251 Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/251
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.
Cam Lee Small joins us today. You may know him from his extremely popular Instagram account, Therapy Redeemed. Cam shares, how he went from aspiring rock band guitarist, yes, you heard that to a therapist who primarily works with adoptees, both children and adults and their families.
We talk about the complexities of supporting the needs of adopted children while keeping their adoptive parents engaged and willing to listen to adult adoptee voices. Before we get started, I want to invite you to donate to our transcription campaign over at adopteeson.com/donate.
We are working on transcribing the entire back catalog of Adoptees On and need your help to make that possible, to make the podcast more accessible to adoptees around the world. That's adopteeson.com/donate.
Cam and I wrap up with some recommended resources for you today, and as always links to everything we'll be talking about or on the website, AdopteesOn.com.
Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Cam Lee Small welcome, Cam!
Cam Lee Small: Thanks for having me, Haley.
Haley Radke: I can't believe this is the first time we're talking,
Cam Lee Small: Right. Yeah, I think we've been, or I've been a part of this community that you are already doing a lot in leading in a lot of ways. It's great to be here.
Haley Radke: I know lots of folks will recognize you from your Instagram and have connected with you on there, but I would love it if you would share a little bit of your story with us.
Cam Lee Small: I have different pieces to my story and as I'm even thinking right now, I'm thinking of like the a meandering river. So if there's any piece that feels like we could go in a different direction, feel free to let me know. And for listeners, my, my story is available in different spaces and places, so if there are any questions, I'm always available to, to answer.
Generally speaking, I come to this conversation as a Korean adoptee. I was born in Korea and relinquished around three years old after my dad died and then after two foster placements was eventually placed with a white family in Wisconsin and that's where I went from He Seong Lee and my name changed to Cameron Lee Small, and now I go by Cam Lee Small. And through my own journey of identity development and adoptee consciousness, we can say, and meeting other adoptees, that's how I came to do the work that I do today.
There's a longer story to that, which we'll probably get into a little bit, but that's wrapped up in, in a few sentences.
Haley Radke: So you're an adoptee therapist and you do work with adult adoptees, but I also know you work a lot with adoptive parents. Can you tell us how you decided to become a therapist and why you're brave enough to do some of the hard work that, speak for myself, I'm not willing to do?
Cam Lee Small: I think just a few days ago or a week or so ago on one of your posts, you had mentioned how in the commenting section you appreciate adoptees only speaking or commenting. And you know what an amazing, helpful expectation to set in some of these spaces of who's it for, who can speak, who's listening.
So my journey to becoming a therapist-- I was actually thinking about this today as I was just recounting my story in a different direction and something that I don't know if I've shared in another place. I think a lot of people know that I used to play guitar in touring recording rock band way back in the day. So I'm like 42 right now. In my forties. This is back in my twenties. So when I was in high school, yeah, I think I got my first guitar when I was like 14 or 15 years old. And playing at coffee shops and stuff like that, and then transitioned to other things.
Anyway, I was living in Madison, Wisconsin at the time. This was like 2008, 2009. And the group of friends that I was living with and playing music with and recording with, we had just finished a show in Madison that night. And there was an after party at a friend's apartment and during that season I was very reckless and I didn't have the information that I needed about substance use and the impact of it and maybe even the origins of it and the way it functioned in my life.
Obviously now is a mental health professional I understand some of the under underpinnings there. Back then, I had no clue. And I was, this was maybe about midnight O 1:00 AM and too much over indulgence. And I was just about passing out. I had already been sick about an hour earlier and my friends helping me to the bathroom and right before I, I passed out, the moment where I usually would've just fallen asleep, blacked out, I had this, I was struck by this sort of like existential realization about death. About the brevity of life and my own existence. And really started to face and confront the idea of the temporary, like that the humanity and mortality of myself.
Now, this is for me, I'm not saying that anyone else should believe this or whatever, but that's where I was in my friend's bathtub at 1:00 AM in the morning. Okay. And I think like that day and that season for me, it was like unplugging like a huge crack in the wall or a little hole in a ship where water started to come through. But in a good way. Water meaning information, community resources, help. People.
And for me, up until that point, looking back, what I realized is that because my dad died when I was three, that was in my adoption papers, I'd always known that. And it actually was a cautionary tale from what I remember, because in the papers, my intake papers said that, he fell off of a roof after consuming too much alcohol. So my parents would always just warn me like, hey Cam watch out. Drinking too much. It could be part of your genetic story, and just predisposed to different things.
And I think as a child I took that, okay, great. But it was the idea that, wow, like my dad died. What is death? And as a kid, for me that was, it was both matter of fact, but it was also this big, scary, intimidating, Hey, you better watch out. And death is pretty much the reason why I'm here in Wisconsin. And just a lot of questions that I wasn't ready to ask or maybe even explore the answers to. So it just stayed hidden in a cave. Don't touch that. That's too scary.
And there in the bathtub, I think in that night, a part of me was like, dude, you gotta go back into that cave. You gotta start facing some of that stuff and figure out what's going on. Wrestle with that. And I think, after meeting a few mentors and one mentor specifically. I was working at Best Buy at that time, and one of my managers was a Korean adoptee older brother figure, eunil, and he would, he shared I think the first or second day we met, he shared the story about searching for his birth family.
I didn't even know he could do that. I didn't even know why someone would wanna do that. But he opened my eyes to a lot of the stuff that I talk about today. So I started to normalize the idea that, okay, so maybe part of your origin story, adoption, race identity, that maybe that's a thing that you could start looking into.
What I realized is that I didn't have language up until that point. I didn't have words or language or even maybe the permission from the culture or from myself to ask these questions. And I think ultimately what I realized is that I got the feeling there's some predators inside this cave. Eat me alive. It's gonna be scary and brutal.
After becoming a clinician, what I've come to realize is that dark place and just the cave in general, what's inside there, instead of battle language I started to approach it with collaborative language. Almost like a partnership. How can I listen to and hear and honor and partner with what's inside to understand myself? Cause that's my story.
And how can I turn this cave into a counseling space? How can I turn it into a bed for some of my brokenness, my hurts, my pains? Even a workroom to figure out, okay, how can I use this to peek out and see who else is in the cave? And instead of, I think, yeah, I was living my life doing all this stuff, playing music, and I thought I was like, I was very anti-government, middle finger to any authority. I can do what I want. I'm my own person. Just punk rock metal. Ah, like this, right?
And so instead of seeing it as like chains pulling me back into the cave. Hey, you better confront this stuff. What I realized, especially with my recent trip back to China and Korea a few weeks ago, it, it's what was in that cave? Probably my three, three year old self. Three year old, four year old Cam reaching out, saying; What in the world is going on? I have no clue what's going on here. Why am I going to the 2, 3, 4 different caregivers? What happened?
Okay. Getting to Wisconsin, we didn't really talk about that. Okay. And is that my parents' fault? 'Did they have resources? That's a whole 'nother story. It's the younger piece. It's those unresolved unintegrated pieces of me that were reaching out during that season. That was a whole journey.
And then like that, my meeting other adoptees. Connecting to community, doing my own reunion trips, that's what led me to say, wow, how can I explore and figure out how to meet with other people who might be going through a similar process? And I'm not gonna project mine onto theirs and say, you are doing the same thing as me, but at least have some kind of a process to say, I get it. Yeah I'm adopted too and I've got these things. And learn also.
I really appreciate your origin with the podcast. I think Hailey, you mentioned something like you wanted to launch the podcast that you needed when you were younger, something like that. How can I become and learn how to become the mentor, the person, the advocate I needed when I was younger? And how can I learn how to be the advocate that people need today? Because growing up in the eighties is a lot different than growing up today. So there's some new stuff that I need to figure out, like driving a fifties car, okay, now we have, automatic transmission, whatever.
There's new language that's constantly evolving. And that's what brings me to-- that's my process right now professionally. Both helping folks and even continuing on this lifelong work internally. But also linking arms with other people who are trying to do this too, and working for that like collective release of captivity of sorts.
So that's like the long version of why I became a therapist. My advisor said, Hey, you know what? This is a possible profession for you. Look into it. He gave me some books.
The camp director at Hold International that I volunteered at, Steve Kalb, shared with me. Yeah. I asked him, Hey, camp is awesome. I'm traveling five weeks throughout the summer as a voluntary camp counselor meeting with these adoptees, like middle school, high school age. I asked him like, where else do they get this?
And he's; there's not really many other spaces outside of the summer. And I'm like, oh, no wonder. That's why these kids come to camp. They say, this is the highlight. They've been waiting for this all year. How can I be a part of that all year round for these folks?
So that's where I am now and I know there are a lot of adoptee elders and advocates who've been doing this work for ages, and that's incredible. I'm honored to walk with them, receive the baton, learn from them. Highlight them as well.
Haley Radke: Yes. Same. We stand on the shoulders and walk with, yes. I don't know how to put this, and I've been thinking about it for a really long time, so you can just bear with me. I wonder how it is for you treading this line in welcoming in adoptive parents to understanding the separation trauma that adopted people have experienced without pushing them away with too much information? But also including the real, real from adopted people.
And I think you've, you have found a way to balance this and sometime, I don't know if you wanna talk about this, sometimes, sometime you may feel like, oh, maybe that was a little misstep for this side, for adoptees, or, oh, that was a misstep for adoptive parents.
Like I just, a therapist friend of mine said, oh, I don't bring that stuff up with adoptive parents of my clients for I don't know, six, 10 months, because it takes so long to get there. What are your thoughts on how you navigate that?
Cam Lee Small: Thank you for bringing me back to the loop here. Cause I think your original question was about how, working with adoptive parents or adoptees in general. What kind of began as just Hey I'm this dude. I'm pretty skeptical of like community and people and just like serving. Going from that to, Hey, how can I participate in making society a better place?
There are nuances to that. So there's just, for me, it was the initial turn that, hey, my life is more than just me and just doing whatever I want. There are other people on Earth too, and how can I meet them? There's that. And then there is the formal training: undergrad psychology major and then master's in counseling psychology. And then doing the 4,000 hours supervised training, face-to-face, submitting all the paperwork, the credentialing, licensure to serving the community as a licensed professional clinical counselor.
Once getting through that, for me personally, it wasn't like, okay, I got licensed and now I automatically transformed to this person who's gonna start educating parents and adoptees.
I actually didn't start working with adoptees face-to-face as a clinician until a little bit further on in my hours and after becoming licensed. It was inevitable that working with this community I was speaking with the parents every day. Update. So they would bring their child to the lobby. Okay, so and so let's, we go back in the room and we talk, and then afterwards we, update this is what we did today. This is their plan for the next week. Sometimes the parents come in.
And even in that space, there is there's still stigma around mental health, but I think working with parents so that, because I know that I'm working with these children and adolescents and teens in the therapy space. They're telling me their story. I get what's going on here, and we're working on skills together and unpacking pieces of their life and then transitioning into my private practice that was centered on adoption and adoptees and really came from my own reunion trip, meeting another adoptee, several adoptees on my reunion trip back in 2012 in Korea. But them saying, Hey, I've been searching for my dad for 10 years.
It's tough. I'm like, okay. Now as a counselor, like I get it. It is tough. I met my mom in Korea. I still have questions and feelings about it. How can we walk this road together? So that's where my practice that was the entry point. And then all of these parents started contacting me.
That's awesome. I'm so glad they trusted me enough. They had the time to read through my little blog and see what I'm about, and they actually invited me into their life. I don't take that lightly. In fact, when anyone invites me into their life, I cherish that. That's certain kind of like intimacy that you don't just hand out to people every day.
So I have to be very responsible with that. I try to as much as I can. Making mistakes along the way, being human learning, trying to put these lessons into practice. So I had this sort of like flood of inquiries. Now this is like 2019, 2018. 2019. I started my practice virtual. I don't have a clinic. It was all online, telehealth. The screen saves on travel time. A lot of teens felt comfortable behind the screen anyway. That's great. They can sit in a room or in the living room. They don't have to feel embarrassed or whatever. And we're, and they can access it wherever we have wifi.
And then this was actually right before we left China last time, the pandemic hit. COVID. All of a sudden everyone is online. We have to find out a way to serve the community virtually. And again, more adoptive parents. More folks in the community, allies, caregivers, professionals contacting me. So that's that was my entry point into it. Into part of this work, also serving adult adoptees who contacted me.
But I think when I began, Haley, if I had to give like a percentage or a ratio, probably my caseload was like, I would say it's like it was 50/ 50 adoptive parents, family members, and then adult adoptees, we'll say it was 50/ 50. And then I think the invitation to speak at either an adoption agency or a conference or at a small group, that came from primarily an adoptive parent audience. Hey, I'm the director for X, Y, Z agency, and we'd love for you to come in and teach us about whatever. Talk to us about your story. And that's where I came in. For me, I'm generally comfortable speaking anywhere. I think even just now I'm realizing I've been talking a lot.
So if I don't have a filter or a gauge in my mind, I can just talk. And I've had to work on that. And I, even through my own counseling and diagnoses and everything, I, that's something I'm working on. Anyway, comfortable talking and then I do get it because I've received questions over the years, not even as a counselor, but when I was a camp director for Holt, when I worked as a volunteer for Holt, when I worked as a volunteer, like five or six summers for Camp Choson here, I got the sense that sometimes parents were asking questions that I didn't quite know what, how to name my reaction. And I would gladly answer it to the best of my capacity.
But I started to get why other adult adoptees might not feel comfortable or safe speaking to adoptive parents. But I understand that's a space that you have to make a conscious decision about being in before we enter it. So the thing, personal invitation to it was my experience at adoptee camp.
I'm at camp all week. It's hot mosquitoes. We're doing summer, fun, water balloons, campers, like staying up too late. Hey, go to bad guys, and wake up in the morning, food, fight, all of this stuff. Like I love these guys. These are my people, my kin, my, my adoptee like siblings, right?
And then when they're parents say things like, oh, we don't see color. Come on. Like during the panel. I get goosebumps even right now when I say that cuz I can, I vividly remember like the exact situations and the parents. It dawned on me that, gosh, I have to say goodbye to you and you're going home with them for a year. I'm not, I don't wanna demonize these parents, but what I want to ask is, Hey, that belief that compelled you to say I don't see color and that belief that potentially compels you to withhold or neglect access to resources throughout the year, throughout the other 359 days of the year. That belief, how can I sit with you in that belief and explore it? Ask questions about it. I wanna, I don't wanna tell anyone what to believe, but how can we have a dialogue to add to your belief?
Maybe it's adding some new information that you haven't heard. Maybe it's inviting you to dig into and reflect on your own story a little bit to, to figure out where you got that, where did you learn this? Maybe it's increasing your sense of awareness to see how does that impact Joey when you say that? Or how does it impact Joey when he doesn't even get to talk to these friends for the whole year? He's going back to this little small town or even a big town, this predominantly non adoptee, or not white or whatever. How can I sit with that?
And for me, one way to support little Joey from my camper group is to talk to Joey's parent somehow. Metaphorically speaking. So throughout the year, and this is, this has changed over some time, but throughout the year, that's how I see speaking with adoptive parents. I want to serve and love the adopted community in one way, one avenue, one in road. Not to treat the APs as some object for my goal, but they're people too.
But I want to sit with those people because they're the people sitting with those people. I want to sit with the adopted parents because they're the ones sitting with the adoptees. Okay? And this is all post-adoption. We haven't got into like preventative care, family preservation, but I'm just-- post-adoption itself. Hey, you're taking Joey home with you. We gotta talk before you leave. There's just one more thing, quick. So that's where I see the speaking engagements, the workshops, the discussions, the dialogue. It's the inroad into part of the adopted community that some of us might not have access to.
Haley Radke: I am. I know it's tricky. And so for a lot of us who are working more in just adoptee advocacy, navigating into that space, it can be so triggering because, and I promise I'm gonna move on to a different topic. It can be so triggering because I hear adoptive parents even you been in on a few interviews and podcasts where it's adoptive parents interviewing you, and they'll say oh yeah, yes, we're trauma informed and da-da-da-da, and yet they're still talking to prospective adoptive parents and being complicit in a very harmful adoption industry. I'm like, okay. You get it, but not all the way. But anyway, I'm glad that you are open to talking to them and for the good of those little adoptees. But let's move and talk about adult adoptees.
I'm curious your thoughts on-- I loved what you said about looking in the cave. I wasn't ready to ask, did I have permission from the culture or myself? And for a lot of us I see adopted people who start looking in the cave and get very angry and they see all the problems and they may get stuck there.
Or we see the adoptees who don't wanna look there whatsoever because it's not safe, doesn't feel safe, and you wrote this whole workbook, This Is Why I Was Adopted, and you are talking through all of these pieces of how, if we look at our full narrative and process, that can be so beneficial.
So can you speak to that a little bit and also, I know you're a person of faith and this term is not necessarily connected to faith, but there's some of us that can do this spiritual bypassing like move, where especially for someone that maybe is a Christian, you can be like, oh, this was God's plan and it just jumps over all that processing of our story so that's a big. Topic, but I know you can. You can do it.
Cam Lee Small: Okay. So what we've got here, I think you mentioned, Hey, what about some folks that start processing the cave and it's a lot and they might get stuck there, or, Hey, we don't even want to go there. There's that piece and then well, we'll start there.
I think I, maybe your question is like, how do we support this or what's it been like to walk with folks in that process?
Haley Radke: I think you're talking to a lot of adopted people, right? Adoptees are the majority of my listeners, and I feel sad for the ones who get stuck.
Cam Lee Small: Yeah.
Haley Radke: I also feel sad for the ones who don't even wanna look, because I think we're not truly experiencing our true story then. And that could feel safe for a while. But I think, as my listeners come find me in their thirties, in their forties, in their fifties, in their sixties, in their seventies, what age is it safe to look?
Cam Lee Small: Yes. You used the term jump over spiritual bypassing is this idea that we're gonna jump over some of these pieces of your story that either are too difficult. We don't have words for that seem counter to what we quote unquote believe or interpret from scripture, sacred text. And I think that jumping over, it reminds me as we're talking right now, Haley, the adoptee consciousness model that I referenced earlier. And folks can go look that up. You can probably leave a link in the show notes. One of the phases or touchpoints we could say, cause it's not linear, it's like the more of a spiral we can return to these touchpoints.
Out of the five touchpoints, the first one is status quo. And we can apply this to just life in general with adoption. The status quo is, hey, nothing to see here. The narrative, the story I've grown up with, Rescue. Luck. Fortune, God's plan. That's where I'm at. Okay. And the piece about the adoptee consciousness ethos is we're not judging folks who are walking in that sort of like storyline.
There's no hierarchy to say, this person who's in forgiveness and activism phase, they're better than someone else. But the invitation though is, hey, we do recognize that to do some of this work, this internal exploratory, emotional, cognitive, spiritual work. It is laborous, it does require bandwidth and time and resources. And relationships shift. Worldview changes, transforms. That's a whole season of life. Okay? So if someone says, now is not the time, then I believe them. Okay.
Now the next two phases I think are like rupture and dissonance. Rupture being, Hey, there's some new information I've gotten, but I'm gonna dig my heels in even further and say, gosh, I was really lucky to be adopted. Gosh, I'm sorry that your one specific story is the exception. I'm sorry about that. But adoption is still a blessing worldwide.
And then the dissonance is, okay, actually, let me just sit with this for a second. Now. I've got some multiple feelings coming up and this is just a lot. And I'm curious. I wanna know a little bit more. I wanna take my time though. It feels intimidating. And who are these new people?
The fourth touchpoint about like expansiveness and being able to sit with multiple feelings at the same time, explore multiple identities, our intersectionality, our connection to different family systems, different belief systems, different people groups. Learning to navigate that and even maybe attending community events, hearing other people's story. That's like the expansiveness phase. And I'm not the expert on this. I'm just off the top of my head of what I have felt myself and read, and I think for adult adoptees, if they don't wanna go look in that cave, like I said, that's okay.
For the ones that do, there is a part of another model. I can't remember exactly the name of this model. There's another five point model. I think one of the phases in that one is like drowning in awareness or drowning in anger. Something like this. And I think that particular model was normed on white adoptees.
White adult adoptees. The piece there though is yes, we're feeling anger. And I've said this before, we're feeling anger at something though. We're not just angry as an identity. I'm not just an angry person point blank. My anger is a response to some unrighteous harm that has been done against people or done by people to others.
So I'm not just angry. I'm angry at something. So we're gonna meet with people or we're gonna have space, we're gonna say it's normal to have this reaction. And so Sandy White Hawk said this in a training recently that I wasn't a part of, but Director Keely told me that they said it, that it's a normative response to a not normal situation. Or it's a normal response to an unnatural situation, something like this.
But essentially, yeah, if an adoptee or, if I feel angry about something, it, of course you would. Why? Why wouldn't you feel angry that you somehow along the way, lost your language, your family, your kinship, your community, your culture, your... all of this legacy. Ancestry. Why wouldn't you have feelings of anger. Okay?
So we're normalizing that. And with the adult adopted community, myself included, I walk with folks as a fellow sojourner. I'm not this know-it-all expert. I'm a person too. Learning along with folks right now, what? It's April, 2023. There are new studies happening.
Like Holly McGinnis is doing the mapping, the life course of adoptees, just right now. In real time adult adoptees are researching adult adoptees. Still paving the way, pioneering this stuff, inventing new language, or in building on new language. So that's where I'm at here, as I honor like where adult adoptees are, fifties, sixties, seventies. It's any time while you're alive is fair game to start asking about adoption.
Haley Radke: I love that it's just become more and more normalized to explore these things. And I think you're one of the unique ones who has experienced reunion. I know it can be very difficult for transnational adoptees to search and you share about this on social, about your meeting with your mother. And I'm gonna link to an interview you did with Kaomi on Adapted, where you talk more about it in depth. But one of the things I really appreciated, especially in, and This Is Why I Was Adopted, you talk about this like, when the meeting's happening, like this is like this momentous occasion.
I had that same, I had that the same momentous occasion, right? Meeting your mother in person and then feeling numb and what's happening and time slows. And yet I think it's such a gift for us to share about those things so that the people that come after us and have those experiences don't feel like, oh my God, what's wrong with me?
I didn't feel anything. It was like, it was weird. Do you mind talking a little bit about that and what's happened subsequently for you? Because a lot of us look for reunion to fix everything. Oh, now we'll know who we are and oh, now we'll be able to process whatever.
But it's just not a fix. Not a band-aid.
Cam Lee Small: It's not a band-aid, it's not a fix. For me, my reunion trip, the first one there was part of this five year process. Four or five year process where I initiated the search and then eventually, they notified me that they found this candidate. And in the room meeting, you're right. And I wanna be careful too, and I write more in depth about that in my upcoming book that I don't wanna like over glorify the reunion meeting. Because it was mine. It's not yours. It's no one else's, and yours isn't mine. It's yours. It's no one else's.
So every single individual person on the planet who has this potential to experience reunion, has permission to experience it as they do. They don't need to fit it into some kind of story arc or model, or some kind of Hallmark testimony to bring back to the church or the community.
You are allowed to experience it how you experience it. You are also allowed to process that for the rest of your life. And you can bring that into different spaces. Hear it through new angles. Hear it even through other people's testimonies as parts of your story resonates with them or parts of their story resonate with you.
That's how life works. That's how it works. So yes, for me I believe in that the particular workbook that you're referencing, it was a both/ and. It was this sort of pinnacle moment that I had been walking toward ever since Eunil at Best Buy told me that he met his mom or he was searching for. And hearing other adoptees at camp and other adoptees sharing this with me, here I am now in the actual building. Eastern Child Welfare in Seoul okay?
And I didn't have this flood of emotions in that moment. There were other times after that where I certainly experienced floods of different emotions in that particular moment, though it was numb. I didn't know exactly how to feel. Silence. Awkward. Mom feels sorry, thankful, guilty shame at the same time.
And I'm sitting there and my particular story was that, she actually had canceled the meeting when I first got to Korea. So I went through my own process of grief and anger and confusion, lament, frustration. Like on the front end before I even stepped into that room.
So I wonder what would that have been like if I didn't have that process? I don't know. I can't go back in time, but that's a reality. Being there in the room and then having a friend interpret for me and then going to dinner. And then in the hotel room afterwards, it was surreal. It was in some ways it was like watching it happen, out of body experience and, my mom rolling up some bulgogi and meat into lettuce and asking if she can feed me. Kind eat and feed me.
I, there's some things that I think my body felt familiar with somehow, there. There's a lot more to that, but just affirming what you're sharing, Haley, that it can be whatever it is to whoever is experiencing it. That's what reunion can be. We're allowed to have that.
Haley Radke: I just talking with you for this last hour it feels like you are just such a wholehearted person and I can tell that you've done so much work to get to this place. And I feel very thankful for what you've contributed to our community and in doing work that some of us can't do. And doing work with and for other adopted people. So I feel very thankful for you.
I wanted to recommend your workbook. We're really excited about your book coming out pretty soon, so we'll make sure to share that when all that news happens. This Is Why I Was Adopted. There is a big faith piece in some of these strands. So for folks who that is not comfortable, that might not be the right thing for you, but you share so much wisdom and knowledge on your Instagram and blog and things.
The other thing I really appreciate, and I guess we're not gonna have time to talk about but, is that you often are providing commentary on the hot topic adoption issues of the moment. And so sometimes I think those are great talking points for us to be educating our friends and family about the complexities of adoption. And if you're ever looking for language around some of those things, I think Cam, you do a really great job on social of unpacking those things like in real time.
And also the community always comes and brings nuance and other perspectives. So I hope folks will check you out for that. And we'll link to some of the other podcast episodes you've done so folks can hear a little more of your story. What do you wanna recommend to us today?
Cam Lee Small: From a mental health perspective, the resource that I refer folks to a lot is to Grow Beyond Words Adoptee Therapist Directory. Especially this past season as my availability is really limited. I often refer folks to that. And that's like a cumulative list, and I think it's still growing. That Dr. Chaitra has put together.
Now, I, for the clinicians on there, there's gonna be a state. So there's clinicians in each state, and it'll let you know whether they offer virtual counseling services, telehealth, the in-person groups, all of that's available. So if you're currently looking for counseling services check that out. Dr. Chaitra is releasing a book series called Adoptees Like Me. And that's been really neat to see because the illustrations are beautiful. The stories are, by adoptees about adoptees and certainly folded into this larger conversation that when we're telling stories about adoption and naming the nuances, who's leading that? And I think Dr. Chitra's book series is a great example say, Hey we can look at this. And it's an example.
It's it's not the only book. It shouldn't be it's part of the collective. And that's one thing you're mentioning Haley, with talking about adoptee topics, adoption topics in the moment. Something that I've so appreciated over time is that especially like online community, that we're doing our best.
Everyone's doing our best to walk forward in solidarity, to raise awareness, to affirm one another, to encourage one another, to give each other space. We're all learning together. You said something earlier, shoulders of giants. Yes. We're on this standing on the shoulders of giants. We're also walking side by side with our adoptee neighbors and siblings.
And to me that's a gift because I didn't have that when I was younger. When I was 3, 4, 5, 6 years old when I was a teenager, even young adult, I didn't have that. So to know that this is part of our story right now, currently in real time, really is a gift and I'm very thankful for that.
Haley Radke: I'm curious about, and you don't have to answer, this is how moving forward, if you'll ever be more comfortable sharing more about family preservation and the upstream systemic problems that cause adoption to exist in the first place?
And, you briefly mentioned that during our conversation and like I think that so many of us are hungry for our leaders to be talking about that. And getting those adoptive parents on board and seeing all of those things. So curious about that too.
Cam Lee Small: Yes. I took some time to address that in the upcoming book and even I think in the workbook, talking a little bit from Dr. Terry Cross's relational worldview model. And thinking through, why do individuals and families in a particular community feel compelled or how are they in a situation that leads them to need to relinquish their children in the first place? What's that all about?
Why is the church emphasizing pouring resources and generosity and service and love into this sort of like post-adoption testimony. Where have we, and I'm included in that, where have we neglected to look, like prior, upstream, like you said? What's going on here? And I think I addressed some of that in just, you can, it's peppered throughout my website and things. But you said it. We're hungry. We wanna talk about this more and we want to take action more.
So that's allocating resources. That's being involved in legislation. That's being involved in just even in the communities face-to-face. Strengths-based language around birth, family, even just language itself. Calling someone a birth mother before things happen? No.
What is coercive? What's not? What's generous, what isn't? What's appropriate? How do we shift all of this toward instead of adoption being the default funnel, end of the road? Maybe we can make some new ones so that families can actually even stay intact.
So I know we've all got a few minutes left, but Yes. Yes.
Haley Radke: Love it. Alright, Cam.
Cam Lee Small: Absolutely.
Haley Radke: Where can we connect with you online, find your resources, and engage with you more?
Cam Lee Small: Right now you can connect with me on Instagram at Therapy Redeemed. My website, it's just therapyredeemed.com/wordpress. I have a Facebook group ,Therapy Redeemed. I'll send you the link for that. And email. I always appreciate folks hitting me up through email, ask questions, so. Try to be available as possible.
I'm a one person kind of show here. So I don't have the staff and human resources to get to every single thing. Personally, I try to. And that's why if someone sends me a message, you might wait four or five weeks, but I'm answering you personally. It's not a bot or AI. It's actually me. So just, thanks for your patience on that and thanks for taking time to connect.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much, Cam I really enjoyed chatting with you today.
Cam Lee Small: Thanks for hosting this this space for me, Haley.
Haley Radke: I really respect people who can call out the problems and do it in a generous, kind, way without alienating folks. And I don't always, I don't always do that well. So I really look up to my peers who are able to manage that whole piece. And I think Cam is one of them.
As I told you at the top of the show, we are working right now to transcribe the entire back catalog of Adoptees On, which takes an extremely huge amount of money and labor, and even with some volunteer hours, it is still a huge cost.
And so if the show has been helpful to you in any way and, especially if you are an adoptive parent and you've never been like, I'm not joining her Patreon. I'm not an adoptee. I don't wanna be there, I don't wanna infringe on their safe space.
Please consider donating to this project. It's adopteeson.com/donate, and then you can see like how far we are along in our goal and how far we have to go. And I would appreciate it. Any amount you can give is super duper helpful and so many of you have been really generous with us already and I really appreciate.
Thank you so much. Adopteeson.com/donate. And thank you for listening. Today's episode, we'll be back next Friday with a brand new show for you. Let's talk again then.
