhhhhhhhhh," like, and everything will slow down and start to churn and, and they'll start asking some big questions.

Because again, this brings me back to the importance of representation. You know, if we don't know something's a thing, how can we even try on whether or not it might fit for us? And we don't have healthy representation of polyamory really still.

Haley: Well. And I think, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's way more people who are in your community that aren't out with it. Even in North America, where it is slightly more accepted. But I'm sure there's lots of folks that have peers in their life that if they came out as polyamorous, they would be shocked and you know, All the reactions people may give that are unwelcome. So yeah, there's, there's more folks out there than we know.

Marta: Absolutely, I am, I feel very privileged to be as out as I am, to be as public as I am and to feel safe doing so. I feel like that is a great deal of privilege. So, yeah, that's my little sending love to any parts that aren't disclosing, you know. Do what you need to do to feel safe. Mm-hmm. You know, there's, I think with attachment wounds, right?

Something we can be really prone to experiencing in, in any relationship is jealousy. Right. Whether that's like jealous of your siblings, jealous of your friends that they have other friends, God forbid. And, and of course shows up in our romantic relationships.

Haley: Uhhuh.

Marta: But you know, when you ask again,

Haley: Sorry. That's very relatable. I, when, when my friends are doing things with other p... I'm like, excuse me? I, yeah.

Marta: Yes.

Haley: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marta: So. You know, another way this looks is ... I live with my chosen sibling. They're a really, really important person in my life, and in the past year they've, their personal life just got a lot fuller, pretty fast.

It happened kind of fast, and so all of a sudden they weren't home hardly at all. And we were missing our sibling time, which we hadn't had to schedule because we were both just home a lot and we would organically do our rituals and our things that we love to do together. And, you know, I really felt that loss.

I felt that physical loss of them not being in this space. And the jealous feelings of like, oh, well, and you, oh, you did that with, with your partner, huh? Instead of me, you know? And I was starting to feel all those salty feelings. And because of how I approach a relationship now instead of Maybe that being a thing I never say, or a thing that drives a wedge or I start acting out so that they feel what I feel.

You know, I just talked to them about it. and I shared my feelings and we figured out a schedule. We decided, okay, we have to start also scheduling sibling time. Very polyamorous thing to do. So, you know, we schedule our sibling dates like you would schedule time with anybody else important in your life. So that I know, right, in my bones that I still very much matter to my sibling, that I'm a priority and that I will not be cast aside just because they have other relationships, whatever those relationships are.

Haley: Mm-hmm.

Marta: Right? And so now I get to feel safe in the dynamic because I was vulnerable and because I openly communicated about my feelings.

Haley: I appreciate you saying that. It's a great example and I think a lot of this, the vulnerability, it takes a lot of bravery to be the initiator of these conversations, and you are opening yourself up to like, well, this is weird. Why do we have to talk about this? Like, of course we're here, you know? So can you give just an example of language, like can you pretend like we haven't connected as much as you'd like and you just wanna open up the conversation with me, can you just model that for folks because it doesn't have to be a big scary thing.

Marta: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, Haley, I, you know, I know we had our last couple coffee dates you had to cancel because there were things going on with your kids and you know, I know you have other responsibilities in your life and I wanna be respectful of that, but I really noticed that those two times when you canceled, like part of me felt really abandoned and really hurt, and I, I'm, I'm starting to question if I'm still important to you. And I wanna check in about, you know, how much time you really have for our friendship right now, because I can handle shifts as long as I know that I still matter to you.

Haley: You're really, you're really putting it all out there. It, it gives the weight of why it's important to you. You're saying like, I'm feeling like this, not, you made me feel like this. Right. Well, those are the things I'm observing about your, the role play.

Marta: Yes. Yes.

Haley: Okay. I, I like that cuz it feels weighty enough that it's like, okay. Oh, I'm really. I feel like I have impacted you, and so going forward, I really need to make it. It's, it's, it's like forcing a decision, honestly, like ...

Marta: mm-hmm.

Haley: Am I going to make the time for you? Or maybe we really don't have the space right now.

Marta: Hmm. And that I just, you know, I need to, this is a me thing that I just need, I need to know what's going on. Just tell me what's going on. I can deal with a lot of things.

I can deal with a lot of change. But I do need to know what's going on. I have a high value around truth. For me that's centered in being an adoptee. But and so I just also need to know what's happening. But yes, I am assuming I'm not coming for their intent, right? I'm not assuming that they know I've been hurt or that that was intentional at all?

I'm just bringing the impact. Yes. What you just said, this impacted me. This thing that you did impacted me. And I want you to know, because I believe, right. I'm also trusting in that moment that you care how you've impacted me.

Haley: I would hope so. Otherwise, yeah. Friends off you like

Marta: Which goes to the question, right, of like, what if this is received poorly? Then I need that information. That's essential information because I need to be in relationships where I matter. So if you don't have space for that right now, for whatever reason, and that's not about my worth or my goodness, that's about whatever's going on with you. But if you don't have space to offer me that basic care of mattering in our relationship, then that's really important information for me because I can't stay in dynamics like that anymore. No mess.

Haley: Who's got time for that?

Marta: Not me.

Haley: Like Absolutely, absolutely agree. And I think we see it play over and over again about we let, I'm saying we, so many adopted people, let people walk all over us. We take the crumbs. We'll still say a secret cuz you don't wanna tell anybody and like, whatever.

Marta: Mm-hmm.

Haley: No more of that because it, it is impacting our self worth. Like, that's all we think we're worth is the leftovers.

Marta: Right?

Haley: No thank you.

Marta: Right.

Haley: Oh, that's good Marta. That's really good.

Marta: Right. Which which all we keep going, looping around right. To vulnerability, which starts with compassion for why all of this is hard for us and that it is not an indication that there's anything wrong with us. Only that we went through something horrific and it had an impact.

Haley: Mm-hmm, yes. Is there anything else about attachment, about attachment styles, about the nested model, polyamory, any of those things that you think is really important for us to know or act on today?

Marta: I almost said no, but yes. One more thing that I really want to say is that, you know, trauma brain leads us towards scarcity. So when we're talking about this fear of loss, that's also based in the idea that there's not enough. Which of course, right. Why would our brains not be wired for that after what we went through? But it's not true. Our society, if we were going back to the nested model around cultural beliefs around love and sex and pleasure and joy, again, we would find scarcity.

And so the idea that love is abundant and expansive is a core belief in the polyamorous community. And again, that has really impacted all of my relationships, right? I don't have to be scared if my best friend gets a new best friend because we can all have as many best friends as we want because love grows and builds on love.

And I don't have to be afraid about people in my life loving other people because that's just better for everybody.

Haley: That's good. That's a good one. Better for everyone because we can also be a little self-centered too, cuz we're just human. So. Yeah, I, I sometimes laugh at the conversations that we say are so adoptee focused when a lot of it is human problems as well.

Marta: Yes.

Haley: Plus we have trauma on top. So .

Marta: Yes.

Haley: Oh my gosh, Marta, this was so good. Thank you so much. Where can we connect with you online?

Marta: My email is marta sierra lm hc gmail.com.

Haley: Perfect. And you're taking clients. What's the deal? People wanna work with you.

Marta: I am currently most interested in working with polyamorous couples or people new to polyamory. I really have been enjoying that work, so,

Haley: okay. Excellent.

Marta: Say that's the most exciting thing that I'm working on.

Haley: Okay. And we are gonna link to your email in the show notes, so where people can connect with you and also some of the other podcast appearances you've been on, adoptees on, and some other spots. If people wanna learn more about you and more about this, Thank you. Thank you so much for being here.

Marta: You're welcome. Thanks, Haley it's always a pleasure.

(Upbeat music)

Haley: I feel so thankful to be a lifelong learner. I am always picking up new things. There is always something new and valuable that our community can learn about attachment or identity or trauma and all the things, the ways it affects us so we can work and move forward in the areas that we feel stuck. So I hope you love learning alongside of me.

I think the Healing Series episodes are so valuable and I really, really am thankful for all the therapists who are willing to share their knowledge with us. So thank you so much, Marta, and all the other healing episodes we've done, all the other guest therapists that we've had on, I'm so appreciative.

If you find the show valuable and you want it to continue to exist in this world, I would invite you to go to Adopteeson.com/community to find out more about supporting the show and all the bonuses you get for joining. Like another weekly podcast. And there's a level for a Facebook group and a book club and off-script parties where you can get to know new adoptees.

And I'm really, really. Pleased and proud of the community that we've built, so we'd love to have you join us, Adopteeson.com/community. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

236 Shannon Gibney

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/236

---

Haley: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.

You are listening to adoptees on the podcast for adoptees, discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke we are so excited to welcome Shannon Gibney back to the show. Shannon is an award-winning author of multiple books in her brand new release. The Girl I Am Was and Never Will Be, is a speculative memoir of transracial adoption.

Today Shannon shares some of her reunion story with us, how her lifelong friends supported her through some pivotal life events and how her relationship with her adoptive family has evolved over the years. We talk about the brand new book and try to be mostly spoiler free. And the most exciting announcement is that you look at the opportunity to join Shannon and me for an adoptee's only book club event in February.

So stay tuned for details about that towards the end of the show. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today on AdopteesOn.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adoptee on.com.

Let's listen in.

(Upbeat music)

Haley: I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On Shannon Gibney. Hi Shannon.

Shannon: Thanks for having me, Haley. It's always wonderful to talk to you.

Haley: I'm so excited to talk with you. In our last conversation, I think it was in April, 2021, so a couple years ago.

Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Haley: You briefly mentioned, like, oh, well now that I'm in my forties or whatever, , and I was like, this is the year I get to join you,

Shannon: Yeah. The forties are a, you know, it's a different road.

Haley: I'm ready. Different road. Yeah. I'm ready to be released into freedom.

Shannon: It's a, it's a good road. It's a go, especially for women. But but it's, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things, there's many, yes.

Haley: Well, we are celebrating with you cuz you have your brand new book out into the world: The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be. And it is spectacular .

Shannon: Oh, thank you.

Haley: So we'll get to that, but will you start and just give us a little snippet of your story to catch people up if they haven't heard from you.

Shannon: Yeah, my name is Shannon Gibby and I was adopted by a white family in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was about five years old. And this was in 1975. Five years old, five months old, haha. In 1975. I have two white adoptive brothers. One is two years older than me and one is a year younger than me. And then I did my birth search when I was 19. And at that time my birth mom, Patricia Powers, had put her name on the central registry.

And so we were able to make contact and we had a, you know, complicated on again, off again relationship for many years until her death from a rare form of cancer about nine or 10 years ago. And when I did my birth search, I also found out that my African American birth father had died when I was six as a result of a high speed police chase. Well, I should say complications he sustained from that, in Palo Alto, California in 1981 when I was six.

So I think that's sort of as far as my adoption story. My adoption journey. I'm 47 years old. I have two children of my own. One is almost 13, one is eight, and I think, I think that's it.

Haley: You've told it so many times, you've been able to just like snap it in this little photo for us. But this is your first book that really unpacks that story more fully.

We talked briefly about See No Color when you were here last time and that was fictional with some autobiographical elements I think you told me then. So what was it like, how difficult was it to get like some of your real, real you on the page this time around?

Shannon: Yeah, it's It's been very emotional, like, I mean, not while I was... so the book before this, the novel before this was Dream Country, which is about five generations of a Liberian and Liberian American family.

I think you all were kind enough to, to read that in your book club as well. And had me on to talk a little bit about that too. But you know, that book has a ton of Liberian and Liberian American protagonists my children's father's Liberian. And you know, there's a lot of sort of like personal connections, but the point is I'm not Liberian.

And that, that book is really about the chasm between continental Africans and those of us in the diaspora. But I had to do just a ton of research, you know, to get those voices right and to get all the details right. And so that book took me a very long time to write and this book just kind of, the new one, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, I mean, it just sort of poured out of me and was actually very fun to write cuz I could really tap into these other parts of my, like, you know, like really embrace, like the full on black girl nerd and just with abandon and, and it's such a weird book. I mean, I, I, I tell people, you know, it's. This is definitely the weirdest thing I've ever written.

But, but I mean, and, and, and you know, and, and I say that, you know, I said that to, I think it was like Carrie Miller, who's an NPR host. She's like, you say that with such pride. That was. Yeah. I was like, yes, I do. So it was a very interesting experience to go into this book, which is something, as you say, that is so deeply personal.

I mean, it's, it's so, my story and my birth mother's story, you know, the letters are in her voice. I, I have you know, photos of myself, photos of my birth mom, photos of my birth father. I've got his death certificate. I've got, you know, letters from the adoption agency. I've got all kinds of stuff in there.

And so to go from something, you know, was really hard to write Dream Country because it was so outside my personal experience to something that is so deeply close to me. Was that, yeah, that it was, it was a lot. But yeah, so I had a lot of fun with it. I honestly feel like Haley, right now is going to be the most emotionally intense experience for me, having it out in the world because now this is my third novel, and again, novel memoir. I call it my novel memoir. What the f--k? I don't know what it is. But but you know, sort of like me, you know, a mixed black, what the f--k? You know, I don't know. But adoptee, I don't know, you know?

But yeah, I always say, you know, my experience anyway, writing and publishing has been, you're this this book and this piece of, of art for years usually. And then, you know, and if you're lucky, like I have a really good editor, Andrew Carr, this is our third book together. And so if you know, if you're lucky to have another person that you can work closely with, you know, you are working with one other person for years, and then it's like a child. It goes out into the world when it's published and it, but it doesn't belong to you anymore. People take it in, they interpret it based on their own experiences and their own lens and their own perspective. And then they, they, they put it back out, but it comes back to you different, you know, in different, in different ways. And so that process start early.

I mean, I sent drafts to my black bio family, my white adoptive family, somebody from my, my birth mother's you know, white Irish American family reached out to me and I sent her a draft and she just got back to me. And, you know, it's just been a lot of crying, like good cry, good crying, but you know, those deep wounds that you just, it's not like you overlook them, but you keep, you, you have to keep moving forward, but they're still there.

Haley: Well, and now you're doing things like this where someone has now read your book and seen all your, you know, deep thoughts about your experiences and then is gonna poke at them like this. I could see why this might be the most, the most painful time.

Do you have any great comebacks that you've crafted over the years, especially when non- adopted interviewers are asking you questions?

Shannon: Hahaha! You know, my dear friends Sun-Young Kim,, who is a, a wonderful Korean American transracial and transnational adoptee and also a poet, she's like, Shannon, just wait.

She's like, it's just, somebody's gonna ask you, you know especially, particularly with this book, somebody's gonna be like, would you rather have been raised by your birth mom or your white adoptive parents? She's like, just, just wait. Just wait for that. You know? And I'm like, and you know, and I told that to my editor and he just rolled his eyes, you know, and it's like, you know, so I'm, I'm sure that there's gonna be some, you know, interesting questions from time to time, and I just always reserve the right to not answer certain things.

It's just, part of, I feel like my prerogative as a writer, as an adoptee. Yeah. Because this book is so autobiographical. Yeah. There's going to be, there's gonna be, I think a lot more opportunities for like the digs to go, to go a little deeper. But also, I mean, I have to say too, that like people, so far people have been incredibly generous, you know?

And so I, I, I, that's. That is what I'm, that's my expectation. I had a boss who would say that. I was like, that's my expectation.

Haley: You can hold us to a higher standard. That's all good. Okay, so I guess I'll start where everybody else would probably start if you weren't adopted. So don't hold it against me, but at one point you share in the book that your adoptive parents were hurt when you were first searching, and I'm curious now what your relationship is like with your adoptive family? Because you, as you shared, you have artifacts from your life in the book, including letters that your, Patricia, your birth mother wrote to your adoptive mother.

Shannon: Yes. So I, I've been on quite a journey with my white adoptive parents and my white adoptive family. And actually one of the, the crying moments that I had earlier, this, I mean, last week I guess it was my older brother John, my white adoptive brother, he read the book and texted me he's like, Sis, this is really beautiful. And he was like you know, and I hope it does well.

And, and then later I overheard him talking to my parents on video chat, and I heard him say, I think also what she's trying to show in the story is that in the, in the book is that adoption is a loss. And he's like, and I never realized that before. And yeah, yeah.

Haley: Shannon's reacting to my face.

Shannon: Yes, I am.

Haley: Which you can't hear.

Shannon: Yeah, no. So I mean. When I was searching, when I did my search and I did my re- you know, and I was 19. It was a very isolating experience. It was a very, it was difficult. It was really difficult. And I mean, I will say that I think part of what the book is about too is, is the power of female friendships, you know, and how they can really also help many women what we need to do in the world when everybody else is sort of like, what? What the f--k? Like, why do you need to do this?

When I was doing my search and reunion, you know, my, I have a very supportive family, overall, but they did not understand why I needed to do this. And you know, I say in the book like, they lent me, their car, you know, I have, they gave me some money for, you know, gas and some other things. So did Patricia, and you know, there it was, it was a whole community. You know, my, my best friend Bobby went out with me and my friend Dagney went part of the way and yeah.

So, but, honestly, and we've talked about this before, one of my, one of my biggest, I love your face. What? I love podcasts, but I love watching your face, Haley. You know, one of, like, one of my biggest assets and life is that I'm honest and it's also one of my biggest liabilities. And I think also it's why I'm a writer too, because, you know, I always say like, if you're not telling the truth as a writer, as an artist, like I don't know what you're doing, but the way that it felt when I was going through search and reunion, I did not feel supported at all from, from my, from my white adoptive family.

The, the, the people that I really felt supported by were my three girlfriends, platonic Girlfriends, Bobby Dagney, and Karen. Those were the people that were with me every step of the way. Those were the people, you know, who went with me to the records office and found my birth father's death certificate and laid down in the middle of a cornfield with me, like crying and just, I don't even know.

Like, I just was like, I don't even know what to do. I don't, I don't even know. Those were the people, you know, like in the book sitting with me as I called my, my black biological grandfather and talked to him, you know, and told him who I was. How do you, what do you even say? What do you do? Those were, but most importantly, those were the people who were like ..." you're not doing anything wrong. There's nothing wrong with you, and you're not doing anything wrong and"

oh, I'm getting all verklempt. I'm getting emotional talking about it, you know, but it's just like, I do feel like as adoptees, a lot of times we feel very deeply that there's something wrong with us.

And, and a lot of it is not verbal. You know, a lot of it is really somatic. It's like in our bodies, in our responses to things. And so to have people who love you unconditionally, tell you, you're fine. And I'm with you through this all the way. I know it's hard. I know that people don't understand who you're, you're close to and have held you up in other things, but I'm not going anywhere.

That's really powerful. And you know, I've been friends with Bobby since I was six, so 41 years. Dagney I met when I was 14 , so that's 33 years. And also Karen, 33 years. And so I was telling all of 'em this week. You know, it's like, that's the other thing that's really sort of watching over me right now, you know, is just how lucky I, I've been with those relationships.

My dog is barking. I'm sorry. She sees somebody walking on the sidewalk and has to go.

Haley: You know what? We love a dog cameo. All good. I appreciate you sharing that so much. I'm bringing my personal experience and I know many adoptees experience as well when we've searched or found or found some information.

And to see the adoptive family. And Anne we're very good at detective work and seeing people's faces, but also what's underneath, right? So the adoptive family saying, yes, I support you, but all the other cues are like, Ooh, I, this, not really. So to have the people that show up for you is just like, I like my, my, my heart feels full for you to know that you had those friends by your side.

Shannon: Yeah, and I'm, I mean, I will say, I do wanna say, you know, and so my, neither of my brothers either really understood why I needed to search along with my parents, but I will say, they have changed. All of them have grown and changed through the years. They have evolved. And, you know, I, I just wanna be clear about that because people don't have to evolve.

You know, they, they can make other decisions and that is what has kept us close through the years is is those choices that they've made.

Haley: What was it like asking your mom? Get the letters and cards or like, how did that go? Did you ask her like, Hey, I just need my, the papers, whatever is associated with me, or what did, what was that like?

Shannon: Yeah, you know, that was easy actually. That part was very, you know, I knew that she would give me everything that she has. My parents have been always so supportive of my writing. They've, and I think after we sort of got over this hurdle, you know, of search and reunion and my mom said to me, you know, she, she really maintained the relationship with Patricia throughout all those years after we first made contact. Even in the times when she and I weren't really communicating and, and so that's why she had all those letters and all those things, and obviously she had a really different relationship to Patricia than I did.

So when I was like, you know, yeah, I'm writing this book, this is what it is. Can you send me any and all letters, documentation, pictures that are relevant, any anything. She's like, yeah, absolutely. And she got all that together and you know, the next time I was home, it's like this box of stuff and just, sort of like we were talking before the, the formal podcast.

You know, I had a sinking feeling because I read a lot of those letters in years and so a lot of the tensions and frankly hurt between Patricia and I, you know, it's just, it's rekindled. And I have friends, dear friends, reading the book now, who it's very, it that's also very interesting. They're like, oh my God, I just wanna take you and like hold you and like give you like this hug and like protect you. Like, like I know you already went through this, like it's 19 year old you, but I just, I just. I just wanna keep you safe. I just want you, you know, which is interesting. That's just interesting, you know, that that's their response.

Haley: Well, I think in, in our last podcast episode that was on the main feed, you were talking about how you're really most connected with other adoptees of color and, and how that community has grown over the years and now, like it's grown so much that I can think of several other adoptees who have white mothers and black fathers and whose white mothers are also racist AF and like, like unpacking that as a, a biracial woman and figuring out, oh my gosh, where is my place in this and where, how can I have a relationship? And you've done so much education on anti-racism and you know, all of those kinds of things. Like I've learned so much from you over the years and I just think, wow. Like even that, like the very bare minimum of acceptance. That was really painful to read in the book.

Are you willing to talk about that a little bit? And

Shannon: Of course.

Haley: Okay.

Shannon: Of course,

Haley: Because, I mean that's, that seemed to me as a reader, like that's the big fracture at the beginning.

Shannon: Yeah. So as we know, there's many fractures, as I say in the book, when the bond between mother and child gets, gets broken in any way there, there's gonna be fractures.

And then on top of that, if you have racial difference on top of that, it's just gonna be even more. And so yeah, this dynamic emerged between Patricia, my birth mom and I, where, you know, I found out pretty early on that she was queer, that she was a lesbian, and that that had also created a lot of tensions within her Irish Catholic family and in fact was in many ways why she was like, promiscuous with, with men for a while because they just couldn't accept that about her.

And so I had this idea then that sort of her status as a cultural other, because she's a lesbian, would allow her to better understand my experience as a cultural outsider, as a mixed black woman. And that wasn't true at all. That was not true at all. So in the book I, I talk about, you know, the first reunion and you know, Bobby and I drive up there and you know, Bobby goes to see her boyfriend at the time, and I'm, you know, staying with Patricia and her, her girlfriend Josephine, who's delightful.

The next morning, it's like we're we're having breakfast and I mentioned something in passing about being a black woman and she's just like, it's like the, It is, it's like this physical change in her body. Like she just get all tight and and she's just like, you know, it erases me when you, when you, when you say that.

And, and that's bad because I already feel erased. And then of course I have this physical response to that, which is just like, oh s--t. Like , what where am I, where have I come to? How can I get out of here? Like, this is not what I signed up for. Like this is not, I don't feel safe. I don't feel, I certainly don't feel seen or heard, and then I just sort of like changed the subject, you know?

And but that became as you say, like a primary fracture between us, because then I wrote actually an essay about that for a anthology and this was when I was 25 and I was developing, I would say, an ethics of publishing. So I had this very quaint, naive idea that I should share whatever I write with whoever I was writing about.

And so. Yep. And so I sent it to her and she completely freaked out and was like, cuz it was also about her family. Right. And some of the, you know, I go into some of the microaggressions that her family, I experienced with them as well. And she's like, you know, I put that in the essay too. And she's like, it's all lies, you know?

It's all lies. And I really, I just really wish the audience could see your face right now, Haley, cause it's like there's so many words contained in that particular frown. Yeah. Yeah, she was like, it's all lies. And she threatened to sue me and she was like, you need therapy. And you know, just like all this stuff.

And basically was like, I felt like my, I had two choices. Either I could pull the essay from the collection, which was, it was like St. Martin's Press, which is like a small press. So like, she never would've seen it if I hadn't shown it to her. I could either pull the essay, or I could have a relationship with my birth mom.

Like that's, that's, that was how I viewed the situation, so I pulled it. Of course, what I learned then was that my relationship with my birth mom at that point was already pretty much over because there was no trust there. Of course, I felt abandoned again. And she was, in my view, sort of like very sort of self-righteous and you know.

So, yeah, it was, it was kind of a mess. Yeah.

Haley: Well, I, I, you know what it did for me? Is it, it reading, you know, your experience with her and then, you know, I think of Rebecca Carol's memoir where her birth mother is...

Shannon: oh, a train wreck.

Haley: Okay. Yes.

Shannon: A complete train wreck. Yes. Oh my God.

Haley: Yes. But it, you know, these, these examples have really broken this fallacy for me, like, that, well you're, you may have had white adoptive parents. I'm, I'm generalized, I'm not talking about yours specifically, but like, that were parenting children of color. Didn't get, didn't get it. And then while at least of course, the person who gave birth to you would get it. Like, no, no, no.

Shannon: No, no, no. This is, this is the power and the, like, the pernicious power of whiteness.

Haley: Mm-hmm.

Shannon: You know, is that it makes white people monstrous if they are not aware of how it's working on them, particularly if they have power over other people like, like their children, you know, like parents do. And so that is why I know in my own experience as a, a mixed black transracial adoptee, I have so many friends who are, are mixed identify as mixed black too, women. And even though they're not adoptees, we have a lot of things in common that we, that we talk about in terms of, you know, issues with our, the white side of our family, issues with our white moms, all kinds of things like that. I mean, there's a, there's a lot of crossover.

Haley: I'm so glad you shared that because that's, that feels like a another key where people could unlock friendships. If you're looking for people to support you outside of the adoptee community, that's...

Shannon: Oh yeah. That's been huge. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Haley: Okay. Let's go to motherhood. You say, this is a quote from the book, the Daily satisfaction of finally having a family that looks like me. When I see you write about your kids on Facebook, I like, I just feel this joy from you and just like, oh, I don't know. I just, I always, I'm just like, yes. Now this is a mother.

Shannon: I love being a mom. I do, yeah. It's, it's exhausting and, and stressful. Cause I'm basically a single mom, but but my, my kids. Not like they bring me so much joy, they just like ground me.

You know? Like many writers and artists, I have a kind of brain that can kind of spiral off, which is why I can create things like books, right? But then the other side of that is that, you know, it can spiral into unhealthy things too, right? And so it's just very good to have people around you who are like, yeah, mom, dinner, dinner is what's going on.

You know, what, what is for dinner? Also, I had a bad poop. Also, you know, like I'm not sure how to do long division and the dog ate the cat's food again. You know, or whatever. Like, just these, these daily very ordinary experiences, you know, of mothering and caring for others and, and cohabitating with others. Yeah. I'm very thankful for, for my children every day.

Haley: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . . All right. I dunno how to ask this without being spoiler-y. So we're riding like the edge here. I feel like

Shannon: Riding the edge of spoilerdom . Okay. Yes.

Haley: Okay. So I find it amazing that both Shannon and Erin, who is also Shannon, have, have no idea about their father. This father figure is like, not present through the story and yet is right. There's this like, and I thought, yeah, isn't this like an adoptee? Even in the like imagined, where I would have the answers, I can't even summon up the father on that side.

Shannon: Yes, yes, yes.

Haley: Now, is that too spoiler-y or is that? Without giving...?

Shannon: Okay. No, that's not spoiler-y no, I mean, and I don't think, I mean. The book is interesting because it's basically, like in the prologue, I tell you the whole story of the book. I tell you, I tell you my whole life in two pages, right? And then I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna do something else for the rest of the book.

So, you know, I, other readers might have like a different experience and I'll be glad to hear from them. But I don't think of it as that kind of book that you can like spoil cause just because those aren't the kinds of questions that it's sort of after. But yeah, I mean it's sort of like the Boise Collins Jr., who was my birth father, I mean, he is like, he and his family, that's like the black side of my family. So it's, it's like they've, they're lost and erased, in a way, for both Erin and Shannon. And that is a profound loss. You know, both of, you know, his role as her father, her birth father, but also in terms of, you know, the, the, the cultural loss of, you know, black culture.

And so I think both characters feel that keenly. One thing that I was really actually surprised by and talked with my editor about as I was writing this, is that I think in many ways though Erin is more alone than Shannon is in terms of her ability to navigate someof these difficulties and the supports that she has, you know, she's got this really close. Erin has this really close girlfriend Essie but other than that, she's really kind of on her own.

Haley: How does it feel writing about that loss knowing that, you know, he, he died when you were six years old and so there was never going to be an opportunity for you to meet him. And then how have you connected since I know you shared you were able to speak with your grandfather and how has that been?

Shannon: Yeah, so, my, my uncle, Boise Collins Jr. who's also is a character, actually big character in the book. He, I, I've sent him multiple drafts of the book. And the first thing that he said, which also brought me to tears this was the summer, was he's like, I feel like this is, yes, the story is about this journey. You know, like this, these, this young woman, these young women are trying to, you know, piece these things together. But he's also said, I feel like this is also, it's, it's for your father, it's for your dad. It's something that you made for him. Which of course yeah. Was incredibly moving to me because I'd never, again, I've never really, I didn't think of it consciously that way, but of course, you know, since other people have been reading it, they've also told me that same thing. And of course, you know, in life I never got to meet him, but in art I can, you know? Yeah.

Haley: I love that. That's the, that's it. That's perfect. I, again, no spoilers. I love how you write about him in the book. It's just tremendous.

Shannon: What do you, what do, what do you like about it? Can I just like why do you specifically

Haley: Well, when he's described as this like brilliant person and the accomplishments, I just went straight to, oh, of course. That's why Shannon is so brilliant and, you know, has written these like tremendous books and, and I thought, oh, this is the through line this, this is, you know, so to discover that and then. Actually really when I see you write about your son online and what he, I was gonna say precocious, some of the things that he's put, but it's, it's not that he, he's so wise beyond his years in the way you portray him online.

And you know, he pushes back on things that, you know, some of us would be too Shy to do, and I just think, oh yeah, that's the line. So I love that that's the piece you wrote, right? It's again, like this myth busting of like what we have in our heads sometimes about adoptees, birth parents, like Right, it's the stereotypical kind of like, whatever, low income, don't have enough resources so of course the baby has to get adopted out and you know, like all that kind of stuff. But that's not how you write him. Like he's a real person and he was brilliant and Yeah. Yeah, that's what I see. Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. And complicated. You know, like, I mean, there's like part of this family that's like, yeah, he was bipolar and then there's another part of the family that's like, no, he just, he just had issues, you know, like on like, you know, and so it's just like I, and yeah, and I think that that's the other thing that, you know, sort of racialization and/ or sort of putting people into these stock categories, you know, like birth parent or whatever it does, is it takes away their individuality, you know?

Haley: Yeah. And their human, like, their humanity. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else you wanna share before we do our recommended resources?

Shannon: I just wanna thank, something that my, my friends and I call Planet Adoptee, you know, all the adoptees out there who are sharing their stories and connecting with each other and trying hold all the holes in our stories together and to, and to sit in those holes. Because I think it's a paradox that that's the only way that we, we will become whole. Mm-hmm. And so, or, or healed, you know, at least in moments. And so I just, yeah, I just wanna thank all of you for who you are and how you approach this life and and yeah, engaging with my, with my work. And love to hear, love to hear from you about it.

Haley: I, I think that's so powerful, right? Like, you know, you're in the podcast, you've written multiple books now. This is your speculative memoir that's out in the world. And there's, you know, so many of us that we're not, we're not gonna, we're not gonna write the book as much as we might want to, we're not gonna write the book. And so to have our stories represented and to be able to find pieces of them through you and other adoptees is just so magical. I think. So as I was reading your new book, I mean, I've read, I think I've read pretty much everything else that you've put out in the world. But because this was one, this was so deeply personal to you, it also was deeply personal to me as an adopted person. As you shared, there's all these documents like from the adoption agency, the letters from your birth and, and I mean like actual, you know, scanned copies of them. So people can see the handwriting and all of those things. It felt so real and ...

Shannon: I know probably sometimes too real, like sometimes Yeah.

Haley: It. Some of it I was like, oh my God, is this what my birth mother wrote about me? Is this what, like just so many like connection points I felt with you. I, I just, it's so good, Shannon. And I'm not just saying this cuz we're looking, you know, face to face here.

Shannon: Yeah. Thank you.

Haley: This is the thing that people wanted and we haven't really talked too much about, like, the whole premise. It's like, who the characters in the book. It's like, it's you and your story. And also what if you had stayed with your mother? Yeah. And so, and in looking at that kind of going back and forth, and that's what we always dream about as a kid.

Like so many of us think about like, well, what, what did we have been if we were still with our biological family? And so to have it like interspersed like that, The surprise. I mean, so good. I don't wanna say. this is the hard part. Like, how do you say that without saying the thing?

Shannon: Yeah, yeah. Right, you gotta read that part. Yes. You gotta read the book to, you know, get at the, sort of the, the, the ending, which is, you know, sort of like my nerd finale. But but yeah, I mean, I, I think so many of us, as you say, go about our lives with this. These dopplegangers, you know, this, this sort of, this, this person living on this alternate timeline.

That's me. But it, it's not me. And what does that mean for my own identity for my relationships, particularly, you know, probably with my adoptive family, but, but not just that, right? Like my sense of, of reality and. And so this was really sort of my, I mean, it's kind of a gift, but it's just sort of also just like this experiment, you know, of like really, you know, I, I described the premise of somebody, a non- adoptee one time, and they're like, oh, it's like sliding doors.

And I'm like, no, it's not... . No, it's not at all like sliding doors because sliding doors is this sort of, And I don't know if people know that it's an old movie with Gwyneth Paltro and it's like, oh, she did this. She went in this door. Then like her whole life would've been different, but she went in that door or whatever.

But it's like, you know, and there's many stories like that, but with this, it's sort of like, I wanted to really just like sink deeply into the, the other reality. For me, Erin Powers, you know, the, that was my name at birth. No, what is her daily life like, really? What is her life like with Patricia and you know, her white biological family, you know, and you know, with, with Shannon, you know, like how does she think about Erin and how do they intersect and what kinds of new knowledge or information can we get sitting deeply in those two realities.

That was really kind of the premise of the book. Because also, you know, another thing that my friend Sun Young said was that, you know, we, we have stories of search and reunion, but we actually don't have a lot of stories about the longitudinal experience of search and reunion, and she's like, and so I think it's also important that you wrote this book in your forties because it really shows the intergenerational sort of effects of this.

And you know, it's not seamless and it's not easy. And it's not, you know, like all these things, right? I mean, there's still all these ruptures that, that keep popping up.

Haley: Absolutely. And you, and there's this, the one thing that you do, that there's the whole chapter of this whole, you know, story, whatever, and then a little bit down the way you're like, oh, okay, that wasn't actually true.

Shannon: Yes.

Haley: Like struck through.

Shannon: It's like, oh yeah.

Haley: How many times has that happened to us? Yep. Yeah, it's so beautifully written. I mean, I know people have read your other work and so I'm sure they, they have an expectation. It what lives up to the expectation exactly of what you think this might be. And I love that you talk in our last interview that you're writing it like at that time and you tell us a little bit about it.

So anyway, that's just like a special little like breadcrumb trail to where we are now. Yeah. I just, I love that it's in the world and I think so many adopted people will feel very seen. No matter what their experience is, even if you've not had the reunion, even if you're, if you don't wanna search any of those things, it's like the speculative nature of it, like the what ifs.

I think that's very relatable. What do you wanna recommend to us?

Shannon: My friends at the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture they have a journal and it is, hard copy and online. The hard copy edition for this particular special edition isn't out yet, but it's available online and what it is is various critical adoption scholars, many of them adoptees talking about the Dobbs decision, which of course, you know, is taken away the abortion, women's right to abortion and nationally, and so critical adoptions, study scholars writing about how that intersects with issues of adoption.

And so I've read, you know, just a, a few of the pieces, they're all a thousand words or less, and you don't, you don't have to be an academic to appreciate them. And so I just, yeah, I just would encourage folks to, to check it out online.

Haley: Awesome. Yeah, I'll definitely link to that. Oh my goodness. So many brilliant people writing over there.

Shannon: Yeah. Oh my. Yeah, it's, yeah. Yeah. Kind of amazing. Yeah, they've, I think they have 12 up right now or some, something like that. That's a lot.

Haley: Okay. Well, and. What I find is when we read pieces like that, that can just help us in our everyday, if we're talking to people like it, it can give us language as well to express some of the things that probably have been turning around about those, right? Yeah. So yeah, and I agree, like you don't have to be academic to access any of those things. It's. readable. We're trying to like, help people access those things.

Shannon: Yes. Well, academics, it's like, it, it, it's a problem for academics too, right? Like, I, I mostly write creative stuff, but I do write some scholarly stuff and, you know, I've got a, a piece on little fires everywhere with, you know, Dr. Kimberly McKee coming out in feminist formations, you know, a little later in the year. And I mean, yeah, it's got some academic elements, and we're looking at little fires everywhere through a reproductive justice lens, right? We want, we, we don't just want academics to read it, you know, like we want to hear from just regular people, you know? So it, it, yeah. It, it is a problem that, you know, sort of, things get siloed into these places and people are like, oh, well that's not for me. But it's like, what? Not necessarily, you know, like.

Haley: Yes, it can be for sure. It can be. Okay. Can you tell us where we can connect with you online?

Shannon: Okay, so my website is probably the easiest way, and it's just my name ShannonGibney.com. And I try to keep that pretty up to date particularly with events and such. And then I'm on IG and it's Shannon at ShannonElaineGibney. My full name with my middle name and then Twitter is at Gibney Shannon and Facebook is Shannon Gibney.

Haley: Perfect. We'll link to all those and I'll definitely link to your events page cuz you've got lots of stuff coming up with the book release into the world. So there's live events, I think some virtual things coming to you, and we are going to have book club with you in February.

Shannon: Yeah, I'm so excited about that. I'm really so excited. So yeah, thank you.

Haley: You had mentioned earlier that in that in 2022 we, we read Dream Country, we also read See No Color, but we had you come for a Dream Country to have a conversation with our adoptee readers. It was so good. So can't wait for that and hopefully people will come and join us.

Shannon: That would be fantastic. Yeah. I love, I love book, book club, so thanks for telling me . Yeah.

Haley: We love adoptee writers and there's so many books we just, there's, you know, can't even pick them all, but you're our first repeat author.

Shannon: Woohoo.

Haley: In book clubs.

Shannon: Woohoo.

Haley: Love it. Love it. Thank you so much, Shannon. Congratulations on your brand new work, and I know there's more coming from you.

Shannon: Oh yeah. It's a busy, it is a very busy time right now, but a good time. Too. Yes. So yeah. Yeah. We like to be busy writers, like to be busy, so yeah, for sure.

Haley: Wonderful.

Shannon: Thank you Haley and everyone really appreciate it.

Haley: I totally missed asking Shannon about this, but I do wanna let you know, Shannon read her own audiobook. So if you are an audiobook fan and you want her to read this book to you, she will, which is so amazing. I love hearing authors read in their own voice and there's just something about that personal connection and they know what they meant when they wrote a sentence.

So you'll get the exact tone that they intend for you to get when you're listening. So I love. Shannon is so amazing. I think I mentioned in the show that this is gonna be her second book club with us, so we have that event coming up in February. If you wanna join us, it's adopteeson.com/bookclub has details about all the upcoming book club events and it is a live zoom.

So we usually have a one hour interview with the author, and it's me and my co-host Carrie Cahill Mulligan is gonna be doing that interview with Shannon and I take questions from the chat and read them out. And that's an hour on Zoom that is recorded, and then later the audio only is released into the podcast feed for patrons, so you can listen anytime if you're not able to join us.

Our book clips are usually Saturday mornings on North America time. And yeah, if you wanna join us, we would love to have you. We have some other book clips coming up right away. We are reading Already Enough by Lisa Olivera this month, which we have a book club with her at the end of January. Lots of great stuff happening over on Patreon for supporters of the podcast who help keep the lights on over here.

So AdopteesOn.com/community. If you want to learn about the other things about Patreon. If you have your calendar handy, our adoptee's only book club with Lisa Olivera reading already enough is going to be January 28th, 2023, and our book club with Shannon Gibney for her brand new speculative memoir is going to be February 25th, 2023 and both of those are Saturday mornings. Thank you for listening, and let's talk again next Friday.

235 JaeRan Kim, Ph.D.

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/235

---

Haley: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.

(Upbeat music)

You are listening to adoptees on the podcast where adoptees discussed the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Happy 2023. What a way for us to begin the new year. One of the people I'm most highly esteem in the adoptee community is here, Dr. JaeRan Kim. JaeRan shares her personal story and a brilliant new model to help us move beyond "out of the fog" language and instead come into adoptee consciousness.

Dr. JaeRan Kim is an adoptee scholar and community leader, author of the prolific blog Harlow's Monkey, and as one of the very first adoptees, I had the great honor of learning from when I was first experiencing a rupture and dissonance in my understanding of adoption to use their new adoptee consciousness model language.

Before we get started, I wanted to invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We have a ton of amazing events coming up. I'll talk about that at the end of the show, so stick around to find out about that.

Dr. JaeRan Kim and I wrap up our interview 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.

(Upbeat Music)

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Dr. JaeRan. Kim, welcome JaeRan.

JaeRan Kim: Thank you, Haley. I'm so honored to be asked to be on your podcast.

Haley: Okay. I'm gonna gush a little bit because you are one of the very first bloggers I ever followed back when I was first in reunion with my father, which was almost 12 years ago.

And you are one of the main reasons I started processing adoption in a different way. And so you were at, you know, on my bucket list. This is a bucket list interview for me, so I'm very, very honored to speak with you and I'd love it if you would start the way we usually do and share some of your story with us.

JaeRan Kim: Sure. I think most people probably know, if you've read my blog or listened to some of my other podcast interviews that I've done that I grew up in Minnesota. I was adopted in 1971 to a family there and you know, just had kind of what I would describe a pretty non-descript typical childhood. I had two younger siblings.

My parents were just, you know, kind of your typical, average suburban Minnesota family. We grew up, I grew up kind of having all the childhood experiences that most kids really thrive in. And what I typically say is that my parents were actually pretty good when it comes to talking about adoption. I didn't, I never felt really any different.

I never felt singled out. But the, the challenging part for me was we didn't talk about that I was a transracial adoptee, that I was Korean and that when I came I was almost three years old. And so there was just kind of a lot about that aspect of my identity that was never really touched on growing up.

And you know, I think like a lot of other adoptees, and I know we're gonna talk about this model that I did with some other adoptees, it took me a long time. I was like, typically in college before I really started thinking about and processing what it meant to be a transracial adoptee. And mostly that was because of the exposure I had to other people that had different experiences, well shared experience with me, but different from what I had experienced growing up.

Haley: And I saw that something happened to you when you were 30 years old that prompted something for you.

JaeRan Kim: We all have these catalyst moments, right? Where something specifically happens. I reconnected with a friend of mine that I had met, that known very briefly as a child and she said, I'm going to Korea.

I would like you to come to Korea with me to do a birth family search. And so we did. And that was really kind of what opened everything up for me is starting to meet other adoptees and getting connected to that community. At first it was Korean adoptees and that prompted me to come back and go back to school and think about becoming a social worker.

I really wanted to understand, you know, how could a child like me who was in these orphanages in South Korea end up in a white middle class Christian suburban family. It doesn't just happen, you know, the adoption narrative is kind of like, oh, you know, these parents need a kid and these kid, this kid needs a parent. It just happens and it all works out. And I knew that, that all these other things had to have happened for our family to be what it was.

And I wanted to understand it, and nobody could really explain it. My parents couldn't explain it. They didn't understand the mechanics of it other than their own personal experience.

So meeting other adoptees, hearing their stories, seeing the differences and the similarities really helped me think broader. Helped me think about, okay, so what are the systems? What are the push-pull factors? What happened in Korea? What happened in other countries? Oh, what happened in the United States?

You know, I only knew my own experience. I didn't really know anything about domestic adoption either. . And so going to school and getting my social work degree gave me the opportunity to really learn about how adoption's been practiced in the United States in other countries. It was, it was really, it was a catalyst for me.

Haley: So you started blogging around 2006?

JaeRan Kim: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And I have a quote that is from your blog, so I'll read it to you.

"It sounds cliche, but 10 years ago I was a totally different person from who I am today. I was a shy, timid, private, introverted person who believed that I'd never figure out how to do anything meaningful in my life. Everything I've done in these past 10 years has been because I had supportive and loving people in my life who believed I could amount to something in this world, even when I didn't believe them myself."

Now that was from January of 2010.

JaeRan Kim: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And so now we're 13 years later. So can you tell me about your evolution from, I guess age 30, from that pivotal moment to now, in your understanding of adoption and, and its personal impact on your life and, and the adoptees that you researched.

JaeRan Kim: And I would even have to say that I'd have to go back a little bit further than 2000 when I was 30 because, well, actually in 2000 I was 30, almost 32. I'm 54 now. So I'm trying to do the math here quickly, because in my twenties, I, I got married really young. My husband and I we're still together. We eloped when we were 20 years old.

Haley: Oh.

JaeRan Kim: And yeah. Yeah. And you know, part of that blog post that you just read, was about him because he really supported my whole journey.

When he met me, I wasn't thinking about adoption at all. I was barely thinking about race. You know, I was just, I look back at my little baby- adoptee/ adult- adoptee self and I just think about all the things I didn't know. And you know, a lot of partners when they marry or start, have re having relationships with their adoptee partners who go through that evolution sometimes there's a lot of questions like, why now? Why was this not an issue before? You know, what happened? And so having somebody who's really open to being able to say, yep, just tell me it's okay. I'm not, you know, non-judgmental. Okay, we'll figure this out together. I think it's really huge. So I, I'd just also like to give a shout out that part of going back to school, becoming a social worker, starting my blog, was really supporting, it was supported by him. He, he came up with a name Harlow's Monkey by the way.

Haley: Which is so brilliant. We love that.

JaeRan Kim: It's still great. Cause I was talking about in my social work programs, I was talking about Harlow's Monkey and then, you know, I wanted to start doing this blog and I couldn't come up with a catchy name and I was anonymous at first, so I didn't want anyone to know it was me again, that's that shy, introverted self. I didn't wanna be public. So he said, well what about Harlow's Monkey as as your moniker? And it was brilliant.

I think I just didn't really think that much about adoption outside of my own experience. And I had a lot of questions. My parents first of all were very open with my adoption records, what they had of it, and I didn't know to ask for more or to dig further.

And I would say that like a lot of people, I was just kind of going along for the ride. I just accepted everything that had happened to me as well. That just must have been the way that it needed to work out. I grew up in a very evangelical Christian family, and so there was a lot of talk about things that were meant to be.

It was God's will, that sort of thing. And so as I got older and started questioning things like, well, it's not, I didn't think personally it was God's will. I was really starting to uncover that there were people involved and they may have been doing it based on what they thought was God's will. But it was really impactful to me, and I don't, I didn't necessarily go along with, with that mindset, right?

Because I had left the church in my early twenties and was kind of going through my own spiritual identity at the same time. And because adoption was seen as so tied into Christianity in my family growing up it was kind of this, the rupture from being part of this organized religious community.

Also, the rupture around the way I thought about adoption happened at the same time because there's a lot of talk about saviorism and there's a lot of talk about, you know, I, I remember growing up there was a friend of mine who got pregnant when she was in college and everybody in the church wanted her to place the child for adoption.

And I said, I don't think she should do that. She's an adult, you know, she should be able to raise her child. And everybody kept saying, well, it's God's will for her to place that child for adoption. And that was the first time I think I really remember disagreeing, but I didn't feel like I had the power to really strongly argue for that.

Right. In the end, she did keep her child and she raised him, and so it, you know, things worked out, but just the whole narrative around the church saying this, this was in the best interest of both the child and the, and the parent. And that was really my first kind of inkling that, no, I think I have a different belief, but it wasn't fully formed yet.

It was really going to school and re- reading about the Native American boarding schools. Really looking at adoption policies and histories, reading lots of historical books about how adoption practices evolved over time. I was a child welfare student, so I knew I was gonna work in the field of child welfare and seeing how it was practiced, these things really changed how I saw adoption in really significant ways because I think I really learned if you support families, cuz most families love and wanna raise their kids, but there are obstacles and barriers to them being able to do that. And my experience working in child welfare wasn't that all these parents were abusing their kids.

Some did, but many times there were many other things that were preventing them from being able to raise their kids. And it's just everything learning about adoption subsidies. And not that I think that adoptive parents shouldn't receive subsidies necessarily, but why is all this money being spent on supporting kids in their adoptive homes when that money could have supported, you know, families of origin to keep their kids?

When I started working in child welfare, there weren't that many kids being raised by their relatives to keep them intact in their larger families and communities where they had that continuity of history and family. Now that's changed, but when I was working in child welfare in the two thousands, early two thousands, it wasn't the priority.

And I was really influenced by folks like Kevin Campbell who did the Family Finders work. And he would take youth in foster care that supposedly were cold cases, they had no known family members. He would be able to find an average of 40 to 60 family members for these youth in foster care and helped them get connected.

And so I knew that there were people out there doing this work that had kind of the counter narrative to what I had always assumed, you know? And that also then really shaped how I thought about it, and I wanted to, I really wanted other people to know this information too. That was part of the reason why I started the blog.

I was documenting my own journey and I wanted other people to, to have the same information that I had because information is powerful.

Haley: Absolutely. And so you have this moment in your twenties of being like, oh, family preservation. Like of course this, this woman should parent her child. Even when everyone else was like, oh, you know, you should give... and then you see all these systemic practices that have promoted adoption over a preservation.

And, and I, I'm, I'm making some assumptions now, but you see the lack of actual academic studies past childhood for adoptees. Can you talk about that? Finding the gap in the knowledge?

JaeRan Kim: When I was working in child welfare, I was working in foster care adoptions. These were youth that had already experienced a termination of parental right.

That means legally their, you know, their families, their first parents were no longer had any legal physical rights to make decisions about their lives, right? So my job was to find adoptive families for them. And I would read home studies and I would say, I would think, is there a script for home studies?

These parents, all their home studies, all look exactly the same. I used to joke in Minnesota that the families were all married, they all lived outside of the city. They were active in their church. The mom was liked to read and sew or read and quilt, and the dad liked to go fishing and hunting. It, it was almost like a script.

and I had the opportunity to, as part of my work, to attend prospective parent trainings and kind of support groups. And I just really felt like there wasn't, we weren't preparing adoptive families very well and the practices that we were doing every day, I had questions about what's the research evidence on this?

Because talking to the youth, and I worked mostly with youth who were like 12 to 17 years old and they're very vocal and they, they would tell me what they thought about the ways that we were practicing child welfare when I would talk to them about adoptive, prospective adoptive families and what they wanted in an adoptive families.

You know, really listening to them and hearing what they had to say, I thought we're not doing a good job on the end of trying to find adoptive families for these kids that are really gonna listen and who are gonna affirm their identities, who are going to see them for who they are. So I started looking at the research and I have to say I was really disappointed in how the combination of my own personal experience and then my professional experience working with youth who, adopt or foster youth, and really kind of wondering like, where is the research that kind of talks about what everybody is saying, who's had this lived experience of being either in foster care or being an adoptee.

Because at this time I had also been, again, like meeting all these other adoptees, Korean adoptees and black transracial adoptees and Native American adoptees. And so I was meeting many, many more people who had foster care or adoption experiences and I didn't think the research really spoke to our lived experiences.

And I remember saying to my husband, I think I need to go to a PhD program, because I, I want to ask the questions that nobody else is asking, cuz most of the questions were asking young kids about their experiences and they could tell you what it was like to be an eight or a nine year old, but they couldn't tell you, you know, when they're 30 or 40 or 50 or 60, what it was like being a kid.

You know, kids wanna please their parents, they don't wanna say anything wrong. You know, I just, I was always a little concerned about how much assurance adults were placing on what kids were saying when they hadn't gone through their whole adoptee development yet. You know, like all of us do. So they were making placement, like professionals are making placement decisions based on what little kids are saying without thinking about how that might impact us when we're much older in our lives.

And youth, especially if you're adolescents, there's so much negativity around what they say and what they want. And I just really felt like we weren't listening, we weren't listening to, to what youth in foster care were saying about their experiences and how they thought about adoption. They're constantly being told you don't know what's in your best interest, but they're, they will tell you what they think and it has to be nuanced.

You know, obviously, like when you're an adolescent, you don't know everything yet, you know. So sometimes adults do have, you know, that wisdom to share about what might, what they might wanna anticipate in the future. But I really felt like we weren't listening to foster youth at all.

Haley: So I know you've done multiple different studies that have added to the, you know, wealth of knowledge now about, well, maybe not wealth, but like, the start of knowledge about adult adoptees and our experiences.

And, I, I do, I'm we're gonna get to the model that you developed with some adoptee peers. I first wanna ask, how has it been now in recent years working in this field as an adult adoptee and wanting to add to the conversation about adult adoptee experiences and looking back to childhood and et cetera?

I mean, I was at a conference that you presented at last year, early in the year with I think probably a student of yours. And you know, there's other people presenting at the conference that are adoptive parents or are still working in adoption and perpetuating some of the problematic, you know, system that you have, you know, shared like you're like discovering as you were going through your, you know, blogging and, and academia career.

So what is it like for you and how do you deal still being and working with colleagues that are still doing this problematic stuff?

JaeRan Kim: There's, there are. Yeah. It, it can be challenging. There are biases, but I think, well, first of all, there have been adoptees doing research and doing the work long before me and I am where I am because they, some of them reached out or recognized me or mentored and supported me. I was highly influenced by a number of adoptees who are doing research. You know, Dr. John Rabel and Amanda Baden, and Dr. Gina Samuels. So there have been lots of others who I read their articles when I was in grad school and that helped me kind of think and formulate strategies for how I'm gonna do my own research.

I think one of the things that is the hardest for me is, and a lot of adoptee researchers are pretty good about, and kind of insistent on talking about our positionality and talking about how our lenses and our experiences inform the questions that we ask and the, the way we design our studies and the topics that we wanna explore.

And it's always been frustrating to me how few adoption researchers who are adoptive parents and they don't disclose it, or they think that it doesn't provide a, a bias or any specific lens to their work. And I've always really just wondered like, what is what that is? I, I constantly hear new like, oh, did you know so and so is an adoptive parent?

And it's, of course, it's somebody that does adoption research and I didn't know . I just learned of another one. And I'm always like, why don't they ever talk about it? I mean, we talk about it. And what that does is it creates a sense that adoptees are biased and that when we do our research, we're doing it because of our own, you know, oftentimes they think it's our own bad experiences with adoption.

One of the things that I talk about is like, I don't have like a bad adoption story, right? I think I have kind of the classic adoption story for a lot of adoptees, meaning that there were some things that, you know, were hard and challenging growing up, but like I, my adoptive parents weren't abusive and you know, so all those things.

But there is an assumption that, because I like to research the things that aren't talked about in adoption. For example, adoption disruptions and displacement and adoptee estrangements from their adoptive parents. This isn't necessarily driven just because I had this experience. I talk about it because so many adoptees have told me their stories and nowhere, it's not found anywhere.

And in fact, when I bring it up with other child welfare or adoption researchers, I often get this, well, there's no data on that. They discount it. Well that's such a small percentage, we just don't have enough information about that. But until we start to actually do research on it, we never will. And all those people who have had those experiences, their voices are never gonna be documented.

They're never, their experiences are never gonna be taken seriously. And I think that that's terrible, for lack of a better word. I think that that's, that's abhorrent. We need to be documenting all of the experiences that adoptees have, not just the ones that make it look like everything is great, and so we should continue the practices and the status quo.

And I don't, even if it's only 5%, even if it's 10%, we need to be re-looking at our practices. If there's five or 10% of the adoptees that are not being, if they're adoptions harm them, we need to take that seriously. I've said this to other folks too. You know, when there's something else that's kind of a public health crisis, the threshold is much less than that.

But when it comes to adoptees, we tend to say, well, unless it becomes like the majority, then it's fine. But we have made, we have changed laws for a much smaller percentage of people who have been harmed by things. I just think that we need to be thinking the same way when it comes to child welfare and to the, to adoptees.

Haley: Absolutely. So we're so thankful that you are like, oh, we don't have data on that. Okay, let's get some. So you're. The people doing that. And I appreciate too, you know, this acknowledgement of all those who've come before us, right? So for me, I look at you and I'm like, oh my gosh, she came before me. And in your blog you were always highlighting and continue to do so, all of the folks that you learned from and, and you would reference and all, all of those things.

So I appreciate that, trying to bring all that knowledge to the next gen and the next gen after that, et cetera. So before we talk about the model you developed with your colleagues, you know, the language that we've used for years is adoptees coming outta the fog. Meaning some form of when we realize the impact adoption has had on our lives and the implication that people that are still, you know, air quotes in the fog, haven't woken up to that yet.

Awaken awakened from the great sleep as Betty Jean Lifton would say. But something that you pointed out to me before we started recording when we were planning the interview, that you mentioned that you didn't want adoptees to feel shame if they didn't know about the complexities of adoption because the system was built to support keeping us in the dark.

JaeRan Kim: Yes.

Haley: Can you talk about that please?

JaeRan Kim: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is something that I learned, you know, when I was going through my own awakening or out of the fog or however you wanna call it, we would call it moving into rupture. Yeah, we know there's so much about the process of adoption that is hidden. You've raised I mean, our whole identities as adoptees are kept secret.

And Tony Corsentino, who you had on your podcast, I loved how he phrased the difference between privacy and secrecy, right. And how, who it benefits. I thought he did such a great job of articulating that. And that's, I think that that's a huge part of what I mean by this, that statement. Because so much of an adoptee's life is shrouded in secrecy with this kind of assumption that it's meant to protect people, but it really doesn't, it's actually quite harmful for us to not have our information and know our identities.

And so it, because we're constantly told these paradoxes like, this happened for your own good. That when we start to really explore and think about it and understand, oh, all these adoption practices, some of them are really, really harmful. The idea of falsifying our birth certificates, for example, and that we don't have access to our original birth certificates.

And these are really damaging to a person's sense of identity, but it's also just damaging to all the things that happen when we live our daily lives. Like every, we're, well, you know, this, you know, adoptees are the only people that, that don't actually have true identities because they're all built on false documents.

Haley: Isn't that, it's wild to think about, right? Like you just paused there, like uhhuh . It is, yeah. And you're talking about original birth certificate access and you're someone that actually doesn't even know when your actual birthday was. You know?

JaeRan Kim: Right, right. Like or where I was born at all right.

Haley: You're like, I think I came, I was around three. I mean, who, who gets to decide how old you are?

JaeRan Kim: Well, that's just it. Exactly. Who gets to decide all of it? Who gets to decide? You know, who our parents are going to be? Who gets to decide what our names are going to be? Who gets to decide if our birth dates are accurate? Who gets to decide how much of our past family history we are entitled to know? All of that. And as you know, especially in the United States, but it happens everywhere, because there's more of a demand for especially young children, babies, and, and infants. So many people have done really unethical and illegal things in order to become parents.

Adoption professionals and I really say that social workers in particular need to be held accountable for how they've participated in falsifying records, in obscuring information and advocating for legislation that perpetuates this harm of us not being able to have access to our own information. Right. I mean, that's just it there, and I'm not even talking about then once we're placed in families and what, how we screen and the narratives around who's believed.

You know, as we know there are adoptive parents, it's like there's other parents who are not always providing safe loving homes for their children, but because they're adoptive parents, the scrutiny isn't there. And in the same way that it is for families of origin, if there's any allegations of abuse or neglect.

My research found adoptees would often tell other adults that they were being abused or neglected in their homes and they were not believed. Or people would kind of throw their hands up and they say, well, you know, there was this assumption that adoptive parents are always better parents because of who our first parents are and the fact, you know, that there was a reason why we were with the adoptive parents instead.

All of this is just a complicated way of saying that the system all the ways that laws and policies and practices have kind of purposely kept us away from this information. You know, when we aren't informed about our own structural systems that that had a hand in how our families were put together, then it's really easy of course for us just to believe all the platitudes and the media and what everybody has said.

You know, adoptive parents tell their kids, "oh, your, your first mom loved you so much she placed you for adoption", or "we got to choose you" knowing that actually all those different things are probably not true. They don't actually really know most of the time, you know, organizations, agencies, professional staff, they did the matching.

They worked with the first families. You know, it might be a little bit different now in with open adoptions and and stuff, but at least for most of us who are of a certain age, it was really kind of random about how we ended up in the families that we ended up in. And so once you start to uncover and, and dig in and learn about all this, that's when you have what we in, in our model called the rupture, right?

All of a sudden you're like... and then you can feel a huge sense of internal shame, like, why didn't I know? Or, this is partly what we're hoping this model is going to do is help other adoptees, not be so negative towards adoptees who haven't learned this yet. Right. Because I think that we can cause lateral harm to each other when we say like a good adoptee is one who is anti- adoption or wants to abolish adoption or whatever.

We have a lot of diversity in our experiences. And so I think that all of our experiences need to be taken into consideration. And so some adoptees might be starting their path towards becoming more critically aware, but if they feel like they're not doing it fast enough or in the same way that other adoptees do, they might actually just close down and shut down and go back into a more convenient status quo phase and not do that exploration.

And so I, I want us to support every adoptee. Mm-hmm. who's go going through that.

Haley: Well, it feels like it's not. Safe, then it's not safe to explore cuz you're just gonna get shut down. And when you were describing earlier, the word that was in my head of, of the experience of us growing up and being told all of these things and the societal pressure was just indoctrination.

JaeRan Kim: Yes.

Haley: Like we have been indoctrinated. So to unpack years and years of that, I absolutely, like, I'm, I'm so glad you used the word shame. Like it does feel, it's like once you see it, you can't unsee it. And so this, this idea that you're like, how come I didn't see it? Like I'm not, am I not a stupid person? I don't understand.

Anyway, let's, let's, can you go through the model and the different pieces for us? Cuz I think that will help just frame our discussion about this. So Yeah, I'll, I'll let you go ahead and do that.

JaeRan Kim: So we, of course, you know, some of our. Adoptee ancestors as you know, Betty Jean Lifton, and we looked at the model that Boarders, Penny (JM) and Borders (DI) had done, kind of, and then we, we kind of looked at other groups of people, specifically Paolo Freire and his pedagogy of the oppressed, working with folks who you know, like conceptualizing the idea of what happens when people start to question and they develop a critical consciousness about their oppression.

Gloria also, you know, writes about the process of, in her specific case, what does it mean to be mixed race? What does it mean to be mestiza? What does it mean to be a multilingual, multiethnic and queer and try to embrace all of these identities in these, in this world that wants to put you in these narrow confines.

And as adoptees, we all know, right? We are used to knowing that we're from multiple families, that we have these really these experiences that are not singular. And so we wanted to kind of talk about that as well as kind of think about identity development, because there's been several identity development models around like adoptees throughout their, their lives.

But identity development models tend to be really kind of like you're in this phase and then you're in this phase, and then maybe you come over here. And oftentimes there's a judgment about one, phases being good or bad.

Haley: Right, the linear and like ..

JaeRan Kim: The linearness of it.

Haley: You gotta go from one to two and and number four is the highest Uhhuh.

JaeRan Kim: Right. Right. And here's where you should be and here's where we don't want you to be anymore. And again, that causes a sense of shame if you are not there yet, or if you haven't had experiences that have challenged you to think about the paradoxes or to think about both/ and. So we really wanted a model that was, more holistically show kind of demonstrated what many of us go through, which we think is more of a spiral because you might learn something like, let's say you realize, oh, it's actually problematic that my birth certificate says that I was born in a place that I was not born, to people who I was not born to, right?

That's, that's actually not true, and yet I don't have access to that true information. So it may start there. You may not be ready yet to be thinking about, did my adoption agency falsify? Maybe I'm not truly an orphan, or maybe this information my parents received about my first family isn't accurate. Or maybe I was kidnapped or stolen, or you know, whatever the situation is.

You may not be ready to go there yet, but maybe you're ready to start just thinking about what are the ethics around having a birth certificate that's not true and accurate. You can go through all these different stages and kind of circle around and go back. You might feel like you've resolved one part of your adoption experience, but again, it may be a while before you have a rupture that kind of propels you to be thinking about something else.

So that's why we conceptualized our motto as spiral instead of as linear, and we wanted to kind of say like, status quo is just like when you just don't question what's been told to you. It's accepting, accepting it without any kind of curiosity. Right. And a lot of adoptees do this because it's safe.

And you're validated by larger society and it's a protective measure, right? So one of the things that I sometimes tell people who kind of question that is like, you know, well they seem fine and they don't seem to care and they, they're uncritical. And I'm like, well, maybe they had to be uncritical.

Maybe it was the safest thing for them to be uncritical because they know that they're in a family or they can sense that their environment wouldn't be supportive of them exploring that. So maybe it will take, that's why I think a lot of us, as the older we get, the more we're able to be critical and to, to look at adoption and with a critical lens.

Because the older we get, the more resources we have, the better we know ourselves. We oftentimes have supported people in our lives and so it's a safer way for us to do that. But that's why I think it's also really, it can be really challenging for some because they may, may not have that safety around them to do that exploration.

So the status quo is kind of where I think many of us start out. And then rupture again is where something happens. We learn a bit of information, we meet somebody who had a different experience. It's what kind of is the catalyst or the instigator to us starting to have questions and start to think like, oh, maybe what I knew isn't the way it is.

And then dissonance is that time period where you're really struggling between what you thought, you know, knew the information you're starting to learn. And it's really what I, I kind of call it like struggling with the paradoxes because there's so many paradoxes and adoption. So for example, we said if somebody says your birth mother, I don't like to use birth mother, but it's common for people to say, your birth mother loved you so much, she placed you for adoption cuz she wanted a better life for you.

So struggling with that, that's the time of dissonance. Like, is that really true? And maybe at that point you've searched for your first family and maybe you've met your first family and you find out that's not true. And so it's that real struggle around what can I believe? What should I believe? That dissonance is like, I need to do something about it, but you don't really know what.

And the expansiveness is where you start to kind of dig deeper into it and say, okay, I, I need to do more thinking of this. I need to do more research on this. I need to explore this dissonance more. I need to see if I can find ways to help me come to terms and understand what has happened. And then the last stage we call forgiveness and activism.

And that's really where we've done a lot of the work in our expansiveness time. We start to formulate some ideas about what it means to us. And then oftentimes it's where we wanna join in with other people now and start to think about the broader sense. So it's a little bit of a pullback from our own individual experiences and now where we're starting to say, let's join these other groups.

Let's coalesce. Let's you know it's where you might do some activism. And people sometimes ask about the forgiveness part. And when we talk about forgiveness, we don't mean like carte blanche, just say like, oh, like the adoption system was abusive towards me and caused me harm, but it's okay, I forgive them.

It's about, again, taking that larger, broader view in saying things happened and yes, we should hold people accountable, but also I use the example of like adoptive parents; kind of understanding that our adoptive parents were told the same lies that everybody else was told, right? And so sometimes the things that they did that were not supportive are because they really believed what other people had told them and they wanted to believe that.

And so we can understand that they did or said things that were harmful to us, but not because they were intending necessarily to be harmful to us, but that it was part of the larger system that intentionally tried to keep us all in the dark. So I don't know if that helps some of the listeners with that aspect, but I know that's something that we get asked about.

Haley: I think it's, I, I, I appreciate that you brought it up cuz I did have a question about that. . And when I read the paper as I read it, it doesn't mean like, oh, you have to have forgiven. Especially for, I mean there's lots of us that are, as you mentioned earlier, are estranged from adoptive parents or had a bad situation, and it's not like forgiving for that.

It's, it's more this piece of the participation in the adoption industry as a whole versus like our personal kind of relationship with them. Am I getting that correct?

JaeRan Kim: Yes. I mean, because people still need to be held accountable for their behaviors and their actions. So we're not saying, oh, if you had abusive parents, just forgive them.

Not at all. Understanding you may have been placed in that family because of poor adoption practices by an agency who didn't do their due diligence and vetting your parents, for example. You're not necessarily even forgiving that adoption agency. Like they should still be held accountable if they committed some unethical practices.

But for us to be able to work together and move forward, I don't say move on because I don't think we need to forget what happened to us, but moving forward, meaning to, to be able to help change the system, to change society, we also need to be able to kind of just say like, yes, things happen. Like history is filled with terrible things that have happened and I just, I think we felt like we need to be able to have a sense of, for... and one more thing, a sense of forgiveness for ourselves for also not knowing as well, right?

The forgiveness is like a larger sense of just like trying to heal ourselves. Not saying people aren't, shouldn't be held accountable for the things that they did.

Haley: Mm-hmm. , it's kind of like, there isn't quite the right word. Like, it's like trying to find a sense of peace in it. Not necessarily, yeah, like, like you said, not necessarily forgetting, like forgive and forget or that kind of a thing, but some sense of coming to terms with it so that you can be an activist and change things, if that's your vibe or not.

JaeRan Kim: Or not. Well, you know, it's also, it's like the difference between wanting to change the system out of a sense of revenge versus out of a system of collective community care.

Haley: Mm. Oh, that's good, right? Mm-hmm.

JaeRan Kim: Because, because anybody can try and, and be an activist out of a sense of revenge. There's this Nietzsche quote that was, really instrumental to me back in the early blogging days, which is, it's a paraphrase, but it's like, 'be careful fighting monsters lest you become one.'

And so sometimes you can see people who are really trying to change things using the same kind of tactics that were really harmful to us to keep us oppressed. And so for me, it's a reminder that we always need to be thinking about, how are we moving forward and changing the system out of a sense of community care, not in harmful ways that are just gonna perpetuate the oppression that we've experienced.

Haley: Hmm. I love that. I think that's something we definitely need to be mindful of. Can you just share who your co-authors are of this, Out of the Fog and Into Consciousness: A Model of Adoptee Awareness.

JaeRan Kim: Yep. So Dr. Susan Branco is the lead author. We worked on this together with Grace Newton, who is a Chinese adoptee. And then the other two co-authors is Dr. Kripa Cooper-Lewter, and Paula O'Loughlin, who works in education. And we're all adoptees. We're all transracial, transnational adoptees. And we're thrilled to talk about our model cuz we hope that it's helpful for people.

Haley: Well, and one of the things that you chose to do is have it accessible. So like for lots of academic articles, if folks don't know, you can click on a link and then you're... pay walls.

JaeRan Kim: You're asked to pay $40 to look at an article that you may not find meaningful to you.

Haley: Yeah. So to have this gift to the community is so amazing. Like. Hats off. Like I'm just really impressed by that.

And I really love this spiral model, and you share more about this in the paper and about how you can be in two different touchstone pieces at once and you can move back and forth. And as you said earlier when we were explaining the it's, it's not that, you know, stage one, stage two, stage two, stage four kind of thing.

It's very fluid. And I think we all really heard from you like, this is more about not having judgment for where other adoptees are in the process. So I really appreciate that. So can you say before we do our recommended resources, I mean we are so in the habit here of saying, coming out of the fog or like, oh, I know people don't like that, but you know, when you come out of the fog, like, how do you picture us, if you do, adapting this language into, you know, our regular vernacular when we're talking about this?

JaeRan Kim: That's a good question. I think, you know, if people know the different kind of touchstones or experiences, so again, we don't say like you're in this stage, but we talk about them as touchstones. So like if you've experienced rupture and that's a touchstone for you, that's kind of.. Rupture is the, the word that kind of describes your feelings and your thoughts and your actions at that particular point in time.

Like it's kind of a represent, representation of where you might be at. So if people can start to think about like, oh, I just experienced this rupture, or I'm experiencing dissonance right now because I'm having a hard time understanding the information that I had versus this new information I just received and I don't know where to, what to believe anymore.

That could be one way of helping it. Again, it's not like we want to force people to stop saying you're in the fog or outta the fog, but I think for our, for what we were talking about is the quote unquote, out of the fog time in your life, it's, it's not just a static one way of being. There's so many other iterations of what happens and you can be out of the fog, so to speak, in one area of your life and not in another area.

And so then how do you describe yourself that way? Right. So I think for the fog metaphor, I can see why people like it. It's just so concrete. You can imagine it. We've all experienced what a fog is like. And so I think I get why we use that term. We just wanted more nuance, I guess, is, you know, we wanted more, more descriptors for the different ways that we understand our adoptions.

Haley: I, I, and it absolutely does that for me. I see, I love the, how you said that, like, oh, I'm outta the fog. Okay. Well, I feel like I was outta the fog six years ago and my , I've been podcasting for six years, my perspective on adoption has totally shifted even from men. And so I love being able to see all of these different pieces in this model.

I just think it's brilliant. So my recommendation is that people will, will link to it. There's a few different places, I think a couple of you have shared on your blogs or your websites where you can download it. And like, I sat down with it with a highlighter and I wrote notes on it, like I was a nerd. I'm back in university. And that's what I hope people do. I think it's really helpful, honestly, I'm not just saying that cuz you're like right there. But JaeRan, I really think it will be so impactful for the community and already has been.

JaeRan Kim: We are going to be doing some focus groups after, you know, sometime in 2023 we're gonna be launching some focus groups so that we can hear from more adoptees about what this model might look like in different people's lives. So hopefully people will continue to check in with us so that we can get the information when we start to do our focus groups and potential surveys.

Haley: Oh, perfect. Yes. Okay. We will let people know where they can connect with you for sure. . I also, I've recommended your blog so many times on the show. I know other guests have, but y if you go back , I was doing that this morning. I was like, holy moly, you, you had a lot of posts there, Harlow's Monkey, and I was, I was scrolling back through, you know, how you go like, next post, next post, next post. And I was like, oh, I never heard of that. Like, I was still like finding think gems. So I hope folks go check that out. I mean, if you haven't yet, where, are you here? I guess so.

JaeRan Kim: I have a link. I have one page that has a link of kind of some of the more popular posts that people have either commented on or shared over, you know, since 2006 and they're kind of categorized. So that might be helpful for somebody who's new because as you said, like I've been posting since 2006.

There's a lot of content and, you know, if you want kind of a quick summary for people to go to, if you wanna hear my thoughts about race or child welfare or, you know, different things.

Haley: The angry adoptee post from 2007, right, when no one told me about adoption '09, anti-racism work from, you know, decades ago, like we're, oh yeah. Yeah. There's so much there. Thank you. Thank you so much for your work. I, I can't say enough. Really, really appreciate your commitment to the adoptee community and highlighting adoptee voices first. I think I must have learned that from you by osmosis, but you have it written down multiple places where that is your top priority.

What do you wanna recommend to us?

JaeRan Kim: Yeah, so I wanna recommend another really kind of old school resource because it was so helpful for me. I found it when I was doing some of my grad school work around 2006, 2007. It's called the Adoption History Project, and it's by author Ellen Hermann. She wrote a book called Kinship by Design, which anybody who wants to know about kind of the way modern, by modern we mean like from the 19 hundreds till today, modern adoption practices developed, who were the main influencing people in, what's kind of the science behind that?

She wrote this great book and when she was doing it, she kept this website, this adoption history project website, and it's, there's so much information cuz she would go to the archives and then she would, you know, find documents, primary documents. Anyway, it's such a great resource and it's an old school website, so it's not as easy to navigate as, as they are today.

Haley: Is it back in style now? I was like, oh, is this ? What's old is new again.

JaeRan Kim: Yeah. I, I would just give it a chance because I think it's such a great way for any of us to start to look at adoption, the way adoption has been conceptualized and practiced in the United States. So she also has stuff around transracial adoption and Native American adoption and international adoption.

There's, there's a lot of stuff there. So I think that's a good place for anybody to start. It will give you a little bit and then you can look for more.

Haley: Totally. The timeline. Yeah. With starting with the you know, orphan Train and the adoption of children act, and I mean, timely also. Right. She's writing about ICWA which is now under review for 2023. There'll be, you know mm-hmm. some ruling on it. And yeah. Again, talking about those who've come before us and have been documenting these things. I mean, it is on us not to be ignorant about it, honestly. So if you're in the, which, which touchstone? If you're in the forgiveness and activism touchstone, expansiveness. It could be expansiveness.

JaeRan Kim: Expansiveness, yes. I would say it's a good resource for that.

Haley: Okay. Well, we are gonna practice using the touchstone lingo here and our great thanks. I will. I can't speak on behalf of the community, but I'm going to right now, our great thanks on the community for all the work that you've done for us.

Dr. Kim, it is just honor to be able to talk with you.

JaeRan Kim: Well, thank you, Haley, for being part of the community and for all the work that you've done on your podcast. Been very important to elevate adoptive voices.

Haley: Thank you. Where can we connect with you online?

JaeRan Kim: So I would say Harlow's Monkey. My blog is probably the best place to start cuz I have links to all my social media there.

But I am on Instagram, I have a Harlow's Monkey Facebook account. I'm on LinkedIn. , I'm on Twitter, but not really. Not much. And that was even before , the recent changes happened. But you, yeah. You should be able to find me in multiple ways. You can also, I've started doing what I'm calling lab notes, which are these kind of weekly summaries.

And so you can sign up on my blog, website and you can get it to your email if you like that better.

Perfect. And

Haley: I'm assuming that when the time comes for your reaching out to people, that you'll be posting about that in all those spots?

JaeRan Kim: Yes.

Great. Thank you again so

Haley: much.

JaeRan Kim: Thank you.

Haley: Wow. I can't wait to hear more from JaeRan and her co-authors of the adoptee consciousness model. It is so fascinating and I think it will be really, really helpful for the community. As I already said in the episode.

I want to let you know about some of the awesome adoptees on events that are coming up. Patreon supporters are folks that support the show monthly or by a yearly subscription. And we have Zoom events through the year here and there. And if you're listening the day this came out, we have an adoptee's off-script party on January 14th with our, one of our favorite therapists, Pam Cordano and we're talking all about how to be a bad adoptee which I think is very funny.

We also have book club meetings coming up. With Lisa Olivera. We're talking about her book Already Enough. We are going to be reading Shannon Gibney's brand new speculative memoir, the Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be. And we're gonna be talking about Harrison Mooney's book, Invisible Boy. I'm telling you, the next few months, it is a happening place on Adoptees On Patreon.

So if you wanna join us, Adoptesson.com/communithy has details of how to sign up and we would love to have you join us. Our live Zoom events are only for adoptees. And most of them are recorded and released in audio form later in a podcast form. So if you're not an adoptee, you can listen later, but you just aren't invited to the live event. Those are adoptee only.

Okay. Thank you so much for listening. Excited about the new year, and let's talk again next Friday.

234 [Healing Series] Positive Racial Identity

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/234

---

Haley Radke: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.

(upbeat music)

Haley Radke: You are listening to adoptees on the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption. I'm Haley Radke. This is a special episode in our healing series where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps to support you and the show to support more adoptees around the world.

Today we are talking all about developing a positive racial identity and links to everything we'll be talking about are on the website, AdopteesOn.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to Welcome to Adopetes On, Dr. Abby Habserry! Welcome Abby.

Abby Hasberry: Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: I would love it if you would start. This is the first time you've been on and in our healing series I always love for folks to get to know the therapist a little bit. So would you share just a little bit of your story with us?

Abby Hasberry: I am a transracial adoptee, adopted in 1971, so in the baby scoop era, I am a black adoptee adopted by a white family who already had three biological children. So I was the only black child in my family.

I have lived all over the place, all over the world, all over, the US and the world, and have had a lot of experiences just with growing and learning and just becoming the person that I am now. To include, I'm also a birth mom. I was a teenage mom in 1988 and placed a child for adoption there. I consider myself a victim of adoption coercion in that instance. I am also in reunion on both sides of my biological families and with my son as well. I'm a trained educator, former principal, and now a therapist, and I work predominantly with adoptees and specifically have a kind of a special niche for transracial adoptees who are working on racial identity development and working through racialized trauma,

Haley Radke: Which is so needed. Oh my word. How many adoptees have come to me and been like, I need a therapist who gets, who gets me, and, have you heard this before? I have several friends that have said this to me in private, transracial adoptees, black and otherwise even will say "I feel white. I look in the mirror and I see a white person."

It is very hard to, just get back to, or they feel like they're appropriating culture if they do any sort of exploration into racial identity work. I imagine you have folks saying that to you too.

Abby Hasberry: Yes That is actually the exact reason why I decided to switch from education and become a therapist. I was doing some work in just some of my own healing in adoption groups and on Facebook and Instagram, and just kind of introducing myself to the adoptee community, and I started to have black transracial adoptees, specifically females, approached me and asked how I was so confident in my racial identity. They talked a lot about feeling like they were uncomfortable around other black women and uncomfortable in their own skin and didn't feel like they fit in in the black community, but also recognized that they didn't fit in completely in the white community.

And so that is exactly why I decided to become a therapist, because I realized that there was an increased need or just not an increased need, but a need, a huge need in that field, especially with transracial adoptees. And so when I sat down to support them and talk through them and trying to see what was there, what was there for support, there were just weren't many, if any, black racial identity development trained therapists who really understood adoption as a trauma.

Who understood what it means to really identify racially and be proud of your racial identity, who have done that kind of work. And it just so happened that as an educator, my PhD was on the experiences of black teachers in predominantly white and affluent private schools. And so my work was around identity development before I even came into therapy.

And it was around feelings of tokenism and feelings of invisibility. At the same time being highly visible, the heightened visibility of being the only one. And so it just kind of happened that that unicorn space was something that I was able to fill once I went to school and, and got that, got a degree in marriage and family therapy.

Haley Radke: Can you go back a little bit to your junior high, high school years, because I've listened to several interviews and appearances that you've done and, and read some of your writing, and I found it really interesting how you, in those age ranges, you were seeking out black friends and then going home and putting on your, like assimilated- into- white- culture voice and going back to that and like living two different sorts of identities at the time.

Can you talk about that? Because I think it's probably a pretty common experience and also not. I think a lot of folks don't even realize that they could experience that too. So I'd love to hear more about that.

Abby Hasberry: Sure. So I think it even goes back further because we moved so much, I grew up from first to third grade in Egypt, and my primary identity at that time was as an American.

My mom taught at private schools where my, my family and I all attended, my siblings and I all attended, so I never had an adoptee identity at that time. And just growing up, because everyone always knew. So it wasn't something I talked about or anything I even explored because I was just Mrs. Madera's daughter and everyone knew who my family was.

And so there was never that kind of question of reintroducing myself or any of those questions because it was such a small expat community in Egypt. But I was very aware of being American in a different, a different country. And so in middle school, when we moved to Miami, Florida, I still attended the school where my mom went.

So that identity was still, my adoptee identity was still something I didn't really explore, but all of a sudden I was black in America. So I really started to explore what that meant to me. And I think the thing that stood out the most to me was that there was a whole culture that I could see on BET specifically, as that came out, like Black Entertainment Television came out in the eighties and I started to really realize that there was a whole culture that I had not been introduced to and that I did not have any access to. And so I kind of kicked the door open and decided to find my own access, which meant going to the mall and meeting black friends and going to black teenage clubs and going to the roller skating rink and places where I could meet kids who were outside of my school because I was the only black kid in my grade for many years.

Other than that, there was one girl who was Haitian who identified as Haitian, not as African American, and there was another African American girl who really identified more with her white adoptive parents and I had to kind of go out and find that identity on my own, through music, through tv, and just through social interactions.

And then I had to come back to my school, to my family and really code switch backwards. So when you think about code switching, usually that is someone who's in a minoritized position going into white society, whether that's professionally or in school or whatever and switching to standard English, Standard cultural norms.

And I did the opposite. When I went outside of my community, outside of my home, that's where I felt more comfortable. That's where I felt more me. That's where I explored my racial identity. And when I came back home, I code switched back to kind of that white community, white norm white feeling. And so that just became kind of part of who I am and, and even today, I still see myself do that when I go to family gatherings or spend time with my adoptive family. I still feel myself doing that switch and my kids will actually tease me about putting up my white voice around my parents.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's so interesting. And I think I, I thank you for explaining that. I've heard, you know, as I work through my white anti-racist education pieces for myself in the last few years, I've heard so many things from transracial adoptees that as far as code switching or, or being, being in the workplace as a person of color, they have to put on that identity and, and there's no safe place at home to go back and, you know, be who I really am. And so I find it really interesting I remember, I remember when, when I heard you first say that I would just like, something like went on in me, and I was like, oh, that's really different. That's very interesting.

Can you talk a little bit more about what you think led you to do that? I, I, I'm struggling to ask you those questions because I think it's unusual and as a white person, I don't necessarily understand. I just, I just, I don't know. I just, I don't understand how in a person, in a black body can't realize that they're black?

Like they're, they're not safe enough to realize that. And so for you as a young person to go out and seek out your own cultural people, it's just interesting as a young person to do that, cuz I feel like the most folks I've talked to don't really kind of do that until their twenties or mid twenties because they're still in the white household of adoptive parents at home and they wanna make sure they're, you know, kind of falling in line and don't feel safe to do so.

So do you think there was anything different about you that you were able to kind of do that exploration?

Abby Hasberry: Yeah. So I think that, as I mentioned, the fact that I started to explore my black identity in adolescence as opposed to in elementary school or earlier, I think that that has one that's part of it.

But while I kind of give, like, take credit away from my mom for a lot of the decisions that she made, I have to give her credit for the fact that when things happened in our environment that involved race, she discussed them with me and gave me really great perspectives on my identity as a black person in the world.

And so there was this weird dichotomy with my mom where I am very aware that she wanted me to be a, just part of the family, a brown, a darker skinned child with the same norms, the same culture. And she did not, she was not aware of kind of what I needed to identify as a black person. However, she was very aware of how society would look at me and how I would interact with society.

And so she gave me that. So I remember there were times when people would look at our family differently and my mom would say, that's their ignorance. You know, just, just look at it as their ignorance that has nothing to do with you or, or who you are. There was a time that I often talk about where I was invited to a country club to go swimming with friends in Miami and then disinvited or uninvited the night before because the country club didn't allow people of color to come and swim on the weekends there. And my mom reacted to that by first telling me the truth. She was honest with me, even though I think I was probably like 11 years old, but then also saying to me that my friend was allowed to come to our house and do whatever, you know, hang out with me as often and as much as I wanted to, but that she no longer was allowing me to go to the friend's house because she did not believe that it was a safe environment for me if my friend's parents were okay being members of a country club that was exclusive in that way. And so giving me that perspective and that love of understanding one, that things are taught in that, you know, you can't, you can't hold people, I couldn't hold my friend and their values to, to question just because of what their parents were doing. We were still allowed to interact and have that, have her at my house, but that I also needed to hold the people accountable for their own actions. And so therefore, like my mom was like, yeah, this isn't a safe environment for you.

And so, there were plenty of times like that when I was pulled over, while, while driving my car in high school and questioned about who owned my car. It was late at night. I was dropping a friend off and the police was follwing, the police officer was following us for quite a while, about 10 minutes or so before he pulled us over and called for back up, after separating us, bringing me to the back of the car, and my friend of the front of the car and the officers questioning about like my name and where I lived over and over and over and over again.

I finally realized it clicked in my head that they knew that the car was registered to a white male, my dad, and they were questioning why I was driving it. And so when I went home kind of flustered from that, my mom was just so angry and talked about like perceptions and how people have narrow minds and can't, you know, my, my, my license had the same last name.

I kept giving the same address, I kept giving the same story. It, it was, there was no reason for them to continue to question us. And so she really talked about, you know, other people's ignorance and other people not understanding and how that wasn't something that I should take on as part of who I am and how I should still proudly go into spaces and be my authentic self.

So she really instilled a lot of that self-esteem, that identity awareness just as, as me as an individual. And then I then was given the freedom to then explore further my racial identity, because that is something that she, that she, she failed in. I did not have racial mirrors. She, they didn't have any friends of color all the time that, that I, that I was, you know, part of the family.

They did not frequent black salons, black doctors. They didn't do any of the things that we know are super important, but she did instill kind of that sense that it was okay to be me, and that I should be proud of who I am and that other people will never define who I am.

Haley Radke: Okay, well good job, mom. Now.

Abby Hasberry: Yes.

So what I'm hearing is there was a sense of safety that exploring these things was okay and probably, for the thing people I'm thinking of, there wasn't necessarily that sense of safety, and so there was more of a focus on just trying to fit in in the adoptive family and trying to, you know, act as though you were born to the adoptive parents. So for folks who've had that experience and are now coming into their twenties, their thirties, their forties, and are looking at identity, and are, a racialized person, whether in America or anywhere. What are some of the things that you're seeing with your clients or what are some of the things that you tell people, some of those first steps, like I mentioned earlier, people can be afraid that their culturally appropriating their own culture.

Haley Radke: Can you speak to that?

Abby Hasberry: Absolutely. So, so first I wanna say, I don't think that my environment was safe to identify my black identity. My environment was safe to explore my identity as a human being, but not my black identity. There were times where my mom definitely felt threatened by the fact that I was exploring this identity, and she made that very clear so that it wasn't safe necessarily for me to explore my blackness.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Abby Hasberry: I just was so safe to be me, that I didn't care or no, I don't wanna say I didn't care, but I did it anyway. I did it anyway. But as far as like, one of the things that I always tell my clients is there's no way, one way of being anything, there's no one way of being black. There's no one way of being American.

There's no one way of being a female. There's no one way of being. . So as far as appropriating something, that is who you are. You are a black person. I am a black woman. There is no one way for me to be black. And so there is no appropriating. If I think about like the culture of an African American culture, there is not one way of being black.

Black people are everything on the spectrum. And I talk a lot about my own children, who, I have a son who is a swimmer and a skateboarder. I have a daughter who just got married this last weekend, who was married to a man who is, he's half Vietnamese and half white. I have a daughter who is a soccer player and is absolutely in love with Billy Eilish.

There are, is no one way for my kids to be black, although though they are raised by two black parents, they are just on the spectrum of any teenager, any 20 something. And so I think that that's kind of step one is just accepting there is not one way of being anything. There are black cultural norms that you can learn, that you can feel comfortable with, but regardless of how you adopt those or not, your identity as a black person is your identity as a black person, and there is no one way to do that.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. And you know, I'm sort of asking this very broad question, which probably really the answer is it takes a very long time and there's not just like this switch to flip, but when you're going into that, what is, what are some of the first steps? What, what do you see people kind of doing? What do you see as most helpful?

I know you work with people to do this, and I imagine that some of the, the roots are really deep and there's psychological trauma there from internalized racism from white family members and just living in a white culture where white is, you know, the standard of beauty and making all the decisions and all of those things.

There's so many things being raised in, I'll just say North America's, cuz I'm Canadian and we have the same problems, so. Can you talk a little bit about kind of delving into that and if people are interested in it and because it's a big process right?

Abby Hasberry: It is, it is, it's a huge process. And I think safety in, in who you are is kind of the number one thing. And I am a marriage family therapist, so of course relationships for me are, are step one, finding relationships where you feel safe. Finding relationships where you can explore those, just those parts of your identity. Finding racial mirrors and people who can nurture and love and, and understand you, right?

That, that's number one for me is, with my clients, is kind of starting with, A) who are the people in your life who are representative of your culture and your identity that you are close to? And you can start to really talk through things with. And if there aren't any, which often there aren't, with transracial adoptees, I often become kind of that person where we are talking about identity and we're a safe place to talk about, safe space, to talk about racial identity and just all of the cultural things that people are uncomfortable with.

We often start talking about music and we start talking about stereotypes and stereotype threat and just all of the things that, for one, in or in order to normalize a feeling, an identity, a behavior, you have to give language to it. Because once someone understands that the things that they're feeling are things that other people are feeling, it kind of helps normalize that experience and make it a little bit more safe.

And so that is one of the things that I definitely try to do is, is talk about terms, talk about phenomena, talk about kind of what, what people are experiencing and how this, this experience is more broad than just you. And then connecting adoptees with other adoptees, with other adoptee organizations, with support groups.

All of those things are, are part of that constellation, part of that support group. Part of that kind of getting back that sense of belonging and identity that that is lost. And then also definitely name, naming the trauma. Naming the racialized trauma. Naming the adoption trauma. Naming the trauma in your life that we've all experienced as adoptees.

Haley Radke: I had another therapist teach us a little bit about the experience of having internalized racism and how painful that can be to untangle and come into a place of confidence and happiness and joyfulness in who the person is. Have you seen folks do that sort of internal work and can you talk about that? I think it's probably really difficult and challenging because it's like core identity work.

Abby Hasberry: Yeah. So often as transracial adoptees, one of the things that is taught in internalized is that you're different from whatever group you belong to. You're different because you're raised by a white family. You're different because you speak differently.

You're different because you have gone to a school with people who don't look like you. And so removing that label from yourself and, and seeing yourself within a group that has been othered by your own family, is very, very painful, very difficult. I see it with my clients, but I also experience some of that myself and seeing yourself no longer as separate from that group, but included is just so important to doing that work and internalizing now your new identity because it is a new identity, although it was one that you were born into. I often use the, the language with my clients, the person that you were born to be, like, who you were supposed to be when you were born, and who, that was changed because of your adoption, your adoption experience.

And so when we talk about it in those words, it helps them to understand that like, it it un- others, the community becomes their community because this is the community that you were originally beloned, born to, that you originally belonged to, and you were taken from that community as opposed to the belief that I'm different and somehow almost better from the community because I was raised by this white family who's told me that I'm different.

It, it's painful work. It's undoing lies. Seeing your parents as human beings who may have had flaw ed perceptions of the community that you were born into. All of those things are very, very hard to do, but super important.

Haley Radke: How do you work with someone who is moving towards that but still feels like, I'm gonna use the word imposter because visibly, if you've, if you've been able to cultivate a group of peers who you're similar to, and and like you're all eating out at a restaurant, and I look over and I just see, um, a group of happy, say Koreans, who are all excited to be together and are enjoying a meal together, but there's a Korean adoptee at the table who is raised with white parents and feels internally like, an imposter like, well, I'm not a real Korean. Have you seen that? What does it take to move towards feeling, like accepting that about yourself and and to a place of full inclusivity?

Abby Hasberry: Yeah. So definitely, and not only in adoptees, you can see it also in some second generation, immigrants, especially if their parents in the, in the kids were taught not to speak their language and not to, um, identify with their culture, but to assimilate as much as possible.

You can see that also with people who are removed second, usually second generation removed from immigration, then going back and now trying to find your authentic self and feeling like an imposter because you don't speak Spanish because your parents didn't teach it to you, even though you were raised in a, a household that is a Spanish speaking.

That imposter syndrome surfaces in so many places in our lives, not just in our, our identity, our racialized identity or our ethnic identity, but it can surface in our professional identities. And so that is kind of a universal syndrome that I think most people can relate to. I, I relate to it when I, you know, first got my PhD and just was waiting for the first couple weeks afterward for them to call and say that I missed a course or I didn't do something right.

Because just identifying myself with different group is, was really hard for me to even understand that I had earned that right. And I think that the thing to do is to understand when it comes to your identity as a ethnic racial being, there is no earning your right. You are that person just because you are that person, just because of, of your, your blood, your dna, and that's something that we talk about in counseling and therapy a lot, is that how can I be in a imposter of black identity when I have black skin?

I need to learn more about black culture. Perhaps, you know, I need to identify more with my black identity. Yes. That all of that could be true, but I am still a black person and deserve the, you know, full rights respects and all of that as being identified as a black woman. I do think it was a, it has been easier for me because I did start that process so early and so it from around 11 or 12 years old, it's always been part of my black identity and I've been code switching for forever.

But regardless of the age, it's just claiming who you are and standing in your space and being authentically yourself. One of the things that I love to, one of the phrases that I love to give my clients is to take up space. Whatever that space is, whatever that identity is, just take up space and and know that you belong.

And then the other phrase that I really love to give to them is don't defend yourself. Define yourself. So decide who you are and be that person and don't feel like you have to defend being any part of you. Just live in who you are and just have that define who you are.

Haley Radke: Without breaking confidentiality, what are you most proud of some of the clients that have been doing this work with you? What are you seeing that you're just like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited I get to help folks walk through this?

Abby Hasberry: I think when clients have that kind of aha, self acceptance moment, I think that when I see them all of a sudden, drop their shoulders and relax and feel confident in who they are and feel safe in who they are.

Those moments where it's like, okay, everything that I've experienced is normal. I hear you saying that other people have experienced it. There are terms for it, and just kind of that realization that everything's going to be okay because I'm going to be okay like I am okay. Just that moment of accepting themselves for who they are, accepting themselves for their experiences, for everything that has happened to them and by them.

I think I'm most proud when I see a client just step into their identity and take up space and just be kind of fully present and fully themselves.

I know

Haley Radke: when people start to get into identity work period, because it's at the core of our, our being and can be very world shifting, it can be really challenging, deep, painful work. It's hard work, like so much hard work. And I see some people offering like coaching and stuff like that online, and I know that you trained to become a therapist, so you would have more tools and skills to help folks do that. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of having a therapist guide you along this deep internal work versus maybe someone that is not as credentialed or trained in doing some of that stuff.

Abby Hasberry: Sure. So trauma is, is complex. Trauma is deep. Trauma runs in all the spaces in our body that we try to hide it in. And if you have someone who is working through trauma with you, who is not understanding and respectful and really just kind of aware of, of trauma and how it impacts the brain and how it impacts the body, that can be re-traumatizing.

You can actually have trauma from working with someone working through your trauma who does not have experience or knowledge of how trauma affects the brain and the body, and just the physical parts of you, as well as the mental parts of you. When people ask me about the difference between coaching and therapy, the one thing I try to impart on them is when you see someone who is working as a coach, that person should only be working from where you are now to where you wanna go in the future.

And so if you think of like a professional coach works with your professional identity, whether you be a teacher and you want to be a principal, and let's work with the leadership skills and the skills that you need to get to the goal that you want to be. Whereas as the therapist works back from your trauma to untangle the things that are affecting who you are right now in order to heal those things so that you can then move forward.

And I think that that is the thing that you should be thinking about when you're thinking, deciding if I wanna see a coach or a therapist, is what are your goals? Are your, is your goal just to move forward from where you are to that new thing? I had a professional life coach who helped me when I decided to step down as a principal and then move into different realms of my professional identity.

And she talked about my why and my passions and my motivations, and we did lots of work on that and my personality traits and all of those things. But when I needed to do work on myself as an adoptee in the trauma that I've been through and as an a victim of childhood sexual abuse and all of the things that I had to work through in order to be more whole, then I looked for a therapist who could do that work and understand how it has affected my health both physically and mentally.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. Great answer. I love that. It's so illuminates the differences. I appreciate that. Thank you. I would love to hear you just talk about any strategies you think are best for specifically transracial adoptees or black adoptees in starting on this journey.

Whether it be things they can do on their own or if they're looking to work with like a therapist like you, if they're lucky enough to get an appointment. Any steps you wanna share as we're wrapping up any other thoughts that you have for, especially our folks in our community who are racialized and who have grown up in white adoptive families.

Abby Hasberry: So one of the things that I definitely love to do personally and have done for a long time, and that I suggest to my clients to do is when you read a book about trauma, about adoption, about anything, when you see a movie, when you listen to a podcast and you have a question come up or something is like an aha, write that down on the top of a first piece of paper and then something else comes up, turn the page, turn the page and write whatever that is on the top of a piece of paper and just have a notebook of things that kind of spark your curiosity or hit you to your, your core or just make sense or don't make sense and you wanna question it. Write those things down as on the top of a piece of paper and then go back to them in your kind of sacred, safe, reflective space and write your responses to those things. And, and that's just kind of the start of journaling.

It's almost kind of making your own guided journal. I do that often when I hear, so for example, when I first heard this, the someone say, don't defend yourself, define yourself. That just struck me in the core. And so I wrote down that; Don't defend myself. Define myself. And then I wrote about like one of the times that I've found myself defending myself, one of the times that I've felt good about defining my space, what does that mean to me? And so I just then just took that one thing that I wrote down and a few days later went back and journaled through that. And that was me doing my own work and really thinking through those things that hit me to the core or questions that I think I didn't understand, or questions that just peaked my curiosity.

Um, I would suggest listening, reading, watching all of the things that have to do with whatever it is that you're working through, whether it's racial identity, adoption, trauma, just trauma in general. Just listen to people talk and when someone says something that strikes you, write it down and then go back later and journal about it.

Haley Radke: That's a great first step. Love it. Okay. On a personal note, I'm curious how you take care of yourself in this space. When I imagine lots of questions you're getting are from white adoptive parents who are trying to do better, but they want you to do their work for them. And folks like me asking you about these hard racial issues and, they're like, oh my gosh, sure, I'll talk about this again. How do you best take care of yourself in our community and in the work you do as a black woman who's a professional, highly credentialed and is still being asked lots of deep things about herself to, you know, be in space?

Abby Hasberry: So I am very, very, set in some of my boundaries. For sure. So, and I think that's something I didn't learn until after my forties, is that, first of all, I can say no just because I wanna say no, and I don't have to have a reason or an explanation or an excuse.

If I don't feel like doing something, there's a reason and just say no. So I think definitely establishing boundaries around my time. That has been, that has changed my life. Deciding when I will work and how long I will work, and that's something that's been afforded to me over the years. I definitely could not have been in this space 20 years ago where I say like, I'm only gonna work three hours today because what I'm doing is heavy.

I, I just, I wasn't in that space before, so that has been an amazing gift to me to be in a space where I can afford to just kind of claim my time. But also really staying grounded and centered in my why. And so I had an experience where I was around a, a lot of transracial adoptees and their parents, and their parents wanted a lot from me.

They were taking a lot from me, and I had to reground myself in the fact that I'm doing this for their kids. For little me to think about the experiences that I went through to hope that they don't have to go through some of the same pitfalls. I have to constantly reground myself in my why and and in my passion, and that's something I definitely learned as a principal.

I, I always told myself it's whatever's in the best interest of kids. Any decision I made any hard days, I just kept regrounding myself in that. And so as I've transitioned to this work, I had to find that same kind of grounding, that foundation, my why, and it's for transracial adoptive kids, adoptees in general.

Adult adoptees. It's just for adoptees, like that is my kind of my why, why I do this is because I've gotten to a space where I feel like I've done my work and I just wanna reach back and help other people do their work, whether that be adoptees or their parents to provide a more safe environment for them to do their own work.

Yeah, just, just that and then also spending time with my family, reminding myself of kind of who loves me and, and where, where I get that sense of just home.

Haley Radke: I love that. I was picturing all the needy parents you had to deal with as a principal and now they're just all adoptive parents. You were really trained. You practiced. Oh my gosh. Wow. I'm sorry. My kids go to a Christian school and our principal gets lots of calls. So yeah,

Abby Hasberry: So many calls.

Haley Radke: So many calls. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. Is there anything I did not ask you about that you wanna make sure to mention before we talk about where folks can connect with you?

Abby Hasberry: So we didn't talk about my, my identity as a birth mom, and so I just kind of wanna mention that as well, just for those who are listening. That while I do a lot of my work for adoptees, I also do work with, with birth moms and kind of their, their ability to, to heal their own trauma and to understand what happened and their experience with the adoption system, the adoption institution as well. Um, so yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. Thank you. So good that you're well, it's not good. It's not good that you lost your son to adoption. I'm sorry that happened. But you're a multi- experienced person in all of these different areas, make you really a tremendous resource for the community.

So if folks do, I've listened to you and are like, oh my gosh, I wanna work with Abby. Are you taking new clients? And how can we connect with you and tell us all the things?

Abby Hasberry: Sure. So I am taking new clients in Texas. I'm taking a couple more and I can be reached at dearabbycounseling.com. Abby is a b b y, so dear abbey counseling.com is where I can be reached and social media and Instagram, all of those places, I think that we will have kind of linked to this as well. Because I, while I am taking new clients in Texas, I am also open to just kind of speaking with people as well. And I do do some coaching as well too. So, and coaching is national, although therapies only in Texas at this moment.

Haley Radke: Yes, but you're a trained therapist, so, yes. That's amazing. Yes. We will have all your links in the show notes, so people can follow you. And I love some of the things you're sharing on Instagram and they make me think and, so yes, I think there's great value there and hopefully you'll come back and we'll talk about something else and that'll be awesome

Abby Hasberry: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Okay. Thank you so much, Abby. Such a pleasure to talk with you today.

(upbeat music)

Haley Radke: All right, it is time for our annual holiday break. I take about a month off to spend time with my family and prep shows for the new year. So we will have brand new episodes starting back in January, on the 13th of 2023, and I'm really excited to announce our first episode will be with Dr. JaeRan Kim, who is a amazing adoptee researcher, and we are going to be talking about the newly launched paper that Dr. Kim and four of her adoptee academic colleagues have written that is about the adoptee consciousness model. I cannot wait to share that with you. We had such a great conversation. Coming soon. Coming soon, January 13th, and in the meantime, if you are looking for more Adoptees On content, I would recommend going back through our Healing Series episodes to look for surviving in the holidays and those conversations with Leslie Johnson if you need a little more support in that area. Or if you're a reader, you can listen to some of our book club episodes over on Patreon. We have so many conversations with fabulous adoptee authors and we will be talking more about that in the new year as well.

So you can join us there. You can go to AdopteesOn.com/community to find out all the ways to support the show and access our book club and other weekly podcasts with myself and fellow adoptees. Love to have your support. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate, and as I reflect back on 2022 and all the exciting milestones that I have been able to accomplish, only with the support of the community. I remain most grateful that I can support fellow adoptees in a myriad of ways of looking at other people's experiences, so we know we're not alone looking within ourselves to know what things we should be working on and looking at our history and becoming more knowledgeable about the systemic injustices and inhumane practices that continue to this day in the adoption industrial complex.

And I feel really fortunate that on that hard journey, I can do that alongside of you. So just know I'm always learning along with you. I, I am no expert because every single conversation I have, I'm always like, oh, I never thought of that. Oh yeah, that's so right. Like, I'm absorbing just as much from these conversations and I hope they feel supportive and helpful for you too.

So I'm grateful you're in this world. I hope that if the holiday season is a difficult time for you, that you are still able to find some sort of connection or something that you love to do to take extra care of yourself in this season. And I will be back with regular episodes starting January 13th in 2023.

And thanks for listening. I'm so glad you're here and let's talk again very soon.

(upbeat music)