298 Kit Myers

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/298

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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. I have been waiting several years to have today's guest on, and when better than to celebrate his brand new book. Professor and critical adoption scholar Kit Myers is with us to talk about his new book, The Violence of Love, Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States.

Kit is an adoptee from Hong Kong, and he shares some of his personal story, including a recent reunion he got to experience a couple of months ago. We also dive into culture camps and what happened when society tried to quote unquote [00:01:00] destigmatize adoption for the sake of adoptive parents. 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. 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 am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Kit Myers. Hi, Kit.

Kit Myers: Hi, Haley, it's so great to meet you and be on your podcast.

Haley Radke: I'm so excited. I've learned under you through several different conference events and now getting to read your book, which has a lot of the culmination of your work and research, it's just been really amazing for me so I'm really excited. But first, can you share a little bit of your story with [00:02:00] us?

Kit Myers: , Yeah thank you for those kind words. I guess the shorter version is that I'm adopted from Hong Kong. I was adopted right before I turned four and I grew up, I mean, I was, I was relinquished and, I actually have a lot of I have my original birth certificate and has my, my mother's name on it and had her address where she lived at the time.

And I stayed at multiple sort of institutions, orphanages in Hong Kong. Four different places. And then eventually I was adopted to the United States and I grew up in Oregon. With my family my mom and my dad and, and my brother who's, who's not adopted and we're actually really close in age he's six months, six months older than me, butit was, it was a small town in Oregon and between Portland and Salem.

And it's a town about 15, 000 people or maybe even less when it, when I was actually first adopted 12, 000 or [00:03:00] so when I was adopted. So as a rule sort of setting, we lived on a, was it two and a half acres. And had a lot of miniature animals growing up, so we had a just a farm of miniature pigs, and a couple miniature donkeys, and a pony and rabbits, cats, dogs.

Haley Radke: Oh my god, you grew up with a pony Kit.

Kit Myers: We did, , I got to ride the pony for, , I forgot when the pony passed away, but , we definitely had pony rides and oh we had a couple miniature goats as well so it was It was kind of like this fun childhood out in the country living next to a creek and a overgrown Christmas tree farm and , so so that part was was quite wonderful. Of course, as you can imagine, , it was kind of, sort of racially isolating, so that part was difficult, but I did, , grow up with a loving family, and then when I grew up, I didn't really have exposure to [00:04:00] much about adoption, , I did go to therapy when I was younger to kind of talk through some of the stuff that comes up with adoption, but I didn't, I kind of was quite dismissive of a lot of that stuff until, I got to University of Oregon where I met a lot of other students of color and started learning about more histories about people of color in the United States learned a little bit more about adoption and started doing some research on it.

And that's where I kind of did, what, a research paper on Holt, which is based out of Eugene, Oregon, and did a paper on First Person Plural, which is, , pretty well known documentary by Deann Borshay Liem. That, that kind of propelled me into graduate school, where I started studying it, and then here I am at UC Merced, .

I'm an ethnic studies professor, and I teach classes on [00:05:00] primarily how race is socially constructed, but I also in my classes I talk about gender and class and sexuality and, and disability to think through the law and media and literature and, all of those sort of things. But that's what I teach and then, , my research is, is primarily focused on adoption.

Haley Radke: Well, I I'm so glad you you sort of answered a question I had because a lot of adoptees we get critiqued It's like oh, well, you're critical about adoption because you had a bad experience and you're like no like I had a happy childhood To what I understand you're still in a good relationship with your adoptive parents to this day. Is that right?

Kit Myers: .

We, I talked to him, on a weekly basis and , I mean, I love them dearly and they, they love me a lot. I think it was, it's been hard to fully share what my research [00:06:00] has been on, but , in this last year I've, I've been more open and transparent about that, and they've been supportive.

I mean, I think there's still, there's still some stuff in the book that they haven't had like full exposure to, but, but we've started to have more conversations about that. .

Haley Radke: Well, as you study these things, it's like, oh my gosh, I can't unsee it now.

And we didn't know what we didn't know. And now we know. So . Oh my goodness. Okay. So they have they, they've not read your book fully yet.

Kit Myers: No, no. But my mom was probably the first one to pre order it.

Haley Radke: Okay. Good job, Mom.

Kit Myers: So I think they'll, they'll probably take a look at it. She did ask if she was going to be able to understand anything in the book, and I think, , she'll, , they'll be able to understand the, the main points. And I, I think that, really, I tried to write the book for the broadest audience possible. And [00:07:00] in terms of those who are connected to adoption. So the idea was to try to invite everyone into this sort of conversation and to try to write in a way that wasn't going to judge people for maybe what they've done or how they felt or what their experiences have been, but to really sort of say that we have all these feelings and intentions, but what has If we take a, a sort of a larger picture view, how has adoption been constructed and shaped and despite, , people's intentions, what have the outcomes been and why has adoption been needed in the first place historically?

Haley Radke: You write a lot about summer camp, like culture camp, heritage camp, they've been called different things. And I [00:08:00] interviewed SunAh Laybourn last year or the year before, I can't remember. But in the recent past years, y'all can listen to that episode. And her book was the first one where I was like, she, she writes about this, like this fact that it's like these camps are for the white adoptive parents to get together and feel good about their choice.

It's, I mean, listen, I'm, that's super paraphrasing. That's what I took from it. And I was like, whoa. And you really kind of go into that too, about the reason really why they exist. Can you talk a little bit about camps, what they meant to you and how you see them?

Kit Myers: Yeah I mean, and SunAh is, great, so I'm, glad, I mean, the list of people who you've interviewed for this podcast is just amazing, and she is, , one of the countless amazing people who've been on your podcast.

So, I got involved in [00:09:00] 2006, and the summer camp that I worked for used to be a culture camp, and I'm purposely keeping vague the name of the camp because it's a part of it was it's been a part of an article that I published and I mentioned it in the book as well. But because it's a part of research, I try to create anonymity for the people who are interviewed.

So anyway, it used to be a culture camp, but it changed that, , the director who is a Korean adoptee, he came in and felt like the camp, which is a Korean culture camp was serving adoptees from children from probably like 14 different countries and so it felt odd that it was a Korean culture camp But but there was all of these kids who are attending. And so he felt like we should really shift it and, sort of think about adoptee identity and adoption issues and, race, and racism.

And so [00:10:00] that's kind of that was my first exposure to summer camps, I think really at all in terms of these overnight camps. I mean, on the West Coast, there's just, there's not as strong of summer camp culture on the West Coast as there is, I think, in the Midwest and on the East Coast. So I'd never been to any summer camp let alone one for adoptees.

And so that was just an amazing experience right after graduating college and meeting that was the first time meeting a ton of adoptees for the first time in my life. And it was, it was a big group of us and we traveled to different states and hosted a summer camp for mostly transnational adoptees, but but also a few domestic transracial adoptees and and then eventually when I am in grad school and I I took this critical pedagogy class, which is a class that's thinking about how do we teach.

And so for the class, [00:11:00] I talked about the summer camp as a space of teaching. And through the interviews that I did, talking with some of the adult camp counselors who are all adoptees it became clear that, that the camps were the, primary driver of the camps was less about learning birth culture.

So the camps were kind of emerged in first in the, in the eighties, like the first one was in the eighties and it was a Korean culture camp. And it really was this attempt to go past the color evasiveness. That a lot of adoption agencies and a lot of adoptive parents practice, right, is where, , we want to have our child assimilate into a family and be fully a part of the family, but to do so, we're going to kind of erase their, their culture.

And so the summer camp was an attempt to, it's this early multiculturalism, right, where we're going to embrace and celebrate culture. And so this [00:12:00] is supposed to be. , it's coming from this really loving space or, or place and and agencies are starting to promote this, right? And they're, they're either hosting their own summer camps or they are recommending these summer camps as a way to preserve or cultivate lost heritage, right?

And of course they're popular for adoptees. What's very interesting is that,in my experience, , kids, some kids would, a lot of kids are excited to come, but there's a few who are like, kicking and screaming, like, I don't want to go, I don't want to go, I don't want to go, because this is going to highlight my difference from my family and I don't want to be around all these other adoptees and they feel weird and this is gonna just highlight my differences. But once the children who come who were against it, I think there there is this and one of the the interviewees said it [00:13:00] is this like invisible need for adoptees To it is something where if you don't have it, you don't realize that it's something so special right to meet other adoptees to be able to share your experiences to be able to share in a safe environment where you're not going to be judged where there could be people who could say, I've felt that same same way too, or I've experienced that, or someone has said that to me as well, or I've had that thought, or I've had that fear, and so there's so much to the summer camp and the birth culture camp in terms of trying to provide this space, this educational space for your child, right, and they were really run by adoptive parents, right, and adoptive parents are trying to provide this for their children, and this. They've been told that culture is the primary thing that they've lost, that their kids have lost, and so this is a way to fill that [00:14:00] void.

And so I think it's coming from a good place, but in doing research on the camps, , what I found is a lot of them are focusing on culture while not really attending to the other complexities of adoption and primarily this notion of where does culture come from? Well, it comes from not just the birth nation, but it comes from the birth parents.

And, and so a lot of these camps were not really bringing up birth parents because that's like a whole nother level, right? So I talk about how birth culture is kind of containable, right? You can sort of contain the dangers that exist in talking about birth culture, but it's really difficult to contain the potential, , and I don't want to say it's, it's guaranteed danger, but that's the perceived. That's the perception, right? Is that it would be a can of worms to talk about birth parents because then that threatens adoptive parents place [00:15:00] as parents, right?

Haley Radke: Sure. Let's get a bunch of kids together who've had that stripped away and see if they can learn it from each other while eating , sorry, kimchi will say it's Korean adoptee camp, , like, okay. But can I read you a quote from your book about community? Because that part, I was like, yes, they got that at least, right?

Haley Radke: This is from your conclusion. You say, adoptees who meet a community or communities of other adoptees develop a more complex and sophisticated understanding of adoption experiences, ideologies and practices, and they are given space to hold complex feelings about adoption. And like, what a gift to give those young people.

Kit Myers: And I think I think that adoptive parents were, that's what they were aiming for. I think in, and my memory is so bad, but I, so I don't know if that quote was talking about the birth culture [00:16:00] camps or if it was talking about the camp that I worked at.

Haley Radke: No, no, it's talking about it in general and probably more towards adults, but I'm picturing this as like, how can we get this out of?

Kit Myers: Yeah absolutely. I mean, I think it really is about when we're talking about. This sort of stuff. It's so weighted with a range of experiences. I mean, y'all are coming into this space thinking, oh we have this commonality and we do, but there is a range of experiences and feelings.

And , how do we hold that diversity and acknowledge sort of the the difficult things that people are saying as valid and , what do we do to contend with that?

Haley Radke: I remember one of the sessions I went to at an ASAC conference and you were presenting Adoptee from Hong Kong and then with a room full of scholars [00:17:00] learning about adoption from China and y'all were talking about like how much research and, all the academics who've been studying adoption from Korea for all these years and now making this new space for researching critical adoption studies, whether it's from your country or just overall, you, have such a broad historical research in your book that you present all kinds of things that you're talking about, but I really love that.

I still think about it. I wish I could have found my notes. I'm just, like, so mad about that. That's okay. But I was, I was wondering how it is for you being an adoptee from Hong Kong. Can you talk about some of the numbers, like how prolific the international adoption is from Hong Kong? And then china closed its adoption program last year. Does that affect adoption from Hong Kong as well? And also I [00:18:00] noted that you shared this in another interview because of British colonization of Hong Kong. A lot of your paperwork is also in English. So small benefit, I guess, that you could read some of your paperwork. I don't know. I'm always looking for like a sliver of good in these things, but anyway, go ahead.

Kit Myers: I mean, and it's funny because I went back to Hong Kong for the first time in 2013. And that's when I kind of started searching. Before that, I definitely never, I'm pretty sure I did not identify as like a Chinese adoptee or a Hong Kong adoptee 2013. This, I mean, I'm 31 years old. I'm, , I've graduated.

I finished my dissertation, graduated from grad school. And at that time, I don't think I really identified as a Chinese or Hong Kong adoptee. I identified mostly as a Asian American adoptee and 2015 I went back and went back with a [00:19:00] group of like 30 Hong Kong adoptees, right, who I just kind of met within the last two years.

There's a small group in the Bay Area and, and then there's this larger group in the UK. Because there was a Hong Kong adoption project in the UK during the late fifties, early sixties, and they adopted 100 children from Hong Kong. And there was this study that was done in the 2000s, and that study reunited many of them.

I mean, I think it was like 80 of them or so were found and kind of reunited, and they did a study on, on this group of adoptees. And so, through that group, the Hong Kong adoptee group, the, , they all went back to Hong Kong. And Amanda Baden and I, we, we did some surveys and interviews of some of the folks who went on that trip.

And it was [00:20:00] probably after that trip where I started to identify more as a Hong Kong adoptee. And so, it's very interesting how that is evolved. There aren't that many of us in the United States. And this is just a guess from what I've, , the very little that, I've found, it's like 500 to 700 total.

Haley Radke: Whoa!

Kit Myers: . So like, , maybe 20 a year or, or less. And in the UK, , there was that sort of huge wave of 100 people. I mean, relative because it's like, , Hong Kong is, it's a large city. But , the amount of adoptions coming out of Hong Kong were not as significant as some of these other countries and so , it's it's not a big group and , I didn't identify as a Hong Kong adoptee. So for a long time, there's a lot of people who just assumed I was a Korean adoptee and then they'd find out much later that I was not so.

Haley Radke: Are there [00:21:00] any implications of China ending international adoption for Hong Kong is that still.

Kit Myers: Yeah so I've tried to look into that and from what I can tell it's it hasn't impacted Hong Kong yet. That adoptions from Hong Kong are still available, but again, it's not like there were there was a ton.

Haley Radke: Is it similar to China where it's like older kids kids with like severe special needs in some way, medical or otherwise?

Kit Myers: That's, that's exactly the situation. . Primarily.

Haley Radke: To get a little bit personal, are you okay talking about your birth search and some of what you found? Is that okay?

Kit Myers: Well, I guess I could start with,first finding one of my first cousins on 23andMe. So that was quite a shock. I was very sort of hesitant to do it. But eventually I did, and a first cousin showed up, , right away. Which I know is very [00:22:00] rare. And, , the other thing, actually, I'm going to backtrack, because I remember your other question or comment. And it was about sort of British colonialism.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Kit Myers: And , and so that's that's a very fortuitous, it's like really one of the only times that I'm grateful that a place that's been colonized, because it's certainly helped me, right? So, , all my documents are in English, and then the family that I've met, , they all speak English. And I just posted on social media that I did this review of Dr.Sara Docan-Morgan's book, In Reunion.

Haley Radke: Oh, it's so good.

Kit Myers: , it's a fantastic book, and it's a great resource for anyone who's thinking about it or in the midst of reunion and, but a lot of the book is about language and, the difficulties of overcoming that language gap. And, so I've been very fortunate for the people who I've met to, to speak English.

And so, , I met first cousin [00:23:00] and, and what's kind of wild is that he , it took two years for him to reach back out to me. And so, but eventually he does and he, lived , I live in Merced, California. And he, interestingly, lived in Berkeley, California, which is just two hours away.

So that was really great to kind of connect with him, and eventually, we meet a couple times what, like three times now in person? And so it's been wonderful to meet him. And then I got introduced to two other first cousins through zoom. And they're both in Canada.

Haley Radke: So is this all on your mother's side?

Kit Myers: , it's all on her side. And their parents are siblings of my mother. But, but I mean, I think the difficult part of this is that none of their parents, and there's three other siblings, she had, three siblings, none, of their parents knew where she was. I mean, eventually all of the cousins tell their parents, it [00:24:00] takes a while, but they did eventually all tell, and there was valid reasons for kind of waiting.

And so that they didn't know where she was, and the cousins actually didn't even know that she existed, which kind of says that she was a family secret by the time that the cousins were old enough to understand anything. And so, , like I said, I was looking for her since 2013.

And I went back in 2015, I did a little bit more searching. During this time I have a friend in Hong Kong and he's helping me look up government records and, and whatnot and we're, we're finding bits and pieces of information and, then I have a, I had a trip planned for June of this last year and so I reach out to another friend who's helped a lot of adoptees actually find and reconnect with their birth family. And so the two of them started doing some work in early last year. And then eventually they found out [00:25:00] it's kind of a long story, but, they found out that my mom had passed away in 1995. So a long time ago, I mean, she's, she was 42 years old and I found out about it like literally the day that my book was due back to the editor and I still had quite a bit of work to do that last day to finish things up and it was also, , a week before I turned 42.

And so, , that hit pretty hard, and it felt, it felt really bizarre. It felt very weird because we actually didn't know 100 percent if it was true. Because there's just like a small chance that another person with the same name and the same birthday existed. Because we couldn't cross, there wasn't a third point to triangulate if this was actually her.

And so the, idea of ambiguous loss felt very salient to me for the next few months. And I [00:26:00] wrote, I wrote a post about it, about adoptee temporality and how adoptees can experience time differently. And this being kind of an example of that to find out that you're the person who gave birth to you died nearly 20 years ago is kind of a shock.

So the other side of this is that from her death certificate, I found out that she had married through common law, this other person, and through a wild turn of events, I was able to connect with that person. to find him and connect with him, and he does not speak much English, but my friends help translate.

And so he was able to tell me a little bit about her and her life and her situation, which her situation was very difficult, especially after I was born. But she [00:27:00] had a developmental disability and then,I don't know if it was, before I was conceived, or if it only happened afterwards, but she it appears that she, went into sex work for quite a long time afterwards, and then she developed cervical cancer.

I don't know, I would assume maybe because of it, and that's how she passed at such a young age. And so, this gentleman Mr. Wong, , he helped take care of her in her last couple years. And so that, , brought me some comfort that even though she was not really connected with her family anymore, that there was someone who cared for her and treated her as a human.

Haley Radke: I'm sorry, Kit. That's hard. Did, did he know about you?

Kit Myers: He did, . She, mentioned me and the, I have two half siblings. , one of the things, one of the gifts he gave me was telling me that literally, , the day before she died, or [00:28:00] maybe a couple days before she passed away, one of the last things she wanted to do was to go back to the orphanage that she thought that all three of us were at.

And I think that my two younger siblings might have still been there. But, , I'd been adopted at that point. But she wanted to try to see us. One last time. So , he knew about us and and that's how I found out that I had two half siblings. I didn't know about that before this summer. That's kind of the third part of the story of searching for them and, and finding one of 'em.

And then meeting, I went back to Hong Kong in November and, got to meet him, the younger brother and his family. That was just another,thing that is a part of the adoption journey.

Haley Radke: Was that exciting or difficult? And difficult?

Kit Myers: It was everything. It was, I was very anxious about it. I was anxious because I've, I was raised by, , my family [00:29:00] was middle class, was solidly middle class. And now here I am a professor and my, spouse is a professor. And so, and we have two kids. And so I feel very lucky in that regards, right? In terms of what I'm doing and how my life is right now.

And so, , I think I was anxious about what their lives were like. And it turns out that he was adopted, but he was adopted in Hong Kong. And his father is Chinese from Hong Kong, and his mother is actually Welsh. And so they're actually a very, a quite wealthy family, and they adopted him when he was also around four years old.

And when they adopted him, they knew he had a, a developmental disability as well. And so, , I met him, and he's a wonderful person. He just has a very, a bright spirit, and he's got a good sense of humor. He, [00:30:00] they seem to have a good relationship. He with his parents, and his siblings, and they with him.

And so, , I mean, there's a lot of, like I said, I felt everything. And it was great to meet them. And , they spoke English. My half sibling actually only speaks English. And so , I'm hoping to stay connected,the plan is to stay connected. So when I go back I can,visit again. But it was a wonderful visit.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that with us. It's so, I'm assuming, it must be so strange to be living these things in your personal life and , if we're so intimately familiar with grief and yes, all the struggles of search or reunion or if people want to do that or not. And then to be doing the work that you do and, and having to sort of like separate, like draw this line and be like, okay, this is the personal and now this is we're going to critique time and like, I [00:31:00] don't know, it's just so complicated because you're in your book.

I want to ask you some questions about that before we run out of time. You, you talk about this adoption as an act of violence and, and you're talking about your brother and I'm like, well, in the circumstances, like, hopefully he's getting all the care he needs. And like, it sounds like this was like a pretty good setup.

And like, but, but the violence of,your mother's situation in which she felt , or was forced to take y'all to an orphanage at some point. God, it's so complicated.

Kit Myers: Yeah it is. And, I talk about this in my class all the time, , that this sort of the theories that, , people come up with, they're all coming from, I mean, some theory is developed from quote unquote sort of statistical data, but the theory that I'm more interested in is coming from lived [00:32:00] experiences and from people who are sharing their stories and, those sort of things. And so everything that's in the book is less based on numbers and more based on what have people experienced and felt. And, so, , it is as much as I had actually.

I try not to talk about myself in the book, and I was kind of encouraged to put myself, a little bit more of myself in the book. And so I kind of begrudgingly did it, but

Haley Radke: I wanted more, by the way. That's just because I'm nosy. I'm just, .

Kit Myers: But I do think it's helpful. I think it's helpful for readers to understand where the author's coming from. And of course, it's not because I'm, trying to be, , quote unquote objective. But it is difficult to, to write about your own experience, and I think part of it is because even though I think, a lot of my experiences can be relatable, there's other parts that I think are, highly [00:33:00] unrelatable with regards to adoption.

The fact that I have my birth certificate, when even most, , domestic adoptees don't have access to that, , , transnational adoptees, we understand like that's just like that record. Nobody, no official government entity has that and has the key to it, right? But here in the United States, of course, that's for, that exists for a lot of people, right? A lot of adoptees.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Kit Myers: And so, , I mean, I think that's one reason why I was, I was hesitant. But, at the same time, my experiences has, , obviously they've informed how I've thought about this, concept or this framework of the violence of love.

Because I kept thinking, like, , we hear about love, love, love and adoption. Adoption is love. And then, on the other hand, we've heard, , adoption is trauma and is violent and, and these things, and I felt [00:34:00] both, I felt both were true, not, not in the sense that it's just this relativism and that we can't have this sort of analytical perspective on it, and that we must hold them both as sort of equal things, But that they, that they actually, they are both true, and how do we contend with that?

And, and to go deeper, like, how does actually, how do these things inform each other? Right? Because the, the love that people talk about in adoption, , cannot exist without, the violence of separation, without the violence of that, that condition, that sort of creates the conditions of poverty, or patriarchy, or prisons.

, deportation of settler colonialism, , all of these things produce the condition in which families or single mothers or parents [00:35:00] get placed in this position where they feel like they must relinquish. They are coerced into relinquishing or they are, they have relinquishment, sort of this involuntary , relinquishment. And so you have this, like, aspect that oftentimes, I mean, as most of your listeners know, this aspect that isn't really validated and discussed. And it's really the idea of violence in adoption is that the child was going to experience sort of this guaranteed death. And so that adoption saves the child from violence.

Haley Radke: I was going to ask you about the word, the rescue word, like it's so, oh God, it's so frustrating.

Okay. Let me go here. Okay. This is from page 117. You say, well, rescue in quotation marks. Connotes removal from imminent danger. I contend that adoption as rescue marks originating countries [00:36:00] as spaces of inevitable death, adopting countries are spatially and temporally marked as an opposite and better future that enable freedom from violence and full as opposed to bare life.LOL. Let's take you to America.

Kit Myers: , that's, that's, that's the, too long didn't read sort of version is what a lot of people know as this sort of white saviourism. And, but that passage is really trying to explain a little bit more in detail what's going on in terms of the construction of race and the construction of space. Right? How race and space are tied together.

Because often times we think of race attached to bodies and not to space. And So in these circumstances, when we think about the inner city, when we think about the reservation, when we think about Asian countries, whether it's [00:37:00] China or Korea, Vietnam. Or, , Latin America, Ethiopia, right? We're talking about these spaces that are unable to take care of their children.

And in many cases, like, if you look, , more closely at the discourse, you'll see that there's this discourse of ineptitude. Not only that, it's not just about, like, resources, but that's, like, they're, either morally or culturally unable to, because they're kind of stuck in, in time. They're not as modern as the United States.

They, they don't. Treat girls in a particular way, or they don't value children with disability. And, so, I mean, what's, that, that sort of discourse, right, presumes what I call an opposite future. And so then, a lot of the book is trying to, sort of, show that the racialization of space and this, sort of, predetermined idea of space and time, that if we move the [00:38:00] child to the United States, that the space, and future for that child will be better is not guaranteed.

And there's so many examples in which, , Reuters did that expose on rehoming years ago and the AP Associated Press, , came out with their sort of long series on Korean adoptions. And we just have example after example of , whether it's estrangement or whether it's deportation, there's just a lot of examples right in which this isn't the case and then we can even go even broader and thinking about like how disability is thought of in the United States.

And so, yes, like. Some, I think there's some parents here in the U. S. who are adopting children with disability. But at the same time, some of those adoptive parents are doing it in a way in which they are treating their child in a particular way, right? That doesn't really empower them, that doesn't sort of [00:39:00] acknowledge them as, it sort of attaches disability to the person and in a really sort of messed up way, right?

And so, the way that we think about gender, obviously, , we have elected, , this person who has sexually assaulted women and, and bragged about it, and, so we have this idea of what America, is, but then if we take that wider lens, , right, that the discourse that justifies adoption doesn't actually match what is actually happening.

And and so that's kind of like what I'm trying to do. And really what I'm trying to do is like thinking about like the people who are really invested in adoptive care, care through adoption. Like my end argument is that we can actually provide care that we imagine through different means other than adoption.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. And I totally agree with you. For sure. [00:40:00] I want to ask you one more thing about your book, which I'm going to recommend. So let's just consider we're in the recommended resource section. So, Your book is so thorough about it's got this historical record keeping. You talk about MEPA and ICWA and several high profile trials that, have gone to the Supreme Court.

A lot of us will be familiar with them. You're also challenging positive adoption language. And this is what I wanted to talk to you a little bit about. You talk about de stigmatizing adoption, like this process that, I guess society went through and thought, God, this is exactly right. We have switched from, , adoptive parents were looked at as like infertile, broken somehow, like you can't, you can't do what we're supposed to do into glorifying adoptive parents and putting them up on this pedestal, like the, the white savior narrative you were talking about earlier. And I [00:41:00] thought, , and in doing so, what have we done to adoptees? We've forever infantilized them. And unfortunately, like birth parents have had the stigma before and after from this, , shameful, out of wedlock sex villainized in some way.

And then. , there's this desire to, like, move to calling them brave so that more people will relinquish and keep the baby supply going. Can you talk about that? Like, what do you see when you're looking at, say, current day society? What do you see people looking at adoptive parents as and adoptees as? And I know this book is to help change those views. But what are you seeing, like, working and changing that?

Kit Myers: A lot of what I'm, I, I try to write about is, or, certainly part of the book is, is talking [00:42:00] about the destigmatization of adoptive parenthood and adoption in general, and how the, the push to normalize adoption, right, as a, as a normative way to make families, of course, then in turn, creates another form of symbolic violence.

It kind of passes the violence on, so to speak. And so I talk about this in my class, this idea of creating, creating meaning is always relational. Like when you create meaning for something, you're, it's usually in relation to something else. And if something is devalued and you try to sort of imbue that devalued thing with value sort of to reclaim that value.

The danger is is that in reclaiming that value you would sort of inadvertently devalue something else and that's kind of what I feel has happened and I understand why because , I still [00:43:00] see adoption and adoptees as the sort of the butt of jokes in popular media, right? It's still even though they're Held up on this pedestal, it is a easy, it is a easy sort of quote unquote laugh, right, in a lot of media, film and TV shows and whatnot.

And so I understand the sort of tendency or the desire to sort of be viewed as normal and to claim this normalcy and to, and this is one of the reasons why I think adoptive parents really, really, for the longest time were like, well, we're the real parents and trying to claim that legitimacy and for even adoptees who say that these are my real parents because they are trying to be a part of a legitimate family, right?

And so this discourse is very much informed by how society has constructed this idea of family in such a narrow [00:44:00] way and then so adoption has in turned sort of solidified or concretized that definition of family and said, okay, we're going to just add this, but we're going to still keep the same rigid structure of what family is.

We're just going to kind of squeeze ourself in there. And so I think that a lot of adoptees, especially right adult adoptees who have. Who are adding to the discourse and who are, , writing poetry or memoirs or, , your podcast and documentary films like all of this work by these amazing adult adoptees, as you said, right, that, that we are no longer children, this constantly infantilized group of people, right, that this sort of collective voice has helped shift How we think about adoption and, and so, , my book is just another contribution.

And I really try to, at the end , I want to make sure that readers understand that, , I'm not trying to [00:45:00] be the last voice on this, right? I'm, I really want people to seek out other adotee voices with love, like an, a sort of openness and a sort of love that, that is so often claimed to be taking place in adoption, I want us to have that love when we go out and search other information that might go against, , what we've been taught or told, or even what we've experienced, right? So, so , I do think that the narrative is changing or the discourse is changing, but there's still so much work to do and it's, it's very evident constantly. I think we're confronting with it all the time.

Haley Radke: We have just scratched the surface of Kit's book. It's called The Violence of Love, Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States. I am so, it's so cool you went with a publisher who's given open source access so people can buy it anywhere and support your work. And if you're not able to, there's a free version available also. So that's [00:46:00] amazing. Thank you for doing that. What did you want to recommend to us today?

Kit Myers: , , and I love this aspect about your podcast because I think it's just so important to like seek out different resources. And so this was such a hard question because you asked me to only pick one

Haley Radke: I know it's so mean.

Kit Myers: It is it's torturous, but I I sort of ended up on When We Become Ours, which is a young adult adoptee anthology edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung.

And I've known Shannon for years and, and I've just got connected with Nicole and she wrote this wonderful blurb for me, for my book. They're both amazing people. They're both amazing writers and the folks that they have called into this anthology are just, they're such exciting voices. And I think it's. It's going to help shape young adult literature. So I'm really excited that they put this book out [00:47:00] into the world and we need more like it.

Haley Radke: Oh, absolutely. I love it. I totally second that recommendation. It's so good. Such a great resource and especially for young people as well to have something like that in your high schools library, like how cool, amazing.

.

Thank you so much for sharing a little more of you with us, Kit. I've appreciated getting to know you a little today so much. Thank you. Where can we connect with you and find your book and all the things and take a class from you? We could do that.

Kit Myers: And we're all in UC Merced. Yes.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Kit Myers: . Well, you, the easiest way to find a lot of my stuff is just if you Google me, you'll, you'll find, I think my website, the UC Merced website, which I think hopefully you can put in the podcast information.

Haley Radke: I will.

Kit Myers: I'm on Twitter and Instagram. I don't know how long I'll be on those because of just the, the stuff that the people have been that the owners of [00:48:00] those companies have been saying and doing

Haley Radke: mm hmm

Kit Myers: I just got a blue sky account, so I might be more active over there But , my book is available, on sort of your traditional online sources to buy but it's also available on Luminosoa. org and you can if you go to the University of California Press website there is a link to the free version.

Haley Radke: Amazing. That is wonderful. Thank you so much, Kit. It's such a pleasure to speak with you.

Kit Myers: It has been, , really wonderful chatting and I've been loving sort of listening to your podcast and really appreciate the work you do and I hope we can stay connected.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

Know that saying that people that people say good one Haley, that saying that history is written by the victors [00:49:00] I don't think I've talked about this enough on the podcast, but for every academic that includes historical facts, research, and data in their work, preserving adoption history. I just think it's so important, especially when it's an adoptee, right?

Because you can think of, I was just thinking, like, thinking back to Kit's book and had an adoptive parent written, parts of these histories would surely be erased because being complicit in such a problematic system, it's very difficult for some adoptive parents to look on it with, let's say, clear lenses, okay?

So, [00:50:00] I just, I really want us to support critical adoption scholars like Kit and others who we've had on the show. And sometimes it's like, I know, I know, God, listen, I know, it can sound like, oh my gosh, Haley, really? You want us to like read more about this depressing history of like, , I do. I do because we have to be the ones to talk about all of these problematic things, and we didn't really go too much into it today, but Kit has a whole chapter on the couple versus Veronica. That went all the way to the Supreme Court. I don't know if you remember that case, like the adoptive parents who were insistent on trying to adopt this baby girl who was very much wanted by her biological father.

[00:51:00] And , preserving these stories is so important, and I was almost going to say critical, but, , critical adoption scholar. How many times can I say critical? Anyway, it's, it's really important. And so I would encourage you to read Kit's book and, and other adoption history books, so many of the ones we've had on in recent years.

Many of the critical adoption scholar, professor types have sections of their books that include adoption history, and it's just, it's just so important for us. So I know it's difficult, but , just one bite at a time, we can do it. I believe in you. And I think Kit mentioned like, his parents were I don't remember the wording, but like intimidated or worried they wouldn't understand.

I know you are a very smart audience because I interact with [00:52:00] you regularly and you're very smart people. And so this book will not be difficult for you. It definitely is academic, but it's absolutely doable. And I learned so many things and there were so many things he pointed out that I was like, oh, that's where that's from.

It's one another one of those books where you can look at the bibliography and, , get a new reading list for the rest of your life. No, not, , I mean, actually, yes, but just extensive, extensive research and work has gone into it. So, I hope you all pick it up, and there's free version, so no excuse.

Thank you for supporting these conversations that I get to have with folks that are doing the research and work which is what we've been asking for right. Thank you so much for listening and let's talk again very [00:53:00] soon.

297 Adé Carrena

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/297

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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. We're getting so close to 300 episodes, and I don't think we've ever had anyone on the show that shares today's guest's profession. I am so thrilled to introduce you to chef Adé Carrena.

She is the subject of a beautiful new documentary called Bite of Bénin. Adé is passionate about using food as a storytelling tool and has worked to bring West African flavors and spices to a global audience. She shares some of her personal story with us today, including being taken at age 10 to the United States with her sister [00:01:00] to be adopted.

We do mention some difficult topics in this episode, so take good care when deciding to listen. 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.

And we'll talk about it at the end, but Chef Adé is going to be with us for documentary club this month. So make sure you join so you don't miss out on that. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and as always, links to all the things 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, Chef Adé Carrena. Welcome, Adé!

Adé Carrena: Thank you. It's lovely to be here. I'm excited to take, go on this journey with you.

Haley Radke: Me too. I've, I told you before, I'm so looking forward to our conversation today. [00:02:00] I'd love it if you would start by sharing your story with us.

Adé Carrena: Yeah, absolutely. As my name is Adé. I'm a chef and storyteller and a filmmaker. I was born in a very tiny country on the west coast of Africa called Bénin. Almost none of us have ever heard of it, but if you can place Nigeria on the map, Bénin is a small country right to the left of that.

I was adopted when I was 10 years old and moved to Trumbull, Connecticut. So I lived in the suburbs of Connecticut raised in a Puerto Rican household and, experienced that, experienced a lot and I am now a chef a filmmaker, an advocate, a mother. And I'm just grateful to have platforms that allow us to amplify our experience as adoptees and to start this journey of healing for all of us. So thank you for having [00:03:00] me here.

Haley Radke: My honor. Can you talk a little bit about why you were relinquished for adoption at age 10, because that's unusual. And I know your mother is still alive.

Adé Carrena: Yeah, that's a great question. And it is actually unusual. I would say in conversations with my mom, when you grow up in a third world country, there is this sort of idea that all of the answers are in the Western world.

And there's a misconception of what America is like, of what living in Europe is like. And so any opportunity there is to send your children abroad in hopes of a better life, you take it. And so at 10 years old, they felt that the best opportunity I would have to live a life [00:04:00] worth living would be to send me away. For me to come to the states and have that experience instead.

Haley Radke: What's the perception of adoption in Bénin? Because we've heard stories from people whose biological parents, again, in a developing nation, may need assistance with child rearing and will send children to orphanages so to make sure they have food to eat or be educated or those kinds of things.

And then they're like, permanently severed and adopted out to other countries, and that was unexpected to them. Is there a cultural perception of adoption as a permanent legal severing there? Or what would you say is, they think about it there?

Adé Carrena: I would say that, again, the perception isn't necessarily adoption isn't really what they're [00:05:00] looking at.

What they're looking at is the opportunity that is provided to them. Like they're looking for the out. So you even have experiences, even me, when I go back home right now, when I go back home to do the work I do there, folks want to give me their children. Folks tell me. You can take them. It provides an opportunity for them to live a grander life that they imagine is what America is like, so it's less about the word adoption and so much more about what is the exchange that happens.

What can I what? Also, what value does my child have to whomever you are that allows you to take my child with you? Without knowing what is even the experience your child is going to have in their mind, it's just [00:06:00] so much better than what life is like for them here, which is fascinating. When you think about it, like the defining what a good life means, what wealth means, what health means what happiness means, what success means.

It's very fascinating to hear the perception that I don't really, that the latter, the unknown has to be better than what we're actually experiencing every day here in this world. And so it's very interesting. And Bénin is a very small country. There's probably a much less percentage of children who are adopted.

There are orphanages in Bénin Republic, but it's a lot less about what adoption means and much more about what the exchange that's happening and the possibility of the life that can be given to their child all also in the hopes of that child coming back to also make your life better.

Haley Radke: So I guess I'm picturing [00:07:00] like, it's like a, it's not an exchange student because there's no exchange happening, but it's like sending your child abroad to be educated.

With the hopes they'll return did you still have contact with them when you were in the United States?

Adé Carrena: No, very seldom. I think perhaps maybe I do remember a couple phone calls with my father and my mother but not nothing really beyond that. It really was no longer a relationship. It was like, okay, you're like out of sight out of mind and so and I said what I said now because in interviewing my mother and my grandmother, there's this pride in your children going to America or in Europe for them [00:08:00] to, oh, you know how, have you ever seen Slumdog Millionaire?

Haley Radke: Yes.

Adé Carrena: I could equate it to this idea of winning the lottery and the lottery being a plane ticket into this new world, this new experience, because if I make it out, the idea is that I then provide this new gateway for my family to also make it out. But that's a lot to put on a 10 year old child.

Haley Radke: And it wasn't just you, some of your other siblings left as well, right? So you went with your one sister, but to my understanding, other siblings went elsewhere.

Adé Carrena: Yeah, my mother is a mother of six children, four girls and two boys. All of her girls were adopted. That is also something to do. [00:09:00] It's also something to be said about that and the way that young girls are a commodity.

And our connection to servitude and the desire of society for us to have a lack of autonomy over our own bodies. That's the way young girls are viewed. As a young girl, I could clean, I could cook, I could, be of service, and that is something that gives me value to go outside of the world that I'm used to living.

I had sisters, a sister that went to France, and then she was the first one to be adopted. And yeah, we just dispersed, but the boys stayed.

Haley Radke: So not to just break this. I'm trying. I'm really trying hard to wrap my mind around it. Do you think this worldview [00:10:00] is as a product of Bénin being colonized.

Adé Carrena: Is that where it's coming from?

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Adé Carrena: So mindful of what I just said that I think of that and just think about Russian brides. Think about young child brides. Like most communities don't say, okay, this boy is of age let us send him into marriage. That's a conversation that happens around young girls. There's also completely hidden worlds in which young women are quote unquote sold into like service work, I think it does have a lot to do with colonialism.

I think it has a lot to do with our fight as young girls and women's in this world of having autonomy over our own bodies and what happens to us. Even the idea of like women [00:11:00] back in the day being having to marry into other kingdoms to make treaties for peace and safekeeping. Women have always been this thing that decisions are made for us.

Big decisions are made for us in these kinds of ways outside of our control to help society in some sort of way based on what their views are. But yeah, I think. When I think of international adoption, and of course, for me, it's very much continent to western world I think it really feels to me like legalized, human trafficking, and also just another form of like enslavement, you know?

Haley Radke: I was going to ask you about that. Yes.

Adé Carrena: It's a modern day way of enslavement.

Haley Radke: Your amazing documentary, which we [00:12:00] will talk about, I'm sure, at length a little bit later on, is called A Bite of Bénin, and then it's, a play on words where Bite, B I G H T is a location where many slave ships left from. I just, I'm having so much I get it, but also I'm having real trouble reconciling the idea of it being a pride amazed I'm so proud to send my child abroad to where all the slave ships left from to take our people away. It doesn't make sense.

Adé Carrena: I hear you. We can see this. I see this in two parts, and it goes into a lot of the work that I do of shifting the narrative and using food to do when I think about the impacts of enslavement across the diaspora. And because I came here at such a young [00:13:00] age, I was 10 years old. I had the opportunity to live the African American experience.

I learned that black is a thing because in Africa, we do not identify ourselves based on the color of our skin. It's more so your religion more so the tribe you belong to. Color, we, race isn't a thing. Colorism is, let's be clear on that, but race is not a thing. So I got to experience what it's like to be black in the world, which is a direct effect of enslavement.

The other thing is, as a child who grew up in Bénin, and then with the experience I have going back home, I also understand the effects of colonialism when colonialism helps to break down a person's identity completely. Rips you of it and [00:14:00] introduces some new concepts to you. A big example of that is like beauty standards.

People wanting to be lighter, bleaching of our skin. The straightening of our hair, the perming of our hair. Wanting to be closer to this idea of that whiteness equates to beauty or better. That's what happens with colonialism. Not only that they strip you of your languages. In any, our nationally recognized language is French.

The language of those who colonized us, and so you completely break down a society and introduce new concepts to them and that's where that idea of, it's gotta be better over there, makes, comes from, because we no longer have the same, hold the same value about our own culture, our own ways of thinking, ways of living completely shifts for [00:15:00] us, if even if you have the opportunity to go to school, you're being taught in that language of your colonizers. The way we teach, I don't know if you've ever heard an African elder speak, they speak in anecdotes, they speak in philosophies, like the ways in which they are taught is very philosophical.

An elder will tell you a story, and within that story, you're supposed to understand get the gem that they're trying to teach you. Our philosophy's just, there aren't Eurocentric words that can really define what some of our philosophies are. So when you're already starting with the children and shifting the way that they think, there isn't value anymore in our own culture.

We look externally. So I don't, some people say, oh, you're gracious for being able to rationalize. Like my heart and my [00:16:00] mind are very different. I can rationalize. a mother saying it's hard here. I have all these girls my husband's 14 15 years older than me I live in a society where even I myself don't have full autonomy of the decisions that I make we see tv we see on tv how the life in america looks you I can rationalize the it must be better there.

Like I let me take the opportunity to make sure you know they might at least have a chance there, but in saying that, what are you, in really believing that, what are you then saying about your own home and culture, that's not enough? So my heart can be sad and feel all the anger and all the feelings about that decision, but I have been able to rationalize it. In a way that I can see why you, I can see [00:17:00] why you would think that, but let's do work to undo that way of thinking.

Haley Radke: Yes. Yes, and so if you're comfortable sharing, can you talk a little bit about what it was like for you in this promised land of education and opportunities that your mother envisioned for you?

Adé Carrena: Yes, I can. I will also say that as a child, while I were very, I have this vivid memory, we used to have this channel called El Cedro. El Cedro used to play American shows and like music videos. I remember one of the first music videos I saw was Destiny's Child Survivor. And I used to sing that song.

It really, as a child too, I have this idea that America was this beautiful place that I was going to be sent to. And so the way I was told that adoption was happening or that I was [00:18:00] leaving home, literally I'm in fifth grade, I'm 10 years old. I just finished my final exams. I come home. My mom is having a conversation on the phone with somebody later on we're having dinner and we were just told you're going to America. And then there was no conversation, no sort of direction about. This is what it might look like. We might be able to talk to you this amount of times. Maybe we'll see you this is exactly where you're going. There was no information.

It said you this is what's happening. So then it happened. So at first I felt a great deal of excitement, obviously I'm 10 I already have what my perception of America is like according to what I feel I know. There was this, so there was a bit of excitement and I remember living in this place of [00:19:00] wonder because it almost felt like I'm a child.

My brain is man, where am I going? What's it going to look like? What is it going to feel like? So I remember when I got off the plane at JFK, I remember this very vividly. We got in the car we're driving down their parkway. I'm looking at the trees. I'm taking it all in. This is August.

It's August of 2001, one that I get here. So it's warm, but it's not like hot. And I remember even turning onto, taking that left onto Lakewood Drive in Trumbull and coming out and seeing the new place I was going to live in, coming out and feeling really excited. The first. The first few months, even I would say, like my first day there, they had a pool in the backyard. I almost drowned. That literally, that really should have been an indication of what my experience was going to be [00:20:00] like. As a child, I did not know how to swim. Don't ask me what, why I let somebody convince me to go in the deep end, but I did. But at first it felt, felt good for a moment and, my adoptive mom, something that I now think is a bit strange because we hadn't developed a relationship, immediately was asking me to call her mom.

And at first it seemed like she also was excited about this experience, right? And then the reality, I think, set in of I went from having two children of my own. To having these other children who don't speak the language, who really don't understand this culture, who we don't know, who doesn't know us, then it all shifted very quickly, I grew up in a, an extremely abusive household by the time, I was 11.

We're responsible for like cooking for our family. Like it was, you go to school, you come home, you do your chores. If it's your turn to cook, you do it. [00:21:00] It really felt like a prison, if I could really describe it, what it felt like was I no longer, my humanity was no longer intact. It felt very much to me like be grateful that you even have the opportunity to be here, which then mean because I was meant to be grateful. My needs as a child were no longer important were no longer met because I was given an opportunity. And so there was a clear distinction in the way I was treated versus the way their children were treated.

It really was take what we give you and be happy with it. Before that's before we even start talking about abuse. It was just a lack of love, a lack of care, a lack of consideration, a lack of even the grief I was feeling for having lost my [00:22:00] entire life. There really was no empathy no compassion for the experience of a 10 year old child leaving their entire home, their parents did not even knowing whether you would ever see them again, so outside of the actual abuse that happened that felt more cruel than anything, because there just was no emotional or mental support in the transition of leaving everything I knew to come into this new space. So first, you're dealing with grief. Then, within that grief, you have to learn how to disseminate into this new society. And children are fascinating. Children are beautiful because children are incredibly resilient. And will find ways to cope with what's going on because they'll naturally be like, safety.

How do I find [00:23:00] it? And whatever that is, that's what they'll do to feel safe. So I did that amidst like the literal hell I was experiencing. But what felt the most insidious to me is really the dehumanizing of myself and the complete removal of my autonomy as a human. Existing in life.

Haley Radke: I'm really sorry that happened to you and your sister. Do you even know why they adopted? What the impetus was? They already had their own biological children.

Adé Carrena: Yeah. What it very much felt like to me going back to what we're talking about, this servitude idea. They were, I don't know, how young were they? Maybe in their thirties, perhaps mid to late thirties.

I think what it felt like to me, and I'm speaking for them because I don't have a relationship with [00:24:00] them. And I've never gone down this path of like understanding them, but what it felt like to me was. They had, there's a life that they wanted to create for themselves and us being there was a support of that. So domestic work, we did it. Even the caring of their children, we did it. So it feels like that enabled them to be able to pursue the things that they wanted to do to progress themselves in life and then, and then also just adding, let's say, yes, I do lead with grace. I do. I'm just imagining what it might feel like as well to make a decision and then be faced with the reality of that decision and not doing the work to work through it yourself to show up better in [00:25:00] ownership of the decision that you made.

And then just not doing the best, like it's, I'm a mom, you're a mama, like it's not. It's not always the best, the easiest thing, it's not, you wake up, you're tired, you make lots of sacrifices, you got a lot of things to do, but it's already hard with your own children, right?

Navigating the nuances of being a mother, a mom, excuse me, a woman, a mom, a partner, and whatever else you are to everybody. But I think there was just no ownership and accountability for the decision that were made. Even thinking, even if they thought, oh, we could do this, and then you realize, oh, I can't do this, then what do you do?

You know what I mean? There was no there really was no responsibility on their part to be better. Because I can take somebody saying to me, I really thought I could do this. I really [00:26:00] thought I could love you and care for you as my own. I really did. I really thought I could, but I'm finding it harder than anticipated. I really would have loved a conversation like a real conversation like that. It still sucks because dang, I didn't ask to be here. It still sucks. I'm not saying that is the best option either. But it's real. And at least maybe there would have been another option for me maybe.

Maybe I would have found a safer place. I don't know but they're also we also have to take accountability for ourselves in life and the decisions that we make and in doing that you also give yourself grace and you're showing yourself love. They're like man. I thought I was better. I was in a better place, but I'm not how can I do that then?

There was nothing like that, but yeah, thank you for saying, you know for seeing [00:27:00] me. It's not the easiest thing for anyone to experience. I'm just so grateful that I'm blessed with just the way I was created, of having the disposition, the natural disposition I have, because this could have ended real bad.

This could have been, oh man, my heart could have been the coldest, I could have been a whole, I could have been on a whole different trajectory, so I am so grateful that I have found the healing necessary to be a fuller person.

Haley Radke: Can you talk about how did food start off, not start off, but let's talk about when you're adopted and it's it's a job you're given, you got to feed the family and you don't know how to do it and you tell a little bit about that in the documentary, but how did it switch for you to something that you chose as a career, as a [00:28:00] passion, as something that you show your love through and story tell through. That's a real flip.

Adé Carrena: Yeah, it's wild. Every day I'm shocked. Sometimes I sit on my couch and I think about, I'm like, baby girl, how did we get here? But I'm very grateful for it. I always like to tell people in Africa, our ways of living is incredibly different. When you're cooking I have vivid memories of my mom cooking outside. We do a lot of live fire cooking and cooking for us is a communal act. It is an oral tradition. It's not something that you're taught. You might be a child in that space with your mom, your aunties, and the women of the community, and never at once are you being, are you thinking to yourself, oh, I'm learning how to cook, but that's just not how we do it.

You're in the spaces and it is through storytelling. And through communion, it's a communing that you learn. [00:29:00] And when I got here and it became this trauma filled task for me, cooking became very connected to traumatic experiences for me, living here in the states. I hated it, it was nothing that I ever imagined doing, personally or professionally.

But when I was about 19 years old I started working in this beautiful fine dining farm to table restaurant called Heirloom at the study at Yale in the heart of New Haven, Connecticut. And I remember I was hosting, I was a hostess one evening cause they needed some help. And I remember studying the menu, looking at the pricing, the range of pricing, nothing was under $16 and I think the highest, the most expensive thing there was like 52 or just under $60.

They had bottles of wine that were like thousands of [00:30:00] dollars and the place was packed. And I remember feeling perplexed by that. That, huh, why are people coming here to eat this and also pay this price? So food must be something more than sustenance. So food must be more than I'm hungry I need to feed myself and attain to my physical body. And that's when I, this, I became curious in trying to understand why folks were making that choice. And then it hit me that, oh, it's more, there's an experience here. There's something that is more fulfilling than just this food tastes good.

So I went on this journey of seeing food as a form of storytelling. And then as I matured more, I recognized not only is it a form of storytelling, it is [00:31:00] also a vehicle for understanding oneself and reclaiming one's identity. And as I grew more and reconnected with my home, I was like, oh, not only is it that too, it's also incredibly healing because in the same way that generational trauma is passed down, so is all the other information, like there is a connection between our biological makeup, our cultural DNA, and biologi and geographically where we come from.

And so when you are, when you have certain cravings, that's not by accident. It's your body. Your body is I'm looking for something familiar. And so going through that journey, I say, whoa I am African. I'm African American. I, culturally, I'm Puerto Rican. And then I [00:32:00] grew up around white folks all my life. I'm an immigrant. I'm adopted. I got a lot to say. And I think food is this really beautiful non abrasive way of connecting with others and it's an unspoken language that we all understand. We don't have to we know when food tastes good. We know when food makes us do that little dance, that it feels good and it tastes good and we can relate.

If we can't relate on anything else as a society, we know what good food tastes like and food gathers communities. And that's where I, that's how I landed here. So it really is a personal journey for me of understanding myself and healing myself. I just now am able to take everyone else on this journey with me and then demonstrate to others that they can too find healing through [00:33:00] this.

Haley Radke: What was it like the first time you went home since you were adopted?

Adé Carrena: Oh my goodness. That itself is another story, but it was very eye opening to me because I remember everything. I didn't forget anything. I remembered it all and it was a lot. It was incredibly overwhelming, but it made me one going home and going back to the home I grew up in and seeing my father's empty chair was quite a bit to take in because he passed away and the feelings were so layered because I know you, but I don't know you. I have this connection with you. I feel like I lost you twice and then also the nerve of you to be dead. [00:34:00] Why are you dead? I have questions, so it's so many layers of emotions that you feel. And in that experience, really if you don't know how to accept the things you can't change, you're going to live a life full of disappointments and just and always feeling unsettled. My experience has really taught me that control the things I can and the things I cannot learn to let it go and I can't control what happened to me.

I can't control the fact that I can't, I don't have a relationship with my father. I can't control the fact that I lost him when I was ten and then again, and I can't bring him back. It really teaches you how to be at peace with the things that are outside of your control. But it was a very emotional experience because it's also not fair and I also have the right to feel my anger.

But [00:35:00] going back and understanding our complex history as a people who have suffered a lot and being like a byproduct of that because living in America for so long, I was like, oh, I can see where there's a disconnect between us as Africans and us as children of the black diaspora. And then I also found myself slipping into some normative westernized philosophies and having to check myself for that. I especially remember having that experience in the market when I was there with my mom. Another hard thing is people's perception of your experience. And then really just not having any idea to them. It's like to them, it's like the prophecy is fulfilled.

You see what I'm saying? To them, the prophecy, she left, she [00:36:00] came back. That's what they set out for. So the prophecy is fulfilled and she came back. And so it's how does that benefit us now? But also, they just cannot really relate to the amount of loss that they will never understand the loss.

Haley Radke: They see the gain. They see the gains.

Adé Carrena: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And that's what benefits them.

Adé Carrena: Yes. But they will not understand what it feels like to not live with people who've loved you for years. And then. And then also not hate them for sending you literally to the devil's den, and processing that on your own and making space to even allow them into your heart again, because to them, they also see the sacrifice they made, and then there's like this, just this misconception that because I'm in America, [00:37:00] like everything is great, like that I'm wealthy, that things have come easy for me.

But there really isn't this understanding of how hard I've had to work to get to where I am because I'm a black woman in America. They don't understand that concept doesn't even exist. You know. And then there isn't even an understanding of my relearning. I go home and they're like, do you remember me?

I'm like, no, they want to speak to me in all of our different languages. I don't understand them anymore. I've got to do work to relearn and then it's hard for us then to communicate because we don't speak the same. We're not on the same wavelength anymore. Sometimes I feel like a stranger. Sometimes I feel like an outsider.

And there isn't a way for them to really process that or even understand what that means [00:38:00] for me. So it's a lot.

Haley Radke: I have a 10 year old. You have a 10 year old. When you were talking about the circumstances in which you were sent abroad. As a 10 year old, I'm picturing my kid and sitting him down and telling him that and, of course the, our kids right now are so capable and smart and, they're not mini adults, they're kids.

And you got to be a mini adult at 10 because of the trauma of separation. I think this will be our last question before I do recommend resources with you. But how have you dealt? In order to be the mom you are to your 10 year old, like she's 10 now and you're looking at little Adé and how have you processed all these things and I know that you've even reclaimed a lot of culture through your food and storytelling and your work and bringing spices back and all, we'll get to that, [00:39:00] but like, How?

Adé Carrena: Honestly my daughter has completely changed my life. I do look at my little Imaga and I see baby Adé all the time and I'm like, how would baby Adé would have wanted someone to show up for them? So I always have that in mind. But before anything I expressed to my daughter that I am a human, I am a woman before I am her mother.

And in turn, I tell her that she is a human and a young girl before she is my daughter. So her human existence is acknowledged and I do not own her. I have no ownership of my child. I am a vessel that brought her here and I am a guide for her. And my responsibility to my child is to protect her, but to [00:40:00] raise her in such a way where autonomy over her own self is what is prioritized.

This sort of way of thinking has been very healing to me, but also allows my daughter to just exist in a way that she can communicate with me. I never want her to be afraid to express herself to me. I welcome her challenging. I welcome her asking questions, and I welcome her curiosity because she will then go into a world in which she has to be that person and be that way, and I want to make sure that my trauma is not transcended on her.

So I'm in therapy, I believe in therapy wholeheartedly, and that, in that same light, that my fears because of my trauma doesn't suffocate her either, [00:41:00] allows her space to, explore the world and make also make her own mistakes. So being able to see the humanity in each other has really helped us have a beautiful relationship. She can tell me she talks to me about anything. She talked she even the most beautiful conversations I have with my daughter is when maybe I've hurt her feelings or I've done something she has she doesn't like and she's able to say, hey, mom, I didn't like that.

This is how it made me feel. And I can accept it. And then in turn, she has also had moments where she might say something or do something and will correct herself. Like she'd be like, oh, mom, I didn't mean to say that I'm sorry. And I think it's just the most beautiful thing that emotionally [00:42:00] she feels safe to just express herself because as a child, I like, how do I, how would I tell my adoptive mom, man, you just beat me for no reason.

And this is why I'm crying and I can't even tell you that I gotta go somewhere and deal with it. And then as an adult, I recognize, oh, the fact that I always want everyone else to feel good in this space is because I was never allowed to express myself. So, therapy is, we all, need it everybody should be in therapy has really helped me be the kind of mother I am. And my daughter is who has allowed me to have the grace that people keep telling me I have, especially with my own mother. When I became a mama myself, I said I was, I became a mom at 22 and [00:43:00] obviously I didn't know what I was doing.

And so it really has allowed me to see my own mother as a human, too, and recognize that she made decisions based on the information that she had, and she probably was just doing the best that she could.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I am, so I'm so impressed with all the things you've accomplished at a young age, and just your your wisdom, like you really, you've got a depth of wisdom that a lot of us can aspire to. I want to recommend,

Adé Carrena: I always say that's the trauma.

Haley Radke: Yeah, it is. It is being a mini adult at 10, you skip 10 years of childhood and just got right to being an adult. So it's not a great, it's not great circumstances, how you came to it. But, your daughter, is benefiting from the work you've done.

Adé Carrena: Thank [00:44:00] you. Thank you very much.

Haley Radke: And so are we.

Adé Carrena: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Not grateful for the trauma this let's be so clear.

Adé Carrena: Oh for sure.

Haley Radke: I want to make sure people know all the things about you. So you're documentary a Bite of Bénin it's so beautiful and it is, God the video of all the different food in the beginning, especially like the, there's grinding rice and what you're doing with peanuts and there's basting meat and deep frying and whisking greens and marinating there's just it's so you can almost taste it, like you can't, which is sad, but it's so beautiful.

And it's so interesting how I think a project that started out being all about the food really comes to be about Adé and a critique of [00:45:00] adoption and you get to interview your mother and it's just amazing. And I know you're y'all are working on bringing it to be a feature length. It's shorter right now. It's 33 minutes, I think.

Adé Carrena: Yeah. 36 minutes.

Haley Radke: 36. Okay. So I hope we can help you do that. And we're we've chosen your film to be our documentary club pick for this month for Patreon supporters. So that's so cool. You'll be able to watch it and we're going to have another conversation fully spoiling the whole thing. We're going to talk about all of it, but can you tell us how we can support it to make sure we get more of it in the world?

Adé Carrena: Yes. First of all, thank you so much for saying that. It's a blessing. It really is a blessing that Brad Herring, who is a filmmaker came into my life and with so much love and gently pushed me into being open to [00:46:00] tell my story and has protected me, has covered me, has prioritized my well being in this entire process. So shout out to you, Brad. I love you so much. The ways in which people can support us, we have started a crowdfunding campaign to help us do a lot more of this work. I reckon I realized that through my own process of healing, it has opened up a door for so many more of us to tell our stories.

And that's what we really want to do. And crowdfunding not only helps us be able to do exactly what we're needing to do, but a very big mission of ours is to make sure especially us artists that are not exploited, and that we are able to compensate people for all of their time and their hard work and their creativity and their talents.

And then it also helps us get into bigger spaces where we can do this work in a profound way. That [00:47:00] change can happen. So we will, I'll be sharing that link with you. And if anyone wants to support in any kind of way, even if it's encouraging words, if you have a story you feel we need to tell in any kind of way, we are very much a collaborative team and there would be no Bite of Bénin without Brad and any other hands that have touched this. In any way, shape, or form anybody wants to support we welcome it and we receive it.

Haley Radke: Make sure we have that link in the show notes for folks. You can go right through and click through on your app when you're listening to this and find it. Okay, so we talked about your love of food and the storytelling and everything, but like, where can we eat your food and where can we experience this? I wouldn't even get to talk about this yet. You bring spices back from West Africa from women farmers and you are like, you have this really amazing business. You want to tell [00:48:00] us about that? Where can we get all those things?

Adé Carrena: Yes. So as a chef and storyteller, I have created this really niche space for myself that I'm grateful for so I don't have a restaurant. I have a food truck that does Street food from Bénin but really the bulk of what I do is create really intentional immersive dining experiences that explore different themes that are connected to healing and also exploring the intersection between West African food in the American South, and then just as a whole, the diaspora as a whole.

So whether we are doing an experience on a farm, in a garden, on a plantation, in a museum, wherever the story leads us is where I'm curating this experience. So it ranges anywhere from, five, seven, nine [00:49:00] courses and we explore a theme and we break it down and there's poetry involved and also it's all paired with zero proof cocktails because we believe in consent and being present to receive this message and doing the work in real time whether that's introspectively or with the people who we have gathered with.

So I am so blessed that through my trauma, through my story, I was able to create art in this type of way that allows other people the opportunity to see themselves and want to heal. So that's the way we can experience my food, and that could be anywhere. I've done it in New York, I'll go around the states, like I'll be in France next week doing something like this.

And it really depends on where the story takes us. Aside from that, because I know we're all from all over the place, [00:50:00] another way to support the work that we're doing is, in my first trip back home, I recognized that there was a need for creating ecosystems that will build equity for all of us. And so my spice company was born from that.

It's called iLéWA Foods where we work exclusively with female farmers and producers from Dene and Ghana. To source our ingredients and then we bring it here to the states. I make my blends here and we sell them on our website, but they're also in different stores across the state and also we've gotten into a couple stores like we're in Canada, we're in some stores in Canada, the UK, across Europe, and so I'm also incredibly blessed for that opportunity.

It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. But, again, I'm just really grateful to be a vessel that my story, no [00:51:00] matter how not that great it was, that there was purpose that came out of it. Because I think about the amount of people who are, unfortunately, just exist in life and haven't found that thing, that, that fire that burns inside of them. So I'm very grateful that there's a fire inside of me that is burning brightly, that wants to make some sort of change in this world.

Haley Radke: I love that. Okay. I just want to say, I meant to say this earlier, but when I was researching you, like you've won all these awards, Chef of the Year, North Carolina.

I know you're doing something for the top secret we can't say at there's things, there are great things happening for you. But the other thing, when I Googled your name, I found a couple of people who were like Adé cooked, the best meal of my life. So the memory, the love, like it's all there and people can, you can taste it.

You said everybody can taste good food. So we.

Adé Carrena: Thank you. Thank you.

Haley Radke: So we can hear it from [00:52:00] your story and your presence that you're a good one. So thanks Adé. Thanks for sharing your story with us. Where can we keep in touch with you online and yeah, stay connected.

Adé Carrena: Yeah. The best way would be through social media, Instagram, and we can add that as dounou_cuisine or even through our website https://www.wamidounou.com/home. I love love, love talking to people and making space for that. A lot of times. I'm just like I lead with my humanity first. So please if anyone wants to reach out you are more than welcome to I welcome it. I am not I am very much right here with all of us and I love connection.

So please don't be afraid to send me a message or shoot me an email. I will respond. It may take me a moment, but I guarantee you that I will respond because human connection to me is the greatest [00:53:00] gift. So do not be afraid to reach out. Instagram is great. Or through my website, you can shoot me an email.

Haley Radke: Okay, perfect.

Adé Carrena: And I want to say as well, to you, I know you're saying how, you're saying thank you to me for all of these things, but also thank you to you. Your story has also allowed you to create spaces like this, where we as adoptees can express ourselves and our voices can be heard and what a beautiful thing you have done in creating community for all of us. So I'm very proud of you and I'm also very grateful for you.

Haley Radke: Oh, thank you so much. I got so excited for people to connect with you, but you also have something you want to recommend today. So I don't want to skip over that. What would you like to share?

Adé Carrena: Yes. Okay. I want to say that all of my life, I didn't recognize that other [00:54:00] people have had their own version of my experience.

And so adoption was not a thing that was at the center of my brain that there was a community out there for me that would see me, that would understand me until I stumbled upon Rewriting Adoption. They are a beautiful sister team who have all been also adopted who have gone on their own journey of self discovery and reconnection and have now created a platform for all of us to gather and be in community with each other.

So Rewriting Adoption is a great resource for us. If you are an adoptee, not only to be around people, who understand your experience but they're talking about real life things and they're doing beautiful work and helping us reconnect with our first families. So if that's a thing [00:55:00] that is important to you, if that's a thing that you've even considered, if that's a thing you want to even discuss because I'm not sure that we all want that experience, but they are at least a resource for you to start that conversation and see how you feel. So I love them. They also allowed me the first opportunity to showcase our documentary to an, to a fully, a full adoptee audience, which was a first for me.

Which opened my mind and my heart even more that there is a community of us out there and it also relit a passion for advocating for us. So please check them out. They are wonderful people.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Yes. We will link to that Instagram account in the show notes. Thank you so much Adé. What a pleasure to talk with you today. Thank you.

Adé Carrena: Thank you for having me. This is really [00:56:00] nice. Anytime. I I never imagined I would be talking to anyone outside of my therapist about any of this. And it has made me feel more comfortable. And it makes me feel more seen so thank you for having me. Thank you for wanting me to be a part of this.

Haley Radke: Our pleasure.

Oh my goodness. Is she not a delight of a human? I can't wait. We are doing Documentary Club. I know we mentioned in the episode, but I just want to let you know if you want to join us. You can join through Patreon and support the show and financially support the work we're doing here. I really appreciate everyone who does that.

You can do monthly or yearly and we also have a scholarship program and there's a free seven day trial. So all of those things are available to you. If you go to adopteason.com/community and click through to [00:57:00] join the free trial will come right up for you and you can access that if you're listening in the future, and that's already happened there will be an audio recording of it in Patreon. And, of course, check the show notes because you'll be able to find out where Bite of Bénin is showing and where you can support Adé's work. Okay, speaking of supporting Adé's work, another thing I've never done before, I ordered one of her spice packs that I could find in Canada.

She has a couple of different kinds, and this is from iLéWA West African Foods. I don't know if I'm saying that so my apologies if I'm mispronouncing it. But this is the one that came fast enough to get it in today's episode, and I haven't used it in cooking yet, but I wanted to open it with you.

And tell you my, my first impressions of what it smells like it's opening. It says on it, freaking delicious, make anything taste better, [00:58:00] rich and sweet. Fire roasted peanuts, bird's eye chili, this is the coffee suya rub, mellow mild. Okay.

It smells so smoky and delicious. I can't even describe it. Some of the ingredients are like sweet paprika, smoked paprika. I think that's what I'm getting. Coffee? Oh my gosh. I can't wait to use that. It smells so good. Just use it as a rub, marinade, or toss it on your favorite dish for sweet and spicy deliciousness.

Oh, I can't wait. That sounds so good. Okay thank you for staying for food podcasting, which just like television is not smell o vision or smell, whatever. I don't know what the podcasting version is, but I hope you join us to watch Bite of Bénin and celebrate Adé and learn more about her documentary.

And yeah, just [00:59:00] what an honor to get to talk with her and share her with you today. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

296 Connor Howe

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/296

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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. I am so excited to introduce you to our guest today. We are talking all about open adoption with Connor Howe, who you probably already know as Adopted Connor from his many videos online. We talk about Connor's personal story, including what it's like to grow up with a sibling that is your adoptive parent's biological child.

We also discuss what led Connor to get in front of the camera to critique adoption in such a public way. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, [00:01:00] which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

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

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Connor Howe. Hi Connor.

Connor Howe: Hi Haley, thanks for having me. This is crazy.

Haley Radke: Why is it crazy?

Connor Howe: This is I'm sure everyone who's gone on the show before it's oh my gosh I've listened to a million episodes Pretty crazy.

Haley Radke: I'm real. You're real. We're both real. I'm so glad to talk to you today. Would you mind by starting and sharing some of your story with us?

Connor Howe: My mom was like 16 or 17, my biological mom, when she left her parents house dropped out of high school, moved to Ireland. I don't really know every detail of that part of her story, but she was living in Ireland. Started dating my dad and got pregnant. [00:02:00] At a certain point of her pregnancy, she flew back to the U. S. after, having a conversation with my dad about oh, I'm pregnant, you have a child. And as far as I can tell, he wasn't interested in really any of that. She flew back to the U. S., back to San Diego, where I was born. And I don't really know at what stage of her pregnancy, but I believe pretty late, based on the non identifying information I've read, that pretty late in her pregnancy, she went to the Catholic Church.

I don't know like how she approached it, but went to the church for help and they put her in counseling and ultimately she decided yeah, I think I got to give my kid a two parent home with the kind of loving suburban America, blah, blah, blah. I was relinquished for adoption as an infant in a pre birth match open adoption.

So I've known my mom for my whole life. I grew up pretty close to her proximity wise, but also like relationship wise. Not like super, super close, but yeah, I was like within driving distance of her for many years of my adolescence. And then she started moving around like later on [00:03:00] in my life, but that's my story.

And then I also have, like I said, this Irish dad who I still at 29 have never met, have never seen as far as I can tell, I'm still a secret to his family, my, my family. So it's a weird kind of intercountry, domestic, open, closed adoption. You know the classic story.

Haley Radke: The classic open/closed adoption. I think p eople have this idea that open adoption is a panacea. I've called it that for a long time, that people in society. This is what they say. This closed adoption is terrible, but open adoption is the solution to all the adoption problems. So you're the perfect person to talk about this with because my gen, most of us were closed adoptions and folks like you, late 20s, 30s, you're the first generation of people who really grew up in a truly promised open adoption. What did that really look like? [00:04:00]

Connor Howe: Yeah, definitely. And obviously I've, I've heard all these episodes and I've read all the memoir. I've read so much stuff, consumed everything. And I feel like the number one thing I hear, even in books that I read about adoption, written with adopted people in mind, is that, oh this was all really sad and this was all really challenging for these people, but now we have open adoptions and everything's fine.

And for me, that definitely wasn't necessarily like the case. I don't want to play, trauma Olympics. I'm sure that having access to information and relationships puts me at some type of an upper hand compared to someone else. But for me, it was really challenging. I feel like growing up and having this open adoption, I, where I never really felt comfortable being able to call my mom, she was always like my birth mom, or she was her first name.

The people around, like the siblings I had later in life were my half siblings, even though my adoptive brother was my brother, and for me, like the labels make things confusing. I also [00:05:00] feel and I've characterized this in some of my videos that like. Being in an open adoption, to me at least, feels like you have a summer camp relationship with someone, you see them, you're like a pen pal with them, maybe, but you have this like awesome, time that you spend in a very small window with them, and it feels awesome, you're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, you're at summer camp, you don't have school, you don't have homework, you don't have any of these issues that you're dealing with, because it's usually on a vacation, or you're spending a weekend with them, or whatever it is.

And then you go back to the, to real life, right? You go down the hill and you go back to your house and school or work or whatever, it gets in the way of everything. And ultimately they're just like this person in a distant land. Like I said, my mom lived really close to me, but she wasn't really that involved in my life.

She never was at like a soccer game or basketball game, or I think she went to my high school graduation and I had her walk me down the aisle with my adoptive mom at my wedding, which, was really special. And we had the first dance and all that stuff, but at the same time, it was this, it was weird.

I remember being at my wedding and asking my [00:06:00] mom, Hey, will you do this with me? Cause you're my mom too. And she was in this position of feeling like, oh, I don't want to step on anyone's toes. I don't want to get involved when I shouldn't be involved. And I think like my adopters, my adoptive parents, my mom, everyone had good intentions.

Everyone did what they thought they should be doing. Because the adoption agency, puts them through this, whatever, this like day or a couple days long of a course where, oh yeah, we have an adoptee and a birth mom and a whoever that, gives us our two cents about how Open Adoption is this great new thing and it's going to fix everything.

But they really weren't given a I just feel like ultimately having a truly genuine uninhibited relationship with your family of origin and the idea of especially like the private infant adoption, those 2 things can't really coexist in a way that's healthy for the adopted person. If the adopted person is like the means to an end for someone.

Then having this relationship and acknowledging the natural parents, the natural [00:07:00] family, the family of origin, whatever, as like a family, not a family with a caveat in front of it is not giving the adopters the full experience they're paying for. And I don't want to sit here and say that like the family I grew up with, if that was like, if that was their expectation, like we need this and we don't want her in our life, they were pretty open.

They wanted everything to be as positive for all of us as it could be, but I don't really think that anyone was given a full understanding of the implications. And part of that was probably due to lack of understanding at the time. But I think, like I said, I think a lot of it has to do with the business model of if you're promised parenthood, you don't want to share certain parts of parenthood, even if you have the best of intentions. At least that was my experience.

Haley Radke: From my understanding your mom, your natural mom, went on to have other children that she parented. What's your age gap there?

Connor Howe: I have a younger sister who's about three years younger, and then I have three other siblings who are all high school age right now.

Haley Radke: Okay. I'm thinking of you as a kid, child, middle teen, like all those [00:08:00] years. What are you thinking about when you visit with your mom and or siblings? Like, why am I here and they're there? Did you think about that consciously?

Connor Howe: Yeah, it's really weird. For me, I remember, really vividly, like my first conversation with my mom where we had like the adoption talk and it was like, I don't really remember what was said.

I just remember being really uncomfortable and we got this Red Robin and yeah, I just remember she. And in years passing would talk about that and be like, yeah, you looked really uncomfortable or something like that. And I was like, yeah, I was and then, I don't think I really I have pictures.

This is like blowing my mind, but not that long ago, I was looking through pictures from like when I was a kid and I saw a picture of like me and my sister at the beach and I was like, I don't remember that I literally never. Thought I had seen my sister until I was in eighth grade. Cause I remember going to Starbucks with my sister.

My [00:09:00] mom was like, oh, you and your sister should go. And you should give her advice before high school. And I was like, cool. I don't really know this person, but I'll try to give her advice. And so that was really weird. I feel like seeing my sister as again, it's this person that like, you're not really introduced to them as this is your family, no, no caveats.

It's today I can look at them and use these labels and it feels less weird to see them as family. But when I was a kid, it's yeah, I don't know. It's just weird. When you're not, when it's not this is your mom. When it's this is your mom's name, or this is, your birth mom.

That's not true. There's something different. And you ask I didn't really start getting to know my siblings until I was about 18 or older. Because when I was growing up, I just didn't have really a relationship with them in that way. And also my youngest siblings are pretty, pretty young, so they weren't really like talking until I was out of high school, I think, but yeah, with that relationship, it's just weird.

I feel like I would think about that. And I still do. I think when I'm even today, like that [00:10:00] they're all going to do Christmas in this one place. And I'm invited, but it's not like a, hey, everyone in the family, we're going to be here this year. It's like a, oh, you guys are there. oh yeah, you're invited if you want to come and it's okay yeah, I could, but it doesn't really, I don't know, in my life, I don't know where I belong, where I don't belong and having multiple families just complicates everything because I do appreciate my relationships with everyone in my life to a certain extent, but I feel like I have a bunch of 50 to 75 percent relationships as opposed to having one or two full like 100 percent relationships where I feel like I'm trying to fit in, I'm trying to belong, but I don't really know where do I belong? Do I belong? Even if everyone else in the room around me is yeah what's different about Connor?

Haley Radke: You're blowing my mind a little bit, because I've had the similar conversations with my bio family I've been reunion with for like almost 13 years now. And it's okay, so y'all have a group chat, but like, [00:11:00] when do I get to be in it?

Connor Howe: I made the group chat and to me it was like, it was at first it was like, this is awesome.

And then it was like. This group chat's been around for a long time. I'm trying not to take it personal. I know it's not this like personal thing. I know it's not we don't want Connor here, but it's weird. They're family, but they're not family. And that goes for both of my families.

It's I am the black sheep in both of my families. I don't think that open adoption really fixed that or created a sense of belonging.

Haley Radke: Oh, I'm sure people are going to be thinking about that phrase for a while. Okay, going back to your adoptive family. So I'm making this assumption like an infertility to cause you to be adopted, but then they were able to get pregnant and have a biological child pretty close to you.

Connor Howe: Yes. I think it's four, four months after me.

Haley Radke: Okay. So your adoptive mother was [00:12:00] pregnant when you were placed with them?

Connor Howe: Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. And what's that relationship like? Because there's no more contrasting, like, how could you have, besides having a twin study, which, yikes if you think about all the adoptees who were twins separated, I'm laughing, it's just not, it's so bad, that's just absurd that anyone ever thought that was humane, but how did you feel growing up with a brother who's literally the biological child and you're the adopted child. So you said black sheep. Can you describe what that was like for you?

Connor Howe: Yeah, I mean it's I haven't talked a lot about this because it's like I still don't really know how to feel about everything You know, I have such a complicated relationship with my brother we've had like our ups and downs periods of time where you haven't talked to each other for like a year or so.

It's really weird it was really hard. I also feel like in open adoption in general. [00:13:00] Again, it's like people approach it and they're like how much can I get away with? How many kids can I adopt or can I adopt a kid with a biological sibling? It's all about what can I achieve?

And for me, I feel like there wasn't much consideration to how insane of an environment that really was. I think there was like a ton of physical violence between both of us repeatedly pretty much every single day for 18 years. It's like you have this like twin relationship, but you're not twins.

You don't have that connection. You just have all the negatives, right? It's like the insane sibling rivalry, all this competition and all at the same time. Not trying to point fingers or anything, but no one in my family was really able to recognize, myself included, that I was different. It was like, I'm as if born to.

So whenever I felt like why is, why do I feel this way? It was always we don't treat you guys [00:14:00] any differently, if we give Connor 5 bucks, we give his brother 5 bucks. If Connor gets punished for violence, this is the punishment. If his brother gets punished for violence, this is the punishment, right?

If I have bad grades it's, everything is equal to the penny, even to this day. It's a really bizarre kind of I don't know, I just feel like adoption creates this pressure to treat everyone perfectly equally and I, I make a lot of videos online and whenever people, one of the most common comments I get is it's really clear that, you didn't have the right adopters, adoptive parents and to me, it's honestly I don't really feel like that was the issue.

I feel like my adoptive parents did the best they could. But really, were not equipped to understand that their approach was the exact wrong thing to do. And I think it's really jarring to people to hear that treating an adopted person and treating a biological child exactly the same is actually not what you should do at all.

Treating us exactly the same, at least for me, was like, oh, you [00:15:00] constantly feel depressed. You constantly feel all of these different things that, for some reason, our biological child isn't feeling. That's a you problem. You're just being a victim. Get over it. We treat you both the exact same.

For me, it's yeah, having that really close in age relationship was just like I think torture for both of us, I would get all of this attention that he didn't get because I was having all these problems and then I think it that made him, resent me for all the attention I got and, he'd poke and poke and I was very easy to poke because I would get triggered at literally anything, a leaf hitting the ground would set me off.

And yeah, we were just completely insane people. I feel like for many years of my life. And I don't really advocate against many things, but I will say that I feel like raising an adopted person with a sibling, especially a sibling so close in age that as that biological relationship is just like a recipe for absolute disaster, we would go to school and we were in separate grades because if we were in the same grade, [00:16:00] we would fight.

We had classes that we were never like in the same class except for like once or twice, and we had a PE class together one time. And the coach, I remember the whole semester was trying to figure out should they be on the same team or should they be on different teams? Because ultimately, no matter what, every single day, the class is gonna get derailed by these two kids getting in a literal fight in front of everyone. It was chaos.

Haley Radke: I think anyone on the outside looking in objectively can be like, you can't possibly love your children the same. You just can't. This one literally came out of my body with my DNA versus, the baby we signed the paperwork for. It's just not. It's just not the same.

Connor Howe: I would have rather heard that it's not the same, honestly. It would have made me feel normal. Like that I'm allowed to not like that. I'm allowed to feel what I'm feeling. I already felt less than, so it's not like the perfectly equal treatment that everyone thinks is like the ideal parenting norm. Gaslighting me for my whole life didn't [00:17:00] make me feel like I was an equal. I still felt unequal.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh.

Connor Howe: And I don't say that I don't think they were doing that intentionally, I think they really thought that was best. I think everyone in my life did what they thought was best and that's what's really sad.

Haley Radke: And we still have adoptive parents all over the internet saying those things to us no, I love them all the same. I love them all, I treat them all the same. They're, that's the right thing to do. Okay. You are a super public creator of videos saying the true things about adoption, and, in my opinion, the true things about adoption, and yours probably.

Connor Howe: I'm hopeful.

Haley Radke: When did you feel comfortable and safe enough to say those things out loud, critiquing adoption publicly with your name?

Connor Howe: I listened to, and I'm not just saying this because I'm on your podcast, but I started coming out of the fog and I listened to a lot of your podcasts. I read all the memoirs, Anne Heffron, Nicole Chung. You can go down the list. [00:18:00] I read probably like 30 of them. I read, the books that aren't written by adopted people about adoption.

I I heard all of it. I read all of it. And for me, I just, I came out of the fog like a couple of years ago, around 2022. That was like when I first started. And I was going to therapy, I was in support groups, I was doing all this stuff and really something pulled on me. I just felt I hear all these different experiences.

And again I don't want to, I can't point out one specific thing, but I remember reading the book, American Baby. I think it was by Gabrielle Glaser. And the whole book was like, awesome. 99 percent of it was awesome. It was like this story about, this Jewish adopted person who was born and or adopted from the Louise Wise agency, which I think was one of the big agencies doing the twin studies at the end of his life.

He or his natural parents or the kids natural parents, like both have this realization that they were thinking about this child. They relinquish, even though they never talked about him or whatever for so many years of his life. And he had all these, they had all these like different discoveries [00:19:00] about things that could have, that should have been different basically, like he had this genetically inherited illness or something that if he had known about his biological history, his medical history, maybe something could have been done about it and he went to die the exact same way his dad died.

And at the end of the book there was this chapter that was basically saying oh open adoption fixes everything now. It's all everything's fine today. And I just, I think something, I can't point to that one specific thing. Cause there's so many examples of it. I feel like where to see it.

And to me, growing up, feeling like I'm a case study that people are pointing to of hey, lookit, this kid has this great life. He has this great life even though I'm completely suffering in silence for my whole life. I get to a certain point where, again, I'm just reading this stuff and I realize, I can't stay silent about this when there's so many people that are probably growing up exactly the same way that I grew up and will continue to grow up the way that I grew up.

Being [00:20:00] gaslit into compliance and being told you should be grateful you're happy, you have this good life. I don't want to sit here and say I have a terrible life or a bad life there's a lot of things to be, like, a lot of blessings, a lot of things to be grateful for, but I really feel like the recipe for my life was like, the ingredients, you can't make a cake when you don't have the ingredients to make a cake.

When you give someone pepper and like bug spray and you're like, here, make a cake. You can't make a cake that way. And I just feel like I don't really want to sit here and say I feel a specific way about anything, but I don't like the idea that I have been, not necessarily like me specifically, but open adoption adopted people are like paraded around as this panacea, like you say, when that just really wasn't the case.

And I, like many other people have, spent years of my life in the fog and did the whole, oh, open adoption is great. I'm so grateful. Adoption made my life amazing. But I think, yeah, really just seeing other people [00:21:00] talking about how people like me are the ones that are grateful and seeing like all the invalidation online, right?

You go on like the adoption subreddit, for example, or any Facebook group about adoption, and people will just say, oh this is just negativity bias. There's actually you know, for every one of you that are complaining online, there's actually thousands of people that aren't complaining online and we can safely assume that all of them are perfectly happy with every single detail of their lives because if they weren't happy, they'd be complaining on the internet, right?

No one who's unhappy doesn't go on this specific subreddit and complain about it, but that's literally how people will talk to adopted people. I think for me also, yeah, just being an internet warrior in the comment section of these subreddits and Facebook groups and like seeing the hostility at adopted people experience, like at first for me, it was really hard to get these comments.

But when I realized I could handle them, I realized, you know what I see a lot of adopted people doing good things and saying a lot of the important things, but I think there's also room to even go a little further and to reject the adoption positive language. [00:22:00] And the idea that open adoption is the panacea of the adoption, the idea that adoption is even a social mechanism that meets the needs of children for me, I just feel like, I want to elevate our movement of people and have our voices heard.

And obviously not everyone's going to agree with my, whatever my ideas are for solutions or my ideologies. But I really wanted to, yeah, to challenge the kind of societal narratives that I kept seeing that were like using me as this like political prop.

Haley Radke: You have said something. Adoption is the systematic removal of children from poor families to rich families.

Connor Howe: Yeah. It's we think that's like the best thing because I grew up, in suburbia. I had this like rich family and I got a car when I turned 16. I got college paid for after, I got my scholarship. There's a lot of blessings that I have in my life that I'm really grateful for.

One thing I'll say is like when I, in 2014, I spent, I grew up in the [00:23:00] church, like a lot of adopted people and I did a summer long mission trip, so to speak, in the Dominican Republic, where I basically, it was like working at a social work site with a bunch of kids living in complete poverty. And the whole thing is like, oh, just play soccer with them and talk to them about Jesus and blah, blah, blah.

I think for me, when I went on that trip, I didn't realize it at the time, but looking and looking back, and I still have a lot of relationships, these kids and talk to them a lot, and sometimes they ask for money, sometimes they don't. But for me, I realized like for me, having that community with those people and that they're all my they're all, 18 years old or 10 years older, however much older they were, they are than they were when I saw them.

And they're all still connected. They're all still friends. They have their community. And I'm not trying to say that these kids living in poverty wouldn't have it better if they lived in a white picket fence, but there is an element of togetherness that they have that I didn't have growing up in this, American dreamland that they would all, kill for probably.

And I'm not trying to sit here and say that, again, affluence isn't necessarily an improvement, but I think [00:24:00] it's the only metric we look at when we look at adoption, right? Adopted people grow up in more affluence, like statistically speaking, than the people that don't get adopted or whatever we want to say.

And for me, this idea that yeah, growing up rich makes your life better for me, that just wasn't true at all. And honestly, like when I get all these Christmas presents for my kid, or I, I drive around the neighborhood and there's like nice houses or whatever and whatever neighborhood I'm driving through.

It's I come to almost resent all of the money of this is I didn't need this much money. I just needed this connection that I feel like I've been searching for my whole life that I haven't had.

Haley Radke: And you knew her, right?

Connor Howe: Yeah.

Haley Radke: I think that's what people don't, I think, I hope people can understand that, that even though you knew her name, you got to meet with her. It's not the same.

Connor Howe: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Oh, okay. I have so many things I want to ask you about. I'm going to go to your content creation. [00:25:00] So a piece of my mind in the background is always are you worried about what this could cost you being public? And I didn't. When I started my show, I didn't anticipate this either, so I went in using my full name and would I have done that now? Maybe not. Like I've said that before. And so I'm curious how you think about that. Because at one point, you decided, I'm going to be online with my full name and say these things outright, which you've answered, but I'm curious about, that's like rumbling in the background as I'm asking you these things.

Here's the themes of the common pushbacks I've seen you have, and you're like, I can take the comments.

Connor Howe: I'm ready for it.

Haley Radke: Holy crap. Okay. We'd love an alternative connor, what's your plan?

Connor Howe: My plan's easy, right? It's just support people. I was in Ireland like a couple months ago. And and it was like, I was walking around, I didn't see any homeless people on the street for [00:26:00] one.

And I was like, this is crazy. I live in San Diego. It's like a city with a massive homeless population. And I'm not trying to sit here and play, politician and solve the world's problems. But it's I feel like when I was in Ireland, one thing I really was observant to was the fact that they just take care of their people.

Social welfare isn't this radical idea. America is just like one of the only countries that's you know what, let's just not do that. Instead, let's just villainize poor people and I don't know, be mad about people for not being able to afford basic housing or the afford being able to afford to raise their kids.

And I'm like, I'm not, I can't sit here and say that, $1, 000 was the difference between my mom raising me and not raising me. I don't know what was going on in her brain at that time, but I feel if you look at adoption as a system rather than just a, hey, every single adopted person is one use case.

Money changes things. When you look at countries like Australia, when you look at most of the EU, any level of financial assistance to women, or like mothers, or parents in [00:27:00] general, is going to decrease the rate of adoption. I think in Australia, and I love talking about this, the Australia stat that just blows my mind is the fact that in the United States, we facilitate more adoptions in a calendar year than, or in a calendar day, than Australia facilitates in a calendar year.

I'll say it again. The United States facilitates more adoptions in one day than Australia facilitates in an entire year. And obviously, different populations, different circumstances, whatever. It's a big country. It's not like we're talking about Ecuador. We're talking about Australia. We facilitate more adoptions in Australia in one day than they do in a year.

It's crazy. But again, it's you can eliminate adoption. The world existed without adoption longer than it's existed with adoption. So yeah, support people. It's a very basic concept.

Haley Radke: God, I'm so sorry you had a bad experience.

Connor Howe: Yeah, I don't really know what people want me to say to that. I think people have this idea that adopted people with good experiences can't have critiques of the societal pressures that ultimately [00:28:00] push women into deciding on adoption. For me, I could have the best life or the worst life ever. I still am going to have opinions about politics, right? And like adoption, whether people want to believe it or not, is an extremely political decision.

I think many adopted people are Democrats. And yet the biggest piece of legislation that adoptees would probably would point to is like, this is not great, is the Adoption Safe Families Act passed by Bill Clinton in the late 90s. We have a bipartisan legislature in this country, or whatever you want to say, that promotes adoption.

Obviously for different reasons. One side wants control over, particular groups of people. The other side wants to give children to anyone who wants a child. But both sides do, I would say. And, I I don't know. Anyways I just, I feel like I can have a positive or negative experience and have opinions about adoption.

Me having a negative or positive experience doesn't really change my opinions or I guess people just want to believe [00:29:00] that those who have negative experiences in life like their voices shouldn't be heard. I feel like it's almost telling on yourself, right? Oh that some homeless guy on the street who has a problem with the minimum wage. It's oh, yeah of course you have a problem with the minimum wage because you know if we just paid you a million dollars you'd be living on the street.

It's hey, The guy probably has a point, if he was making like a living wage, then yeah, he probably wouldn't be sleeping on the street. Again, it's if we supported people in this country, maybe adoptions wouldn't be as prominent or prevalent. And yeah, I don't think it's a good thing.

If I have a very complicated experience. I would say it's more negative than positive. Maybe I wouldn't say it to a person who's criticizing me and accusing me of having this, negative bias or experience or whatever. But again, there's people who've had more positive experiences than me that have just as many criticisms.

There's people who have more negative experiences than me that have way more positive things to say about adoption. I don't know. It's just people are, people have different experiences.

Haley Radke: Actual comment you got we have a very open adoption and it worked for all of us.

Connor Howe: I like that when people say that [00:30:00] they let people have no problem speaking for the adopted person.

Obviously that applies to every adoption, but it's yeah, of course that this person who I'm speaking for is happy because yeah, my dog loves the way I treat my dog. My dog has not once ever complained about not getting enough walks, my dog has never complained about me not feeding her enough.

My dog has never said that I don't cuddle her well enough at night when we're sleeping together. Yeah, of course that if you can, if you want to speak for someone, like they're never going to have complaints. But, I just feel like when I make these videos, it's like I just want adopted people to have their own voice, right?

And it's I It drives me crazy that people speak for us. That's the reason why I started doing all of this is because again, these adoption agencies, they say hey, all these open adoption adoptees are so happy. It's I haven't read a single memoir from an open adopt, like a per an adopted person.

If you look at open adoption on Goodreads or Amazon or whatever. I don't think there's ever been a book written on open adoption by an adopted person. I could be wrong. Fact check. Please, if someone's listening to this, fact check me because I want [00:31:00] to be the first.

Haley Radke: Yeah, tell us.

Connor Howe: But it drives me crazy that that so many people speak for people like me when it's you don't, none of us know, I didn't know how I felt about adoption until I was, 27. And I feel like I was early. I'd be in these support groups and people were like, whoa, you're really young to be here.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's what I was thinking. Truthfully, before we got on, I was like, how'd you do it so early? And people say that to me. Also, how'd you do that so early? People in their 50s or 60s are finally thinking about it. Or 70s, who knows? God, I hope you get the help you need, Connor. You need to go to therapy.

Connor Howe: Yeah, I get that all the time. It's it's, I don't know why people think it's I don't know.

Haley Radke: That's an own.

Connor Howe: I also think if you're telling someone to go to therapy, that probably says more about you than it says about someone else, especially when you're accusing some internet stranger of needing help. Like today I woke up to, and I don't get this every day, but I woke up to some like barrage of DMs from people that were upset with one of the videos I [00:32:00] posted.

And they were all I don't know, they're saying whatever they're saying, and I just messaged all of them oh, I'm sorry I triggered you or something like that. And they were like, I'm not triggered, I'm not triggered. And it's okay if you think I need if you're the one that thinks I need therapy, why are you DMing a complete stranger on Instagram telling them that they need help?

It's just a little weird. And, for me, Yeah, I've done a lot of work. I probably do need therapy. I don't know. Ironically, if I had the financial means to pay for more therapy, I'd be paying for it. And one thing I really appreciate about this show is that you make so much of the therapy resources and conversations accessible to all adopted people because, yeah, it's a huge issue.

A lot of us do need therapy. It's not like I am gonna sit here and say, oh yeah, I'm 100 percent fixed. I don't think I ever will be. But that doesn't really change the fact that telling someone online to go get therapy is probably more of a reflection of your mental health than it is of theirs.

Haley Radke: But even if it was on us, it's yeah, I do need [00:33:00] therapy, because I got adopted.

Connor Howe: That's why I'm making these videos, bro.

Haley Radke: Yeah, oh, you get it. Okay good, okay. oh my gosh, there's so many more. What should I do my last one? Oh let's talk about the policing your language. You have chosen to use say adopters most often in your videos. And you most often say natural mother, and so people get really mad about that, including adoptees. Including adoptees, when you say adopters.

Connor Howe: People really don't like it. Yeah.

Haley Radke: I should, I'm just going to give the caveat. The adoptees I've seen push back on that are ones who I would classify as people that maybe haven't looked through the full impact of adoption on their lives yet.

Connor Howe: Yeah. I think, I look at all this as a, like I said. As a marketer and someone who's interested in politics, I look at adoption as like a system, like I said, rather than an individual act and [00:34:00] you can look at the history of adoption. It's not that. It's not easy to find. I think the adoption agencies know what they're doing and not being that open with where a lot of this stuff comes from, but open it like the positive adoption language, respectful adoption language all stems from Marietta Spencer who was, an adoptive mother who didn't like the idea that adopted people were seen as adopted people. She wanted them to feel like as if born to basically. She also didn't like being called, an adoptive mother. She just wanted to be a mother and her whole, which I know is surprising.

Haley Radke: Or a real mother.

Connor Howe: Yeah, a real mother. She is the real mother, like we don't get to decide that. Who are we to have opinions about things? All of this really stems from the best practices, quote unquote, today.all stem from, a woman that I would classify as at the very least insecure and someone who wanted to police the language of adoption. And I think another part, like I said, [00:35:00] of why I do what I do and why I use the language that I use is that I see, adopted people who have really good intentions, who are trying to work from within the system and change things.

I read books written by adopted people. Adoptive people I really respect, books I really love that use the term birth mom, use the term my mom, my real mom, whatever. And for me, it's I don't like that the language pushes us in a direction. I just wish that adopted people had agency over our own lives.

And I feel like when we use language that really enforces these relationships on us. Like that, that this is who this person is to you. You don't really have a choice of like mom or dad or whatever. It's just hard to feel like you have control in your own life. I, when I was young, I was trained to call, my adoptive parents, mom and dad, I would, I'd get in trouble if I didn't respond to them with yes, mom or yes, dad.

And I'm not going to sit here and say that I was like a two year old, I was, raising my fist and sticking it [00:36:00] to the man or whatever and trying not to call them that. But I also think that I feel like I didn't really belong in that sense, and I didn't feel like I felt like there was something different, especially knowing that I do have a mom out there who is my she's my mom, right?

When you're two, you're not thinking about the complexities of adoption. You just know that there's some lady out there who looks like you, who sounds like you, who you probably know you came out of. I don't know. Like I don't know what's going on in a two year old's brain. I have a two year old, but I, yeah, it's just all that stuff is really complicated and people really, take offense to terms that were very common in American language prior to the 1970s, prior to 1970s, we use the term natural mother, we use the term adopters, we use this language.

And then when you look at these I love seeing the adoption agency, like the grids of here's what not to say. And then here's what to say, I always like looking at the left column, because it's always the words I use, like natural mother, adopters, whatever. It's this is why these words are evil.

And it's never, I have never, The reasons those words are bad never [00:37:00] have anything to do with the adopted person. Never. It's, I'm not trying to sit here and say that adopters or adoptive parents aren't owed some level of respect or that natural parents are, like, that any of the adults in our life are or aren't owed some level of respect.

I get it. Adults are adults. They're the people that raise you. They're the people that birth you. Whatever. Adopted people all have complicated relationships with the adults in our lives. But I feel like it's very telling that this industry, which it is an industry, enforces language that, it's language that is used to propagandize adoption.

That adoption creates parents. It gives the gift of parenthood. And to me, as the person that was sold, it doesn't really feel like you're selling parenthood. It feels like you're selling humans. And yeah, I just feel like people need to hear the actual language that was used before adoption became propagandized because I think it [00:38:00] might I don't know, I just feel like if enough people hear the word adopter, if enough people hear the word natural parent, And it becomes normal to not have to use a specific like that that we don't societally acknowledge one person as the unconditional parent, whether it's in any direction that the adopted people are respected like oh, Connor can choose who he feels his family. Like we outside of adoption. We have all of these people that are like, oh, I grew up these terrible parents or whatever. And now I have this chosen family and people will refer to non genetic relatives as like family members, but for some reason when adopted people want to challenge the status quo, and it's not even challenging the status quo. It's just like my mom is my mom that is a threat to people. It's just bizarre.

Haley Radke: I agree. Simply say I'll just agree. We have a lot of folks that listen who are adoptees who have maybe heard my call to let's tell the whole truth about adoption. Like yourself, [00:39:00] and it is, it can be so painful to be online and getting these kinds of things.

In fact I used to post some more provocative things and engage in the comments and I just, I literally couldn't do it anymore. And so I feel very thankful for people like you who are willing to do that. And I just thought, no, my biggest impact actually can just be, focus on the show.

So that's what I've chosen to do. And I'm just sensitive. I'm a sensitive person. What can I say? But I was looking back on my Twitter and I have screenshots of this every once in a while in my time hop I get reminded someone posted back when it was called Twitter. In almost every state in the U. S. it's illegal to separate puppies from the mother until they're eight weeks old. Why do we think four weeks parental leave is sufficient for anyone ever? And so I replied back and I was like, and here's the real kicker, infant adoption, the instant and permanent removal of babies from their mothers. And so another random person on this thread said, [00:40:00] wait, this is actually an interesting point.

Like I never thought of this before. Okay. And I was like, oh wow. Like I really did something there. So you're really doing something there on all your videos and you have, when we're recording this, TikTok is in jeopardy. So I'm having a weird time finding out how to talk about this because it's going to come out after.

Connor Howe: Yeah, maybe after TikTok is banned.

Haley Radke: Who knows? Behind the curtain, people. This is just what Haley's thinking about. But anyway. You have videos up on YouTube Shorts, you have Instagram Reels, you've got threads on Threads and TikTok. Which platforms are you finding the most traction versus pushback versus some of these idiotic and even worse comments? Way worse than whatever I read to you.

Connor Howe: Yeah, it's really funny because I post, I would say predominantly on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. I don't ever really I never really looked at Facebook until a month or two [00:41:00] ago, and then it was so funny because the comments on Facebook are so much nastier than anywhere else. But then at the same time

Haley Radke: Worse than YouTube?

Connor Howe: Maybe, I don't know. YouTube sometimes people comment. I don't think, I don't think I get that many comments.

Haley Radke: Okay, I'll admit I did not look at the comments on Facebook. I looked at them on all the other platforms and what I saw was YouTube was horrendous.

Connor Howe: Yeah, YouTube's pretty bad but there's not, I feel like the videos don't perform as well on YouTube so I don't pay that much attention to it.

On Facebook it's really interesting because most, it's like 80, 90 percent of my followers are all women over the age of 65. And so it's really funny that there's so many old ladies out there. Sorry if that's offensive. I don't know if that's offensive or not, but that really hate what I have to say and are like trying to like, yeah, insult me or send me, threats or whatever.

Obviously there's like people of all ages. It's an, it's equal opportunity to throw jabs at me and it's fine. But I think the content [00:42:00] performs. What I'll say is I don't necessarily think it's the platform. I think what I've really learned in I've only been doing this for a few months, but I really feel like I focus on kind of what is the thing that is going to make the people who aren't adopted get it.

What is that sticking point? And like you said, I think that separating puppies versus separating babies is something, I don't know who the first person to say it was, but every once in a while, I have to make a video on infant separation because they always do well. If you look at any of the, Carpoozies, Melissa, Adoption Thoughts, Adoptee Thoughts, any of these people who have their top videos, one of them is probably going to be about infant separation because people just get it.

Yeah. Why do we separate babies when we don't separate puppies? I think the topic of re homing is for me at least in the past week or two, has just been going crazy. Because we saw with the Myka Stauffer thing on YouTube years ago, anyone who realizes that an adopted person is rejected by people who are supposed to care for them their whole lives, it's [00:43:00] like a betrayal of that contract.

And people really like to villainize the people that re home adopted people. I don't really necessarily feel like it's the, all of that attention comes from a compassion of the adopted person as much as a like an internet justice type of vendetta against, these evil people who re home children, but I feel like what I've discovered is that yeah, rehoming usually is a good way to get people to understand if that does, if it does happen, I don't know the exact data, but you can just say it happens way more often than people expect, and that's true, right?

We don't really associate rehoming with being a common occurrence in adoption. I don't know, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I read an article not that long ago that was like, in certain cohorts of foster youth that are adopted, it's 10 to 25 percent of them are rehomed if they're, if they meet these criteria.

And to me, that's like pretty surprising. I don't think even someone who is out of the fog or listening to these podcasts would necessarily believe that the numbers can be that high. For let's say a foster youth who [00:44:00] came from a certain place or has these, mental challenges or whatever it may be.

I think rehoming is a big one. I think yeah, that's the infant separation. And I'm trying to figure out what those other things are. I think my goal with my videos is like, how do I get the guy who lives next door to me? To who hears me making videos in my backyard about adoption complaining, how do I get, the guy who every once in a while, I see the guy who lives directly behind me, who lives on a hill that overlooks my house that he's just this old man who has his back turned to me, but he might be wondering one day what's this guy rambling about this?

He's every day. He's complaining about adoption in his backyard. What is going to make that guy compassionate to the adopted person. And I feel like, yeah, at least for me it's really those two things. Instagram and Facebook, both. I will say I get a lot of the strength that I have to keep on making videos from the people that are sending me kind words.

I don't need, the validation from people, but I just, I feel like to know that when I'm making these videos, they're really not necessarily for specifically adopted people that they still click with adopted people. They still resonate [00:45:00] with other people. And that even people who don't always agree with me are like, hey, what do you think about this?

Or I really appreciated this to know that there's this community of people out there that even if they don't agree with every word that I'm saying that they appreciate that someone is putting themselves out there I just want to be that voice that people are not the voice, but a voice that people can get behind because I feel like we just are perpetually silenced and I will say that with all the negativity that I get on Facebook or Instagram, I see a lot of these adoption Facebook groups with the adopted people in charge that my videos will get posted there and they're like, let's go, fight the crusade in the comments and every time I see that I'm like, you guys really don't have to do that, it's not worth it, trust me I will respond to some comments but I will not respond to every comment and, usually, I get pretty troll y, because it's just I know that some of the videos that do really well are, like, something that isn't necessarily adoption entirely.

It'll be, like, adoption and race together, or it'll be, like, adoption and vaccination together. Anything that's politically charged, sometimes that will get a huge horde of [00:46:00] people that really don't even care what I'm saying. They're just like very on this crusade about whatever the this adjacent topic is and so for those videos or whatever that does really well, I'm just like, all I'm just gonna let these people own me in the comments or whatever. Even if it means, you know looking like I'm taking egg on the face for losing the battle but I just want to get the conversation out there. I don't mind being the punching bag for people if it means that one day other adopted people aren't going to have to grow up and be like this token, adoptee of oh, this person has a great life.

But again, to what you were saying earlier that, oh, my, my adoptee is really happy. I just don't want that to be a thing. I don't want adopted people to be spoken for.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I really hope people will go and subscribe on whatever platform. It sounds like your videos are all over whatever platform you're using.

Connor Howe: I want to caveat by saying people do not follow if it's too much, I understand it. I it's massive trigger warning for every video, every comment. It's I, [00:47:00] my goal with this really is to pop like the bubble of this conversation. And, I'm trying to use like whatever skills I have in marketing and social media to really elevate these conversations because for me, it's not about me being big.

It's about, I think if. If people can understand these conversations, then they read an All You Can Ever Know, or they read a one of our, one of these adopted people's memoirs, or they see a movie like Lion or whatever, and they have a little bit of compassion for the adopted person instead of this whatever the societal Disney orphan adoption narratives that we're so used to seeing.

I just want to elevate the voices of other adopted people. And I don't want necessarily to be that person that's the guy at the front line or whatever. But I think that in being able to elevate whatever pages I'm trying to grow, that will, by proxy, elevate, all the other adoption people.

Or people in adoption that are having these conversations and talking about this stuff. Because I just want to envision. I get so frustrated when people [00:48:00] say when people are like America, like, how can you ever imagine America creating a social safety net in our lifetime? It's just not going to happen.

There's this like nihilistic thinking in politics and especially adoption of we can't just get rid of adoption in our lifetime. And for me, it's like, why not? I want to see a real reason why we can't actually do something. Adopted people are fighting on the front lines for birth certificate access and all kinds of things like 24 seven and and we're meeting all kinds of resistance and we're still fighting, not just me, but all kinds of people, whether it's, the person who's talking to their city council person about trying to get birth certificate access, or it's someone who's on Facebook, leaving a comment on a viral video of, some kid get reading their adoption papers out loud for the first time, I think every adopted person is put into this position of we feel like we either have to defend adoption or attack adoption and I just want these conversations to be normal.

Haley Radke: Thank you for the trigger warning. I get it. It would be hard to watch media reviews. I've watched [00:49:00] almost all of them. I scrolled through and I watched and I read all the comments. On multiple platforms.

But I want people to follow you. Yes, as a support, but not just as a support. For the way you're speaking about current events it can teach people how to have these conversations or it's pointers for how we can respond when folks bring up whatever topic. Like you talked earlier about that you're, a marketer and, you have videos about, adoption agencies and their marketing budgets and in those kinds of things, right?

So all of those things put more tools in our toolkits as adoptees who are activists and wanting to speak up for ourselves in a way that doesn't necessarily cost our like full emotional labor by using our personal stories. You are doing it in a different way which I think is very instructive and [00:50:00] informative for us. So anyway, thank you for your work in that. I really appreciate it. What do you want to recommend to us, Connor?

Connor Howe: I want to recommend Caitríona Palmer's An Affair With My Mother. So when I was I didn't really tell this part of my story, but when I was coming out of the fog, I really started thinking about actually trying to search for my dad.

I, in 2015, had went to Ireland for the first time and just felt like I just connected. I don't really know if it's like soul and valor to say I feel like an intercountry adoptee, but I, my life started in Ireland and I have always, since I was born, felt this like profound connection to where I come from.

And even as a child, I was like. Any time I had a school project, it was, I would choose Ireland if it was about like some other country. And when I went to Ireland for the first time, I didn't really know anything. I knew what my dad's name was, I probably had seen a picture of him, but I didn't really I just wrote it off as something I can't really achieve.

Oh, he's just some guy living somewhere. [00:51:00] I remember watching Lion for the first time with my wife, probably like five or so years ago, and just crying. I feel like that was before, it was before I came out of the fog, but that was definitely one of those like indicators of something is weird about adoption.

I was like, I cried like every day of my childhood to the point where I feel like I lost tears and it's like really hard for me to cry at this point in my life. But that was just one of the moments where I cried so, so hard. And I literally stayed up for the next three hours, just saving every single picture of my dad or his family that I could find online.

And so when I came out of the fog and started initiating the search, I read, I was really like trying to figure out who is this guy? What does he think about anything? I don't know about anything about him. And I want to learn more about Ireland, about adoption. I was reading, books about Irish history, the history of adoption, Ireland, but I listened to your podcast with Caitríona Palmer.

I thought she was really articulate. I really loved her story and her books sounded awesome. So I [00:52:00] bought it. And I felt hey, it's similar. We're both like in these like secret Irish adoption relationships. And yeah, I just think it was a really good book. She has a very interesting life story in general that I feel like someone who isn't adopted would appreciate and yeah, this like secrecy angle to her story is very similar to mine and I feel like when I was able to read as many books like I read all these books, but really that book I think meant so much to me to be able to hear it from someone else who was in this kind of like secretive Irish relationship and understanding kind, I think she even talks a little bit about adoption in Ireland and like the legislation or norms in the country related to adoption and the stigmas.

It helps me understand some of the things I really wanted to understand in order to feel confident and comfortable kind of trying to find my dad or other members of my family and have these conversations, which I haven't been able to achieve to this date, but I have talked to some very distant relatives.

And yeah, I just feel like that [00:53:00] book really, for me, was, I think it gave me permission to try to initiate that search and really to like make these videos because ultimately I realize like what am I missing I'm missing out on this relationship with someone who I put on a pedestal for much of my life, even though all I heard was negative things about him, but I realized, okay if he's keeping me a secret for my whole life.

Am I really damaging him by just being honest about my own story online? I'm not saying his name. I'm not like sharing his information. And I just feel like, yeah, it might, that could, I guess what I'm doing could damage like relationships. I think more so the people in Ireland than the people in America in my life, but I don't really have relationships with those people.

And I feel like. Reading Caitríona talk about the pain of reunion and this like I don't want to spoil anything from the book but I think you read it to you like the kind of yeah, this like unwillingness really for her like that from her not her family of origin to acknowledge [00:54:00] her or someone in her family of origin, I should say, and to be vulnerable about who she was in relation to them like that for me, it rang very true. I've gotten rejected with extremely harsh rejection letters. From, I should say I got rejected partially from one person in my family, and then I knew someone else who basically went around and was telling everyone in the family, don't talk to this guy. To hear it from her and to see it, I realized, you know what, I might as well try, because, yeah I just felt like it gave me the kind of the courage to do it.

Haley Radke: I love Caitríona. Her book is amazing. And I absolutely agree. If you are someone, especially if you've been kept a secret by your biological family members. It is the book for you, for sure. Connor, what a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for your work. And you said, I've only been doing a couple of months. I feel like the impact's been pretty big in those couple of months. So I appreciate it. And where can we connect with you and follow you online? [00:55:00]

Connor Howe: My Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube are all just adopted_conor. C O N O R. It's the American spelling of my Irish name. Shout out to yeah, the Irish Connors who spell it right.

But also if people want to add me on Facebook, like my personal, I don't know. I'm pretty, I feel like I'm pretty good about responding to DMs on Facebook or messages on Instagram or sorry, DMs on Instagram, messages on Facebook or whatever people could probably send me an email. I don't check my email as much, but.

Yeah any, even if you just leave a comment, I try to be as responsive as I can to everything. I think direct messages are, I'm going to see more, more likely than anything else. But yeah, Haley, I also just want to say thanks so much for having me on. I feel like I don't really know if I'd have the courage to be out there about a lot of this stuff if it wasn't for like your podcast.

I know you said that like you wanted to do that and felt like you need to be safe and I totally get that because I [00:56:00] have been like back and forth on like how open do I want to be? How vulnerable do I want to be? I just I think you being able to elevate adopted people's voices the way that you do gives people like the courage to share whatever they want to share. However, vulnerably or not vulnerably or whatever how open or not open for me I feel like your show is like the number one thing by far is like what made me feel comfortable and all this stuff and I really feel like I know you're not a therapist I know you're not a lawyer any of this stuff but whatever the caveat you put in your show is but I feel like this show really is what helps me become like a normal person.

I feel like I could be like a human. I don't know how to say it. It's just weird. I really appreciate so much like all of what you've done and all of your guests as well. I feel like I, I don't know. It's been very healing to come out of the fog, even though it's been like, crazy at the same time. I think a lot of that just most of that really has to do with this show. So

Haley Radke: Thanks very much. I appreciate that[00:57:00]

You know after my interview with Connor I truly didn't know that he was inspired by Adoptee's On. I knew he had listened to it before but I didn't know what he shared with us during the interview and the whole rest of the day I was just like thinking about the ripples that we can make for people and I had, I think I've shared this before, but I know that some of you, I've heard from several listeners who listened to Adoptees On and then decided to go back to school and become therapists for Adoptees, which is so amazing.

And then I think about people who will watch Connor's videos and maybe it'll get them thinking about what adoption really [00:58:00] means and what that really looks like and how it really impacts adopted people and first parents. So think about the ripples that you make when you share your personal story, your personal experiences, when you tell the whole truth about your adoption experience and some of those ripples like we'll probably never know I'll probably never know all the people who've listened to adoptees on and I'll probably never know all the people who you know started their own podcast because they listened to the show or started blogging or started their sub stack or started their you know, online advocacy in some way, or just shared with their friends and family about what they're exploring.

I'll probably never know that, but it's pretty cool to think that this show has had that kind of impact on people's lives. It's [00:59:00] really special. And I've shared this with a lot of people that I've interviewed privately behind the scenes. But when I have a difficult day, or things are challenging in some way, I have this wall in front of me of notes and letters from listeners who have written to me and shared what the show has meant to me. And so I always look up at the wall and there's photos and cards and things, and it always makes me be like, okay, I know I'm doing the right thing. I know I'm doing it for them. And it helps me to keep going.

So stories like Connor sharing that with me and those of you who've emailed me and shared other things I just, I'm grateful that I can make this for you and that it's meant something to you because it means so much to me. So thank you. Thank you for listening and let's [01:00:00] talk again soon.

295 Lee Herrick

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/295

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AO E295 Lee Herrick

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. We are starting off the year with such a delight. Lee Herrick, the California Poet Laureate, is joining us again today. Lee recently released his latest poetry collection, In Praise of Late Wonder, which is focused fully on the topic of adoption.

Today, we talk about what it means to feel significant as an adoptee, why writing prose felt a little more comfortable than a whole memoir, and we word nerd out a little on crosswords and wordplay. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today [00:01:00] over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources. And as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.Com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Lee Herrick. Hi Lee!

Lee Herrick: Hi, Haley. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. I'm so glad we get to talk again. So you were a guest on the show all the way back in 2022. Can't believe it's been so long. And you shared a bit of your story with us then. So I'm going to encourage folks to go back and listen to it.

But for anyone who is new to you, would you mind sharing just a little bit of your story with us so we can get to know you?

Lee Herrick: A quick version would be that I was born in South Korea. Daejeon, about late 1970, and I was adopted into a white [00:02:00] family who were living in the Bay Area in California when I was about 10 months old, and raised in the Bay Area and then later the Central Valley, have done a birth family search, have not been reunited.

And I've been back to Korea a couple of times and yeah, doing well now I'm a professor and a poet and I live in Fresno, California.

Haley Radke: So I recently saw that you were the Poet Laureate of Fresno before now you are finishing up your two year term as the 10th Poet Laureate of California.

Lee Herrick: Yes. Yes. It's been a really incredible journey and honor. I served for Fresno 2015 to 2017 and then in late 2022 after about an eight month period of waiting and not thinking it would happen because [00:03:00] California is a massive state with some great poets, but in late, 2022, I was notified, so appointed by the governor to a two year term that'll conclude in spring 2025, and it's been incredible.

A lot of travel, speaking to all different kinds of groups. Organizations that I never thought would have a connection to poetry and the arts, but they see the value in it. So everything from political or civic or environmental organizations to state prisons and adoptee organizations and schools. So it's been great. It's been a lot of fun.

Haley Radke: How does it feel to be a professional poet? I just think when, you think of writers and the grind it is to make it, whatever that means and poetry, it's so unusual to [00:04:00] become such a well known poet you've been very successful in your writing and I think that's of course due to your skill and expertise and you've done a lot of education and all of those things and you teach as well but there's something so vulnerable about your work that people just are really able to connect with it. That's what I see anyway.

Lee Herrick: I really appreciate that Haley, I, what comes to mind that I'm not just saying this to, to placate, but, I'm thinking about your podcast and the reach it has. And how it impacts audiences from all different walks of life related to adoption. And if I were to ask you, and maybe I could, what is that or how does one create such a thing?

I think about success and poetry in similar ways that, that any other endeavor and what it [00:05:00] requires, and at the root of it is some, not just a strong desire or passion or life or love for the work, but a necessity to do it, that for me has nothing to do with accolades or acclaim or praise. It has to do with some kind of partly internal.

But also, maybe ancestral, or familial, or ephemeral sort of thing that merges together that creates a kind of work and love for what we do. That's one way to answer it. Another way to say it is just, quite frankly, some longevity. I'm, I've been writing for a while, I've been teaching for a while, and it's been joyful as much work.

And of course there are setbacks with any kind of relationship, be it with work or other people, but it's been [00:06:00] deeply joyful. I, I've been asked that recently at a high school, somebody asked me about being successful and it felt pithy to say, doing what you love and then being able to do it with and for other people who are doing that work is really joyful to me.

Poetry is not the most lucrative genre nor is teaching, at least in terms of monetary things. But just, incredibly expansive. I feel very joyful. The last way I could answer that is just to say that it's much more visible. And that's taken me a while to get used to. It's a much more social position.

California is the largest state in the country by over 10 million people. We're almost 40 million. And there's a lot of visibility and events that come with it and I'm an introvert. So that's been [00:07:00] an area of growth for me and how I've done it or how I've tried to approach it is to be present and really enjoy the visits and the people as much as I can.

Haley Radke: I love that now I promise the whole interview, I'm not going to keep saying these things to you that may make you feel uncomfortable because I don't think you like to be, praised in this way. But I heard this, my last question on this line, just so you know I heard you talking on a different interview and you were, referring to a couple of other poets and you said something like, called them something like poets of significance.

And I thought, oh, wow. And so now I would say that you've reached that as well. And as an adoptee, many of us have these beginnings where we're relinquished there may be a deep woundedness there, [00:08:00] like not good enough to keep or discarded or, those kinds of things that kind of settle into our identity for better or worse.

And when I say that knowing that your name is equated with a poet of significance, you'll have this on your bio forever, Poet Laureate of California, the first Asian American as well to hold the position. What does it mean to you to be an adopted person and take on a title like that?

Lee Herrick: I said to a group once, and I found myself saying it and thinking it quite frequently, and it was a group of adoptees, and what I said was that what I hope for us is, first and foremost, to be okay. And by that I meant to have whatever we need to make it through, in terms of, [00:09:00] shelter, some kind of stability or support for any kind of mental health or physical health or anxieties or depression or things like that.

To be frank, I had, especially in my youth, especially in high school, which was quite difficult for me in terms of mental health and anxiety specifically. I think once we can make it through some of those rocky patches, the turbulence stabilizes, if you will. The, I call it sometimes the rattle. If that can stabilize for us, I think from there really good things can happen.

So, I've also, I think I've been fortunate to have a couple of very dear friends, some family members and authors and teachers who support, and I think that can be very helpful too. [00:10:00] It's humbling, and I don't take it for granted, if, and it's a good feeling, being the first Asian American California Poet Laureate, or to be seen as an adoptee author, or an adopted author.

I hesitate to say, Haley, and I used to bristle when I would hear people say, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And I don't want to say that today either because I don't know what other people are going through. And also, I don't think of myself as person of the week, I don't know that I've done anything extraordinary.

I've done what I've loved. I've tried to do my best. And it's not always been so great, but I think maybe this goes along with the adoption question and flaws and things like that is Another thing that was very helpful for me, and this probably happened maybe in or after college, maybe in my [00:11:00] mid twenties was not only did I let go of this perfectionism idea and a fear of failure but I realized that I was quite imperfect and that failure was not only necessary, but good in terms of that stabilization for me.

It's a fragile, frail impossibility in my mind to progress if we think we have to be perfect. And that might be put on us, right? I'm not victim blaming here or shaming anybody, but for me, once I realized that I was flawed and am and will be, and also it allowed me to see the humanity in others, that they didn't have to be perfect.

I think that was good for me. And, um, I know I'm slightly off your question about being seen as a significant poet. If that's the case, I'm very grateful. I hope I [00:12:00] answered that.

Haley Radke: I promise I won't keep going on that track. I know it's uncomfortable.

Lee Herrick: No, I appreciate it.

Haley Radke: I wonder what you think about the, I'll call it the theology of place. You wrote, I think it was published in 2012, the My California poem. That there's some videos of you and other folks reading your work and talking about My California. And I'm wondering about that also of course, everything's tied back to adoption on this show, right? I know it's not for everybody, but.

Writing that poem, your role in California now. And then also as a person, we talked about this last time you were on the show, discovering that the city that you thought you were born your whole life actually wasn't. And so thinking about this idea of place and how meaningful place is to you. And now you've said you've lived in Fresno for many years now as an [00:13:00] adult. How many years have you been there?

Lee Herrick: About 28 years.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So over a quarter century, like that's significant to, to love somewhere enough to stay and have roots grow deeply in a place, especially. Do you have thoughts about that, about place and those things?

Lee Herrick: Yeah, that's. When I think about the word place or the idea of place, another word that I think of in the same breath is displacement.

And in terms of the adoptee's circumstance, it could be considered displacement, but certainly place takes on a different idea for us. A home, an orphanage, a courtroom, a different city. different families and things like that. So with place, I think many people first go to the environment [00:14:00] or the landscape.

So I've always felt very home in California, whenever I'm on the coast and I might be on a beach. It's always on my mind that I'm as close in terms of land that I could be to South Korea. And I don't know, I wonder if other adoptees think about that, if they were, let's say they were born in, I don't know, Wyoming, and they live in Ohio, and they go back to Wyoming, do they feel some kind of visceral reaction?

I don't know. I also think about, of course, family. And that kind of thing. I think about place in terms of home, and how we can feel at home, and what makes us feel at home. Of course, adoptees have, I think for a thousand adoptees, you'd probably have a thousand different takes, or opinions, or experiences with home.[00:15:00]

What it feels like to be at home or completely alienated and outcast. So, part of me wants to chalk it up to some kind of larger purpose, but it also could just be complete chance. For example, in the Korean adoption community, I think about adoptees born in Korea that were raised and live in Australia or France or Sweden and is just it seems or feels somewhat random, but I connect with that a lot.

Whenever I see a Scandinavian, Scandinavian adoptee speaking, let's say fluent Danish or something. I really feel a kinship with that person, even though I don't know him or her or them. Whenever I see a homeless or unhoused person, I feel some kind of familiarity. And maybe this goes back to [00:16:00] poetry and adoption, but I think poetry is a space where there's a lot of room for questions.

And, nuance, which the adoptee circumstance definitely gives us.

Haley Radke: In your latest collection, In Praise of Late Wonder, you have this piece called Stars. Could you read that for us?

Lee Herrick: Sure, I'd be happy to. Stars. I am one of approximately 200, 000 Korean adoptees, or adopted Koreans, in the entire world. A small subset, the 83 million Koreans.

Other small populations like ours include the Ambonese from Indonesia, Blaan of Philippines, Damara from Namibia, and Sioux Lakota from the United States, and Otomi from Mexico. We're rare, like shooting stars, [00:17:00] double rainbows, scratched diamonds.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I remember reading that, and my first go to was like, where? Lee, I talk to so many Korean adoptees all the time. In our community, there's so many. And I love this reframing of it, like in the grand scheme of things and thinking about these different population groups. And when you wind up with the scratched diamonds, I was like, oh, I don't know. You got me. I love that line.

Lee Herrick: Oh, good. Thank you, Haley. Yeah, I think at a certain point, we start looking and hoping for each other. Because we aren't around one another. And as a result, you host a wonderful podcast, so like you say, you're [00:18:00] talking with adoptees regularly, or many of them. It might even be, a good portion of your world, your thinking, your life.

Yeah. And I started to think about it because I know at least with Asian adoptees, I think Koreans are still the majority, but I know there are a lot of Chinese adoptees as well and things like that, even though that just formally ended, but I started looking up other populations around the world that were about the same number as Korean adoptees.

And except for the Sioux Lakota, I have not heard of them. I had never heard of the Ambonese, for example. So it was fascinating to, yeah, like you say, to reframe it and just how few of us there really are. And I know that there are other numbers such as one in six families in the United States has some relation to an adopted person and things like that.

But [00:19:00] I think because of the small numbers, shows like this, books, films, it's really meaningful work anytime people have the opportunity to learn more about adopted folks.

Haley Radke: Absolutely agree. I live in a bubble, adoptee bubble, and I take it for granted. And I'm always encouraging community building and finding fellow adoptees to connect with and you and I have been blessed with that for a number of years.

You longer than I. I'm curious in relation to that, as you go and speak and you're introduced and part of your intro is that you're an adopted person from Korea. How many folks come up to you and talk about adoption that are adoptees and perhaps maybe they're hearing some of these thoughts about adoption for the first time [00:20:00] from a fellow adoptee.

Lee Herrick: Oh it's one of the great gifts of this experience. Traveling and speaking as an author, of course, there are some where I think chances are high I'm going to meet an adoptee. For example, if I'm in Los Angeles or San Francisco or something like that, but I've been in towns that are probably 80, 90 percent white and someone will come up to me invariably they might be Asian American, but often they aren't. And they'll tell me that they were adopted, or, a sibling, or it might be an adoptive parent. But what's really neat is when it's an adoptee who is a little nervous and tells me that they've really never met an adoptee before. Or they've never met an adoptee author.

And I really love that [00:21:00] because whatever journey they're on and it's not my purpose or point to direct their purpose but I can see it when they're telling me that's really wonderful. Yeah, and there are a lot of other connections to it, too. You know I had one woman say to me after an event that she really resonated with a poem I was reading about names and name changes and identities, because even though she wasn't an adoptee, she said that when she was a young girl, her father had committed a very grisly, heinous crime, and she and her mother had to go in hiding through a witness protection program, and they had to change their name.

And she said even though she wasn't adopted, she really felt some connection with that. So it's been. It's been exciting and eye opening, the different ways people connect with adoptees. And then, of [00:22:00] course, there's sometimes one that's not so pleasant. I hesitate to talk too much about this one publicly, but just.

Haley Radke: Please, Dish, we're desperate. I want to hear it.

Lee Herrick: If you insist No. I was doing an event recently and my new book is the most I've ever written about adoption. It's the most bare and honest and vulnerable in many ways I've ever written about my adoption. There's probably 20 to 30 pages of poems, very specific and autobiographical. So I was reading one of these poems, and afterwards, during the Q& A, the first person to ask a question.

She raised her hand and said that, she said to me, in your reading, and you even said it, you mentioned sadness. You mentioned feeling sad [00:23:00] and grief, but you were adopted into such a loving family. She said, I think you may have misread your adoption experience. I couldn't believe it. Here's a woman, I'm a grown man, I'm not new to this, and and it also flies in the face of my philosophy, or one of my philosophies, and that is to let each person have their own traumas and joys.

She tells me that I misread my experience, and I took it in for a minute when I could feel the audience looking at me, wondering, how is he going to respond to this? And I told her that I really hesitate personally to tell anybody how to feel or what to make of their experience.

But I told her, I said, I take great great umbrage [00:24:00] at being told that my lived experience and sadness around loss related to adoption was a misreading. I take great umbrage with that. And then I, that was it. And some of the audience started clapping. So it reminds me how little sometimes people know, but also how forcefully some people feel that adoption is very simple and positive and unemotional.

So we have a long way to go, but in the vast majority, it's wonderful folks coming up to me telling me, they might tell me their adoption story or things like that. I'm speaking in a few weeks to a group in the San Francisco Bay Area. And so I love meeting [00:25:00] with groups of adoptees of all ages. It's been interesting.

Haley Radke: So initially when you're telling that story, I just started laughing because it's so absurd. And then I got really emotional towards the end because It's I want, I would love for you to tell us why now the prose section of this book, why the full, fully themed adoption book, even though in all your prior works, there's always, of course, some pieces about adoption and in your, some autobiographical work.

But I just, God, we just, we give it all, the whole story, pour out our heart, your books out there, you're walking around naked in the world feels like cause people can see all your innermost thoughts and hurts and it's and even that, you won't even believe that?

Lee Herrick: Yeah.

Haley Radke: It's so deeply painful. So I'm very sorry. That is [00:26:00] really egregious.

Lee Herrick: Yeah, I, I appreciate it. This is actually the first time I've talked about that. It only happened a couple of months ago. I think as a writer, at least in my experience as a poet, as an author, before I put a poem out into the world on the page, for example, or published

or read at an event. I have worked through and with those experiences, and I've also worked through and with the poem, so much so that I almost feel, I wouldn't say impervious, but I fully understand, as authors often say, that it's no longer mine. And so a person can praise it, and that's her praise, and a person could also critique [00:27:00] it.

Or not believe it or dislike it, and that's also for the reader. And so what that allows me is a little bit of distance when that woman said that. It threw me off because I've never had somebody tell me that. That I misread it. It's a unbelievable audacity to say that to someone.

Haley Radke: I'm still laughing about it again.

Lee Herrick: Yeah.

Haley Radke: It is. It's so absurd.

Lee Herrick: Yeah, I just couldn't believe that and, I didn't want to make it personal and attack her and whatnot. But I think that's maybe just part of the time spent with it, there, there have been times when I was much younger when I allowed everything to affect me, but I'm just at the point in my life where I'm not that impacted by someone's take on it.

Unless it's really violent or [00:28:00] aggressive or harmful to what I think an adoptee or a person's experience is then I will engage, then I will definitely push back. I'm not someone to just. Take it passively. And I think that's a turning point too for us as adoptees. And usually I think it starts first with the family conversations or the comments, because if it's something on television that's offensive we could bristle or take umbrage or maybe even take some action, but there's a real distance with media, but with the family or friends.

That was a big turning point for me, when we can stand up for ourselves with language and we can stand up for our sense of who we are as adoptees, I think that's deeply meaningful. And whether a person goes on to host a podcast or write a book, that's another subject, but I think just being able to defend ourselves and [00:29:00] have a boundary in terms of what hurts us. That's very meaningful.

Haley Radke: I, I love the title. There's a poem in the book called In Praise of Late Wonder. And there's another poem called Wonder, and I was just thinking about the word again, like we were talking about place before, What a great word, wonder. What does that mean for you? And how do you see it? There's a that's one of those words that can mean a few different things.

Lee Herrick: Yeah, Haley. I love your questions I feel like we could and I know there's a time frame here but I every time you ask a question, I just think Ooh, I could really play around with that question and have fun with it.

So I love etymology and so word origins, and I love the sound of words and wordplay. So with wonder, a word that I think of in tandem with wonder is wander. And I wonder [00:30:00] about other adoptees experiences with wandering. Even mentally, what do we dream of, or do we think about what our birth parents looked like, or things like that.

But also, just literally there was a span of about maybe 10 or 12 years where I traveled. And backpacked for about two or three months at a time each year. And I would just wander and love the feeling, not so much of being lost, but not knowing exactly where I was. I could find my way back. But I loved just exploring, and I felt at home a lot. It helped me, I think, feel at home wherever I was. And maybe that's a rationalization for the adoptee's sense of displacement. I don't know, but and I just love the sound of the word wonder. One of my favorite speeches was Steve [00:31:00] Jobs, commencement speech that he gave at Stanford and Steve Jobs, as you may know, is adopted. And he talked about staying foolish. He said he encouraged graduates and young people to stay foolish, which I read as keep your curiosity. Keep your sense of wonder. That's partly what I was thinking, and then with the title, In Praise of Late Wonder, it's just as it sounds, really I praise the idea and the gift of being able to wonder. To know some things, but if we don't know some things that we can still wonder and be okay with that. We don't have to know everything to be okay.

Haley Radke: Just an aside, one of the later poems you talk about crosswords, watching someone do a crossword on a plane, and I was really sick a couple months ago, so sick. I joke with friends. There was only one day I really thought I was actually going to die, but the rest of the time it was just, I [00:32:00] was really sick and I had double pneumonia.

That's another story. But I got into doing crosswords. I was watching this lady do crosswords on Tik Tok and she taught me how to do crosswords. And so now like I read the poem with as a person that does crosswords, I love your wordplay and all those things like I'm totally getting into that now.

Lee Herrick: Oh, I love it. I love it. And I hope you're feeling better.

Haley Radke: Yes. I am totally 100 percent better. All good That was the reason for my like two months of trying to fill space with something to do. That was less effort than my normal life.

Lee Herrick: Yeah. I love them. And they also slow us down. Don't they don't crosswords and there's nothing flashing at us saying in five seconds, here's the next one coming along or there are no banner ads.

It's just. It's just you and the puzzle, it's fun.

Haley Radke: And you can't do anything else. Like I, as a chronically online person, [00:33:00] I absolutely, I'm usually doing one thing with something going in the background and it's you're not successful at a crossword if you're also trying to listen or watch something else, you can't do it. It's true. Focus. Yeah.

Lee Herrick: It's true.

Haley Radke: Would you mind reading the poem that's called Wonder on page 20.

Lee Herrick: Wonder. For a period of time in my late 20s. I thought every Korean woman 15 to 50 years older than me could be my mother. I'd imagine walking up to her and asking, Did you ever give birth to a boy and then lose him or give him away?

The classy businesswoman wearing expensive shoes. The dry cleaner who wanted to teach me Korean. The woman who shoved kimchi in my mouth and said hers was the [00:34:00] best in Seoul, the homeless one, I could be part of each one. This lasted for about five years, until I realized I was wrong, that not knowing who a woman was did not mean she was likely who I thought.

I began to study logic and reason and devoured philosophy. I began to see Korean women as a source of pride and strength and wholeness rather than a mystery or a curse. I began to see people everywhere around the planet in full dimension rather than through my singular and limited lens. This changed everything.

Haley Radke: I love that one. Thank you for reading that.

Lee Herrick: Of course.

Haley Radke: Can you talk to us about why now a collection fully about you, autobiographical, [00:35:00] adoption themed, and the first whole chunk is prose, like fully prose, which is different from your other works. And it's a totally different style.

Lee Herrick: Yeah. For a while, I'd say over the last maybe 10, 12 years, I've thought about a memoir and I was asked by a couple of agents if I would consider or would I consider writing a memoir.

And, people will come up to you saying, oh, I'd love to read a memoir. But I never really took it all that seriously. And then I started writing these little vignettes. I was thinking of them as little stories or vignettes about my adoption. And it just didn't take shape as a memoir.

I thought for a while about writing a YA book, as I'm sure There's a real need for YA literature [00:36:00] about adoption. And, but I couldn't do that either. I just couldn't access that genre. So then I thought about making them prose poems, which is how I see these prose like pieces or these poems of sorts.

Really, I don't know what to call them. They're little vignettes maybe, but I just decided to put them into this book. I feel most at home as a poet. As far as, why now in terms of readiness? I think, for me, it just got to the point where I was comfortable enough with myself to put these kinds of things out there, regardless of what may come, regardless of reception, or criticism, or anything else.

For example, I thought if I don't have a real section praising my family, will they be upset? Or, there are a [00:37:00] couple very personal among all of them that are personal, but there are two letters that I wrote for my birth father and birth mother. And even though they're letters to them, they're still created a little bit.

I still think of them as creative writing, but those are very personal. You just get to a point where it's not for anyone else, and I'm, it's felt liberating to do Haley. It just felt good to write that stuff because we're asked it so many times. I can only imagine how many times you've been asked certain questions about your experience.

I know a little bit about your background, having read about you, and in reunion, and in and out of reunion, and different things like that. For me, it just felt good to write it all out. The opening poem is about a time I was taking a shower, scrubbing my skin to see if I could turn my skin white.

And as I said in the piece, not because I wanted to be white, but because I wondered why I wasn't white. And [00:38:00] why now? It's just, we get to a point where we need or want to say these things. There it is.

Haley Radke: Do you feel more free? And can you attribute that to aging? Or what?

Lee Herrick: Yeah, it's a good question.

Some of it might be aging. You know how a lot of times you, and I'm not generalizing, but it happened with some of my grandparents or other folks who are wonderfully seasoned and experienced where they give less concern about judgment or opinion or what the cashier says. And, so my, some of it might be age.

Yeah. Yeah. Also it's, it. I think it also depends on if something's eating away at a [00:39:00] person, I think that stuff is best aired out to someone, somehow. It could even just be in a journal, privately. But that's the kind of stuff that the poet Audre Lorde says. That's tyrannical. That stuff is the thing, the sort of thing that can really harm us, I think. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Maybe this is my last question before I do our recommended resources section. Is you write about doing the search and part of it is on a TV show and those things. And it feels like to me that you've come to terms with, I'm probably not going to get my answers. And again, with both of you living in this space where we are connected with so many fellow adoptees, like that's what we see. Lots of people search, don't find anything. Lots of [00:40:00] people search, find things maybe they didn't want to know and, or have, some happy moments. And yeah. What does that look like for you now and in your fifties, thinking about that, being public about it.

And if you're able to give folks something to like, I don't know, hang on to can peace come if you feel like you're actually never going to get answers.

Lee Herrick: Yeah, so I hesitate to say to anybody what they can receive or get I just don't know enough about it to tell anybody else what to, what they can do.

But in my experience, I can speak from my own experience. Is that I feel like I not that I had, maybe that I had to, because if my sense of, quote, peace, if my sense of being okay, was [00:41:00] contingent upon one, the one thing that I had great odds against me finding, Then what would that mean for me?

So I think there are a lot of different ways that I've been able to make it through, and one of them is doing some kind of earnest search in my experience. I went back to Korea. I've been back twice. I think those things help. I've worked, it's been quite some years, but I probably had a year of good, solid work with forgiveness.

And so there's a mental health aspect to all of this. And, yeah, I think there are a lot of ways that we can make it through and find a sense of peace or wholeness. I also used to think that I was not whole because I didn't have this. [00:42:00] Part of my family or my birth family history now, and I might be deluding myself.

I don't think I am, but I say now that we've always been whole, at least we are certainly capable of wholeness without every fact of every person in our families. It's also helped me to fight and advocate where I can. As my time and energies and spirit allow, we all can't do everything all the time for everyone on their terms, but there are some things that I am trying to be a part of, for example, California, becoming one of the states that allows adoptees access to their birth records.

I think there are somewhere around 20 states now that have passed that. I'm hopeful that the citizenship amendment to the congressional bill, Adoptee Citizenship Acts, will be passed [00:43:00] that will allow adoptees citizenship retroactively so we won't keep being deported and things like that. But in the meantime, I think as much as the adoption work is core and central, just other things, trying to work through fears was a big part of my life.

That's been probably the biggest thing that has helped me feel liberated is working through fears, which I tell my students keep us from living our fullest lives. Fears keep us from being our truest, fullest selves. Turning the corner on those, the whole world opens up. It felt very liberating and has been very liberating for me, moving beyond some of those fears that I used to think would cripple me.

Haley Radke: And to see you as an introvert stepping what looks like to us confidently onto [00:44:00] stages that are bigger than likely you've taught before is so amazing. It's so impressive and exciting for me to follow along with that. I love that I had this recent conversation with an adoptee therapist and she was talking about how we have our true identity within us. And so I'm thinking about that as no matter what, if we want to search or not, if we get a reunion or not, if we're able to really truly get to know ourselves, like some of those answers are within. And that feels a little bit like woo to say out loud, but I really think it's true.

And the last time you were on Lee, I was telling you, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm really trying to figure out my preferences. So embarrassing in my late thirties to figure out what kind of perfume I like. I don't know if you remember that, but we talked about that and now [00:45:00] it's a few years later, I absolutely know what my favorites are.

I have more pieces of my identity. I feel like nailed down and those passions and loves within you and the joy that you found through all your writing, like those are pieces of your identity that you found and claimed. Like it's so I hope for people listening. I hope that is liberating to hear.

This is possible for me too. Your book, this one, In Praise of Late Wonder, you can't see behind me, but that's where my hundreds of adoptee books live, and I have two of your other poetry collections there. They're on my desk now, but normally live there. I love this so much, Lee. It is evocative. And I got mad at you when you were saying you didn't want to really write a memoir. You couldn't do it because I was like, no, I do want the memoir. Could you write, could you also write a memoir? No, but we so get to know you, especially through [00:46:00] the beginning of the book and all these prose pieces.

It's just so lovely that you let us in and allow us to into these really deep places. And I, and you mentioned in our interview the letters, I was going to mention that now, the Dear Korean mother and Dear Korean father. I think many of us will have written a letter like this. So to be able to read yours, that's so deeply personal is really special. So thank you. Thank you so much.

Lee Herrick: Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: You're welcome.

Lee Herrick: That means a lot coming from you. That means a lot to me.

Haley Radke: I mean it.

Lee Herrick: Yeah. Thank you. I feel like we're very much in the same world, and grateful for what you do and, for your reading of the book and for the interview. Yeah, it's wonderful to be here with you.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Yeah, I know for some people poetry can be intimidating and this is [00:47:00] like such a great way in my opinion, especially through prose. I'm at the beginning and you get to know Lee a little more And then I love having pieces of some of your other collections in there and you touch on really important things.

You talk about suicide, you talk about adoptee citizenship, you talk about many of the themes that are really important to us, particularly as adoptees and also just as humans. So yes, I hope folks will go out and grab this. And the other cool thing that you are working on is, are these collections of poems from Californians. I was clicking around through the website for Our California today and I found like poems from grade 5 kids and poems from adults. And it's really a special thing, project that you're doing. So we'll link to that too for folks to explore. Yeah. What a great project.

Lee Herrick: Yeah, thank you. That's been [00:48:00] fun. In the governor's office and the California Arts Council were really supportive. It's just my, a way to give any Californian a chance to write a poem about their place or town or their vision of their state. Yeah, those have been fun to read.

Haley Radke: That's a nice light. Not always light, but that's a cool thing to click around on, especially if you're from California and I'm not, but I found it interesting.

Lee Herrick: They're fun.

Haley Radke: What did you want to recommend to us today, Lee?

Lee Herrick: It's not a book, or a film, or a podcast even, but I would like to recommend the Adoptee Literary Festival.

It was the first one held about a year and a half ago, maybe. And it's archived, and anyone could watch it and they're planning another one. It is a wonderful literary festival online and the next one will be coming out later this year and they've got wonderful writers and panelists in fiction, [00:49:00] creative non fiction, poetry, and young adult writing.

Some of the panelists you've had on your podcast, and so I really highly recommend that. It was co founded by the adopted writers Alice Stevens and Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, and it's just fantastic.

Haley Radke: I went last year. It's such a great event. Awesome recommendation. We'll link to that. It's scheduled for end of March, 2025. And so I'm sure lots of our listeners will get to enjoy that. Thank you so much, Lee, for this very stimulating conversation. I enjoyed it so much. Where can we follow your work and catch up with you online?

Lee Herrick: You could keep up with me or be in touch through my website. It's just LeeHerrick. com. I'm also on Facebook and that's the extent of my social media at this point, but I'd [00:50:00] love to be in touch with anyone.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Lee Herrick: Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: I don't know what it is about Lee, but I just have this super comfortable feeling talking with him. And, I think I've described other folks like this wholehearted way of being, and I really get that from Lee and his poetry as well. So even if you're not super into poetry, I think this is a great collection to get started with.

And yeah, I just, I love hearing people be vulnerable about the real stuff that we're all going through. And it's so special to see an adoptee get to have the stage that [00:51:00] Leigh has access to right now as California Poet Laureate and talking to so many people. And I was thinking you told us that really shocking story, but I was thinking how special for so many young adoptees to see someone that they can aspire to be and whether or not they want to be a poet, but to write down and heal through some writing work to share their story and in some sort of way, whether it's for themselves or to share publicly like that.

I just think it's so powerful to have that to look up to for young people and for us olds. Yeah, I just, yeah, well done Lee, we are cheering you on and thank you for being vulnerable with us and modeling that for us and for the future generations. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again [00:52:00] soon.

294 [Healing Series] IFS for Adoptees with Kathy Mackechney

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/294

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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 can't wait to introduce you to today's guest. We're doing kind of a hybrid healing series episode with adoptee and adoptee therapist, Kathy Mackechney. Kathy shares part of her story with us, including how she was prepared for rejection during her reunions, but was instead surprised by eager acceptance.

Getting into the therapy of it all. Kathy is an Internal Family Systems practitioner and has developed the idea that not all of our parts get adopted. We unpack what that means, including what I think is quite a joyful idea that somewhere inside [00:01:00] us, we can access who we may have been had we not been separated from our original families.

Kathy is one of the first, if not the first, adoptee therapists to have an entire chapter published in a clinical text that focuses on how to work with adoptees. It is literally the chapter we should assign our therapists to read. Before we get started, I want to invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

We 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 Adoptee on Kathy Mackechney. Hi Kathy.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Hi, Haley. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: I'm so excited to finally talk to you. I'd love [00:02:00] it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Sure. I will just start at the beginning. I have always known that I was relinquished and adopted. My adoptive parents started telling me that before I even knew what those words meant.

And there was. A book. It's a really old book. I think it might be called The Family of Adoption, but I'm not sure. I still have it on a bookshelf somewhere. Really old book. This was the baby scoop era. 1968. They had this book that they read to me, and I remember actually sitting on this green vinyl couch in my parents home hearing this story and I guess I would say now wondering exactly what that meant.

Like hearing the words and [00:03:00] taking it in but not fully getting it. Joined this family. My parents have, my adoptive parents have two sons who are, they're biological sons, and they are eight and nine years older than me. Actually, one of them died a couple of years ago, so I have one remaining brother, but my parents tried for several years after my brothers were born to get pregnant again and were unable to do so and my mom really wanted a girl and yeah, common story. And my parents knew some people who had adopted and because they knew people, other people who had done it, they felt comfortable with the idea of it. So they decided to pursue adoption and being white professionals, I think that was easy for them.

So they adopted [00:04:00] me through the state of Oklahoma. And I was plopped into this family. We didn't talk about it growing up because at that time, when my parents adopted, they were instructed, as I think all adoptive parents were then, to tell me, and then just, treat me like they treated my brothers and act like I had come into the family the same way, so we didn't talk about it, and then I went to college, and in my freshman year of college, I was in this orientation class, this freshman orientation class, and I had an assignment to write a personal essay.

And seemingly out of nowhere, I mean we know these things don't come from nowhere, but seemingly out of nowhere, I suddenly was writing about having been adopted. And so I went to my mom with some questions and [00:05:00] she told me again what she knew, which was just the non identifying information that my parents had been given about my original parents heights and weights and religious preferences and hair color and I think that was it.

So I wrote my paper, turned it in, we didn't talk about it again. And then fast forward several years, and I had gotten my undergraduate degree in journalism, and I was working at a media relations agency, and I discovered that my boss had also been adopted. So she was a woman about my age, And she was pregnant with her second child and I don't even remember how it came up, but I learned that she had been adopted and that she had decided to do a search when she was pregnant with her first child, which we know is a common time for women to [00:06:00] decide to search for female adoptees to decide to search.

And she asked me if I had ever thought about that. And at that time, I was still in the fog. And I said, no, I know who my parents are and that was that, but I would say it was around that same time or shortly after that, that I started exploring adoption related issues in therapy. And I, I don't know how I learned about The Primal Wound, but that was one of the first books that I heard of and I read that and I read a couple of Betty Jean Lifton's books, Journey of the Adopted Self and Lost and Found, and I was starting to explore the impact on me.

And when I read The Primal Wound, I was like oh yeah I just, it was as though I could, point at page, at what was written on page after page and [00:07:00] say, yeah that's my experience. And, I started thinking somewhere in that same timeframe, so I was in my late 20s, I was thinking about turning 30, I was thinking about what I was doing at that time, friends of mine were having children, my first husband and I were, considering when we might do that, if we did that.

And I was also thinking about, like I said, what I was doing career wise and what else I might like to do. And I started thinking that I might like to become a therapist and I, this was coming partly from my experiences in therapy where I was having to educate my therapist. So I'd started [00:08:00] exploring these issues, I'd done that reading and I was going to therapy to talk about it and none of my therapists got it.

None of them had done any of that reading. None of them were familiar with it. Common issues for people who are adopted. And so I was having to educate them and I thought adoptees need someone who gets it. And I would, I had already been thinking about going back to school and getting a degree in social work and becoming a therapist.

So I decided before I spent all that money on grad school that I wanted to make sure that was going to be a good fit for me. Which is really typical of me as a result of how my brain works to take this very rational approach. And so I went to career counseling and I met this woman, Sandy, who is a psychologist who did testing [00:09:00] so she could administer all the tests for career counseling.

And through that process of meeting with her and doing the testing and learning, yes, it would be a good fit for me to be a therapist or any kind of helping professional. I also figured out that for me to know what I really wanted to do, what I most wanted to do, I needed to know who I fully am. And for me, that meant finding the pieces, the missing pieces and the missing people from the beginning of my life.

So I searched, I did a search. I started it in the summer. And I think this is so interesting. Nine months later. The gestation period later, I had the information that allowed me to send a letter at that time, a letter to my birth mom. [00:10:00] And I had prepared mySelf for every possible worst case scenario, like that she would be dead. She would be incarcerated. She wouldn't want to hear from me. Every possible form of rejection of some sort. And when I did not hear from her for weeks and weeks. I don't know how many weeks went by, a few months went by. I was prepared for that. I thought, okay. And then, one day, I think I started my search in August, and then one day the following June, the phone rang, and my first husband answered.

This was like pre the proliferation of cell phones. And he said, yeah, hang on a minute. And he handed it to me and said, it's your mom. And I talked to her. I got on the phone. The first thing that happened is I got on the phone and she said who she was. [00:11:00] And she said, are you my daughter? And I remember that moment because I hesitated because inside me, there was this yes response.

And at the same time, there was a well, no not exactly because I've been raised by someone else. And I called someone else mom. And anyway, so she and I talked. She had the information that allowed me to contact my birth father because he had contacted her when I was 18 because he had decided he wanted to look for me and he had given her his like address at that time and he was still in the same place so I was able to contact him and what happened is in both cases with each of them I experienced acceptance.

And wanting to be known and I hadn't prepared for that and so [00:12:00] that was totally overwhelming for me and my system and all my parts to have these people feel so happy to hear from me and want to meet me and have extended families that wanted to meet me and I was like, whoa, though I did meet my mom. She lived in Iowa. I was here in Colorado. We both drove halfway and met in Kansas. A couple weeks later, I flew to Connecticut and met my birth father. And then two weeks later, I started grad school. And so it was a whirlwind.

Haley Radke: Literally this is what I was so curious about. What is it like processing reunion while you're in grad school?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: It's such a great question, and I think there was not a lot of processing of it. There was some to some degree, but yeah, [00:13:00] grad school is all consuming, or at least it was for me. Reunion happened, but it also got put on hold. And I didn't, so I met each of them. I didn't meet anyone else beyond that at that time.

And I didn't see either of them again until as it turned out, 20 years later.

Haley Radke: What?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: I know. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Cause, as life goes, oh, there was like, one of my brothers had a stroke. My mom had heart issues. I got through grad school and my first husband and I divorced shortly after that.

All of these major life events happened and time just, kept passing. And then a few years ago. Both of my adoptive parents died. My dad died suddenly and unexpectedly, [00:14:00] and that was a significant loss for me. And then 80 days later, my mom died. That was more expected. And that I'm sorry to say was also not as much of a loss for me as a result of the character of my mom.

But the next year, I think it was after they both died. I saw my mom again, my original mom, and there was more family there, all this extended family. And so I got to meet my uncle, I would say my beloved uncle, her brother and his wife and their kids, my cousins, whom I adore. And in another reunion, I met my birth father's sister, my aunt, with whom I'm in touch multiple times a week and is a real dear to [00:15:00] me and I've met both of her kids too. So I met extended family just a few years ago and that has been a whole other reunion that I could, spend a whole episode talking about, but won't.

Haley Radke: I do want to pause there because I think I've mentioned this before that in our Ask an Adoptee Therapist events that we have for Patreon, that question, or I should say the answer to a question has been given by several different therapists. If we're not getting, I'm not saying this is the case for you, but if we're not getting like what we need from our relationship with our first mother or biological father or they're not accessible to us, whether it be by their choice or they're not here, they've passed on or any of those things like there are extended family members who may have answers to some of the questions we have.

Or it may feel a little more free about talking about some of the [00:16:00] stories and those kinds of things. So it can almost be sometimes like a safer person to talk through some of those things because they're not so close to it.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100 percent just based on my personal experience. My mom, I would say, was never really able to go deep with me about it.

I don't think that's entirely because she can't go, I think it's I don't know. She was in the, she was in the fog herSelf for a long time. And when I first met her, she was still very much in the fog and believed that she had made the right decision. And actually she stayed in the fog until her dementia started setting in further.

This is so interesting. So she's pretty far into dementia now. And now the last time I saw her earlier this year, [00:17:00] this is what I expected. She no longer remembered who I am and that she had a second daughter or not a second daughter, a first daughter whom she did not raise and gave up her adoption.

She no longer remembered that. But the previous visit, which was about a year ago, or maybe it was two now, the dementia had set in like just enough that it's like it had wiped out the fog. And she said to me, I, my experience was that I got a more authentic version of her. I got more of her authentic Self.

And she said to me, and she had never said anything like this to me before, I wish I had raised you. And, like I said, that was the first time I'd ever heard her say anything like that. And it was a, I'll say for lack of a better way of saying it, a gift of her dementia [00:18:00] for me. She and I never really talked much about it, but my uncle and I have been able to talk a good bit about it and about the, and about what Linda my mom had told me that her mother had said to her in 1968 when she was pregnant with me, which was, you will not come home with that baby.

And my uncle and I were able to talk about what he thought my grandma would say now if she were alive and she could meet me and how sorry he thinks she would be that she said that. And my aunt has asked me, my aunt on my birth father's side has asked me lots of questions about my experience and both of them have just included me in those families and welcomed me and like my aunt is wonderful about keeping me, she's just giving me so much information about the family, [00:19:00] so much education and includes me like in sharing photos, family just everything, past and present.

Haley Radke: I love that. You have that. That's really special. That's really special.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: It is. I'm lucky. I'm lucky.

Haley Radke: So you became a therapist. You're trained in IFS. And I have some questions related to that for you, and okay, so we'll say Internal Family Systems is that's what IFS stands for, and can you in brief for people who might not be familiar with that style of therapy, if you could just say what that means. And you might have heard how Kathy's already talking, like, all my parts and like you have like little references to IFS. . But yeah, just for, just like a little primer for people who maybe are unfamiliar.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah. I'll do my best. In IFS, we believe that we all consist of different parts. [00:20:00] And the reference I like to make is to the film Inside Out for those of you who have seen it, that is a great depiction of what it's like to have different parts of us that simultaneously coexist and have competing thoughts and feelings and perspectives, and not one of them represents or has to represent who we really are. There's no such thing because we consist of all of these different parts and we all also have what is called Self with a capital S and Self is our essence and we are born with it. It is fully intact when we are born and Self could be considered the internal attachment figure for parts and it's through the facilitation of a Self to part relationship between Self and parts that parts are able to heal and release the burdens that they took on as a result of [00:21:00] the traumas they experienced and be liberated. And that is what opens up space inside of us for us to experience things differently and start to do things differently in our lives.

Haley Radke: What a fantastic explanation. I think that's very clear. Okay, so as I was reading your chapter in Altogether Us, which is, I mean to me it's groundbreaking to have an adoptee talking about adoption issues finally in some kind of psychological text that experts are going to use and refer to and to like actually talk about us. So thank you for that. We'll talk about that more a little bit later too. However, what I was like, I got really stuck on is thinking about this Self, capital S Self, the core of us, And for adoptees so [00:22:00] many of us struggle with identity literally, who are we? And you mentioned the Self can just be fully hidden from us can you talk about that? Because reading that, it broke my heart, yeah.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah. Yeah. I'd be happy to talk about that. Because our trauma happens so early, you could say it starts happening in the womb, but certainly at birth or right after birth parts, our parts don't get to experience any of life knowing Self with access to Self before that trauma happens.

So if the trauma were to happen later, so this would be the case, perhaps for some adoptees who aren't relinquished at birth, but are removed later after abuse and neglect, maybe parts have a little bit of time to experience [00:23:00] some access to Self before the trauma happens. But in, for those of us who were relinquished right at birth, that doesn't happen.

And so parts, they never have an experience of getting to know Self and who Self is. And having Self there. And also, we're so young when, we are newborn when that happens. And it's not that Self is young, and this is where it gets harder to explain the concept of Self, but parts are young, and that, so they're not as, I'll say, resourced in their ability to access Self.

And what happens I believe what happens is that parts believe that Self must be bad, and [00:24:00] that's why we were relinquished. That Self at its core is bad, and that's what got us relinquished. And there it is, right at birth, right after birth, this this belief that sets in. It's not that Self is bad. No Self is bad. It's impossible for Self to be bad. But that's what parts think and they think it early and then they grow up believing that often. And Self is there. Self is still there. Parts just don't know that it's there or they believe Self had to be exiled. And so they exile Self to keep Self out so that Self doesn't get us abandoned again.

Haley Radke: Okay, so I'm hearing, I'm going to say self hatred, but little s [00:25:00] self, right? So that's what a lot of us would be familiar with, like a self hatred. And then the other thing, what I understand from IFS is everything like Self should be like our energy source and we should be living out of that. And that's what like a wholehearted life looks like. And so if we've pushed Self to the side or are allowing like other parts to lead life without accessing that, like that's like a lot of our problems, right?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Am I getting any of that right?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah, actually, I think that is a beautiful description of what happens. And the thing is, even if we are living our life like that, there are moments when we access Self, like we often liken Self to the sun behind the clouds. We even when the clouds are there, you know when it's a cloudy day, we know the sun is [00:26:00] still behind the clouds, it's still there. In IFS, we think of creating relationships with parts that are like the clouds in order to get the clouds to clear a little bit and open up some access to Self.

And so even if we have been living our lives like you described, there have still been moments I can promise you when you have accessed Self, you've experienced a little bit of access to Self. Some Self has come through, the sun has shown through the clouds. And we start to identify times like that and that becomes a foundational base for realizing, oh, I do have Self and it's not bad, in fact, it's good. And I would like to access that more often.

Haley Radke: So [00:27:00] much of probably for adoptees who are doing IFS work, parts work, you're examining that as you're meeting your parts and processing things. We're going to set aside IFS just for a second. When you communicate with other therapists and professionals about adoptee needs what are you finding is most effective? Because I want to give adoptee's language that they can use with their friends and family when they're like processing these things and everybody around them, still sees adoption as like the best thing ever. And in your chapter, you talk about this, like there's two traumas, right? There's a relinquishment trauma and there's also the trauma of being adopted. Those are two separate things. And I love how you describe it. So what are you finding is the [00:28:00] most effective way to explain that to the biologicals, as you say, or the kept, we were calling them the kept. So.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: The kept, Oh, I love that. Yeah. I want to say right off the bat, a lot of them are not going to get it, or at least some of them are not going to get it no matter what. No matter how we say it, and our culture has been so steeped in the adoptive parent centric perspective, that's the water in which everyone has swum, and it's hard for people to see things another way.

And I don't know that I have a great answer to this, but for me personally, focusing on the infant mother separation and that this is a baby, a child who lost their mother their mother, the person that is, [00:29:00] was, and is their mother, that for me is the place to start. And that's, that seems to be what people can connect with at least a little bit. Like I describe in the chapter, this client of mine who refers to her trauma or to herself as a survivor of infant mother separation. And I love that because that, I think that captures it. And, if people want to hurry to, but then, but then the adoptive mother was there, then, That's where I slow them down and I'm like wait a second.

You, you can't skip over the impact of the infant mother separation. Let's linger there. We need to stay on that. What would that, what do you think that would have been like for you? Kept person, [00:30:00] if that had been your child, if that had been your mother, what if your mother hadn't been able to keep you?

It makes me think about my husband and I watched Adoption Reckoning the other night, and, about South Korean adoptees, and when they were describing how workers would go into hospitals and maternity homes and snatch children, I said to my husband, because his first child was born with a major physiological issue that was corrected shortly after birth, but that required intensive hospitalization and care right after he was born, I said, can you imagine if a hospital worker had come to you and told you that Zach was gonna have to be sent somewhere else for care and that you were [00:31:00] That and then he would have to be adopted to get can you I don't know that I'm doing a good job of describing how it could have gone. But my husband got it. He could only imagine what that would have been like and apply that and that helped him to even further understand and I think he was already there thinking about that before I even said anything, but let's stay on that let's stay on that infant mother separation let's just focus on that a while and what it's like to lose one's mother at birth and I don't want to give short shrift to the fathers. There's another family here, too. There's a father who was lost and the whole paternal family, too.

Haley Radke: And the other part that we don't talk about that much is looking at adoption as a trauma. So being put in most cases say stranger adoption, and then saying, [00:32:00] okay, Self, now we are going to act as though we were born here.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Right. Exactly. Yeah, just like I described, in what the social worker said to my parents, just, treat her like you treat your sons, but I wasn't like them. And that burden as is the case for all of us, it fell on me to try to fit into their family and be like them and sacrifice, I'll say, myself, that's not exactly Self in the way that we think of it in IFS, but it's applicable.

Haley Radke: Yeah. This is the perfect part. So you have workshops where you talk about, not all parts are adopted. Can you talk about that? Because that's such a brilliant concept. And so, let's just say for people who haven't done IFS work, like we have all these parts, which you mentioned. Let's give some examples. So I might still have like my infant self,

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: abandoned baby.

Haley Radke: [00:33:00] Yeah, so I did a little IFS session with Ridghaus, which we recorded for Patreon, by the way. Goodness. What was I thinking? Anyway, and met a part who was like a protective part and was, protecting a, an age of Haley that something happened, bad, and so there can be all of these different parts. So with that being said, please go ahead.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah. So that's great. I love that you are naming some of the common parts that us adoptees have, that we adoptees have, like the abandoned baby. For me, one of the first parts I discovered was an eight year old who, so she was at that age where there's a shift, there's further cognitive development, and it's right around that age that we start to figure out, wait a second, in order for me to have been adopted first, someone else had to give me up, [00:34:00] and she thought that it was her fault.

That was one of my young parts that I discovered. We tend to have, or it's not uncommon for adoptees to have a people pleaser part. A chameleon part that figures out like what the rules are and norms are in any given group so that we can fit in. A part that likes to know what's going to happen and tries to predict what's coming so that they feel in control of that. A perfectionistic part that tries to do everything really well and be all put together.

Haley Radke: I don't relate to that one either. None of those.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: No. Not you, Haley. A caretaker part. So those are some of the common ones that we tend to have, any part that helps us fit and belong and be accepted and not rejected and abandoned.

And so one day I [00:35:00] was walking, I was just walking through my house and it literally just popped into my head. And not all parts get adopted. And I just paused and I thought, yep, like I just felt the truth of that and I kept going. I went on with my day and it stayed with me and that evening at dinner I mentioned it to my husband. Hey, this thought came to me today and I shared it and he got it. He is not an adoptee, but he is the son of an adoptee. And I started sharing it with other adoptees I know, and they would all do the same thing. They would start nodding like it resonated and that felt true to them. And so I knew I was onto something and I needed to flesh it out because my first instinct was that's it. That's all you need. That's what you need to know. Here it is, this [00:36:00] essential truth. Not all parts get adopted, but I started fleshing it out and exploring more about what that means and I did a workshop on it at the IFS conference that year and then I turned it into this workshop that I give about every other month and just speaking for myself personally, when that first came to me, it was significant because it was, it alerted me that there were parts of me that had not been impacted by relinquishment and adoption.

And it felt like such a relief to realize that. And for me, it was celebratory hooray, not all parts are adopted, not all parts experience that trauma. And these parts are available to me to tell me all this information about my innate gifts and, all that good stuff. They are, [00:37:00] as Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS might say some of the juiciest parts of me, of an adoptee.

Haley Radke: I think, just to pause there.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.

Haley Radke: That is so hopeful because I think a lot of us think our original me who I was supposed to be is lost forever and that can't be recaptured. And so this is a way of thinking about those things that's no, they're still there.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And in IFS, when we go through the process, there, there are a lot of steps to it and I won't go into all those. But one of the things we do is we find parts and they are usually in or around our bodies. We usually find them somewhere inside us or right around our body. And my experience has been that with these parts that did not get adopted, they can be farther away.

So they can feel farther away from [00:38:00] us, from our bodies, but they are still connected to us as though by an invisible string, an invisible thread. For me, it was hopeful, and it is hopeful, and I've learned in giving these workshops it's not the same for everybody, and everybody's system is different, and so it's not a positive for everyone that there are, to find the parts, or that there are parts that didn't get adopted.

There are some parts that didn't get adopted that are upset about that. Who feel left behind.

Haley Radke: I could see that as like, right? When, if your adoptive parents are like, rejecting this part of how you act or this way you are. Cause that's not like them.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Exactly.

Haley Radke: No one in their families is like that. That's not welcome here. So that's where we put away those, again, put away those parts of our identities in order to be safe and fit in.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Exactly. Yep. You got [00:39:00] it. You nailed it. And that's something I talk about in the workshop that is one of the reasons some parts don't get adopted because the adoptive parents don't adopt them. They reject those parts either overtly or inadvertently.

Haley Radke: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay, I don't mean to interrupt. Is there anything else that you want to tell us about that? I think just having that knowledge, I think really can. Free us a little bit and like maybe we do at some point go and explore that about ourselves.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.

Haley Radke: I'm totally drawn to IFS.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yay. I love that. Yeah. And it's not for everyone. And that's okay, too. All parts are welcome, as we say.

Haley Radke: I think, I don't know. The more we can give adoptees the sense of agency, the more empowered we are and we can take control of whatever our, quote unquote healing journey will look like.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's [00:40:00] right. Yeah. And I believe that the more we can connect with all of our parts. Those that were adopted and those that weren't, the more we know all of our parts, the more actually we can access and know Self.

It's through those connections, those Self to part relationships, that we do get a fuller, richer sense of who we fully are or, what has been called Self.

Haley Radke: Yeah, perfect. I love that. Thank you so much. I want to make sure to recommend your chapter in Altogether Us. It's called IFS and Adoptees, Healing Parts Burdened by Relinquishment Trauma.

And you talked about this in our interview, you mentioned it a little bit in here, you're in therapy and you're going to train your therapist on how to work with adoptees. How unfair. Now [00:41:00] folks, even if you're not going to an IFS therapist, you can recommend to your therapist that they read Kathy's chapter in this book to familiarize themselves a little bit more with what it looks like to work with an adoptee.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's right. And in fact that was the intent of the chapter and all the chapters in that book to write it for someone who may work with an adoptee and is not themselves an adoptee and doesn't have that personal experience.

Haley Radke: It's so good. You touch on all the things. I pointed out a few things during our conversation, but thank you so much. You mentioned my friend Reshma's, Dear Adoption work. You have quotes from that in here. You mentioned Adoptees On in your resource section. Thank you.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Oh, thank you. You're welcome and thank you. [00:42:00]

Haley Radke: I think it'd be so cool if you've taken Kathy's workshop, will you comment in our like social posts about this because I'd love to hear from folks who've taken it. It sounds really amazing. I haven't personally done that with you, but I know that you're unpacking things for folks that was in a really helpful way. So yeah.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: And I would love to have you in one of them. That would be awesome.

Haley Radke: Great. Okay.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: You should come.

Haley Radke: We'll make sure to tell people where to find out when the next one is before we wrap up. But what did you want to recommend to us?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: I'm laughing because you and I talked about this a little bit.

Haley Radke: I'm pressuring her. I'm pressuring her to recommend this. It's not fully under her. It's under duress. Okay.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's right.

Haley Radke: If you feel weird about it. Yeah.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: I in full disclosure, I will [00:43:00] name, that my husband, whom I mentioned, this is my second husband, is the son of an adoptee, and he made a film several years ago, this is actually how he and I met, called Father Unknown, about his and his father's journey to try to find his father. His father was born and adopted in Switzerland. His father actually spent the first three years of his life with his mother before she gave him up to a Swiss orphanage for many years and then reclaimed him when he was 12 and brought him to the United States. So trauma upon trauma.

And then David and his dad, gosh, more than a decade ago now, went back to Switzerland to try to find information on his birth father about whom his mother would never tell David's dad. I mentioned, I said to you, but I feel weird recommending that because he's my [00:44:00] husband and it was recommended a long time ago.

Yeah. By someone else and you graciously said that I could also recommend one other person.

Haley Radke: Yes, but can you wait one second?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. A Father Unknown is so powerful and I love that it captured sorry to be sexist and grossly, stereotyping. I love that it captures all of this male emotion on this journey. It's really amazing to see on screen and it has been out for a little while. It's on YouTube now.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.

Haley Radke: There's no barrier. Folks can get, we'll linked to it in the show notes and yeah, it's really beautiful. And I can't, I'm not going to spoil anything because I feel like you and I talking is like a really cute part too. Like it's like a, I don't know, I can't say that if once you watch it, you'll get it. But anyway, no [00:45:00] spoilers. Okay, now go ahead. Go ahead. What's your other recommendation?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: My other recommendation is Carl Smith's Instagram account because it is such a great source of all the news in the adoption world. I think that might be where I first read about the PBS frontline documentary on South Korean adoptees.

And it's also where I learned about president Biden's apology for, the Indian native American boarding schools in the United States. It's just a great source of all the latest news and I love that and I am deeply appreciative to Carl for staying so up on all of it.

Haley Radke: Amazing. We will link to that. Carl's handle is DECSmith50 but we'll make sure it's in the show notes for [00:46:00] you. And speaking of that, where can we connect with you online and find out about any of your future workshops or writings that you have out in the world? . .

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: The best place is Instagram @adopteetherapy.

Haley Radke: And what's your website?

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Adopteetherapy.com.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much, Kathy.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing part of your personal story and you've been a guest on several other shows. We'll link to a couple of episodes for folks to hear a little bit more. I was thinking especially of Adoptee Crossing Lines.

You're talking about with a couple of other adoptee therapists and really deep diving this. That's another great place to hear a little bit more from you.

Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: My pleasure.

One of the questions I get asked the most often by listeners [00:47:00] truly is are there any retreats for adoptees? And there's a few out there. I've never gone to one. So I'm not in like the habit of recommending them, but Kathy is having her first ever, not all parts get adopted retreat. And if you're listening, when this drops, you have a couple months and It is in May of 2025. So May 22nd to 26th of 2025. And she is having it in Colorado. We are going to have a link to all the info in the show notes. So if you're interested, you can get in touch with Kathy and she'll have more details. So in the show notes, we should have a link in there. And if not, it'll be coming shortly, I promise.

I am so excited for the opportunities that many of our fellow adoptee therapists are [00:48:00] making available to us as a community. And if we want those things to continue, we got to support them. Anyway thank you to Kathy. And part two to that is, I'm going to say it out loud just in case you didn't realize the gravity of what the work Kathy is putting into the world how many of us have gone to therapists who have no friggin clue about adoption trauma, adoptee issues, they gloss over adoption stuff, like it's just like nothing. And we have to educate them. Right? How many of us? So I've heard from so many people, it's like their number one reason why they're like never going to go to therapy again because they wasted all this money trying to quote unquote educate their therapist unfair.

And so Kathy is doing that work for us. And hopefully the ripple effect, like we might not get to see it [00:49:00] right away, but it's coming that so many more practitioners will be trained to be helpful to us as adoptees. I'm so thankful and so excited. My plan is to be back with you guys in January. So we'll have a little bit of a holiday break.

And let my team rest up and me, God, I know I keep saying, I was sick for two months. It's been a real trip trying to get back on track with everything. So I think we'll be back in January. No, like for sure we'll be back in January. We may have one more episode in December, probably in January, but just so you know, transparent, haven't decided quite yet.

But probably will be back in January with new episodes and some of the people I have booked. Oh my goodness. I'm so excited. We're celebrating Kathy and the work she's doing in the world. There are [00:50:00] so many adoptees publishing books next year, 2025, like a fantastic resources for us, fantastic academic work, poetry, memoir, like so many amazing things are coming.

And I'm really excited because I get to interview some of those fantastic folks who are putting that good work into the world. Look forward to that and thanks for listening. Let's talk again very [00:51:00] soon.