May 02, 2025

303 Craig Mod

May 02, 2025/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/303

Haley Radke: [00:00:00] 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. What a delight to host our guest today, Craig Mod, the author of Things Become Other Things, A Walking Memoir joins us to share his story. We deep dive into Craig's recent reunion with his birth mother, including the complexities of searching in the digital age when so much of our personal information is publicly available.

Being fairly new to adoptee land Craig also gave me a chance to talk through some of those things that complicate the usual sunshine and rainbow views of adoption. We do make reference [00:01:00] to sexual assault briefly at a couple of different points during this conversation. So please take care when deciding if this is a safe episode for you to listen to.

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

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Craig Mod. Welcome, Craig.

Craig Mod: Thanks for having me.

Haley Radke: I'd love it. If you would start the way we usually do, if you would share some of your story with us.

Craig Mod: I am a writer and photographer and 99% of my work is book related writing books. And for most of my life I've been like an independent book maker all throughout my twenties and a big chunk of my thirties, I was running independent presses and or I was art directing independent presses and involved with the publishing world in that capacity.

And then I did some digital book stuff around [00:02:00] 2010, but now I am just fully my own person producing and writing books that are mainly connected with my big walks across Japan. So I've been living in Japan for 25 years. I moved here when I was 19 and for the last decade or so, last 15 years, I've been doing huge walks across the country.

So I've walked from Tokyo to Kyoto three times on various different paths to Nakasendo, the Tōkaidō. I've done pilgrimage roots. I've walked a lot of the Kii peninsula, so I've just really tried to touch as much of the country as I can on foot. And that is my life now. So it's working on the books, living in Japan, which is my home.

I consider myself an immigrant to the country. I bristle at the word expat, which is filled with these connotations of apartness and like living above a place or a people. And also historically, if you kinda look into it it's fairly racist to a certain degree. There's a kind of built in racism, [00:03:00] embedded in the word, in the sense that expats were their own little group and they felt like they were better than the locals.

And so I definitely don't consider myself that at all. In fact I've struggled my whole life to connect with the expats that are here. It's I don't naturally feel an affinity towards the moneyed kind of foreigners that choose to live in, not just Japan, but like a lot of Asia.

That's a pretty common trope. So I consider myself an immigrant trying to be as engaged as possible with the country and the people and try to be an additive part of the world here. And I try to do that through my books and walks and I write for the New York Times and all sorts of stuff. So that's basically it.

Haley Radke: And how about your adoption story? When did you find out you were adopted?

Craig Mod: I found out I was adopted for as long as I've had memory. I don't, there's no, I have a vague, fuzzy memory of maybe when I was, I don't know, four or five or something like of [00:04:00] getting an adoption book. And I think my adoptive parents, and at that point it was just my mom.

So the parents who adopted me got divorced almost immediately. So I was raised by my mom and her parents, and I just remember getting this kind of, this sort of picture book for adopted kids and them explaining it to me and it not making any sense. I think this is this is the thing I think adopted parents misjudge over and over and over again, is how complex emotionally and like physiologically, this idea of birthing and who you come from and what you come out of and who you know, who you literally, who you come out of and how that's family.

And I remember for years and years asking my mom my parents went to Hawaii on their honeymoon and I just assumed that babies like sprouted in bellies on honeymoons. That's how where I thought kids came from. And I [00:05:00] remember asking, even after I knew I was adopted over and over again, I'd tell friends, oh, I've technically I've been to Hawaii because like I was in my mom's belly, but I remember saying that over, several times to people, to kids and thinking back on it now, it's just so funny how that it didn't register for me what it really meant to be adopted. And then I think my parents, I mean my father taught me like literally nothing. It's like amazing to think back to my adoptive father. He's gone now and there's a whole story of burying him.

He moved into the woods and I had to go bury him alone. And I wrote this whole novel based off of that, which is not published, thank God. But that was like my training novel basically. I used that to get a bunch of residencies. I did Ragdale and VCCA and I've gotten into Tin House with it and stuff like that. But Iowa Writers Workshop with that manuscript. But my mom and my grandpa, her parents, I think they tried their hardest, but like they also didn't really get it. I think they didn't [00:06:00] really empathize with me as an adoptee and the amount of work I think an adoptive parent has to do to help a kid work through the notion of being adopted, I think is about a thousand times more than most parents understand.

And so I was left wondering. And also, the amount of guilt I think an adoptive kid feels. Towards their adoptive parents in the sense of if that, if the parents don't hyper normalize the idea of thinking about where you came from or the fact that you came from somewhere else so that you have this blood connection to a totally different family.

If that isn't hyper normalized, I think it's real easy to feel incredible guilt about having those impulses to search or to look. And so my family did not do a good job at assuaging that guilt. So I've known my whole life, I'm adopted, but it wasn't until just a couple years ago that I did any kind of real [00:07:00] work to find my birth parents.

Haley Radke: Did you hear she loved you so much she gave you away?

Craig Mod: Oh, yeah. Or no. It was the call from the adoption center was a call from Jesus himself. That was

Haley Radke: Oh.

Craig Mod: Yeah, that was the framing.

Haley Radke: God ordained family separation.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So you had a story growing up about the circumstances of your conception and the reason you were available for adoption.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Do you wanna share that and then,

Craig Mod: yeah.

Haley Radke: So when you find out the real story.

Craig Mod: Yeah. So the little bit of information we had was in the adoption papers that it was a Catholic adoption service that did the adoption, and they gave us a little paper that said a little info about the mom who was 13 when she got pregnant and she'd smoked weed and done Valium.

That was like, those were listed on, I don't know why that was listed on the paperwork. So my mom smoked weed and liked horses. I think that was all I knew. And my birth father [00:08:00] was listed with almost no information except for the fact that there was a car accident. I think he was listed as 17 or something like that, and there was a car accident.

And then at the site of the car accident, he got in a fight and was murdered. So that was my genesis story was just this terrible, oh, my birth father was murdered and my mom was 13. It was probably kinda rapey, and I, and of course to protect myself as a kid, because with other kids this idea of being adopted is you were thrown away or whatever.

Oh, you're not your real they're not your real family. In movies, the general comedic trope is, oh, you're actually adopted. That's what older brothers say to younger brothers that they don't like. And so to protect myself, I was like, oh yeah, my mom was a hooker and she probably got, she was a drug addict.

She smoked weed. She probably did crack or whatever. That you just concoct this really terrible sort of genesis story in order to protect yourself from the other kids. And also from the, because of the fact I wasn't given permission by my birth parent, my adoptive parents to do [00:09:00] a bigger investigation into things or to be like, Hey, I'd to look, let's find out more about this.

What's the real story? That wasn't part of the set of options available to me that I think concocting this kind of worst case genesis story was a way of setting up walls to protect myself. But that's what we knew.

Haley Radke: And so I heard you talk briefly in another interview about not wanting to be curious because of some sense of adoptive parent loyalty, which is so super common.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Or not wanting to talk about that when did the curiosity like come to the surface for you?

Craig Mod: Honestly, it was not until, my whole life there's been curiosity of course. And it's funny, since I've come out publicly with a little bit of this story, I've gotten all these messages from old friends who, who were like reminiscing about my meditations on adoption when I was a [00:10:00] teenager. So clearly this was really, I don't have any memory of these conversations, but for a few friends that were like really powerful moments of me, yeah, just being, talking about how I didn't feel like I connected with my adoptive family and I felt apart from it all.

And I don't really have a strong memory of that, but clearly my whole life that's been underlying something. And I don't know, in my twenties I was so focused on figuring out who I could be. I moved to Japan when I was 19 and a big part of that was to kind reset the game, the whole system, to reset socioeconomic status and to also reset just personal narrative, genesis narrative.

And to be able to be in a place where you are forever gonna be the other. And so you're given permission to embody whatever you want to, whatever you wanna be. You aren't seen through the eyes, the classic eyes of contemporary American sort of judgment or whatever, which, me coming, I came from a middle lower, I'd say working class [00:11:00] factory town.

My grandparents met at the factory, my parents met at the factory. Their parent, everyone's parents were working there. And then when I left my town, I felt acutely the fact that a big part of America going to university did not come from places like I came from. And you could just feel this kind of judgment.

So Japan was like offering me many layers of reset. And my twenties were spent just purely trying to figure out who I could be in the world trying to desperately look for archetypes of people I could trust. I think trust was a big part of it. And I imagine a lot of adoptive kids have issues with trust because that is having your core identity the exploration of that, not normalized by your parents is actually a pretty big breach of trust, I think. And so I, I can imagine a lot of adoptees being like having lots of weird trust issues. Anyway, I definitely did. And my twenties were about figuring that out and it wasn't until my thirties and I moved briefly to [00:12:00] California and I and 23 And Me came out and I was like, oh, I'll do that just to find, not to find my birth parents, but to just find out genetic information.

That was like, for me, that was 99% of the curiosity was just, I just wanna know genetically what's happening in my body. And so that prompted the 23 And Me registration, which didn't really bring up much, to be honest. 23 And Me seems like it's like the, now they're bankrupt. They just filed for bankruptcy, but they seem like the redheaded stepchild just to use all of the terrible things we're probably not supposed to say about it, poor redheads, poor step kids, but it felt like the unloved DNA resource, because it wasn't until many years later, almost a over a decade later, when I joined Ancestry that then I really connected with, found all these people from, my birth father's side and mother's side popped up.

Haley Radke: Yeah, when we talk about search now, folks do DNA testing in multiple places. They import [00:13:00] their stuff into GEDMatch. There's all these tools that have come so far and yeah, 23 And Me, I don't know, people are deleting their data, so just so you know, like.

Craig Mod: I deleted mine.

Haley Radke: There you go.

Craig Mod: But it never had, there were never any good matches on it. That was the thing. It's it was always like, oh, your fourth cousins on here. Which like, we're probably fourth cousins, I mean it's.

Haley Radke: We could be. Well, and it makes sense that you would test there 'cause they were the ones giving you the medical stuff more so than anyone else. That was their whole deal.

Craig Mod: And they were first out the gate. I think they were the first at home spit in the tubes and put it in the mailbox and get your matches or whatever. And it actually, even before I did Ancestry though, I found out my birth mother's name actually my birth name, because I was able to get my birth certificate, I was born in Connecticut and state law changed in 2009.

I didn't even, like no one told me, it's like I, I didn't have any Google alerts about adoption law changes, and I emailed the [00:14:00] Catholic Agency and I said, hey, is there any way I could get my birth certificate? And they were like, oh, you can just email the town hall of the city you were born in and they'll, they can send it to you now. They don't need parental permission. And so I got that actually two months before I joined Ancestry. But that was interesting. That was quite powerful to see. Oh, I have a birth name. Oh, I have, oh, wow. This is my last name. It's, it was pretty affecting. It was pretty, it was more interesting than I thought it would be.

Haley Radke: There's so many states that are still closed, you can't get your original birth certificate. And there's, so there's a lot of adoptees advocating for that. And yeah, when people get their OBCs, it's just whoa. It's a lot.

Craig Mod: Yeah. Yeah, to see the definitive name of this person and of you, in their eyes. It was also interesting to see she gave me first and middle name, and so just imagining like a 13-year-old going through all of this and then naming this child that, [00:15:00] she's gonna give up. It's a pretty, it's a pretty intense thing to do.

Haley Radke: Did you feel, okay, so did you feel like, oh. This makes it more real that there's a person in versus the honeymoon Hawaii baby or the stork drop.

Craig Mod: Yeah, a little bit. I, I think something I hadn't realized was just how pervasive my walls were that I'd built up over my entire life. And, like I have not had, I would say, many adults acting like adults in my life. And I think I was terrified. Probably the scariest thing about, and the reason why I didn't do more intensive searches earlier is that I think I was traumatized by the lack of actual adults in my orbit for pretty much all of my childhood. And thinking back, just, there's just all these different things where you're just like, why?

How, and this both on a local level, like in my immediate orbit, but also [00:16:00] on a more global level like. Why wasn't the state taking care of my town? Why wasn't the country taken care of my state? Connecticut's the richest state in America. The GDP average in Connecticut is insane.

It's probably close to a hundred k . And yet my town was like less than a quarter of that. And you just go, okay, why wasn't my school funded? Why weren't these programs funded? And so I think that also created a bunch of trust issues about adults not really being adults. And so the last thing I wanted in my life was to have another adult.

So my, and my, of course, my genesis story being so terrible. My mom's a drug addict and a hooker and blah, blah, all this stuff. It's I don't want that close to me. So that was subconsciously or consciously a huge barrier to going and doing the search earlier. And I think seeing her name did shift that a little.

It just humanized her. She wasn't this, apparition in my mind, oh, she's a name. And then I could Google her 10 seconds later, and now I know everything about her, see her [00:17:00] Facebook page, I can see the family and all this stuff and my worst case scenario was like, oh, she's this destitute, she needs money.

It's gonna be this issue of someone in debt or someone with extreme political views that don't align with mine, America right now is so weird. You don't know who you're gonna get on the other end. And it's the last thing I want is to be connected with someone that I can't talk about the state of the world with, or don't agree or have to like do phone calls where we pretend to like wanna talk to each other or whatever.

Which is basically the relationship I've had, I had with my dad for all of my adult life, just politically extreme in the opposite direction and to a certain degree with my mom. And so I was just like, I don't need another one of these in my life. But getting the birth certificate was and being able to like Google her and I was kinda like.

Looking at the Facebook page, I was like, did they look like they might own AR fifteens? I'm not entirely sure how many guns they might own. I'm like, I don't know if I need these [00:18:00] people in my life. And it was just nice to see them and be like, oh, okay. That's good. That's all I need.

Again, like the, just funny feeling all these walls and being like, okay, I've taken a peek and I made like a document where I was just like dumping screenshots of just creating this family archive thing that I could go back to if I wanted to later.

Haley Radke: And so what happened when you tested with Ancestry?

Craig Mod: So then, yeah, I went on this walk, I run these walks with this guy Kevin Kelly, who is the co-founder of Wired Magazine. He's 73. We met 15 years ago, and I'd say one of the things that's come up, unsurprisingly, the fact that I didn't really have a dad, and so I've been drawn to surprise, surprise, like really having their bleep together, older male figures, not in a father figure search sort of way, but just as like a set of archetypes of what is possible in the world.

I think that's really important to say that it's not about finding, it was like none of these friendships were, and they are friendships about [00:19:00] finding a father replacement, or, oh, my birth father was murdered and my adoptive father was not really present at all. And so you could go are you searching for dad?

It's, and it wasn't, it was just, I was, I had seen no real fathers ever in my life. And so when I started writing and getting my name out there and connecting to incredible people via my writing, I started meeting these amazing humans. And so Kevin Kelly was one of them. And we just started walking together and slowly but surely, I just realized listening to how he raised his kids was mind-bending to me, just in the fact that he was such a present force in their lives.

And so he became like archetype number one of the prime archetype for me of what an incredible father can do in the world. And so anyway, we run these walks recently, like twice a year. We just finished one in Spain. I just got back two days ago. And we run these walks. We invite people from around the [00:20:00] world.

We do these walks together for a week. And every day we have conversations as we're walking. And then at night we do Jeffersonian dinners, which is a single topic dinner where there's only one conversation, so there aren't, so everyone sits around a kind of a circular table and we all talk together.

And there aren't like sub conversations happening on the side. And about two years ago, 20, or I guess three years ago now we were doing one in England and everyone was like, you gotta do Ancestry. They're like, you aren't on Ancestry? And I was like, no I did 23 And Me, they're like, oh man, get off 23 And Me, that's garbage.

And I was like, all so I came back I'd gotten my birth certificate and then I joined Ancestry and of course, boom right away matched with my birth mom and I knew her name. And so it was like, okay, yeah, this is definitely her 50% DNA match and all that. So that was pretty interesting. But then as soon as we matched, like her Facebook page shut down and she started locking down, like her LinkedIn, [00:21:00] my take was like, oh damn, okay.

She was on there because like maybe her family coerced her to joining it and she didn't really want to connect, and now I'm like, this thing she's never talked about maybe with her family. And so I don't wanna create chaos either, so I'm just gonna step back. So that was to me, like seeing kind of all these things shut down right after we connected on there.

I was like, all right, that's great. Definitely her and I focus more on the dad side, which I, the paternal side of ancestry had all these interesting connections and I started looking people up and like my, like an uncle figure character with three, so three cousin like figures, which is really fascinating.

Like the uncle was the CEO is the CEO, he's not dead. At least he wasn't a couple years ago. He's the CEO of a biotech startup. I was like, oh, that's cool. I resonate with that 'cause I have a strong technical background I've done, even though I'm doing a lot of book stuff my major in university was I focused on computer science and fine arts.

So I have a really strong technical background [00:22:00] and I've done a bunch of work with the startup community and I was like, oh, this, that resonates. That's cool. And then his son's one is like a poet that lives in Brooklyn and does like directing and has worked on HBO shows as like a AD or whatever.

And I was like, oh yeah, that resonates. And then one of the other sons was something else. And then one of the other sons was, I looked at his Instagram and he's this super hardcore gay swimsuit influencer. Like he's just naked. Yeah. He's just like super buff and like in his swimsuit and like showing off his body and he's got all these followers.

And the, I was like, that's cool. Like that resonates with me. Like gay swimsuit influencer. And I was like, oh these people make sense to me in a way that like looking at, and again, this is also superficial, but like looking at my birth mom's stuff, I was like, ooh, I don't know like this could go either way.

They could be like extremely conservative. Whereas like this paternal side was like, oh, these guys are pretty [00:23:00] liberal and funky. And I actually met up with my cousin two years ago after we, I, we connected on Ancestry and I found him on Instagram and I just DMed him. I was like, hey man, I think we're cousins like could we do a call? And he is yeah, he was super into it. He is like 29. I think people in their twenties are excited about finding birth connect, blood connections that are there's a mystery. And then we had lunch in Brooklyn and it was like, it was fun. But also he was like, my dad, he said, my dad totally shut down the conversation 'cause apparently like one of our uncles was in the mob and he like abandoned his family and disappeared for 20 years. And he thinks that maybe you're the son of this mob uncle, so he is I, he didn't want to touch it. I was like, whoa, okay. That, but that kind of also tracked with the story.

I was like, oh, maybe this mobster got murdered and he raped this, young woman. This young girl. And I was like, oh, this all kind of makes sense to a certain degree. But it was also really interesting and it was fun. It was like, it was just nice to meet my sort of [00:24:00] cousin, I say cousin because it's not ex I'm, we're still not entirely sure what the connection is, but it's close if, whether it's a first cousin or second cousin, a first cousin once removed. I actually don't know all the terminology, but cousin ish.

Haley Radke: Sure. Yeah. And they give you the percentages and they estimate what your relationship is, but.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Yeah. A half sister could be an aunt percent, like there's

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: All kinds of, yeah.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. Did he know who you were when you met up with him?

Craig Mod: Just in yeah. Yeah. And that's because I DMed him on Instagram.

Haley Radke: Okay. So he saw your profile and Yeah. Okay.

Craig Mod: Yeah. And I trusted him, it was like, 'cause on Ancestry in 23 And Me I was anonymous to protect myself again, I just didn't wanna open these doors. I couldn't close. And so I was deliberately very anonymous, no information in my profile. With this guy, it's oh, a poet who lives in Bushwick, [00:25:00] Brooklyn and works on HBO TV shows. I'm like, yeah I want to connect with this guy. I want, I just wanna be friends with him. So I was happy to de anonymize immediately with him.

Haley Radke: And how about your mom?

Craig Mod: The mom thing was a little more complicated just in that, when we connected or when we matched on Ancestry and I was, still anonymous, she shut down or locked down her Facebook profile and locked down her Instagram profile. So two months before when I got the birth certificate, I could see everything.

And then after we connected on Ancestry, suddenly that was all I could only see like the profile pic. So I just treated it as great. I'm glad we were able to connect and I know kind of everything I need to know in, in the sense of she's been demystified, I have the photos from when her Facebook page wasn't locked down.

And I was like, that's fine. That was it. And so I, and I didn't wanna send her a message, I didn't wanna, I would let her make the first move if she wanted to. And it seemed like she had made a move indicating that she didn't want to connect. That was how I read all that. [00:26:00] Again, walls protection, self preservation, it's like, how do I not get myself hurt in this situation?

These are, there's so many layers of that. And then it took a year for her to send me a message and she sent me this really weird message that was all like lowercase, and it was like one sentence and it just said, Hey, I think we're related. Are you American or something like that? It was just, it was, 'cause I think the only thing my profile said was, I live in Japan and, but it was like 50% match and exactly, 13 years younger than you.

It's obviously, it's like I, I'm your kid. So that really frustrated me getting that message. It really annoyed me. 'cause I'm like, great, another adult, I've gotta like parent, I've gotta be the one, it's like I had this core memory of like my dad crying in the car after I graduated high school.

My adoptive father, like [00:27:00] saying oh, you didn't in include me in your life enough. And I was just like, what are you talking about dude? You're the adult. Step up and enter my life. It's yes, you were divorced but you weren't. It's not like you had been your legs had been chopped off and you were in like a wheelchair and you couldn't like walk and you couldn't you lost some kind of agency.

It's like you could have come to anything I was doing. You could have entered my life as much as you wanted to. So just the fact that I remember just sitting there this guy is looking for some kind of absolution from me for not being a great, it was just like, oh my God, I can't have another one of these people in my life.

And so I sat on it for three months and I talked to my therapist, which I highly recommend having a therapist. I've been doing therapy now for eight years, pretty much weekly. And if I could say one thing that's had the greatest positive impact on my life, it's a hundred percent that. Committed weekly talk therapy with this guy in [00:28:00] New York that I just zoom with and I love him to bits.

I don't know anything about him really. I've very deliberately kept our relationship professional and even though we've been talking for eight years, I I vaguely have a sense that he is like married and has a kid vaguely, but I love that we have this, anyway, this distance that for me, that's been really good.

And I talked with him about it. I talked with a couple friends. I was just like, what the bleep? I can't have another one of these parents that need me to parent them. And finally I just thought, okay, you know what? If I was her just trying to sum up as much empathy as possible, what would I want if I was her?

And I just wanna know. Am I okay. And so I wrote this kind of snarky letter that was a little distanced, but it was just basically hey, look, I know it must've been really hard for you to do what you did, and I thank you for going through that, and I'm sorry that you had to go through it. I can't imagine how difficult that must've been to have been pregnant at your age and then to like, put me up for [00:29:00] adoption. Those are all, such emotionally difficult, complicated things to do. So thank you for doing that. And just, here's a little snippet. This is what my life is like. And my childhood wasn't perfect, but the people who adopted me tried the best they could, which I do think is true. Although I really wish they, I really wish they had a few more parenting skills.

Looking back on it now, and look, I've played music in front of thousands of people I've given talks in front. It's like I've had this in many ways a charmed life and I just wanna let you know that things are good and thank you. And that's it. I didn't tell her my name, I didn't give her any identifying details, like she couldn't have Googled me or anything.

And then I got no response from her at all and I was like, great, this is completely dysfunctional adult that you know, has got a closet full of automatic weapons and this is my, and yeah. Okay, great. She doesn't really wanna connect and okay, I can't deal with this. Three [00:30:00] months later I'm in like the busiest period of my life. I have this new book coming out. I'm running a walk with Kevin in Thailand where everything is super intense. My adoptive mother and her, my stepfather are coming to Japan to visit and I'm trying to organize that. I'm just so overwhelmed. And in the middle of all that, I get this reply from my birth mom and she's oh my God, I don't have email notifications on for Ancestry I didn't see this. And she writes me like the most empathetic, beautiful, emotionally intelligent, like 3000 word letter. And it's just overflowing with smarts and curiosity and I'm just like, I just, I don't, I can't process it. This is when would this would've been, yeah like 15 months ago. And I'm just like what do I do with this?

I can't, I don't have the room for this. And I, so I didn't respond to it. And then three weeks later, she sends another one even longer, even more like beautifully written talking about, [00:31:00] oh, this is what your grandfather was like. And I'm, I have four siblings and I'm one of five kids and he passed away when I was nine.

And we all, the oldest was 17 and my mom was a single mom and we were all working hard 'cause the family didn't have much money and all this. And we, here's all the pets I had, and this is what I used to do with your grandfather. And you come from this line of hardworking Polish immigrants and all this stuff.

And I'm just like, I've, again I'm like, I don't, what do I do with this? I can't. I don't have the time, I'm completely freaked out and exhausted. And then I got this weird MRSA infection in my arm, like MRSA bacterial infection. I'm in the hospital. Anyway, it was like there was this too much going on.

And so I just sent her a little note and I said, oh my God, thank you for these letters. They mean a lot. I do not have the time to respond to these properly right now. I'll get I'll send you a message in the new year. New year comes, I'm just as busy, burnt out on a bunch of stuff. I'm doing all this media here in [00:32:00] Japan.

I'm doing all these radio shows and TV shows, and basically I've, I did not respond. And then Mother's Day comes and she sends me a note on Mother's Day on Ancestry again. I'm like, anonymous, right? And she goes, thinking of you on Mother's Day, and I hope you're hugging your adoptive mom. And just, I just wanted to let you know that I'm here if you want to talk. And but again saying I realize this may be a lot for you if you don't wanna talk I understand if you do, I'm here. I hope this isn't our last communication, but I also under understand if it is she's saying things like that. So being really, again, emotionally intelligent, very adult, not being selfish, not being narcissistic about things, not expecting or demanding love to be returned.

She was honestly like textbook doing things exactly how you, I think you're supposed to do things as a parent. But she was also excited. I think she was just like, oh my God, I've been waiting my whole life to connect with this kid and here he is and now it's like I might lose him or he's not [00:33:00] responding.

So then I went on another walk with Kevin and co like these Kevin walks. Actually, now that I'm replaying this are actually pretty seminal weeks of my life 'cause I get to be around seven to eight, nine other people who are all top of their class, just best of the best doing what they're doing. In Spain, I was walking with this neuroscientist who is probably gonna win a Nobel Prize.

Just that level of just incredible humans and then also who are all great parents and incredible archetypes. And so I was in Bali and Kevin was like, we were having dinner one night with everyone talking about families. And I was like, oh, my birth mom keeps sending me these messages and I feel so terrible.

It's now I have two moms that I'm not being a great son for. I feel it's like I'm not sending enough messages to my adoptive mom, or now my birth mom. And Kevin was like, just go have lunch with her. And I was like, oh God, I can't just go have lunch. She lives in Chicago. And it was like, I, when am I [00:34:00] gonna be in Chicago?

And then a couple weeks later I was like, you know what I bleep it, let's just go have lunch with her. And I just messaged her on Ancestry, was like, hey, do you wanna have lunch? I was giving a talk in Portland, I'd been invited out for a talk. And I was like, all right, I'll slap Chicago onto that. And I was like, do you wanna have lunch on like August 14th?

And she was like, yes, I'll here for absolutely, I'll make reservations. And again, I'm still anonymous, haven't told her my name. And I was like, apologies, apologizing. I was like, I'm sorry I'm still anonymous. I'm just, this is just a lot for me. And I would rather you not know anything about me because you can Google me and find out everything about me before we meet.

I'd rather just meet I don't know, on that plane of an anonymity. And so we set up that lunch and I'm like, I'm a little nervous, not super nervous, but also, I feel really good about who I am. There was no part of me that was like, oh, I need this to be something. I need her to be some person in my life or occupy some space in my life as like a mother or [00:35:00] whatever.

None of that. And I was also like even if I didn't think she wouldn't like me, but I was just, I was thinking, and maybe this sounds a little like narcissistic, but I have to say this is not, I do not think this is a narcissistic way of looking at it. In fact, I think it speaks to the amount of self love I've worked hard on over the last 10 years to build up for myself.

I just felt like she's so lucky to meet me as I am today. I feel I just feel good about who I am and what I'm working on and what I've built. And I have this incredible relationship with my stepdaughter from a previous relationship that in the end we broke up. But I have this stepdaughter out of it, and she's 15 now.

And building up that relationship with my stepdaughter and going through, when she was 8, 9, 10, 11, especially about being a father to her and being adopted, that's a superpower where it's like blood doesn't have to matter and you can create these strong family connections without the blood.

And for me on, for people on the outside, it's oh my God, I can't believe [00:36:00] you're such a father figure to this kid. But for me it's I, we had the connection and I'm just honoring it. And even though I've broken up with her mom, we separated. That doesn't stop that connection.

It's I think that's the adopt again, adoptive superpower is not needing the blood to define things or feel like, okay, because we don't have a blood connection. And because I broke up with the mother, now I don't have to be in your life. That's absolutely not the case. But when we were, when she was 8, 9, 10, 11, we were still together.

And obviously I was a present in her life and feeling like I could be a good father through all these small interactions that we started to have. And I think parenting, this is I've become this real strong advocate of parenting because these experiences I had with my stepdaughter, I don't think could have appeared anywhere else in my life.

And the way they forced me to grow. Like we'd get in a fight and I would be like, okay, she's gonna throw me away. Which is an insane thing to think about an 8-year-old, I was like, oh yeah, she, we these stupid little fights. And [00:37:00] then she wouldn't talk to me for a week and I would just go, okay, she's done with me.

Because I had so internalized this narrative of I'm something to be thrown away. And I think that was just such a core narrative for me, such a core narrative for a lot of adoptees. And I was like, okay, this eight year old's gonna throw me away. This nine year old's gonna throw me away now. And it killed me.

And then we would reconcile and I'd never witnessed reconciliation again this is why I say I had no real adults as parents in my life in the sense, because there wasn't a reconciliation. So when would get in a fight, or they would break up. And my mom had all these boyfriends and she would, they would break up and then they would just disappear.

There was no attempt to think about me and who these people represented for me and to go, hey, maybe for Craig, we should talk to him about this. It was always, there was an incredible selfishness on the part of my mother around these relationships and never saying, oh, maybe Craig [00:38:00] needs this guy who broke up with me, still in his life in some way.

Anyway, so reconciliation was something I had never witnessed. And then with my daughter, I just call her my daughter. I don't call her my stepdaughter. I think that's like a weird pejorative. And then with my daughter, we started reconciling after these like little, these dumb little fights, which is insane to think now, like how certain I was that she was gonna throw me away from these like dumb little things.

We started reconciling over and over again and I came to realize like not only was reconciliation, actually really easy to do, but she was so hungry for it and she didn't know how to do it. So it was like two eight year olds essentially, me and her sort of trying to figure this thing out of oh wow, you can get in a fight and then reconcile and actually be stronger after it and hug and she was so hungry for that.

And, oh, in fact, not only did she like not want to throw me away, she really needed me in her life and was so happy to have me in her life. So that was, those were pretty seminal moments I'd say, in the last eight years. And so to have gone through that and to [00:39:00] feel this value in myself as a father and to my, to this daughter.

And so to have done all that stuff and then with the work I'm doing, being really proud of the work I'm doing and there's all this stuff with Japanese cities that I've done that, there's a huge story around that, but like with New York Times and blah, blah, blah. But these have been pretty powerful, impactful things like, I've had a hundred million dollar impact on one of these Japanese cities, like in terms of growth and helping it out and giving resources to the city. And so to have done those things and then to be able to meet my birth mother, I was able to go to that meeting and be like, man, she's really lucky to meet me as I am today.

As opposed to 20 years ago where I was basically an alcoholic and didn't know who I was and had no faith in my ability to be a parent, let alone even take care of myself. Anyway, quite a big shift in, in the story. And so I, I go to Chicago with that mindset and with this version of who I am today, and that felt good to be able to [00:40:00] go to that meeting as that person.

Haley Radke: This reunion is really recent. Yeah, I know. You're like it's 15 months ago. It's super recent.

Craig Mod: Oh, but the Chicago was eight months ago.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So eight months ago you went but anonymously. So she still didn't know really your accomplishments and all of those things.

Craig Mod: And so anyway, it's the morning of, I'm like starting to feel, oh yeah, what's gonna happen? Are we gonna burst into flames when we hug? You know what's, I don't know what, how does this work? And so I go to the steak restaurant she had made a reservation at this steak restaurant, and she was, she's I'll be standing in front of it. And I knew what she looked like. And I showed up and was like waving, hello. Hey, I'm the anonymous weirdo that wouldn't tell you my name, and we hugged and it was we're both just so nervous. And looking back on it, I realized like she was so nervous and she hoped, she so hoped I would like her.

So like that, it's interesting to think about her perspective of it. [00:41:00] Like just really desperately wanting to be liked by me or just being nervous about it, or just being, you think of the parent as not being nervous, but actually she was. Very nervous.

Haley Radke: Well and a 13 year age difference is. You're essentially peers now.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Age wise.

Craig Mod: It's so weird. So we go in and sit down in this booth, the waitress comes over and she's just oh my God, okay you guys honey's you just take your time. We didn't order for two hours. It was like we could, we sat down and the first thing she does is she like opens her wallet and she takes out a baby photo of me and she goes, I've been carrying this my whole life.

I guess the adoption agency gave it to her. I've been carrying this my whole life, and every year on your birthday, I think of you and I think I pray for you. I hope you become a good person and you've had a good life. And and I'm just like, oh my God, I, I can't believe already, it's starting to rewire this genesis story of, wait, maybe this wasn't traumatic for her in a way that [00:42:00] I had always assumed it was, and she just starts telling me about everything. It's like she was 13 and she was, she presented much older than she was, or more mature she says, than she was. And she was working part-time job at a deli, because everyone in the family kinda had to work because the family, it was the father had passed away.

She just met this son of the deli owner and he wasn't 17, he was 22. So there's a lot of, okay. He was a pedophile a little bit, but she presented, oh yeah, I think she probably told him she was, 16 or 17 or whatever. Whether I, now that I've, I have a daughter and I've seen her at 13.

I go, when it's a 13-year-old, this is like pretty weird. Anyway, but her retelling of it all was that it was totally copacetic. It was not like this weird power thing. And they slept together once she got pregnant. And yeah, she was just like, he didn't want anything to do with it. He didn't believe it was [00:43:00] his, and she was just like, all right, bleep you, I'm gonna figure this bleep out.

She just had this really like working class I'm going to get this done, bleep all of you guys. And she just described, she's finally she told her mom, she was like trying to figure it out on her own. I think she tried to have an abortion, but it was like too late or something in Chicago.

And then she finally told her mom, and she was, and her mom was like, oh, okay, yeah, we can't deal with this here, but your aunt and uncle can maybe help out. And so she went and lived with her aunt and uncle and they were super supportive and she was like, oh, that time living with my aunt and uncle was actually great.

And the high school I went to was so supportive, even though I was like six months pregnant, when I started there and they gave me like a senior that was like my mentor and I was, getting prenatal vitamins, so like this image of her like, oh, she was just smoking weed and doing crack and was, and this desperate place. She was like, I was, surrounded by so much love and I didn't want to give you up, but I knew I couldn't support you. I knew I couldn't raise you, we just didn't have the resources and I wanted you to have the best [00:44:00] possible life, and so I had to put you up for adoption, but I got to hold you for two days in the hospital and I, loved just holding you.

And I wrote you this letter. Did you get the letter? And I was like, what? I was like, I don't have a letter, but just imagining this 13-year-old writing this letter to this kid she just gave birth to and feels all this love for and having to give him up. That was all, it was just so wild to hear her describe all this.

And then she was, she's I've just always been so independent. When I was 16, I bought my first car, second car when I was 18, first house when I was 24. She's I never graduated college. She felt really bad about that, but like I just hacked my way through things and it turns out she's like a computer programmer, which is crazy to hear. It was just so in insane to hear that. And just as I'm sitting there and she's telling me her story and she's erasing all of this trauma genesis that I had concocted and I'm listening to her talk about how she navigated life and navigates life. I'm, [00:45:00] I was just in awe because all my life I had felt almost no cerebral connection to any of my adoptive family.

Anything you, like a black family could have adopted me and I don't think I would've felt more adopted in certain, in a certain way. It's like a family that kind of looks like me, adopted me. And so we, that was also what was weird about being a kid is that we didn't talk about me being adopted.

So people would be like, oh, you look, you have your grandfather's nose. And we wouldn't say anything, wouldn't be like, technically it's not his, because, and but psychically, from a very early age and certainly from teenage years, I did not connect with my adoptive family on a mental level, to have this woman sitting in front of me telling me her story and being like, I get every beat of this.

Everything you're saying makes sense. Everything you're saying is how I've approached the world and how I've hacked my way through the world, and how I've been like, all right, bleep you guys, I'm gonna figure this bleep out. Oh, you don't wanna be a, you don't want to be, take [00:46:00] responsibility and be a dad. Whatever.

I don't need a dad. I'm going to, I'm gonna figure it all out on my own. Screw you and she, her brain. For the first time ever in my life, I realized I have her brain, her, that's where my brain came from. I felt that it was like, oh, birth mom's brain is in my head. That's interesting. And that was pretty profound and pretty crazy.

And she was asking me, she goes, oh, do you know anyone in Chicago? I'm like, yeah, I've got a couple friends, I'm gonna, I've got dinner reservations with a friend tonight and she was like, you have dinner reservations. And like we had just over, messages on Ancestry, just planned a lunch.

So I thought that's all we were doing. She was like, I booked, I got us tickets to the symphony and I got us pizza reservations on the river and like that. And we were, I wanted to take you on an architecture tour. And I was like, oh my. I was like, yeah, great. These are, and she's saying all these things that like, I would really love to do, that.

And I'm just like, like someone inviting me to the symphony. Like it sounds insane, but that, I was like, that's a dream invite for [00:47:00] me. No one's ever invited me to the symphony before. So that was really interesting and really bizarre. And we ended up walking around Chicago for six hours and I was like, I have to go back to my hotel and just decompress for a couple hours before the symphony.

And she was like, of course. And we went to the symphony together and it was just so bizarre 'cause again, yeah, our age difference isn't that big. And it wouldn't be that insane for me to date someone 13 years older than me. And so it kind, it was like this, looking around it was like, how are people perceiving us together? Would they ever think we're mother and son and we kinda went to this symphony thing and we're taking selfies together and I'm just, it just felt so out of body, surreal, the whole experience. And like the pizza place she booked was like this, it ended up being terrible.

She didn't know. She had never been, it was like a club that served pizza and it was so loud. And again, I was just like, oh my God everyone thinks we're on a date. And it was just funny. [00:48:00] And we had to scream to like talk and I was also just so exhausted and overwhelmed and I was like, look, it was like 10 30, and I was like, she clearly just wanted to talk until 3:00 AM She just wanted to keep going. And I was like, I'm so sorry. I have to go shut down now. And she's of course. She walked me back to my hotel. It was just, it was a lot. It was so much. I'm still processing it eight months later and doing this, like going on a show like this is part of my forcing function to force me to think about this stuff more, because I think my impulse, I'm so busy with my life.

I've got so much going on. I have this new book coming out in May, prepping for that. I am doing a book tour. I'm running all these other things. I've got all this media stuff coming in. I have 12 seconds to myself a day. And so my impulse is to be like, okay, great, that happened. Let's never think about that again.

That's that's the bizarre impulse. But yeah. So talking about these things in public, I think for me it's forcing me to just sit with it. A little bit. [00:49:00] And also I did the Tim Ferriss show a couple weeks ago, and I've just, my inbox is bananas right now with people, mostly adoptees reaching out and some birth parents reaching out, sharing just hundreds of stories.

And so I also feel like having a positive adoption reconnection story is maybe more rare than I knew 'cause like I told you over email, I have engaged with this world 0%. I have never looked at an adoption Reddit subreddit. I have never read any forums. I've never listened to any podcasts. I've never looked at any YouTube channels.

And again, that was part of the preservation thing and also part of the guilt thing, like my adoptive mother, I think feeling like by engaging with this world, I'm doing her disservice, or I'm hurting her, or dishonoring her in some weird way. That narrative was pretty strong in my head. And [00:50:00] so also part of doing this is to eviscerate that narrative, to get rid of that narrative and also to maybe help others who might be listening think about whether or not they hold that narrative and whether that narrative's holding them back or not.

So with the birth mom, anyway, I go to bed, it's like Saturday. Clearly she just goes back to the hotel and calls literally everyone in her family, like all of the aunts and uncles, the, all of her brothers and sisters, the aunts and uncle she connected with. And I'm telling her my story during the day and she's just oh my God, I can't believe you're my kid.

I can't believe you're doing these things. And so then like even a couple days later, I start getting dms from like cousins in Wisconsin who are like, hey, I run a flower shop. And I heard you're my cousin. That's cool. Do you wanna do a call sometime? And I'm just like, what is happening?

So I went from having my adoptive family is so small. A bunch of only children. Everyone's dead, basically zero family. There's almost no, my adoptive mom is the only person left in my life, essentially from that family, both sides, mothers and father's side. And so to go from this super tiny thing [00:51:00] where all of my life I dreamed about having a Christmas with, a big family, and all these, and now I've got four aunts and uncles on my mother's side.

I've got a bunch of aunts and uncles on my father's side. I've got all of these cousins now and everyone wants to integrate or to accept me. And it's just whoa, what? What is going on? And during that day of talking with my birth mom, I said, so what is the story with dad? He was murdered. Who was this guy? And she goes, actually, yeah, he wasn't murdered. I picked him out. I picked a random guy out of the newspaper who was murdered and said, that's the birth father because your real birth father was 22. And so it was statutory rape and I didn't wanna deal with legal stuff. And it turns out that he's alive and he lives in Florida.

It was like, what? Oh my God. So again, like this. And it turns out you have a half sister who's 28 or something like that. I was like, oh my God. [00:52:00] And actually, of all the information I got, that first day, that half sister thing made me so happy. And I had not realized how hungry, I guess my, I've been my entire life to have a sibling, a real sibling, and part of what this book that's coming out in May is about, this book, Things Become Other Things, is this brother person I had throughout my childhood who is murdered as soon as we graduate high school. And so like that one person who was a brother had been taken from me. And so to suddenly have this half sister was really profoundly moving and affecting. I was like, oh, my impulse was like immediately I wanna protect her. It was like really bizarre. Again, this sort of whatever, me having to be the father all the time, like I, immediately went to that place because my birth mom was like, oh, she has this terrible relationship with her birth father, with your father, and he has a bunch of problems and he's an alcoholic and they haven't talked in 10 years and all this stuff.

And I was like, whoa. And so my, I was like, I want to talk to her. [00:53:00] Let me connect with her. And through a few channels, there's, the whole story's extremely complicated and long, and we, you need diagrams to figure it all out. But through some channels I heard back that she wasn't ready to connect with me.

So she didn't know I obviously didn't know I existed. And I was, I feel like I'm, I've been really lucky connecting at this point in my life. Again, I needed nothing from this meeting with my mom. I was going in there not expecting anything, not demanding anything. I didn't need for her to like me, I didn't need for her to accept me.

I didn't need for my story to be a good story. Like I didn't need any of that. I was just going into it as an adventure. Okay, this is a really weird thing to do. And I would probably regret not doing it if like I'd heard she passed away or something, and I missed the opportunity, so let's just go do this.

And then same with the half sister stuff, where I was like, I'd love to connect with her, but if she's not ready, that's, this is heavy, weird, complicated stuff. She has one guy in her life, her father, that kind of doesn't work as a relationship. And I can totally see her being like, I don't need another dude, [00:54:00] older dude who I'm not gonna get along with.

I'd like completely sympathize. So that thankfully didn't hurt me or I didn't feel bad about that. I was like, you know what? If she ever wants to connect, that's cool. And then two months ago, my father's older sister who I'd also tried to connect with and didn't wanna connect with me, emailed me outta the blue and she said, I just read this book about adoption.

I'm really sorry. I didn't want to connect with you. I've thought it over. I'm ready to connect. Now. The first of all, everyone knows who I am, so it's like, all right, I don't have this anonymity armor anymore. So like everyone knows they can Google me, they can see what I'm doing. Do you wanna do a call?

I was like, yeah, of course I do. 'cause like I wanna connect with everybody. I'm like, I, this is now. And it's sure, let's just do it. Let's just connect with these people. So we did a call, she's super cool, really interesting, very smart. She doesn't have any kids. She's become like a mother figure to my half sister.

And I said, look, I still wanna connect with my sister. Can you make that happen? She's I'll try, I'll ask her again. And then two weeks [00:55:00] later, she's okay, she wants to connect. And so we did a zoom call. It was me, my half sister, and her husband. So she's 28, her husband's 27. And my aunt, I guess as, almost as like a chaperone.

Oh, it was very. A little bit strange, but my aunt immediately had to like, go do something else. So she left the zoom call and it was just me and my sister and we talked probably for an hour, 90 minutes. And we just clearly really liked each other. Immediately it was just like, or at least I liked her.

I don't know. She, I was just like, she's, I was like, you're just such a cool, kind, smart person. Like everything you're saying is awesome. You are, you've got this like kindness to your eyes that is really affecting and beautiful. And I was just like, wow. Like I feel honored to have you as a sister. Great.

And I don't think she knew what to get out of it. And I think if you get me as a sudden sibling, it's pretty cool. I'm just doing a lot of cool stuff. Again, not in a narcissistic way, [00:56:00] just in an objectively, like I have a cool life. I'm doing cool stuff I like, and it's taken me a long time to be able to say that.

Or believe it about myself or have that kind of like self-worth. And so I'm like, of course she's gonna be excited to connect with someone like me doing cool stuff. And so after the call, like immediately she messaged me and she's hey bro, just wanted to say it was so amazing connecting and she's can I call you bro? Is that weird? And I'm like, no. Like I, so calling her sis, she's calling me bro. And we've been like texting like pretty regularly, sending little photos of our life to each other. And then I'm going on this book tour in May, all over America, and she's can I join?

Can I come like my husband and I wanna fly out to one of these to, and I was like, of course. And so today actually, she just messaged me and said, we bought our tickets, we're gonna see you in Seattle. And I'm like, awesome. I'm like, I'm so happy that they're gonna come. That's she's is it okay to come to the event, the reading?

I'm like, yes. Like I'm realizing like people are being like way too cautious at this point. I'm like, you guys like [00:57:00] you, you get a free pass, sis gets a free pass. Anything you wanna do, I'm here for you. Come on. Hopefully next year they come to Japan, we can do a walk together. I'm trying not to give too much information about them.

I, because they don't know I'm talking about them, so I'm not saying like where they live or whatever, but I wanna go where they, visit them and do stuff together. And, I don't know, it just feels, it feels really wonderful. I don't to have this new person who we both like each other for now. We may hate each other.

Sibling rivalry. Sibling rivalry to come, but I don't know. It's all of this is so new. Like I said, connecting with my sisters like two months ago, I think that happened. Connecting with my birth mom was eight months ago. We only just did another video call like a couple weeks ago. I've just been so busy and she, with my birth mom, it's been such a respectful amount of texting and communication.

She's so cognizant of not overwhelming me and, but at the same time, letting me know she really wants me to be part of her life. Same with the sister. [00:58:00] We're just, everyone's being really careful. It's awesome. The birth father side of things is a little more complicated, a little weirder.

He, you Google him and he's got two, the only two Google results are court records and one's 20 years ago filing to pay lower child support payments, and then the other, and then the other one is filing for bankruptcy and it's oh, great. Yeah, he's, he embodies exactly what I was, my worst case scenario for these kind of birth parent figures would be.

And his sister told him, hey, here's your son. And, do you want to connect with him? Even though I wasn't asking to connect with him, and he wrote back, he's he, here's, give him my home address. He can write me a letter. And I was just like, what? Write you a letter, like bleep you like another one of these baby adults.

Who are these people? Write me a letter mother bleeper. If you're gonna, sorry, I don't know how like language sensitive.

Haley Radke: We'll beep it, it's fine.

Craig Mod: You'll beep it. I'm like, this is just the language of where I come from. I'm like, write me a letter, ding dong. And then two weeks later I [00:59:00] get another message from the aunt and she's oh, now he sent his email address. I'm like, F you man. I like now, okay, you like write your sister a letter and have her give it to me. So I ignore that and then a month later I start getting these insane emails from I guess his girlfriend. The emails are coming and like the entire body of the text of the email is all in the subject.

It's like one of these like crazy, super crazy people that like don't know how to use email properly and like they don't know where to write the letter. Anyway, I'm getting these like emails with these insane subjects that are like, have no punctuation or are like, I can help you. I know your father, here's my number. Please call me now with no periods or all lowercase. I'm just like, what the heck? And she's sending me like three, four emails a day. I just ignored 'em all. I'm like, I can't let this crazy into my life. I think having those boundaries is really important when you do these things.

And for me right now. Processing the goodness of my birth mother and my sister, and then the extended family. I've got like an aunt in [01:00:00] Switzerland who's like a yoga teacher or whatever, like all just cool stuff. Another aunt who's like a beekeeper or something like super weird, wacky bee keeper aunt I wanna sit with and just relish and feel the love and coolness of that connection, the father stuff, because I've dealt with these sort of non father fathers my whole life.

I actually have a lot of empathy for this guy. I feel like I may be the only person in the world who can absolve this man, who can give him a second chance to try to have a relationship with someone. And this isn't, again, it's not an attempt to save him or it's not this attempt of subjugating myself or diminishing myself.

There's a bunch of stories I can tell about these older, broken male figures that I've connected with, and we've formed these interesting connections that were, I think, mutually beneficial and mutually elevating. And so I, I have a weird ability to empathize with broken men and me, myself [01:01:00] also having been a broken man for most of my life.

And so I do not think it's my role or I have any duty to help or elevate this person, but I think some interesting essays can come out of going and meeting this guy and sitting with that and just seeing if, as in the twilight of his life, 'cause now he's, in his late sixties, I don't know how he's doing health wise.

Who knows how much longer. Maybe he's got 20 years left, maybe he's got three years left, who knows? But in this kind of twilight period of his life, can he and me too, I think have an interesting connection that doesn't feel parasitic. And a, again, to use that term, mutually elevating. Is there a way to be mutually elevating in this relationship in a way that's really careful?

And obviously that I don't put myself at risk and psychologically, but again, it's only because I'm in this place that I've gotten to myself to in the last, I'd say five to eight years that I can even think about this. [01:02:00] And because I've had experiences with super interesting, older, broken people in weird, very weird connections that have turned out to be really beautiful stories of my life in my life.

So that's how I'm thinking about the birth dad thing. But man, just processing mom and sis like. That's a lot. And.

Haley Radke: Reunion is so complicated.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And layering all of these new people into your existing life. And trying to right size all of those things. And I would say you're in the early days, we often call it the honeymoon stage.

The complexity is yet to come. And I often don't interview people till they're well down the road past how long you've been in reunion because there's so much to process. So I feel honored that you shared this with us and I'm excited for you. You got quite a journey ahead [01:03:00] of you. More walking to do.

Craig Mod: Yes. More walking literally and metaphorically. But do you have any advice for me in this position? You've talked to so many people, you've heard so many stories. Is there anything to like, look out for or to be careful of or I don't know.

Haley Radke: The fact that you have a therapist to walk alongside you during this time

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Is super important.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Craig Mod: So you can process those things outside of your relationship with your birth mother. And your sister and slow is better. I think,

Haley Radke: Yeah. Slowing down is better because we get really caught up in, in all the things. It's really easy.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: To get caught up in it.

Craig Mod: I feel like the pace that we've taken Connecting on ancestry, no message for a year.

Weird message, nothing for three months, me responding nothing for three months, and then some letters and then we still don't even meet until eight months after that. I feel like that was a pretty sane pace. And then also [01:04:00] after the super intense, we ended up spending that Saturday together and then Sunday morning we had brunch and it was cool. We, I have all of these friends who are whatever famous, people who've are connected with all sorts of different crap in the world. And one of my friends is a big food guy and he produced Chef's Table, the Netflix show. And so anywhere I go, he's always dude, who do you want me to connect you with?

You should eat here. You have to eat here. And so he connected me with this brunch place that doesn't take reservations and that there's like a two hour line every day waiting outside of, and he's don't worry, I've messaged them. You're all set. Go in the back kitchen door and just tell 'em who you are, and so my birth mom and I meet at this place and she's oh my God, the line. And I'm like, come with me. And we go through this like back patio space and I opened the kitchen door and like we walk into the kitchen and they're like, Craig, oh is that you? Oh my God, we've been waiting for you. We have your table right over here.

So it was just so funny 'cause my birth mom was like, who are you? Who am I having brunch with? So it was a pretty [01:05:00] funny to, to be able to like flex that weird oh yeah, I'm a guy who like gets us in the kitchen back door, skips the line, sort of person. And we had this amazing brunch and at the end she, we hadn't cried or there hadn't been anything really emotional through the whole thing.

And then at the end of brunch, she was like saying all the things she wanted to do now I wanna go on this. Let's walk down this tour. Let's do, and I just said, look, I can't do this. I'm done. I'm so overwhelmed. Like this brunch even was like my breaking point. And I'm like, I just need to be alone now for four days.

That's what I need. And she's I totally get it. And she just, started tearing up and saying, thank you for trusting me and for making the time and for coming out. And she's I have a gift bag for you. And she had this like very cute gift bag that had, she's don't open it now.

It took me like three days to open it. I like just couldn't just so much. And I think. I've also learned that you can operate on your own timeline and actually having a therapist, the great thing about that tool and [01:06:00] something it's taught me is if something in your life is happening that's emotionally overwhelming or you get a stressful email or something stressful is happening, not that this is stressful, this is more just so many emotions.

When you have someone like a therapist, a tool like that, a resource like that, you can say, okay, I'm gonna put this over to the side now and then in five days I'm gonna talk to Dan and we'll unpack this together. And I think I've just learned to do that even without the therapist, just knowing okay, I don't have the mental space to open this gift basket right now. That's like too much. And then when I did finally open it, it had this Christmas ornament for the city of Chicago in it, and it had all these, like a chocolate bar and Twizzlerss and these other candies. And she was, and she wrote me this letter clearly the night after we met, she wrote me this big letter about the meeting that day. And she created a book of the, our family history, so like a full family tree and [01:07:00] photos of my grandparents and great-grandparents and talking about this grandparent ran like a hat shop and this is what your grandfather did. And like he, I want you to know who you are and where you come from.

And it was just amazing. Like she had just, she hadn't met me, she didn't know who I was, on that brunch. She was like, I was so worried. You were like, gonna be morbidly obese or something. And we couldn't walk around the city. And I was like, I didn't know what we were gonna be able to do.

And like she had, had all these worst case scenarios in her head, but even though she did, had no idea who I was or who I would be, she still had all of this love for me. And, went into this book and went into wanting me to know these things, which I found to be really affecting. And that was quite amazing.

So any birth moms or dads who are listening to this story. Do what my birth mom did all of this stuff was, I couldn't imagine a better reunion unless, the only better reunion would be like, she picked me up in her [01:08:00] private jet and was like here's a suitcase of gold.

I've, it's I don't even I've just tried to imagine there's like only these insane things. Oh, and by, it's like I have no idea what could have made this better. Just her level of emotional intelligence, of her concern for my wellbeing. Also, there's some selfishness on her part in the sense of like really wanting to connect and really wanting to be, have this work out and like you could tell she was nervous and she really wants to maintain a relationship and all that stuff, but that's, it's tempered with this understanding and affection for who I am and emotional intelligence from what I'm feeling and a concern for what I'm feeling.

And that altogether was amazing to feel that from an adult because it's been so rare for me to feel that from any of the adults for most of my life as a child, certainly a kind of selflessness in the meeting. And I think that's how, that really is how you have to go into it. And she's just been, she's just been so cool.

Just little texts here and there sharing, hey, I'm running this project in Portland, she's got a consultancy. She's [01:09:00] been to Taipei and Shanghai and Tokyo, like with work and stuff, yeah. I'm having dinner at this Michelin starred restaurant. It's really great. Here's some photos of the entrees, I'm just like, great.

That's exactly the kind of message I wanna get. And then I think she's also following along with all the, all this stuff too and not saying she is, 'cause she doesn't want me to be too overwhelmed by it, by her presence. And so again, just like a perfect, at least at this stage, being like a really perfect birth mother in this reuniting process.

And my sister too. Sensitive and emotionally intelligent and grounded and concerned for how I'm feeling. Really amazing to have humans at operating at this level entering into my life. So we'll see. So if you're listening and you're on the non adoptee side, do what these people have been doing 'cause it's been pretty good.

Haley Radke: For you. And for some adoptees that might've been like, whoa, this is a lot. And I can't deal. And so it's amazing that you're both in the [01:10:00] right place and the right mindset and all those things. You got a lot of good stuff going. Your new book, Craig. Things Become Other Things, A Walking Memoir.

I loved it. It's so what's really beautiful, you, we didn't even get to talking about photography or anything, but the photographs are so beautiful and moving. The stories, the mystery of your friend propels people forward. You mentioned earlier, he was like a brother figure to you, and as an adoptee activist, I really appreciate mainstream books that talk about adoption in a true way.

And you have all of these nods to the complexity of adoption rather than the usual glossing over happy rainbow sunshine all the time, and instead the impacts it had on you. So I really appreciated that, and I don't know if you expected this or not, but I'm a mom to kids who [01:11:00] are about the age that you were when you were, you're telling these stories of childhood.

And so I'm reading it with my mom lens and being like, oh my gosh, if my kids were up to this stuff. And so I had all kinds of experiences reading it, and it was just really wonderful. I know it's gonna be well received by so many it's just an honor to get to read early and I loved it. Congratulations. It's so well done.

Craig Mod: Thank you. Yeah I'm happy the adoption stuff is in there in the way it is. And I've had a few, my PR person at Random House is actually also adopted very different adoption experience. This part of the Korean adoption wave adopted by non Korean families in America.

And it's a different kind of complexity, but she actually was first of all, she's like the most amazing PR person. She's just been the most incredible person to work with. But also she was like, I need to be on this book. She's I love how this book is [01:12:00] talking about adoption and I've highlighted all these passages you wrote about it and I need to be, I need to be your person for this book. So that felt,

Haley Radke: I wondered why I got the email.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Oh, that is so cool.

Craig Mod: Yeah. And so to hear you also say the adoption stuff is, feels true or not exploitative, not that it could be exploitative, but that means a lot. And part of why I'm doing this book with Random House is because I think the themes and the stories in it deserve a bigger platform.

And so part of my book tour, I'm doing this book tour. I think when this pod comes out, it'll be just at the start of the book tour. And so people can still come to a lot of these events. I'm doing this book tour. All across America and definitely adoption. And that part of the story will be a central part of the themes I'm talking about at all these events.

So I know I said earlier, I've never engaged really with the adoption universe as part of a [01:13:00] form of self preservation because I wasn't really ready to. But I love that you're doing this and I have listened to a few episodes. I went through to just see, what's the deal?

Haley Radke: See what you're getting into.

Craig Mod: What's the deal?

Haley Radke: Yeah. What's the deal with Haley? Yeah.

Craig Mod: How much crazy am I walking into even? But I love that you're doing this and I think if I had been in a more, if I had been in a better place in my twenties to think about this stuff, I would've, I think this resource of allowing people to tell these stories is so profound.

And I think it's, I think it's just magical and wonderful and I'm so grateful that. You're doing this and.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

Craig Mod: Man. I'm sure. You must get lots of emails from people too. And I'm overwhelmed by the number of adoptees out there who have struggled or are struggling or have had suboptimal reunions and stuff like that, as I've now just started to get these emails from. And so any kind of [01:14:00] resource to help people process that, it's a big deal.

Haley Radke: Send them my way.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: We have a show about them.

Craig Mod: Oh yeah.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I can I read to a couple lines?

Craig Mod: Sure. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. You write, how does it feel to be adopted? It feels like floating off in your own little bubble apart from everyone else.

A bit lonely, a bit distance, a bit mythic, and you go on. It's so for people that listen to the show and they're like, oh, you're new to adoptee land what is that gonna be? Craig gets it. You can read it. It's a safe book.

Craig Mod: Oh, that's so interesting that people might be like, oh he's, he is a, he is still wet behind the ears about reconnecting. That's funny to think about that. Yeah. No, I've been. Thinking about adoption and it, being adopted and it has clearly shaped, I live in Japan. I've this is my home. You have, there's a lot of broken stuff in me to have chosen to live. No, truly to have chosen to live in a culture that will never accept you [01:15:00] as part of it.

That speaks to some kind of self preservation technique. And I think that's all, you can trace it all back to the story. The stories of adoption that we tell ourselves and the pain that finding out you're adopted. That psychic wound of it because it is a psychic wound, especially if the adoptive parents don't work so hard to normalize it and to make it part of the conversation for you and to make it part of your identity.

It becomes, and if that doesn't happen, I think it just becomes this wound. And so.

Haley Radke: Even if it doesn't, I'm gonna, I'll disagree even if they do normalize all of it.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Nothing about being separated from your biological origins is normal.

Craig Mod: So is there on, from your side, have you, what is the best case strategy for.

Haley Radke: With family preservation?

Craig Mod: How do you minimize, how do you minimize that psychic wound? What's the strategy?

Haley Radke: Let's go back in time and go up river and talk about, so [01:16:00] why couldn't someone come alongside your birth mother and her family and support her in some sort of kinship parenting? I know 13 is super young. My, my birth mother was 15 and it's so why are we leaving our biological families? It's not. It's tough. It's tough. I'm very for family preservation, you'll find.

Craig Mod: Yeah. I see. That's interesting.

Haley Radke: And I think open adoption has been promoted as the panacea, and this is the fix to the secret closed adoption era.

Craig Mod: Yep.

Haley Radke: And the secrets and lies. That's what's making us feel disconnected and crazy and stuff.

Open adoption adoptees have the same identity issues you mentioned in your book, and you shared just briefly here that you struggled with alcohol. Adoptees are overrepresented.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: in addictions. Gee, I wonder why.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: [01:17:00] You're not alone in that by any stretch. There's a wound and we can put band-aids all over it, but adoption is, it's a primal wound as the famous adoptive parent book says.

Craig Mod: So there's no, that's, so that's really interesting. I think about there's no cohesive strategy to not make it feel painful in some way or another.

Haley Radke: Yes, get your kids into therapy, but what heals the deep truth that you were separated from your biological origins and you get to meet your birth mother and your half sister and you're like so connected and you find all these similarities and

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Like you, you mentioned your people saying, oh, you look so much like your grandfather.

You have your grandfather's nose, or whatever. People said that to me.

Craig Mod: Yeah,

Haley Radke: I'm adopted. I would be like, no, I'm adopted as a kid. I'd refuse it. Yeah. I'm like no, we're not connected.

Craig Mod: Yeah. Yeah. [01:18:00] I definitely, I definitely said that to, friends and stuff, it's no, it's not, that's not real. That's not, the real connection or whatever. Yeah, it is funny. I think you could, not to diminish things, but like I think you, it's one of these people will see patterns where they wanna see patterns and so it's like you could have almost put a random person, a random woman in front of me in that steakhouse and had her tell a story and I would've projected into it a certain amount of kinship that said, there are a lot of things like I don't see connections with, so physically I wasn't like, oh my god, it's my eyes, or this thing or that. I didn't feel any of that. But there was just something about the brain processes that, and the fact that she's a computer programmer is pretty wild. And I have this like really strong technical side and the fact that especially women of that age group, being computer programmers is pretty rare.

Those things did feel real. And the sister thing too, I think I'm more, and again, [01:19:00] I'm trying to parse out like, are people excited to connect with me just because I'm me? If I was less successful, would any of these people be excited to, to have me in their life? And so that's something I'm trying not to overthink because that again allows you to shut down pretty easily and just write this stuff off and be like if you know you, if you couldn't Google me and find all this cool stuff would they like me or not?

But I think, even with, I'm not sure my birth sister knew who I was before we did that first Zoom and my birth mother certainly didn't. So there, there seems to be a kind of truth. And I think my part of being anonymous was to create kind of a bulwark against that voice in the back of my head being like, oh, these people only want to connect because of maybe I can give them money, or this thing or that thing or whatever.

And in fact, my birth mom was like, don't connect with your birth dad. 'cause he's just gonna ask you for money. It was really funny that she had, even though she hasn't talked to him in 43 years, she had this narrative of oh, this guy's no good. I've talked to his sister and she says, he's always asking her for money and yada, yada.

But [01:20:00] that's funny to hear you say that even open adoptions don't, but, open adoptions to me intuitively seem to make a lot of sense. Intuitively. It's yeah.

Haley Radke: We could have a whole nother conversation about that. Yes, it does seem to make a lot of sense. A lot of it open adoption's close. They're not legally enforceable. Have, open adoption can mean the adoptive family sends photos to a birth mother once a year.

Craig Mod: Wow.

Haley Radke: It doesn't mean you have any sort of meaningful, ongoing relationship with a parent. Also, even if you do as a child, it's wait, so you're here, but like you're not taking care of me. Like it's very confusing.

Craig Mod: Sure.

Haley Radke: So for all of it, our identity is impacted.

Craig Mod: Is training for adoptive parents just not good enough? Is that something we're butting up against? I don't think, I don't think there was any training for my parents, whereas like I talked to, I have a [01:21:00] friend who did fostering and the amount of work he had to do before he was able to accept a foster kid was bananas, a year of classes and all sorts of stuff. Before where I feel like my parents were just like, hey, we want a kid. And we're, hey, we're Catholic. And they're like, oh yeah, here's one. And then, God forbid all these freaking Korean kids who were just shipped often with like fake birth certificates and what, just shipped out to America in the eighties.

Haley Radke: That's still happening here. That's still happening in North America. I'm Canadian. People think I'm American, but that's still happening here.

Craig Mod: Wow.

Haley Radke: In, private infant adoption, there's maybe 45 to 55 couples for every available infant.

Craig Mod: Wow.

Haley Radke: And adoption agencies are like, actively, the most money they spend is on marketing and recruiting to try and find mothers to relinquish, just like in Korea, where

Craig Mod: Wow.

Haley Radke: Government officials were, going down the street and paying people to take babies. [01:22:00] Essentially we have similar things happening here. I know, Craig, we could go down a very terrible rabbit hole. I don't know if you wanna go there, but it's troublesome.

Craig Mod: Wow.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Craig Mod: Yeah. And I, and at the same time, if I was aborted, I wouldn't know about my, I wouldn't be able to mourn my own existence. Yeah. So that's like the interesting paradox here. But for most of my life. I'd say my teenage years were incredibly painful psychically and my twenties were just so terrible, and my sense of self-worth was so low throughout my entire life. And it's funny saying these things actually I'm getting some permission from you.

Hearing even just this small bit of information again, like having, I feel like a dilettante having engaged zero with the community, but hearing from you how common all of this is, I think saying this almost feels like it's an indictment on my adoptive parents, but really they, because like I, because I feel like they don't [01:23:00] have the emotional capacity to process this stuff in the, in ways that I would hope they could.

So that's kept me from, I think, engaging with a lot of this stuff or thinking about a lot of this stuff directly, because I'm always like, if I engage with it directly, it's I'm dishonoring them in a weird way, even though they tried their best and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that crap. But actually it was a irreconcilable wound that even if they had been super awesome, maybe to a next level of greatness, like they could have probably, smoothed some of it out. But you're, what I'm hearing from you is that there is a fundamental like kind of Adam and Eve, eating the fruit, like understanding of evil that's implanted in every adopted kid. The psychic pain of the knowledge.

Haley Radke: Let's say it is a, actually it's an indictment on society.

Craig Mod: Yes.

Haley Radke: And the narratives that they have force fed us and everyone else that everything's good here, [01:24:00] everything's good. However, adoptees are the butt of jokes and however, adoptees are the ones that come back looking for money. And we're the serial killers, and

Craig Mod: right.

Haley Radke: There's a lot to dig into.

Craig Mod: Okay, here's a crazy question. Is it better to pretend a kid isn't adopted?

Haley Radke: No. No.

Craig Mod: Is that better?

Haley Radke: There's no secrets anymore. No. That's we call those late discovery adoptees.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And there's no secrets anymore. So those folks, when I interview them.

Craig Mod: If you could avoid the psychic trauma as a child and teenager of adoption, and then get it when you're 25, is that a better scenario?

Haley Radke: I have only ever interviewed one late discovery adoptee who said yes she was happy her parents lied to her and she didn't find out till her mid twenties.

Craig Mod: That's so interesting. We need to run some experiments. Can we? We need to start some Harvard funded adoptee experiments. That's.

Haley Radke: Oh, don't worry those have already happened.

Craig Mod: Right? What is it? Three Perfect Strangers that you [01:25:00] know, that film that came out a couple years ago? Heartbreaking, insane.

Haley Radke: Oh, there's actually one of the books I was gonna recommend for you to read is called The Guild of the Infant Savior. It's by my friend Megan Culhane Galbraith, and I think you'd really enjoy it because it's essays and her art and there's photographs in it. So it's like a hybrid memoir. And she has an essay in it where she talks about this program where they used to take babies who were gonna be adopted. But they brought them into a home economics program to train young women how to be mothers. And they put these babies on a schedule, and these college mothers would come and take care of them and train the babies. Then if they were good enough, they would be adopted out into families.

Craig Mod: Oh. If the babies were good enough.

Haley Radke: But if the babies, yeah, and if the babies didn't take into the schedule, then they might go into [01:26:00] foster care. They're called the domecon babies babies.

Craig Mod: Oh,

Haley Radke: yeah.

Craig Mod: We're so twisted.

Haley Radke: Yeah. This is from the twenties. All the records of which babies had been in the domecon program, the records were destroyed. So if you were adopted at that time, you would never know you were a domecon baby.

Craig Mod: Whoa. And Japan has an interesting history with adoption in that a lot of it is adult adoptions into families to continue businesses or trades.

But it's, it's considered very real. Like they, they really do. You're now part of the family and I think the monocultural element of Japan where everyone is of the same race, the same quote, unquote blood according to their mythologies or whatever. So I think there's a little bit more fluidity there of moving people between families because it feels like everyone's already close. But it is interesting that.

Haley Radke: And there's a connection still to your original identity.

Craig Mod: Yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke: It's not the full [01:27:00] erasure. Like our practice of adoption is.

Craig Mod: Right. Geez. Wow. It's a lot. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Sorry, Craig. So we call this, there's this new paper out, it's called the Adoptee Consciousness Model. So we used to call it Coming Out of the Fog, and that sort of has a negative connotation. Oh, you're in the fog, so you don't get it, but you're outta the fog and it's like a binary thing. But the adoptee consciousness model talks about unpacking all these different touchstones

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: In your life and you may think about adoption differently, or you may think about your adoptive parents differently or your biological parents. All these things. But yeah, I feel like I'm like dragging you through the.

Craig Mod: No, I love it. I love it. I wasn't in a fog. I was in the, I was in a freaking swamp. I was just like swamp in a swamp. I was deep in the adoptive swamp where of self-loathing and suicidal ideation and stuff like that. It just like really.

Haley Radke: Yeah. That's so common.

Craig Mod: Yeah.

Haley Radke: It's so common. Suicidal ideation for us too. The studies will show that we're four times more likely to [01:28:00] attempt suicide.

Craig Mod: I believe it. I definitely, my drinking was definitely a version of that. The number of days I woke up and was just like, I can't believe I'm still alive after what I just did to my body, just falling over, waking up, cracked open head stuff like, just really looking back on it. Very sad stuff and even difficult now to fully empathize with who that person was 'cause it feels just like the journey has taken me so far from whatever that place was, and yet still knowing that's in there, that those feelings, that impulse or whatever. So I basically stopped drinking completely like 13, 14 years ago, mainly because I felt almost like a theological pull to do the work that I'm doing, and so it's I know people can have like religious conversions and that's like how you're able to pull yourself out of it or whatever. But for me, getting around a lot of the addiction stuff was creating a narrative around my work and wanting so [01:29:00] badly for nothing to get in the way of that. And then realizing the easiest way I could gain back so much time and energy and capability was to just not drink.

That allowed me to start saying no to drinking functions and drinks and stuff like that because it was, there was a clear purpose there and it, and building up self-worth, I'd say the most pivotal parts of my journey coming out of whatever the adoption haze, fog swamp was creating a sense of self-worth.

I'd say that was probably the most, the thing most affected by adoption was probably that I, from such a young age being like, oh, I'm a thing you throw away, I'm a thing people can throw away. And then my parents getting divorced so, so quickly and my dad not being present. It's like all of that stuff, just like layering on that narrative.

Oh, see, that's more data. It's like I'm, I get thrown away. I'm the person who's thrown away. I don't have any value, blah, blah, blah, blah. And ratcheting my way out of that place was I think the first step that, we talk about therapy. I had to get myself to a [01:30:00] place where I felt like I had enough value to warrant therapy, to be able to do that therapy, reach out.

And that was that was a big deal.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Craig Mod: And for me, running was the first step in creating self-worth. That sounds like weird, but running, quitting alcohol, charging more for my work and then using my work, I getting a little bit of like the fame that I was accruing through some of my work. Being out in the world to connect with great people and spending more time with great people, going on walks with great people and just feeling that greatness and believing that it could exist in the world.

And then believing that I deserved to be in the presence of that. And then from that believing, oh, maybe I have a little bit of goodness in me too. And that's why these incredible, kind, empathetic, emotionally intelligent, wonderful people want to be near me and just, but it takes, that process is so slow.

This is, I started dragging myself out of the fog [01:31:00] swamp probably when I was 27. And it wasn't until I was 37 that I could think, oh, I should do therapy. It took me 10 years to be able to get to the place where I felt like I had enough worth to do therapy. And then the therapy and the daughter stuff and all this stuff, compounding and compounding as resources have gotten me, got me to where I am today and got me to the place where I was able to do that birth mother meeting.

And so now, yeah, a big part of what I've, the next stage of processing is definitely adoptive mom processing stuff where I'm like 'cause I just told her for the first time two weeks ago that I met my birth mom. That was its own thing. Maybe we could do a follow up in a year and see how things are going.

Haley Radke: I'd love to, we can, if you would like, we can also talk privately so you don't have to air all your everything for all to hear. I thank you. Thanks for letting us in. I'm really honored to have heard your story. [01:32:00] What do you wanna recommend to us today, Craig?

Craig Mod: Therapy, definitely.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Craig Mod: I just, it's like I can't, I literally can't point to anything else in my life that's had a bigger impact. And for me, therapy is just having a totally switched on, completely present listener in my life, which is someone I've never had, I'd never had before this therapist, I'm doing it all remotely.

So don't even think you have to. Oh God, I don't have a therapist near me. I, I can't do therapy like try a few people. It's, there's definitely a kind of pheromonal thing that happens, like whether or not you connect with the person on the other end. And talk to three or four people at least, and test them out.

And for me it was just like, wow, okay, this person's smart. They are super present, they don't have a horse in this race. So that they're able to listen to me in an objective way. I trust them implicitly. I can tell them my story and I don't worry about them judging me. I can tell them [01:33:00] exactly how I feel about X, Y, or Z.

A lot of people will say, oh, I don't need a therapist 'cause I have this good friend and we like go out for drinks and we can talk about anything. And there's a lot of people who say that's not therapy. That is, your friend is bringing so much crap to the table. They, your friend I'm almost certain, unless they're a trained therapist, is trying to solve everything for you.

And so that is not what you need. That's not what therapy is about. It's not about that solving process. It really is about having this person who can listen and synthesize for you and reflect back to you. What you've said, not just in a session, but over time. And so I have this eight year relationship with this person who's heard, who's seen me go through by these last eight years of my life have been insane just on every level personal and as a father and professionally and starting my membership program and doing these big walks and, all this stuff.

And so to have someone in your life that you're going on this journey with and having them be able to point back [01:34:00] to these different moments and say, hey what's happening to you now remember, this is this happened three years ago. This happened five years ago. And do it all in a non nonjudgmental way and help you think about these things is you cannot overemphasize the power of that resource.

It is so bananas. And I really think if I could snap my fingers and give everyone the world something aside after national healthcare as sane countries do, and, whatever, like funded schools and blah, blah, all that baseline crap. The bonus would be everyone has a great therapist, and I just think that would literally solve like, most of the issues in the world. It's crazy. It's crazy,

Haley Radke: yeah.

Craig Mod: When you think about it. So do that.

Haley Radke: Absolutely.

Craig Mod: And try to go on a big walk. I do these things called walk and talks. I've written about 'em on my website. You can find Kevin Kelly and I have done a full writeup of exactly what we've learned running these things for the last 10 years.

It's a blueprint for how to run one and do it. And I would say walk the Camino de [01:35:00] Santiago, do it in Spain. The Santiago is so easy to set up. The resources are so good. It's such a wonderful path to walk and go invite five incredible people that you want to connect with, you wanna spend a week with and do our walk and talk style thing where every night you do a Jeffersonian dinner and you have one topic and you talk for two or three hours about that topic and invite, really invite five or six people that you love and want, just want to connect with, and you will have a life changing week. It is so rare as an adult to spend that much time with other adults, especially adults that are non narcissists.

That's a huge thing. Don't invite narcissists. We've invited narcissists in the past. They're the worst. They're really hard to deal with. Don't invite the narcissist and go on, try to do a week of walking. I know that sounds like it might be a lot, but like Santiago for a week, it's basically $1,300. You can book everything. It's not that expensive. The flights will cost more, but try to find that time and do that kind of walk. And maybe, you should think about [01:36:00] in doing an adoption walk and talk, that would be

Haley Radke: adoptee walk

Craig Mod: be incredible. That would be, and every day is like a different adoption topic and you just kinda spend the week breaking this stuff. It might be, everyone might lose their minds. Like it's almost too emotional to talk about for a week

Haley Radke: Just cry all week. Yeah. We'll be dehydrated for sure. Oh, I love that. Yes. I read that today when I was preparing for our conversation. So I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes.

Craig Mod: Cool.

Haley Radke: Okay. So your new book, Things Become Other Things, A Walking Memoir. Folks can find it everywhere books are sold.

Craig Mod: Yep. Yep.

Haley Radke: And follow along with your book tour, we'll link to that as well in the show notes.

Craig Mod: Awesome.

Haley Radke: Thanks so much. What a delight to meet you, Craig. Just an honor.

Craig Mod: Likewise. Thank you Again, thank you for making this program and thanks for having me.

Haley Radke: That was so enjoyable for me. We had originally booked an hour and we just kept going. And so I love that Craig gave me [01:37:00] extra time and we got to talk through so much more than I anticipated getting to hear. And if I'll never get over this where an adoptee gets to share with another adoptee for the first time, their reunion experience, their story.

Like it's just really special. So I'm so glad we got to share that with you. And Craig's book I enjoyed it so much. I'll discuss just a little bit more. The photographs are so beautiful. They're black and white. We didn't go into this Craig is colorblind to a certain extent, and so he, he just has this ability to capture light and shadow just like it's remarkable.

And they're just so stunning. And they go along with, of course, all the stories and the vignettes he's sharing about his walk. And I loved it because [01:38:00] it's so much about Japan and things that I never thought about before and the rural landscape and what it looks like now and the farmers he met and all of these different characters from his past and the adoption identity, the adoptee identity, adoption complexity. It's sprinkled throughout the whole book. Like all the spots I marked in my book were adoption related 'cause those are the things I wanted to ask him about or touch on. And I've asked Craig to do book club with us and so I think that will happen this summer.

You can pay attention to our social media to see when, if that's available and I'll keep you up to date on that, but it'll be so cool to read that in community with y'all. So thank you so much for sharing your story Craig. I'll just, reiterate, it was just a pleasure and I had no idea who Craig [01:39:00] was when the publicist reached out to me.

So it was really cool to investigate and be like, oh my gosh, this guy's a literal book nerd. And making books. The old fashioned way, and it's very cool. He has so many amazing projects and neat things going on. We didn't get to touch on 98% of them. So if you connected with him and found his story interesting, do a deep dive, do just do a quick Google and you'll see all the amazing things Craig's working on.

So what a pleasure to welcome him into adoptee land. Okay, before we say goodbye, I want to personally 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. And if you're new to adoptee land, this is a great [01:40:00] place to land.

We've got so many amazing people in our community. We do live Zoom events a couple times a month. We have book club or documentary club, or we have adoptees off script parties where you can meet fellow adoptees and connect and talk a little bit about deeper things that adoptees wanna talk about with each other.

So I'd love to have your support there. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

April 18, 2025

302 greiby medina

April 18, 2025/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/302

You are listening to Adoptees On the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radkey. Today I'm pleased to introduce you to greiby medina, author of The One Who Loves You the Most. greiby was adopted from Honduras at age two and a half to a single white mother. We discuss changing names, why greiby is not a fan of the term coming out of the fog and being afraid people won't like us because we're adopted. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees [00:01:00] 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 to Adoptees On greiby medina. Hello greiby.

greiby medina: Hi, how are you?

Haley Radke: I'm great. I'm so glad to finally get a chance to interview you.

greiby medina: I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much for thinking of me. I feel like I've docked you a few times, like we've had email exchanges, so I'm really happy that we'd have an opportunity to finally chat.

Haley Radke: Yes. I'd love it. If you wouldn't mind, would you share some of your story with us?

greiby medina: Sure. I was adopted when I was two and a half years old from Honduras. I was actually born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and then I was transferred to Tegucigalpa because they deemed me as adoptable because I was more [00:02:00] aligned with white. I was considered. Beautiful because I was white, because colorism is a real thing in Latin America and in Latinidad. And I actually have learned a lot more about my story recently. I was adopted by a single white mother who is an educator of deaf education, and I grew up in Portland, Maine. I'm an author, I'm a youth advocate, and I live in Spanish Harlem now.

Haley Radke: Can you share why you were available for adoption at two and a half?

greiby medina: So the story that was told to my mother, and my mother was, my adoptive mother, I'll say, was 33 when she went to Honduras. The story was that my birth mother was very young and she gave me up, but the real story that I know now is my birth mother actually went to prison [00:03:00] at age 20. She had me when she was 19. She went to prison for defending me because she was pregnant with me and somebody was trying to steal me when she was pregnant with me.

Haley Radke: So she went to prison and then there was no one to take care of you, so the government took you in some capacity.

greiby medina: My mother. Had one of my sisters, we all have different fathers, right? When she was 15, so they kicked her out. She was born in a very small city and she went north to make money and try to bring money back home. And her plan was to probably stay in that bigger city. She was essentially estranged from that family, but she was raised by her grandmother and she was kicked out as a young person like I'll say primary school, like young from her mother. Her mother wasn't interested in having a child, so all she really knew was being displaced. And, all of her rights were stripped from her because she [00:04:00] was a non person essentially. She was literate. And when someone is put up for adoption, there's a notice in the newspaper, but the notice was in a different city and my mother was sitting in jail. How is she going to be like, oh, it's actually my child.

Haley Radke: So how did you come to know the new story? Were you an adult already?

greiby medina: Yeah, I was an adult already. Facebook I have been.

Haley Radke: Classic. Me too.

greiby medina: And literally. Yeah. And it's like we have a very, huh. Complicated relationship with Facebook right now.

A lot of us in the world. And I wanna also say too, part of my story is that I've always known that I was adopted. I've always had my paperwork. I've always known what my name is, and so even when I was a child, like 9, 8, 7, 6, I was looking for my birth family and my mother was like, go for it. But we didn't have Facebook back then.

If I was seven and I had Facebook, I probably would've found my birth [00:05:00] mother, but I came to know my story because I went on like an affinity group for that small town that she grew up in. And I posted 'cause I speak Spanish. And when I say small, like small and obviously the population has gotten bigger since then.

So when she grew up in the seventies, everyone knows everyone. They're like, oh, that the white house by the church. Yes, of course we know them. So they knew exactly who I was talking about and, her, my aunt, I guess messaged me.

Haley Radke: So have you been able to connect any further with family members there?

greiby medina: Yeah, so you know what's interesting is that, I wouldn't say interesting, but I was actually literally moving to New Orleans as this was happening because I wasn't expecting it to be real. Do you know what I mean? I wasn't expecting to actually. For somebody to be like, oh yes, that's that. That is I, and [00:06:00] so I did.

I connected and they actually didn't believe me that I was who I said I was because I have the same name spelled differently as my younger sister. My sister, who is so why I'm gonna be 38. My younger sister, greiby, that spell with Y and she's 25. Same exact name, middle name, two little spelled a little differently.

And she's a character I'll say. And so they thought that she, we were like, they were being punked and I looked like her dear, or she looks like me. So a lot of it was me trying to convince them that I was who I was. And I'm literal, there's moving people coming in and outta my apartment.

And I was like, can we talk later? And then they were like, we're your family. Don't you wanna talk now? I'm like, sure. But so we had to put a pin in it.

Haley Radke: I think that's such a good observation for people, right? With the reunion, things like it happens during [00:07:00] our real life.

greiby medina: Yeah.

Haley Radke: You're moving and all of a sudden the messages are coming in.

greiby medina: Yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Did your mom keep your original name then? Were you named greiby at birth?

greiby medina: No, I wasn't. I had an Italian name. A very long hyphenated Italian name, which is, I love that name. But she actually was going through Hurricane Gabrielle when she went to Honduras, and that's why she, that's why she named me Gabrielle.

That was my former name. And she kept my mom's name Alicia, for my middle name. So I thought it was beautiful, but when I got older and I actually reclaimed my name like in 2020. So pretty recently, but I think probably when I was like 16, 17, 18, I told people to call me greiby. Do you know what I mean?

Like people called me that I changed my name together, all different types of names and that was just something that I did.

Haley Radke: So your biological family, you were named greiby then.

greiby medina: Correct yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. Yeah. And now you've renamed yourself [00:08:00] that, okay.

greiby medina: Yes. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's interesting. So then your mom chose to name your younger sister greiby as well.

greiby medina: Yeah. And the story with that, by the way, is actually sad, but as a writer, you kind of transmute sadness into art. But she knew she was not going to see me again. She got out of prison. She, again, was not believed. We have the family curse is not being believed. She was not believed that I existed because they're like, you were, what do you mean you're pregnant?

I don't see a baby. And so she named my younger sister greiby to remember me, 'cause she knew she would never see me again. And then she died when I was 12, so she died at age 33, which is interesting because that's when my mom adopted me.

Haley Radke: Oh, I'm sorry.

greiby medina: Yeah. She had a very hard life. Poverty killed my mother. That's what I say.

Haley Radke: Yep. And that's why you were available for adoption, right?

greiby medina: Exactly.

Haley Radke: Poverty. Yeah. So have you gone back to Honduras?

greiby medina: I have. I've gone back [00:09:00] three times, at least. The first time I was volunteering at a nonprofit organization on the coast. And I had a terrible time actually because a lot of people had different opinions about why they wanted to be there, and they didn't really recognize or appreciate that I was literally Honduran.

And, um, my profound reason for being there might be different than theirs. And so I was only there for three or four months. But I was friends with this woman who owned a bar or a restaurant on the beach and I just sat there all the, like almost every day and hung out with her and her family and had fried fish and chips.

But I've definitely it's interesting that you ask that question because I often feel like when I go back, 'cause I've gone to Latin America multiple times, but I feel like when I go. I'm not appreciated for, [00:10:00] I'm not saying like appreciated, appreciate me, but like I'm not seen as a literal Latin American because I am so Americanized.

And so we have people from Norway, Sweden, whatever, international students who might be doing missionary work, whatever they're doing, and I speak fluent English and maybe my Spanish wasn't as good as it is now, and I'm just this person that is from Maine. And so it's okay, got it. So definitely been back and when I was there, actually it was really beautiful because the, that woman that I was just talking about, her husband was one of the local taxi drivers and he wanted to help me find my birth family and get my ID and do these certain things. But like I was supposed to be volunteering, like I was not supposed to be doing these things.

Haley Radke: Were you ready to search then?

greiby medina: Absolutely. Did.

Haley Radke: You wanted to? Okay.

greiby medina: Yeah. I feel like I have, I have OCD, so there's like always like this PI and in my brain, like a private investigator in my [00:11:00] brain, and I'm very good at compartmentalizing as well. So I was like, let's go, let's do it. Go time. But at the same time, I'm like, I need to, I, I need to be at my post I'm volunteering. So we didn't really get to, that didn't come into fruition unfortunately. And then, I did leave because I just, the environment was strange to me and then all of a sudden I ended up adopting 12 kittens. Yeah.

Haley Radke: So what was it like growing up in Maine?

greiby medina: Maine is beautiful. Maine in itself as a state is a beautiful state. I loved being a kid before I went to kindergarten, before I entered school.

I loved being with my mom, my mom, as a child, and being coddled by my mom and being safe with my mom, I loved that. When I got to school and then when I met, started meeting people, school was very difficult because I had [00:12:00] cerebral palsy. I had surgery when I was five or six years old, so I was literally recovering from surgery.

I was in a wheelchair for probably eight weeks. I was in cast, I was in braces. I was bullied a lot for different, various reasons for being adopted, for looking different. Maine right now is probably the second most, second whitest state in North America. Vermont takes the pie for that.

Haley Radke: Yep.

greiby medina: And I will say too, that Portland, Maine is contrary to popular belief. Pretty diverse. You know the high school that I went to, we spoke over 200 languages because we do have a lot of immigrants that come to Maine for various reasons, because we do have some really great resources.

Haley Radke: So you write in your book, and we'll talk about it a little bit later, but about this group of kids that come together. And so I know community and friendship's really important to [00:13:00] you. Were you able to build that for yourself as a teen or even younger?

greiby medina: Yeah. Good on, yes. Yeah. I definitely, write from a place of this unmet childhood need, or childhood, I would even say wound or trauma of not really finding authentic community, I. I did find it in a couple of friends, but I don't think I ever had like a breakfast club like community. I think that's fantastical and people, if people have that, I hope they do. That's awesome. In high school, I think, this is the funny thing, I played sports all through from like second grade to graduated high school. I was very good at sports, upper body 'cause I have cp.

Haley Radke: Okay. What did you play?

greiby medina: I played softball, lacrosse, swimming, couldn't do basketball. I tried. I was like, I can't run you guys. And then I did ice hockey and field hockey. So I was [00:14:00] always playing sports. When you're in sports, a lot of times the default is.

You're popular and I'm funny, so I used humor. I was actually a lot funnier than I am now, folks. I'm a little traumatized. I did have a group of friends quote you know what I'm saying? Sure cliquey of people that like I could sit at lunch with. But I didn't really particularly really agree with a lot of the things that they did, and I would often be like somebody that would float around and just talk to everybody.

Haley Radke: So in our previous discussions and emailing back and forth, you mentioned to me that you weren't outta the fog, you were never in a fog. Can you talk a little bit about that? Are you comfortable sharing about that? What do you mean by that?

greiby medina: Yeah, I think I was very firm with that. I was like, I was never in the fog.

I think it's and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong too, 'cause it's a lot of times. I'm gonna make a comparison, and [00:15:00] maybe this is outlandish, but like when even when we talk about white supremacy or we talk about kinds of cultures of dismantling these internalized, very harmful systems and we're like I'm not that.

I could never be that. You are that because we all are that because that's what is ingrained in us and that's cultural and it's capitalism and it's these things. When I say I don't believe that I was, because I was actively not. Being that or being in it. So every day I was actively not in the fog.

I would like to ask you actually, how would you define the fog as, because everyone has I'm very I like to be precise with language. Are we using the same shared language? When we talk about these things, right?

Haley Radke: You're a writer and I know it's very important to you you get the word, you get right to the words.

So there's a new model now called the adoptee consciousness model, which I like very much, and they [00:16:00] talk about these different touch points. As we go through adulthood and examine adoption, there's all of these things that we may come to or may not, and it's a little bit different than describing the fog.

So in the fog, I would always talk about, it's like examining what adoption has, how it has really impacted our lives. And you are coming into awareness of that. And so I think the problem a lot of people have with that language is it's you're either in or you're out. And that's not really how it is.

Like eight years ago, I would say, oh, I'm out of the fog, and here I am eight years later being like an activist to help more mothers keep their babies, and how can we, fully engage in family preservation [00:17:00] work and those kinds of things. I had no language for that back then. I knew there was something wrong with stranger adoption in my case.

I knew that there were a lot of people who felt like actually crazy because adoption's the best thing ever. What do you mean you don't feel like you fit in your family? And so you internally feel like there's something wrong with you. But I don't fit here and I'm not grateful.

And so all of those pieces would be. Quote unquote, coming outta the fog or the adoptee consciousness model is really interesting. We'll link to it in the show notes for folks who wanna have a look at it and engage with it a little bit more with the different touch points because it's much more helpful and not as linear. Because it's not linear.

greiby medina: And when you were talking about that too, I think in tandem and also complimentary to that. I'm thinking of grief and how grief is just not [00:18:00] linear. You're not

Haley Radke: Exactly.

greiby medina: I'm not grieving anymore. Yeah. Sometimes we are and sometimes we're not, and sometimes we think we're not. And it's just not linear.

Haley Radke: And grief looks so different.

greiby medina: For everyone. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

greiby medina: And every day.

Haley Radke: Exactly. Like you could have memories of your loved one and it brings joy to you 'cause are delighting in some past thing, reliving, and then the next day you're like, oh my gosh, like you're not here.

greiby medina: Yes. I could never look at you again. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's really about nuance and. Yeah, I think it's very complex. So I.

Haley Radke: It sounds like to me, I don't wanna put words in your mouth,

greiby medina: do it,

Haley Radke: it sounds like to me,

greiby medina: I'd love it

Haley Radke: that your mom was really good at talking to you about adoption.

greiby medina: Yes.

Haley Radke: Talking to you about being Honduran.

greiby medina: Yes.

Haley Radke: And all of those things.

greiby medina: Yes. And she tried to, and she'd listen. I was actually the resistant one. Okay, because she, listen she put me in language school, like Spanish school. She was like, do you wanna go Spanish school? I was like, sure. [00:19:00] I quit after two days.

There was a Bolivian family that lived near me. I was embarrassed because I actually had a crush on the older sister. There were different situations where, and then she was like, I don't wanna keep putting you in these situations, because I know I'm embarrassing you. I want you to be ready to connect with Latin American and like back then.

Back then, I'm so old now. I'm wise. I'm not old. It's an age it's a number. There were not that many,

Haley Radke: I think four years ahead of you. So

greiby medina: we are wise beyond that, no, but like back then I'm growing up in Portland, Maine, and. I was born in 1987, so I'm 10. In 1997, I probably saw two Latin American people in my high school.

That doesn't mean that they didn't exist or in my actual class, like not class one, 200 people in the classes that I had, like science, whatever, every day. And they came from different neighborhoods. I grew up in a [00:20:00] suburban north Deering. I wasn't rich, it was just, back then there was a middle class.

There was like an upper middle class thing. It was weird, but I was not exposed to, it was either an immigrant population of Latin American folks that were in downtown Portland. And that I was not, that, that was 15 minutes away from where I lived. I went down there to have coffee and go to the movies, but I was in a different socioeconomic bracket, so I was not exposed.

And then when I did have that one Bolivian family that I talk about in one of those, in the Catapult article, I fumbled to the ball, you know what I mean? Because I was, I personally on a soul level was not ready to be vulnerable with them because I was afraid that as if they didn't know that I was adopted. They did. They did, but I was afraid that they wouldn't like me. Because I was adopted.

Haley Radke: [00:21:00] I think I'm thinking of, I just had this therapy session a couple weeks ago, and that's literally what I started out saying to the therapist I was working with.

greiby medina: Wow.

Haley Radke: Like my first thing was like, I'm afraid you're not gonna like me.

greiby medina: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And it's this deep core belief that a lot of us hold. I'm afraid you won't like me, I'm unlovable. What's the reason we were separated from our original parents? There's some, and you can look back now and be like, she was in prison.

greiby medina: Literally,

Haley Radke: it's not right. But it's,

greiby medina: I wanna say like spiritually grateful that I've always felt and known like I'm very spiritual in this way, where I'm very connected to. I've always been very connected to my birth mother. Like really? Like I knew when she was no longer in the world. I really did when I was like, when I was 12. It was interesting 'cause my grandmother, whom I loved, my Italian grandmother, I'm just gonna say Italian [00:22:00] grandmother, my aunt, so when my Italian grandmother died around the same time, I just, before even that phone call happened, I was like. Grandmother's, our grandmother's dead. I have always been, because even in thinking of motherhood and I'm not a mother, I'm not gonna go there. But even in thinking of like why isn't this person contacting me?

We have Facebook, we have this, they're not okay. If they know that they have a kid out there. So I have always known that there is a reason, and by the way, my mom alicia, she tried to come to America three times and she was unsuccessful, and half of my family actually lives in North America, but she was unsuccessful and there's still a lot that I wanna uncover about her. I'm still studying and doing a lot of things in here, but like it's, I still feel like. She deserves justice.

Haley Radke: So do you feel like there was a point in your [00:23:00] time where you felt, okay, now I feel Honduran versus the Americanized version of you? Or do you still feel just like a mix of identities? And you were talking about the first time you went to Honduras and people were like, we, you're not from here. How about the third time? Did you ever feel like you belonged there or you were from there?

greiby medina: Oh, listen, I have definitely felt like that.

Haley Radke: Okay.

greiby medina: Different things and different, and I think it's Honduran people and not that you're saying this right, but it depends on who I meet and where I am locally. In the physicality of Honduras. Like I could be in Tegucigalpa and they're like, oh, I totally get it. For sure. 'cause there could be international students that are coming back and visiting family and they're like, yeah, I get it. We're third culture kids, or whatever it is at this end of the day.

It's what they're projecting onto me. And I've [00:24:00] literally have always, from how as long as I can remember, and I have a very good memory. I like to remind people I've been proud of who I am, where I come from, and the things that I don't know about myself since kindergarten, since first grade, since I did my star of the week and, begged them to let me go first and talk about Honduras. You know what I mean? But then I was shut down and. I'm not gonna mention her name 'cause she's still around and she raises her hand and she says, yeah, that's nice, but where's your dad? Why don't you have a dad? And so that's when I stopped sharing because I'm telling you something I'm very proud of.

And you care about, like there are a lot of people that don't have dads here and that aren't adopted. Why do you care so much? Yeah. So yeah.

Haley Radke: Kids are brutal.

greiby medina: So, brutal.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Kids can be so brutal.

greiby medina: So brutal. But you know what? I still like kids and I write for kids. I like their, they're honest. You don't have to be, you don't have to be mean. I like their honesty though.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I was [00:25:00] gonna say they tell it like it is, but they don't always need to. I'm thinking of your Honduran mother and the story you said about. They were trying to steal you before you were even here and just the child trafficking of it all. The system is just so broken. And our society sees opportunities for swooping in and saving, quote unquote. Instead of really what 's broken is helping kids stay with their families.

greiby medina: Put the money into the families that are struggling. Yeah, and just to clarify too, she was working as a live-in like cleaning person, so it was actually them. That was like, so it's

Haley Radke: That we're gonna try and steal you.

greiby medina: Because they thought Yeah, because she was very beautiful. Like literally, right? So they're like, this is going to be a beautiful baby. We own you. Literally we feel like we own you. And yeah, it's very traumatic and [00:26:00] it's good thing I can compartmentalize, no woman, no person deserves to be separated from their loved one in any way like that. Obviously and in any way period to their biological loved one.

Haley Radke: Okay. Before we do recommended resources, is there anything I missed asking you about that you really wanna mention or talk about?

greiby medina: Listen, I'm really happy that you have this podcast. Honestly, I have known about this podcast forever and when I say forever, eight years plus. And so I really wanted to thank you for that. Like big props. It's not an easy thing to do. Big production. Awesome. I wanted to just shout you out and thank you again.

Haley Radke: Aw, thanks. greiby. That's so kind of you. Yeah I found your book. I don't even remember when, it was, when it was first out. The One Who Loves You the Most, would you, this is YA or is it middle grade?

greiby medina: That's so funny you said that, like that's what people say. It's [00:27:00] actually technically middle grade.

Haley Radke: Okay. I was wondering about that.

greiby medina: Yeah, because middle grade's eight years old to like 12,

Haley Radke: okay,

greiby medina: so they're, yeah.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So I read it then, and this time when I reread it, I listened on audio.

greiby medina: Oh, cool.

Haley Radke: And it was so lovely. I really enjoyed listening to it, and I thought that the person who read it did a great job. It's a really cool picture of what community could look like for someone who is searching for that. I feel like you really did put a big part of your story in here, and I'm thinking of your mom in particular, the mother character. She's just, as you described, your mom to us today. And yeah, it's just really

greiby medina: thank you.

Haley Radke: It's a beautiful story. We talked about this before about representation. We haven't talked about it here. I'm sorry. A previous conversation I had with greiby for listeners,

greiby medina: ' cause I'm a yapper, I don't [00:28:00] stop talking. Yes, we did talk. We probably have, yes.

Haley Radke: I love that you wrote a book that maybe you needed when you were in school, so

greiby medina: Absolutely. I think absolutely. I did. Yeah. And I hope that young people continue to read my book. Teachers, if you're listening, librarians.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

greiby medina: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Okay, so we'll make sure to link to it in the show notes. And I love adoptee representation also in books. And that's in there too.

greiby medina: Yeah. And I have, can I ask you a question? Do you feel like it is, obviously I'm an adopted person that wrote it, but do you glean from the book that is an adopt, it's like about adoption too, because there's so many different themes. I don't want that to get lost.

Haley Radke: Oh, definitely. Oh, definitely. I think the protagonist is really searching for who am I? What's my identity? And so [00:29:00] I felt so deeply for them because not only as an adoptee, you're looking for your identity in this world and you've got all the layers here. Yeah, it's complicated, but that's,

greiby medina: it's complicated.

Haley Radke: That's what our lives are, right? It's complicated. Yeah. Okay. So greiby, we are gonna order your book, but what do you wanna recommend to us?

greiby medina: Honestly, I just want people to, if they have an interest, to tap into that interest and to keep learning and growing and failing and being okay to fail. Because when we learn from our failures. We become better people and that makes the world better.

Haley Radke: Do you wanna share about Adoptees of South America?

greiby medina: Oh, absolutely. I actually stumbled across them. I. A few years or maybe during Covid, COVID was a time when we were online. I have chatted with them online a few times and they're just wonderful.

They have, [00:30:00] they do events. They have a wonderful community from literally adoptees from South America and Central America, and they're lovely people. I believe one of the founders is a social worker. They are on Instagram. Adoptees of South America. They also have a website and a link tree that is in their Instagram as well, and you can find out more there.

Haley Radke: Okay. We'll make sure to link to that. Yeah. I think especially for adoptees, like when you're looking for community and whatever kind of supports you need, if you're searching or in reunion or you're trying to navigate intercountry searching, like all of those kind of things. It's really cool to connect with adoptees who are adopted from the same country you are, or similar. Yeah.

greiby medina: Region. Yeah. And also I'll say just as a sidebar as like a note about that is look at who they follow and who likes their posts. Because a lot of times there are a lot of different new collectives, I'll say organizations for adoptees and [00:31:00] by adoptees. And maybe that's a community for you too.

Haley Radke: Definitely. Thank you so much for talking with me greiby. Such an honor. And I don't, I won't ask where people can connect with you online since you're offline.

greiby medina: I'm so mysterious.

Haley Radke: You're mysterious. But we will link to your book. And a couple of the articles that you've written so people can read your work there.

greiby medina: Cool. Thank you.

Haley Radke: I know I've said this before, but I just wanna remind y'all if you are hoping to support adoptee authors and your book buy list is getting extensive and too many for on your TBR pile, another great way you can support adoptee authors is requesting their books from your local library.

Often libraries will have a suggest we buy this book page and my, my local library, I think you can suggest up to five books a month [00:32:00] and you can write in the name an author of the book. You can tell them why you want them to purchase it, and often they will. And so it's a great way to support adoptee authors and have more people have access to their work in the world.

So I love doing that for adoptee authors. Anyway thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

April 04, 2025

301 [Healing Series] Wounds of Childhood with Anna Linde, Sexologist

April 04, 2025/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/301

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 we bring on adoptee experts to tackle issues that may impact our mental health. Most often we're talking with therapists, but today I invited Anna Linde a sexologist to talk with us about the impacts of childhood sexual abuse on adopted people.

This issue is so prevalent in our community, and yet hardly anyone ever talks about it. We have talked about so many difficult things on this show that I think we're finally ready. So we do [00:01:00] keep this to a high level discussion, but please take care when deciding if this is a safe episode for you to listen to.

We also always have transcripts available. If that feels like a less triggering option for you, there is a link in the show notes. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

Links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Anna Linde. Welcome Anna. How are you?

Anna Linde, MSc: Thank you. I'm great and I'm happy to be here.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad to finally speak with you and you are a multicultural world traveler. And why don't you start by sharing just a little bit of [00:02:00] your story with us, because I think it will hit how many countries you've been in.

Anna Linde, MSc: True. So I am adopted from Brazil. And I'm raised in Sweden. So I lived maybe my first 34 years in Sweden, some something like this. And then we moved to Spain and we lived in Portugal. And we were traveling around in Europe and now we live in Thailand since one and a half years.

Haley Radke: Amazing. That's a lot of places. And you are a sexologist, which some people might not know what that term is. Can you tell us what led you to study that and what is a sexologist?

Anna Linde, MSc: What led me to study sexology is when I had my kids and I realized how much of my own story and background and roots and fear that was included automatically in the experience of giving [00:03:00] birth.

And then when I was sitting in that situation, or when I was giving birth, and I had all of these questions coming up from my body, and I had all of the other questions that I had already in my head, I was hoping to find a way on how to make meaning out of them somehow. And I already had my bachelor in social work.

So then when I got a divorce, I was Googling what was possible to study and I found sexology for this master. So then I thought, yeah, why not? How could sex be boring? What's the first

Haley Radke: It really isn't

Anna Linde, MSc: Somehow, but yeah. But of course it's different to study it than if you think about it. That's a funny. Funny thing, but it's really been an eyeopener in so many ways. So I'm very happy for that choice.

Haley Radke: And so when you think about how you were taken from [00:04:00] Brazil and brought to Sweden and the critiques of adoption that Sweden has now been having now in the early 2020s what was the impact that adoption had on you and how do you see it now from the adult perspective?

Anna Linde, MSc: So I think it's important to make a difference in what you think personally from your own story, because I think in from that perspective, we will all have very different experiences or very different thoughts.

I'm very privileged because I've been to Brazil and I met my biological mom. I met everybody in my family. So for me personally, I've been able to make a little closure with that part of me, or the not knowing part or the why did you gave me away part. So I think if I wouldn't have that experience, I would think totally different about adoption, [00:05:00] but.

Based on what I just said I think Sweden deserves all the critique. I think there's a lot of stupidity, a lot of mistakes that are not mistakes, but that are planned. And there's a lot of bleep that has been ongoing. So I'm very happy that Sweden finally gets critique for what is not okay that has been going on.

But me personally, I think I have a very privileged situation or relationship to my adoption with good connection with my adoptive parents, with good opportunities and not so many mental health challenges as many others. That's, that of course makes it easier to just look at the critique and feel that I'm upset.

It's upsetting what has been going on, but I'm also feeling more of a calm feeling inside that finally, the truth is here and [00:06:00] many people can get some ratification now instead.

Haley Radke: Definitely. I'm finding it very fascinating watching the implications for international adoption and what countries are deciding to do on a case by case basis.

And I think we're living in interesting times, Anna where the truth is being revealed. So that's good. Anyway, we didn't come to talk about that today specifically. We came to talk about something even more difficult and in our first meeting I was sharing with you that over the years of doing this show, I have had a heartbreaking number of adoptees reach out to me to either share their personal experiences with having received sexual abuse at either the hands of an adoptive parent or an adopted sibling, or extended family member, or looking for help [00:07:00] with these things, and I often didn't know where to send them. And it's like a taboo topic and it's such a difficult thing to talk about because I think it's way more prevalent than people think. And of course there's reasons for that and we can talk about that. One of them being, I think, like I'll just say, when you're adopted into a family, then the taboo of incestuous behavior can be quote unquote removed for the adoptive family members. And so I just think we're just at a higher risk for being taken advantage of. What are your thoughts on that?

Anna Linde, MSc: Yeah. So first of all, I think exactly like you're saying that this is such a, this is a [00:08:00] difficult topic to approach, but just to remind you how important your work is being people, being able to even reach out to you about it and you catalyzing it like this, making an episode about it so that we can, talk about it for all of these individuals that have emailed you, because then this episode is for them.

Of course. And for everybody else that is affected by it. And that's really important to just, remind us that even if a lot of people are suffering and have been suffering, this is why what we're doing counts. And it is important because they are not alone. They are actually not at all alone.

Haley Radke: No.

Anna Linde, MSc: And from a Swedish perspective, which is a pretty good example, we have a very colorblind ideology in Sweden, which means that we don't see color because it's racist. Which is basically how I'm raised. [00:09:00] But we are in the same time over focusing in color, which means that a lot of adoptive parents and a lot of adults have been, it's been possible for them to express their desire of having children with almond eyes or chocolate skin or these type of things and, getting away with expressing themself in this way.

And I'm also not saying that these individuals or these parents have necessarily have had an an evil plan with that. But as a society, this have, opened the doors for it being accepted for our bodies to be desired in this way. And, having a body that's always visible.

As a child when adults or siblings but like, when [00:10:00] adults are a part of that desire, a part in looking at our bodies as others a part in, it being okay for them to be curious. That's of course moving the boundaries or, the normal or like the wished way. We want adults to interact with children when it comes to intimacy and sexuality.

So there's a lot of pieces in the puzzle around adoptees and adoptee bodies. And another part that I think matters is that we came to this family as a transaction, or the transaction was a big part of it, which also gives a different flavor on what we mean when we talk about quality in a relationship.

So there's a lot of subtle things and there's a lot of things that, that, makes this complicated. [00:11:00] And also the idea of that we should be grateful because if I am raised with the idea that I should be grateful of what I have, what I got in whatever that means. That means that I'm will probably not say no and I need to say no 'cause I learned that I should be grateful.

And if we then have a child that doesn't learn to say no, doesn't learn that you are supposed to say no, you have the right to say no. You have the right to your body and to have privacy. Rather the opposite, that we have children that are, othered, racialized sexualized by adults and nobody's protecting them from it.

Then the distance or, the time span for being sexually abused or having people that are supposed to be safe. To, walk over those boundaries or into that private space is much, much shorter. And I think that's a [00:12:00] big problem. All of these things that I said, I think all of them separately is a really big problem.

And then, there's probably more things in this that matters, but for me, those are the things that are the most visible.

Haley Radke: It's a perfect storm, right? All the things together. Yeah. In your experience, do you think that adoptees are more more affected by this than the general population. I don't like, we already always critique that there's not enough studies on adoptees, and so I'm assuming that there's not really too many studies, especially on this particular topic either, when frankly, we can't even get accurate numbers of how many adopted people there are, just as like a one.

Anna Linde, MSc: But if we look how closely related adoption is to human trafficking, [00:13:00] unfortunately, then it's also very easy to think that sometimes what is actually trafficking gets the title or name adoption because people can get away with that somewhere somehow. And that's one part that makes it really tricky, I think to actually see what is what.

Also, because of all of the different legalizations and laws in different countries and corruption and all of these things that has been possible because of corruption, because of the adults working in these organizations. But if you just look at any person who is traumatized, they will always have a different, understanding of the rights to have boundaries.

They will because they have been, walked over or it could be bullied, it could be whatever type of trauma as adoption is a [00:14:00] trauma for that child. Then, if you're acting out, then you are in more danger of meeting people that are, going to answer to those behavior in maybe a negative way.

Also in the same way, if you are, very different, you are very visible. And if you're very visible, then people see you. So there's a lot of things that I think makes adoptees in more danger for things, but also because we have a lot of already mental health challenges, issues, and all of the other, following problems and challenges for us in general.

So I would say yes, based on that. How would we not get more problems or get more in, dangerous situations as well.

Haley Radke: So this is one of those things that people mostly keep private, there's a great sense of shame, meaning, it was my [00:15:00] fault or I deserved it, or those kinds of things.

So you just keep it secret or hidden. When someone has put that away, what are some of the things that can happen in their lives that they might not necessarily attribute to this hidden childhood sexual abuse, but can come out in other ways? Maladaptive behaviors, let's say.

Anna Linde, MSc: So first of all, just to, to name what we're talking about when we're saying shame.

One thing that is really common is that adoptees, we swallow shame better than others because we are already carrying a lot of shame around our identities, as in not being able to stay in my own family, or the idea that it has to be something wrong with me. Because my mom didn't keep me or whatever thoughts that is, or whatever words there [00:16:00] is to describe it.

But many have and feel a strong sense of shame over their existence, over their, their position in the world over their destinies. So adding more shame to that might not be the biggest deal for some. But it just melts in with everything else. And then it might not affect them as much compared to others, but this is a very, it can be so different from every individual.

Also depending on which age you're in and everything else. But for many people and many adoptees that has experienced sexual abuse or trauma are usually pretty disconnected to their bodies. Which means that, sex might work, it might be pretty much as it should from their perspective or their idea of how a sex should work or be, [00:17:00] but it might also be that they're not feeling or experiencing pleasure.

They're not feeling that sex or sexual connection is something that is liberating, is something that is playful, is something that is funny and it's something that they have the right to choose a hundred percent if they wanna be involved with or not. But it could also be as certain things or certain situations like being, becoming pregnant, for example, or getting the information that you know, I'm going to be a father or whatever it might be for that person, might trigger something connected to this shame, which might make it impossible for those people to even want to touch somebody else or wanting to be touched. But the strong longing in general that we have for [00:18:00] finding our way home and melting together with somebody again or, becoming one or, returning to that place where we are supposed to be and where things were supposed to be different. And I'm talking in a very subconscious level now, but sex could also be, a way to represent that.

So between, the one side not wanting to be intimate, not wanting to have sexual connections at all, not enjoying it, to having much more than what might be, in the best interest of that person in that time because of that longing or because we are re, redoing something or we are trying to figure something out that's not a hundred percent clear.

That could also put us in pretty tricky situations because usually we don't feel good at all [00:19:00] if we're having sex for a reason, that we're actually not really a hundred percent clear. What that reason is

Haley Radke: For someone who maybe hasn't told anybody about this at all and is keeping it secret all these years.

It is now oh, maybe this is impacting my life. Maybe I should look at the past and like maybe examine this and bring it into the light and work on healing from this trauma. This can be really scary and feel life threatening. What are some ways that. You can open the door or know that you're safe to do let's say safe to look at something that can be so terrifying.

Anna Linde, MSc: I've just, for majority of people, this is how it feels, that it is terrifying, because even if we feel [00:20:00] that shame or that guilt or that fear or whatever strong emotion it might be. When we accept that it's there, it usually, blows up to a hundred percent strength and it feels like it might actually kill us, but that's not, that's not what it, what's going to happen, or that's not how it is.

But I would say maybe write it down. Start by writing what you remember. Or what happened, or write down how this episode feels to listen on, because it's not only, now I'm going to go and heal this. I need to fix it. But it's also allowing yourself to look at this that happened in your own pace and being with yourself.

Because almost everyone who has [00:21:00] been exposed or violated sexually has had, have the experience of having their bodies for somebody else. And if we are going to, move back to your bodies for you, your sexual or intimate connections is for you, then we need to go backwards and restore that.

In every place that it's possible. So writing it down what you remember, what you are thinking about, allowing yourself to feel everything that you're feeling about it, angry, sad, disappointed, disgusted, everything then feel it, write it down and be with yourself in that. But also that shame and guilt, usually both. The tricky part is to remember and to understand and remember that it's not yours. The [00:22:00] shame is not ours because we got exposed for something. The shame is the other person or persons, the abusers that overstepped your boundaries in this like tragic and horrible ways. And maybe multiple times they are supposed to feel this shame because shame is socially here for us to know how to navigate being with other people and because then you feel the shame that they are supposed to feel.

It's called secondary shame. That's also a thing. You can Google shame and secondary shame and just get that concept into your head so that you can start to make a difference. And that's two things that I think everybody can do and should do, can do. But I'm also thinking it's important to think forward.

Like what would you like, what is the best, what is the goal? What is the best [00:23:00] outcome? Like, where do you want to go? What does healing mean for you? And I talk a lot about sexual liberation, then maybe also that, what does that mean? For you personally or for the person listen personally and start to look at that, because with that, as in front of us or with that as an idea, then it's actually possible to start to navigate towards, but without an idea of what it means to be free or healed.

Which maybe means, I would start to date again, or I would start to date, ever. I never did or I would be more brave. I would try new things or I would take initiative or, it can be so many different things. So to start to think about that as well, to not get totally stuck in the pain or in the emotional, like anxiety and mess that it's [00:24:00] always a mess when we're trying to heal us.

Haley Radke: And what about for people who have maintained contact or relationship with the perpetrators and what does that look like into adulthood if you're starting to examine this? I don't know if you have tips on this or ideas for support. 'cause this is this is a big one.

Anna Linde, MSc: Yeah, that's a tricky one.

And the first thing I'm thinking is everybody who does this has a reason. Nobody does it because it's logic and made sense. And it was in the book that we were supposed to do it. Everybody has a reason and that reason, whatever that reason is, it's okay. We cannot do more than our best. And staying in contact with that person or those persons.

And if it's the parents or the relatives, which is, [00:25:00] common. Also siblings, like you said, also common. It's also the, it might be the only family we got and if you're in that position that you feel no, that this is the only family you got. You also heard that you're supposed to be grateful. And you're trying to balance that, that experience with, I might lose exactly everybody, and I'm nobody and nobody wants me.

That that's that's not funny. That's a bleep situation to be in. So for anybody who felt that they needed to choose between those two things, that choice cannot have been easy. And it's probably haunting them every day. And a lot of respect for everybody in that situation, trying to do their best with something that is really hard for people in general to understand or to even grasp, because people don't get it.

And it's [00:26:00] the same with a lot of people having a hard time leaving a partner that is abusive. But it's a similar fear because if the fear of abandonment or the fear of being alone is that strong, we cannot leave, then, that's a strong fear. Otherwise, it would've been easier to make a decision based on logic.

But majority of people are not doing that. So it's not, it's not so easy. Also, actually people who have the experience of being sexually abused or, physically abused, it's very easy to accidentally also become somebody that is abusing others. And then the shame and guilt is double.

And then how, how the hell, what, how do you get out of that? Because you usually get a lot of, moral and punishment from the society from [00:27:00] being an abuser or somebody that is violating other people's rights. And it's also important that majority of, people abusing others have this experience as well.

They were abused when they grew up, and that's it. Like we need to remember that as well. And I do this type of work. I coach people also around sexual trauma of course, because it's a very big thing. So I'm thinking if somebody like have an immediate question or feels like they would like to know more or have more, I don't know, ideas on what to do, then they could just send me an email maybe and better than emailing you in this case. I would also say.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I can't help you. I can't help you.

Anna Linde, MSc: No.

Haley Radke: If people ever wonder why I closed down all my dms and why my emails are private, it's things like this, Anna, I'm laughing about [00:28:00] it, but it's so difficult to hear people's deep traumatic events and know, there's nothing I can do to help.

I'm so sorry. It just, it's a weight that people carry and I don't I don't want you to have to carry that, I want you to get help and support and heal from these things, and I can't help you.

Anna Linde, MSc: No, but it's not, you're not supposed to know how to do it unless you learn how to do it also.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Anna Linde, MSc: Because it's, it is tricky. And it was tricky for me, and I think every, every professional experience that it's tricky in the beginning and it's probably different for us that have experience of similar things or similar experiences, probably different for us in this position. But I would say it's, it's important to protect yourself from getting overwhelmed because [00:29:00] then we are accidentally in a new trauma somehow, then I would say it's better to do this, that we talk and we are talking about it like this. And if also if I get a lot of question, we can do a follow up and we could answer those questions together. This could also be a way to pin down things not to traumatize everybody else but we can probably make that work. Some point.

Haley Radke: Let's talk about this. How would you like, give us some tips, like what are some things we can do to navigate, so you talked about writing a letter to ourselves or like recording what happened or what you hope will happen if you examine this and do some healing work. How do you find supports. I don't think this is something people should be doing on their own, frankly, because it is so it's such a deep wound. Anything sexual, it's just such a deep core woundedness, that you're touching.

Anna Linde, MSc: [00:30:00] Yeah, it is, and I think we are a little, in general, we're a little out of resources to handle, sexual health in general in the world, which is a sad part.

I put together a group together with Katherine Garland, and she wrote a book about being addicted to sex or like overusing sex and what she did, how she did, and why she did it. So we have a two day course or a two day two session workshop where we're going to talk more about this in May. So for anybody who's interested, you can find that link at your page somewhere.

Haley Radke: Yeah, we'll definitely put it in the show notes for folks for sure. And if you're listening in the future, we'll put whatever else Anna's got coming up for you.

Anna Linde, MSc: But I would say it's exactly like you're saying. We do need to heal in community because we need community as well. [00:31:00] But I would suggest that we look closer to what does it actually mean?

Because you already survived this. You survived it big time. Now we just need to look closer at the symptoms and at the consequences of your survival and make sure that you are reaching the best level in your sexual health in your life in, what it means for you. But you can always, remind yourself that you are a survivor.

You're not, this is not something that, you know, even if you replay this in your head, but if this is not something that is happening to you now, today, tomorrow, yesterday, then you survived it, and that's really important. Because you, you did already. And then you can look at what did I do? Like what strategies have I been using already?

And are they good or are they not? [00:32:00] But I also am thinking if you have a really good friend, then maybe it's possible to tell that friend that something bad happened to me when I was younger and I never thought about it this much as I'm doing now. But I am, and I'm going to look for a way to handle this differently 'cause I realize that, this is affecting me a lot and I just needed to say it. With, with, keep the information, keep most of the details for you because people are really bad in handling details in general. Around adoptees we very often get to hear that we're supposed to be grateful.

What would've happened if you stayed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which is a hundred percent not what you wanna hear when you're sharing something that is important. So also, keep yourself safe from that. [00:33:00]

Haley Radke: When people are starting to look at this and examine and do some healing work, like what are some things you can look for to know that your, your work on it is helping and is freeing you from this shame?

Anna Linde, MSc: That's a really good question. And it's hard work. It's like everything we do, it's hard work and our sexual identity is one of the layers of identities that we have and that we walk around in every day. And for, for me to express my sexuality in a way that, I can incorporate that I deserve pleasure.

That means that my sexual identity and everything else that I'm carrying in my body needs to be in line with I deserve pleasure or I deserve to have a good life. And sometimes these two things are not, they're not correlating, [00:34:00] but only from, a sexual perspective, a sexual health perspective, is that you deserve pleasure.

And that's the first thing I would say. You deserve it. You're not supposed to do anything or have sex because you should, because that's what we do. That's what expected, no, it's not like it's not. We have the right to redefine this and we should continue to redefine this all the time and the right to feel pleasure.

It's not only sexually, but that's emotionally, that's mentally that, physically, that socially we have the right to feel pleasure about what we're doing, where we are in the context we're in, or what, whatever's going on. And one way to look at that is of course, what does it mean for me to feel pleasure sexually and how is that in [00:35:00] situations where I'm alone with my body?

I want to touch myself. I want to explore then do I know what is pleasurable or not? Do I feel it? Do I know? Do I, do I, could I write the list of five things I like or is it just a, a surprise every time? Because then maybe exploring ourselves more what we actually like. It's like choosing writing a list of five dishes you like to eat.

Because we are supposed to actually know what we like, so we can navigate towards that. And with that, of course, take the time to redefine sex. What does it mean? What kind of attitudes do we have? What kind of ideas do I have about what is normal or not? What is okay or not what I should do or not like, what is going on in my head?

And usually [00:36:00] these norms mirror, the society as it is. But it could also mirror the idea I have about myself and the ideas I have about sex. So if I have a lot of negative experiences or one negative experience, then I might, think or feel that sex is, it is unsafe for me to have sex, it's unsafe for me to be in sexual connection.

And it's, that's how it is. And we can make new meanings. We have the right to do that. But then again, we need to know what kind of new moods we want to have. And what is important.

Haley Radke: Okay. I'm gonna interrupt the question because I'm curious what you think about this in trying to think about even what we like and you mentioned like dishes we like and things. So many of us struggle with boundaries and this is so [00:37:00] connected. Yeah.

Anna Linde, MSc: Yes. It is because if we're not, if we don't know what a true no is. And it's very hard for us to know how a yes feels and they come together. It's really, it's a lot of people that thinks and feels that it's scary to say, no, we don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings.

We don't wanna make anybody sad. We might never learn that it's okay for us to say no. And when we say no, somebody's, giving us guilt or shaming us for what we're saying. If we're never able to express a no, that's not for me, or no, I'm not hungry, or no I don't want it, or whatever it might be, then we will have a really hard time knowing where our yes are as well.

So for anybody who, feels this, that [00:38:00] we're saying, a lot of people are bad in saying no and not feeling that it's okay to have boundaries. Then I would say, you can remind yourself of who is the person that is the most difficult to say no to, and who around you is the person that is the most easiest to say no to?

And remind yourself that's how different it could be only between people that you met or that you have around you, but also in which situation is it okay for you to say no? Is it okay to say no thank you I'm not going to buy anything when you're walking out from a store? Or do you also get a bad feeling, not buying anything because you think whatever you might think about the person working there, being sad or whatever it might be. But also in, a sexual setting we're not supposed to do anything that we don't want [00:39:00] so that the other person will not get sad. I'm like that's a very, that's a very not beautiful and not amazing way to look at sexual health.

And I try to say this to kids, to teenagers, when I have those type of groups and especially to their parents that do you want your 13-year-old to give somebody a blowjob after school because otherwise that person would get, would feel sad. Is that a valid, is it a valid reason? Because it's not, and then this is not how we're supposed to think about it in general.

Haley Radke: That's a good point. That's a very good point Anna. Um, I really appreciate you talking to us about this extremely difficult topic. I think you've given us a lot to think about. Is there any last things you wanna leave us with before we tell people where we can connect with you and [00:40:00] find out more resources?

Anna Linde, MSc: I think, the more you think about sexual health. The more you think about sexology, the more you realize that it's not only something about me and somebody else, or me and other people, but it's about norms in the society that tells us what is okay or not. And it's about ideas from culture or from religions or from politicians that are creating what is actually possible to do or not in so many different ways and levels. And we can, we can challenge this all the time. And one way that I, it's funny to challenge for yourself is to just, you can ask yourself, which words am I comfortable in using? If I would describe my body, for example, then which words am I actually comfortable in using?

Would I like when you, [00:41:00] now maybe I cannot say these words now because I realize that you're going to air this and you, might get sensored but which words is okay? Which words can you use? And is there other words that you're not using and what happens if you use them? What happens if you use one of those words instead?

Can you practice? What happens if you say that word 10 times? It could be so easy. So so to say the word period, like I'm on my period. Okay. But is that are you feeling stressed or anxious about using that word? Then maybe that's something to practice. That's a thing. That's how we can actually change what we're doing and what is going on.

Haley Radke: Okay. I was thinking in my head of all the words and I was like, please don't make me say any of these words and you didn't. So thanks.

Anna Linde, MSc: Trying not to say them out loud because usually I just say [00:42:00] them out loud.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Anna Linde, MSc: And now I was like. Maybe you need to cut them off. No, that's a lot of work.

That's tricky. And then I thought, okay, I really need to work now not to say that.

Haley Radke: We'll just have a string of beeps in here and then people will just imagine what you said. No. Okay. Where can we connect with you online and find out about working with you or other courses or things that you're offering?

Anna Linde, MSc: I do a lot of things. A lot of things. So I have an individual coaching program where there is prerecorded like sessions or like homework sessions, exercises, and you still get, I think it's nine, I don't remember right now. I think it's nine individual sessions and the handouts to every team that we're working with.

So that's one way that is maybe the easiest one to work with me. Otherwise, I have groups together with other [00:43:00] professionals and other colab partners because it's funny to do things together. This group in May that I was talking about is the closest one or one closest in time. Easiest is to find me at, I think Substack, theadoptedsexologist.Substack.com.

And on Instagram, I'm also theadoptedsexologist. Which is also my webpage, theadoptedsexologist.com. I'm trying not to be so complicated. Let's see. I, it's too complicated anyway, but I think Substack is the best place because there I also have some recordings trying to do some podcasting on my own. Upload some freebies and stuff. That's fun.

Haley Radke: Perfect. We will link to all those things. And your newly published article, Who I Am or Who You Make Me To Be, Adult Adoptees Imprisoned by Expectations and Intimate Meetings. So folks can read a little more of your [00:44:00] research there.

Anna Linde, MSc: That's correct. I don't celebrate that enough actually. Thank you for reminding us.

Haley Radke: Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to share this episode with listeners and for folks to pass it on to, people who've been impacted by childhood sexual abuse. I hope it's super helpful for them. Thank you, Anna.

Anna Linde, MSc: Thank you. It was very nice to be here and very nice that you take on such an important topic.

Haley Radke: I hope that was helpful for you to think through some of the impacts that this may have had on you. And I think, I don't think we've really talked about this in the episode, but I really have this belief that our brains let us know when we're ready to open the next thing to work on, if we [00:45:00] really examined our whole lives and all the traumatic things that have impacted us and we like, opened our brains up like a book and just saw everything all at once.

No, nobody can handle that. No human can handle. And looking back at all these like crazy things that have happened to them. But I think our brains do things, a couple things at a time so we can be safe. So only examine this if this feels like a safe time for you and you'll know. I think you'll know. I love that Anna is doing a workshop. There are some resources linked in the show notes for you and I, it's really neat that she's a sexologist and she's like a total expert in this area. Lots of trauma-informed therapists like that you may already be working with will also be skilled and able to help you through some of these things.

If you're [00:46:00] able to ask your therapist and open up that convo if they're not able to, I'm sure they can also refer you on to a specialist in that area. So get the professional support that you deserve. I know sometimes therapy can feel inaccessible and often it is for many folks. But there are so many amazing free resources therapy supports for adopted people experts in this field more and more.

Don't just be like, oh, I just can't, don't do that. Take good care of yourself. We need you to be here. And the more we work on these things, like we're just able to show up for ourselves more and our people more, and have a happier, healthier, joy-filled, meaningful life. And that's, [00:47:00] isn't that what it's all about? I don't know. That's my personal opinion.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to listen and I really hope you had some good takeaways from this. And if you do know someone who's had, who's experienced childhood sexual abuse of some kind maybe share this episode with them if you think it might be helpful.

And it can be a resource hopefully. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

March 21, 2025

300 Haley’s Sisters

March 21, 2025/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/300

Haley Radke: [00:00:00] 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're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. I didn't really think that I'd reach this milestone, but it's here. We have reached our 300th episode, and I've been thinking about this for months and was trying to decide what special interview, what special topic, what could I bring you to mark this milestone?

And I finally decided. that I wanted to celebrate with my sisters. I found my paternal side of my family 14 years ago, and I discovered I had three younger [00:01:00] siblings. So even though I'm technically the only adoptee on today's show, I thought that you'd enjoy this peek behind the curtain, exploring what it was like for my young sisters when they were told at age nine and 12 that they had a surprise older sister.

We deep dive what reunion was like for them, the ups, the downs, what things are like for us now. We also have a brother. He was 14 when we first met, and now he is a very busy young husband and father. And when I spoke about this recording with him, we had his blessing. And I think he shares some of the same sentiments that our sisters are going to share with us today.

Before we get started, I want to personally 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. Oh my gosh. Come meet my sisters. Let's listen in.[00:02:00]

I'm so pleased to introduce to my listeners. My sisters, Amy and Sarah. Hello, girls.

Sarah: Hello.

Amy: Hello, everyone.

Haley Radke: I should say, okay, Amy. Who's Amy?

Amy: I am Amy, and Sarah and I have been told we sound really similar, so it might sound like we're the same person talking.

Haley Radke: Oh, no. Okay, and Sarah,

Sarah: Hi, this is me We do speak very similarly, but I think I don't know I think you'll be able to tell.

Haley Radke: I think so. I think so. That's so funny. I don't hear it maybe I should I don't know. I love people's voices. I'm obsessed with sound so you know, that's the reason for my job. Thanks for being on. You guys are not adopted, but you have some in depth expertise into my [00:03:00] adoption reunion situation, which I thought folks might be interested in to celebrate 300 episodes.

So welcome. Thanks for being brave. The only other relative who's been on the show. Is your mother.

Amy: Oh, yeah. That's right. I do remember when mom was on the show.

Haley Radke: Do you?

Amy: Yeah. I do. I remember. I listened to her episode.

Haley Radke: Sarah, did you listen?

Sarah: I think I listened, but it was forever ago. I don't remember at all. Like, how that went or what the conversation was. Zero memory.

Haley Radke: Yeah, it's been a long time. Speaking of, okay. So we've been in reunion for 14 years as of the time of this recording, which is pretty amazing. Sarah, you were nine. Amy, you were 12. And so we've already passed the mark where [00:04:00] I've been in your life more than not over the halfway point. Do you remember that it was that long? Do you have a clear delineation of before Haley and after Haley?

Amy: I do, for sure. It was, yeah, I think really already a pivotal time in my life, right? I was 12, almost a teenager, and so I have a really clear pre Haley, post Haley memory in my life. It was like, oh, and I have three siblings, not two. So yeah, it was a really big deal. Definitely a significant life event in my childhood.

Haley Radke: When I called our brother to tell him we were doing this, he said, yeah, what I remember is we sat down to dinner and all of a sudden there was a secret surprise sister. Sarah, do you remember that?

Sarah: I [00:05:00] absolutely remember that, and I think, I don't remember the dinner itself, but I vividly remember after dinner that mom or dad had been like, we have something to tell you, and I remember a long pause, and dad looking the most nervous I have probably ever seen him. He is a very clear speaker, he always has something to say, and it was a little of him trying to get the words out and fumbling almost before saying it, I very much remember that very clearly.

Amy: Oh my gosh, that's crazy you remember that so clearly. I don't remember the actual moment they told us.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amy: I actually don't, I remember after and my, I was feeling so surprised and I remember that, but your memory is so clear for [00:06:00] the fact that.

Sarah: Yeah it was such a thing of I don't have a lot of memories across all my life of Dad being frazzled. He was nervous and frazzled to tell us this news, and so I think it was so out of the ordinary that I just very much remember he was super nervous to have that conversation.

Haley Radke: So you don't remember that, Amy, but what do you remember about that time?

Amy: I remember I was feeling really upset after because as I don't know if your listeners would know but we grew up in a very Christian kind of environment and so for me having premarital sex was like the worst thing you could possibly do and so I was just shocked to hear that my dad had a baby outside of marriage when he was super young and [00:07:00] so that was really earth shattering for me as a 12 year old.

Haley Radke: Totally. It's like the person I thought I knew is no more, right? Cause you have this picture of who your parents are and yeah, totally shattering. Yeah. So I remember that your neighbor's dog was named Haley. And so I felt really offended by that because that was the first Haley in your life was a dog Haley but guess what I think that dog is dead so I win.

Sarah: That is correct.

Amy: And I don't even remember that as my first Haley just so you know, you're the first Haley I don't even think about the dog.

Sarah: I remember the dog sorry, Haley.

Haley Radke: Was it a boy dog or a girl dog?

Amy: It was a boy.

Sarah: It was a boy! And they, the only reason they had named the dog [00:08:00] Haley was because they let their eight year old daughter name the dog, who was like a year younger than me. So it was probably, she probably named him when she was like, six and she wanted the boy dog to be named Haley. So they were like, okay, I guess we're doing that.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Okay, I remember sitting down to write you guys emails because that was our first communication. Do you remember emailing me? Do you remember anything that I sent you or what you sent back?

Amy: I remember all the emails. I was so excited to email you. It was the best thing. I remember checking my emails to see if Haley responded.

Oh my god!

Haley Radke: I'm showing Amy a Full, single space typed. This is the first email you sent me. It is a full page.

Amy: Oh my gosh.

Haley Radke: Yeah, [00:09:00] this has got to be 500 words.

Amy: Yeah, and so I remember feeling, I think, so special because here was this adult who, how old were you when we met? 27?

Haley Radke: Yeah, 27, 28. Yeah.

Amy: 27! And I just thought you were so cool, and you wanted to talk to me, and hear about my life, and you cared about who my friends were and what I like to do, and so I felt so special. And I remember we met you not that long before my 13th birthday, and you bought me this necklace.

Which I still have. It's very wait, I'll go get it.

Haley Radke: What? I don't remember.

Sarah: That was sweet.

Haley Radke: I don't remember that.

Amy: Yeah, you bought me this necklace.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh.

Amy: And I remember you wrote me this note, and you were like, oh this lady hand makes this jewelry, and each piece is unique

Sarah: Aww!

Amy: And I think that's like us as humans because God makes each of us unique [00:10:00] and you wrote this to me and see I remember it so you I yeah, I just felt so special and so loved.

Haley Radke: Good job past Haley. Wow, that's pretty good.

Sarah: I love that. I think my experience was so different because I was so young, right? That as a nine year old, I don't have a very vivid before and after of you, and I really do not remember a lot from emails. I barely even remember emails. I could not tell you a single thing that either of us said.

I think at the beginning of reunion, I was just so excited. I was confused as to why there were big feelings about it, right? I was that young that [00:11:00] I did not understand what a complex situation it was. I was just like, yay! I have a bonus big sister! That's so exciting. And I think when we maybe did a first video call with you and Nick, it had been screenshotted or something.

Somehow I had a picture of you and I remember showing the picture to my friends and being like, guess what? I have a like older big sister. And that was it. And I know that there was a lot of intentionality on your end building relationship, right? And starting to write emails and us emailing back and forth, which really, I think I was just so ready and happy to accept and be like, yay! This is fantastic! And that was [00:12:00] really it. I don't remember a whole lot of early years whatsoever.

Haley Radke: I think that's really lovely for me to think about how for Isaiah, he doesn't know any different. You guys were always in our lives when he was born, and I love that. For you, Sarah, like you don't really remember before Haley too much.

It's not this big delineation, not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's a special thing for you being so young in it. And I do remember waiting for emails. getting back. Amy, I don't know if you remember this, but you did like a full photo tour of the house before we ever visited. Like I have a full, oh yeah, from the the house you lived in when we first met. I have a full photo tour.

Amy: Oh my gosh. I don't even remember that. Wow.

Haley Radke: Yep. Yep. So y'all spent time doing that. [00:13:00] There's a lot of pictures of the dog. Not dog Haley, but your dog. Do you remember? Do you remember when we first met? Did you feel like there was an instant connection? Or do you feel like it took more time to build. I remember Sarah basically sitting in my lap the whole weekend wanting to snuggle up, which was really cute.

Sarah: Yeah, I think I felt like there was an instant connection. And I was just like, great, this is my big sister. And that was really it. For, my small brain, that's as far as I got with any of the details, was just like, okay, this is my big sister, and I was super happy and excited about it.

Amy: I think for me, it was different because I had been so used to emailing with you, and I felt so connected to you over email, and then I met you in person, and all of a sudden, the sound of your voice is really new for me, and the way [00:14:00] you speak is really new for me, and so it was almost like a switch.

I was so excited to meet you, and then I was like, wait, this is different than the person I was emailing. It was like putting the two together, right? Not that you acted any differently, but I wasn't used to you as a full human. I had just had a pen pal almost.

Haley Radke: It's like love is blind. Like we met in the pods and you're talking and then you meet after and it's oh, it's a person with a body and they're not like I pictured. And

Amy: Yes, we had to go to phase two of the experiment.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Of the experiment.

Sarah: Yeah, so true. I think something I remember from meeting in person for the first time was that I was more awkward around Nick than I was with you. Because I think, as a young girl, it was so much easier to be comfortable around women than it was men and [00:15:00] so it definitely took more time to be like, okay, also she comes with a husband and that's great, but also who is he? What's, what's the vibe and what is our relationship gonna look like? That definitely took more time to build, I think, than it did with you.

Haley Radke: Yeah, okay. You probably won't remember this. Amy wrote in her email to me in the first one. She's I think Sarah's probably disappointed that you're already married because she would have liked to be a flower girl or something.

Sarah: I think that is so true. And Amy was right, exactly right on that.

Haley Radke: That's amazing. Okay, are there any similarities that you guys have noticed between either us or me and dad? Anything that's popped up [00:16:00] through the years?

Amy: I definitely notice. Your and dad's sense of humor is really similar, which I think was so fun for me, especially as a teenager, because our dad has always been the really funny one in the household.

And so to see a woman who was also really funny, it was like, oh wow, here's Haley with the same kind of sense of humor. So that was definitely a similarity I noticed between you and dad. And I also really remember loving the fact that we look pretty similar. Because I think mom and Sarah look pretty similar, but I had been the female in our house who took more on dad's side of the family.

And so I just remember being like, oh my gosh, I think my sister is so pretty and we look the same. That's so special when I met you, so that was really nice, I think, to feel like I had this similarity.

Haley Radke: I'm gonna get all [00:17:00] teary. Oh, I wasn't anticipating that. Sarah, what about you? Do you remember any similarities, or even now, like?

Sarah: I definitely do. Even just you and dad on paper, I think if dad was born when you were born, I think it's very possible he would have a podcast about something. Is that inherently? I think our whole family our all of us siblings are very confident public speakers and love reading and writing and are very well spoken and I think that all comes from dad and his, he is so much of that, and that we're all very passionate people.

Also I think that's a huge [00:18:00] similarity between all of us. But I definitely remember something from my childhood. Dad had gotten me a comic book. It was like a treasury of all of the Ziggy comics. I don't think it's a very well known comic series, but essentially, the vibe of the comics is that Ziggy is this kinda odd looking, funny guy, and the humor is all very sarcastic and skeptical, and that Dad loved those comics, and Mom did not.

These comics are horrible! They're depressing! And he had given a book of them to me, and I loved them, and thought they were so so fun and entertaining and I think that [00:19:00] we definitely share some of the like more sarcastic humor and more like deep skepticism like in being funny and I think that's definitely a similarity between us and dad also.

Haley Radke: Do you guys remember one time I came and I wrote little notes on everybody's mirrors or windows I had I on a white, with a whiteboard marker. And because I did it right before we left for the airport, it was like a secret kind of thing. I don't even know what I wrote. I don't know.

Just cutesy little notes, I'm sure. And y'all thought dad had done it because our writing is so similar. And he's a lefty. I don't understand how handwriting is genetic, but do you remember that?

Sarah: I absolutely remember that and being shocked to learn that it was you that [00:20:00] wrote the note on the board and just being like, wow, like, how is that even possible that your handwriting is so similar?

Haley Radke: It was just such a funny thing. I, yeah, I was like, what? I don't, I didn't understand that you guys would think it was him because why would he write, I don't know, the whiteboard marker. Okay. Can you think of any surprises for you in terms of our differences? I remember when I met you guys were vegetarian at the time.

And I know Dad had written that in an email, but I didn't act like that was for, I thought he was being joke around about it. I didn't understand that. No, you guys were in fact vegetarian. And it was a huge deal because when we visited. He made a steak when we came. Do you remember that?

Amy: I do remember that and it was a really big deal that dad was making steak. It was the talk of the town for a week before you guys came.

Haley Radke: Scandalous. [00:21:00]

Sarah: I think for me the biggest thing was knowing that you weren't Catholic.

Haley Radke: Oh.

Sarah: That was a huge deal because even though you were Christian, the vast majority, especially at that point in my life as a nine year old, we were in Catholic homeschool groups and very Catholic circles to the point where all of my best friends were Catholic and their families were Catholic and some of them had wayward older siblings who weren't Catholic anymore, right?

Which was a huge deal and I knew that at the time that was just a really big deal. So I remember, I think after maybe the first visit or something, having a conversation with mom about it. And me being [00:22:00] concerned about you because you weren't Catholic, which is so funny now, I'm like, oh boy, I'm very deep in that.

Haley Radke: I even worked at a church at the time I was, all in evangelical Christianity. You couldn't get more Christian. I'm like,

Sarah: 100 percent. But I think at some point you wore black nail polish and that's really concerning behavior.

Amy: I remember that. I remember the nail polish.

Haley Radke: What?

Amy: Yes, that was very edgy for us. We were like, whoa, she wears black nail polish.

Sarah: Yeah, we were not allowed to wear black nail polish which is so funny.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, I didn't know. That's good. I'm sure there was other scandalous things I did that I did not know were.

Amy: Also remember you had a streak in your hair, like you had a pink streak. [00:23:00] And that was also edgy. We were like, whoa, she dyes her hair a different color. But I was gonna say, the difference that I remember was, I think, maybe your first visit when we had family game night. And our family is very loud, there's lots of trash talking, there's lots of hype and excitement, and it is a big deal, we're very competitive.

And I remember, Haley, that you had to leave the table, because it was too much for you! And, I just re I was so surprised, because this was normal to me. This is how you play games. And so the fact that it was too much for you, I couldn't understand.

Haley Radke: Oh, I remember that. It was Monopoly. And it was so intense. And I am actually a very competitive person. I'm sure I've told you guys this game before, this story before, but I remember playing this game [00:24:00] with this other couple and it was, it's called Ticket to Ride. I'm sure lots of people have played Ticket to Ride and you have to build these pathways to other cities.

And there's only so many ways you can get to a city, and if you don't make it there's a big point penalty. And we were playing with this other couple, and the wife had a meltdown, because her husband took the last track that she needed to win the game. And she had a temper tantrum in front of us, and, we were in our early to mid twenties at the time, and I was just like, this is the most embarrassing thing I've ever witnessed.

I'm never gonna be this again. I cannot be this competitive. It is not that serious. I still remember it. It was yesterday. Anyway, so I really toned it back on the competitiveness. So when you guys were playing Monopoly like it was real money and you were gonna actually be like so wealthy when you [00:25:00] won this game, I was so torn because that is my nature is to be, but I couldn't trash talk my new sibling.

I wasn't going to get in there. Like it was like a very I can't alienate you in the beginning. And this is I can't, I've never seen a family act this way, which I know lots of families do. This is how game night is at my house now. Like my kids are just the same as super competitive as you guys were, are.

Yeah, I remember that. It was, I didn't know what to do. And I had left and I felt so awkward about it. It was bad. Yeah.

Amy: Oh, I could totally see that. You don't want to trash talk the new family that you're trying to win over in a way.

Haley Radke: The kids?

Sarah: Yeah.

Haley Radke: The kids? I was an adult. I'm gonna trash talk Sarah? No. But you guys were super into it. Into it. Oh my gosh. And now Monopoly is Isaiah's favorite game. And I [00:26:00] always win. And he still wants to play. I don't know. Can you give us the practical, like, how have we stayed connected over the years as you've grown into, young adulthood now.

Now you're, I don't know, can I even say young adults anymore? I don't think so. You're just adults.

Amy: I feel like I'm too old for young adults.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Sarah: Young adults.

Haley Radke: Sarah, you can be a young adult, but not Amy. Okay. Yeah. From emails to what have we done over the years to keep in touch?

Amy: I think it's definitely evolved over time. At the beginning it was emails and then I think there definitely were some years where we didn't end up talking as much and then it's evolved into more texting and more phone calls, and then as I've gotten even older, visits, either you visiting me, me visiting [00:27:00] you. So I would say it's changed because my life has changed so much since I was 12 when we met, right?

Sarah: Yeah, I think same for me, in terms of emails, even just having each other on Instagram and being able to respond to stories and seeing each other's, life updates in that way and I think we don't talk right now as much as we realistically could. We do intentional phone calls every now and then, but it's not a regular weekly communication between the two of us, but it also, to me, feels very much like my relationships with Amy and Daniel also in that, oh, it's the phase of life, and it's, there's so much love there, even without a weekly update and [00:28:00] check in, right? And I know, in the future, that will also evolve into a season of talking more, or less, or whatever that looks like.

But it feels like a pretty average sibling connection to me, where there's a big age gap. Like it just feels so normal of yeah, there's not constant communication. And also this is just kind of relationship when one of you is in school and the other one just graduated school and the other one is an adult with kids.

Haley Radke: With almost a teenager.

Sarah: Literally.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I do appreciate how y'all roast how old I am. That's good.

Amy: This is making me think. I'm almost the age that you were when we met. And that's crazy because in my head you were so old [00:29:00] and I do not feel that old right now.

Haley Radke: It doesn't help that I was married. That just makes you feel older anyway, right? It's oh, you're a real adult.

Amy: Fair enough.

Haley Radke: Even though I got married when I was 20, okay, let's go to the hard. Do you think of what's the most difficult thing that's been, has there been things difficult for us to navigate or any particularly super challenging times?

Amy: I think post reunion initially was pretty tough for me because as I said, I had to re know and discover about who my dad was and what my family was. I even remember going to summer camp that summer and one of the classic questions you're asked is, how many siblings do you have? And I was like, three, it used to be this easy question and then all of a sudden I felt stuck.

And so that was a really tough time and I think, I know the adults all went to therapy, you and Nick and mom and dad, the adults all went to [00:30:00] therapy and it would have been awesome in hindsight if I had been brought into the therapy because I think that I was really going through a rough time and that all of the dynamics and the different boundaries that were put in place with communication, which were super helpful for the adults, were really tough on me.

And so it would have been just so nice if, I had the one, piece of advice to give people in reunion. It's don't leave anyone out. Everyone is going to be affected by the reunion, and if you're doing therapy, everyone needs to be included.

Haley Radke: Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's a good one.

Sarah: I think for me, because I was so young, I don't think I went through any difficult periods with it, but I do remember there was an emotional weight around the rest of the family, and that for a certain amount of time [00:31:00] Mom and Dad were really going through it, and, were in therapy and were working through things, but that I had no idea what they were working through.

There was, like, I think, in many ways, the communication could have been better, and maybe, like Amy said, it realistically would have been helpful for me to also go to a therapist. And to have some maybe mediated conversations about what was happening. But I just remember in my head, you were my sister and that was really exciting and good but that mom and dad are really not okay and having a difficult time with something which, even as an adult, what's funny is that I'm like I have no idea what was going on. I [00:32:00] still don't know what the therapy, between all of you was and what was addressed, and I have no idea, and I definitely think it was really difficult to know that there was this huge emotional thing going on, that half of the family wasn't okay, and that I had no concept of what was happening, and I think there could have been some extra communication to dumb it down to a nine year old's level, almost, right?

Of I think I needed something to have a better idea of what was happening, to feel more secure, I think, because there definitely was a time period where I just knew the family did not feel stable.

Haley Radke: Amy, do you know what the adults were all fussing about?

Amy: I do, and I [00:33:00] did know at the time, which I think was tough almost in a way that I knew. I know, Sarah, you're like, oh, I wish I would have known. But see, I did know, and then that made me worried, I think, for the adults. So yeah, I was privy to what was going on, which was tough. It was just a tough situation. Reunion is hard. There's no easy, there's no easy answer or path or system.

Haley Radke: I'm trying to think about what you would have thought were the issues. Even in my mind, I'm like, what did we talk about in therapy? I know we talked about having rules of how many communications and it was very much like trying to right size their relationships into more normalcy. That's what I remember and I had [00:34:00] Isaiah, pretty soon into reunion and so it was like, oh, now I have a kid and it's what are you going to be in terms of what is grandparenting going to look like? And that's the stuff I remember. Sarah, is that what you remember, Amy?

Amy: Yeah, no, that's what I remember, and I think those rules surrounding communication were what was really hard on me, because, I mentioned earlier, you were this older person who was all of a sudden a support for me and interested in me, and I was a pretty shy kid it was a really big deal for me to have someone like you in my life.

And then, with the communication rules, it blocked off our relationship. I wasn't supposed to have private emails back and forth anymore between you and me. And it was like, all of a sudden, it's oh, here's the this person had been brought into my life and then all of a sudden was taken away.

And I remember sharing that. I did [00:35:00] share it. And was then told, explained why the rules were put in place, but I think what I got from that situation was then like, okay, what I need doesn't matter I'm not a priority here, we need to do this for the sake of the adults and the dynamic, and I got that but it was like a big heartbreak for me.

It was very painful, I think especially because the introduction of you into our lives had created a lot of pain and struggle for me internally and then I got used to it and got close to you and that was like, oh and upheaval again.

Haley Radke: That's really hard.

Amy: Yeah, and I have so much grace for the adults involved so much grace. Everyone was doing their best. It was a really hard situation everyone was doing what they thought was best right and as an adult, I totally understand that.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Aww. Little Amy.

Amy: I know, right? Poor little 12 year old Amy. Aww. [00:36:00] Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. Now you can grade me. Let's talk about, I disrupted the birth order. Daniel is no longer the oldest. I'm the oldest by so many years, apparently, like decades. For the listeners, you can grade me on big sister duties. As someone who grew up as an only child, how am I doing as a big sister?

Amy: You're doing great as a big sister. I absolutely love having you as a big sister. I often tell people how grateful I am that you came back into our lives because I missed out on you when you were younger and when I was younger and so the fact that I get to have you in my life is just incredible. You've been such a support to me and I think the age gap, which I know you love when I bring up, works out to be really cool for me because I have this person who does have more life experience than me and you can be a support for me.

And there was one particular time [00:37:00] about three, four years ago now that I went through a really bad breakup and Haley flew out to come see me. She flew out for the weekend and we spent an Airbnb weekend together and traveled around and the amount of support and love that I've gotten from you has just been so meaningful for me. I can't picture my life without you.

Haley Radke: That's so nice. Thank you. Sarah?

Sarah: I think you're doing great on older sister duties.

Haley Radke: Older sister.

Amy: You called yourself that. You can't complain.

Sarah: I'm so sorry, but you are older than me. I don't know.

Haley Radke: By so much. I know.

Amy: Sarah, don't double down.

Sarah: If it helps, I also call Amy my older sister. You are both older than me.

Haley Radke: Oh, she's very old. Yeah.

Amy: Ancient, one would say.

Sarah: Yeah, I think it is [00:38:00] also been so lovely for me to have you a part of our lives. There were definitely many years that I was not close with Amy. While we were living together, we really did not, grow closer until after high school and after we were both moving out and starting to make our own life choices, which is, I feel like, very common for siblings.

And I think that because you never lived with us, we always had that relationship. Of there was no underlying tension and fighting about who's cleaning the bathroom that week, which meant that you've always just been a supportive role and that you have always just been a comfortable big sister that I could talk about with different things [00:39:00] and that you were older was also a blessing to me, too.

There was one period when I was, I think it was the summer when I was in grade, maybe going into grade 8 or 9, that I had come to stay with you and Nick for a few weeks after

Haley Radke: I had surgery. And you were helping because I couldn't pick up the babies.

Sarah: Yeah, which to me was the best thing ever and it was so special for me to have a safe place outside of my family that was also my family.

Of this isn't my house where things are, there's different things going on always with the other siblings and mom and dad and it was such a safe haven for me to be able to have family who I loved [00:40:00] that, yeah, were able to, support me and be there for me if at that time, my mental health was so not good and I remember having so many beautiful conversations, and us hanging out, and having girl time, and so many, yeah, so many blessings in that.

Haley Radke: Okay, I'm fine. Everything's fine. What, God, what an honor. I, Okay.

Amy: Sorry I'm tearing up over here.

Haley Radke: I told y'all we're gonna keep it light and fluffy and I'm gonna keep it super professional. That's just, it's a sweet moment. That's nice. What's it like for you having me be a podcaster and talking about adoption for my job now.

Amy: I think it's fun. I'm like, oh, my sister has a podcast. She's big in the adoptee podcasting and adoptee world. [00:41:00] And sometimes I'll tell people to go look up your podcast. They'll be like, oh, send it to me. So I'll send them an episode and they'll listen, which is fun.

Haley Radke: You're helping get me downloads? All right.

Amy: Oh, yeah.

Haley Radke: That's pretty good.

Sarah: I think it is so wonderful and I am always so proud to talk about that and share that with people I think a lot of you know the very Christian spaces that we were in growing up, many of them very much, I heard a lot of messaging growing up that was, adoption is the answer, it prevents abortion, and therefore, it is fantastic.

And I've had conversations with many of my friends and different people in my life, and I'm always so happy to share that this is not a perfect solution. [00:42:00] This is not a perfect answer and that there are, many flaws and difficult things and lifelong impact to adoptees and I feel so proud as a sister that this is something that you went through that had a huge impact on you as a person and your life and so proud that you share your story with people and that you have created a beautiful space that you needed when you were 20, like I am so proud of that and really just think it's the best thing ever.

Haley Radke: Oh, thank you. Amy, have you have your thoughts on adoption changed over the years from either from me or listening to the show? I know you used to listen for a while. I don't know [00:43:00] if you ever listened, Sarah, but

Amy: I did. I used to listen as I was falling asleep.

Haley Radke: Happy to serve you to dreamland.

Amy: My thoughts on adoption have definitely changed over the years. When we first met, as Sarah said, I was just hearing the Christian messaging of adoption is this beautiful, good thing and everyone should do it. I even remember, like, when I was maybe 11 just before I met you I went through a phase where I wanted mom and dad to adopt a baby.

I was like, mom, you and dad should adopt a baby. Yeah I was fully bought in to adoption and so I think, I've really appreciated getting to hear all the complexities about adoption, and I often talk about people, talk to people about the grief that goes along with adoption, and I've felt that grief, right?

The grief of missing out on knowing you for so long, and so [00:44:00] my thoughts on adoption have definitely changed. I'm no longer yes, adoption is always good. And I see the grief and heartbreak on the side of the biological family and for the adoptee and all of the mental health issues that go along with the trauma of being relinquished at birth.

Haley Radke: So I guess I've radicalized everyone. Excellent. My master plan has all come into fruition.

Sarah: I think as a very young person, like I would say probably as a 16, 17 year old, from knowing your story and having limited understanding of everything I knew at that point that I was like, okay, adoption will never be an option for me.

That if I got pregnant, [00:45:00] I would never place my child up for adoption, which I think, obviously there's a lot of privilege that comes with that in that I know I have family who would support me, I have a lot of financial support, but I do think that's significant. And that, for me, I've known for a long time from having you a part of our lives that I was like, that would never be an option.

Haley Radke: Wow, thank you. Thank you guys for your candor. I really appreciate you being willing to share today. It's just been so lovely to hear all these memories and stories and I have tingly love feelings in my body. It's so nice. Do you have any last thoughts, advice for people, especially for people who have kids in reunion, like you shared some things today like I literally had not thought of, and I [00:46:00] feel silly that I didn't. Even those things are helpful advice, but any last thoughts that you want to share? With folks.

Amy: I think I would just reiterate what I said before that adoption really affects everyone. Reunion really affects everyone and I've had to process through my own grief and my own feelings and I think that if you are in reunion and you have kids.

Take everyone to therapy. I'm certainly biased because I'm in school to be a psychotherapist right now but family therapy is really helpful. So take your kids to therapy. It's gonna have an impact on them and I would say that it's gonna impact everyone differently. I know our brother was impacted very differently than I was and I was impacted very differently than Sarah was, and so everyone's gonna have really unique needs in this situation so spending time to, as best as possible, support each person in whatever they need is awesome.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Sarah?

Sarah: I think I would just say that, [00:47:00] are we, is it 14 years? 14 years out, I think we're all doing really well, and I know I am so grateful to have Haley a part of our lives and I just would give hope to anyone that's in the trenches of processing with a new family that there's so much hope and so much work went into that on all sides. But, that I'm so happy that you were brave enough to send that first text to Dad.

Amy: Sarah, you're so sweet. You're such a sweet person. I love your optimism and everything. That is so true.

Haley Radke: Aww. I have loved being a big sister and have worked really hard at it. And it's just been [00:48:00] truly such an honor to watch you both grow up and Daniel too.

And he's got his own little family now and to get to be there for The milestones, the breakups, the weddings, the babies it's just been just amazing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you both for sharing. I know it's not easy to be public but welcome, welcome to the public podcast.

Amy: Thank you for having us. It's an honor to get to be on your podcast. That's such a special thing.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I'm so happy that we were able to do this and so happy to be able to share a little bit of our side of that journey.

Haley Radke: Aren't they amazing? Our brother is equally as amazing and we had this just really special conversation. [00:49:00] Even once we had finished recording, we stayed on and chatted about how powerful it was to unpack these things and like really have a good discussion about them. And we talked about some heavier topics as well, but I just thought, wow, like how, miraculous that after all these years and all the work that everyone put in that we've built this beautiful connection in all its variations.

So now I get to be an auntie. And I have a sister in law and I'm going to be gaining a brother in law shortly. And we're reaching all these milestones and I'm watching my sisters decide on their careers and pursue them. And it just, it's just so cool to be at this new stage of life together. And if we hadn't put the work [00:50:00] in, I don't know.

Where we'd be, we wouldn't be connected. So I do hope that this does bring you hope, like Sarah said. I hope that this celebratory conversation was a happy moment that you could share in our joy. And God, I really, it was really special to bring them to you. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did.

And I told Amy and Sarah when we were done, I'm like, even if this never went to air, this was just like the best. Here it is for you. Thank you for celebrating 300 episodes with us. And I know I've been telling you about this. I'm working on this brand new project. It is, it's all happening, and you'll be hearing more soon, but there's so many good things happening to be excited about, and advancing adoptee [00:51:00] advocacy and family preservation and lots of good stuff.

So thank you for listening. Thank you for celebrating 300 episodes with me. I still can't really believe it. That's a lot of episodes. That's a lot of talking. So, I'll just say goodnight, Amy. Hopefully this helped you fall asleep and. There's humbling moments, right? It was overall so sweet, but it's come on, you know what?

Tell me in the comments, does anyone else fall asleep to our conversations? I have my sleep podcast too. So it is a compliment. I hope you laughed with us and enjoyed, thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

March 07, 2025

299 Dr. Abby Hasberry

March 07, 2025/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/299

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Abby Hasberry back to the show today. We are celebrating her brand new book, Adopting Privilege, a Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative. Abby is a therapist, a scholar, an adoptee, and a birth mother.

We get into all of it, coercion in adoption, parenting after placing a child for adoption, reunion from both sides. We even talk about sororities. Abby also addresses why so many adoptees go on to place a child for [00:01:00] adoption themselves. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adoptees on.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

We wrap up with some recommended resources, including sharing how you can join us for a book club event with Dr. Abby Hasberry. And links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.Com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Dr. Abby Hasberry. Hi Abby.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: Yeah, last, we had, we talked a couple of years ago. We did a whole healing series episode. We talked a lot about therapy and race, and I'm sure those things are still absolutely front of mind for you, [00:02:00] of course, but would you share a little more of your personal story with us today?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Sure. My personal story. So I was adopted in 1971 in Baltimore, transracially adopted. The really interesting thing that I like to share often is that when I was adopted, my parents had planned on adopting another black child, but in 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers put out a position statement against transracial adoption.

And so when they went back in 1973 to start the process again, they were denied based on that. And so we talk a lot about that National Association of Black Social Workers position statement, but I'm actually someone who was personally affected by that decision, and I ended up being the only person of color in my family.

My parents had three biological kids, and so a lot of my story is around the experiences of transracial adoption, the experiences of just of racism in the United States, the experiences of racism and just identity development in [00:03:00] other countries as well, because I've lived all over the place many states, many countries.

And so I've had to learn to heal and to adapt and to really understand people and myself. And so a lot of that comes into my story, but it also comes into kind of the healing in my practice as a therapist and a lot of what I do in identity development as well. And as a former educator, so lots and lots of things that happened to me over my life as a personal person and as a career person that have all been really affected by my adoption.

I think the biggest thing really is around my identity development, though, as a black woman, and just as an adoptee as well, and thinking about the traumas that happened to me over the years, and also how I kind of pushed through them and I've really become a student of understanding how my body and my brain transform trauma, and it kind of transformed who I was.

And so [00:04:00] thinking about anxiety, thinking about like depression, thinking about some of those protective things that we do, we put on those protective layers and really kind of becoming a student of why these things have happened and how I've developed these parts of me, but also how they've really served me And so I can appreciate those things and not be like, you know, really upset about you know my trauma reactions my response would say like this thing really served me when I was younger now I need to be able to figure out a way to let it know that I'm okay and I'm in charge and heal that and kind of move on and so my story is a little bit about that as well.

Haley Radke: Your story is super unique to me, in many ways, one of which is, all the different places you lived growing up, you've referenced, like, I've lived in many countries, like, absolutely. Can you talk about, as a therapist now, like, looking back on that? Well, how do you think that impacted you as an adopted person? Having so many different [00:05:00] transitions and, like, trying to figure out where home is, what's that sort of meant to you?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, and as an introvert, it really affected me just moving around from place to place and trying to figure out who I was, where did I fit in? How do I navigate this space in these friendships and this school, there is a lot of just trying to figure out lots of parts of me. I think that one of the things that really, really kind of shaped who I was was spending early years overseas. And not thinking about my race and even my adoption status, but really thinking of myself as an American and as an expat.

It allowed me to develop young as just a human and as a being, and then to think about the other parts of my identity, those intersections later in life. I think that that helped kind of shape who I am and how I look at the world. And really just, I don't know, it, it, it shaped how I relate to other people and feeling relatable to [00:06:00] other people as well, because I've been so many places and had to navigate so many different spaces.

Haley Radke: I, I wondered about like identity development when it felt like to me, you got trained to really try and know who you were because you were the, you were the same thing from moving to place to place versus all your surroundings. I don't know. Do you think that's true? Like, I always, I lived basically the same place for, you know, 17 years.

I've lived in the same, you know, let's say four block radius for 20 years. The idea of moving is actually quite scary for me to move to a different country or place or even a different town than I live in. You know, I don't know. What do you think?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely believe that. And one of the things that I [00:07:00] remember my mom saying when I got a little bit older, not not so much in my elementary years, but middle school when high school and when we would move.

And then even I told myself as I moved as an adult is every time I moved, I got to reinvent myself and decide what parts of me I wanted to keep and what parts of me I wanted to leave in that old life. And so it really was a lot of thought about who I am and how I'm showing up in spaces and who I want to be and how I want other people to see me.

I thought about that a lot and had the opportunity to kind of mold that and be intentional even as a child, because I'm moving to this whole new place where no one knows me and how do I want to dress? How do I want to show up? I don't have to be who I was a year ago. They didn't know those that person at all.

So yeah, it absolutely I've trained it's a really great way to kind of explain the process of learning to just shape my identity intentionally.

Haley Radke: Well, you know what? I love that for you because it sounded like a benefit in the end. It feels scary for me to think about what I would have done in those circumstances. So that's really [00:08:00] interesting.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, don't get me wrong. It was definitely scary at times. One of the things I don't think I've put in my book, I'm not sure if I did or not, but I remember in ninth grade, moving to a new school and spending the very first lunch period crying in the phone booth, talking to my mom because I didn't know anyone.

So like, it wasn't, it wasn't like this whole sunshines and rainbows and roses moving. There were definitely hard times,

Haley Radke: indeed,

Dr. Abby Hasberry: and really some hard effects on me.

Haley Radke: It's kind of like how we talk about, you know, the trauma in adoption. Oh, but adoptees are so resilient and right. It's like let's look for any ray of sunshine in there I guess.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes.

Haley Radke: So, one of the pieces in your story is that you placed a child for adoption as a teenager. And I'm curious what your thoughts are as someone who holds two identities in the adoption [00:09:00] constellation. Because I know so many adoptees who have gone on to be first mothers, birth mothers, bio mothers, mothers lost, natural mothers, whatever term you like to use. And I'm curious your thoughts on that. I was recently speaking to someone else who holds those both identities as you do. And she was like, I think being adopted is like a perfect pipeline to becoming a birth mother. Do you think that's the case?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I about a year ago, I recorded a video where this term birth mother grooming in my head came and just like, that's what I feel like I went through is really birth mother grooming. I was groomed to be a birth mother from being an adoptee, from being a transracial adoptee.

And so there's all this race stuff that kind of played into my mom's vision of who she thought I should be as a black person. And when I was teenage, black pregnant girl. It was like all of her stereotypes were crashing together and a fear of that and what that would mean for [00:10:00] me and for her, as well as all of the coercive practices that happen and all of those things. I absolutely see now that like I was really groomed to be a birth mom.

Haley Radke: It's so upsetting. And yet like when you talk about it's like, yeah, we can see that.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah.

Haley Radke: A hundred percent. Right? That was a choice available to your parents to add to their family. Your parents, you talk about this a little bit in the book, how they were going to adopt from Vietnam.

Cause that like, that's like peak time, right? In the early seventies the Vietnam war and, and we're talking about, you know, all of these half American babies we'll say. And so, God, what's that called? Operation Baby Lift? When they, like, that plain girl, that's terrible. Look up that history if you guys aren't familiar with it.

Can you talk a little bit more about that? When, from your mother experience, you shared, like, you'd like them placed in a black [00:11:00] family and that didn't ultimately happen. And so part of that grooming, I think, goes into that.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, absolutely. That grooming of these are all these families you can choose from.

And it's like picking out a new house. You get to think about all the things that you would want in space. And, you know, how much money do they have? What are their vacations like? It's like, You get to develop this family, this dream family, and especially as an adoptee who already spent so much of my life in my head thinking about that dream family and that ghost kingdom life, it was just like, I'm now thinking about this ghost kingdom for my son.

And so it was kind of like dreaming about everything that I would want for him. The thing I didn't understand though, is that once I signed that paperwork, everything that we agreed upon, like it was a handshake agreement, there was nothing written, everything we agreed upon. None of it was legal or binding.

And so they did end up placing him with a completely different family, with a completely different dynamic. And specifically, the thing that was most hurtful is that they placed him transracially. [00:12:00] And I wanted him to have at least one Black parent and at least one Black sibling. And he had none of that.

And that was, and I, they knew from our conversations that that was the most important thing for me. And even though at 16 and 17, when it was, when these conversations were taking place, I was still definitely very much in the fog. I was very aware of those things that needed to happen and were important to me. But yeah, they did not honor that at all.

Haley Radke: I'm so sorry. You know, like, it's like I gave you everything and you couldn't even, you couldn't even respect like

Dr. Abby Hasberry: The one thing.

Haley Radke: The one thing. Oh my gosh.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Another thing that I've heard you talk about, you talk about a little bit in the book, not a little bit, quite a bit in the book, is your idea that this is a temporary situation and you weren't given any other outs.

Like people were like, oh, we'll help you, you know, you can, [00:13:00] whatever you do will support you. But like, here's the op, there's the one option. Here's the one choice.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes.

Haley Radke: Yeah, you know, because a lot of people don't actually understand all the coercion and manipulation that happens for mothers. So can you share a little bit about that?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, that was something that I did not realize until I was like a fully formed adult for all of my years until probably, I don't know, five, 10 years ago. I really believe that I made this choice. I believe that everything was laid out in front of me and I made a decision based on what I had at that moment.

Still felt regret, still felt shame and guilt about it, but really believed that I had made the choice. As a parent now, as an adult and going back and looking and even getting back memories that I had blocked out afterward, I really understand that there was no choice there. There was no this is how you'll go to college.

This is how you're going to continue to run track. This is where the baby will go. This is where we'll have a crib in a month and a half, [00:14:00] because when I started these conversations I had him a month and a half later. And so there was none of that just pathway that they gave me. My parents, when we talked about college told me, you know, this is what it will look like.

This is where you'll get money. This is what financial aid is. This is where you'll live. This is how you'll go back and forth for holidays. If you want to go to the school that's a couple hours away, you can come back as often as you want. If you want to go to a school that's in another state, you don't have that much money for plane tickets, so this is how often you'll be able to come home.

Whole plan. When we talked about having this, my son and raising him, it was, if you want to do it, we'll support you. That was the plan. There was no, you know, I know we have a month and a half. This is how we're going to get clothes. What does breastfeeding look like? What are, you know, nursing options bottle feeding options?

Where are we going to get a crib? Where, what about child care in September when you go back to school I had him in, in June, none of those discussions were had. And so it was a choice with no information. And it really was coercion because they would say, we will support you. [00:15:00] But then they would tell me, these are all these families.

These are all these have all the things they have. These are the plans they have for your son. This is the lessons he'll be able to take and the experiences, the vacations. And so I understood what his plan looked like. If he were to go to someone else. But there was no plan if he were to stay with me,

Haley Radke: I'm sorry. I mean, it's just, it's still happening to this day. That's ultimately, it's still happening to this day for mothers who are in a temporary situation and feel like they have no bridging help. I've spent the last month talking to a lot of mothers and, you know, like some of them are like, by the time, like three years later, I was like fully resourced and in fact had more resources than my child's adoptive parents.

It's just like, it's so temporary. Like how do we help women parent who really would like to parent? [00:16:00] It's just so angering.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, and the ironic thing for me is that the family that I chose, not the one that he went to, but the family that I chose were a doctor and lawyer, and my husband and I are doctor, PhD, but, and doctor, and he's a lawyer, and so, and we have all of the black history, and he has, he would have had black siblings and all the things that I wanted him, the plan I had laid out for him that he didn't get is now my home, and so, like, it's, it's maddening. Heartbreaking. All of the things.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I know you trained in IFS in the last year. I saw it on Facebook.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And so how has that helped you personally to like, look back at, you know, say 16 year old Abby within you and just be like, girl, like you didn't know.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely helped to really give myself more grace and understand why I did certain things and how these protective parts came. It's really helped me to [00:17:00] see kind of the, the parts of me that were really hurt and how they're still in the hurt and how, like, what, when I get kind of triggered, I hate the word triggered, but when I get triggered by something, when those, those hurt parts of me get triggered by something, my reactive

part of me that comes out and reacts. I can understand it and give it a little more grace and also it really helps me to kind of bring it back down much more quickly because I can recognize that this is a reaction as a protective part of the hurt part of me. And so my reaction isn't the anger or whatever the feeling is, it really is pain and hurt.

It's so I can really kind of go to that pain and hurt and not to the reaction. IFS has definitely helped me see that in me, but more importantly, it's helped me see that in my patients and my clients and help them to kind of see that in themselves.

Haley Radke: Hmm. Can we sort of go back in time a little bit to when you had your second child? How was parenting after placing [00:18:00] for you? Because for a lot of folks, right, it brings all the trauma right to the surface again. And, and that's really difficult.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah. I think that part of my protective ability or disability depends on how you look at it is that I pushed the memories away. And so having my son did not bring up a whole lot of that.

The thing that really kind of brought it up was when he was around 5 and started saying he wanted an older brother and I was just like, well, what in the world? Like, what kid asks for an older brother specifically? When he has one out there. And what do I say to this? And so I think that was the first time that it really, like, struck me to my core that, like, this is a thing that's affecting not only me, but him.

But I, because I pushed away all of the other memories, it really, it did not play the part that I've often heard it does in other first parents.

Haley Radke: Okay, wait, how I want to ask this. I don't know. I'm going to ask it like how [00:19:00] and when did you decide to tell your other children that they in fact did have an older brother?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: I did not tell them until I found him because I didn't want them to feel what I felt, which is that like that longing that, you know, the questioning the, where is he? Is he okay? I didn't want them to have that those same anxious feelings that I had my entire life. And so it wasn't until I was sure that I'd found him that I told them.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Do you think that like looking back, are you like, that was a good choice to protect them?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: I think so. Yes.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Because for my, for my son, I think it was, he kind of somehow knew like when I, when we did finally tell him it wasn't. He didn't have a huge reaction. It was like, cause I brought up, you know, how you always ask for an older brother and like, you do have one.

And so, and they're so incredibly similar down to their hobbies. And that I think that it was the right thing to do for them. And especially for my [00:20:00] youngest, because she was four when we found him. And so she really hasn't known life. Without him. I think it's been hardest for her as he's, my son has come in and out of our life and has had to deal with his own adoption trauma and deciding whether or not to have contact or not.

I think it's been hardest for her because she didn't know life without him. So when he leaves, it feels like a hole in a way that's different from my other two.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Okay, so you've experienced reunion in different ways.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: So many ways.

Haley Radke: So many ways. So, okay, I have a question as someone who was you know, sorry listeners, I'm going to repeat a story I've told 20 times on the show. I presented with a friend. We're both adoptees, both rejected from our mothers in reunion after a period of time of knowing them. And so during this presentation, we were attacked by a birth [00:21:00] mom in the room. She was very angry. Very upset with the things we were sharing, insinuating that, you know, me and my co presenter were somehow just like re sharing things that just super weren't helpful and all those things.

And like, we only saw the adoptee side. Fair enough. That's my experience. So as someone who's experienced reunion from both sides, and there you go, we have an adoptee that comes in and out and what feels safe to them and those things. What do you see in, like, what are some things that are really helpful in a reunion? What are some things that are not helpful? I mean, I know it's different for everybody, like, do you see things adoptees are doing, like, I'm gonna put in quotations, like, wrong in reunions? Because I felt very, like, slimed for the things that I was saying.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: [00:22:00] I think it's a personal experience, and so, as long as you're kind of living in what your own truth is, I don't.

And you're really giving grace and understanding to everyone else in that situation. I don't think that there's a right or wrong. It's what our capacity is and how we are able to handle it. My, my birth mother has not been able to, has, has rejected me and I just see it as her still living in her pain and her trauma and it's not a reflection of me.

I try to not make it a reflection of her although there are days when it hurts and so I'm not happy with her, but overall I just try to see, see and recognize that. She's still living in, in all the pain of it as well, and so she may never be able to open up to me as far as my son kind of going in and out and saying, at times he can't handle the contact, he doesn't want anything to do with us and specifically with me, I just, I treat it as just any parent, like I'm his parent and so it's my job to kind of be the eye of the hurricane and whatever he's doing around me is whatever he needs to do at that moment.[00:23:00]

My job is. Just stay steady and be here. If he wants to be here, then great. If he doesn't, then that's fine as well. It just, you just center yourself in it and see what you need. I know that I have the capacity to be that for him. I don't know what my capacity would ever be for my birth mother. If she reached out again, I don't know if I'd want to have contact with her or not. I would just play it by ear and see what happens when it happens, if it ever happens.

Haley Radke: Thank you. So as someone who searched, like, a long time ago, and then you did, like, DNA testing and stuff, did you feel some sort of way about searching for your son? And, like, what that would look like?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, I definitely hoped he would have done it. Like, when he turned 18, it was, like, waiting for a while. Like, for a couple months after he turned 18, I was, like, checking the mail and hoping like every time the phone rang that that this would be the [00:24:00] time. He didn't and I learned later that boys often don't search in the same way that girls do they aren't as like interested and so then when he turned 21 I decided to start looking again because I thought at that point brain development was happening more college was probably near ending and all of the things were his life would be a little more stable and settled and so that's when I decided to go out on my own and start looking for him.

I really wanted to think about when he would feel supported and mature enough and be stable enough in order for me to kind of come in and disrupt his world a little bit and say, here I am.

Haley Radke: And then what did you say to your youngest daughter when he was taking breaks?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Just that. Just that he just needed like to step away and it was a lot for him to handle and that we would as a family support that and be here when and if he wanted to come back.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Thank [00:25:00] you I mean, I just I know people must have similar situations happening in their households and it's so confusing to navigate like what's the right thing to do, you know? Are you, are you comfortable talking about your adoptive mom a little bit? Yeah.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes. Absolutely.

Haley Radke: You share in your, in your new book that she passed in 2023 after a battle with dementia and your relationship with her also sort of went up and down. And so how did you navigate those years with her with dementia and then following her passing, like how did you take care of yourself in the grieving process?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, it's dementia's horrible. It is a long, long grieving process because it starts off with just kind of memory things and just like repeating of stories in a conversation and then just deteriorates over the years and the way that I kind of, [00:26:00] I guess, put up my boundaries in order to be okay and really honored the capacity that I had to deal with it was to only deal with it with her specifically when I knew I was strong.

There were times when I knew I couldn't, it was just too hard. And towards the end, I did not see her very often. And I think, not I think, I know that part of that was me wanting to preserve her memory as the person that she was. The strong kind of force very opinionated, very in your face person that she was.

I wanted to remember her as that and not the shell that she kind of turned into a different person, relapsed almost into her own childhood. And that was not only my intention, but also because she had had a relative who had dementia, who lived with her at some point in childhood, and she had spoken about how, if that ever happened to her, that's not how she wanted to be remembered.

She talked about us, like, don't have me come live in your house, put me somewhere else. I [00:27:00] don't want you guys to deal with what I did. And she also, I refer to my mom as an education snob. She loved everything to do with education and that was one of the things she was most proud about herself is how intelligent she was as well.

And so thinking about her losing her memories and losing that intelligence, I wanted to honor who she wanted to be. And who she was and how she wanted to be remembered as well. So I did put up a lot of boundaries towards the end, which felt like losing her over and over again.

Haley Radke: In your book, you seem to be so like, I'll call it tender with the balance of how you talk about your parents.

You give them a lot of grace, you share a lot of very difficult things, and you really, it seems to me like you're really trying to balance them out as like a full human while saying the things that happened. And did you, were you like? [00:28:00] Nervous about writing any of those things like you share some really deeply personal things all together in your memoir

Dr. Abby Hasberry: yeah,

Haley Radke: I think a lot of people will be surprised by how candid you get and how did you know what to share and like do you still feel like the adoptee loyalty to like sort of I don't know. I'm all say hedge like it's not but you know what? I mean?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, I kind of decided that anything that I'm healed from, and I'm writing from a healing place, I guess it's more of what I want to say, is anything that I'm writing from in a healed place, I would write about it. And then anything that was my story, that was just me, that I experienced, I'm allowed to write about.

I don't want to write about other people's stories or interpret things, but anything that was my story, I was going to write about. I also believed, I heard the quote, I feel like it was Dolly Parton, but I could be making this up, that if they wanted me to write better about them, they should have treated me better.

And so that was kind of the honesty from which I wrote, is that [00:29:00] like these things happened and if you didn't want me to talk about it. Don't do it. But at the same time, that balance that you talk about, I was very intentional about that because I like me. I think I turned out pretty well and I have to give them credit for the parts of that that they did.

And so I, while there are things that they did absolutely wrong, there are things that they did absolutely right. And I wanted to highlight both parts of that and show that humans are flawed and can do horrible things, but they can also be amazing people that do awesome things. And so that balance was important to me to not just point fingers at the horrible things that happen, but also to say, like, I am who I am because of the great things, the experiences, the travel, the ability to really understand my identity, the ability to be critical, a critical thinker and think about race and the way that that shows up in the world. All of that is because of my parents. And so I didn't, I wanted to give them that grace and give them that balance while also saying there are some really horrible things that happen in adoption. [00:30:00]

Haley Radke: You talked about your mom as an educator and, and that's how you spent a lot of your career. You identify as a lifelong learner. How many PhDs you have now?

What's your certificate collection at for all your extra training? So those are such special things about you that, I mean, I haven't collected a bunch of like degrees, but I also identify as like a lifelong learner. Like I want, I'm just desperate to know more. And so I'm curious what parts of those do you think are, can you parse out nature versus nurture?

Or like. Core Abby, like I desire more knowledge and it seems to me that you live your life in such a way that you desire to give back in a huge way.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, a little bit of both. I said before my mom was an education snob. And so I think it was kind of really pressed into my brain that education is the way to grow, to expand your knowledge, to expand your experience, your [00:31:00] abilities, all of that.

So I think that pursuing it in that way was definitely part of my mom, part of my dad, because he also had a PhD. And so I wouldn't have even really known about a PhD in high school and thinking about going that path if I didn't have a father who was who had a PhD. And so I always that was had been one of my goals my entire life.

However, the way that I've kind of weaved together my education, my experiences and my like work life and all of those things are definitely inherently me. And I can say that because when I started to really develop my career and who I was before my mom passed, she couldn't understand what I did when I would talk to her about my job.

She was just like, I don't understand what you do. And this is before dementia . She was just like, like, I don't understand how you weaved all these things together to make this path and what you're doing with your life. And so I know that that was the way that I've used my experiences, my education and all of it together to [00:32:00] make this strange career that I'm in now was definitely me to the core.

Haley Radke: That's, sorry, I'm confused. Like, she didn't know what you did. Okay.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: She's like, why is that a job? I remember her asking me one. Why are people paying you to do these things? I don't, I don't know.

Haley Radke: Okay, this is like, must be post principal, because she knew what that was.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, she did know what that was, but even that one, she was like, why would anyone want to do that job as a teacher? She asked me that.

Haley Radke: Really?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Why would you want to be a principal? Yeah, she did ask me that at one point.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's so interesting, because you're just like a very effective leader and you model that really well in all the things that I've observed you doing. I wonder why she couldn't see herself ever doing something like that.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, she was a teacher to her heart and my dad as well. He was a PhD, but he wanted to teach only so he never did [00:33:00] any research or published. And so that whole tenure thing never happened for him because they were both both my parents were just teachers and not just, but were teachers to their core and did not want to do any of the other parts of education. They really believed in just in educating. So the other jobs, she was just like, why would you ever want to do any of that?

Haley Radke: Curious. Okay, something else I'm curious, and I don't know if it's just because I'm Canadian. I don't know. When you talked about being in a sorority, I was like, okay, I know this is a big thing in the states. Maybe it is here. I just did not experience it personally. Okay, what is it like being in a sorority? Like, how has that shaped you?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, so I'm in an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority incorporated, and it is a historically black sorority founded in 1908. And so it's very different. The black fraternities and sororities are very different in that they're so [00:34:00] incredibly community based, so incredibly part of your identity.

It's not something you do in college and then you're done with it. It's not, it's, it is kind of how, who you are and how you live. And so being able to be a part of a black sorority as a transracial adoptee. It was almost a sign of like, I made it. Like I, I found my identity. I've been accepted in a way that I don't know that I could have gotten in any other place.

Because I'm part of legacies of history of sorority and sisterhood and all of the things that have to do with being in a black sorority and it really is part of your identity.

Haley Radke: Okay. And to this day. To this day you identify, you say the name of sorority. Are there still like things you're involved with?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, so with sororities you get to do graduate chapter after you graduate from college. And so you it is a lifelong [00:35:00] commitment. There are lifelong service it is a service organization, so there are things that you can do lifelong. This Saturday actually, there's a chapter here in Baltimore, and we will be going for a walk together in the mall.

There are service opportunities where you can do things in the community and it is a week to week. Monthly meeting, but week to week activities of service around, around the community.

Haley Radke: And I imagine you would mentor younger women that are part of it then, too, in, in some capacity, whether formal or informal?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, there, there could be formal and informal and even formal ways of mentoring in high school, back, going back to high school and mentoring as a grown person. So, yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. I'm so, I'm so new to, I mean, listen, things I knew about sororities, movies, there's parties, sometimes girls dress the same. So anyway, that's really cool to [00:36:00] learn about the other community involvement. And so it sounds like that also shaped a part of like a passions to give back and those kinds of things.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes, absolutely.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. So, you don't look like a grandma, but you are one. And so

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Thank you.

Haley Radke: For real. For real. I'm like, you look so young. Can you talk about, you talked about legacy with sorority, but how about starting a new legacy for your biological family? And now that you have grandchildren, like what is, what does it feel like to be a grandparent? To a, like a biologically related, like, oh my goodness.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: And I'm, I'm grandparent to biologically related children and some who are not. And so I have two granddaughters who are not biologically related, but my son is their dad and has been their dad, one since she was a little [00:37:00] less, a little less than a year old and the other since she was about four. So yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting to have a family dynamic where the biology of it all hasn't made a difference in who is father and who is grandparent. And so, yes, I have three that I'm biologically related to and two that I'm not right now.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: And grandparenting is the most amazing experience ever. It's just like a different kind of love and that kind of love that I only have to do for 45 minutes at a time if I want to, and I can give them back which is really amazing thing to o especially as you get older and exhausted. But no, it is, it's been my joy and like, I, yeah, I can't. Yeah, I would recommend.

Haley Radke: Okay. Highly recommend being a grandparent.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Highly, highly. Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. I just wonder if you ever spend time reflecting on that. Like my generations are going to be together now. [00:38:00]

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes. Yeah. Especially with my, like with the reunion and my oldest daughter has gotten to know her cousins, her biological cousins.

That has been really interesting. She's been the one who's really connected with them the most, probably because she's here and also they're closest to her age. But yeah, it's It's very interesting to and kind of a gift for them to be able to see people who look like them and I didn't get that until I had my son that was the first time they have each other they have me and now they have this whole other side of the family that they get to see and not only get to see but get to see things about them.

My son can play any instrument by ear completely, like, musically inclined, and to find out that my biological family were all musicians. Most of them sing, some actually might have a couple uncles who were pretty famous musicians, and so it was like, those kinds of things just clicked. Like, okay, I see where we come from and why we have these things, and they get to experience it [00:39:00] at an early age. Which I didn't get to do until I was an adult.

Haley Radke: That's such a, that's such a neat part of reunion, I agree. Like the extended sort of family building and another thing we've talked about a little bit more recently on the show, but just the fact that even if you're denied a reunion with a biological parent, whether it's because you found them deceased or they've refused a connection with you.

There's there's possibly other family members that you can build connections to or your children can build connections to, to fill in some of those stories that as an adopted person, we may feel that we're missing.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes, absolutely. And I've experienced that as my mom. It rejected me and my biological dad died decades before I actually found the family.

And so not being able to have connection with either one of them, but being able to connect to the children, my siblings, to my nieces and nephews, grandnieces [00:40:00] and nephews, all of that has, has filled in a lot of what I missed. But I always say, though, you can never go back again. And so I recently spent some time with my siblings at a sibling reunion.

And it was amazing. And the connection was just like right there. But then there were conversations about lived experiences that I just could not connect to, just did not have that experience with them and felt like an outsider. Like I'm in this place where they accept me as their sibling, but they're having these, remember these conversations.

At one point they were singing a song that they sang together growing up. And none of that was part of my experience. And so while reunion brings back a lot of it. It also reminds you of often of how much you've lost.

Haley Radke: Right. So relate to that. So much even like being in the house and it's like, oh yeah, all the, all the childhood family pictures.

Yeah. I am definitely not in there. I am not in there. [00:41:00] Yeah. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for sharing. I, my last question for you before we do recommended resources. So your book is called Adopting Privilege.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yes.

Haley Radke: When did you discover who holds the privileges, who holds the advantages, the rights in adoption?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: In adoption, specifically, I would definitely say in relinquishment as a birth mother in that relinquishment time that, yeah, just definitely that was an experience of coercion and just understanding that the agency worker and the hopeful adoptive parents, their needs were definitely much more prioritized than mine, even in the delivery room and giving birth.

And then in my experience being taken off the delivery floor and being put on just a regular, regular surgical floor to disconnect me [00:42:00] from the birth experience. Yeah, definitely in that relinquishment, I think that I recognize privilege very, very young as a transracial adoptee, recognize, recognize.

Economic privilege and racial privilege, very, very young, but the adopting privilege of it, I really recognize as a birth parent.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Your new book, Adopting Privilege, A Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative. I don't say this to everybody, Abby. I read it immediately when you sent it to me. I read it in the same day, the same evening I sat there and I was like, go away, go away.

I'm reading. I read on my laptop. It was so good. You put so much of you into it. I literally, I literally cried. I felt so proud of your bravery in the things that you share. I said earlier that you were more candid than I expected, and I [00:43:00] think that's because I think going in, I thought I was going to meet a little bit more therapist.

Dr. Hasberry with and that's there. That's absolutely there. Your expertise and, and you have these like, amazing, listen, dear Abby letters. Come on. How, you're the Abby I'd like to write, to write to. The reflections, like all of those things are there. But to get to know you in such a personal way, it just felt, I felt kind of lucky, frankly, when I was reading it, and I just was like, this book is going to be so helpful.

And as someone who's a leader in the community and shows that spirit of like generosity of sharing wisdom in your story, like to like give all of it is just felt really special. So thank you for writing it. And I know people are just going to love reading it and getting to know you at a more deeper level.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Frankly, how is it to write some of this? [00:44:00] Like, were you like, I don't know if I'm going to share this all.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Yeah, I definitely had a moment of that when I started writing and my mentor for my PhD program, Dr. Clark, who was like the most amazing woman ever. She said, just write it all and you can take out whatever you want later.

And so that was what I did. And I took out nothing, but she, she just gave me the freedom to just pour it all out by saying that. And like saying, if it, if you've had pause in the end, you can take it out. You don't have to share all of it, but write it all. And so, yeah, it, it was hard. It was very many years.

And there were even times when I would write it and come back like a year later. And I don't feel that way anymore. I've got to rewrite this section because a new memory came up or you know, just I've learned some more or just I've done some more healing and work. And I recognize that that that thing that I believe wasn't really true.

And it's not true to who I am right now, at least. And so it was very much a [00:45:00] labor of love and the labor of healing and an intense process. Don't regret any of it though.

Haley Radke: Okay, good. Okay, good. And you write, you write, like, the scathing critiques of the adoption system that, and like, you, you really go there.

So for anyone who's like, Oh, I don't like. Is she going to be hesitant about that? Like, no, no, no, you just say all the real things. Like, really? So I'm really, I loved it.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: From my story.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Sorry. Who are you hoping that who you're hoping to read it besides us?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Um definitely adoptees. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: And birth parents, but therapists, educators, parents in general, just people because people who have been victims of, of sexual abuse, people who have been victims of microaggressions, like literally everybody, I think anyone can get something from the story because, again, I really didn't hold back very much.

So, yeah, I really feel like I want [00:46:00] everyone to read it. But I definitely think educators, therapists, people who are in the community, social workers, adoption agency people just to get another, another narrative added to the story.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. I agree. I think this will be a great book that we'll be able to recommend to our friends who don't even have a connection to adoption because it's so, I love that it's really story driven and, and, and so it's so easily readable, but you're saying all the things that we need to hear. So.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Well done. Well done you. What do you want to recommend to us?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: One of the things that Rebecca Wellington's, Who Is A Worthy Mother, absolutely, it's one of the books that I've recommended to some of my clients and Relinquished as well, both of those books I recommend, I recommend to my clients.

And the other thing that I've been kind of reading and thinking about for healing is The Seven Circles, which is a based on indigenous healing spaces, but thinking about the seven circles [00:47:00] of wellness and the ways that we show up in those places, our safe space, our, our food, our movement, religion, all of those seven circles of just how we really find balance and find ourselves in the world.

Haley Radke: Amazing. We will put links to all of those books in the show notes. Thank you so much, Abby. It's just such an honor to get to talk with you again. Where can we find your book and follow along with you and connect with you online?

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Easiest is just adoptingprivilege. com. And then all of my links are there.

I'm on Instagram as well, but you can get to all of that from adoptingprivilege. com.

Haley Radke: Perfect. We will also link to your, your socials in the show notes. Congratulations on your book launch. So excited to cheer you on.

Dr. Abby Hasberry: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I am so excited that we get to read [00:48:00] Abby's book with her in April. I hope you will join us. We are going to have info in the show notes for you. And if you're wondering about any of our upcoming live events, like maybe you're listening to this in 2028. And you're like, I know this book club is well past you can go to adopteeson.com/calendar and see any of our upcoming live events. We usually host them on zoom and Abby will be joining us. We'll talk all about her memoir, full spoilers, which we tried to avoid during this interview. And I hope you will come. There is a seven day free trial. Patreon now has activated gift subscriptions.

So if you want to join and you want to bring your bestie adoptee friend along, you can gift Patreon subscriptions now, which is really amazing. We've asked Patreon to do that for years and years and years. And so now they [00:49:00] finally have implemented that. And if you want a scholarship, there's also a link on the website adopteeson.com that you can click through and apply. And yeah, that's, I'm really looking forward to that. We also have our monthly Ask an Adoptee Therapist events, which are some of my favorite things that we do. And you're welcome to submit questions for our therapists at adopteeson.com/ask. Thank you so much for listening.

Let's talk again [00:50:00] soon.

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Adoptees On