232 [Healing Series] Identity
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Full show notes: http://www.adopteeson.com/listen/232
Haley: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. This is a special episode in our healing. Where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves and they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on AdopteesOn.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.
On today's episode, we are talking about identity development as adults. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptee on Marta Sierra. Hi Marta.
Marta Sierra: Hi Haley.
Haley: I just told you I listened to some of your past episodes last night. And I can't believe how impactful they have been for the community and still to this day have been for me.
So we're gonna link to Marta's past appearances on the show so you can go back and listen. Um, but especially we were talking about estrangement and loyalty as a trauma response. And you unlocked something for folks I think, has been bottled up for so many of us for years. So I'll just express my appreciation from the community to you for that.
But I wanna start where we kind of left off and share a little bit of your story since then.
Marta Sierra: Sure. Thank you so much for that feedback, Haley. It's, you know, it's truly an honor and I'm very public about so many parts of my story because I really believe in representation, which we'll probably keep talking about in this episode.
But I also, yeah, you've heard me talk about it a bunch, like what community is the medicine? I just feel so strongly about that, and I think that your show and other platforms are community activism and I just feel really passionately. This work. So yeah, we last talked about estrangement and, and that was interesting for me to look back to and, and revisit some of our past episodes because that was such a beginning for me, is what I was thinking about in reflecting on us talking about identity more today and coming back to.
Identity development as an adult adoptee or identity development over long term reunion. And for me, estrangement really was such a beginning to be myself, find myself, be myself, stand in myself. We were talking about our purpose being to, you know, on this earth to give and receive love. You and I, last time we talked, Haley and, and you said, you finished my sentence.
There was this moment and you, I said something about giving and receiving love, and you said as who we really are. And yeah. Turns out what I learned post estrangement is who I am is gay and polyamorous . Which...
Haley: Is that a surprise to you?
Marta Sierra: ...were some big discoveries. Uh, it sort of, and sort of not and, and my journey with, with my queerness and my journey with polyamory have been, you know, didn't just start then, but it was, you know, when I look back now, it really was the beginning of, I don't, I'm not beholden to anyone except myself, and I can really be free to explore myself and express myself without fear. And that was just brand new.
Haley: Isn't that fascinating? I think that is. Of the biggest takeaways from our last conversation, I shouldn't even say that cuz there's so many.
But coming into ourselves and having our own identity, like I've had so many conversations over the last decade with friends being like, oh yeah, I finally figured out what I like, in terms of perfume or a preference? Yes, just, just like, just preferences. Where, I don't know. I see my kids and being like, oh, I really love this, or I really love that.
And I think, I think, did I even have the option to really explore preferences when I was little? I don't know.
Marta Sierra: Right. Did I have enough of a context on myself to even choose those choices from an authentic place?
Haley: Yes. Or are you choosing. Because this is the family environment you are in. This is what they like. This is what was modeled. This is what's acceptable. This is what's not acceptable and not safe. And so are you just fitting into this, like trying to pour yourself into a mold that is not for you?
Marta Sierra: Right. The need for belonging supersedes the need for authenticity. So if, if I need to be an authentic to belong, that's gonna trump who I am really every time.
Haley: That's wild. Like That's so wild. Okay, so identity development in terms of becoming our own authentic selves, like who we really are, is that, can you talk a little more about that? What do you see as identity development for adult adoptees?
Marta Sierra: You know, I see memes all the time, I feel like on, on Instagram about traumatized people in general, but how, you know, if you feel like you're behind your peers on whatever life step, right? Whether that's career or owning a home or having children, That some of that I is about our delayed development. When you are a person who has experienced trauma, we do get stalled out in different places and that looks different for every individual of course.
But there is this very real delayed development because if you spend most of your childhood disassociated, there's just all of this lost time. Right? Like you're saying as a kid, like when we were supposed to, Like, oh, do I like purple or do I like pink? Or, which sport do I like to play? We were like, how do I survive? How do I survive? How do I survive like that?
If that's what your nervous system is running on, you don't have the space for that exploration. And you know, I even, I give a disclaimer to new clients, especially in groups, but even individuals, um, especially if someone comes in, you know, one toe out of the fog.
I know we're like retiring that phrase soon as a community, but I'm just gonna keep using it today for lack of a replacement. But, you know, I, I try to be as transparent as possible and, and one of those disclaimers is, You may want to make a lot of changes in your life as you move into this work. And I don't want that to be jarring.
You know, a lot of people moving through their trauma work, change careers, move to another country, get married, end of marriage. You know, there's all of these big shifts as we realize like, oh, I'm not that person at all that I thought I was. And now that I'm finding myself, I gotta make some changes to align my insides with my oustides.
Haley: So you are just telling clients up front, this is a disclaimer, like if we address these things, you may be upending like, wow. Yes. I never thought of that before, Marta. Like sincerely. I guess I've seen that too. I've seen so many people come into our community and change their name. Move across the country, change career, just as you said, end of marriage.
I can, I mean, I know one person that does all of those things, um. Wow. Okay. So that's identity.
Marta Sierra: You know, and even thinking about us talking today is I sometimes it's hard for me to go back and listen to the first recordings that we did, Haley, because it's my dead name. My dead name is on those interviews.
And, and even that as what, but I, I think about, I feel like my voice is even different then. Like, there's just been so many shifts in adulthood for me and so many transformations, and I think that's what, yeah, when, again, when our system's driven by fear. And when, when losing anybody or anything is the most important thing. I don't have space to be myself in that. Right.
Haley: I, I was kind of talking about this with a friend this morning and what I mentioned was when we're in reunion, if we're, you know, fortunate enough to have that with our genetic family, can we be ourselves, and if we even know who we are, but at this point, I think I feel like I know who I am and am I showing up there as myself, because if I'm rejected, then they're really rejecting the real me.
Marta Sierra: Right.
Haley: Versus if I'm there and I'm trying to still Mm. Shape shift a little. Yes.
Marta Sierra: The chameleon thing.
Haley: Then if I'm rejected, they're just rejecting the, you know, costume I put.
Marta Sierra: So right. That really highlights how we have to have done enough healing where the other people leaving and rejecting us doesn't cause chaos. Where if I'm fiercely choosing myself, I no longer need that outside of me. I mean, I need some people to choose me. Right. We need, we need people, but I don't need, it's not as, it's not all as serious as I had previously thought. It's okay. That's, we are supposed to be in a place where people can move in and out of our lives without us, you know, teetering on the edge of sanity, ideally.
Haley: Right? I mean, we're laughing, but also for real. Right?
Marta Sierra: For real,
Haley: For real.
Marta Sierra: Totally for real.
Haley: Okay. So since you became estranged from your adopters and you have been doing identity, you know, exploration and finding these things out about yourself, Like, oh, I'm queer. Oh, I, I want to live a polyamorous lifestyle. How has that impacted you and the people around you? Because I know you've done a lot of internal work, you're an IFS therapist, so it's like, uh, required, I guess, um. But can are, are you comfortable sharing a little bit about that?
Marta Sierra: Yes, absolutely. I. And I, I, I can mention it again at the end too, but I did do an episode on my queerness and polyamory specifically, so I will talk about that at the end if your listeners wanna hear a ton more about those things.
Again, all of that wasn't, wasn't brand new, but I really did just feel this new level of freedom to pursue, yeah, the level of, of freedom I wanted and freedom of choices of partnerships and, partners and to explore my queerness. I mean, as a straight presenting pansexual woman that had been with a man, you know, in this really long relationship, and the only way for me, without ending that relationship that I did not want to end at all to explore my queerness is, is to be a non monogamous. And that was everything, like starting to lean into that and, falling in love with a, a woman for the first time. You know, I had been with women very casually throughout my adulthood, never had the permission to really date a woman to fall in love with a woman.
And for me as an adoptee, there felt something really powerful for me in a relationship with another woman that I had not experienced in my other relationship. Something particularly healing, something particularly sacred and, it just, uh, I don't, I don't, still don't have words for like, the amount of healing that I experienced in that relationship.
Haley: Can I just press in on something? Cuz I, I think I keep saying, oh, this is new for you, but you're like, no, no, I, I knew something. Can you, can you say that, like, looking back, what did you know that you're only noticing you know now? Or I don't know. Can you talk about that?
Marta Sierra: Yeah, I, I identified as bisexual from like as early as my teen years, I would say, but I never gave myself permission to really claim that or to pursue women romantically, and it was just something I didn't feel allowed to do.
I don't know if I can say it any other way. And then also this piece, Being in a straight presenting relationship, um, being a straight presenting them, and that I just didn't think that I was ever gonna get to have that and, or, or even that I was allowed to want it. Definitely felt like I wasn't even allowed to want it.
Haley: Because if you actually shared that identity out loud with the people that were in your life, that would not have been safe for you?
Marta Sierra: Yeah, just, uh, I think just as adoptees, I feel like we take this really quiet vow so young to like not want or need anything. And so this is about like right, my hunger for healing, my hunger for connection, my hunger for joy and pleasure, and to be brought alive from this like ghost existence that I was living and that hunger feels, can feel really selfish, indulgent, elicit whatever words you wanna put to it that, that shame our very human wants and needs.
Haley: I dunno how you do that. You say so many, like one line, one off things. This is, that's where people are gonna pause. We take this quiet vow like, yeah.
Marta Sierra: You know, ideally I would've got to experiment when I was younger and date girls and date boys and like see how I thought all felt, but I didn't know enough about myself.
So, you know, I see this, we talked a little bit about this before we started recording. I see this in, in so many adult adoptees that are learning really big things about themselves in their thirties, in their forties, in their fifties, and then trying to figure out how to course correct big decisions they've made in their lives to realign around the truth that they're discovering about themselves.
Haley: I think you said to me, we think we know who we are. . . Yeah. But then we don't really, uh, okay. So, so to me, I'm hearing those things and even though I've been sort of in the midst of this for the last 10 years or maybe a little more, Figuring out who I am. It can sound really scary. Like yes, you're talking about like, well, if we look at this and you explore, like you might decide you're not gonna be married anymore, you might decide you're gonna change out, like that's big stuff and that's world shifting stuff, so that sounds terrifying.
Marta Sierra: Yes. Yeah, it's really scary. And all of healing though requires a risk. Right. You're taking a risk that if you turn towards something really painful, maybe something good will be on the other side, and that's the discovery. I think for me post estrangement is that every risk I take there is something powerful on the other side.
You know, something that queer adoptees have in Reunion have to sit with, right? Is whether or not to come out to their birth families and international transracial adoptees. There's added scary cultural elements to that sometimes. Sometimes we're from birth countries where homosexuality is illegal, like really intense things to be up against.
Really terrifying as you're saying, right? To think about risking this connection that is essential and fragile and can feel fragile. And so I hadn't, I hadn't come out to my mom because it didn't feel that relevant when I was living in a monogamous partnership with a man. Why? Right. It didn't, I didn't feel like I was particularly hiding it, but I never really addressed it directly either.
But I, I hit this point where I was living poly amorously. I had a very serious girlfriend who I loved very deeply, and I was starting to think about bringing her down there at some point. And so, I realized step one before that is I have to come out to my mom. And that was really terrifying.
Haley: What, when what do you do? Like you're, you're like, am I gonna lose the relationship I worked so hard and we've worked so hard to build? Is this gonna cost me everything? Mm-hmm. . Yeah.
Marta Sierra: Yes, and I, you know, Columbia is a very patriarchal Catholic country, as I've talked about on here before. So it's, it's not really okay to be gay still culturally, and it's definitely not okay to break the rules around monogamy and structure like that.
So, you know, I knew that I'm, I'm presenting something that's outside of, of what she knows and her culture. So, yeah, it, and, and, and also, this is still in my, in my second language that I, I, I identify as functionally fluent right now. But it, it's clunky. It's not perfect. There's lots of things I still don't know.
So I actually practice in my, I do one-on-one Spanish tutoring, so I practiced for weeks about this. So we would mock do the conversation and I tried to prepare for questions that I thought she might have and. When, when I got down there, so this was last Christmas, we were walking maybe the second or third morning that I was there, and it, I, it felt like the moment it was calm, it was early morning, it was really beautiful where we were walking and I could feel that it was the time and it was like starting to like burn up the center of my chest and I was starting to shake and I, I just jumped right into kind of what I had prepared and....
The most shocking part was I had prepared how to explain polyamory in Spanish ad nauseum. And I said, do you know what that is? After I said, we have been practicing polyamory, of course she knows my partner. And uh, she said, yeah, I know what that is.
And I was like, oh, 30 minutes of material out the door. Okay, and, what she ended up asking me the most about was my queerness. When did I know and, and my history with that, which I had not prepared emotionally or linguistically to talk to her about at all. And so that was, you know, a big surprise. But she was, she was absolutely incredible. She. That's what she always says, which is lo que es mas importante que tollo que estas feliz, like the most important thing is that you're happy, and I know that's her value as a mom, but I still of course, feared that this would be the thing that was outside of the bounds of that because my experience of caregiver support is that it's so unstable and unsafe that I didn't trust that. But she has shown me over and over that her love is boundless and that I do not need to fear her.
And yet I am still so afraid because of my childhood that she'll hurt me in moments of vulnerability especially.
Haley: Mm. Thank you for sharing that like intimate story. I'm so thankful you got the response you did, and the other thing I know about you is if you hadn't got that response, you're still you and still confident in you and still like, I feel like I made all the right choices here.
You know? I'm assuming, did you prepare yourself for the other reaction?
Marta Sierra: I did, I did, and I, I forgot to say this part of my lead in before, before my disclosure and really what got me to the point also of deciding to come out to her was, I already hid who I am to gain entrance into one family system in this life, and I feel like it almost killed me, so I just can't do it that way Again, I can't hide just to belong to this family.
And so I led with that and, and that I was trusting her to not require that of me.
Haley: And she showed up for you?
Marta Sierra: She showed up.
Haley: We love her. Um, so I've been in Reunion for 11 years, I think at this point with my dad and my siblings and his wife. And I just recently came back from a family wedding and I didn't realize the, uh, fear I was going in with, because there's all these moments at weddings in particular, right? That you see who's in and who's not, right?
Like and, you know, let, let me just like, no fear anyone, like it's a happy ending for this. Like going in, are we gonna be in the family pictures? Is there gonna be one where you're like, okay, now you guys step out. So we just have the OGs, you know, like
Marta Sierra: mm-hmm.
Haley: That did not happen at a speech at one point, my brother said, my three sisters including me with no asterisk.
Right? All of those things that I think for them, didn't, they didn't even think twice about it.
Marta Sierra: Right.
Haley: But I came in with these fears of that. And then the other example I'm gonna give is more talking about how I think I really am authentically me when I'm there. Cuz at one point I, I was helping with a couple different things here and there. You know, food stuff and whatever. Um, my dad's wife, I call mom. At one point we were discussing something and then she said, I'm just gonna make an executive decision just like you do. You make a, you know, I was like, okay, I know I'm real here because I do that all the time, and that really is me.
Marta Sierra: Yes.
Haley: So, I don't know, there's just this, I feel like it's two parts of my story sharing with you this, it's like I still was afraid. I didn't even know I was afraid, but it came with relief after the pictures, I went back to the car with my kids, I teared up again. Right. And I cried and I was wearing sunglasses and I'm trying not to show my kids I'm crying cuz it was a happy, I was like, oh, okay.
Like it was happy. And then same with the reception. He's, you know, it was just an offhanded comment. It wasn't really even talking about us specifically, but it was just like, oh, like to be included is just really amazing and it's still like lots of people would just never think twice about that. Right. I dunno.
Marta Sierra: Mm-hmm.
Haley: That's the adoptee experience, right?
Marta Sierra: Well, they see you and they claimed you. In that simple way, I think that biological families do, because like you're saying, it's not, it's not out of the norm for them, but we are not expecting it.
Haley: Which is so sad. We're not expecting it, you know, but it's, it's true. That's how we grew up. Like if you felt unsafe and you know, I just wanna say there's a few times where you were like, um, mentioning these thoughts that were going through our heads as children. And for a lot of us that's unconscious. So I, I'm, I'm meant to kind of come back to that.
Those are unconscious thoughts that are just kind of circling around and we're acting as though those things are true cuz they are, am I safe here, do I belong here? All those things. But to have them below the surface and not visible to us now, hopefully they're visible to us. I don't know. Anyway, this is so, these conversations are so hard, but so good.
I feel very up-ended sometimes when I talk to you because you're unlocking things for me too, just along with you who are listening. So
Marta Sierra: Yes. I mean, your example's really powerful, Haley, because by in, in a different space and time, if you were listening to parts of you that were sabotaging the connection with your family, right, that were saying like, they don't really want you there, they just invited you out of obligation.
You know, you're not really one of them. Like you shouldn't go, you know, you might have not even gone. From a place of paralyzing theory maybe wouldn't have gone. And these corrective experiences where we are loved and accepted as we really are require vulnerability. And that vulnerability requires an internal sense of safety.
Haley: So I'm extrapolating. Does that mean somehow deep down, uh, you and I both are, have experienced this safety and we're sort of trusting that, that even if something had happened, like even if your mom had rejected what you told her, or I had got the, uh, Okay now you guys step out. Let's have the real, they're just the real family now, um, and we would've been, okay. Would've been painful, but we would've been okay.
Marta Sierra: It would've been very painful and we would've relived a lot of trauma, but we would've been Okay. Yeah.
Haley: Go us. I'm growing up. Look at that. . . No, I think it, it demonstrates, that some measure of healing work we've done has been effective.
Marta Sierra: Yes. Yeah. Mm.
Haley: Okay. I'll take that. Thank you. I'll take that in. . Is there anything else you wanna say to us about identity development, especially as adults? Like, huh? Do we need to do this? Like I think we do. It's obvious to me from the folks I've talked to who are coming into their adoptee consciousness and processing these things.
Marta Sierra: Yeah. You, I, again, I can't say community is the medicine enough. Right. But if we think about that, we need to find community for all the different kind of parts of us or all the different identities that we hold. You know, I need, I need other adoptees for sure, but coming into my queerness, I need other queer people.
And some of coming into my own queerness is, uh, creating community in my personal life, but it has also been running my first LGBTQ group for adoptees and confronting my own internal imposter stuff with that about like, am I queer enough to even run this? Which is its own interesting layer of identity work.
And that group space has been really powerful and , you know, we need community for, for all the pieces of our identities. Safe places to explore, safe places to say the hard things. And so, you know, why am I so public about all of this? I, because representation matters so much.
Haley: Yes. Thank you. And I, you know, I said before, like, I thanked you for sharing these deeply personal parts of your story because it comes at a cost and it's so amazing that you're so generous with that and letting us in. And I really believe it brings freedom for other people to be who they are. So thank you. Okay. Where can we connect with you online? Marta,
Marta Sierra: MartaSierraLMHC@gmail.com.
Haley: Perfect. And then you mentioned that there is another podcast episode, right, where you talk more about, um, your queerness and polyamory, and we can link to that in the show notes, but you wanna talk about that?
Marta Sierra: Yes. So that is my dear friend Tasha Hunter's podcast called When We Speak. You can find that on Spotify or anywhere you listen to your podcast. And there is an episode on queerness and polyamory from me. Also one on adoption trauma that your listeners that have listened to all my episodes might not feel like brand new material, but that's out there as well.
Haley: Oh yeah. But more Marta is more good. Thanks So we'll, we'll link to both of those episodes.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Really appreciate it.
I am so thankful. Full of gratitude for every single therapist that has come on the podcast and shared some of their hard earned wisdom with us. I really, really appreciate it. So thank you, Marta. She's been on the show multiple times and has really guided a lot of us through some very challenging themes.
So I know today's episode was no exception, and I'm just really, really thankful. If you wanna connect with other adoptees and support the show, if you go to AdopteesOn.com/community, you can find out how to get started in our Facebook group or listening to our off-script episodes. Or join us for book club or off script parties.
We have a whole range of options for you. If you are looking to get into some adoptee community to talk about some of these things that Marta and I talked about today, we would welcome you in. Thank you so much for listening and supporting adoptee voices, and let's talk again next Friday.
