225 Ethan Ferkiss
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/225
Haley Radke: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today we are joined by Ethan Ferkiss to share his heartwarming reunion story. Expecting rejection or indifference, Ethan wasn't prepared for his search to end in what he calls the “jackpot scenario,” a full-scale welcome.
But as you can guess, navigating new relationships with four adult siblings, his biological mother, and his biological father has been a whirlwind and can be overwhelming at times. We wrap up with some recommended resources for you 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 Ethan Ferkiss. Welcome, Ethan.
Ethan Ferkiss: Hey, Haley, how are you?
Haley Radke: I'm so good. I'm really excited to chat with you and I'd love it if you would share some of your story with us?
Ethan Ferkiss: Yes, of course. I'm very excited to be here too, so thank you. My adoption story, you know, for years was very short. It could fill a pamphlet, and then all of a sudden, about a year and a half ago, it blew up into a novel, but I'll start at the beginning.
I was born in 1967 through Catholic Charities. I was three weeks old when I was adopted, and I was raised in and around Washington DC and for years, all I knew I had was two wonderful parents.
A really loving, engaged, wicked smart mom and an academic dad and two very fun older siblings. And it was an amazing childhood. My father was a professor, so we were exposed to his college campus. We grew up in Washington DC which at the time was such an amazing place, I mean, it's still a beautiful city, but growing up during the Bicentennial years when I was a kid, it was just amazing.
Plus, we got to live in Vancouver BC, Trinidad and Tobago, and Berkeley, and so it was just a larger-than-life childhood of ideas and destinations.
My mom was integral and I think she recognized that I had some extra energy. I think it's that energy that adoptees have that lives in their bodies. I used to be so demonstrative and I used to just have so much energy and I was just this engine and I did have this little frenetic energy and I would have meltdowns, but I was talented and so my mom was able to put me in so many activities to harness and focus me and so I did anything and everything. We threw ourselves together in everything, whether it be chess or homework, and I really just responded to her.
She told me when I was a kid that I was adopted very early on. She said it in a very loving way. She said, you know, you have a biological mom and dad. But they couldn't take care of you the way that they thought you deserve. And we really wanted you.
So at the end of it, I just thought, well, this is how it goes sometimes. It's normal. I'm loved, I'm wanted, and she said it in such a way that I was intrigued by these two people, but I just thought it was, anyway….
I lived my life. I enjoyed my life. And then throughout the years, I would just have a passive kind of wonder about who they were, especially the birth mom. That's where the connection is. It wasn't until last year that I realized, well, at some point it would be nice to meet my birth mother, if possible.
And so I took a DNA test, and this was Christmas of 2020. And then a few weeks later I got the test results and I had a first cousin, which is pretty remarkable to get such a close hit. So I reached out to the first cousin. I said, Hey, we are apparently first cousins. Here's a little information about me:
I live in Seattle. This is what I do. These are the kind of things I like. And as I'm adopted, and as far as I know, if there's anybody on your side of the family who knows who I am and wants to meet, that would be great. And if they don't want to meet, I totally understand. Because that's what I had actually prepared for. These are often old secrets that people just carry with them.
There was no pressure on my side. I just thought, well, there's probably gonna be a half-brother or half-sister because she was young when she had me. I just put it out that way. And as it turns out, his name is Ryan. So he went to his dad, my birth mom's youngest brother, and he told him who had surfaced in his 23andme.
So his dad went to my birth mom and then they started reading her the letter that I had written, and they could see the wheels turning in her head. As soon as they read the part where I said my birthday was March 31, she just broke down in tears, they told me, and she told me, too. And she was just so happy and joyful.
And it turns out I've got four younger siblings. I'm the oldest of five. They knew about me. So this all broke open very quickly.
So as soon as Ryan, my first cousin went to his dad, who then went to my birth mom, my birth mom was like, Oh my God, I can't believe it. So she wrote me a letter. I had mentioned in this email to Ryan, my first cousin, that I worked at the local TV station here in Seattle, one of them.
So she wrote me a letter. I was working from home and this letter sat in my inbox at work for two months. So on my end, I thought she just wasn't interested because Ryan said he was going to reach out to his family and he would get back to me and a couple months passed and I was thinking, you know, it's too much. I get it. She's not gonna reach out.
This is obviously an old secret and I was fine with it. On her end, she had heard from me through the grapevine, she had written me a letter, and then I hadn't responded, and this is two months. So we're both just in this limbo thinking the other person's not ready for whatever reason.
So she finally tells her oldest daughter Suzanne, who turns out to be my younger half-sister by two years. She says to Suzanne, Hey, the son I gave up for adoption, they knew about me, years ago has surfaced. I wrote him a letter but he hasn't responded, and Suzanne's wicked smart. She said, You know, mom, he's probably working from home, that letter is probably sitting in his inbox at work and just rotting there.
So she reached out to me on LinkedIn. She said, Hey, I'm your sister. It exploded from there. I was overwhelmed. The fact that I had four siblings who knew about me their entire life. There's this letter waiting for me at work.
You know, this is late at night and I hadn't been to my work in over a year, and I said, Oh, I have to go get that letter. And I went that night, it was like midnight. I went in and got this letter and I'm very sentimental and so I just carefully opened it up and it was such a beautiful letter. And she said: I am ready for anything you want.
Relationships, stories, and there are just so many coincidences and remarkable events that we realized happen in no particular order. After college in Washington DC, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had the idea of bicycling across the country one day, and this was before the Internet.
I didn't know if anybody had ever bicycled across country. I don't know if it was possible, but anyway, the idea kept on growing and growing. Eventually, I bicycled across country. It was 4,400 miles and it was such an epic, wonderful trip. And it was the first and only time I really spent any sustained time by myself.
And it was physical, it was spiritual. It was just hour after hour in this beautiful landscape, all back roads. The coincidence ends up where I pull into Seattle. August 1, 1990. I meet a friend from college who's living there, and we go to a nice little dive bar that still exists here called The Comet.
And so we have a few drinks and I'm happy to be in Seattle. I'm happy to be off the road and to explore my new life in Seattle. Turns out, when I met my birth mom last year we're sitting down, me and my wife Stephanie, and Irene, my birth mom, and we're just having a wonderful time talking with one another and she's just bighearted and speaking in poems and she's gleaming and she's just a beautiful woman.
Everything was popping up and one of the things that popped up. She said, Yeah, I've lived in Seattle since 1989. I moved there in 1990, and I said, Well, sometimes I would go to The Comet back in 1990. And she said, Oh, that's where me and my girlfriend would go after our work shift in 1990.
So my salmon senses, not only on a bicycle, took me from DC all the way to her home city where she was living, but it took me to her favorite bar at that time that first night.
And there's been these types of weird little coincidences unfolding ever since. My half-sister works just a mile down the road from me. They've lived in and around Seattle for years. We've passed each other probably too many times to count, but never knew it.
When you're an adopted person, you sometimes just wonder how close have I come to my people? Have I passed them on the subway? You'll scan the bus and you'll look for details that might look like you, and that says nothing about your family. I love the family I grew up with.
It's just, it's like wanting to know, people wanting to know their ancestry. It's the same thing for adopted people. They want to know their story. And I love stories. I worked in the local TV station for like 20 years and I just wrote stories. So this was a story I wanted to know.
I had a deep feeling that my birth mom was this remarkable woman, because my mom, my adopted mom, who I call my mom. She gave me some background information. Your birth mom, she got pregnant and then she ended up in DC and I was like, Wow, that's a real adventure. And you see what a commitment that is to turn your life upside down to go across country.
And for some reason, I just knew she was doing it because she had this big heart. Because otherwise you just go to the fastest place, you go somewhere and you leave and like you go to, I don't know, somewhere, California, but she did this whole journey and it turns out, I found out later she found refuge with her grandmother who knew what was going on with her, but didn't ask and she didn't pass any judgment.
And she felt very safe with the grandma in Texas. So her journey was from Bozeman. Down to the Alamo in Texas and then eventually up to Washington, DC, and for some reason, I firmly believe I feel the connection between her. I think that journey that we took across country, it lives in my body.
I think I picked up on her sense of adventure, her sense of she was a kid that was in over her head, but still determined to figure out the best route forward. So her cross-country trip was a little different than mine, but 23 years later, I just went right back the other way towards her.
She listened to her inner voice and she just trusted. She didn't know where it was all going to end.
I didn't know that I was born at Georgetown University until I talked to her. You know, I'm 55 years old, and I just knew I was born in Washington, DC. I thought I was born at the St. Anne's Orphanage, but it turns out I was born at Georgetown University and that's where I went to school and I lived across from the hospital when I was in school there. And I would pass that all the time.
So she's a wonderful woman and it's been such a great delight to connect with her. She lives in Olympia. I'm in Seattle and we see each other and text each other and we send each other cards. I know it sounds cosmic and kooky, but I feel the connection with her even when we're talking and, you know, I really appreciate that.
You know, along with the story, I have the journalist in me working at an old TV station here who was like, Well, okay, who's the dad? And at that first visit when we're sitting on our couch in Olympia, she just straight out told me. Well, his name's Michael Beldon, we can use his name cause he's, as it turns out, he's a proud papa now.
So I grew up the youngest of three, found out a year and a half ago I'm also the oldest of five. And then when I reach out to this gentleman, Michael Belden, who lives in Arizona, I'm expecting rejection again. But we're on a road trip, my wife and I are on a road trip, and it just surfaced to me and it's like, well, he's probably 80.
I should probably call him. And so I did call him. Stephanie went in to get some groceries and I called him from the van and I said, Hey, this is a weird call. Is this Michael Belden? He goes, Yep. And I go, Well, you might not wanna talk to me, but I'm your biological, and I didn't get the word “son” out. And then he's like, Oh my god, my boy.
And he's crying just like he's such a bighearted, sappy, wonderful guy. And it was so funny to just be like another flood of happiness, and unexpected. I didn't plan it out. I didn't think I was going to call him until this voice was just like, Okay. It didn't subside. So I called him.
Turns out he was pretty sick. His friend reached out to me the next day and I could tell there's something wrong with him, but he was being a tough guy, and he was like, No, I'm fine. Anyway, his friend said, Look, we think he's in real dire straits, but he's living alone in Arizona and if there's any way you could make a U-turn, we were in Utah, make a U-turn and check in on him.
And I didn't have to think twice. There was no other choice. I wanted to make sure he was okay. And so I called my brother, my adopted brother, Michael, because we were going to meet and I said, Hey, I just found my birth father and he might need some help. And he's like, Go for it. So I have a really supportive family and we went down there and I go up to his door and it's 110 degrees out.
And I knock on the door and I see where I get some of my kookiness. He answers, he's a little bit sick and tired, but he's so happy that I came down and he enters in his underwear. So my first hug with my biological dad is just, you know, he's built like a rock.
It's so funny. Both my birth parents are 5’4” and I'm six foot half an inch. And he's built like a knuckle, like a rock. And that's why I'm hugging this naked man and he bounced back after that. He's 80 and he's doing really well and his health has just shot up this last year and a half.
And I check in on him and he's got a wonderful friend who lives on the east coast who checks in on him. And he's just so happy to have a boy. It's like his happiest thing. He's always calling me up, and he's also a writer.
So I have an adopted father who's a writer. I have a biological father who's a writer. I was a writer for more than 20 years at a local TV station.
So I found all these details. My birth mother went to DC. She really excelled in that city. It was so funny to see she was this young, beautiful woman showing me pictures of places that I grew up in and it's so wild to see my birth mom was living just about four blocks from my first house where I was growing up.
Haley Radke: I'm curious how it's been for you to move from someone who said, I had these passive wonderings to now having real humans in your life, extra bonus relationships with all these people. It can be so overwhelming.,
Ethan Ferkiss: Well, yeah, I appreciate that question.
You know, my birth mom Irene said we had such a lovely time connecting one-on-one with Stephanie there, my wife, and then she said, We're gonna have a party for you. And she looked at me, paused, made sure we had eye contact, and she said, Get ready for the tsunami. And so she knew that connecting with her is amazing.
And then it is overwhelming. There's so many people. And at that first party it was amazing to be in a room filled with relatives and seeing everybody's jawline and nose and eyebrows and short legs and long torsos. And I'm like, Oh my God, this is a whole room of us. And they’re all wonderful. And this is all first draft for all of us.
They welcome me with open arms, but there's also this part where it's almost, you've really gotta breathe cause all I had prepared myself for was the possibility of “I'm not ready to meet you.” And I would've been fine with that.
I wasn't ready to have this big family welcome. And it sounds like it's the hugest blessing and I know it's the best kind of problem to have, but it was still a little disorienting because I'm kind of a solitary guy and I have a small circle and I grew up with a small circle, and that's where my comfort zone is.
And I've actually had really wonderful conversations one-on-one. My first conversation with Suzanne, the oldest daughter, my half-sister, was about three hours and it was wonderful. And then I've had a wonderful conversation with another sister, one-on-one, when I took her to the airport.
My favorite times have been when we've had a chance to talk one-on-one. You know, when you're with a family, there's a group dynamic with any family that's established and there's behaviors and trying to crack that is disorienting. But each person has been wonderful to talk with.
I realized at one point I was so discombobulated by how do I navigate this feeling? And it's just so much. Not much in a bad way, I just mean I don't know how to fold it in and it's so much information. It's like trying to read an encyclopedia in a day, like you just can't, so I realized I needed to just internally make some soft boundaries so I could make sure I'm still in my heart.
Because honestly, one thing about me, I got out of my heart. So my mom, my adopted mom died when I was 14. She was the one person who was, her life and death were very pivotal for me, because her life was just everything to me. And then she died suddenly and I went external. I had nobody safe to help me navigate through this grief.
My father, as accomplished as he was as an academic, just wasn't available in the relationships, which is typical of his generation. And so I, and also at the time in the early eighties, you're supposed to just move on, you know, and I'm a processor. I need to process, I need somebody to talk this through.
I need to know where I'm at. And I didn't have somebody to process that through. And it was so confusing for me. So then after my mom's death, like I said earlier, she helped me harness this adoptive energy that lives in our bodies when you're adopted. So not only did I have the unprocessed grief of her loss, because I didn't get a safe place for me to grieve and then I just stuffed it all down.
And then I also had this amorphous adoptive energy because without my mom's presence it was just kind of getting diffused. I got through high school and college on the surface. Great. But emotionally was I rooted in my heart as fully as I could be? No, I knew I was a kind of a mess at points.
Sometimes I just start crying and I was like, what is wrong with me? I didn't beat myself up too much, but I knew something was wrong and I think the bicycle trip across country was my way of just saying, Hey, I need time to myself. I love adventure.
And so that gave me the time and space and that gave me my first recognition that I was living externally, like trying to accommodate somebody else or trying to make somebody else like you or whatever, you know.
I was scrambling to get my father to be a team. But he wasn't available for that. So by the time I hit 22, 23, I finally started to take a hold. I need to do something. I need to start examining some stuff inside of me. Because the past will stay present until you process it.
I try to explain to people I love and care for who say, Well, I just don't wanna live in the past. And I firmly believe that the past will live in you until you process it. And I was a young kid, when nowadays if you're 14 and your mom dies tragically, suddenly, there's a lot of support.
There's a lot of recognition. The narrative has changed, and people know that you need to process it, think about it, acknowledge it. And it was the early eighties for me, so I didn't have that. And that's where I felt a little bit like, Oh, I'm slowly, softly trying to figure out how to fit into this external world.
And I was placing me out of my body. I didn't know how to navigate through it. So I could tell I'm coming out of my body. Because it was so overwhelming and it's, again, not anything against them. Everyone is doing their absolute best and they've been nothing but great. But I realized, Hey, I need to just softly say, if you want to get to know me, let's get together one-on-one and do it.
And my birth mom Irene even recognized that. I think there was a push to have a big party before I even met her first. There was a push to have a big party and we both said, no, no, no, no. Because real connection happens one-on-one, getting to know people one-on-one.
And like I said, every time I've had it, conversation one-on-one, with all of my half-siblings. I've had a chance to talk with my half-sisters. I haven't had a real chance yet to talk with my half-brother, but you know, everyone goes on a different timeline and I'm trying to just respect and figure out what everybody needs on their end, too.
I don't know what it brings up on their end. Even the most awesome reunion opens up a floodgate of dynamics that you have to navigate, and if you want to do it, seat it in your heart and you just have to take it slow. I hadn't prepared for that. I thought I just had to prepare to understand if they didn't want to reach out to me.
That's what I prepared for. Again, it sounds like I'm complaining about a real blessing because it has been a blessing. I'm trying to just emphasize the fact that as we fold people in, you just have to listen to yourself and make sure you're doing it in a way that you remain in your heart. Because I don't know if this is something that happens when you've had tragedy in your life or if I know that it happens when you're adopted.
A lot of people can disassociate when the external world doesn't make sense. I know that's common in a lot of adoptees, I think I'm prone to that. I slowed down a little bit just so that I could speed up the process of getting to know them.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing about the challenges, because I think that's what really gets glossed over in a lot of conversations.
And even with the good, like it really can bring about, I mean, just meeting one birth parent is completely life shifting, and so navigating that on its own, but having all of these extra layers, even if it's all love and joy and you know, wanted good things, it's so much for one person, especially if you don't have anyone else to talk about it with.
Like, right, because I can hear you. I can hear you saying, no, no, but, it's good. Because you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, and yet it's hard.
Ethan Ferkiss: Right. I don't fear I'm going to hurt their feelings. I just have a real hard time explaining. I was a writer. I could write this stuff much better than I can talk it.
So if I was slowing down and overexplaining, it's just when all of a sudden a lone wolf needs his pack of 50 beautiful people, you're still going to need your lone wolf time a little bit.
And fortunately, really blessedly, I have this dynamic that adoptees have that some people talk about getting out of the fog. You know, I was in the fog for a long time, compounded with the grief of my mom. And then when you only cope with it in not the healthiest ways because that becomes kind of a habit and you just push your feelings away and then at some point you don't even know how to navigate through your feelings and you're just lost.
And I had patterns I would repeat in the fog. I would have this coping mechanism. I didn't want to get too close with anybody in an intimate way, a real heartfelt way, because that was just too scary. So either I would sabotage it or I'd find somebody who truly wasn't available. So it was the two sides of the same coin, but it's all the same drama, the same play that can be played out because we just can't.
It's too scary to go to your heart. One thing that I had with Stephanie that I've never had with anybody else is we find each other after challenging moments and our love grows. And so now here we are, 15 years in, and I now have the environment and security of a loving relationship that puts my heart at ease.
I learned how to love myself and it was a struggle. I learned to truly love someone else and accept her and she with me and that puts you in a position to start truly exploring other aspects of your life. I listened to your guests and so many of them are doing this incredible effort to, you know, to journey back home, the hero's journey.
Everyone has their own individual hero’s journey and all it is is just figuring out how to get back to the basics of your heart. And, you know, I have to admit it. It is hard to talk about. We live in a society where nobody wants to talk about hard stuff. And I appreciate your show a lot. I appreciate books I've read because we are human, we're frail, we can get derailed.
And I know I felt like I was on fumes by the time I was 22 or 23, and I still struggled. I still repeated coping patterns throughout my thirties and forties that worked as a kid to get through. But just over 15 years ago, I got out of a relationship and my coping mechanisms are no longer working.
I'm a mess. I've got to figure this out. And I was able to like, finally, I had some footing cause I guess it's the cliche rock bottom. I was just like, this is not working. So I've been climbing out, but it's only been like the last 15 years that I've made sustained progress and it is that for any listener who isn't familiar with this energy that adoptees hold. I didn't know about it when I was a kid, and so you just think there's something kind of crazy about you, but it's this pre-verbal energy that's in your body. And until you have a framework, thanks to your show, you can't start exploring what it truly is.
And then so often when I couldn't sleep before. You know, I have battles of insomnia and I wouldn't really dread it. I would just look at it as an opportunity to explore what's going on inside of me. It was sort of like Encyclopedia Brown or Sherlock Holmes and having the love of Stephanie, we recognize that we could help each other grow, and when we find each other, it's just amazing, always.
So that's helped me get out of the fog, finding somebody who is honest and just as raw sometimes, and willing to come back and admit when, you know, I'll just start from scratch or admit when we may be overstepped or something, and take it from there.
Haley Radke: I know that you have this storyteller's mind. How have you used that? Have you to unpack some of your adoption stuff or the grief of the loss of your mom as well?
Ethan Ferkiss: You know, I am still in this process. Like this family reunion has just happened in the last year and a half, and I'm trying to figure out how, in terms of writing or some type of something to share with others, I don't know where I'm at in terms of that.
I mean, I should, this stuff does need to get written down at some point, but what I do is I just take long walks with my dogs. I'm writing the story in my head and heart still, and I'm trying to just process it through my body and I just try to listen to myself and it's a story for myself and for people I care about.
And I reached out to your show because I would listen to your show at night and fall asleep to it. And not everything reverberates. Everyone has individual unique portions, but it resonated enough that it shook free this energy one night where this is going to sound kooky, but we speak in words, which is intellectual, but our body speaks in something different.
And for the one and only time in my life, I really felt, Oh my God, that was what it felt like to be separated from your mom. Cause you know, you're with your mom for nine months and you're just the same heart rhythms, everything. And then one day, you're in her arms and then you're not. And my body was speaking to me when I could feel this and it was overwhelming and I wasn't victimized by it or anything.
I was just soaking it all in. I was like, Oh, that's what that baby felt. And it was because I was able to loosen it up, because other people are talking about it. Your guests are writing it in their books. I couldn't listen to what was inside of me for years because it was too chaotic and I didn't even know how to orient myself.
But now that I've got some tools, it's not so scary. And then you just have to listen. The story's still being written inside of me and how I'm processing it and maybe we'll see where it goes from there.
Haley Radke: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and so much of the ups and downs and for telling us about your mom. I appreciate that.
I wanted to recommend a couple things, but do you want to start today? What do you want to recommend to us?
Ethan Ferkiss: Well, I've been saying it, all the books that other guests have mentioned are great: The Primal Wound, The Body Keeps the Score, You Don't Look Adopted. But once you do that, I think at some point I would recommend taking time to listen to your inner voice.
I know that sounds hokey, but it could be late at night. So if you're having insomnia, maybe don't dread that you're having insomnia. Maybe your body's just trying to loosen something up and listen to it. And so that's been my greatest resources.
Respecting, recognizing an inner voice and trying to see what it's telling me. It's actually led me a great life. When I was 23 and I was bicycling across country and all I ever wanted was a beautiful little home, somebody to love, and, you know, my health to explore. And I have everything I want.
And that was the result of listening to my inner voice. And that would be my recommendation is do your best to listen to your inner voice.
Haley Radke: I love how you shared that through the interview and you're also following in your biological mother's footsteps. Like literally. So that's really special. Yeah, no, I think that's a good call.
Okay. Well I love that you mentioned one of Anne Heffron's books, cause I have two recommendations. The first one is a new book that she put out this year. It's called Truth and Agency: Writing Ideas for Adopted People.
So if you are wanting to write, but you're struggling a little bit, this one has tons of prompts and ideas and you can just, you know, flip to any page and start there. You can read it front to back. Either way it is so fully Anne. I mean it's lovely. So it's called Truth and Agency: Writing Ideas for Adopted People and the other book that's brand new this year. I've just been meaning to recommend but I haven't had a chance because I got it in the summer.
It's a book of poetry and it's by Sun Yung Shin. She has a number of books of poetry available, but this came out in 2022 and it's called The Wet Hex. She is a Korean adoptee and this book is beautifully written and thoughtful and full of challenging ideas. You need to read it slow. And there's a whole section that also has drawings that go along with it that's very interesting and provocative.
It's one of the best books of poetry I've read lately. And so it's called The Wet Hex. It's 10 out 10. Love it. So yes, those are my two books to recommend.
Ethan Ferkiss: I'll check 'em out. That sounds great.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Where can we connect with you online?
Ethan Ferkiss: Well, I do have Twitter, it's Ethan Ferkiss and Instagram. If you wanna see a bunch of videos of my puppies.
Haley Radke: Always. We love dog videos.
Ethan Ferkiss: Yes. So that's Ethan in Seattle, all one word. And I am on Facebook. Just look me up under my name, Ethan Ferkiss. And if anybody wants to talk about reunions or what they're going through, it's such a treat to be able to talk to a fellow adoptee.
And so, yes, I would love to hear from anybody who's interested.
Haley Radke: Absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing with us. I really appreciate it.
Ethan Ferkiss: Thank you. I appreciate it too.
Haley Radke: I think it takes so much courage to share your reunion story, whether you are a year and a half in or 10 years in, if we're lucky enough to get a reunion. We're all kind of just like figuring it out as we go. So it's such an honor to be able to share these with you and, you know, Ethan was kind enough to say he listened to so many of your stories on Adoptees On and that helped him process through things.
So I hope his story now will pay that forward to you if that's something that you connect with. Another way you can help the show continue and help more adoptees feel supported when they're going through these things that no one else is talking about is joining our community. adopteeson.com/community.
You can join our monthly Patreon. There's a Facebook group for supporters. There's weekly episodes where I talk with my friends about what's going on, either in the news about adoption stuff or just our personal lives navigating through adoption things, or we're talking about adoption reform or spicy takes on whatever pop culture or books are talking about adoption and getting it wrong.
We do all of those things. We also have an adoptee-centric book club where we read books written by fellow adoptees, and that is one of my favorite things that we do. There's so many amazing recorded events that are available on Patreon as well with adoptee authors and fellow adoptees discussing these books.
So again, we'd love to have your support, adopteeson.com/community, and join us over there and we can talk more adoption. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
