321 David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/321

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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. Today's guest is Dr. David McCarty-Caplan., a researcher, consultant, and a Colombian born adoptee. After becoming a father himself, David began searching for his biological family, leading to a reunion with his mother and siblings in Colombia, an experience that deepened both his personal journey and his professional research.

We talk about his scholarship. Including how families and communities can better support adoptees in developing a stronger sense of belonging. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast [00:01:00] newsletter, which you can find at adoptees on.com/newsletter. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased. To welcome to Adoptees On Dr. David McCarty-Caplan.. Welcome David.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Hi. I am so excited and honored to be a part of this. Thank you so much, Haley.

Haley Radke: I've spent the last week or so listening to interviews you've done and reading your research, and I'm so honored to get to speak to you. I'm very excited too.

So feelings mutual and I would love it if you would start off by sharing a bit of your story with us please.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: I was born in Bogota Colombia, 1981, and I was adopted at three weeks old by a American white Jewish family that at the time was [00:02:00] living in Michigan. I was taken from FANA, which was the orphanage I came from that I know a lot of your guests have actually come from as well.

But yeah, taken from FANA raised in Michigan for a period of time in Ann Arbor and then in Maryland, outside of DC for my young teen years. And yeah, life has been wild with regard to adoption. It's been such an amazing process to figure out how all of this fits in to the stories of our lives. I knew from the moment I was adopted that I was adopted.

It was never a question. I'm like five foot, five and brownish, and my dad is six two and white. So it was visibly very present. But also they shared it with me from a very young age that I was adopted. And that was a big part of my upbringing because when I grew up, there were actually about five or six other families in Ann Arbor that all adopted kids within a few years from my same [00:03:00] orphanage.

And so I had this kind of unique childhood of being raised in a community with a lot of white adoptive families, with Colombian adopted people. And so my early holidays were often spent with these families, and my earliest friends were from this group. And that was a huge thing for me to see other Colombian adoptees.

But oddly looking back on it now as a grownup, we never talked about adoption. It was just the silent elephant in the room always. And that's something I think about a lot. So I had adoptee community, but never really spoke about it. And I think that was a big part of my childhood, getting this reflection from people around me that adoption is something that needs to be kept quiet in some way, and that kind of followed me through my early years, especially in Jewish community, being raised in that community and feeling at times like I wasn't welcomed or I didn't fully belong, even though I really wanted to be part of that [00:04:00] community. And then I was raised up in that space and really fell in love with aspects of Jewish community and culture with regard to social justice and community support and the traditions and histories of it.

And that all informed kind of me getting into work related to social issues. I was a social worker at the beginning of my career in clinical practice working with emotionally disturbed youth and incarcerated populations. And I think that connects to adoption too, because I know so many of us get into helping professions, which is something I get so excited to talk about.

But yeah, I was just super fascinated by culture, identity development, and how systems do or do not support people as they're facing the challenges of very complex human lives. And after that, I ended up going to pursue my master's degree in social work and then went on to the PhD and started doing research.

And all [00:05:00] along the way, I was working in extremely challenging social context, but never adoption specifically up until about five years ago. I have two wonderful kids, Milo and Max, and when they were born, Milo is 12 now. When they were born, that's when I think things for me drastically shifted. Like my whole life turned upside down the moment I held my first child 'cause it was that moment, you have that. I had never had a biological relative and here I was holding my child and it's like a switch went off in my head about what that felt like. And it awoke in me a deep longing and curiosity that I've been, it's like the thread I've been pulling on ever since.

So I, I really feel like my adoption stuff has been coming out these past 12 years 'cause before that, I just told everyone I was fine. I told everyone I didn't need to know where my family was or who they were. [00:06:00] And the more I think about it now I just feel deeply that for me personally, that was a defense mechanism.

I was trying to protect myself against the grief. Now I know that for me personally. Processing that grief is actually my path to healing, and it's actually what's good for me and for my family and my children, for my next generation, for my bio family that I met a few years ago. So now I'm just trying to put all my effort into aligning these things where I came from, the work I do, trying to analyze systems and institutions that should be supportive of adoptive people of color more generally, and where they're needing to kick their game up.

And in so doing, hopefully building communities that really feel like they can be their full, complex, authentic selves without rejection.

Haley Radke: Can I ask you about this idea that you didn't really wanna search, you [00:07:00] didn't really wanna know, and you called it a defense mechanism?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Did you ever have like thoughts come to the surface during those years about search or wondering?

And just outwardly, you said to people, no, I'm not interested. Or were you just genuinely you thought I'm not interested. You never really had surface things and now looking back you're like, oh, maybe I did have something bubbling under.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Oh, it was definitely both. It depended on the point in life that I was at. The first thing that popped to mind when you mentioned that is a couple years ago, I was looking through some old papers that my, my adoptive mom had for me from like my childhood. And one of the things I found was this like old notebook of things that I wrote when I was in second grade. You know those like big lined papers where you like, we're learning how to write words out and there's like a blank space.

You can feel it, it's

Haley Radke: wait, can I tell you I have a notebook like this? Where a teacher noted, like Haley doesn't leave [00:08:00] enough space between words, and they, the tip is like to put a finger space in between and literally put your finger in between writing. And so then from that point on, I have these giant gaping spaces in my said, I can picture exactly what you're talking about.

I love that.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah. So I can feel it and smell it, but I found this paper and it blew my mind 'cause I was probably seven or eight at the time. And it's, it's just a few lines and at the top of the lines there's a blank space where I was supposed to draw what I was writing about.

And in the drawing you can see. Some grownup figure, putting a crying baby either into or out of a bassinet and another group of grownups crying, right? That's the drawing. I'm not a hundred percent sure who the people are, but then in the lines it says, I was adopted from Colombia. I do not know who my mother is. I don't know if she's alive anymore. And that makes me cry just thinking about it [00:09:00] now. I was eight and that was what I was writing about. And the thing that trips me out the most about it was at the bottom of the page, there's a happy face sticker and a pen written line from my teacher, very well intentioned teacher who I still love to this day.

And what she wrote was, aren't you so lucky for having the family you have now? Like that's the message I got. I have evidence of it, which really is a lot to process. So yes, I think I was consciously trying to figure it out and was acting in ways to please others around me or to present in a way where I didn't have to feel like my sadness or grief was too much.

And then I think it just got to be part of me through so many years that then it became subconscious and I just thought I was fine. But there are telltale signs. Like even before I wanted to find my family, [00:10:00] when I would talk about adoption, I would weep. It would just come outta me and it's, I feel like that's my body telling me to go there. It's unprocessed love, unprocessed grief, and so I've really been trying to embrace the tears too, because I feel like I wasn't listening to them all the time.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. And I wanted to ask you about this 'cause I've heard you talk around this idea on a couple of other podcasts.

And I think I'm one of those people who absolutely have stigmatized adoptees for saying they're in the fog or they're not outta the fog yet, or, that language. And now we have the new adoptee consciousness model language we can use as well. But I don't know, like I, I don't know. I'd love for to hear your thoughts on that language.

Like we don't wanna be prescriptive over anyone's story or process. [00:11:00] And I also see yeah, a lot of people don't wanna think about it for a long time, and hopefully they die happy. Lucky you.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Boy, wouldn't that be great?

Haley Radke: So I'd love to hear your thoughts around that.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Oh man. I just remember being earlier in my path and receiving what felt like judgment from another adoptee that I was really trying to open up to, and it hurt.

To be told essentially that I wasn't far enough along yet, and I've said this before, I don't think that person was wrong, cause clearly I'm much farther now than I was before, but it was something about the tone or the language that really stung because I was all nerves out sharing what I was thinking.

So for me, now, I have that experience in my mind all the time when I talk about adoption because I just think it's so important. [00:12:00] We as adoptees that are speaking about adoption, welcome anyone in who's coming from an adoptee experience with a true honoring of where they are in the moment. That could be somewhere totally different than we are.

And what I would rather do is focus on owning my experience and my story as my individual experience and state as clearly as possible. I hope my story or our conversation or my experience, I hope it gets you thinking. I hope it invites you to have conversation with me about where you're coming from. I hope in the vulnerable way, I hope to present myself that it encourages you also to feel safe to share wherever you're at.

And if you don't want to talk but you wanna listen, that's cool. If you want to tell me everything about your life, that's cool. If you want to find your family [00:13:00] someday, let's go there. If you feel like that's not something you need at all. Cool. I just want you to feel like adoptees have your back.

Haley Radke: Yeah. It's a, it's lonely enough. It's lonely enough being adopted, that to pile on. And I totally admit. I've certainly used language like that in the past, and I try to be more open and aware of that damage that does now.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: And I think also the language, that's a key thing too though, to acknowledge when you make a mistake or when the language is limited.

Because so much of the language in this world and other worlds I've worked in is fraught with terms that are inadequate or things that change over time. So again, I think it's okay to use the language we have. And if it's received in a way that is a hurt or an ouch situation, like that's where I hope we have the grace to process with like kindness, that restorative justice piece is something I really am excited about in [00:14:00] building adoptee spaces is like how do we deal with the things that we do that might harm one another or hurt one another? 'cause we really are trying to support and build our community.

Right?

Haley Radke: Oh, definitely. Definitely. And as someone who's doing it publicly from a mic, and I'm not necessarily interacting one-on-one with all the folks that hear me say those things, you wanna hear the evolution of Haley can start at episode one.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Episode one, yeah. You're in that rough place. It's really hard to have have people observe you as you go through this process, as an adoptee. I was thinking about that today. Just how many eyes and ears have been listening to how you have processed things over years. And I just, I don't know. It's just a lot to have on your shoulders and I imagine that there are moments where you wanna take something back or change the way was something was said, but I don't know. I just am. I'm very impressed by [00:15:00] the way you hold space for people.

Haley Radke: Thank you. You know what I think about, I'm glad people can see my evolution over the years, and I remember I had a guest on pretty early on who was a blogger and she talked about how when she first started blogging, she was that like stereotypical happy adoption story stuff on her blog. And that's kinda what she put out in the world. And she said, she was like, I never wanna take that down so people can see the evolution and I've appreciated that. And anyway,

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Oh my gosh. Yeah. That, that's so valuable. I actually did, my first podcast was with an organization I work with and I love called Jewtina and it was a couple years before I decided to look for my family. I was deep in adoption processing in my mind, but I hadn't gotten to the bio family stuff. And that entire podcast is heartfelt and true.

And [00:16:00] also I talk about not wanting to find my family and how that doesn't matter to me. And I look back on it now and I'm like, I'm so glad that exists. I want that to be out there because human development, human change is important to note, especially for communities that have a history of having their stories be so uncomplex. Like we don't get enough depth to our stories, and so it's good to have these touch points over time.

Haley Radke: So can we go to that? You have your first child and something opens up in you, and when did you become aware that you actually wanted to find family? If you could. If it was possible.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: I think it was maybe the third minute that my child was born.

Haley Radke: Really?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: At least the first thoughts of it. That's when it came to my mind. And then I was scared. I was like essentially scared for the next eight years to actually do the thing, but it was really, it was holding Milo. It was holding my [00:17:00] child and the first thought was, oh my God, I'm a dad.

Oh God, I'm in so much trouble. This is such a big thing. And then it was like this feeling of deep love and I'm like, wow, this is what this feels like. And I'd been thinking, I knew what love felt like, but I didn't until that for me.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: And then the next thought was, something must have been really wrong for my mom to give me up.

Right.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: That was the second thought. And the third thought was not mad at her. And then it was like this, the follow up was like. I wish I could ask her. I wish I could ask her what that was like.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Are you able to articulate, I'm sorry I'm poking at painful things here. You just tell me if you're ready to move on. I'm sorry.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Oh, I'm good.

Haley Radke: Okay. Are you able to [00:18:00] articulate. What the fear was in searching, like what does it mean if you're gonna be open to searching?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah, I know the answer to that because many years later, after my first child was born, I'm in Colombia, I decided to go there. It was my second time there, and on this trip I was deciding to bring my kids to connect to my homeland and to have another touchpoint for myself and my wife. To be there when somewhat unexpectedly. We ended up finding my family, which is bananas.

Haley Radke: That,

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: and so it was, I had no preparation.

Haley Radke: Okay. That's a real skipping over like unexpected.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah. Oh,

Haley Radke: There's much, how did you unexpectedly find your family?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Okay, so the short version is. I was planning to go to Colombia with my family. I was thinking [00:19:00] maybe I will look for my bio family. And then I got scared and I decided, nope, nevermind. I'm just gonna have it be a family trip for us to connect to the country. And then two weeks before we went, a dear friend of mine at Adoption Mosaic put me in touch with a searcher, an investigator Elena from Healing Puentes who is also connected to Adoption Mosaic and she basically put the word out there into the internet inter sphere to she had some information from me and basically the week before I went to Colombia, she found somebody that may have been a relation to me. I thought it was a cousin. It turns out it was one of my sisters and the day I was flying to Colombia, like I was in the airport getting on the plane to go to Colombia at 1:00 AM from LAX with my family.

And I'm walking onto the plane and I get an email from another one of my sisters saying, who are you? What [00:20:00] is going on? I heard you're looking for us. What's the deal? And so I wrote a quick email back, sent some pictures of the family, just I don't know if you're the person I'm looking for. I think we may be related.

I didn't say I'm coming to Colombia right now 'cause I didn't wanna freak her out. But I sent the email and I'm like hoping. I get off the plane six hours, seven hours, whatever it is, later, and there's four or five emails from my sister saying with like pictures of the family, like I found out I had five siblings the minute I landed in Colombia.

I found out what my mom looked like with pictures when I landed in the country and then the next week of being in Colombia, which was supposed to be just like vacation, turned into me hearing my mother's voice for the first time on a WhatsApp message and doing a DNA test and sending people to do a DNA test for her, and then waiting to see if it's really her, and then getting the confirmation that it was her, and then the next day I saw her [00:21:00] in person.

Like it was so bananas, the emotional upheaval of these days. And to answer your initial question, the night before I was gonna meet my mother, I was terrified. Like I'd just gotten the paperwork that it was her. And I remember saying to my wife the fear is, what if she doesn't want me? What if she doesn't want to talk to me?

What if she didn't want me in the first place? What if she's upset that I'm here? What if I cause her more problems? What if it goes poorly? What if? What if it's scary for me? I was just scared that she wouldn't want the connection that I was hoping to find, and it was almost too much, but I did it and I was wrong. And it was wonderful and heartbreaking. [00:22:00] I'm really proud I did it.

Haley Radke: Thank you for naming those things. And I think of your responsibilities like you're on a family vacation and your kids are there, and you're still having to do real life while your world is shaking, and that's really difficult.

It's that reminder that search, reunion processing, adoption, failing. That all happens while real life is still going. Real life's still going. The people sitting behind you on the plane don't realize. You're like, oh my God, if you can email me back for six hours, like no one else knows. You're going through that. It's heavy.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah, that reunion trip was so much to process and there's an added angle which like most people don't know, which is at the end of the week of being there with my family, I was then on a week long trip with the organization I mentioned that I work with called Jewtina, [00:23:00] which is all about the intersections of Latin and Jewish community and culture.

And part of the crazy part of my story is. I got called up by my dear friend who runs that organization and she was like, hey, we're thinking of doing these international trips and the first place we might wanna go to is Colombia. Are you interested? And I was like, I was literally just thinking about going with my family.

So that sealed the deal that I was gonna go was this additional professional experience. So I'm there with the day I met my mother was actually the day after my family flew home and I joined this group of international Jewish Latinos traveling to Colombia, and that's like real life. I was there. I was actually, I'd led a three hour session on adoption in Colombia with the group.

The day I found out my mom was my mom. I'm sitting on a bus going through Bogota with these 12 [00:24:00] new friends when I like get the text message with the fact that my mom is my mom, like the DNA test. And then I had to teach this class for three hours, just weeping. And everyone there is wait, you're telling me this happened like now?

Like right now? And I'm like. Yeah. Yeah. This happened. This is happening as I am teaching, as yeah. Life. But I had just had my family there, my kids, my, wife were holding me down. The people I was with on this trip were so warm and so loving, and so supportive. They celebrated me.

When I got home from meeting my mom that night, they were literally cheering for me. And it just helps so much when you know you're in the right community spaces to be going through hard stuff.

Haley Radke: Wow. Thank you for including us in the Inner circle to talk about that. Like I am, feel [00:25:00] honored. I also, it made me like excited for you to be the person doing research on adoptees. And I was like, okay. He knows the right questions to ask adoptees. And you wrote this whole white paper, we'll link to it. We'll talk about and recommended resources a little more. About Jewish adoptees who are adoptees of color and their experiences.

And as I was going through it, something I noted that I was like, oh, this is really interesting. I wanna hear you talk more about this 'cause I think this is really critical information, especially for adoptive parents of children of color adoptees who had opportunities to connect to their race or culture, had a higher sense of belonging. Can you talk about that, David?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah. Yeah. That was one of many, I think, super valuable findings of the study. There [00:26:00] was another piece that also connected with that, which I think is super valuable, which is that also Jewish adoptees of color that know other adoptees of color have a greater sense of belonging.

Haley Radke: Oh, good.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: And so there's this beautiful piece about that. There's something really special. Let me back up and start from like the negative, like the really, the, like the real bad part about my study is I found that 75% of Jewish adoptees have no strong sense of belonging in their Jewish community, even though the Jewish community to a disproportionate degree adopts kids into their community, particularly kids of color. 75% of us don't feel a sense of belonging in those communal spaces, which is just heartbreaking. And that resonates. That's, that was my experience. I felt at times welcomed, but generally just a great sense of unease in the community as an adopted person of color.

But the beautiful piece is then statistically. Being able to [00:27:00] show that the things that change, that likelihood of belonging, increasing belonging, or decreasing belonging. There's some really beautiful things in there. Number one is knowing other adoptees. If you knew more adoptees, particularly adoptees of color, your sense of belonging grows in those spaces.

And then the second piece is, do you have touch points for your cultural heritage? Is the communal space you're in acknowledging your cultural identity? Is it giving you a space to see yourself in those arenas? And that also increases the sense of belonging. And I just love those findings because they just tell me that we a need each other.

We need to see each other. We need to be in communication with each other. And we need to be building things with each other. And also we need to have communities that value where we came from and the things that we lost, the grief that we've had to absorb. And if there's [00:28:00] an acknowledgement of who we are and where we come from, inevitably in my mind, that's like our grief is being seen, our identities are being seen.

We don't have to hide it and pretend that we're fine. Pretend that. I don't miss my homeland, that I ache when I can't connect to Latinos in the way I want to. If there's some piece that's allowing me to reconnect and pull back those lines of lineage that you've talked about in the past it's so beautiful.

And these are structural things that, not just Jewish communities, all communal spaces, Christian, Jewish, whatever schools organizations, institutions. Like if you can be celebrated and seen in your authentic wholeness. Then you'll feel welcomed and belonging in that space. At least you'll be more likely to.

Haley Radke: Do you think of like little David knowing all these other adoptees from your same orphanage? And like you guys didn't talk about it. Do you think I [00:29:00] get it, do my kids enjoy when I make them watch something and say, tell me what you thought about this adoption theme in it 'cause I'm recording about it for a podcast.

They, no, they don't enjoy that. We have kids around the same age. Oh, there's no, they're not that excited. But so looking back now as a parent, are there things you think that could have been helped, like to facilitate those conversations and friendship where it's just oh man, we just weren't that interested. I dunno.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: I think it's a mixture like kids, I've got kids now and I know there are times when I want to dig in on big questions and they're like meh. Like they're like just not feeling it for whatever reason, and that's okay. I don't think it should be pressured. I think the challenge that I see though, which was my own experience, was when I asked my parents about this many years later, like both with that community that I was raised in for a short period of time, and also the fact that we traveled to many Latin American countries but [00:30:00] never went to Colombia.

It feels weird to me that they made those choices of just, it's like we were close, we were proximal, but not actually in the thing that I needed to address. And with no judgment of my parents 'cause they were doing the best they could. They say that they were waiting for me to tell them that I wanted to dig in on these things.

And that is, I think, a very common experience for a lot of adoptees, particularly my generation. Your generation. And I also think that it's a fundamental disservice to the adoptees to expect the weight of that proactive approach to addressing adoption challenges should come from the child because there's this tension between relationships and authentic expression, and I think a lot of adoptees, myself included, all of the fear I had of talking about adoption and the grief [00:31:00] that I was experiencing, the way the society around me talked about adoption was like, oh, aren't you so grateful? Aren't you so lucky to have been adopted? My parents thought I was a happy go-lucky kid, and in many ways I was, because I think I was afraid to talk about the depth of my experience for fear that it might put into jeopardy my relationship with my parents or anyone else I loved.

And so if you're waiting for a kid to tell you they need to go do these things, but for the child to talk about these things in their mind might mean a risk or loss of the people that they're most terrified of losing. Now that they've already lost a family, they're not gonna tell you all the time that they want to go do these things.

And if they do. Good on those kids. Those are some brave ass kids, right? But it just, I don't think it should be expected to have the weight of that be the child's responsibility. I think the parents should [00:32:00] have touchpoints regularly where they bring it up and they say, take it or leave it. This is what's on my mind.

This is important to me because I care for and love you unconditionally. I wanna make sure you know that I am okay talking about this thing. And if a kid picks it up, great. And if they don't, also great. It's the parents' work to stay in that lane. You know what I mean?

Haley Radke: Oh yeah. And I totally agree, and I think it's one of those things where we get this messaging from our teachers. Good job. Aren't you so lucky in writing on your little assignment. And we get this messaging from our TV movies, and we get it from our parents, our adoptive parents, who by not talking about it. We can get the sense of it's not safe to talk about this.

They don't wanna talk about it. And kids are very perceptive. They're very perceptive. [00:33:00] And that's, those are the messages I got. Yeah.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah. And I think it's even more complex when you add in interracial issues in adoptive families 'cause. There's just added layers to being a person with darker skin tone, and it's harder, the darker your skin is to find places and spaces that are gonna be willing to talk to you about what it's like to be in a society that doesn't acknowledge the hardships that come with racial identity.

And then to, in your own family, have no mirroring no, no models of what that experience looks like, but to know it. To know it your whole life, that there's some something there that is different that is deserving of attention because it's hitting your heart like you can feel it. And I think a lot of white adoptive parents really struggle talking about race and identity in ways that can hold space for the [00:34:00] death of grief and identity challenges that adoptees experience. But I know they can do it 'cause I work with them on it. Like they can do it. They just have to be bold enough to sit in the discomfort of it for a while.

Haley Radke: Can you tell me after all your many in-depth interviews with fellow adoptees who had maybe a similar experience to what you did? How did that change you?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: It just got me so excited. It's just, I was just so excited. I was looking for these people my whole life. Like my particular study was on Jewish adoptees because that's where I come from. But I just see it as like a big picture thing. I think a lot of adoptee communities are also overlapping with religious communities. And but for me, it was like I used to introduce myself in Jewish spaces as the only Colombian adoptee, Colombian adopted Jew you will ever meet. I used to say that as like a joke when I introduced myself, but I [00:35:00] was scared that it was true. And then I do this study and I found I had over a hundred people participate in this study and I interviewed over 30 of them, and it just felt like each interview I did was like finding, just like finding family. It felt like I've found people who I've been looking for, who may have been looking for me, every one of my interviews said that they'd never been asked about what it's like to be adopted and Jewish. Every single one. And I show up and I get to ask these questions like, what an honor to be able to find these people. Let them know they're not the only one to ask them what it's like. And so for me it just, it's fuel. It just made me wanna do more. So I'm very excited about next steps and building and [00:36:00] reconnecting, and hopefully creating futures for adoptees so that they don't have to feel like they're the only ones ever again.

Haley Radke: I relate to that so much so much. I remember my first interviews where folks had never shared their story before and it was like, oh my God, I feel like I'm like treading on holy ground here. And that feeling of I'm not alone. Like it's such a relief because you just I spent so much of my life feeling crazy. And I don't mean that in an ableist way. Like I genuinely thought there was something wrong with me. Like totally could not connect. And I'll tell you, meeting other adoptees like changed my life. Truly. Yeah,

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah. And now I have these connections and others like just finding adoptee spaces has been everything for me in the past five or so years.

Just having people you can call on your birthday when your birthday [00:37:00] feels, like when you just don't know why you're feeling funky on this day or that day. And like I've got people, I've got people with me that I can reach out to where I don't have to explain myself. And I hope that they can reach out to me and feel like they don't have to explain themselves and we can just vibe and yeah just be in space, in peaceful space with one another. 'Cause I'm gonna need it the rest of my life, so I gotta keep working on building this. Like we, you also are building this and it's just amazing to see what exists now in comparison to when I was a child. And it's just exciting to see where we're going.

Haley Radke: Before we do recommended resources, I have a couple last questions for you. One of which is, did you say that you are working with adoptive parents and how do you do that? I cannot. I can't. Is there hope there if i'm tired. I'm so tired. [00:38:00]

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yeah. Let me ask a clarifying question. Do you mean like it's too hard to work with the adoptive parents 'cause they don't get it sometimes? Is that kind of the vibe?

Haley Radke: I get a lot of email. I get a lot of dms even though my inbox is closed. Somehow they just keep coming in and it's the majority is like adoptive parents trying to ask for free labor from me to answer their questions, and I'm like, oh yeah, you know what? I have 320 plus episodes you can listen to. Yeah. Do the

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: work.

Haley Radke: I have pointed you to hundreds of books and documentaries and other. Why are you still asking me these questions? So anyway, thank you for doing that, David. Thank you for answering our questions. And is there any hope there? Because not the one's emailing me.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Okay. So there's hope and then there's definitely [00:39:00] places where I'm like, I don't have the energy, nor do I want to be in this conversation. So it's it's honestly, it's finding people that are really willing to dig into the self exploration that is needed. To support their adopted children.

And that's not everyone. It also as like a consultant in these spaces. Yeah, this is labor. So you should pay me for this, and that's important because it honors my time and my expertise, and it shows that you're not expecting things like that, that, that taking aspect of what adoptive parents often can look like or present as is frustrating. So there for me, it's yes, I know stuff about this. I really do believe in your ability to support your kids better. Let's dig in. But often the first place to dig in is actually inward. And [00:40:00] if they're not, honestly, I work in a lot of like anti-racist, like racial equity spaces.

A lot of it is deconstructing white supremacist culture, examining racial biases, examining the like tropes or narratives that they had around adoption before they got into this. And that tells you real quick who's ready to ride with you and who's not really ready. And so there's some testing that goes on in the early conversations to get a sense of is this a place where I'm actually willing to put my time and energy and do they hear me?

And sometimes I get really excited when the answer to that question is yes, because I know my parents have come a long way and they're trying their best and they're working real hard and they make mistakes, but they keep showing up. They keep trying and it's something I love so much about them, and that's what I hope other families will have as well.

That sense that you're gonna mess up. But it's about showing up [00:41:00] again and trying again without ego, without with humility. But it's real hard. It's a lot easier to counsel and support adoptees. That's all beautiful.

Haley Radke: Bless you for doing that hard work on behalf of those of us. Who choose not to.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Hey. And that's understandable. You do. You Haley.

Haley Radke: I am, I am. Okay. Last question. I love this idea that you were talking about and you have expertise in this, like seeing the systems and just the structural part of how systems support currently the structure of adoption. And when you think about that, this is a really big question.

I know we don't have that much time. When you think about that, what are the things that you see upstream that really need to change in order to support family preservation, adoptee rights, whatever you wanna talk about, just in terms of [00:42:00] systems, just give us a broad. High level.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Okay. That's a huge question. It's also like one of my favorite things to talk about, like I come from social work, so it's all about like person and environment systems analysis, like deconstructing systems of oppression. So this is always on my mind, right? The thing that I am working on most these days is looking at existing systems for people that have already been adopted.

And whether or not those systems are creating spaces that allow them to feel fully seen, heard, and valued. So I'm talking about schools, I'm talking about workplaces. I'm talking about community organizations and religious spaces, religious institutions or communities. And so for me, in those places, there are really important conversations that need to be had about policy like what are the rules that govern these spaces, and do they allow people to be their full, [00:43:00] authentic selves? I think it's really important to understand the narratives that influence these spaces, like the kind of unwritten social policies, like the things around aren't you so lucky? Aren't you so grateful?

Like hearing that all the time in school was really weird for me. And in Jewish spaces, like the idea that adoption is a mitzvah or a good deed, or in Christian spaces, that it's a benevolent act like you're doing God's will. Or in other religious spaces where the idea might be like, oh, you were chosen.

You were chosen by God to be taken into this new family. And these are systems of oppression in my mind for an adoptive person because all of those expectations, all the policies that don't allow us to dig in on identity or race, all the narratives that structure adoption, understanding around benevolence or gratitude or god's will silence us from being able to [00:44:00] express the hurt and the grief and the questions that we have being disconnected from our lands of origin, our ancestors, our racial community, our cultural community. So for me, it's like I love analyzing institutions and systems on policy levels, on education levels, on cultural levels, so that we can pull apart all these threads.

So that adoptee voices can feel like they can be safe enough to be shared. And then hopefully that's the first step, as we said, feeling like you can connect to your community, finding other people feeling like you're heard. That leads to greater sense of belonging.

Haley Radke: I love that. Good answer. I am assuming that folks who've heard our discussion do want to hear more of your research because you're just a really fascinating person and I can tell you're just so thoughtful.

And you have access to, people have [00:45:00] open source access to Shades of Belonging, which is your research. And I also watched you give a presentation on it along with a couple of subjects.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Oh, you did oh, that's so great.

Haley Radke: I did.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: That's so great. Thank you.

Haley Radke: We'll, yeah, we'll link to that in the show notes as well for folks because you know there's something through having the researcher walk you through their results and hear from some of the participants. I thought that was really special. So we'll make sure that's available for people. But thank you so much for doing that work. Like good for you. I'm just cheering you on.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Thank you. I think it's super, like that's something I also focus on a lot is I come from academia, but I don't want any research that I do to be disconnected from community or applied practical value.

So I don't want to, I do publish peer reviewed studies of course, yet that's, of course, that's what we're supposed to do. But like more than anything, the thing I loved about that video is it's [00:46:00] conversation about the findings and two of the people that participated in the study were part of the presentation. It's so accessible. It's so real and that's how I hope my research is in the future. I want it to be accessible. I want it to have practical value, and I don't want it to be overly complex or ivory towery, you know?

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. I think you hit the mark. So I hope we see more from you. David, what do you wanna recommend to us?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: There's so many things. There's so much good stuff happening. Okay. So I am a huge fan of Gabor Mate. I am actually just now rereading his book, The Myth of Normal, which I think is just an outstanding piece of work for a variety of reasons, and I look at that work through the lens of adoption and it's amazing.

It talks so much about relationship versus authenticity. It talks a lot about the connections between childhood trauma and [00:47:00] mental health challenges and physical ailments for those that have struggled with big T or little T. Trauma over time. Talks a lot about parenting and parenthood. I just love that book because I feel like it's deeply felt and helps me so much understand where I come from in a way. So I love that piece. Other resources, your podcast is like, as I said, it changed my life. I think often about episodes that really mean something to me, and I often recommend that there's two episodes that I got a double shout out.

I hope it's not like overdoing it 'cause I'm on the podcast, but like the one about the seven attachment challenges that adoptees face. That was a life changer for me.

Haley Radke: Pam Cordano.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Honestly. Yes. And I'm a just a, I'm a huge fan of Pam Cordano. And then the other one, which I heard more recently was the one about The Nothing Place also with Pam Cordano. And the whole thing about how attachment theory is a theory that does not account for adoptee experience blew my mind. And that's a systems [00:48:00] level issue. If we have therapy that we're all supposed to go to, but the tools that therapy is using to address our needs is actually miscalibrated.

Then we're working with a systems deficit. So yes, those are two huge things. Adoption Mosaic. Another organization I work with is a huge resource. I absolutely adore that organization. I consult for them and I've been like a community member with them for a long time. Astrid Castro is also brilliant. And another adoptee from Colombia. Yeah, there's just a lot of good stuff out there.

Haley Radke: Totally. Thanks for shouting those out. I'm gonna name one more before you tell people where they can find you. You were on an episode of a podcast that I don't know if I've talked about very recently called Labor of Love.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Yes. Oh my gosh. I can't believe I forgot that one. Yes. I love them.

Haley Radke: So their tagline is A podcast for Bipoc adoptees navigating parenthood, and you're, we'll link to your interview with them in the show [00:49:00] notes for folks. It's just, it made me fall in love with David. You just,

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: that's so sweet.

Haley Radke: Your kids are. Lucky to have you. Lucky. They should be grateful.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: They should be. No I mess up far more than the podcast would suggest.

Haley Radke: Oh same here. But we, I'm, I know that listeners will go have, check that out. It's a great podcast. Lots of good resources there. Okay. Where can we connect with you online and follow your work?

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Oh yeah. Okay. I would love if people wanted to visit shadesofbelonging.com. That's an emerging place where I will be putting out future research where my existing research already exists around Jewish adoption. But honestly, I feel like that's expanding.

It's expanding beyond just Jewish community, so just really anyone that's interested in exploring community and adoption, particularly transracial adoption. That's where you can find me shadesofbelonging.com. On Instagram, it's @shadesof belonging and yeah, also I work with Jewtina y Co.. I'm their [00:50:00] Director of Research and Evaluation, so people can find me there.

And I just am really excited to connect with anyone because I believe that our healing must be collective and must come through community. And so I think it's everything that you're doing as far as like how do we connect to each other is such valuable work. So if anyone who's listening to this wants to figure out ways to get involved or participate or just connect to other people thinking about these things, yeah, find me. 'Cause I would be excited to talk to you.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing with us today.

David McCarty-Caplan, Ph.D.: Thank you so much, Haley. This really oof. What a day. I'm just buzzing. Thank you.

Haley Radke: If you're listening, when this episode just released, July, 2026 is going to be my 10th anniversary of the show, and I keep reflecting, it's just like one of those years where you're like, think back and all of [00:51:00] the memorable people I've had on the show and just the honor of having these deep conversations and sharing them with y'all.

It's just. It's just been just the honor of my life, truly, and this conversation is going to just be up there with my, some of my favorites. I loved this conversation. I hope you did too. And folks that love adoptees like I do and really want to do research and serve and, get to the bottom of how we can fix things and help our peers and help younger adoptees like. Those are my people. So I feel grateful that I could share this conversation with David and with you, and I'm just feeling especially thankful for all the [00:52:00] guests who've been brave enough to share their stories with us here on Adoptees On.

Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

320 Erick Wolfmeyer

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/320

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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. Today's guest is Erick Wolfmeyer, a contemporary quilt artist known for his bold, large scale textile works. Erick shares experiences of being relinquished twice by his mother, their fraught reunion, and the DNA discovery that upended his identity yet again.

Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter, and we wrap up with recommended resources for you. And as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's [00:01:00] listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Erick Wolfmeyer. Welcome Erick.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Thank you, Haley. Thanks for having me. I'm so honored to be here.

Haley Radke: I cannot wait to hear your story. And you have an unusual skill, and I'm so excited to hear about it. So please, why don't you share your story with us a little?

Erick Wolfmeyer: I always say my story started probably around the age of three to five. And one thing before I even say anything about my story, I think in the, in our community, we often conflate our search with our story. And while our search is part of our story, our search is certainly not our entire story. There's the semantics of what is my story? When we ask that question, what are we really asking?

And I think really what we're talking about, and I doubt people that don't have our experience are asked this question as often as we are and have to have our elevator [00:02:00] pitch about our whole life story in a nutshell. But we get really practiced I think at telling it. I think, I remember when I was dating in college, I was always feel very compelled to tell them at least something to know so they know like the person sitting in front of you is not the entire story, so I've been telling and refining that story for years. And one thing I've also learned is that telling your story, people are just innately curious, right? And, but telling our story can be certainly puts us in a point of vulnerability and can be very dangerous in a sense that if we don't know our audience, it really opens us up to micro and macroaggressions no matter how well intended the listener is.

And I've just learned over the years to be very protective of my story and know that no one deserves my story. That it is, an honor that I would bestow it on them if [00:03:00] it seems appropriate. And I'm just a lot more careful in how I tell the story and who I tell it to. But I do like to share it because I think it's all part of folks who have not had this experience understanding really what it is and what it isn't.

'Cause as you well know, part of the reason we're here is to fight against the false narrative that exists around this experience called adoption. And can I ask you a favor before I tell you this story? I wanted to start with a quote.

Haley Radke: Certainly.

Erick Wolfmeyer: That I felt like is gonna really set the tone for where I'm coming from. And it is old and dusty. It's from 99 to 55 BC so it's a little old. It's from a man named Lucretius and he, there's a wonderful book by Lucretius called The Nature of Things, and this is a passage from there that I like. "Lastly, in construction, if the carpenter's rule is bent or if the square is warped on which you have your measurement, [00:04:00] or if the level anywhere staggers off even by a jot, all of the structure must be built on crooked lines, the lot ramshackle, tumble down walls leading out or in and all out of whack. Now part of the rickety shack is to fall, and now part of it does collapse and all because it was betrayed by faulty measurements when its foundation was being laid. Likewise, your reasoning concerning things is built to skew if founded on sensations that are off from plum and true."

Haley Radke: I can see how that might relate to what we're gonna discuss.

Erick Wolfmeyer: We'll just let that sink in for a little bit. Some of my earliest memories around this are, I know earlier than age five because the family that raised me, we moved at around a certain age. So I know before the move. After the move, and it was before the move and that was in 73 I think. But anyway, I remember sitting in the bathroom.

The bathroom was the [00:05:00] only house or only room in the house that had a lock on the door. And I would go in the bathroom again. I was anywhere from three to five years old. And I would lock the door and I would sit on the toilet with my pants on. I wasn't actually gonna the bathroom. And I would do ESP with my mother because I don't know if you remember the movie we're slightly different ages it looks like, but there's a movie, a Disney movie called Escape to Witch Mountain, and I've watched it recently and it's actually has a why it makes sense why I would've liked it at that age in terms of, there's a lot of themes that are about separation and whatnot, but, and family connection. But I would sit on the toilet and I would do ESP with my mother, and I would just send her little messages and say, I want you to know that I'm okay. I'm okay. Where are you? And I would just basically, that was the gist of it, as I remembered, is I wanted her to know that I was okay, if she were worrying about me the next big thing I remember related to this was the Series Roots, again, based on our age, discrepency. I'm not sure if you'll know what that is.

It was an American [00:06:00] television series that was, you're shaking your head Yes. Do you remember Roots Well, or you've heard of it?

Haley Radke: Don't remember it. I've heard of it. You've heard of it? I've seen bits of it, yes.

Erick Wolfmeyer: You know what? Yeah. Okay. You know the reference. Yeah. So Roots was a big deal. That was back when you had three stations on tv, and I remember seeing the scenes where the families were separated on the auction block, and of course, I didn't have the understanding to know why that was freaking me out. But I look back and I think, yeah that, that really, that's something that's ooh, that spoke to me like something's not, Ooh, that's not good. That really was shocking. Then fast forward to my freshman year of college, I was going to a small Lutheran school in Chicago, in River Forest, to be specific, Illinois.

And one of my part-time jobs was as a babysitter. And when I was doing the interview, I never forget she was taking dishes outta the dishwasher, clean ones. And I happened to tell her that at the time I said I was adopted, and she just got [00:07:00] this look on her face, like she was almost ready to drop the glass.

And I thought, wow. No one's ever responded that way. Come to find out, she had relinquished her daughter and she was fairly, and this is back in 1985, and so this woman was also somewhat involved in kind of the movement, to help. Kinda move things along, for search and all that. Again, it's was before the internet, so it was so different.

It was so analog and there was even the things you could do were just so painstaking and so iffy in terms of a result. So I noted those three things as precursors to all of this, because up until then, it was just something that was internal and, I dealt with it as we all do growing up, but it wasn't until I met Diane Coates that it all broke open for me.

I had never even heard the term birth mother, which is not really a term that I use now, but I had never even heard that term before I met her. So I was like oh, there's a name for that. Oh, okay. So that really set me on my way. I would've been like 18, 19 years old. [00:08:00] And I ended up transferring schools and ended up finishing up in St. Louis, Missouri. Went to art school. I left my pre seminary program after a year and went to art school instead. Which was a much better fit for me as it turns out. But I then initiated my search in 1989. I was a junior in college. My, it had to be, it was this whole court thing where my parents that raised me had to take, go to the court where my adoption was finalized and the court had to petition the adoption agency to do the search.

My family of origin, my, mother and father had the option to be declined to be identified. This is in Missouri. This was in Missouri in 1989. So my mother agreed to be identified and the man named as my father declined to be identified. Okay, fine. So my mother and I talked on the phone, this is around like spring break in March, and we agreed not to exchange any photos, any recent photos before we met.

And so I flew up to Montreal. She was, oh, by the way, she was living in [00:09:00] Montreal and I had an 18-year-old brother, half maternal brother Scott. And so we agreed to meet in Montreal. I flew up there over my spring break and one of the things I remember just recently was my brother told me that when I came through sort of the doors in the airport, my airport moment, and he, she leaned over to him and said, there he is.

She had never seen a picture of me as an adult. And I found that really fascinating that she just knew right away. Suffice it to say as many do. It didn't go as planned. I was supposed to be there about nine days and I was only there about four before she, my mother took the liberty of reading the diary that I was keeping while I was there.

So I took a shower one day. My brother Scott was like at school or something, he was gone. So my mother and I were only the only ones at her apartment and she read the notes I was keeping. And when I got outta the shower, she just ambushed [00:10:00] me and come to find out she had already called the airport and had my ticket changed and the whole shebang.

So I had made a backup plan through my employer at the time. He had a friend in Montreal as it turned out. And so I had already made an escape plan. We were always at the ready, right? We always have our plan B. And so I had within moments after the confrontation that my mother and I had, I was being scooped up by this person I didn't even know.

But that was a friend of my employer and I spent the night at their house. I went to the airport the next day, prepared to buy my own one-way ticket home. And come to find out she'd already made the plans for me to, who, how you change a ticket, I, whatever. So I flew home. So the next several years were pretty rocky and weird and off and on and back and forth and whatever.

My mother that raised me intervened at one point, and it was just a whole thing. It was just rough. But it, the next sort of chapter was my mother came to visit me, and by [00:11:00] that time I was living in Rapid City, South Dakota. I had finished college and et cetera, and she came to visit me, stayed with me actually for a month. Big mistake. And all I remember about that visit, the main takeaway is that she got on the plane in this, it was a summer of 93, 92, something like that. And I didn't hear from her for 27 years. So.

Haley Radke: Are you comfortable saying what. What were you sharing in your private thoughts in your journal that was so upsetting to her?

Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh I mean my mother is the queen of self sabotage. She actually has no contact with me or my brother who, whom she raised, or he would tell me he raised her. So it's not surprising looking back that I almost think she was looking for a reason to just burn it all down. I think my mother might have, an undiagnosed mental, but who knows?

For obviously being a relinquishing mother is not the easiest thing in the world for sure. I don't know 'cause it [00:12:00] wasn't my experience, but I know that she had her own challenges long before that ever happened. She lost her father at a very young age and it thrust her and her mother into poverty and I'm really getting way ahead of myself. One thing that I would say is my mother, I found out only fairly recently that my mother, had planned to relinquish me from the get-go. She was a go-go dancer in St. Louis. She danced with me until she was seven months pregnant, believe it or not. So I'm always wondering what kind of music I was hearing, like in utero.

Haley Radke: Do you have the moves now?

Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh, I used to. I'm too old now. I used to love to dance. Yeah, it was a big thing. She's also was a chorus line dancer, so she, the high kicks, all that fun stuff. So I was born and then immediately relinquished. She didn't even know my gender. But here's the trick. I'd always thought that I was relinquished because of my cleft lip and palate. But actually, weirdly. That's really what kept me in her life for longer than I would've been otherwise, most likely. Because I had that complication. She had to sign paperwork and she had to be In loco parentis [00:13:00] or whatever they say.

She couldn't really entirely relinquish her responsibilities 'cause I needed this immediate care. So the first day of my life, I had a repair on my lip. My palate stayed open for a full year, and it wasn't until my family that raised me, got me that they took care of that. So it's funny to watch my name and my parents change in the medical records that I have.

She relinquished me initially, although she had to stay in touch. Then she went to Chicago for a month because she said she would, people on the street would ask her like about the baby, and it was just too much. After a month, she came back. I don't know anything about that first month in my life. I have no idea who or how many caretakers I may have had, but I was a failure to thrive baby. I was actually starving because they couldn't figure out how to feed me with the open palate, which for those of you who don't know, that just means that my upper, like the soft palate was just open to my sinuses and everything. So you can imagine it's really tricky to feed a baby like that. So it was failure to thrive and she actually took me back. So my mother took me [00:14:00] back at a month old and she and my grandmother raised me or took care of me. My mother would take it, my mother would dance at night and my grandmother would take in ironing.

This is back in the day when people ironed things or pay. So you can imagine they were very poor, but they managed to take care of me for the next six months, and then they just ran out of resources and my mother relinquished me for a second time. And that February 2nd, actually, of 1968 is the day that I was transferred to the family that raised me.

And the nutshell on that is I had a great life. I love my parents. They're wonderful. They're still married after 65 plus years. They're 87 years old. You know I mean they're great. There's really nothing to tell on that. It's all good. Very Leave it to Beaver, so wonderful. Just idyllic childhood.

But fast forward to where I picked up, where I left off. So then my mother came back into my life unexpectedly in around 2015 and promised me that everything was better now and we're gonna be good. And so I was willing to give her a second, third, [00:15:00] fourth chance, whatever it was by that point.

And that time culminated with a visit around July 4th to Southern California where she now lives and has lived for several years, as well as my maternal brother. He lives there too. And everything seemed great. I did mention to her, oh, by the way, I, IDNA tested and what I failed to mention was when I was in Montreal in 89, even though my named father had declined to be identified, she told me she identified a man and he happened to be living in St. Louis, right? In the same city I was living in. So I went back to the adoption agency and said, Hey, I actually know who he is. I could go see him, but I don't wanna do that. So will you please just contact him and let him know that I know who he is? So they did all that.

He was very reluctant when I met him. He said don't be so sure I'm your father. And I thought that was a really horrible thing to say at the time, but we never, ever developed a relationship whatsoever. So anyway, fast forward to 2015. I told my mother like, oh, by the way, I did a DNA test.

'Cause I gotten a call outta the blue on a [00:16:00] hot July day from my would be first cousin. This man who was named to my father, his niece called me and said, Hey, I'm Jennifer. Would you mind DNA testing? I'm actually trying to find my father. And I said Jennifer, how do you even know about me?

After things went south with the man named to my father, I wrote a letter to his parents, my wouldbe grandparents. And I thought maybe they're just these nice little old people in rocking chairs and they're just gonna be so happy to find out about a grandson they, didn't know about.

Actually the opposite was true. They called a big family meeting and were very upset, and they tried to get this man's siblings to turn on him and tell 'em what was going on and who was this person? I just wrote them an introduction letter. I didn't ask for anything, but apparently the quote was shared with me was, we're not supporting any bastard children.

So that letter was very important because without it, I actually would never, ever know the truth of my story. So it goes to show that every little thing we do in life really does matter. It's that whole butterfly flapping wing thing. [00:17:00] So Jennifer had heard about that letter. It was such a big deal in their family, and based on that letter, which apparently she still had in her hands, she was able to find me and asked me to DNA test.

I said, sure. I'm thinking nothing more than it would just prove this guy who was so reluctant that he was my father. As you can imagine, it turned out that he was not my father. The DNA test revealed completely different person. Jennifer was not my first cousin, but she was so lovely and actually is extremely knowledgeable about how the all this stuff works. And she helped me find the truth and dig through all, the GED match, the ancestry.com, it's wade through, all that sort of stuff. And my father was actually well known enough that I could read about him online and that was really a blessing because he had actually died 11 years prior to this.

And I had, I have a paternal brother who had died four years prior to him. And so I never got to meet them, but my father was well known enough that I read an article in Forbes Magazine about him [00:18:00] and because, that's what, how you do. And I learned that I had sisters that I didn't know about. And so within just a few minutes I was able to find them via social media.

But Jennifer, who stayed in my life, this would be first cousin who helped me reveal all this truth through the DNA test. She very wisely said, don't contact them. Let me contact them and then we'll get them to DNA test and then we'll know for sure that all this is like true. And so she contacted my sister Christian, and she took her about six months, but she did eventually DNA test.

And we are siblings and I love her dearly. And I just talked to her this morning, so that's really great. I, so I, after this was around 2015, 2016, I went to Texas to meet all of my paternal siblings that we know of. The flip the other side of the story with my mother at this time, when I told her that I, the last communication I had with her was via text, which we, we were texting back and forth.

That was normal during that final year. And I said, hey my [00:19:00] DNA test results came back and there was some surprises and she sent some very kind of angry response. And I basically I've never heard from her ever again and we don't have any contact. I am in contact with my maternal brother, Scott, he and Christian.

I'm very clo Christian. My is my paternal sister. Scott is my maternal brother, and we are, I feel very close to them and I maintain regular contact, regular relationship with them. So that's as nut-shelly as I can get I think about it. And there's, I wanna mention my father. You can read it on my website, who my father was.

He's not someone that, most people that he wouldn't recognize, people wouldn't recognize his name. But he was a really big, huge deal in the music industry and was, has been called like one of the best r and b songwriters you've never heard of. His friends were like Mick Fleetwood. He lived next door to Jack Nicholson at one point.

Actually, Mick Fleetwood asked him to be in Fleetwood Mac and my father turned him down 'cause that's just the kind of guy he was. It's just stuff like that. It was like [00:20:00] kind of mind blowing actually to read about him. I can watch videos on YouTube of Tina Turner singing my father's songs and he wrote songs for Bonnie Rait that I was literally listening to on a seat on a cassette tape that I still have in 1989, having no idea that I was hearing my father's songs he wrote for Eric Clapton. I just recently got to hear two new songs on my father's 'cause Eric Clapton rereleased, his album Journeyman, and there are two new songs on there. And both of them were written by my father.

So that was a cool thing about having this big character for a father, that he was well known enough that I could read articles about him online and learn about him that way. My, my single goal that's still left my box to check is I wanna see a video of him 'cause I've never seen him alive or moving.

I've heard him sing. I have his, you can listen to his music on YouTube. He has albums of his own where he's singing, but I've never heard him talk or, seen him walk or move. My sister Christian tells me all the time, oh, you [00:21:00] look just like dad. You look, of course I don't have to tell you this, but there's just nothing that's more music to my ears than to hear that, she can see a thing that I can't see, but I know that it's there. And just to have that mirrored back to me is really such a gift. Such a gift.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah.

Haley Radke: I'm sorry you never got the chance to meet him.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, I am too.

But I think I accept what is, and I do feel like he, I don't know that he ever knew about me in his life, in his living years, but I do believe he knows about me now, and I do believe that he communicates with me in various ways, not surprisingly through music. There just have been too many little things that have happened along the way that are hard to ignore that I really feel like it's his little nod of saying, yeah I'm in another place now.

I'm in a better place. And like he looks back in his life and it's free of all of the. All the craziness. He lived like the big hard rock [00:22:00] and roll lifestyle, and he died at age 57. I'm 58 years old, so I've already outlived him by a year. But I do think he's in a loving place and he sends love to me and my siblings and yeah I do feel, so what else?

That was really nut-shelly, really nut-shelly. But I don't know what else to say. It was just one of those funny, wow like there isn't there, this sort of, this thing where, you know almost like a fairytale thing where, you know the relinquished child discovers that, oh my gosh, my, my father was like, a multimillionaire and he was, semi-famous, all this sort of stuff, but, and.

Okay. Yeah I had that sort of fairytale story, but it really didn't mean a whole lot in the sense that he was already passed away. But what it, what meant the most to me when I found out who my father was actually, and knowing how close I came to, never, ever knowing that, and to know that the only reason I know it to this day is because of a letter that I wrote with an open heart [00:23:00] to these would be grandparents that were not my grandparents.

Isn't that bizarre? That's how I know, that's how I know this. And people ask me like why do you think your mother lied to you? I said I don't know that she lied to me. I just don't know that she knew because my birth certificate, my original, my OBC original birth certificate, there's no father listed and I don't know the circumstances of my conception. Obviously, other than that, my parents are both Scorpios and I always think, oh they just had a really great night on around their birthdays, and my father was, he was not even 18 at that point. This would've been November of 1966. My mother was like 20. She was gonna be having her 23rd birthday, I think.

He, at the time, around that time, he was on tour with Little Richard and my father actually learned to play guitar from Jimi Hendrix. I know it sounds like I'm making all this stuff up, but it's true. You're laughing. But he did. This was Jimmy his, he was Jimmy James and he was touring with Little Richard, and my father was too.

My father was [00:24:00] very tall and was often mistaken for being much older than he was. And so he got sent home off the tour because he was actually underage. I don't know how my parents' paths crossed, but my mother also traveled with her dancing. She told me that she would travel throughout the south in various clubs and do shows like dinner and a show kind of thing back in the day when that was a thing.

And so maybe they crossed paths when she was traveling. Maybe they crossed paths when my father might have been in St. Louis. But it doesn't really matter 'cause I'm here, we're here and we're here to talk about, moving forward in life.

Haley Radke: It's so nice that you have pieces of documentation.

Erick Wolfmeyer: It's a privilege. Yeah.

Haley Radke: And a lot of us find graves and then are trying to piece together things with folks who knew our parents in real life somehow. So that's cool. But of course it still is all secondhand knowledge that you're getting access to.

Erick Wolfmeyer: It is. Yeah. My siblings could tell me some things. I did recently meet, so [00:25:00] Roy Orbison moved from Nashville to Malibu to write with my father, and I did recently meet Alex Orbison, Roy's son. He's delightful. He was my late brother's best friend and happened to be in concert where I live in Iowa City and so my sister knows Alex and lots of other folks, and she help me arrange to meet him. 'cause I wanted, I have a handmade bracelet that was belonged to my brother, that my sister gave me. And I have two of my father's rings, which I meant to wear today. Oh, I forgot. Anyway, so I wanted to show Alex that bracelet, and I just wanted to make a full circle connection with him that, because I know my brother died so young when, and so my brother was in a band with Alex, and so Alex was really lovely.

And so to hear him talk about my father and, so there's lots of people that knew him. But yeah, it's all, it is all secondhand. But again, I wanna acknowledge like I have so many privileges, but keep in mind too, I'm 58 years old and I, like I said earlier, I've been working on this since I was about three years old. 55 years.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Erick Wolfmeyer: And I don't know, I think [00:26:00] you know this, but one of the things I like to tell people is I'm so old school that I literally was workshopping. The Primal Wound with Nancy Verrier in 1992 in Oakland, California. So a year before it was published in 1993. I was in a small group, workshopping it with her. That's how old school I am. I was like, honey, I've been around the block. I've been doing this for a while. I've been doing this for a while.

Haley Radke: So one of the things I really appreciate is you talk about how you had this idyllic upbringing with your family that raised you, and yet I have, I wrote this quote down from an interview you gave in 2010. "I have a shattered sense of identity. Quilts are like trying to put together pieces of my life into something that makes sense. " Can you talk about that?

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, so in 1998 I made my first quilt for a guy who's actually getting married this summer and he invited me to his wedding and I was so thrilled. And it's a day after my birthday, which is funny too. [00:27:00] But he's really the reason that I started quilting. 'cause he was a baby and I made a quilt for him. And then it turned into this whole thing. My art education kicked into high gear and it just became a thing. So I, it has taken me around the world and my quilts have shown all over the country.

I just found out on Saturday that two of my quilts just sold in a show that I'm in Michigan right now. So it has become a whole advocation. I have a day job, by the way. I'm a paratransit bus drivers, so I drive a bus for people with disabilities, mostly mobility issues or cognitive developmental issues.

And I actually love, love, love that work. But I have three days off cause I work four 10 hour days. And so I try to spend as much time when I'm not doing podcast interviews. I try, I, I spend as much time as I can in my studio, which is in a church making quilts. And I've made, I would say I quit counting at a hundred.

I don't know how many I've made, but they've mostly sold which has been a blessing. And, yeah it's become a whole spiritual practice for me, and it's been, I think, the primary [00:28:00] gift and tool in my life for finding healing and wholeness and integration. Because it is literally the perfect metaphor.

It does root back to my early self where, I primarily as a child would spend my days alone in my bedroom building with blocks, be it like Lincoln Logs or Legos or whatever. And that's really still what I do to this day, is I go to my studio, I'm by myself, I turn on music, and I just piece quilts that are just like giant puzzles and I make my own designs.

I don't use patterns, and I stay really true to the traditions of quilting. Oh and if you look at my website, you'll see a giant quilt of my mother. It was that last visit I talked about seeing her around July 4th in 2016. The quilts called Corona, California 2016. And there are a variety of reasons why a titled it that, but I think one of the primary ones is, before the internet, especially when we're doing our searches, just having an address or a city or anything tangible as to a, [00:29:00] where is so critical. So I did this gigantic portrait, quilt of her, it's 12 feet by 16 feet and it's made up of over 27,000 pieces each hand selected by me. There was no sort of computer, generated pixelation, but it's essentially using the concept of pixelation.

But I hand selected each piece to make this portrait. And it's a, from a snapshot that I took the last time that I saw her, she's in her pool at her home in California. That was like, the grand people have called it, I can't think of the term they've used. It'll pop in my head in a second. But tour de force or whatever, it's just such a grand expression of how quilting has interfaced with this re-stitching back together of my whole self.

Because, as people have had this experience of a relinquishment and identity reassignment, we're always living in two realities. And as Paul Sunderland says, it's the impossible job description that we have to live into and up to this assigned identity that we've [00:30:00] been given.

And that's a big job and it's exhausting. And I find that the creativity is a place to, for my soul to rest and to celebrate. And it has brought me so much joy and connecting me to so many people. And there's are other interesting parallels too. All my quilts are hand quilted, I make the tops what but then they're sent off to Amish women that hand quilt them for me.

And that's actually rare. Most people are machine quilting these days. And every stitch is done by hand by a woman that I will never meet because that's how their culture works. They don't want any credit. And I worked through brokers to get the quilts to them and back from them.

And I always find that kind of fascinating. Oh, that's interesting, isn't it? That I wouldn't even have this work complete if it weren't for these anonymous relationships with these women, in a far off distance that I'll never meet or see. I'm like what does that sound like? So yeah, I think that what we're always doing. Is trying to [00:31:00] make our outsides match our insides. So if our insides are calm and integrated, then hopefully our lives will reflect that. And if our insides are not, our outsides might reflect that as well. And I think that's where what we call self-sabotaging behavior comes from is that we're really, as counterintuitive as it might seem, we're really just trying to make our insides and outsides match.

So yeah, the quilting has been just an enormous part of my life. I hope to do it until I die. I showed in France in 2018 and I'm been invited back in 2028, so I'm hoping just to go every 10 years. Why not? So anyway, yeah, that's a huge part of my life. And if people want to look at my work, my name is my. Given name for my adopted family is Erick Wolfmeyer. It's a name I go by. And of course I never really liked it as a kid 'cause it's hard to say and it's hard to spell and ugh. But it's been a wonderful [00:32:00] name to have in the age of searchability. 'cause it's very unusual. I think in fact, I think I was the only Erick Wolfmeyer on Instagram when I was on social media. That's pretty remarkable. So yeah, you can just search me and you'll find my stuff.

Haley Radke: You, you have to go look at these quilts. You have to. They're incredible.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I know you've talked about quilting with quilting people. So I'm going to, mostly leave that there.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, because there are interviews that you can find on YouTube and all that sort of fun stuff. I just did one with Wisconsin Public Radio. That's was good practice for this interview. And it's online and YouTube, all that fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Amazing. I have one question I cannot get outta my head, so I'm gonna say it out loud and it's not gonna add anything to this interview except for my interest.

Erick Wolfmeyer: I don't know, you might be surprised.

Haley Radke: Do you have a story of a mishap I just think about working with fabric and I'm a spiller. I took 15 minutes yesterday to try and get grease stains outta my, one of my son's favorite sweatshirts. And [00:33:00] I just think about, having your coffee by this, on this. Incredible.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Okay. You've brought up several things here, so you should know that I almost never am further away than five feet from a Tide pen.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Erick Wolfmeyer: I love my tide pens. They just fall out of pockets. They're everywhere. Tide pens, love those 'cause I can't stand having a little drip. I will tell you last year, one of my personal goals was to spill on myself less.

'Cause I'm old and I'm thinking it's not a good look to be spilling on myself. So I am doing much better. And it's really all about intention and consciousness and slowing down. So it is possible, but I've never really, I've never really had a mishap in that I've had things like one of the quilts I recently finished, I got about three quarters of the way done with it and I realized there was some kind of seam allowance differences and the whole thing was getting askew and weird.

And I was like, oh, that's gonna bug me forever. And I literally [00:34:00] deconstructed the whole thing after being about three quarters of the way done with it and then reconstructed it. But the truth is, I don't even have any memory of that. All I have now is a beautiful finished quilt that I like and so it doesn't really matter.

But no, I don't really have any spillkus, or gezoink memories or? No, we're good. We're good. I'm glad you asked though.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Erick Wolfmeyer: I hope that can be reassuring to you.

Haley Radke: It is.

Erick Wolfmeyer: It's a goal.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad you don't have a,

Erick Wolfmeyer: It's within reach for you, Haley.

Haley Radke: I have a, I have a terrible story about accidentally dropping one can of root beer and it sprayed over my entire living room in a 360. I don't know if you knew this, but if a pop can drops and spins, explodes, it spins,

Erick Wolfmeyer: It spins.

Haley Radke: So you get the full.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Wow.

Haley Radke: Anyway, I'm glad you don't know about that. Okay, let's switch gears. Yeah. I wanna talk about language with you because before we got on in some of our contacts, you're like, listen, I don't say adoptee. I don't talk about adoption.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Right.

Haley Radke: I don't say birth mother.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Nope.

Haley Radke: Tell me [00:35:00] about language for you.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Okay, let's just go down some of them. The why's. So birth parent, to me, it's too like matricentric. It's only focusing on the mother. So I like, I'm not into that. Also, why is it that our population, why are we the only ones really that have to talk about birth parents? I have parents. Period. I don't say biological parents. It sounds like a, all I think of are petri dishes. I think of like science experiments and labs and like bubbling liquids.

I don't say first parents. It seems like, there's a hierarchy. I don't say natural. I don't say original. I don't say real. I say parents because to say anything less is to soften the impact and the trauma and to make it okay for everybody. Everybody else. Because you know what, let's back up here.

And one thing I wanna make sure that I say is hold onto your hats. Adoption is not about parenting. Adoption is [00:36:00] about solving adult problems. Now, I'm not so naive to believe that, of course there are times when kids do need a different situation for safety reasons, for whatever. We're not gonna go into that because that's not my job, but that is one of my, the things that, one of the things I premise all my thoughts about this is adoption I've discovered is not about parenting, it's about shame management. And then a story I'll tell you of that is my sister that I was raised with, my adoptive sister, if you will she found her family of origin, both paternal and maternal, talked to some of her paternal brothers, found out that her mother, not her mother, but their mother was still living.

And they were like, oh no, we can't we have to keep this under. Her father had died, but her siblings are still living. And the brother basically is now controlling my sister to say, I'm not gonna let you meet anybody. Because even though now our father and our mother, like their mother, but not my sister's [00:37:00] mother are gone, they're still shame managing their 'cause. He doesn't wanna besmirched the memory of his father because my sister, my adopted sister was the product of an affair that this man had, and they don't want that to be come to light. So here is my grown sister who's 60 years old, being infantalized by another, adult sibling, as if somehow it's okay for them to have access to this, but she can't because they're shame managing.

So that's an example of what I mean when I say adoption is not about parenting. And so for so many people who don't have this experience. Our stories and even our lives seem to be so intricately linked with the quality of our parenting because as if somehow we have any responsibility for that.

But, there's such a link between the, there are all these sort of false binaries, good parent, bad parent, the failed mother who didn't keep her child. And then the Madonna-ized woman who [00:38:00] then in her grief of her infertility, takes on someone else's child and raises them and all the benevolence and all the awards and the accolades and all this.

And that narrative is so much part of the false narrative, but it doesn't serve our needs and it creates all these false loyalty battles that just really need not exist. And I'm just, after all these years, I'm really a realist and I've realized that in order I, so I'm not really a part of the adoptee activism, movement, whatever other than in my own way.

And I try to use my platform that I have with the quilting world to speak out when I can and just speak my truth. But part of it is because I, and by the way, I told you this off the air, but I love and adore and respect the work you do in your show. And it's amazing and it's wonderful. I found that when I was on social media and other things that it just wasn't, I would just get really frustrated because I feel like, to be truth, totally truthful, Haley, that until we stop using the word adoptee and adoption, [00:39:00] I don't know how much further we're gonna get.

And so I really looked at the trans community and how far they've come with a very uphill battle and learning the term cisgender. And I remember there was a time, I had no idea what that meant. Looked it up. Oh, okay. So I'm cis male. Okay, cool. Ah, that's good to know. So I, if I had, first of all, I try to only use little precursor type boards as sparingly as possible.

Qualifiers I try to use as sparingly as possible, but I do like cis parent and allo parent because it really takes out any of the judgment or the value around better, worse, whatever. And what more importantly it does is it, in order to define ourselves, we have to define ourselves within the entire community of human beings.

Because so often our language and our, all of the things that we do have in common, we [00:40:00] start to silo off. And so then there are the cis parented folks with all their cis parented privilege that they don't even realize they have, but they're swimming in it all the time. And then we are over here in the corner going sharing our little stories. But I really feel like in order for the cis parented folks to really understand who we are and our experience and how traumatic and painful and difficult it is, and what we're always navigating day after day, they have to understand themselves in relationship to us.

And that we started our lives just like they did. It's just that there was this gigantic interruption. And again, I go back to, I was just reading, I was just listening to Paul Sunderland's video today. I'm like, oh my gosh, please everybody listen to his stuff over and over again. 'cause that was a major turning point for me when I heard his work.

Haley Radke: Can you say what allo parent is.

Erick Wolfmeyer: So allo just means other, it's, I think it's a Greek term. It just simply means other. So I have my cis parents, which are my original parents or parents of origin. Family of origin. So terms I do use, I use cis parent or I [00:41:00] use family of origin. You've heard me say many times today, the family that raised me.

It's not that I never say the word adoption or adoptee, but I next to never, ever refer to myself as an adoptee. So I find the term adoptee to be infantalizing. It keeps us perpetually in and defined by that state and that thing that happened. And even Sunderland says it's the word adoption is it's this weird word that really doesn't even describe what happened.

And it's a whitewash term to me. It's not that much different than when you go on these forums and they ask you to check your, are you white, are you Latino? Are you whatever? I am not white. I'm not a color. I'm of Northern European descent, but I'm not white. And I feel like. The analogy I would make is if it were a piece of furniture that had been varnished or painted, and that I continually identify myself with the varnish in the paint, but disregard the actual piece of furniture that's underneath of all that.

And so for me I go to therapy again. I have so much privilege. I'm [00:42:00] able to go to therapy every week pretty much if I want to. And I have a wonderful therapist that I've trained. She would admit that I have trained all my therapists and I have the privilege of having made a friendship.

When I did workshop that book with Nancy Verrier in 92 in Oakland, I met a guy named Randall and we became like the best of friends. He was also gay. He still, he is also gay. And we were just like blood brothers for about 20 years. And for whatever reason, I don't know, our friendship is like evaporated and I don't ever hear from him again.

And I've tried to reach out and I get nothing, and it's really super strange and hurtful. But I do accept that. It was what it was and it really saved me when you talk about people finding your show and telling you that it saved them 'cause they felt really isolated and they felt really crazy. He was that person for me that had all broke open, like knowing Randall and going, 'cause he was also I guess I forgot to say he was, had also had the relinquishment and adoption experience.

But yeah, so I feel privileged in [00:43:00] that. I had a really great family that raised me. I feel privileged in having had Randall in my life for 20 years to share this journey with. So I come to this having had a lot of bolsters and a lot of supports. But it is very hard and I've definitely had my dark moments.

Haley Radke: Can I ask you, Erick, how do you identify yourself? Without saying adoptee your adoption.

Erick Wolfmeyer: I know it's, it is tricky, isn't it? Because the fact of the matter is, there isn't one word that sums it up. So I enjoy seeing the quizzical look on people's faces because, adoption or adoptee is a word of convenience, but convenient for whom it's not convenient for me 'cause it doesn't tell my story. And if it does, tell the story. For example I said earlier when you asked me to tell my story, the reason I've become so skittish about it is because for me, all I have to do is say the word adoption. I call it the a-bomb. And suddenly I could see people's eyes glass over, and in their mind, they already have decided, they just click into the [00:44:00] cultural narrative that they've been told about it, then suddenly everything I say gets skewed through that. I just say I was, family separated and re-identified or given an assumed identity. It's not unlike the witness protection program, and when you really stop and think about what we went through. Just so you know, I was a baby scoop, classic baby scoop, conceived in 66, born in 67, relinquished and reassigned in 68 and closed adoption.

I wasn't able to know anything other than that, that I was from St. Louis. I wasn't raised in St. Louis, but I, we were two hours north of there on the Mississippi River. So a total shutdown lockdown. And then from age 18 on, I was, from that time that I met that woman who I babysat for, I was like, pedal to the metal baby.

I am not resting until I am satisfied. And you know what satisfaction looks like? It looks like you're, 50 something and you are tired and you say, I'm so happy for everything I've learned [00:45:00] up to this point, but I'm just gonna have to stop searching at some point. I'm tired. I'm tired.

And you just come to peace with the fact that there will always be more that I don't know than that I do and I'm, I have to be okay with that. Just make the most of what is right in front of me and the life that I have with my husband, with my dear friends, with my family, all of my family. So yeah, I feel like I, I literally have eight pages of notes that I realize, oh, I guess I basically have the outline of a book here.

People always tell me, oh, you should write a book. Which maybe when I'm retired in a, two years or whatever, I will start on that project. But right now with my full-time job and the quilts, it's and, life. It's more than enough just to do all that. But yeah, I'm answering your question in like too many words, but does that, so I don't really have a word.

I don't have a word. [00:46:00] I think of us collectively as a diaspora. We are a diverse group of people that have had a similar experiences. I'm not, not monolithic, we know, but I think that we are our own kind of diaspora of sorts. So that would make us diasporites. So I guess I'm a diasporit, but I like to confuse people because when we use the word adoption immediately they think they know what that means, even if in most cases they haven't had that experience.

And what they have had is an experience of cis parented privilege with all the privileges of relatedness. Because relatedness is what's really at the root of all this. It's a little bit like when I talk about quilts, everyone thinks they know what quilts are, right? Oh yeah, my grandma made quilts, or, oh, I have a on my bed, all this.

But then you stop and you ask people tell me what the three parts of a quilt are. And they're like, what? It's the top, it's the batting and it's the backing. And then it's all put together with the binding. So it reminds me a little bit of that, not that it's a quiz, not that I really care that people [00:47:00] need to, they don't need to know that I don't care.

But I'm just as an analogy, that. People think they know what this experience is, even if they haven't had it. And people are all too often unwilling to allow us to have our experience with it when it is our experience, and they're so eager to tell us what it should or shouldn't be. And we have to be so fierce and so strong to hold it together.

It's like a being again, a co constant headwind. A constant headwind. And we know that we show up so much more in, all the places, addiction, suicide, mental illness, all these sort of struggles that we are overrepresented there. And sadly, and what I find so shocking is how underrepresented we are.

Haley, I keep waiting for you to go on National Public Radio. I keep waiting for you to go on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. These are all American references, of course, I think. I listen to a lot of news and talk radio in, the background of my day and I [00:48:00] next to never hear a thing about us.

Since I got the invitation for this interview, I was tracking what do I hear on the radio. I've heard so many stories about researching like spider monkeys or researching the most. And that's fine. I'm not anti-science, I'm not anti-intellectual, but there are the most, obscure things that people are researching and talking about.

I heard a woman talking about like how people suffer when they are disconnected from their family stories. It was an hour long hidden brain on NPR. Not once did she mention anything about our diaspora. Talk about separated from your family story. But we weren't even mentioned. I'm like, what? So why is it we're overrepresented in these things I mentioned prior, but we're so grossly underrepresented in the public dialogue.

I think it's because, the public has been, and we have been sold a bill of goods that, adoption is this, wonderful rainbow and sunshine and everything's good. What? There's [00:49:00] nothing more to talk about. Bye. See ya. And it's just not that way.

Haley Radke: And you wouldn't consult with a baby or a child. And if we are perpetually infantalized.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Like where's the, there's nowhere to call. No one to call for an interview. No one, because they're children.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah. And they're all fine now 'cause they've been adopted and they got happy. Lived happily ever after. There's nothing to talk about. And so I'm just shocked and I cannot listen to one more person come on fresh air with Terry Gross and talk about. How traumatic it was to lose their father, that they live with all their, it's not that I don't have sympathy, but I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, why? So this is why the work you do is so important and it's so nascent and it's so groundbreaking, and it's just like you are literally building the foundation that I hope we can get to it start spilling out into the cis parenthood world of people. Like where we, it can become part of the common communal dialogue.

And it's not just you and me sitting here on a mic, with our 4,000 to 8,000 listeners, which by the way, [00:50:00] wonderful, but you know what I mean? I really want you to be interviewed by someone that outside of our diaspora.

So it's great. We're talking to ourselves, we've been talking to ourselves and among ourselves for probably 40 to 50 years. And I'm just like, we've got to get out there. And that's where I go back to the whole thing about, I just refuse to use the term the language of oppression. And one thing that we are most sort of. Typically in our diaspora is we are, and I learned this recently in my therapy, this, my therapist will shoot terms back at me. I'm like, oh my gosh. And they just, some of 'em just really stick and recognize how overly accommodating I am. For example, I don't go to therapy 'cause my life's a mess.

My life is totally great. I go to therapy to maintain and manage and just deal with the little stuff 'cause guess what? It's not always that little 'cause, even the little stuff, it all taps back into something much bigger. And I tell my therapist too, that imagine a giant reservoir. I'm just coming to you every week, like splat, scooping out [00:51:00] a few buckets and throwing 'em over the edge.

'Cause I have a lifetime of stuff that I never got to process with anyone that was willing to listen, with curiosity and with understanding and willingness to learn. And it's a safe space to do that. And so I go and I talk about the little things because it helps me, just the life as it comes up and it helps me see.

Oh, so one thing I learned recently is how overly accommodating I am. For example, recently I had someone on my bus, she was in a hurry to get to her appointment. In a hurry. In a hurry. Stress. What is over accommodating me do. I made a very stupid decision.

I had seen a bus in front of me in this loop at the hospital, pull through this super tight squeeze. There was a big water truck on one side and like a marble post on another side. He pulled through there within inches of clearance and I thought I drove a school bus for a much bigger, bus for 15 years.

I can do this. It turns out I couldn't do it, and I got hung up on the pole. The water truck eventually [00:52:00] left. They had to come and get a tow truck and pull the bus off the pole. But you know what? It all boiled down to over accommodating. Because I was more concerned about that woman getting to her appointment and managing her stress for her than I was to sit here and say, no, we're gonna have to sit in some discomfort collectively until this situation clears.

So that's why I'm telling you that's what the it, the rubber hits the road in all the little things, those little micro decisions we make every day is that our adoptive consciousness, our adoptive self, it can't help. But because that's what we Sunderland said today I listened to, he says, we have no pre trauma personality, that we are just constantly responding to the world through this trauma brain.

And that's the other thing I wanna make sure I say today. This is my call out. My call out is my challenge to the language we use to think about it very carefully about what it's doing and how it's holding us back, and that we're in. Nah. Anyway. But the other thing is like I cannot believe for the life of [00:53:00] me that there is not a DSM diagnosis.

Like developmental PTSD, I think he refers to it as, or whatever, can you imagine Haley, a world where someone who's had our experience can go to a therapist and the therapist knows what to do and the therapist has gone to workshops and they're like, oh, I know how to deal with this. Just like I know how to deal with sexual abuse or this or that or whatever.

But literally, no matter who you go to see as a therapist, you're pretty much starting from scratch. And like I said, I've been working on this for years, so I train and teach all of my therapists because when I train and they always say, you don't really know something until you can teach it. So I've been teaching my therapist for years, and by teaching it, I've also learned more about myself.

So it's a whole process, but it's also exhausting. Like I'm paying them, like they gotta be paying me. But they're lovely people. I don't, I'm thankful for them but I think about people who aren't able to do that. Yeah I'm an oddball in that regard. I'm just really, I am my mother and my father's child.

That's one I forgot to say earlier is that when I learned about [00:54:00] my father, the thing that it did for me is it made my life make sense from the inside out. I imagine my, with my eyes closed, I imagine that I could see inside this cavernous shape of my body, like I'm inside of a cave and my body, with all the organs and everything gone, it's like the walls of a cave, right?

And someone clicks the light on and suddenly all the walls have the story of my life written on them. And that is how I felt when I found out about who my father is. I'm like. Oh, okay. The man that told Fleetwood Mac, no, thank you. That's my father. And it's oh, why is it that I spend hours upon hours with this passion I have?

Where, what does, where does this burning, creative passion come from? Why always thought my mother liked to sew. She made her all her own clothes. But that didn't quite. It didn't quite cut it for me, but when I found out how big of a personality and a big of a force he was, I was like, oh, okay. [00:55:00] Okay. I got it now. Yeah. Yeah. This makes sense.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing part of your story with us. Erick, and talking through those things. I think that's, you've given us a lot to think about as a community, especially in terms of language and how we're positioning ourselves.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yes.

Haley Radke: With that, I wanna recommend that folks check out your quilting work, and in particular, I'm gonna point them to now you told us about the one of your mother. Face of a stranger.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh yeah. Thanks.

Haley Radke: Oh my God,

Erick Wolfmeyer: I forgot about that one.

Haley Radke: It's a self portrait.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And yet you called it face of a stranger.

Erick Wolfmeyer: And recently, it's gonna be in a show in a, like next year at, it's a, it's owned by a museum, I was in a show, in a museum. They purchased it. And actually it was one of my highest selling quilts ever, which was shocking. 'cause when I made that quilt, Haley, I'll tell you, I made it. And I thought, oh my gosh.

Who would ever want this? This is so [00:56:00] stupid. Why did I do this? What a waste of time. And it has become one of the most popular pieces I have. And like I so said, it sold for like over $10,000. So it hangs in this museum. It's in a show. And what I, what it dawned me the other day is that, oh when most people walk by and see that. It is the face of a stranger to them. But you understand why I title, you know why I gave it that title as well? There's a whole other, right? Yeah. Thank you for, I totally forgot about that.

Haley Radke: I to me it's a nod to us, and.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yes, it is. It is.

Haley Radke: I thank you. I looked through, as you said, you've done many interviews and so I looked through many read many, listened to many to prepare for our conversation, and you always talk about that part of you, and I appreciate that because you're bringing to light what it's like to be separated from your [00:57:00] parents of origin, so thank you for being one of those people that does bring it to the public.

I also wanted to highlight for folks, I don't know if I've ever mentioned Jeff Forney on the show before. He's fellow adoptee. I'm gonna use that language because that's what I have in my,

Erick Wolfmeyer: that's totally great.

Haley Radke: My toolkit.

Erick Wolfmeyer: That's great.

Haley Radke: And he takes portraits of adoptees and he's done your portrait and you share a little piece here and there's multiple photos on here of you and I was so excited to get to see them before we talked today. And I'm gonna link to that in the show notes for folks. So

Erick Wolfmeyer: Great.

Haley Radke: It can be a little trip down memory lane for you too.

Erick Wolfmeyer: It can 'cause I didn't even know it was out there, so I was happy to be reminded of that. It was a fun day.

Haley Radke: It's out there.

Erick Wolfmeyer: It's a fun day.

Haley Radke: It's out there fun. What do you would recommend to us today, Erick?

Erick Wolfmeyer: I wanna recommend the work of a man named John O'Donohue, the late John O'Donohue. I always, he's always my go-to for the sort of moments of the deepest, profound [00:58:00] when you just need that pick me up. And I really believe there's a, I don't know anything about his background off the top of my head, but there's a deep sense of belonging and beauty and longing and desire and his language is so beautiful and I wanna recommend the book called To Bless the Space Between Us or really anything by John O'Donohue is marvelous, really marvelous.

So he's a great author. And like I said, I the last books I read about the, this adoption experience were Primal Wound and Journey To The Adopted Self by Betty Jean Lifton. So you can imagine, I'm like, it's been a while since I've really dove, so I just went on my own journey. I'm grateful to all the help along the way. And then, like I said, I stumbled on Paul Sunderland several years ago, but it's really just been me and my power animal, like powering through all of this. So yeah.

Haley Radke: All the identity pieces.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Trying to put it all back together.

Haley Radke: Yes. Yes.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Into one. Into one.

Haley Radke: Figuratively [00:59:00] and literally.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Literally.

Haley Radke: And, okay. We are gonna link to your website, which is https://ewolfmeyerquilts.com/. You also have a blog there, and as you said, your off social, lucky you. But I'm sure there's a way for folks to connect with you through your work, and do you announce when you have showings and things on your website?

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, if you look at my exhibits page, I will often put things that are upcoming. It'll just, it won't always have the date, but it'll have the year, it'll have the location. So if a person really wants to know, they can Google it or whatever, but yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke: There may be an Erick Wolfmeyer quilt near you, and you don't even know it, but now you will.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah. Exactly.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much, Erick. What a pleasure to get to talk with you today.

Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh, you too. I'm honored. I'm honored. Thank you, Haley, and thank you again for the work that you do.

Haley Radke: My pleasure.

I'm always in awe after I talk with [01:00:00] artists, the way creative folks see and interpret the world. Helps me understand things in a different way.

I love art, but I am such an amateur. So I remember several times going into our local art gallery and feeling like, oh my goodness, I love this, but I don't know why and I don't know who the artist is, and I don't have it all together to understand the nuance and the symbolism, but I think art is for everyone and just the enjoyment of it is okay too.

I watched a couple of tours of Erick's work that are available on YouTube, and I was straight back to that stunned feeling, even though I haven't gotten to be in the room with them. These pieces that we're talking about are, some of them are massive and folks walking nearby them or sitting and enjoying [01:01:00] them, and it's oh my goodness.

To be in the same room as this quilt is so it must be so incredible. And we didn't get into this, but Erick doesn't keep this huge stash of quilting fabric. He uses what he has, and from what I read, I'm guessing he has less than most hobby quilters keep in stock, but the intricacy of assembling thousands of pieces of fabric, and we didn't really describe this, but the self portrait and then also the portrait of his mother, which to date I, as far as I could tell on his website, these are the only ones that he's done portraits of people and it is like a mosaic. And in that all of the colors would match up with a photograph except that there're, in, in blocks [01:02:00] and to figure out the colors for that. I'm sorry, it, I cannot describe this on audio, how impressive this is. And I know there's computer programs I'm thinking of Lego.

Okay. That you can be like, here's a photo, make me a Lego kit that I can assemble so it has similar colors and it will give you something like that. And Erick doesn't do that. He does it all by hand and. Oh my gosh. It's just incredible. And when he applied to be on the show, he wrote he hinted at, in his submission of all the healing that has come through these hours and hours of quilting.

And I love when you find something that works really well for you. And Erick and I didn't go into this, but 'cause I didn't wanna bring it up, I'm like this is not the same. But for me this is my [01:03:00] similar thing. It's just I just love puzzles so much. And I started doing them really regularly just in the last few years.

And it's like one of my favorite things that I do. I just love sitting down and working on them. But I only like puzzles where I can look at a piece. And know exactly where it's gonna fit. So I don't like big forests where it's like this tree, this, piece with a piece of tree with a couple leaves on it could be anywhere in like half of the, I don't like that.

I like to know exactly where something's gonna go. That's what's relaxing for me. And not to put too fine a point on it, but, I'm going with this as adopted people or the diaspora as Erick is calling us to know [01:04:00] where a piece fits into our life is so impactful. And I think that's where my obsession comes from and thus my fascination with Erick's quilts.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Please do go have a look at his work and tell me if you've ever seen it in person. 'Cause I'm jealous. And I would love to see it in person. Thank you so much for listening and for valuing adoptee voices, and let's talk again soon.

319 Kristina Richie

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/319

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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. Today's guest is Kristina Richie, Tik Tokker and author of Unraveling Adoption Weaving Between Two Worlds. She shares some of her story with us, including how her birth mother gained custody of her when Kristina was 16 years old.

We talk about how the secrets in her adoptive home shaped her identity. Future romantic relationships and attachment patterns. We do mention suicidal ideation and suicide at a few different points during this conversation, so please take care when listening. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can [00:01:00] find at adopteeson.com/newsletter.

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. In this episode, Kristina does a little work assessing me, and we have split that section out and kept it at the very end of the show in order to keep our focus on her story.

So listen all the way to the end. If you wanna hear my list of favorite movies, songs, and snacks, and what that means about my adoptee wounds. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Kristina Richie. Hello, Kristina.

Kristina Richie: Hi, Haley. How are you?

Haley Radke: I'm great. I'm so glad we get to talk for longer than our last conversation.

Kristina Richie: No, impromptu live.

Haley Radke: My first and only TikTok live was with you, ma'am, and that was a shock.

Kristina Richie: No way. Are you serious?

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Kristina Richie: Oh [00:02:00] wow. I didn't know that. That's amazing.

Haley Radke: How, the 20 people that were there or whatever can just have that in their hearts and that's where it shall live. But anyway would you mind sharing a little bit of your story with us for folks who may be new to you?

Kristina Richie: Absolutely. My name's Kristina Richie, and I was adopted as an infant. When I was five years old. I found out that I was adopted from the neighbors and it was a horrible way to find out. The neighbor's older brother told me that I was adopted. My mom didn't want me. I was in an orphanage and that's why I didn't look like my parents. And that was. That pretty much what started a lifetime of trying to understand exactly who I was without any answers.

And then a couple years later, I had gone into a grocery store with my parents, and then they had a son five years after they had adopted me. They were not supposed to be able to have children. He was considered a miracle baby. My mom was 42, I believe, 41 when she had him. And we were in this grocery store. Everybody was looking [00:03:00] at my little brother. And this little old lady walks up and she's oh, he's so cute in talking about how he looks, just like my mom, my adopted mom who had blonde hair and blue eyes, and I am darker complected and I don't fit the mold right. And I just remember her talking about how cute he was and gawking over him, and then me standing there wanting her to say something about me.

And I look up at her and she looks down at me and she goes where did you come from? You don't look anything like your parents. And I think it was like the very first time that I like really understood the concept of I don't fit in here. Like I really don't belong. I really am so different. But I was terrified of asking any of those questions.

I remember on the way home there was a really awkward car ride. And I was not about to ask. I could tell that there was some tension going on between my parents in that conversation, and I was not about to be a part of it. But the next day on my way to school, it was just me and my dad. And I asked my dad, hey, what do you know about, my birth mom or any about that?

And it was, it literally took like the whole [00:04:00] drive to school for me to have the courage to ask. It was such like an awkward thing. I try to tell people, and this is, I don't know about other adoptees, how they feel, but as far as me, I always felt like that conversation was the equivalent of having the birds and the bees conversation.

It was just that awkward, gave me the same type of heebie geebie feelings. I don't wanna talk about this, ooh. And so I asked my dad that day in the car on the way to school, right before I had to get out of the car. What can you remember? What can you tell me? And all he could tell me was that, oh, she was really young and they, he gave me her first name and I went to school and I wrote down her first name in a journal and that was like my prize possession.

I still have that journal till this day actually. And so move on a couple years later I was 12 and when I turned 12 we got computer lab at school and I learned that you could use the internet to look up anything. And as soon as I learned that, I was like, I have to go find my birth mom. This internet is, it's gonna [00:05:00] be it. This is gonna be how I find out. My parents don't have to know they're not at school. There's no way they're gonna find out. So I started trying to google how to find your birth mom and trying to figure out where I was born in the hospital, all the things. I even went home and lied to my mom and told her that I needed a copy of my birth certificate for a school project.

And little did I know at that time as a 12-year-old that when you're adopted, but they put your adopted parents on the birth certificate. So that didn't help me. I was very disappointed when she pulled it out and her name was on it instead of this, mysterious woman who I only knew a first name of.

So I didn't get any answers and I actually had a friend that was in school with me and she was looking over my shoulder and she went home and told her mom what I was researching at school. And next thing you know, my friend and her mom are at our front door knocking on the door because they want to come and talk to my parents.

And they were really trying to help. I do believe that they were trying to help, but once again, it was like having the birds and the bees [00:06:00] conversation and I just wanted to crawl in a hole. So I lied that day when my mom asked me if I wanted her to go find my birth mom. I think part of it was because whenever she told me that she didn't have too much information, she was like what happens if we find her and she's married and she has children, and what if they don't know about you?

You wouldn't wanna disrupt her life, would you? And of course not, because the only thing that I could think of as a 12-year-old at the time was, no, I don't wanna ruin her life for a second time. So I internalized everything and I became a really withdrawn, but also angry, rebellious, starving for attachment child, and I was doing all of the things I shouldn't have been doing.

And my parents had always stuck to the narrative of, we don't know anything. We don't know anything. We don't know anything. And I needed answers so bad. I wanted to know who I was looking at when I looked in the mirror. I wanted to know who I was and why I was loud and where my small nose came from and where I got my dark eyes [00:07:00] from.

And what was I had people asking me like, are you Asian? Or what are you? And I would just make stuff up because I really didn't know and I wanted to know those answers. Family trees at school were like the most horrible, like family assignments. They were the most horrible, agonizing thing. I just remember asking the teacher, like trying to feel cool for a second.

Which family do you want me to do? And the teacher would always be like, oh, I don't know, maybe the one you live with. And I'm like, why? These people aren't related to me. That has no impact on my family origin. Like it doesn't make sense. And always feeling just like the outsider. And then when I was 14, I was going through some mental health stuff.

I was so depressed. I had a boyfriend that I was very attached to, that my parents had ripped away from me. And hindsight is 2020. They should have, he was way too old for me. I was doing things I shouldn't have been doing. I was sneaking out. And in all reality, I should have never been allowed to date this boy to begin with.

He was 17 and I was 13 years old. Should never happened. [00:08:00] But he was my solid attachment. He made me feel seen. He made me feel heard. He made me feel held. He understood me. I felt like I could talk to him. And this was the first person that wasn't too busy for me, that my emotions weren't too big for, right?

And my parents ripped that away. And then the state got involved and they tried to prosecute him. And it was just, it was horrible. And so I was looking for attachment. Lots of people say they were looking for love in all the wrong places. I wasn't looking for love. I was looking for connection. I wanted somebody to see me.

I wanted somebody that would hear me, that would understand me, and I felt like I had found that with him, and that my parents took it away from me. And that was horrible. And so I was very depressed. I had suicidal ideations. I was sent off for an evaluation at a mental health type clinic, and I knew what to say so that they didn't keep me.

Because anytime that, especially I believe as an adoptee, I've heard this from multiple adoptees. For me specifically, anytime somebody would threaten to have me evaluated or [00:09:00] put me in an institution or make me go to a teen challenge program, or this type of boarding school or that type of place to quote unquote, help me, I felt like you're abandoning me all over again.

And the idea of that was horrible. I couldn't deal with it. So when I was 14 years old, my birth mom showed up at my high school completely unannounced without my parents' permission, and that started a war. I snuck around for two years. Trying to have a relationship with her, even though they were heavily policing that relationship.

I was only allowed to see her when they said it would only be a phone call supervised with my dad listening on Sundays. And then if I was allowed to see her it'd be for a couple of days at a time, maybe at Christmas or maybe during summer. And that just wasn't enough for me. I had 14 years of questions and not enough time to get those answered in 15 minutes on a Sunday.

So I was sneaking around and calling her, and eventually I snuck out to go see her. And when I did, there was a car accident. I was not involved in the [00:10:00] car accident, but it did make me late for curfew. And when that happened, I admitted what I was doing and who I was with. And as a result of that, my parents tried to put a restraining order against my birth mom.

And when that happened, I hired my own attorney. I showed up to court. I sued my parents when I was 16 years old, and my birth mom got custody of me, and so I moved in with her. After that, I became an emancipated minor about eight months later. And I can tell you that I'm so thankful to this day that I became an emancipated minor, because that did a couple different things for me.

But the biggest thing that did was there was a judge. Judge Stern. Judge Stern gave me autonomy for the very first time. She was the very first adult that looked at me that said, I think you know what you need better than anybody else, and I'm willing to give that to you. And as a result of that, I was able to leave court that day after being emancipated, and instead of going back to my birth mom's house, I made the choice to go back to my adopted parent's house and knock on the door, [00:11:00] which was weird because I had literally walked through that door instinctively my entire life.

I had never moved. That was the house I came home to from the hospital, and my parents answered the door. My mom was very guarded. She was still angry with me. She had every right to be. But my dad, my adopted dad, as soon as he came to the door, he, soon as he came down the hallway, he knew that I was there because I wanted to be, not because I had to be.

And the entire game changed in that moment. And ever since then, my dad has been my safest attachment. My best friend, we had the most amazing reconciliation. I talk to my dad every single day. He is my best friend. And so without all of the different elements and everything that happened within those couple of years and as wild and crazy and all of the things with the sneaking out and the lawsuit and all of the attachment fractures and the ruptures and the betrayal and the lies and all of it, I'm still so [00:12:00] thankful for all of that because as a result of that, I got to understand my dad.

And I hated my dad when I was a teenager with all of this stuff going on because he was so controlling and I just couldn't wait to get away from him. And in fact, when I left and I went to go live with my birth mom, I didn't even speak to my parents for eight months. I didn't talk to 'em at all. I went no contact.

They kept on trying. I refused. I didn't wanna speak to them. And there was a split loyalty. I felt like I was cheating on my birth mom with my parents, and vice versa. I didn't feel like I could make the right decision. I felt like no matter what I was doing just in my existence, I was hurting somebody.

And that was incredibly unfortunate. And so at the age of 17, I got married for the first time because I didn't want anybody fighting over me. I didn't want anyone to feel like I was choosing the other. I wanted to feel like I didn't have to pick. And so I [00:13:00] chose neither. And that was a hard season. And I was a divorce single mom by the time I was 18, and I got remarried 17 days after my divorce from my first husband, and I continued on these trauma loops and I didn't even know what a trauma loop was, and I didn't know why I kept picking the same type of partner over and over again. And I didn't understand why I kept making the same decisions and why these patterns just kept, coming back up in my life until I found myself 30 years old with six children and divorced for the third time.

And I was like, I have got to figure out what is wrong with me. I am obviously broken. I've been told this now by multiple men that are telling me, nobody's gonna want you. Who's gonna want you? You've been divorced three times. You have six kids. Who's gonna wanna be with that? And I really did believe that.

And I had worked so hard. I had struggled with my weight my entire life. I was an emotional eater. And with all of the stuff that was going on, I was a hundred pounds overweight by the time I was in my early twenties. And I had worked really hard. And when I was 25, I lost all of [00:14:00] that weight and I was feeling really good about myself.

And I had convinced myself that nobody would be stupid enough to cheat on me now. Nobody would leave me now. I was such a good wife and I made sure dinner was ready and on the table every single night and all these things. And I was like, if I'm just perfect, nobody's gonna abandon me. Nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna reject me or leave me if I do everything right.

And, it happened was that man still cheated on me and I still got left. And that brought me to my absolute worst place where I was like, I have to figure this out. And that's what started my educational journey on trauma. And I got my bachelor's degree in psychology. And then I continued on a bunch of certifications and started learning about adoption trauma.

And I remember the very first time that I heard somebody use the term adoption trauma. And I was just like, what do you mean? I'm fine. I'm cool, and it wasn't until I started really understanding all of the ways that my story, my childhood, all of that stuff with my birth mom and the way that she showed [00:15:00] up, and all the stuff that happened with my parents and all of the lies and all of the betrayal.

And it wasn't until I started putting the pieces together and saw the through lines where I was like, oh my gosh, I can't deny anymore that this has impacted me. I can't deny anymore that this is why I keep choosing the type of the same type of partner over and over again. I also can't deny that this will impact my children and I have to do something about it.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Kristina, you mentioned trauma loops and I haven't actually heard that phrasing before. Can you talk a little bit about that and when you discovered what that was?

Kristina Richie: We have five basic emotional needs when we're born worthiness, connection, safety, freedom, and belonging. And at any given point, if those one of those five things or all of those five things, or a couple of those five things are neglected chronically in us, we develop a childhood wound around that.[00:16:00]

And those wounds, we have stacks of wounds. Some people will have one or two, some people have all five. But those are basically like the programs that are running in the background that are dictating every single one of our decisions. It's actually pretty crazy. They dictate everything down to the snacks that we prefer, the cars that we drive, the clothing that we wear, the brands that we love.

All of those things are impacted by our trauma. And what happens is we develop these certain wounds and as a child, our nervous system is developing, but then so is our identity. Even after our nervous system is pretty much completely done developing, our identity is still developing. And when we don't have any sense of identity or we have identity ruptures or something that happens like what did with me and many other adoptees, and you just don't know who you are and you're trying to figure that out, you get into this place of, I don't know who I am, I don't know where I belong, I don't know all of these things, and those childhood wounds end up creating [00:17:00] patterns in your life.

These are the patterns that something keeps happening over and over again, and it doesn't feel very good because it always winds up being the same. Like, why do I always pick the cheaters? Why do I always wind up alone? Why does this keep happening to me? The answer to that is trauma loops.

Those trauma loops are patterns that formed as a result of these childhood wounds that basically became calcified within your life. They were not healed. Those things that were neglected, continued to be neglected. Nobody ever made you feel seen. Nobody made you feel heard. Nobody made you feel understood.

So you have spent a lifetime. With these behaviors, with these survival adaptations that kept you safe. And as a result, you are still walking around trying to protect yourself. And those things that you do to protect yourself end up hurting you and you don't understand why you keep on yielding the same result.

Why do I keep getting in relationships to the same person and why does it keep ending up the [00:18:00] same way that is a trauma loop.

Haley Radke: Thank you. And what do you do about it? Like you have managed to actually look at that and impact your life in a substantial way to get out of that?

Kristina Richie: So there is, it's such a loaded answer honestly, but I have developed a framework that talks about these five wounds.

It is called the Julia Effect. I help people heal from not only those childhood wounds, but also these trauma loops that are created from childhood and then just continue through life. Step one is seeing it. Step one is understanding what it is that is playing in the background constantly in your life.

And until you see it super clearly, you won't be able to break it. So step one is being able to identify it. Once we identify it, then I can give you a repair plan and tell you exactly what is needed based off of the particular [00:19:00] wounds. And it's pretty cool how I do this. So what I have developed with the Julia Effect is that I took neuroscience meta programming, which is pattern recognition and epigenetics, which is a study of how the nervous system we basically inherit our nervous systems from the people that we naturally come from.

And we also gain external factors from stepparents adopted parents. That's why a lot of us adoptees are so screwed up, honestly, is because we don't only get the trauma from our biologicals, but we also carry the trauma from the people that raised us, whether that be stepparents, adoptive parents, whoever we're taking on everybody's stuff, especially if they're unhealed.

And that's exactly what happened with me. My adopted dad, when he was 15 years old, both of his parents committed suicide two weeks apart from each other at Christmas time. And my dad was the one that found both of them. [00:20:00] He remembers the night that his father passed away, hearing his family in the kitchen saying, what are we gonna do with Mickey?

And he knew that he was a problem that needed to be solved. And so he winds up living with his aunt and uncle and he is a mess. As you can imagine with just discovering both of your parents after suicide, that's terrible, right? And so he was grieving and he was drinking, and he was getting into fights and he was stealing, and he was doing all of the things that you would expect nowadays if you're trauma informed, you would expect for there to be behaviors as a result of all of that trauma, especially when they don't put you in counseling.

They tell you to suck it up. There was never any let's talk about what you just went through. It was just stuff it. So he gets kicked out of his aunt and uncle's house and he winds up moving in with his elderly grandmother. And one night he comes home and he is so drunk he can't make it up the stairs.

So he ends up falling asleep on the staircase. He wakes up the next morning with a pillow under his head, a blanket on top of him and [00:21:00] his elderly grandmother asleep next to him on the stairs. Now his grandma could have chosen to yell at him, to escalate, to tell him to get upstairs. Take your butt to your room.

She could have lectured him, she could have shamed him. She could have done a lot of things that a lot of parents nowadays do when your kid comes home and they've made some terrible decisions, but she didn't. Instead she laid there with him and his grief and his mess and his behavior, and she was just a safe person for him.

Her name was Julia. And as a result of the way that woman loved my dad, when I came home after leaving and after being emancipated, when I came home and we had our reconciliation, my dad went from being that angry, confused kid that was parenting me to being like his grandma Julia. And so I, I've created this entire [00:22:00] training based off of the fact that one safe adult can change the trajectory of any child's life.

Haley Radke: I wanna go back. I don't know how comfortable you are about talking about this. I wanna go back to your repair with your dad and how he's your bestie now, and him and your mom, your adoptive mom, made some really poor choices in keeping secrets from you and the way they were controlling. We're all making the best choices we can for our children, but it was excessive in my opinion.

Kristina Richie: I agree.

Haley Radke: And some of the things she said to you, I've heard you talk about on, on, in your book and on another podcast I'm gonna recommend in a minute here, but it seemed really harsh and hard to come back from.

Can you talk about your relationship with her and things you wish she would've done [00:23:00] differently, and how you're able to manage that now, being so close to your dad, but has it been different with your adoptive mom?

Kristina Richie: Yeah such a great question. I've actually like really been asked that, and I think I have the best answer right now.

If you would've asked me this a couple months ago, I don't think that I would've had as good of an answer as I do right this moment. I'm gonna take it back to the day that I met my birth mom. When that happened, my adopted mom had come to this school and she knew that my birth mom had shown up. And instead of her asking if I was okay or asking how it went or anything, the first words outta her mouth were, where is she?

And I was like, where's who? I was playing dumb. And she was like, you know exactly who I'm talking about. Don't lie to me, Kristina. And my head turned around on this swivel and I'm like, don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. You've been lying to me my entire life. Don't lie to me. Like, how could you even, how could those words even come outta your mouth?

Like the audacity for you to say that to me right now is wild. And [00:24:00] she was like, let me guess you wanna go live with her, don't you? And I was like, yeah. And I really didn't, I didn't know this lady. I literally spent 45 minutes total with this woman. I knew nothing about her. No I didn't wanna go live with her.

I didn't freaking know her. All I knew was I was in pain in the moment and I wanted to hurt this lady back for all of the lies. And so I was like yeah, I do. She goes, that's fine. You and I have never been into this mother daughter thing anyways. At least I have my son. And her son was her biological son, right?

And so that cut pretty freaking deep. And I don't even think, honestly, I doubt she would ever admit even now that she said that. But I will never forget those words. And there's been several other things that have been said that have been hurtful, but I've said a lot of hurtful things too. And what I will say that has helped me the most with all of this was this past year, back in the beginning of summer, I wound up going no contact with my birth mom [00:25:00] after 24 years of being in reunion. After not understanding why every single time I was around her, I was dysregulated. I didn't even know what dysregulated meant. I didn't understand anything about the nervous system. All I knew was, is that when she texted me, I just felt this weird anxiety. I didn't ever wanna go to her house to hang out. My husband would have to beg me to take the kids over there for dinners.

And I just I hated when she called me and I didn't wanna answer the phone. And I sat there in my own head like, oh, I don't wanna answer it. And there was things that she would say that would just cut so deep. And it was like she would say it with a smile. And I'm like, there's no way that she meant this in a way to hurt me.

And so I went on this really deep dive on healing and understanding the nervous system. And I furthered my education and I spent over a thousand hours and that's where the Julia Effect was born in all reality. And what I came to the conclusion of was that it's just mismatched nervous systems.

And it wasn't anything that I was doing. It was what I couldn't help. It was genetics. And so I [00:26:00] got parts of my nervous system from the people that raised me. I got parts of them from the people that I came from. And you have this big mix of all of this trauma and all of this stuff that I'd never processed and feelings that I didn't have language for and I didn't know how to talk about.

And all I had was these unprocessed emotions and this hard outer shell and this disorganized attachment that said, I really want closeness, but you're gonna have to stay at an arm's distance because I can't let you in. I can't, okay which is very common for adoptees. So I never fully let her in and I feel like she felt rejected by me.

And so with her own junk in her own childhood wounds and all of her unhealed trauma and the way that her dad was and all of this stuff, it was a nervous system issue. And had I understood that. As a kid, had I understood what I know now 30 years ago, 25 years ago, it would've saved me so much pain and heartache.

Even when it comes to what happened with my birth mom. It's the same exact thing. [00:27:00] My birth mom has a very different nervous system than mine. What was wild was is when I started the Julia Effect and I figured out these questions and all of the things and how they relate to each other. I wanted to do basically my own little case study.

And so I started asking all my biological relatives what their favorites were, and I ran all of their stuff and I started comparing and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I'm almost identical to my paternal grandmother, almost identical. And I was like, this is wild, but I'm. Not very, like very different from my biological dad.

Him and his brother are almost identical, and then him and my birth mom are identical and they do not get along. So now it makes perfect sense as to why they don't get along. And it also makes sense as to why I get the same feeling with both of them. I'm just like so dysregulated around both of them.

And I have a lot of that same dysregulation with my adoptive mom. And when I ran everybody's favorites and I started [00:28:00] understanding what it was that dysregulated me so much, I understood that they all had this very dominant safety wound. And I naturally connection wounds. You and I, we get very dysregulated by that.

And not only are we uncomfortable with them, but they are just as uncomfortable with us. So it causes people to say things and to push back and to trigger each other. And it's not like we're doing it on purpose. And the one thing I think that I have kept in my head that has saved me a lot of pain and a lot of internalizing other people's words and emotions is that big reactions, big emotions, whether it be anger or sadness or whatever those things may be, is nothing but information.

It's information. It's telling a story about that person and their own trauma because the reason that they reacted is from something that is way deep within them. Why did this affect you the way that it did? Understanding that has helped me have more empathy and more compassion. That has helped me forgive myself for a [00:29:00] lot of the stupid decisions that I have made.

It has also helped me forgive my adoptive mom for a lot of things that she has said and done. It has also helped me understand my biological parents and why they did the things that they did. Another thing that I have done as well is I researched so heavily. The connection between certain wounds and placing children, and it's pretty consistent across the board.

The people that have safety dominance and they also have belonging. Those two wounds are the most common wounds for placing children for adoption. And when I learned that and I did all the research, and I asked a ton of birth mothers for their favorites, and I analyzed them all, and I saw this huge, compelling piece of evidence of why these people were doing what they were doing.

I was like, I have so much more insight now, and I can look at them with way more compassion than I did before, and now I feel like I understand them. [00:30:00] Instead of me just choosing to be hurt by their words, by their actions, I now understand that my body was having a physical reaction. That was telling me danger, this is not safe for you because my nervous system is not matched up with theirs for, I'm just, I don't feel regulated around them.

I'm not safe around them, not emotionally speaking, but I can say that having all of this information and all of this knowledge now and going back, I was just out there actually visiting my parents three weeks ago, and I talk about this stuff now all the time because it, impacts everything.

Every decision that we make as a human being literally is dictated by our trauma, like all of it. And I can prove it with all of this stuff, which is crazy. But now I have a completely different outlook on who they are and why they are the way they are. Instead of like, why are you, why do you always invalidate my feelings? Why do you dismiss me? Why do you tell me that I'm. Too dramatic or I'm too much, or I'm this and that and the other. Like, [00:31:00] why has this always been a theme and why does this hurt so bad? And why do I want your love so badly? But I just feel like I can't get it. And then now that I understand that it is literally their nervous system versus mine, and that nervous system will always dysregulate mine. I don't have to continue trying to get something out of somebody that is incapable of giving it to me.

Haley Radke: That yeah I can see that. I can see that. And I, when I was thinking about your adoptive mom and dad and their choices early on, they really created the very thing that they were afraid of by holding so tightly.

And I can see that in the trauma loop. What you were talking about earlier, just making these choices out of fear just can perpetuate the cycle. I wanna ask you before we do recommended resources, I know you have used [00:32:00] surrogacy as a family building tool and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that.

Having now unpacked all of this attachment trauma and understanding more of the implications, so while those children are biologically yours and your husband's, someone else carried them and for adoptees we're always like missing that connection to our birth mom. We have the biological piece, but we also like we're in her body for, however many months. And so I wonder if you have thoughts on that now?

Kristina Richie: Definitely. I swore I was never gonna get married again. And lo and behold, this super cute 24-year-old who had never been married and never had any children walked into the bar that I was working at, which was ironic because neither one of us were drinkers.

And I fell in love with this amazing man who [00:33:00] was just precious in every possible way. And I had a hysterectomy. And so I started looking into surrogacy because naively, I believed that all of my issues just stemmed from the fact that I wasn't raised with my biological parents. And I had read the Primal Wound, but I didn't finish it.

And on the last half of it, they talked about this. So I didn't even really know what I was getting myself into, and I didn't think that would have any impact. I like assured myself that no, like they're not the biological parent. If they were the biological parent, I could see that being a problem.

But the, it's really not about that. It's about like genetic mirroring. And I knew those concepts. I knew looking at somebody and seeing yourself in, a reflection type of a thing was really important and understanding where you came from and all of that. And I'm like, as long as I'm open and honest and my kids know that I didn't carry them, everything should be fine.

Yeah, no. So my daughter is almost six and my son will be three in a week and a half. I had two separate surrogates that carried them. [00:34:00] Both of them are friends of mine and it's very obvious that they were very different than all of my other children. Now, my other kids, I have four that I carried, and then two that I have guardianship of that I raised since they were toddlers that call me mom.

So I am used to raising children that are not biologically mine, 'cause I had two. And then I'm used to my own biological children. 'cause I had four of those already. And then I have these two. And these two have very different attachments. They're very anxiously attached. My other kids were very securely attached for the most part, they were my Velcro babies. I've never had a Velcro baby before them. I've never had a baby with colic or stomach issues until these two. I've never had ones that scream all night long until these two. I have never had ones that preferred my husband over me until these two. And I can't really chalk it up to anything other than I didn't carry them.

I will [00:35:00] tell you that the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life was allow somebody else to carry my children. That was so hard. My anxious attachment side got into full gear while these women were pregnant with my babies. I would sit on the phone with poor Tasha. She's the one that carried my oldest, my daughter.

For hours a day because I just needed that closeness with her 'cause she had my baby inside of her. And what I can tell you too is like with all of my kids, I have always co-slept with all of my kids. I have always been so attached with all of my children because I was like always terrified that they would feel like I was abandoning them.

And while these women were pregnant with them, I felt like I was abandoning them. They were in another state, they were in somebody else's womb. I didn't know if they were being protected, if they were being nourished. And that anxiety that came with that was so debilitating. It was horrible. And then you have the other side of it. I've always talked to them about how they were carried by somebody else. I've told 'em the story that, we have an oven. Our oven was broken. We made our own chocolate chip cookie dough. It was time to bake the cookies. We had to take them [00:36:00] to Tasha's because my oven was broken.

So we just baked the cookies in there. So whose cookies are they? And they'd be like yours and yes. So that's how this works, right? So she's always understood that she wasn't in my belly. Tasha still comes and visits, so she sees her and she knows her and she knows that she was in her belly.

We've shown her pictures, but nothing ever would've prepared me for what happened. A month and a half ago, my daughter gets in the car crying from kindergarten and she says, mommy, my friend told me a secret, and I'm not supposed to tell you, but it hurts my feelings. I'm like, whoa. Like first of all, that's not something we do.

Okay. I was like, you can tell mommy anything. She said she told me that I am adopted. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? I'm like, what? She told me I was adopted because I told her that, I didn't, I wasn't in your belly. I was in Tasha's belly. So she says that I was adopted and I'm adopted, and I literally had to sit there with my five-year-old and somehow explain to her, you're not [00:37:00] adopted.

Mommy is adopted, but you're not adopted. You don't have two mommies. You only have one mommy. Like I am the only mommy. Yes, you grew in somebody else's belly, but I'm the only mommy, and she still, like for weeks, was on this, I'm adopted. I'm like, you're not adopted. And she would cry and she would be upset.

And I'm like, you know what sucks so bad about this is my daughter's five. Remember how old I was when I found out? Because some kid told me five. Like this is just history repeating itself. So what I will say is there is a definite obvious difference between the children that I carried and birthed myself, and then the two that my friends carried for me.

Haley Radke: I appreciate you sharing that. And I think as we work in advocacy. It's so helpful to know that, and it's so helpful to connect with those communities as well to have our voices heard a little more about what's traumatic and what's not. So thank you. I know we're wrapping up time and [00:38:00] I really wanna recommend that folks.

First of all, I have a podcast episode so you can hear more from Kristina. You share your story way more in depth on Kate and Ty's podcast. Break It Down on episode 36 and 37. I was locked in listening to you tell your story. It's so good. But you are also a five time, almost six time author.

And I read Unraveling Adoption Weaving Between Two Worlds, and I was like, this is a page turner. I was like, I was really going for it. I totally, yeah, I read it in one sitting and I really enjoyed it. Again, a lots of your stories and a lot of your calls are, to adoptive parents, but I think adoptees will feel really seen.

In the words that you share and you have this, no, I'm just gonna read this a little bit. "You cannot love away a history. You refuse to acknowledge. You cannot expect [00:39:00] secure attachment while denying the very wounds you're meant to help heal. Your child is not a blank slate. They are a whole complex, layered person."

And I was like, yes. Perfect. Well said.

Kristina Richie: Thank you.

Haley Radke: You, you also have a really large TikTok presence. I didn't realize that you've only been on TikTok like a year. You've shared your story on TikTok before and I was reading through some of the comments on some of your most viral videos today.

And I was like, man, people super don't get it. Like I'm really sad for the parents who raised you. What a slap in the face of the people who nurtured you. I would stick with the ones who brought me up, not the ones who gave me up happy face. Who puts a happy face emoji after that? How heartbreaking for your adoptive parent.

And every time I read one of those comments, I don't know if [00:40:00] it like fuels your fire to keep going, but for me I was like, yes, this is why I'm still doing what I'm doing. Most people don't get the impact adoption has on us. And so I'm really thankful for voices like yours sharing your experiences like. Anyway, any comments on any of those things before you tell us what you wanna recommend?

Kristina Richie: Yes, actually. So that's what started this entire journey for the Julia Effect video that you're talking about in particular was I got like 1.2 million views on that video within a matter of four days. And I was blown away and I saw the same thing you saw. I saw those same types of comments and they were literally just repeated over and over again.

And I was super curious as to like, why are these people saying these things? Because I wanted to understand why certain adoptees [00:41:00] don't wanna meet their parents. Wound up finding out was that was actually their attachment style talking. And now that I have this ability to decode the human algorithm to understand where people are coming from, what those comments are, I can actually decode a human being based off of one of those comments not just their attachment style, but also their wound stack based off of their Facebook or even an Instagram or TikTok comment. So now I look forward to looking at those reactions are nothing but information. They say way more about that person than they do about me.

Haley Radke: That's good. What do you wanna recommend to us today?

Kristina Richie: I will tell you that the single best thing that taught me the most about adoption in general was getting on TikTok. I didn't get on TikTok really until January of last year, two days after the blackout happened, and I got on there and I decided to share my adoption story just randomly, and it blew up really fast and [00:42:00] I was blown away by it.

And I didn't even know that there was such a thing as adoptee TikTok, like I had no idea that was a thing. And then I discovered adoptee TikTok, and then I felt like I had community. I felt like I had other people that had similar stories. I had people that understood my story, I had support, and I was just like, wow.

There's people who get it. This is so nice. So I think that understanding that you have a community out there of people who are also willing to talk about it and if you get on there and you start watching, even if you don't agree with them, if you watch with an open mind and you just try to find other people that have the same type of hurt as you, that might have a completely different opinion, might have the same exact opinion, just knowing that you're not alone makes a huge difference.

So that one thing by itself, TikTok changed so much for me and it really inspired me to further my education and to create a way to help people heal.

Haley Radke: I love that. One of the [00:43:00] observations in your book, I was like, oh, this is so good. You talk about cultural hypocrisy and if adoption is so beautiful, why is like saying to someone "you're adopted" still an insult?

And I think you bring those things to light so well on your TikTok as well. So I know folks will go follow you there on TikTok and where else can we connect with you online and follow what you're doing, Kristina?

Kristina Richie: I am on TikTok as Kristina Richie. It's Kristina with a K. I'm also on Facebook also Kristina Richie. I'm not on Instagram as much as I should be, but it is connected to my Facebook, so you can also reach me there it is @thekristinarichie. If you would like to contact me directly, you can do so on my website. If you wanna learn more about the Julia Effect, if you wanna have me come speak, it is www.thejuliaeffect.com. There's plenty of information there about the Julia Effect and exactly what I do trainings on.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much. What [00:44:00] a delight to get to talk to you today and share my affinity for potato chips.

Kristina Richie: Ha. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Haley Radke: So I am on TikTok and I'm more of a lurker than a poster there, but I have seen some very amazing conversations go down about the adoptee experience there, just as Kristina was mentioning. And I think there's also there's drama just like there is on Instagram and wherever we are, we always have those things happening too.

It's mixed and I hope that wherever we show up, we are doing it in good faith and hopefully building great community with fellow adoptees who have experiences we can all learn [00:45:00] from and it's a great way to support each other if we are kind and showing up well. So I love that recommendation from Kristina.

Okay, if you wanna hear the real real about me, go ahead and listen to the very end. And thank you for listening to adoptee voices. Let's talk again soon.

Kristina Richie: So within this training within the Julia Effect, I use a list of your favorites. And it's wild how these favorites correspond to things that have happened to you in your life without you ever even realizing it. I can now decode the human algorithm based off of understanding what your favorite snack is, what your favorite smell is, what your favorite songs are.

It's pretty wild. I would love to do yours, actually. I think it would be really fun. And then at the end, [00:46:00] I deliver something called a Letter from Julia. And a letter from Julia is what Julia would've said to you on the staircase that night. So I do these trainings for educators, for social workers, for anyone that works with children, especially adoptees, adoption conferences, things like that.

Because I think that there's a lot of adults out there that understand the concept of being a safe adult, but they don't fully understand that safe emotionally is totally different from I will protect you physically, right?

And so I'm, I've really made it my mission to help people understand their own trauma and their own healing without reenacting it, without having to talk about things that happen to you without you having to relive anything.

You're literally just answering basic questions. That sounds like something your second. Grade teacher would put on your desk for a fun project and as a result of that, it gives me a full blueprint of what you got going on and how to help you and how to help you heal so that [00:47:00] you can become a safe adult so that you can love like Julia.

Haley Radke: That is fascinating. I know you're not a therapist, but I know you've done a lot of trainings in this area, so that sounds really cool. My favorite snack is chips. Can you tell me about potato chips? No, I'm kidding.

Kristina Richie: I can tell you lot actually.

Haley Radke: Maybe now you should tell me about potato chips.

Kristina Richie: Okay. You wanna do one really quick? 'cause I'll absolutely do yours.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Kristina Richie: I think it'd be really fun for your listeners.

Haley Radke: Let's do it.

Kristina Richie: What are your three favorite colors?

Haley Radke: Red, pink, and yellow.

Kristina Richie: What's your favorite holiday?

Haley Radke: Christmas.

Kristina Richie: What are your three favorite songs or three of your favorite songs? They don't have to be your exact three top favorites.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. This is Hard. I love Ordinary right now by Connor Price. Okay. I love In The Blood [00:48:00] by John Mayer. And what's on Repeat all the time is The Six musical soundtrack.

Kristina Richie: Okay, cool. Okay. What's your favorite Disney movie? Or gimme like three of your favorite Disney movies or children's movies.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. They're all orphans, aren't they? This is a hard one because I have new feelings about movies and pop culture as an adult. So as a kid, I remember Little Mermaid was totally one of my favorites, so was The Lion King and Walle. I really liked Walle.

Kristina Richie: You know what I used to sing. I love The Little Mermaid too, for obvious reasons, but I would change the words, so I would change it. I was a singer, so it was, I wanna be where my people are.

Haley Radke: [00:49:00] Yes. That's good.

Kristina Richie: Favorite movie of all time?

Haley Radke: Oh goodness. I guess I'm gonna say Clueless.

Kristina Richie: Oh, Clueless, yes. Okay. Favorite smell,

Haley Radke: vanilla.

Kristina Richie: Favorite snack chips.

Haley Radke: That's right.

Kristina Richie: Okay. Favorite book?

Haley Radke: I don't even know if I can answer that. I have read a lot of books. I revisit the Harry Potter series constantly, so probably that.

Kristina Richie: Okay. Favorite soda?

Haley Radke: Lemon bubbly.

Kristina Richie: Lemon bubbly. Okay. Favorite fast food chain?

Haley Radke: I'm Celiac. So the only fast food I get anymore is Five guys.

Kristina Richie: I love Five Guys. Favorite animal.

Haley Radke: Dogs.

Kristina Richie: Favorite game?

Haley Radke: Kristina. We have 300 board games at our house. I don't even know. The favorite one right now is Flip Seven.

Kristina Richie: Flip Seven. I've never even heard of [00:50:00] that.

Haley Radke: Oh, it's a new hot card game you gotta try it with your fam.

Kristina Richie: Take a number between one and 100.

Haley Radke: 22.

Kristina Richie: Okay.

Haley Radke: I didn't know I was gonna get this like assessment thing happening. I have a lot of questions for you.

Kristina Richie: All right. Let's see what your favorites say about you. Are you ready?

Haley Radke: Yep.

Kristina Richie: I can tell you that safety is definitely one of your top ones for sure, but you're definitely also connection. Yep. All right. Likely wound stack, we have connection, worthiness, and belonging with safety present in the background and the light freedom streak.

Haley is warm, visually bright, emotionally deep, but she has rules about who gets access to that depth. She reads like someone who feels a lot, wants real closeness, is terrified of being too much, tries to stay cute, upbeat, so she isn't a burden and secretly wants someone to notice what she doesn't say.

Her nervous system summary is that Haley's nervous system is soft core intensity. Not chaotic, not loud, but internally she's very active. Her [00:51:00] body is trying to answer questions like, am I safe to be fully seen? Will people stay if I'm not performing happiness, what if I am actually too needy? And what if I get attached and it costs me?

Number one, connection wound, dominant. Core belief is I feel deeply, but I don't want to scare anyone off. Connection Wound is not I love people. Connection Wound is, please don't make me feel alone in a room full of people. Favorites that scream, connection. Little Mermaid, the most classic connection wound movie ever.

Longing Voicelessness, wanting to be chosen, changing yourself to be loved. Walle. Loneliness, devotion, tenderness, loyalty. Without words. Vanilla. Comfort coated safe. Soft dogs. Unconditional love without emotional risk. Harry Potter series. Found family loyalty, protection and being chosen. Christmas warmth, home memory. I want this feeling again. How connection when shows up. She makes friends easily, but only a few know her deeply. She can be affectionate and playful, but [00:52:00] panic when it feels too serious. She wants consistency but pretends that she doesn't need it. She silently tracks effort and emotional safety. Her triggers are being ignored, being left on red, someone getting distant without an explanation. Sarcasm when she is being vulnerable, feeling like she cares more than the other person. Not being emotionally mirrored. Number two is worthiness. High secondary core belief. I have to be impressive, easy and pretty and fun to keep love worthiness. Wound in women often hides under style humor competence being the good one and being low maintenance worthiness tells our Clueless, iconic, worthiness coated movie.

I love it too. And I also carry worthiness, which is very common for adoptees. I can almost always tell an adoptee or somebody that was not raised by their biological family, they will pull up connection, worthiness and either freedom or belonging. Almost always in the top three. Social hierarchy, being liked, performing, beauty and charm.

If I'm [00:53:00] perfect, I will be safe. Red, pink, yellow, bold, feminine, warm attention, but controlled attention, Ordinary by Connor Price and in the Blood john Meyer Identity, inner wiring. Why am I like this? Worthiness wound says, I'm fine. I'm easy. It doesn't bother me. I don't care. But the nervous system says, please pick me. Please choose me. Please don't replace me. Her triggers are being criticized, being compared. Someone implying she's dramatic or emotional and not being favorite. Feeling like she's failing at life or in relationships. Number three, belonging core belief if I don't fit, I'll be rejected. Belonging when shows up in Haley as a desire to be liked by groups, being hyper aware of social energy, being sweet and adaptable, often defaulting to the vibe of the room.

Belonging tells Christmas, Harry Potter. Five guys chips, bright colors, belonging wound. Doesn't want elite belonging. Wound wants comfort, sameness, familiarity. This feels like us. [00:54:00] Triggers feeling judged, feeling like an outsider not being included. People gossiping or excluding. Than safety wound. Haley has more safety than she realizes.

The chips was the dead giveaway for me. Yes, safety shows up as comfort foods. Simple sense nostalgic movies, a desire for consistency. She likely becomes very anxious when plans change suddenly someone becomes unpredictable. She feels like she can't read the room. Number five, freedom, light streak. Very protective energy.

Haley is not freedom dominant, but she has a freedom flare, meaning once she's hurt enough, she will detach and disappear. She'll burn the bridge if she feels humiliated. She prefers to leave first rather than beg. Freedom and Haley is a protective mechanism. If it's going to hurt me, I'll exit before it destroys me.

Attachment style, anxious, avoidant, fearful, avoidant, leaning, anxious. Translation. She craves closeness, but closeness also scares her. She can test love without meaning to. She may chase, [00:55:00] then pull away, and then chase again. Likely childhood environment. Haley reads like she grew up with the combination of emotional unpredictability, inconsistent affection. Be happy, be good, be sweet. Messaging, emotional needs, being minimized or mocked. Pressure to perform. Good girl. Pretty girl. Smart girl. She likely learned that love is safer when I'm impressive. Me too, girl. Me too. Relationship cycles, spark depth, panic, perform, resent, detach. This is where those loops come into play, right?

So it says she connects quickly, she gets emotionally invested. Then she panics and says, what if I get hurt? She becomes easy, pretty, and fun instead of honest. She feels unseen, so she withdraws, gets quiet, becomes cold. She may leave suddenly or emotionally checkout how haley shows love. Remembering what you like.

Snacks, thoughtful gifts. Attention to detail. I saw this and I thought of you being physically affectionate and supporting your dreams quietly. [00:56:00] What she needs to hear. You are not too much. You're safe with me. I'm not going anywhere. You don't have to earn love here. I love the real you, not the happy version.

Your feelings don't scare me. I want to know what's really going on under your smile. What not to say to Haley. You're being dramatic. You're too sensitive. It's not that deep. Why are you like this? You always do this. You need too much reassurance. You should just get over it because all she hears is your needs are a problem.

Then it goes into your gifts, which I think are really cool. So it says that you would keep a handwritten letter forever. You love customized jewelry. Initials or engraving, perfume or body mist, especially vanilla, cozy Christmas vibe items like blankets or candles. Harry Potter. Themed, but subtle, not childish.

Nostalgic gifts. A date night planned gift planned with effort equals safety. Five guys. Snack night, movie night, type of a thing. Favorite snacks, decoder chips, nervous system, [00:57:00] comfort regulation. I need something crunchy to settle. Five guys. Belonging, warmth and comfort. Ritual. Lemon bubbly. I want control. I want clean. I want lightness. So then we get into the letter from Julia. Haley, you were never too much. You were just too deep for people who only knew how to love on the surface. I can see the way that you carry brightness, like armor, the way you show up with warmth, energy, sweetness. Because somewhere along the way you learned that being lovable meant being easy.

But baby, you were not made to earn love through performance. You were made for connection. Real connection, the kind where you don't have to keep your feelings small so someone else can stay comfortable. I need you to know this. The part of you that wants closeness is not needy. It's not weak. It's not embarrassing is a part of you that never stopped hoping, never stopped believing love could be safe. And if you ever feel like you are too emotional, I want you to remember your sensitivity is not a flaw. It is an intelligence. It is a gift. It is [00:58:00] the proof that your heart is still alive, even after you had reasons to shut it down. You don't need to be the prettiest, and you don't need to be the funniest.

You don't need to be the happiest, and you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be real. The right people will not run when you are human. They will come closer because the real you. The you beneath the charm is the most beautiful part of you. I see you. I am proud of you with all my love, grandma, Julia.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I think a lot of that is, is pretty spot on.

Kristina Richie: Isn't that wild?

Haley Radke: Yeah, totally. Wow. I'm gonna have to re-listen to this when I'm not in work mode, so I can take it in more. But thank you.

Kristina Richie: Absolutely.

318 Diego Vitelli, LMFT

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/318

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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. Today I'm joined by Diego Vitelli, a Colombian adoptee and adoptee focus therapist. Diego shares his own adoption story with us, including what it's looked like for him to have been assigned an artificial date of birth.

We also talk about the accuracy of using terms like reunion. Or adoption trauma. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter. And if you do you will stay [00:01:00] up to date on all my adoptee related work. Diego and I wrap up the show with some recommended resources for you. And as always, links to everything we talk about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Diego Vitelli. Welcome, Diego.

Diego Vitelli: Thank you, Haley. So exciting to be here with you.

Haley Radke: I'm surprised it's taken me so long to get to you because we have lots of mutual connections. I see you in adoptee land doing all kinds of things, but first, would you mind starting and sharing some of your story with us?

Diego Vitelli: Yeah, absolutely. And just to even start at the beginning of like, why it's taken so long to get here which I've been thinking about this for a long time. I first came across your podcast Adoptees On when it was five to seven episodes in.

Haley Radke: [00:02:00] Seriously.

Diego Vitelli: And yes. And at the time I listened, obviously to the first five episodes and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. This is, I don't even know how somebody is doing this. I, it was just something I really connected with and people's stories. And I of course kept listening and was listening for many years, and I have the propensity of when I find a new podcast, I have to start from the very beginning.

So I was very thankful to not be. Coming upon your podcast, a hundred, 200, 300, 500 episodes into it. But I did fall behind because I went off into getting my master's degree, which we'll talk about at some point. And so I got really behind by a couple years because I was deep into that. But I was committed to getting back into listening and even back then I was like, I really wanna be on this podcast, but I didn't feel like I was worthy ready, whatever the situation was at the time. [00:03:00] I said, I'll do this down the road. And then it became I'm not gonna be on the podcast if that opportunity comes until I've listened to all the episodes. So I spent many years catching up and I finally did catch up last November, which was odd timing that you reached out then to have me be here. So it's just really a cool thing at the end of the day that.

Haley Radke: I had no idea. I had no idea. And I was tracking you like you were. I have lists. Okay. Not to be creepy, it's just a thing, that's what podcast producers do. And so when it was time for our next round of invites, you were on the list. Wow. I had no idea. You listened from the beginning.

Diego Vitelli: Everyone,

Haley Radke: You know it's ten years year.

Diego Vitelli: It's unbelievable. I was thinking about this morning. I'm like, is it 9 10, 7? I can't remember. But yeah.

Haley Radke: On July 1st, 2026 will be my 10th anniversary birthday of the show.

Diego Vitelli: [00:04:00] Advance congratulations to you.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

Diego Vitelli: I know I've listened to a lot of those milestone podcasts and I can't even imagine what 10 years is gonna be like for you.

Haley Radke: Yeah, no, I'll start thinking of it right now. What's actually gonna be amazing. Okay, so I know you are actually coming to us we're recording while you're in Colombia, so those are your origins. You wanna share a little bit about that?

Diego Vitelli: Yes, sure. My origin story I've thought about this too, is like how many different ways have I shared this over the years in different platforms and spaces and whatever. And it really just the always been the basic elevator speech that I've had.

I was born here in Colombia in Medellín. My story, so to speak, is that I was supposedly found underneath a bridge in Medellín, and I was anywhere from 18 to 24 months old at that point in time, and taken into state custody by, through Colombian Child Protective Services. I went to a local hospital at that time, was [00:05:00] diagnosed with third degree malnutrition and was in their care for the next 18 to 24 months before I was adopted by a family out of Boston, an Irish Italian family, and I was four to five-ish years old.

And I always say. I was four to five ish, and I say today I am 50 ish years old because I don't know my actual birthday. I was given a birthday by the Colombian government of 1/1/76. And when I got to Boston within that first year, my parents were the first to petition the Massachusetts government to change my birthdate, and I was the first person to have that done and they changed my birthday from 1/1/76 to 7/10/75, which is what I quote unquote celebrated for the next. Since I've been there. And it's, that's a, that's another area to talk about birthdays and [00:06:00] trickiness and who knows their birthdays and who doesn't, and so on and so forth.

But anyways, I grew up in a prototypical kind of way in this family. I came with language, as I say, when I was four or five years old. And within nine months I had it eradicated. And I just grew up being in a, in this family and connected to 'em, and I grew up thinking I was Italian.

I, in many senses, people talk about like, how do you fit into your families? And in many senses, I guess I, that Italian ness blended in, and I never even thought about myself being Latino. There was markers and knowing in some ways, but I just lost it. That connection to it because it wasn't centered.

Or if it was always, usually through microaggressions and, racist remarks about Latinos. And I seem to have that lens thrown on me at certain points in time. So it was, yeah, I just it was [00:07:00] very disconnected to to my experience and grew up, just as I think a lot of us do trying to blend in and fit into our worlds.

And then I went out to Seattle to do my undergrad studies at Seattle University and ended up staying out there and had been there basically 32 years at this point in time. So Seattle's home Boston has a lot of roots for me, but it wasn't until I had gotten married and did the prototypical thing, marriage white picket fence, two kids, all that kind of stuff.

And I was, I found myself, just at moments connecting to my adoptee identity, but not really connecting to it. And it was a very long process for me to really come into that awareness. I did get divorced, and went through that process eventually repartnered with somebody else and was with them for 14 and a half years.

And it was through that relationship that I began to really open [00:08:00] up and peel back some of the layers of adoption and my adoptee identity. So that happened when I was basically around 35 years old. It started prior to that, but that's when it really came into focus and it really showed up and, the relationship part of that was the hard struggle.

And I, connected to the adoptee identity. I was also trying to connect with my bisexual identity. So there was sexuality identity that was coming into play at that point in time. And then obviously my cultural identity, that was also very complicated. And because I had. Been disconnected from it. So that's where things landed in the fast forward lane of coming into my own adoptee identity.

Haley Radke: Can I ask you about the relationship strain of it? What was it about you looking into, oh, adoption had a bigger impact than maybe I had thought that caused a strain [00:09:00] with your partner.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah. I think, you know what the bigger center focus of it was that my ex-partner was also an adoptive mom to a daughter that was adopted from India. And my partner was half Indian and half Latvian. So bicultural herself and was raising this daughter, and it came into focus because of that and this understanding of oh, we have this thing that's happening. And she was young at the time and I was coming into my identity and there was a lot of, I think just this clashing of my own identity, how I was coming into it and what I was feeling was happening with her daughter at the same time.

And how do we bring awareness to people. To people at very different ages. And so I think that was a part of that, was the strain of that and myself, and not having done my own [00:10:00] work entirely at that point in time. To fully understand myself and trust in her and what she was doing as a parent in parenting, and also being very protective of an adoptee, a fellow adoptee as I was coming into my own awareness.

So I think it was just that, and I hadn't done the work and it obviously not only impacted this relationship, but it impacted my marriage and that individual as well. And I fully, really had to reconcile a lot of that through my process.

Haley Radke: Oh wow. Thank you for sharing that. Are you, I don't know. So you're coming into awareness and then are you like looking for outside supports? What were some of the things that you did to look further into this.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah. It, I, and part of this is going back for me, when it really first started for me was when I was a freshman in high school.

And there was a moment a story that I tell [00:11:00] when I came out of a class. I think I was in English class at the time and I was walking down the hall and I had a very visceral reaction in my body of something happening, and I just could not understand what happened. It was knee buckling. Kind of experience. And I was a relatively healthy individual, just out of the blue. And all I could remember is as I was leaning against lockers is thinking, wow, like I feel like maybe my biological mother died is the only thing I could come to in that moment in time. And this is me not being connected to my adoptee identity other than knowing that I was adopted and all that kind of stuff.

And so I held that to myself for the rest of the day and did not know how to process it, did not know what to do with it. And I went home and I, it's, I don't know if it was that day or maybe at some point in time, but I had said to my adoptive mother, I think I really wanna try and find my biological family.

And at that [00:12:00] time what I heard back was, why would you wanna do that? What about us? What about everything we've given you? And so on and so forth. It's a very, that's a very shortened version of the conversation, but a lot of us know what that, that conversation is, and it was my introduction to the whole kind of grateful narrative.

And so I shut everything down as a result of that and really packed everything away. And then I had a very, the pull that we have as adoptees of wanting to search this. And of course this is me at 15 with a heavy identity development process and time. And so I, like I said, packed it away.

I had another experience of that later in college. Revisited the conversation again with my adoptive mother at the time and got very similar kind of response. And so it just became, again, something that was not okay to talk about and to explore . And that's, I think what contributed to a lot of, that part of me being buried.

And then it happened again when I had my [00:13:00] son or my ex-wife and I had our son. And we know when, those of us that do choose to have kids and move into that space usually has some sort of impact on our, adoptee identity as it did for me. And it opened that up and I again, approached it with her and had similar kind of language, but at the same time, she was more willing to start giving me information.

And the one thing I will always credit her for is that she kept everything, all the documents of everything that went through my adoption process. And I didn't have a lot, but I had all this paperwork, so I got that file and that was the beginning of me opening up and exploring, what that was like.

Yeah, it's just a it's a long process, but that was the beginning of how I started to now search and look into groups. And back in the day, I found a Yahoo Chat group of Colombian adoptees. And that was my first [00:14:00] introduction to it. And I opened up this chat and I started reading posts and I was just like, oh my goodness, what is all this?

And I was reading a lot of really painful things that adoptees were sharing and I couldn't connect to it, and I was like overwhelmed by it. And so I just filtered everything into a folder so I wouldn't have it in my inbox. And I said, oh, I'll read that later and check it out. And never did, of course. But then years later, I was in that same feeling of pull and wanted to connect and so I Facebook had come out at that point in time.

Looked for Colombian adoptees, found the Facebook group, and then I did the same thing. And I felt like nothing had changed with the community of who these people were. And of course, because I had blocked it off myself, it was too overwhelming. So I lurked for a number of years in that. And then it was one day that an individual, a male, and I, it's really important for me to identify that it was a male that had written a post and said, [00:15:00] Hey whoever you are, wherever you are in your journey, your, you know your story and if you feel hesitant to post here for whatever reasons, like it was very validating and also very welcome and said, please share your story. You deserve to have it shared, or something to that effect. And that was the beginning.

And I sat on that for maybe an hour or two and got enough of the gumption up for myself to make my first post in that group, and then I was off and running at that point in time. So I always credit Michael for being that individual that really launched me into it.

Haley Radke: Incredible. And so fast forward now you're an adoptee who is also a therapist. And one of the observations that you've made is this piece about generationally how our parents raised us, however, whatever decade we were adopted in, [00:16:00] and the safety in with which to have conversations or not. So you got the outright verbal, why would you wanna look for her? You have us and I got the, I was an eighties baby. I got the, of course we support you, but the face and the actions, none of those lined up. And so can you talk to us a little bit about that and your observations in that area?

Diego Vitelli: Yeah, that's two different experiences and yet very familiar experiences for many adoptees and I, yes I'm more of the older generation, so to speak. I came out of Colombia in 1979. And I, I think, the hard part that I have experienced is that our generation was raised with this expectation that we're just gonna be brought into families and [00:17:00] blended in and assimilation was the name of the game.

And so parents were not equipped to understand really what was happening at all in that situation. And you think about a generation before us, it was even more that, and I've been in spaces with older adoptees that it was really, they really struggle with trying to be coming into their adoptee identity now, even at this age because of the conditioning that was there for so many years.

And, when it comes to adoptees and getting to the point of wanting to explore their identity. There's a lot of work that's being done for years before we ever get to even naming it. I think that's an important part to remember in that, that when an adoptee finally gets the courage to actually come forward and say to their adoptive parents this is something I want to do.

This isn't the first time they've thought about it. They've been thinking about it for a long time, and they've been reading the room for a long time. [00:18:00] They have enough data in their mind, so to speak, to say, is this safe enough? Can I do this? And maybe even in some of those situations, they still know that it's not necessarily safe, but they feel overcome by the need to do it.

And maybe that comes from being in spaces. Maybe it's come from being online, searching and doing things, in their background by themselves. Like it's coming from some depth that says, okay, I cannot do this anymore. And I think this is very true. Of identity work and I, and this is an identity piece that we're talking about as adoptees, but I also use this in comparison with LGBTQ identities or in racial identities.

If you haven't been connected to your race, like it takes time for you to figure out, can I come forward? Figure somebody that's trying to come out, it takes a long time and they've been thinking about it for a long time. It's not [00:19:00] the first time and they've played the tape in their head over and over again. And I think adoptees are very similar in that path.

Haley Radke: I've heard from some people that they feel like the impact of adoptee voices on social media and podcasts and all of those things that we, that are readily accessible now to young people is causing them to come into consciousness much earlier than you or I ever had the chance to be. Is that your observation as well?

Diego Vitelli: Absolutely. Yeah. And it's really important to understand that there, there's a lot of us out there, that adoptees and there's a lot of us that are not at all connected to this. The voices that you and I see, because we're in the spaces a lot. Can very much feel like it's the louder volume of it. What we have to really understand is that it's actually a much smaller subset of [00:20:00] our population that is coming into that consciousness. And I have, I do see that, I see that with clients, even younger clients, this is the first time they've actually really begin to explore and use, recommend pages or, people to follow or resources or whatever.

And it is the first time that they are seeing it, and yet there are a subset of adoptees who are using social media to connect like I did, instead of saying adopt from Colombia Facebook group, there's like adoption and you can put that into Instagram or Snapchat or whatever, and you can get a whole ton of different things. So they are getting exposed to that more. And I think that, yeah, there's a larger group of that and I also don't think it's as big as we would like to think it is.

Haley Radke: No, certainly not. And I'm so grateful for the young people who are sharing their experiences and connecting with their [00:21:00] peers and like making it okay to do I think some of them probably have adoptive parents who took the right training and were a little more open than perhaps your adoptive parents were or mine. But again, I think that's a really small percentage.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Let's go back to this. Sorry I heard from another adoptee that she calls it her birth zone because it's it's a week or two off. She's not really sure on a date, but she, it was like she was so young that it was much more clear. And when you said you were found between 18 months and 24 months, like that's a wide window. Can you talk about your. Adoptive parents choosing to change your birthday. Have you ever thought about changing your birthday? That is wild to me.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah. That part of the journey I [00:22:00] didn't do, I think it was, it began that about seven or eight years ago of really reconciling the fact that this birthday was just not mine. And I struggled for with it before that. The really ironic part of it all is that my daughter is actually born on July 10th. And so when she was born, she's now 19, but when she was born, initially I was still, not in my consciousness. And so it was a really amazing kind of cool experience to say, wow, your daughter's on your same day and this and that. And we had fun celebrating those birthdays for many of those early years.

Haley Radke: Did you, and then as I did, your adoptive parents chose that day for you? Like when did you know that day was specifically chosen?

Diego Vitelli: I don't know the specific date that I came into it. I just known that was something that had happened. I did get the story, full story of it, I think about eight, nine years ago from my adoptive [00:23:00] father.

Haley Radke: So you had many birthdays with your daughter shared on the, on July 10th.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Diego Vitelli: Yes. And as I came into, like I said, as I came into my own consciousness and as many of us do with birthdays, the complexities that show up there is that I just started not really enjoying the lead up to that day, and I would, I was having seasons.

My season would start around Mother's Day. And it would carry through June into Father's Day. And then, because my birthday was basically a couple weeks later, it would carry through until my birthday. And it was really rough. My, ex-partner would tell you all the time, like almost every single year I was in some sense, sabotaging this whole period window. And her birthday happened to be in the, towards the end of May, so she was a part of that experience too. And so I just was really struggling with it for so long. [00:24:00] And the part of us that, those of us who don't have our known birthdays, we're a small subset of people out there, but those of us that don't, and I'm not gonna hear to speak for everybody else, but it is incredibly complicated and hard.

And when you are around people that know their birthdays, that's a huge privilege that they have. And they don't understand that. And it's always hard to. I don't wanna be that person like, I don't know my birthday. But it is, it's a fact. And it's not something that just can be overlooked. And yet when you say it and mention it, people are they don't know what to do with that.

And it's understandable, right? Because they don't have that experience to know what it's like. And it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking for me because I lost a lot of connection to my daughter throughout those years. And we have, struggled for many of her years through high school.

And a lot of that is because of my own process and my [00:25:00] experience of trying to figure this out and not having the right language or the right way to approach all this stuff and they're a product of it. We know this. You have kids. I know that. And those of us that do. If we haven't come into our consciousness before we have our kids, they're the ones actually having to carry the burdens of our trauma as well through that, and how do we help them as we're trying to help ourselves. It's really challenging.

Haley Radke: This is a very light version of this. I don't know what time I was born. I have a time, but I don't know if it was AM or PM and I have a Christmas ornament. You know where you like, that's your name and your birthday, whatever, and it had the time on it, but it's wrong. I knew that it's wrong, but I don't remember if it's AM or PM. And so I just had a friend ask me, oh, I want to do your I think it's called human design. I'm not sure this is what's coming to mind, but I might be incorrect. Do you, what's, what time are you born? You [00:26:00] like, need all these things. And so I was like, oh, I'm not sure. And she said, oh, I'll split the difference.

And in my head I'm like that's not accurate. And so how is it for you participating in these. Not being able to participate in these common cultural, is what's your horoscope or what, which year. Like all of those kind of thing. Yeah, it's insignificant, but it's a part of how we connect with other people. What's your sign, Diego?

Diego Vitelli: Yeah. I'm so glad you asked that question because that was on my mind too, is I thought you were going for astrological sign. Type of kind of identification because they often will ask you like, what day were you born? What time were you born? And it tells you how, I don't even know the language. That's how disconnected I am with,

Haley Radke: which planet and whatever is lined up. Yeah. Yes. I don't know. I'm not sure

Diego Vitelli: Jupiter coming into Mars and all this kind stuff. I have no idea. Can't even fathom it. And it's been hard yeah, because it is a that's a little cultural context that of the people get to bond and connect with about themselves and [00:27:00] figure those things out. And I, yeah it, at times it's like sandpaper to me. It just really rubs me really the wrong way. And at times I'm also curious because naturally we're curious like what would be my day. And I I had I know a tarot card reading many years ago, and I've done this a couple times and I'm very guarded with how much information I give because I think in many senses people can just take a little bit and can really run with something.

And I don't want that. It's not the. It's not the way to really know it, and it feels inauthentic to me, especially somebody that doesn't know their origins. But that in that one tarot card readings the individual kind of narrowed down, seemed to narrow down that they knew my birthday might be 11 two or two 11, like it was like going back and forth.

I'm like. Okay, if I ever do have the fortune of figuring out my actual [00:28:00] birthday, and if it lands on 11 two, then we will have a massive party. We're gonna have a massive party anyways. But that would be unbelievable if that is where it landed.

Haley Radke: Yeah,

Diego Vitelli: and people have told me, no, you're not. I think what is it? Is it? Scorpio or something like that for November. This is how bad I am.

Haley Radke: I don't know.

Diego Vitelli: Then no, you're not that. And then somebody and somebody, I'll say I'm a July 10th. Oh, you're a cancer. And I'm like, I don't know. Am I?

Haley Radke: I know you mentioned like it's pretty unusual to have this gap, but I appreciate you talking about it because I think it lends itself to understanding a little bit more about what adoptees experience, where we're like, we don't know who looks like us and like it's just like this, on shifting sand instead of like on rock and it's, that's just one other layer of your experience that I think can be extrapolated [00:29:00] to the rest of what it feels like to be adopted.

Diego Vitelli: Yes, absolutely.

Haley Radke: Can you talk to me about your feelings about the word reunion, and I've heard you talk about this before and listened to a couple of the podcast episodes you've been a guest on. We can link to those in the show notes for folks. And I was like, oh man, Diego's on to something. We gotta talk about this us.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah. Thank you. This is something I am pretty passionate about. It's the one thing I've, I don't know, I don't know why I've latched on it. I think I'm one of the few that maybe speaks about it in this way. Or I don't know that I've heard of somebody else, but anyways, I, yeah. When it comes to the idea of language we are accustomed to hearing, when we decide we want to search for biological families, that the common language is search and reunion.

We're gonna go through the search and reunion process and [00:30:00] experience, and so on and so forth. And I, started thinking about that as from a clinical standpoint of working with clients and how hard that is for adoptees who go through that process, encounter the biological families. And then have in some senses, for lack of better words unsuccessful reunions or reunions that are short-lived, that it doesn't, you can't qualify that as a reunion to me, because it doesn't the, there's nothing intact to make that.

So I just really was playing this with this mentally at some point, and I was like, we've got to change that language. And I came to that conclusion of like, why can't we call it search and contact and let's start there. Let that be a starting point. And what will that do for an adoptee that's going through that process?

It can take a lot of weight off [00:31:00] of our shoulders as we're going through that. And because if we hear reunion, we expect that we're gonna have to, it's gotta be successful. That's the only outcome. And so if it's not that, then what happens to the adoptee? Like that from a mental health perspective is really hard and, can lead to really challenging experiences for many years afterwards.

If it's not, if it doesn't turn out the way you know that they hoped. So I was in that position wanting to help unburden that process for an adoptee and if we can, as an industry that gives us the language, has given us the language and told us what we should be, the words we should be using, and I, we've been in this space for a long time. We're adoptees that are trying to get our voices to be heard and for us to lead in that language. And so this is just one of those areas that I think we could really make a shift and help adoptees that are going through that process, not carry that [00:32:00] weight and see what happens with contact and work through that process and see where it goes.

Haley Radke: I also, I remember a long time ago thinking about the word reunion and then it's like, what do I call what I am in now? Is it reunification? Has it, are you fully back in? And so that, I agree like that language matters. I love that idea of contact because like frankly, some of us search and we just wanna know medical info and we're not expecting a reunion. Like contact with information provided back to us would be great. And that's all some people want. Sometimes that shifts.

Diego Vitelli: Absolutely. Yeah. And the adoptee needs to be given that space to to control their own narrative. And we'll talk about this later in terms of the resource that I wanna recommend and why it's so important, why that resource is to me, is so important because it gives language, again, really important language to the adoptee [00:33:00] to have more control in their process because a lot of it is put upon them to manage through everything that's there. They're having to manage themselves. They're having to manage what they're going to encounter, they're having to manage their adoptive family. That is a lot of stuff to, for an individual to have to carry and figure out. And just have their own experience through it, right?

Haley Radke: You hit your mid thirties and you have to start thinking about adoption and you have to, it impacts your relationship and all the things,

Diego Vitelli: just a few things.

Haley Radke: It's just on us, just a few things. The other thing it also comes down to a bit of language I think, that you wanted to talk about today was this idea of like adoption trauma and separation trauma and those things. And I think they're two different things. You talk about what [00:34:00] your beliefs are and let's go back and forth on this.

Diego Vitelli: Sure. Absolutely. Again, because we come into anything that we know about adoption comes from how the language is centered around us, which is usually by non-op people.

And you'll hear, and I certainly hear often, the adoptee has to go into counseling, into therapy. And more and more adoptees are doing it at younger ages. And it's yeah, have them go in to therapy because they have adoption trauma. And a lot of the books the professionals that use this language of adoption trauma.

And I started thinking about that again and I was like, that doesn't seem and feel really accurate at the end of the day of what's really happening for the adoptee. So to me, what I felt was a big miss is that the industry and professionals were not talking about where the [00:35:00] core issue was. Where everything really begins.

And it, to me, it begins at separation trauma. At that separation that the trauma is induced through that experience. And for an adoptee that for our community, can range for anybody. It can be from minutes to hours to days, to years, like somebody like myself, right? And what's happening in between, through all that.

And what happens after that. But if we don't acknowledge that beginning and we jump to, oh, it's because he was adopted or really that, that to me is pathologizing the adoption part of it. Now, it's not to say that adoptees that have been adopted have, we know there's plenty of adoptees that have been adopted into adoptive families that have been abused in their adoption experience and that has to be honored and, recognized as [00:36:00] additional trauma, but it's an additional trauma. I shouldn't say, but, and it's an additional trauma. And if we're only focusing on that, or if we're only focusing on selective pieces, then we're missing that and an adoptee can do a lot of work through years and thinking, okay I was really abused by my adopters and went through this whole process, and I worked through all of that, but yet I can't seem to get over the hump of something.

To me it's pretty obvious because somebody didn't focus on the separation trauma part of it.

Haley Radke: A hundred percent agree, and that's like the core root is separation trauma and acknowledging adoption trauma with abusive families. I think of adoption trauma, and so there's separation trauma, and we have all these attachment issues and identity, all those things.

I've been thinking of adoption trauma now as the trauma of being put into a [00:37:00] family with strangers and having to pretend that's normal and I belong here and you have to fit in, and that everyone is like pretending like we're all like pretending like this is normal. And so when I think this is weird, I don't fit here, then I think I feel like, and I'm going to use like, I don't mean this in an ableist way, like I feel crazy, like I felt crazy. And so I think that forced integration is also a traumatic event.

Diego Vitelli: Absolutely. I, yeah I agree with that a hundred percent. Because it's the process. For lack of better words it's the gaslighting experience in full force. And you, and when you have some [00:38:00] sort of idea or concept that this doesn't feel right.

And you're being told no, everything's fine. You're the, you're, we love you, you fit in. You're just a one of us. Like all these kind of things.

Haley Radke: And in fact say thank you.

Diego Vitelli: And say thank you for it. Yes. It's so hard. It's and if you don't have the experience, you just don't understand it. But I, and again, I think there's enough other contexts, and this is a part of, for me as a therapist and one that does relationship therapy, that these things show up in other areas. That to me, it doesn't seem like it's a big ask for people to really reflect on what they're doing or what they're placing on top of an adoptee and not think about it some other context that they may be able to somewhat have a little empathy around it and not hold onto this idea that, no, we need to maintain this narrative so that we can feel [00:39:00] good about what we are doing and the choice that we made to go through this process of adoption. And I say not just the adopters in that situation, we're talking about society.

Society wants adoption to be successful because that's what they've pitched.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Diego Vitelli: And so if there's anything that's negative towards that or makes them challenge their thoughts and their original beliefs around that, what are they gonna do? The whole system falls apart.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Diego Vitelli: We know this about other systems.

Haley Radke: And I should say this is how I see that definition, but that's not how people use it. That's not what people mean when they say adoption trauma.

Diego Vitelli: Right? Yes.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Yeah. That is such a good point, okay. We're close to wrapping up, but can you tell us how you came to decide to become a therapist and work specifically within relationships and adoptees and all that, your focus?

Diego Vitelli: Sure. [00:40:00] Absolutely. Where it became clear for me was going back to that adopted from Colombia Facebook group. I spent a lot of time there. I found my community there. I found connections, I found people that I felt like just understood me and, these were spaces where adoptees were pouring out their hearts.

And it was the first kind of experience socially where you could do that and do this with people across, different states in the US but then it became globally across the world and all these kinds of things, and you're just like, what? What is going on here? And I, the thing that I saw in those groups is that how people were responding to people's stories or comments or whatever there was happening, started to become a little problematic.

And you would start to see adoptees, and we know this pretty well in our own spaces. They start going after [00:41:00] the original poster for whatever thought or view that they had and dismissing them or putting, inserting their own story inside the comments. And it just derailing what was there for the original person.

And I started recognizing that and I was always trying to be very conscious of making sure that I was responding to the person that was there and what their experience was. And it might add a little context of my own stuff as I connect with that in some way.

Anyways, I was doing this for a long time and I just was like I feel a pull to help. I want to be a part of this I want to do this on a different level because you can't just do, 140 character kind of response in something and really cover everything. And yet that's oftentimes what was happening in these chats.

And people were just missing each other and they weren't hearing each other. And it's like at the end of [00:42:00] the day, people want to be seen, heard, and validated for their experience. And I had bounced around in a lot of different jobs and industries and just was struggling and for whatever reason or my partner, I, I shouldn't say for whatever reason, my partner and I had been doing a lot of work, personal growth work.

She was phenomenal at doing personal growth work and had been doing it many years before me and had, brought me into that process. And I was starting to do that work myself. She would argue maybe that I wasn't doing enough of it, but I was beginning to do that. And then it just clicked for me.

I was like, this is what I want to do. And I started seeing, of course, other adoptees that were doing, being in these spaces and helping people. And I wasn't one to wanna be on, social media or out there and do all those kinds of things. I just wanted to be a part of it in some way.

And so this was the way that I found my way into doing that.

Haley Radke: Amazing. I heard you're taking clients, which is pretty stellar. We have [00:43:00] such a need for therapists who work with adoptees who get it, and I don't know, I've had so many therapists on the show, and then they all get booked up and there's and people complain to me. I'm sorry, I can't help that. I can't help that. I'm introducing you to amazing people. How can folks work with you if they would like to.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah. You can refer them to my website, which is adopteefocusedtherapy.com. And yeah the thing that I'm really passionate about is, and I've obviously listened, like I said, to all your episodes and especially the healing series with fellow adoptee therapists.

And the one thing I noticed is, I don't know, I don't think. I could be called out now that you have had a male therapist.

Haley Radke: That's a good point. Where are they?

Diego Vitelli: And so that became like my passion is to be a male working in this space and [00:44:00] helping other male adoptees. And I think about Michael constantly because he was the one that helped motivate that and so I'm a voice that gets to be out there, a person that hopefully helps other males recognize that it's okay to step forward and talk about this. I was invited to do that. And this is my way, in a sense to pay it forward.

Haley Radke: I love that. Thank you. I believe you're the first. I cannot think God if there is another one. I'm very sorry. You're not coming to mind just now. But I think you're correct. Okay. I would love to hear what you're gonna recommend because in addition to recommending you, I have a different recommendation and so you go first today.

Diego Vitelli: Okay. Sounds good. Yes. My recommendation is In Reunion by Sara Docan-Morgan, and I mentioned, referenced this earlier and I'm really excited to talk about this. I'm really a huge fan of this [00:45:00] book. I read this last year when it first came out, and what it did was, it's just amazing. She is a Korean adoptee. She's writing about the Korean reunion experience, and she has a longitudinal study incorporated into this, and she has her own experience. It's so layered. Incredibly layered, and it's fascinating, absolutely fascinating to have read the book and how she constructed it and pulled it together and all the data that's there from these adoptees that have gone through this experience.

And I think, for me, anybody you know that is thinking about going into search and contact really ought to read this book first. And give themselves the opportunity to really understand some of these complexities. As all, the people that she's references and that share their stories, they're covering so much of the range of the experiences.

And I think we [00:46:00] need to have that, we need to have an understanding that this isn't just a very cut and dry process, and you're gonna go hire an investigator, find your person, your family immediately have a huge party and all these kinds of things. And everything's, rainbows and unicorns.

We know that, you know that, that's not that's not necessarily the case, but we don't understand where some of those hardships land and how they show up, what they show up in and so on and so forth. So this is just a really amazing I think it's a gift to our community.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Diego Vitelli: To, especially for us as international adoptees. We can layer it on as a Colombian adoptee. You can just layer that on for our culture. You can layer it on for any other culture. And for domestic adoptees, I would say the same thing. There's things you can really pull from this experience for the domestic adoptee as well. So just an incredible book.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I don't need to, but I totally second it. I've had Sara on, we talked about it and earlier in our conversation you were alluding to [00:47:00] this thing that Sara's named. So

Diego Vitelli: Yes.

Haley Radke: All of those, what am I trying to say? All of the parts of contact and travel planning and who reaches out first, and all of those burdens that come on us, she's named them the discursive burden that adoptees carry.

And again, having language for that is. So helpful. 'cause it can be like, oh yeah, that's another thing I have to do another. And I really appreciated that part. And I agree. I'm a domestic adoptee. I learned so much from this book. It's excellent. An excellent resource. Good call.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up the discussive burden because that was I wanted to revisit that as that was the thing that really opened things up for me when I read that, and it gave language of just how much weight we actually carry through this process and carry through our entire life as an adoptee. Up until that point, [00:48:00] there's a discursive burden that we carry within our own adoptive families that is there that we don't even know of.

But then when you go through the whole search process. And if you do have the contact, yes. It's on so many other additional layers that come on that, and how do we navigate how we talk about it and who do we talk to and all those kinds of things. Yeah. Read the book. It's amazing.

Haley Radke: The word I was looking for was it's invisible labor, so to have a name for that, it's so good.

Diego Vitelli: Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay, so mine's a little fluffy and I agreed it is. It's about me, and so just take it with a grain of salt. Diego. I started a new podcast with two of my friends and it's called Adoption Pop, and we are recapping TVs and movies and critiquing their adoption takes, and it's really fun and I get to swear on that one. I don't swear here, but if [00:49:00] listeners want a take on our view as adoptees on the consistent gaslighting the media has done to society about what adoption is really like. You can hear our excellent takedowns over at Adoption Pop, and I'm gonna recommend one episode. It's the episode where we rip into the Modern Family Pilot episode, which has every bad take you could imagine it's there. So I'm gonna link that in the show notes, but that's my like fun side gig that I'm doing now.

Diego Vitelli: I love that. And I did, I came across that as well. Because of course you were dropping this in your later episodes a year or so ago. I'm working on this other project. I don't know what, it's coming. I'll let you know. It wasn't this.

Haley Radke: No. This is just a new fun one. I'm still working on my other project that is [00:50:00] not as, I'm interviewing moms who've placed their children within the last five years.

Diego Vitelli: Oh.

Haley Radke: And I'm doing a narrative style audio documentary as a it's gonna be called On Adoption, and we're really talking about the impact adoption has on us as adoptees and on moms who've placed their babies. So Adoption Pop's much lighter than that. Yeah.

Diego Vitelli: Yeah, that sounds much lighter. And we, and I love that you're doing this with your friends because those of us that have been in, in these spaces with adoptees, we're having those podcasts all the time. Like we, we share these stories when we get to be in our community and we feel safe enough to open up and share these things.

I've been in those situations. I'm not a podcaster, so thank you for putting it out there and for giving us something to listen to and laugh and chuckle and roll our eyes about and yeah, and relate to a hundred percent.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Yes, my friend Sullivan Summer, who's a [00:51:00] cultural critic, and my friend Kristal Parke, who is a filmmaker. Because we're friends, I feel like we overshare a little bit too much there so you can have a taste of that. So you can find Adoption Pop, wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Diego, where can we find you and connect with you to hear more about what you're doing in the future?

Diego Vitelli: If you're interested in working with me, my website, as I mentioned before adoptee focusedtherapy.com, and I am lightly on social media, although, because I am in Colombia here for six months, a little six month stint I'm sharing a bit about my journey there. Not a lot, but here and there different things. And the best place to catch me there is on my Instagram @Diego.Vitelli.

Haley Radke: Amazing. We'll have that linked in the show notes for folks. Thanks so much for being here, Diego, and what a delight to find out you're one of my OG listeners.

Diego Vitelli: Unbelievable. 10 years it's taken, and here we are. This has been really fantastic. I really [00:52:00] appreciate the opportunity to join you and be, on this side of it, and look forward to many more episodes that come from you and future guests.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

It never ceases to amaze and surprise me, the guests that I invite on the show who have been listening for years, and I had no idea. It's just such an honor to be in your ears in that way, and to be in community in that way, and even if I don't know you personally, I'm so thankful you're here listening to our stories.

Like truly, it means so much to me and I wanna thank you all and I said this like off the record to Diego, but I felt sad when someone thinks that they're not like [00:53:00] ready or, have it all together, whatever, to be on this show 'cause this show that anyone, any adopted person can share their show on adoptees on. It's just that I don't have capacity for like absolutely anyone to come on. We opened guest applications earlier I shouldn't say earlier this year, late in 2025. And we had, I think 40 some come in already. There's more coming in on a weekly basis. And we don't choose based on who has the most followers.

We have folks come on that wanna stay private. We have folks who have, do have a book. We have all kinds of folks we wanna share great stories, wisdom. Earned wisdom from anyone who wants to [00:54:00] connect with other adoptees and who feels that they have something to share that would really benefit fellow adoptees to not feel alone.

That's really at the heart of it. So I was thinking of Diego 10 years ago, we would've loved to hear his story and yeah, he personally felt like he wasn't ready. But I never want you to feel like you have to have it all together to come and be a guest on the show. That is certainly not the case, and if that's something you've wanted to do you can apply to be on the show. We are only able to take a limited number of people just because of the number of episodes we put out. And so if you go to adopteeson.com/application, we are still taking guest applications at this time for 2026 and 2027. So yeah. Shoot your shot. What have you got to lose?

We'd love to hear from you and [00:55:00] a big thank you sincerely to all the folks who've been brave enough to come on the show and tell their stories publicly as a service to our community here. Thank you so much for listening, friends, and remember, you can sign up for my newsletter, adopteeson.com/newsletter, and I would love to keep you up to date on what I'm doing.

Thanks for listening. Let's talk again soon.

317 Kailee Pedersen

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/317

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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 for adoptees, discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is the multifaceted Kailee Pedersen, from software engineer to opera singer to novelist Kailee shares about being adopted from China, growing up in Nebraska, navigating racial isolation and the complexities of searching for family across borders and systems.

We also talk about her debut, Gothic horror novel Sacrificial Animals, how Family, legacy and Intergenerational Trauma show up on the page and her upcoming novel, the Minimalist, which [00:01:00] features adoptee characters. There is one brief mention of suicide in our conversation, so take care when listening. And before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adoptees on.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

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

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Kailee Pedersen. Welcome, Kailee.

Kailee Pedersen: Hi Haley. Thank you so much for having me. I've been really excited for this conversation.

Haley Radke: I am so stoked. I don't think you know this about me, Kailee, but I'm a bit of a horror nut, and so I am eager to talk about your book. But first, would you please share with us a bit of your story?

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, [00:02:00] so in brief, I was adopted from Nanjing, China at the age of 1-year-old in 1996. And I grew up in a smattering of different states, but I would mostly say I am a Nebraskan. That's where my family has lived since the turn of the century. And I spent my whole high school years there with my parents.

My dad, who was a professor at the University of Nebraska and my mom, who also is from Lincoln, and then also spending summers on my family farm that belongs to the paternal side of the family. So my dad's family out in Fremont, so we'll probably get into this when we talk about the book, but that farm life has had a huge influence on my writing.

So I grew up in Nebraska and then after Nebraska, I went to college at Columbia University where I studied classics, so Latin and ancient Greek. I developed a real love for languages, literature, anything ancient history related, and I also started to become more serious as a writer. I had always wanted to be a writer, maybe since the age of 13, but in college I started to really pursue sending [00:03:00] my poetry out. I had my first publication at the age of around 19, I think I was a sophomore. And then I also started to think about writing a novel. Being a college student, I was really busy with my friends and like classes and stuff. Nothing really ever came to totally being the book that was, it was gonna be.

So I ended up graduating from college back in 2017. I stayed in New York City and I've been living here ever since. I absolutely love the city. In the last couple years since, or right after graduating from college for a few years, I basically just tried to, get a job and pay rent and just live my life.

And I started in around 2018, about a year after graduating, thinking about writing a novel again. So at that time I had this idea for a book that would be set in Nebraska, my home state that would really draw on my background as a queer, bisexual Chinese American adoptee. I grew up with a Jewish father and a Christian mother, so a very mixed culturally and interfaith family.

My second [00:04:00] novel, which we can also talk about a little bit, does deal with more of the Jewish elements. But my first novel is more of a, I would say, family drama horror set on the farm. And yeah, in 2018 I really had no clue what I was doing. I lived basically in a box with three other people and I just started typing the story one day and I kept at it.

And in 2020, I lost my job. COVID was happening. I was really trapped inside. I actually quit the book about halfway through and I just was so down. I thought no one would read it. It's never gonna be published. Like no one would be interested in this. A couple months later, I started to realize that was a bad idea.

I should get back to the book. I did end up finishing it. I had a really long journey, which we can touch more on, but just to gloss over it quickly, managed to get an agent with my manuscript. Then my wonderful agent managed to get me a book deal. The book came out in 2024 in hardcover and it's called Sacrificial Animals with St. Martin's Press. Recently, just this past August in 2025, it came out in paperback. And I'm [00:05:00] really grateful for the readers and the success it's had. It was named Best of the Year by a lot of the different publications for horror. So like New York Times Vulture Paste, Esquire. It was one of the New York Public Libraries best books of 2024.

A finalist for the Otherwise Award for Authors Innovating on Gender and Speculative Fiction and a finalist for a Nebraska Book award. Won the Nebraska Book Award, but fiction honor. So it was in the mix there. So I was able to go back, actually recently to my hometown, talk to the kids at my high school and then accept my award.

That was all really wonderful and now I'm here. My next novel comes out August, 2026. It's called The Minimalist, and I'm currently working on my third, and when I'm not doing writing, I'm still at my day job. I work as a software engineer at Netflix and I do a lot of opera singing in my local area, so I perform and sing in operas.

So that's basically all about me. As much as I can condense it.

Haley Radke: How well-rounded of you, Kailee. Oh my goodness. Congratulations on the success of Sacrificial Animals. I'm not surprised. It's a [00:06:00] wonderful book. Can you take me back to growing up in Nebraska as a Chinese person? I'm guessing Nebraska is pretty white. And how was that for you?

Kailee Pedersen: It was pretty difficult at times. I was living in Lincoln most of the time, and Lincoln has gotten more diverse, I think, since I was there. But at the time, there weren't a lot of resources for queer people. There weren't a lot of, I just didn't feel a lot of community. There weren't that many Asian people at my school.

I really didn't see anyone that reflected my identity that much. In fact, a couple of the other Asian girls that I knew also were adopted. So that was like a very interesting situation where. Instead of there being in maybe in more organic Asian American community, we did, we do have Vietnamese folks who are from Nebraska and also Japanese American folks in Nebraska as well.

So there are Asian American communities, but I just, wasn't connected to them and. Most the other girls I knew in high school. Yeah, were like adopted too, but we also never really connected with each [00:07:00] other. So ultimately I ended up feeling really isolated racially, I think a lot of adoptees I got raised with kind of a well-meaning, but ultimately ineffective understanding of my racial identity.

Transracial adoptees specifically. I think that, a lot of adoptive parents who are a different race than their child, they mean well and I know that they. Love their child and want them to do well, but they just truly cannot understand what it's like to be a person of color.

And in that like gap of understanding, I think a lot gets missed and falls through. And that was very difficult for me to grow up and understand why frankly, some people in my family just don't seem to like me years later.

Haley Radke: Yikes. That's not. That not good?

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah. It's just one of those things where you start from this position of, I think ignorance and then you start to develop more of like a racial consciousness and then it's like a huge change and growing and learning about yourself.

But it also can be [00:08:00] very painful to unravel like the kind of colorblindness of the original position you found yourself in, which was like. You're a member of the family. Everyone's equal. We love you just as much as like a biological member of the family, but is that really true for everyone? I wouldn't quite say so.

Haley Radke: No, I totally agree. As a Chinese adoptee. Can you speak to, do you, first of all, do you know the impetus for your adoptive parents adopting from China specifically? And then, in recent years there's been a lot of change from the Chinese government and we had this time period where there was.

Over a hundred thousand Chinese adoptees coming to the US and abroad as well. But that has all changed. So can you speak to those things?

Kailee Pedersen: My understanding is that my parents were struggling to have biological children, like a lot of adoptive parents, and they sought to first adopt a child domestically, which didn't work out.[00:09:00]

Then I believe they were looking at another country, but ultimately settled on China due to the. I think expedience of the process on some level, and in that I'm sure there was a lot of essentially young female babies being exported from the country, and I was just one of the many in the nineties.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Have your views on what China did in that, have you explored that because there's been so much news, when China closed, essentially intercountry adoptee or intercountry adoption, those kinds of things. Did you explore that at all when some of the, those news stories were coming out?

Kailee Pedersen: I think it's hard for me to have a firm grasp on how I feel about China as like this faceless entity or country that I have never returned to. And in some sense, perhaps never will. And I know frankly that I'll not, I won't be buried there, which is a significant thing for me. So there's this sense that it's just this vague sending country or like place of origin for me that like exists almost in a fantasy outside of my [00:10:00] life.

I think for me, what I had to come more to terms with with was my attitude toward my birth parents. I spent a lot of time being very angry with them. I thought that they had abandoned me or that they didn't want me. And for me that was very challenging. But as I grew older and became of age where I could potentially have a child, I don't really want to, you start thinking about it sometimes I realized that most people, or 99% of people would not give up their child unless they were in a really desperate situation.

So I came to an understanding that perhaps it was out of their hands or a situation that was so bad that they had no other choice. We know now that like in some cases, the Chinese government would basically extort people or steal their babies, so it's possible I was human trafficked. So all these things really were flying around for me when more of the abuses of the industry were exposed.

And I was adopted through Holt International, which is one of the more controversial agencies, a very evangelical [00:11:00] Christian, and maybe not so ethical. So that has been a challenge for me. And then recently I learned the role of Madam Butterfly, which is an opera about a Japanese woman who dies by suicide.

And at the end of the opera, she is essentially emotionally coerced by her white former paramour, who was the father of her child, a American named Pinkerton, into giving him custody of their baby. So Pinkerton can take him back to America because Pinkerton has married a white woman. A real American wife and that she's not good enough for him.

But Butterfly has this whole aria at the end about how she, missed her baby and how she is sending him away to America because she truly thinks he'll have a better life there. And I think. By performing and singing that I somehow managed to connect with my understanding of my biological family, that maybe they were just in a really desperate situation like [00:12:00] Butterfly was, and that they had no choice.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know that about that opera, that story. Did you ever want to search or know more, or was it more just. You have these feelings of anger that need to get resolved in some way 'cause that was unsettling to have lingering around.

Kailee Pedersen: I used to go back and forth. There were times where I was so angry. I was like they rejected me so I'll reject 'em. I like won't look for them at all kind of thing. As I got older, I started to feel like, I think I'm gonna regret it if I don't even try. So I have done like some stuff like DNA, uploading and getting in touch with the Nanchang Project. They've been helping me and I sent some of my documents to a police station in China.

I haven't done anything more advanced like hiring a searcher or anything. My DNA test. I'm not always sure how accurate these are indicated that I'm at least around 50% a Chinese minority called the Dai people. So that [00:13:00] also makes me wonder how effective or easy would be to search for someone who's not even part of the Han Majority in China.

If that's true of my background or are they even still in the country? A lot of the Dai people live at kind of the border of China and Vietnam, which makes sense 'cause I was found in a city that is only about a hundred miles north of the Vietnam border. So I would say yes, I am looking, but I also have accepted if it doesn't ever happen and there's no reunion. I think for me it's just more important to look for myself.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Last and we'll pivot promise. Is there. Something about going back there that I understand as a queer person, that also could be scary knowing the circumstances of the country and their viewpoints. Is that a barrier for you?

Kailee Pedersen: I don't think so much the queer element. I mean there are queer people who live in China now, and I'm not trying to downplay the oppression they [00:14:00] face, but I wouldn't necessarily feel like my life would be in danger as it might be in some countries. I think for me, the biggest thing about going back is just it costs a lot of money, frankly, and I just don't know what I would do there. Honestly. I would really wanna go back with some idea of what I wanted to achieve while there, rather than spending all the money to fly out there and get a hotel and everything. So since I don't really have a clear idea of what I'd wanna do, I think it could be a disappointing experience for me. So I would just rather figure things out where we are now.

Haley Radke: Thanks. You're saying the real things and these things are all barriers, especially for inter-country adoptees. And so I'm a domestic adoptee, and that comes with privileges of search looks different and all of those things.

Thank you for saying those things out loud. There are so many different barriers. I love that you talked about wanting to write since you were 13 and you made it happen, Kailee, [00:15:00] that's amazing. Like getting an agent and a book like out in the world, more than one is just like really tremendous.

Can you talk about writing. I know you write in different genres and poetry and you have a, you were journaling as a youngster. There's like a bunch of different forms of writing that you do. Do you ever write to process feelings as well? Is that something that you do?

Kailee Pedersen: When I was younger and in college, I published several creative nonfiction like lyric essays is the term basically like a memoir, but maybe with some poetry interwoven in or a little bit more artistic or free flowing than what you might expect from say like a pretty standard memoir.

And in a shorter format as well about my adoption or about my experiences being adopted. So there was some of that during that period, which I think was much more full of turmoil than my current state. I still do a lot of [00:16:00] poetry and some of my poems and my recent chapbook passed around, which came out in March of 2025 do deal with adoption, even obliquely. So there is some of that there, but a lot of them also deal with sexuality, queerness desire the body. So I wouldn't say I only write to process emotions, but they do just come through. It's really important for me that my work be as honest and raw and authentic as possible while still being an artistically beautiful work, I don't like to write works that I wrote, for profit or something. I really try to take risks, and also I need them to come from deeply within myself. Otherwise, how am I gonna survive the two to four year writing process where you're just struggling and typing if I don't truly care about the work?

So those all come through, I think in my work, they're all very real and true to me. And I would just say that I think that people respond to that, that they see that these are extremely real and intense emotions that I may be channeling, although [00:17:00] they don't always come through in a one-to-one way, where like the Asian female character behaves or is like me all the time.

It's more that they're scattered amongst the characters or the stories are still fictional, but they speak to the emotional truths within ourselves.

Haley Radke: Okay. I've been waiting to say this to you. In preparation for this interview, I did listen to a bunch of different conversations you've had which really focus in on horror and the book and the literary of it all. And I heard a man tell you that you wrote male characters. And I actually laughed out loud 'cause it was so funny, right? 'cause we, there's this critique that men get for writing women and like they can't do it. And so I was like, oh, this is funny that somebody said this out loud.

Flipping it. Can you talk about how it feels to write the male characters, but also like how it [00:18:00] feels as an adoptee or as a, an Asian American or woman or queer person, like how it feels to be written about in such a tropey way often, and how you're upending that with your work.

Kailee Pedersen: To answer the first question, I just try to treat all my characters with a lot of empathy and to really try to understand them on a deep psychological level, even if they are the type of person I would never be friends with, or if I find their behavior, their morality repulsive.

I think it's important not to demonize 'em. It's similar to the strategy I take when I have to do an opera role. A lot of opera characters I play are from like the 1800s. Or even earlier and they behave or act in ways that I think are nuts or modern people find really weird.

But I can't be standing over here being like that's wrong. I wouldn't do it. Like I have to portray the character as authentically as possible. So I have to try to find some avenue into their psyche. So when it comes to understanding across gender, I [00:19:00] just try to be empathetic and open to experiences I've heard of from my male friends or that I've observed personally, dynamics between men.

I think the power of observation and empathy is really important in writing because even if you write a character who's exactly like you, which I don't really know why you would do that, because I think one of the, part of the fun of fiction is. Putting on some other life and exploring that, you still have to put them through some sort of fictional event.

So it's things you haven't experienced. So you still have to imagine, even if it's not a gender, race or identity-based thing, you might have to imagine what it's like to be a plumber, a computer programmer, like some other occupation even. So for me, it's just a part of that exercise of like understanding for example, for the main character like Nick, who is he? What does he think about all the time? Why is he so obsessed with, X, Y, and Z? What are his hangups and fears and how does he feel in his body? How does he move through the day? What parts of his past maybe influence him as an adult? What can he not get rid of? What does he dream [00:20:00] about? What does he fear have nightmares about? These are just things that I think about. And eventually the character just comes together over the process of writing. And I think I feel more able to put them into this world and have them interact with these other characters.

And then in the, to your other question about being written about in ways that are maybe like negative or questionable or stereotyping. I just try to avoid media that does that. I don't really have the energy to engage with that stuff or really even critique or push back against it because I feel like that stuff is just gonna continue to be out there.

The magical orphan thing that happens in so many fantasy works and stuff, it's so prevalent. It just, when that happens, I usually just try to decide if I'm gonna get over it and move through it. If the rest of the work is worth it or if it's this is like too off putting for me. It's more that I think in my work I want to express something real and interesting and true to my own values and concerns in life.

And hopefully through that people can find some [00:21:00] form of representation that's authentic to them, even though a representation is such a heavy term and so loaded at times. But especially with this novel. And then with my second novel, I really tried to also dig around into. My own self and maybe find things that weren't so flattering even, and then just try to bring them out in the book, even if it wasn't something that people always feel comfortable talking about.

So you find like a lot of self-hatred. You find depression, you might find scenes in which characters are not kind to each other, and those are all impulses and I think feelings that maybe people have, but suppress. But I wanna bring that to the surface.

Haley Radke: I think you write really well and one thing I'm super excited that in the Minimalist your book that's coming out in August, 2026, you have an adoptee character.

And so whenever I see that in the world, an adoptee written by an adoptee, I'm so stoked 'cause I'm so sick of people using us as a lazy method of pushing [00:22:00] story forward. Oh. Your parents are missing, so you would do this. Like it just, no. So thank you. Like I love that. There's own voices and I know there's complexities with that too.

But adoptees, writing adoptee characters is just, I don't know, there's something extra special about it for me. 'cause I'm an adoptee and I cheer on adoptee authored work especially. So anyway, I'm glad that'll be out in the world soon.

Kailee Pedersen: I think it was very interesting for me to try to write from an adoptee perspective in the Minimalist, I actually, there are two adoptee characters and I,

I really wanted them to have very different takes on adoption and even come into conflict. One character chooses to search while the other character is actually extremely rude and dismissive about it. So I wanted to depict some of those tensions that can come up in the community itself as well, beyond just there's adoption and then there's adoption trauma, which is of course present in the narrative, but also this kind of multifaceted, like these two [00:23:00] characters, even though they were even at one point in a romantic relationship together they don't agree or don't have the same attitudes about their own adoption.

Haley Radke: Stoked. Stoked to read it. Okay, let's talk about Sacrificial Animals a little bit and you're telling the story of this family and there's two brothers and their dad's super abusive and I don't know if you wanna give us like a little overview of it, but I found it very interesting as a

adopted person reading it and this idea of family legacy. And who is your legacy when you think about it and, you talk about your family farm and it's your adopted family's lineage, right? And so that you're grafted into, and so can you set up like the premise of the book a little for us and then just this idea of family legacy.

Kailee Pedersen: [00:24:00] Yeah, of course. Sacrificial Animals is a Midwestern Gothic novel set on a thousand acre farm in rural Nebraska called Stags Crossing, which is owned by Carlisle Morrow, who is the single father of two boys, Joshua the eldest, and his clear favorite. And Nicholas, the younger brother and his father's not favorite.

Nick is the primary POV character, and we follow him from. In alternating chapters, starting with his childhood, then his adulthood all the way from like age 13, 14, to a man in his forties. So in his childhood, Nick undergoes let's say, a queer awakening. He starts to understand his sexuality a bit more and deals with the legacy of his abusive father.

And also at one point his father and Nick catch a fox on their farm that is eating the chickens. They aren't able to kill the fox, but they do find the foxes den and kill its baby foxes inside. So that is a sort of crime against nature that haunts the family throughout the novel. Now as an adult, Nick is in his forties.

His father calls him. They've been semi estranged [00:25:00] for a while now. And his father says that he's dying of cancer and wants Nick and his brother to come back to the farm to reconcile. This is unusual because prior to this, Joshua, the eldest boy, the most handsome man you know, in Nebraska for miles, the golden Child was disown for marrying an Asian woman named Amelia.

So Nick, Amelia, and Joshua are also back to the farm with Carlisle who is dying. And let's just say family tensions start to simmer. Dark secrets and the impact of certain actions from the past begin to emerge. And Nick gets entangled in something a lot darker and deeper than he expected.

Haley Radke: And how is it writing about family legacy? As an adopted person because we have multiple sets of ancestors, however you wanna look at it.

Kailee Pedersen: It's interesting because in the novel itself, the idea of [00:26:00] patrimony and legacy is repeatedly brought up yet interrogated. So rather than, let's say in the uncritical sense of a legacy where. Blood descent or legal descent dictates one's life or there is some kind of heritage or lineage that must be passed down. There is this question of how helpful is this? Because Carlisle is obsessed with his lineage to the point where he forbids his son from marrying interracially because she's gonna pollute the bloodline. So there's this idea that maybe patrimony inheritance isn't something so great.

And there's also the ways in which the brothers constantly have conflicts over this farm, which is massive and but also an albatross around their neck. It's not really something they really want to inherit, but they also seem to, to wanna inherit. They go back and forth. There's the way in which the farm is a site of trauma and of abuse for them, but also something they desperately want, just like their father's love.

And I think also there's a significant theme of the ways in which. Just because you're members of a family, and in this case between men, the ways in which [00:27:00] fathers, pass trauma to their sons, and the ways in which they may love their sons. I think this is a very core part of Carlisle's tragic character, that he truly loves his children, but he's so warped by his own upbringing and how his own father treated him, that his only way to interact with them is violence and cruelty. And as an old man, he calls them back and is like confused why they hate and fear him.

Haley Radke: There's so many good themes. Can you tell us why gothic, why horror? And talk a little bit about that. Because like I love it so much.

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah. I love the gothic genre too. I also love horror, although I'm all over the place.

I got a really late ADHD diagnosis and I think that explains why I wanna try a lot of different genres. My second novel is more of like a psychological drama with like dark, intense energy. If you've seen like Tar or maybe The Piano Teacher, it has those vibes of like classical music, but like psychological disintegration.

So I'm [00:28:00] still in that horror adjacent space. The third, which I'm currently working on, is a very bloody and brutal Western. So maybe not traditional horror, but still like in that space of emotional intensity. Violence, legacy, family. Again, these themes that constantly crop up in my work. So I would just say for me, horror wasn't something I went in thinking I would write in the sense that I sat down and was like, this is gonna be a horror novel.

I, I honestly, I am so embarrassed when people ask about my process. 'cause I literally just type stuff. I don't really have outlines or anything. I'm like, yolo for and it's yeah I really wish I was more organized and that I had more of a plan because I think I would write a lot faster and not get stuck so much.

But I just let the book be whatever it is. In this case it came out horry, literary, a mishmash of genres. And then with my second novel, I actually think trying to make it horror got me stuck at one point, I really added a lot of supernatural elements that I later ended up deleting and completely removing 'cause it didn't feel right for the book.

And I think I felt almost pressured to continue to [00:29:00] write for when I, what I really needed to do was to just let go and let the book be freaky on its own and its own kind of thing. So it wasn't really a conscious choice. It was just, I think as someone who, and maybe this is because of the CPTSD or the intense emotions from.

Mental illness, which is my experiences, I tend to gravitate toward very intense genres and subjects, and a lot of those genres and subjects tend to lean towards more of the dark side of literature.

Haley Radke: I'm curious, what drew you to studying the classics and remind me of the languages, 'cause Latin and ancient Greek, right?

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, I studied those in my undergrad.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Can you tell us about the draw of that 'cause that feels unusual and the draw to opera. Did you have any of that in childhood?

Kailee Pedersen: The Latin, ancient Greek not really. I did always love Greek mythology. So my first year at college, the first week of every [00:30:00] year you can, or every semester you can just enroll in classes, and then if you drop in the first week, you don't get charged for them.

So it's like a free for all where people just try to go to classes and see if they like them. And I thought at the time I was gonna major in English or something like that. And I also knew that English needed a language requirement, right? So I saw on the schedule that ancient Greek was available.

I thought that just sounded pretty cool. I was like, I'll just go to the first class and see what happens. Worst case, I hate it, drop out. And I met with this really wonderful teacher. She no longer teaches at Columbia. She is at a collegiate school teaching Greek and Latin there, and they're very lucky to have her Collomia Charles.

She was my freshman year Greek teacher, and she just helped me really fall in love with the language. So I feel very lucky over the years to have been supported by instructors and teachers who supported me as a writer, as an artist, et cetera. So I really just accidentally fell in a hole and then just never got out, and that was my major.

And I also felt it was good because it's a smaller department than the [00:31:00] English department. I felt like maybe I could get a little bit more personalized meetings with professors and just generally, I liked the community and I just wanted to stay. And a lot of my favorite authors are pretty heavily influenced by things like biblical sources or ancient Greek or Latin or Roman texts. So being able to read those in the original is really rewarding and fulfilling. In terms of opera also is a similar just accident thing. I did a lot of theater, like spoken theater, what we call straight plays with no singing.

I had no singing voice. I was very bad and I was like, oh, I need to get better at singing so I can audition for some musicals. So I started to take singing lessons and my teacher got me into opera and then I just stuck with opera instead of going to musicals ever. So I also fell into a pit and just never got out.

Haley Radke: I wonder if you've thought about this before. This idea for adopted people, especially when you're younger or you don't have your answers, any of those kinds of things. [00:32:00] And this idea of myth making, right? Like building, Betty Jean Lifton called it the ghost kingdom and then falling in love with like Greek mythology or like the in ancient mythologies. And do you ever think about how those intersect or do they for you.

Kailee Pedersen: Maybe a little bit. I think that there is something there about myth and timelessness that is really attractive to me. The ability to connect yourself to a heritage or history when you don't really have one or your heritage is what a heritage of thorn history of ash, right?

There's nothing there but brambles. So for me to be able to connect with that. And then also because of the Jewishness, there are some Jewish texts that are in ancient Greek that have been really interesting to read and learn about. I also think back to one of my earliest publications was an essay about Greek myth that I connected to my adoption, specifically the myth of Iphigenia.

I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but. Okay, so a kind of wishbone moment, I guess we'll talk about ancient Greek myth a little bit. [00:33:00] Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon, one of the generals in a war, and Agamemnon has made Artemis really angry, or it was Apollo, I can't totally remember. I think it was Artemis.

And as a result, his ships, which he needs to sail to go to battle are stuck in the harbor, and it's literally, the city is called Olis and there is a Greek epithet literally meaning ship delaying. Like they're like literally stuck in the city. And he finds out that if he sacrifices his daughter,  Iphigenia, his ships will sail.

And depending on the myth, he either actually goes through with it or at the very last minute she is replaced by a doe at the altar. So he actually ends up sacrificing the doe instead. It's one of those where there's like a lot of variance, but this myth of the daughter being sacrificed or killed to achieve something, I guess was resonating for me in that moment. And that was what I included in my essay about my adoption.

Haley Radke: Whoa. That's deep. That's deep. That's like Abraham and Isaac.

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, there's a lot of [00:34:00] patrisside filicide themes that I think are from ancient texts, but also in my work. I mean there's like the Oresteia in which Elektra and Orestes kill Klytämnestra which is also an opera.

So these are themes that just resonate across so many different artistic legacies throughout history.

Haley Radke: I hope you just keep writing Kailee, because you've got a lot to tell us. Can you talk more about opera? And to me it's like it's voice reclamation. I don't wanna admit this. I'm going to, I didn't know opera was like un mic'ed.

Like I knew that, but I didn't, I didn't really know. And so this strength of voice is so impactful to think about and. I don't know. There's something about when we are relinquished for adoption at a really young age [00:35:00] and we have no way to communicate except for crying and as an adult to reclaim our voices in some way.

Is important and to talk about adoption, however you feel about adoption, whatever that is. I don't know. Maybe it's not that deep. I feel like it is. Can you talk about opera? And you said you didn't even know how to sing and so you learn how to sing and then it's not just that it's opera, like what is that for you?

Kailee Pedersen: You get years and years of training I was really bad for a really long time and I'm still improving. So it's not something where you're like, okay, two years in, you're like, great. But I, yeah I think it's really powerful to be able to produce certain sounds without a microphone. I think it's interesting because opera itself is really not, there are things that have changed, but you can sing pieces from the 1700s, so you might, you're partaking in a classical music tradition that has lasted a very long time.

I think for me, the draw of opera maybe isn't so [00:36:00] much reclaiming my voice or exerting control over my body, although those are certainly all things that I do when I perform. But I really like to play and to escape myself through like a fantasy of the imagination. So embodying another character, conveying some kind of meaning or emotion to the audience.

I really like that. I also really enjoy introducing people who have never gone to an opera before, to operas or to classical music. I just really love sharing music with people. I think that's really great and I like to try to get the next generation interested in classical music as well because I think it's important to continue to try to keep it alive.

And I like to perform queer and Jewish composers, especially because I really connect with their work. So those are all things that I think about and in my novel, there's a lot of my second novel, there is a lot of opera discussion because the main character is a classical composer, so there is a huge amount of the ways in which that intersects with her life.

And some readings of opera, like I mentioned, the Madama Butterfly reading of like adoption into that [00:37:00] opera. And then for me, also another opera that is almost never performed. It's called La Juive, it's a French Grand Opera by Fromental Halévy. It's, yeah, it's almost never performed 'cause it's super long and you need like a huge cast I think, and also like fancy backdrops and stuff.

And most people don't have that. But it's also not really performed, but it was in its day very popular. It was like a blockbuster film equivalent and it literally means the Jewess kind of a really outdated term for a Jewish woman and it's about this Jewish Goldsmith, Eléazar who finds a baby that's been not really abandoned, but is in like the burned out house, like in a town, and he rescues this baby and adopts her and named her Rachel.

But he never tells Rachel that she's adopted. And it turns out that Rachel's biological father is the cardinal de Brogni. Who is currently persecuting the Jews. So he has raised this girl who is a Christian by birth as his Jewish daughter, and [00:38:00] it's a soap opera. It ends horribly, tragically. And as an opera, a lot of people die.

I'm not totally sure if it's like a really liberating work or anything. And it's certainly not, modern in terms of our sensibilities about Jewishness, heritage, women, anything like that. But it is a really interesting work, I think, to think about. In terms of what they were trying to convey at that time in the 1800s and to think about it from my lens now.

Haley Radke: What do you feel like when you're performing in front of a audience?

Kailee Pedersen: I used to really struggle with stage fright. I think I have mostly gotten over that. So now I'm mostly excited just to sing and perform. I hope people get something outta the performance. I hope they enjoy what they hear and that if they are not opera fans already, it inspires 'em to look up more about opera and maybe explore the genre a bit.

I don't think opera is for everybody. I understand that people just don't like it, but I also think a lot of people just have never heard it. And I think more people could get into it if they knew the vast span of styles and music you could find with an opera. [00:39:00]

Haley Radke: You know my bio dad got super into opera in the last few years and he always goes to the Met when they stream it at movie theaters here.

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah.

Haley Radke: He goes every month. He loves it. Okay. Last thing, slightly personal before we do recommended resources. You mentioned in high school there these other adoptees, but that you didn't necessarily connect with them. How have you connected into the adoptee community in the last number of years?

Kailee Pedersen: I would say I have some friends from a Facebook group I used to be in. I now try to mostly stay off social media with the exception of promotional or like author related usage, just because it's really harmful to my mental health to be constantly online and doom scrolling. I really value that connection.

I have also been lucky enough to connect with some other adoptee authors like Lee Herrick, so they've been very kind to welcome me. [00:40:00] That's happened. Keeping in touch. I'm honestly a little bit of an introvert and the homebody, so I'm always happy to hear from folks. But I do admit I'm shy sometimes or like I get nervous reaching out, so I do sometimes wish I like knew more people.

Haley Radke: I was just in New York and there was some adoptee events and then I was like, oh, you live there. I didn't know. Otherwise I would've invited you to come.

Kailee Pedersen: Oh, thanks.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Okay. I loved Sacrificial Animals so much You're grasp of language is so amazing. It is so like visceral and evocative. And the prose is just like unmatched.

I the never ending dread that's just like going and the payoff, like we couldn't spoil anything in this conversation 'cause it just ruins it. No spoilers. The payoff and the, it's so good. Kailee. Well done. Loved it. Loved it. And [00:41:00] really looking forward to reading your chap book and the Minimalist that's coming out this year.

So well done. I'm so excited for people to get to know your work and read and I don't know, we might have to do a book club with you for the Minimalists since there's so much adoption in it.

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, I would love that. I am really excited to put adoptee work that is, as you say, own voices out into the world.

That's really drawn from being a queer Asian woman, but also the novel deals a lot with the identity of Jewishness and some of the complications that can come with that, especially in the world of classical music specifically, which is so dear and close to my heart, but also so complicated and so difficult sometimes to be an artist in. And while my next, after that doesn't totally deal with themes of adoption, I hope to revisit that at some point. I think I'm the type of person where it was so emotionally intense for me, to write a book that was so focused on the emotional impact of adoption that [00:42:00] I needed for my next book to be a bit of a break. You never know. I definitely would like to come back to that. For sure.

Haley Radke: So you went western.

Kailee Pedersen: Historical fiction yeah. Definitely still seeing those themes of family racial prejudice. It's about a Chinese American family in the frontier from 1860 to 1910, and like an intergenerational three generations of a Chinese American family type of like drama slash western type thing going on.

And then, yeah, I guess we'll see what the future holds maybe. Thinking maybe sci-fi and maybe like some cosmic horror, but like TBD, guess what I'm still on my day job, so unfortunately I'm writing quite slow. But, maybe one day I can take a little bit of a break or something.

Haley Radke: I feel like sacrificial animals sold. The fact they released it in paperback, who knows? You might get to be an author and part-time opera singer. That'd be pretty sweet.

Kailee Pedersen: That would be amazing. Yeah. If anybody wants to adapt it to film, call me.

Haley Radke: A Sacrificial Animals would be amazing. I was thinking about that. I was like, this would be a great movie. [00:43:00] Okay. What did you wanna recommend to us, Kailee?

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, so I've got here with me, Jane Jeong Trenka is the Language of Blood. It is a memoir published by Graywolf Press, about Trenka's experience as a transracial Korean American adoptee. I specifically recommended it because this was one of my first experiences reading a work that I felt reflected my experiences as an Asian woman in a white family.

Trenka also grew up in the Midwest, I believe in, I wanna say Minnesota, and I just found her writing to be extremely authentic and engaging. It's also interesting because it's not just a memoir that's like prose from the internal voice. She also interweaves a lot of different narrative strategies, like letters, even fictionalized scripts.

So there's a quality of collage to it or genre experimentation that I found really engaging. And I believe this might be, I don't wanna say it's the very first 'cause I have to look it up, but it might be one of the very early [00:44:00] adoption specific memoirs for transracial Asian Americans. I think it was one of the very few that was available when I was looking for one at the time.

Haley Radke: Yes. It's definitely one of the earliest I, yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned it. We haven't talked about it on the show for a long time. Thank you. Okay. Where can folks follow along, connect with you online and get notified of new work that you have in the world?

Kailee Pedersen: My main hub is my author website, kaileepedersen.com.

You can find links to all of my social media there. I would say I'm most active on probably my Instagram and sometimes my Blue Sky. But mostly Instagram if you wanna see pictures of the new book and things like that, or just see posts about my travels or fun things I'm doing with opera, I use it as both an author posting hub and also sometimes just posting about my hobbies.

And then, yeah, I definitely welcome, folks, if they are adopted and wanna reach out and say hi or have enjoyed my work, feel free to drop a dm. I'm sometimes not always super online due to the whole, taking [00:45:00] a detox occasionally, but I always try to get back to folks.

Haley Radke: I love that your and your covers are so good.

Kailee Pedersen: I, yeah. All credit to Olga Grlic at St. Martin's Press for the Sacrificial Animals cover. And then Rob Grom did the design for the Minimalist. They both did really amazing jobs.

Haley Radke: And what about Pastorale 'cause that is beautiful too.

Kailee Pedersen: Oh yeah. That is Rory. Oh gosh. I'm forgetting their last name. I think it was Rory Sparks.

They did that for Burnside Review Press.

Haley Radke: Beautiful. They're all beautiful. Thank you so much. It was so nice to get to know you a little better today. Thanks for sharing with us.

Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Haley Radke: I love finding new authors. I was so excited. To read Kailee's first book and I'm so anticipating her next. I hope you enjoy reading fellow adoptee authored work as much as I do. We have some great book clubs for you this year. [00:46:00] If you wanna join us over on Patreon, we've got lots of stuff happening over there and I would love to have you join us. That is the way this show keeps existing in the world with your monthly partnership.

So you can go to adopteeson.com/community to find out more, and I'd love to have you join us for some of our zoom calls. We also do this awesome Ask an Adoptee Therapist event every month, which is so amazing and I'm so proud of it. It is the best of both worlds. It's full Adoptees On vibes. All the therapists are tremendous, and I don't know if you ever liked advice shows as much as I did. But it's all of that all put together, so you should check that out. We have all the live events listed on our calendar on the website, so you can check that out there. adopteeson.com, [00:47:00] and there's a link in the menu bar to our calendar. Okay, friend, thank you so much for listening and let's talk again soon.