263 Stefany Valentine - When We Become Ours
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/263
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's episode is a bit of a celebration. The first young adult adoptee anthology of short stories, When We Become Ours, releases on October 24th, 2023. The first of its kind, edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung, with 15 adoptee authors, is cause for celebration.
Congratulations to all the contributing authors. We're first going to hear an interview with an emerging author, Stefany Valentine, who shares her story of being adopted at age 12 while her biological father had a terminal [00:01:00] illness. She's the first step parent adoptee we've had on the show, and I think you'll find it fascinating as we talk about the lack of consent to her adoption, the cultural losses Stephanie suffered, and how it wasn't until her mid 20s that she realized her biological mother had been removed from her birth certificate.
Next, we're going to hear from five more contributing authors who share about their stories in the collection and what it's meant for them to be a part of the project. I could have done a whole season interviewing all of these amazing folks. I'm sure we'll hear from more of them in the future. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.
com slash community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to AdopteesOn, Stefany Valentine.
Welcome, [00:02:00] Stefany.
Stefany Valentine: Hello! Hi, I can't believe I'm here able to talk to you. I'm so excited to be here.
Haley Radke: Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, I'm excited too. I may have binged too much of your gorgeous Instagram and TikTok. Oh, thank you. Thank you! I know folks are gonna go check you out after we talk, so why don't you start and share some of your story with us?
Stefany Valentine: When I was born, I didn't plan on being adopted. I didn't really plan on being born, but here we are. So it's a bit of a lengthy story. I'm going to try to give you the spark notes version of it. My dad was a Mormon missionary. Went to Taiwan, met my mom. They decided to have kids. Ta da. Now you got this. Half Taiwanese, half white, girly, and so I grew up in Taiwan, and then they got divorced, and so I was kind of like cut off from my heritage that way, and then my dad got married, and then my dad got diagnosed with colon cancer, homeboy died, and then I got legally adopted [00:03:00] by my stepmother. When I was 12.
So, from that point on, my biological mother had absolutely no ties to me. I don't even know how to find her, even if I wanted to. Yeah, so, and now I am a 30 year old author. My contribution to When We Become Ours is a short story about Sora. She is, it's kind of a, an analogy with my... adoption story. So when I was adopted to my stepmother, she's a white woman.
Her kids are Korean, but she speaks Korean, cooks Korean all of that stuff. So I was, I grew up around a lot of Korean influence. And this analogy that I have in, in my short story is about a girl who was born on the moon, who gets raised by parents who live in these colonies that orbit the earth and the analogy is, Oh, well, you're both from outer space.
That should be close [00:04:00] enough. Right. But for me, being a Taiwanese adoptee raised in a Korean household, like there was definitely, definitely some overlap in similarities because they're both East Asian, but I still truly. Missed out on so much of being Taiwanese as a result of being adopted.
Haley Radke: A lot of folks that we have talked to on the show before are adoptees who were adopted as infants in closed adoption. We've talked to some adoptees who've experienced an open adoption. We've talked to adoptees who were in foster care for short or long periods of a ti time and then were adopted. I don't recall having a stepparent adoptee on the show before.
Oh yeah. So, yeah, I think it's really neat that in When We Become Ours, this first YA adoptee anthology that we're sort of [00:05:00] celebrating today that your story is represented as well. Can you talk to me a little bit about when you realized, and this is going to sound a a little bit silly, of a questions because of course there's trauma involved when your parent dies. I'm very sorry for the loss of your father. But can you describe, like, when did you realize that there was such a thing as adoption trauma? And is it weird that now legally your bio mom is not on your birth certificate? It is your step mom. Those kinds of things. When did that realization happen?
Stefany Valentine: I'd love to just like back up just a little bit and talk a little bit about like the legal adoption process, if you're okay with that, because there is something that comes to mind specifically for that. And that is that when I was legally adopted, I was 12-years-old. And at that time, I remember there never being a discussion of consent.
Is this really [00:06:00] what I wanted? And it sucks because as a kid, you, you don't really have the full picture. You have to trust in what your parents decide to do. And I understand that like in that specific situation there, I grew up with nine siblings. So I've got four biological Taiwanese siblings. I got For Korean siblings.
And so it's just a, it's just a chaotic situation where my dad is dying of colon cancer. And now he's Hey, I don't want you, my, my biological kids baptized to your Taiwanese side. You're going to be adopted to her because I'm your, I'm your dad. And this is what I say you're going to do. And I understand that his back was in a corner and her back was in a corner.
And then as a result, all of us kids had our back in a corner, but. Still, where, where was the consent? I was never educated on what that meant, and if I had been told, hey, you're, you're never gonna, your mom isn't gonna be on your birth certificate anymore. Like I would have said I don't want to be adopted, but you know, it happened and here we are today like the moment that I realized and so [00:07:00] so growing up we grew up in a Mormon household, right?
And I love talking about religious trauma as well because religious trauma and adoptee trauma I feel like they go hand in hand so much because in terms of religious trauma, I feel like there's so much kind of propaganda or like you get like this indoctrination. You have this save a life mentality, right?
And like with the adoption narrative it's you're saving a life with a child so they kind of go hand in hand and when you realize oh my gosh like my whole life was kind of a lie. It's you kind of have that same sort of dissonance that are very, very similar. So I feel like for me, when I became an adult, and this is honestly so embarrassing, but I was in my late twenties when I realized, wow, I have a lot to unpackage with my adoption trauma.
And wow, I have a lot to unpackage with my religious deconstruction as well. And it only started because I got on TikTok and someone happened to be talking about their adoption trauma. I didn't even realize that was a thing [00:08:00] until someone was like, yeah, I was told that I should be happy that I was adopted.
But I was never actually happy and I was like mind blown because I had always been told that I should be happy like I should be grateful I should be grateful that my stepmother adopted me because no one else would have wanted me and I I always felt deep deep down that that wasn't true so being able to hear someone else Literally say the words that I've been thinking out loud it meant the world to me and so now I feel like I'm such a huge advocate of sharing stories because one I mean I'm an author that's what I do share stories and two there's so much power in seeing your experiences handled by someone else.
Because now I, I'm not alone. I'm not alone in feeling this way. I'm not this, I'm not this alien. I'm not this freak. I'm not this like weirdo who doesn't fit the mold of what society thinks that I should be. There's someone else who literally knows what I'm talking about and I I get to use minimum words when explaining it because they just get [00:09:00] it.
Haley Radke: You had a lot of feelings when you were talking about your birth certificate. When your father was alive, did he maintain any connection for you with your mother?
Stefany Valentine: I feel like my biological mother, she... made home videos and stuff, but I don't know what happened to those home videos she took a bunch of pictures and to this day I feel so grateful because I have a photo album of like me from ages I believe One, two and three up to three years old I have photo albums with like my first days in pre k my first first years with her I have I swear I'm gonna cry, but I have one picture of me with my biological mother.
I know that there are so many adoptees who don't even have that. I feel so grateful to have that, but at the same time it sucks that that's the only one that I have. It's tough. I think the reason why I'm so emotional is because I'm still, I'm [00:10:00] still new, I guess, to my adoption trauma, and to this day, I haven't fully, it's kind of like a pimple I haven't popped this pimple there's still some juicy stuff in there, and, and these are the emotions coming out.
I haven't had a platform to fully purge all of these emotions. So they just keep coming out like this.
Haley Radke: We do lots of crying here so don't feel like you gotta yeah, I empathize so much with that and my experience is very different. I was adopted as an infant and I too have one photo with my biological mother and it's over there.
But on my wall, you can't see it but it's when she was 38 and I was 22 and wow, so it was like, I just have this one thing. And for a while my, I didn't know where that picture was. And when I found it, it was like having a reunion all over again.
Stefany Valentine: Yeah, I know the feeling. Yeah. Cause it's like, it's like you have [00:11:00] these faint memories of that
and you're like, in a sense did I dream it or is it even real? And then when you see it, you see that picture in your hands, you're like, wow, it really did happen. And it's it awakens things within you that you didn't realize were lost.
Haley Radke: You mentioned growing up with Korean influence. How have you been reconnecting with your Taiwan culture as an adult?
Stefany Valentine: I feel like one thing that haunts me the most is the fact that Mandarin was my first language and I don't remember a single word, like the only thing I remember because I remember going to school in Taiwan is I know how to count to 10. I know how to count to 10 in Mandarin and that's about it. And it was very empowering during lockdown in 2020
I was like, you know what, it's, it's, it's about time. It's about time I start like reclaiming my hope, my culture and my heritage cause, I [00:12:00] miss it. I've always missed it. So I started relearning Mandarin got some tutors, and the most useful and beneficial thing for me has been using an app because I get to go at my own pace and I get to squeeze in a a three minute lesson here, a ten minute lesson there, or whatever.
But the coolest part, I would say, is that when I started relearning Mandarin, I realized that parts of my mouth the muscle memory, my tongue, my lips, my throat, it can make those sounds and it was so like validating to I never would have noticed that my my muscles still remembered Taiwan, even if my brain didn't because I had that experience, I put it into a young adult novel and that was the book that landed in my agent.
And then a couple of years after that, it landed in a book deal. So, and I'm grateful that I'm able to combine so many aspects of of my life and put it into literature, because like I said, there's so much power to sharing stories, sharing the authenticity of those [00:13:00] stories, because that's how we see ourselves in the world, is that authenticity.
And it helps us to not feel so alone. So I love that.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. It's, it's so true. And it's interesting that on TikTok is where you first heard from other adoptees. I want to just go back one more time to this idea of adoption trauma. I see it as sort of different pieces, right? There's family separation trauma, right?
You're disconnected from your biological mom, your father dies, you are losing those connections, and then there's this other piece of the adoption where you've got this legal severing of identity and then this societal expectation of gratitude and then whatever we're getting from our family that we're [00:14:00] placed into.
So do you have thoughts on that?
Stefany Valentine: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so because I was 12-years-old, I remember going to court. So this is I guess a funny story is so there's nine of us, nine of us kids, right? My dad's like yellow jaundice, dying of colon cancer. You can see it in his skin, right? And there's my white mom, blonde hair, blue eyed
and then all of us little dark haired Asian kids, right? And we're all going through this courthouse. My youngest brother, he happened to have a tape measure with him. One of those ones where you pull out and they snap back when, because he's a little kid and he just likes toys, right? So all of us, we're going through the metal detector, like one by one, and it gets to my youngest brother and the, and we're all, we're all scared because we're like, what's going on?
We know we look out of place here, like people keep looking at us. We keep looking at them and we just keep walking and the metal detector goes off for my brother and he is, he's I don't even remember how old he is at the time, maybe like maybe eight, [00:15:00] six, six to eight years old or something super young.
And he's oh my gosh, what is happening? And so all of us, we're all freaking out because that's our baby brother and they're like, do you have a weapon on you? Asking it to a child, right? And so he pulls out this little tape measure thing and they're like, oh yeah, well, you can't take that with you because it's dangerous.
And all of us were thinking like, okay, like I know we're young, I know we're kids, but like, how is that dangerous? So anyway, we go there, we go into the courtroom and I remember the judge literally just taking a look at us and being like, yep, this is final. You're legally adopted. And that was it. And so all of this buildup, all of this, like fear, this trauma, we didn't even understand what was going on and lack of consent again.
Like I, I didn't want this looking back in retrospect and in the moment, I knew for a fact I didn't want this. And a part of me was always wondering why couldn't I just go back to Taiwan? But nobody asked me, we go, we do that, finalized. And then it wasn't until I was looking at my [00:16:00] birth certificate in my mid to late 20s that I was like, hold on a second, where's my biological mother's name?
And that, that was the moment that I realized in my late 20s, after all of this, this is like how little I was educated on the adoption process as I was going through. It was just, here you go, we're just going to send you through it. It wasn't until I was like, in my adulthood that I was looking at my birth certificate
I was like, hold on a sec. There's no way. I do not, I look nothing like this lady. There's no way my stepmother is my biological mother and yet her name is on my birth certificate. It was, it was very traumatic and kind of silly, I guess, how the whole process went down, but I'll never forget it. And I honestly haven't shared that story out loud.
This is probably the first time I've ever had the opportunity to share that experience out loud. Because this is how little I get to talk about my adoption trauma. And I feel like that's why I have so much to purge, so much to, so much to exhale, because it's a lot, it's a lot to... I've lived with [00:17:00] this, like since my childhood into my teen years and now into my adulthood.
I'm still learning how I feel about it and how, how it's still affecting me to this day. There was a, there was a time in my life when I kind of, I don't know what the word for it is, but I'm, I'm gonna refer to it as like internalized adoptee trauma. Where people will be like, well, don't you miss your biological mom?
But I've been told time and time again that I should be happy that I was adopted. And so, even though as a kid I had opportunities to talk about it, I had that kind of like indoctrination ingrained into me so, so much that I was always like, no, I really am grateful to be adopted. I would vocalize it, but deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down
I wasn't, so that's the only way I can learn. I can express it. But I growing up I kind of had that internalized adoption trauma where I, I fed into that, that harmful narrative of adoption is good. Adoption saves lives. This is great for kids. I fed [00:18:00] into that narrative. And now they're like, I've grown up and I'm able to have that emotional competence, have therapy that I need to put words to my feelings and everything and of course to have the validation of an entire community of people who have gone through what I've gone through?
I I'm able to be on the other side of it where it's hey like I am able to see that sort of like internalized adoption trauma in the people around me and even in my own siblings at times because it's such a difficult emotionally exhausting thing to undergo and to unpackage like you have to let go of so much of your past and you have to really sit with that discomfort of this so messed up and then and then you get through it and now you're able to talk about it on platforms like this and share stories so that other adoptees don't have to feel alone.
Haley Radke: Well, let's talk about some of your loves, which is reading and writing. I know there is. So, there's [00:19:00] just this lack of authentic adoptee representation in literature. We've talked about that before on the podcast. We're treated as a trope we're the plot twist, we're the secret murderer revealed at the end.
I mean, all the tropey things.
Stefany Valentine: Absolutely! Oh my goodness, yeah! So... Like growing up let's take Harry Potter, for example that's our that's our classic adoptee, right? But oftentimes in literature you see the adoptee trope because it is a trope unfortunately in publishing even though it's literally like something that needs to be handled with delicacy and care, but it's used so that one gives immediate sympathy to the reader so oh this poor adoptee doesn't know who he is,
whatever. Number two, they always pair the adoption the adoptee to the orphan thing. So, oh, not only is he gonna be adopted into this household, but he's he's [00:20:00] orphaned, doesn't have his parents. Oh, man, poor kid. You, the reader, you better sympathize with this, because me, the author, I don't want to go into the emotional baggage that comes with the trauma of losing both of your parents at a young age.
And it gets really frustrating, and it's, it's, because as, as a writer, I see through it. Not only do I see it as a reader perspective, but I see it from the craft perspective, where it's man, minimum effort was taken and yet the funny part is the adoption trauma is the character development and I'm not I don't want to call out like every single author who's ever attempted to write an orphan or an adoptee because there are certain like nuances that come into play for instance different genres like what age group you catering to and just how much trauma do you get to discuss per age group and then another thing too is like you know what does your editor want so that that's a whole other other ball game that gets added into the equation.
But to me, as a writer, I often see that the adoption trope is used so that as an excuse [00:21:00] for lack of character development and to get immediate sympathy from the audience. And it's, it's, it sucks because that is the character development. That exploring that adoption trauma, exploring being an orphan as a kid, that is the character development.
There is so much internal conflict and internal turmoil and external motivations that you can pull from this, this void that happens when you are severed from your parents. I feel like maybe because it's been done time and time and time again and hasn't been explored in depth that unfortunately people see it in literature and they're like, oh, sure, I can use that in my story.
And another thing that I feel like I see, too, is a lot of the time the orphan slash adoptee trope is very prominent within sci-fi, fantasy, the speculative stuff. And from a craft perspective, a lot of speculative fiction [00:22:00] tends to be about the outside, the world building, the politics, the the magical elements, how the, how the spaceships go from point A to point Z, it's very, very external.
And so it takes away from the character's internal exploration of my adoption trauma, or the character's orphan trauma. In a sense, I guess you could say that the the genre at play takes away from the author's ability to discover and unpackage a lot of that. But that said with a character who has had a lot of that internal trauma, a character's motivation comes from within.
And so, at the end of the day, I feel like if a character has this true adoption trauma part of their motivation is always gonna be like, I just want to know who I am. That can be such a powerful driving force that nobody, like it's just sitting there, it's this untapped potential in literature and it's, it's wild to me from like now that I've had a chance to like really process and unpackage [00:23:00] my adoption trauma, how so many authors don't see that and yet they continue to use the adoptee orphan trope.
To just give you a generic character that's been done time and time and time again.
Haley Radke: What do you think about, I'm going to call it the ethics, of authors writing characters that are adoptees without checking in with adoptees. There's a couple of very famous books, one in particular. I'm not gonna name names, but the author has been quoted in several sources.
We did a bit of a deep dive on this on Patreon a long time ago. And the author said, oh, yes, I researched extensively. I talked to adoptive parents. I talked to birth parents. I talked to social workers lawyers who work in adoption. She listed the whole list of people she researched, [00:24:00] but did not talk to an adopted person.
Stefany Valentine: Yeah, I feel like I feel like you and I, we know we see the elephant in the room, right? Because that's the thing. That's the thing with the adoption narrative is it so much about how adoption is ethical, how, how great it is, how much you're saving lives and you're saving babies. But then when you actually ask the adoptees, we're like it ain't sunshine and rainbows okay. Like ours, our origin story is that we have no origin story. That's the trauma, like that, that in itself needs to be handled with care, completely gets overlooked. I feel, and I'm so grateful for platforms like your podcast. And When We Become Ours and like the whole storm of adoptees coming forward and sharing our experiences, I am so grateful for this movement that is coming, because I feel like a lot of publishing because publishing is such an old storytelling is probably the oldest art form in human society across all [00:25:00] cultures yet we're still uncovering new ways to become better storytellers and one of the ways that do become better storytellers is to be authentic to be vulnerable to be human because as we develop and as we evolve, as in a society we are capable of picking up on these subtle details and these nuances, and they need to be examined for the sake of art and for the sake of humanity, explored very carefully and in publishing specifically. If not, then we risk falling into the same cycle, which is like this underdeveloped is underdeveloped storytelling that we tend to see over and over again.
And not only that, but it just, it continues to perpetuate these harmful stereotypes and the harmful narrative that is the adoption industry. I, I'm just grateful for people who are speaking out about it and speaking up, too, and sharing their stories.
Haley Radke: Well should we talk about it? Let's, let's go to recommended resources When We Become Ours.
It's so exciting to see [00:26:00] it in the world. I don't know if regular listeners will remember, but I talked to Nicole Chung a number of years ago and she was talking about, oh my gosh, one of the things I really want to do is help publish an adoptee anthology. And I recently got to talk to her again and she, and we're like, let's celebrate because it's here,
it's coming out. I'm so impressed by the collection that Nicole and Shannon Gibney have put together. The authors that you are listed among, 15 authors, some of them are best selling authors, some of them are new up and comers, and I just, talk about own voices, like this is it.
Stefany Valentine: Oh my, oh my goodness.
And okay, so I haven't read the whole thing quite yet, but during the developmental processes, I was kind of able to take sneak peeks at some of the other stories. And I'm still waiting for my hardcover to come in and everything. But [00:27:00] I read this one.
Haley Radke: You'll have it in your hands, Stefany. By the time this comes out.
Stefany Valentine: Yeah. Yes. So the very, very first story in this anthology is one Cora and Benji's Great Escape. And I swear within the first page of reading it, I was in tears I was laughing, I was crying I was angry, and I was like, man, this is a whole other genre, I guess, or this whole other aspect of adoption trauma that I need to unpackage still, and it's so basically it follows the protagonist, I believe is Cora.
She's a black adoptee and her mother is white. And her mother is kind of like one of those mom fluencers. Who's like hashtag salt and pepper family, because, the mom is the salt and the pepper is the kid, and I feel like as adoptees hearing this especially transracial adoptees, like all of us are like, oh, like we've got that cringe, right. So I remember reading this and I was like, oh oh, the cringe is so real. But then like how this mother just kind of [00:28:00] like, I don't know if this is the right word for it, but like kind of fetishizes or what's the word I'm thinking of? Exploits, how the, how the mother exploits her children.
And I remember this one time in my, in my childhood, because there's nine of us, right? In this adopted family, there's nine siblings at one point 8 of the nine, we were, we were in elementary school and my mother, none of us wanted to do this talent show, but my mother, my adopted mother was like, hey, all of you guys are going to wear these shirts, they're gonna say, we are the Valentine family because let's be honest, like Valentine is a pretty cool last name. And then the fact that there's nine of us total, like it's, it's pretty eye catching. None of us wanted to get on stage and dance at this talent show and yet she forced us to like... go up there and dance and everything. And I was like, oh my God I can't unsee it now. Like mom, what were you thinking? But at the same time though, it's I get it, mom. Like you were doing the best you were doing what you could with what you had. And we were all kind of in a pickle, [00:29:00] but man, like reading that story and just like the whole hashtag salt and pepper family. I was like, oh, oh, I feel so seen. I've been there. Oh, I've done that. The cringe is real. And she captures, she captures everything about that experience. So, so, so well. Oh man, it was beautiful, beautiful story.
Haley Radke: That's so good. We love Mariama.
That is that story, literally, when I got to the Salt N Pepa line, Stefany, okay, I emailed, I think I emailed Nicole or Shannon, I can't remember which one, because I was like, that's it, because I don't know, we're not going to say the name, but everybody who knows, knows there is a momfluencer who has called her platform this thing.
Not salt and pepper, but related. And [00:30:00] it's so gross. It's so gross. And I think fetishization is a great word for it, actually. And I think it's accurate because we don't talk about people of color as food items. Thank you.
Stefany Valentine: I know right? Oh, it's just a whole other level of cringe. But oh, I love I, I hate that I love it.
So I hate that I feel this way but I love that I feel this way because it's so true. And and that's it. That, that level of nuance, that level of detail, that, that level of care can only be written by someone who has first hand experience that, and that is what I love about this anthology, that is what I love about talking about adoption trauma, and being an author who writes adoptee characters and gets to explore all of this because there's so much intersectionality and there's so much nuance and and the only way to tell it with this much raw human emotion is if you have lived it [00:31:00] and I feel so honored to even be a part of an anthology like this because like this, this story is this anthology is going to it's gonna make so many people feel seen.
It's gonna, gonna help kickstart so many healing journeys.
Haley Radke: Yes. For young people. Yeah. One of the questions I asked, we're going to hear from a couple of your fellow authors once we wrap up our conversation. But one of the questions I asked was like, what would it have meant to you? To have something like this to read when you were a young person and how meaningful that would have been.
So I just think it's so special. I love that it's short stories. And I'm going to ask you a little bit about why you chose sci-fi as your genre of choice. But I think there is something about short stories. Well, For all of us, but I'm thinking especially for your target for the young people [00:32:00] that when you read a short story, you can have this, immediate emotional reaction in a short period of time.
And often those things unlock something for us often those are like the memorable story that you will think back to. And to think there's so many of those in this book all together like it's just really special. Okay, why sci-fi?
Stefany Valentine: Oh, yeah, so, what one of the reasons why I chose to write my story in sci-fi, was because There are so like so much of the adoptee trope that we see is in speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and it never gets explored internally because we're spending so much time building the world, building the conflict, building the plot, and these are all external things, but what if we had a speculative fiction story with an adoptive protagonist and that was the protagonist [00:33:00] motivation was the adoption like it starts from within and it bleeds into into her world.
And this is why I wanted to specifically use this analogy of well, the protagonist is an extraterrestrial she's not like from Earth, like she's a lunar creature, like a lunar alien or whatever, if you want to call it that, but so are her parents, they're, they're both extraterrestrial, but one of them lives on the moon and the other one her parents exist, or they come from colonies that orbit the Earth's atmosphere, so that was the analogy I wanted to use for my adoptee experience with being a Taiwanese girl, adopted into a Korean household.
Yes, we're both extraterrestrial. We're not the same. And I, I feel like specifically with so much of so much racism surrounding East Asian countries, a lot of the narrative is, oh, well, you guys look the same, or you guys speak the same, or you guys [00:34:00] eat the same. No, we don't it's 2023. No, we don't.
And I really wanted to encapsulate how yes, we do share some similarities, but we are different and I, I missed that. I missed that so, so much about growing up in a Korean household. I missed the fact that I never asked my, my adopted mom if we could try to cook something Taiwanese if you, if we could just cook like a Taiwanese food
'cause she was always making like Korean food. And I'm not gonna lie, like my mom's an is a, is an amazing chef. To this day I can't go to get Korean barbecue without comparing it to my mom's cooking because she, she cooks it's so much better than any restaurant camp. Like we went to LA one time, we were in K-town and everybody was like, you've got to go to this Korean barbecue place.
It is the best in town. My husband and I, we go there and we were both like, dude, Mom literally cooks way better. Like we had leftovers of hers that are better than this. Are you kidding me? So I'm, I'm, I'm super grateful. Don't get me wrong. I'm super grateful [00:35:00] for the Korean food that my mom cooked for us, but it's not the same.
And and so now that I live by myself, I'm, I'm exploring Taiwanese food and it's been so rewarding. How smells awaken the deepest memories within you. I made I bought a Taiwanese cookbook and I made something called Three Cup Chicken. And just the smell of the ginger and the garlic and the oil.
It was, it was me walking on the streets of Taiwan all over again. I remember that smell vividly. Just mix in a little bit of car exhaust and that's literally... what Taiwan smelt like so much of my childhood, my, my young years was wandering the streets of Taiwan and it took me back, took me back to before, before all of this trauma, like before, before I had any idea, had just how much heartache was in store for me it took me back to those simple, to that simple
time and it was it was incredible. So yeah, like it's it's been it's been very rewarding and healing and fulfilling for me to reclaim that [00:36:00] part of me because like I want it back.
Haley Radke: Well in many of the stories include some aspect of food and I love that. Thank you for sharing that. We like I said, we're going to hear from some of the other authors and they'll talk a little bit about their work, but I absolutely recommend that folks pick up When We Become Ours.
But what do you want to recommend to us today?
Stefany Valentine: I want to share some, some TikTokers that I love to follow because their content makes me feel so seen. So, the first one is adoptee _ thoughts. So this creator, she's been sharing a lot about her reunification journey, meeting her her bio mom, and on top of that, just being an adoptee educator, and she's also written some books about adoption as well.
And that's Melissa, right?,
Haley Radke: Melissa Guida Richards. Yeah, she's been on the show before. We love
Stefany Valentine: her. Ah! So, so wild. So cool. And [00:37:00] yeah, we follow each other. I love her content. She's doesn't hold back. Like she says it as it is. And that's what I love about it. Because I feel like when you, when you, when you have to deal with so many people who still fall for, I guess, I don't know if I'm saying this
Right, but it feels like the adoptee propaganda when they're still like, oh, like, why can't you just be happier? Why do you have to make your life so much about trauma? When you have to deal with all of that constantly on the internet, like it kind of gets, it's annoying, gets redundant.
And I love that Melissa is so so strong. She's, she's an incredible person. She's very patient,
Haley Radke: I would say. Yeah. She's patient with the nonsense.
Stefany Valentine: Yes. Yes. I absolutely love that about her. Another TikToker that I absolutely love. It's @first.birth.mom. I love a lot of her content as well, because I feel like we relate to each other so much, not only about the adoption trauma stuff, but about growing up Mormon, how [00:38:00] Mormonism overlaps with the adoption narrative really encapsulating the grief of missing the, the, the longing something that adoptees really share and I, and I love, I love that she, I love what she does for the community in, in just being vulnerable and expressing herself.
The last one that I wanted to share, I don't know if I'm saying this right, but it's eunaeemily, she's a Korean adoptee and she makes Korean cuisine. And she does like these voiceovers while she's making Korean food talking about, and she talks about her experiences growing up as an adoptee.
What I love most about her content is it's, it's so empowering. Any, anybody can start cooking. Anybody can start like feeling that void of that cultural connection, like re reclaiming that cultural connection through food and that's what she does is she she cooks and she shows her adoptee stories her adoptee experiences [00:39:00] and like not only not only is the food porn like to die for but the stories to the stories they hit home they she's so vulnerable so raw so unapologetic, and I love that.
I love that about when adoptees share our stories we don't hold back. I see the courage in their words. It's never said outright, but it's said in every other way. Body language, tone of voice, the way that the words are paired together. There is so much strength. It takes so much strength to have to be able to share this experience because I feel like sometimes like I to this day sometimes get anxious sharing my adoptive experiences because I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
I don't want to maybe cause more harm for people who might still be in that sort of like internalized adoptive trauma headspace like at the same time, though. I've lived my entire life catering to that narrative, and like, when am I going to [00:40:00] finally, like, when are we, when are we going to become ours, damn it, or darn it.
Haley Radke: That's a great place to to end, amazing. Well. The way you described some of those creators, Stefany, is what I see in you super authentic, vulnerable, seeing some things out loud that maybe other people haven't had the courage to share yet. And you're Sort of helping open the door for that. So, speaking of that, where can we connect with you online?
Stefany Valentine: Yeah, so I am @booksbystefany , S T E F A N Y, across all platforms.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Folks need to make sure they're following you there so they can check out your debut First Love Language. And it seems so, so many people thrilled about that [00:41:00] romance coming up.
Stefany Valentine: Yay. Thank you.
Haley Radke: Yeah, it's so exciting. Thank you so much for sharing some of your story with us, Stefany, and for celebrating, celebrating the book launch!
Woo!
Stefany Valentine: I know! God, oh, so excited! Ah, man I just keep thinking about me, if I was a kid if somebody else, even if just one classmate had said man, I really miss my biological family or if even if just a classmate was like, yeah, I'm adopted too It would have been a game changer for me game changer, but like it's so mind boggling that like it's such a hard topic to discuss and I'm so glad that not only is this anthology coming out, but there's this whole movement, whole wave of stories coming out and I want to make, I want to make discussing adoptee trauma mainstream. I want people to, to know the nuances, man. Very excited about that.
Haley Radke: Yes. And, and I'll spend one moment honoring our [00:42:00] forerunners just talking with someone who read one of the first adoptee memoirs in 19, in the mid 1970s. So we are Wow. Yeah, we're standing on, standing on generationally. We are not the first.
Stefany Valentine: Absolutely. It's, yeah. Domino effect, man. Mm-hmm. , seriously. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. , thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
Haley Radke: We are going to hear from several authors who have pieces in When We Become Ours, and I will make sure to link to everyone in the show notes, so you can connect and follow their work. I asked them a few questions, and we're going to start with, what would you say to your younger adopted self that you needed to hear?
This is Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who is also the author of the graphic memoir, Palimpsest.
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: Dear Wool-Rim, yes, Wool-Rim. This is how your name is supposed to be pronounced. [00:43:00] It's soft, beautiful, and poetic, and means forest echo. They pronounce it in Sweden incorrectly, and I understand why you resent it. Also, I want you to know that you were never abandoned.
Don't believe what people are telling you about why you ended up being adopted. Your mother loved you and wanted to keep you, but she wasn't allowed, and lost you as much as you lost her. She's thinking about you every day and has not forgotten you.
Mariama J. Lockington: Hi everyone, this is Mariama J. Lockington. I'm an adoptee, an educator, and author of books for tweens and teens, and I am so honored to be a contributor to When We Become Ours.
Something I would want to tell my younger, adoptee self today is simply just to tell her that she is enough, that all of the isolation and loneliness and feelings of otherness that she is feeling are valid, alongside all of her joy and curiosity and dreams, and that she's not alone. That one day [00:44:00] she will find people who see and hear and love her for all of her nuances and complexities.
Haley Radke: What would it have meant to you to have a resource like this when you were a teen?
Kelley Baker: Hello, my name is Kelley Baker and I wrote a story called Deadwood for When We Become Ours. I would have really appreciated a book like this when I was growing up to help validate and normalize my experience as an adoptee.
I think grown ups tend to simplify adoption for children, but in reality, adoption is very complex and nuanced. I wish my younger self knew that it's okay to have complicated, difficult, or even surprising feelings about adoption, and you deserve to feel seen and supported to process those emotions.
Community has been an important part of my journey towards healing, so I'd love to connect. You can find me on Instagram @kelleydbaker.
Mariama J. Lockington: It would have meant the world to me to find a book like When We Become Ours on bookshelves, I was an [00:45:00] avid reader as a kid and I was constantly searching for books with characters that were like me with transracially adopted black girls or black characters and, families that were multiracial. And I didn't find those books growing up. So one of the reasons I write the type of books I write for young people, centering adoptee characters is because I'm writing into this void from my own childhood in the eighties and nineties.
And this book is just, it's just going to be so life affirming, even to me now as an adult, I haven't had the opportunity to read many of the other stories in the anthology yet. So when I get my hands on this final copy, I'm honestly going to, make some tea, put on a cozy sweatshirt, get under a blanket and just relish in the opportunity to read, numerous stories that center people who are like me in some way, even if we come from different contexts that center the adoptee experiences, the good, the [00:46:00] bad, and everything in between. And I just know that it's just going to be such like a soul affirming moment, even for me now as an adult reading this book.
Eric Smith: Hey, everyone. My name's Eric Smith. I'm one of the contributors to When We Become Ours. I cannot stress enough how much a book like this would have meant to me as a kid. I grew up and some of what I'm about to talk about probably means nothing if you have If you're not a big video game nerd like me, but, I grew up with video games like Final Fantasy 3 and Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana and all these golden age of Super Nintendo role playing games where you had protagonists who were the forgotten adopted kid or that the orphan or the foster youth who somehow has magical powers and saves the day and saves the world.
And while that might sound great oh, wow, cool. You're, you're, you're people you looked up to were, were superheroes. It's also not great because, I didn't have magic when I [00:47:00] was a kid. I didn't have any, I didn't have a giant sword that solved all my problems. So having a, a book that had, real stories from real people that could answer real questions would have been so helpful because then I would have had the language I needed to communicate what I was feeling.
Those video games didn't give me that language, they gave me an escape, and I needed, I needed to face what was going on and a book like this would have really helped out a lot.
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: I want to say that I would have loved it, but when I was a teen, I was so busy fitting in, dreaming of waking up white, and hating myself for being Asian.
I still didn't understand how adoption had impacted me, and that I could draw strength from other adopted people. So I'm not sure there would have been room for me to appreciate this book then. But the more positive me would like to believe that reading a book like this, with voices mirroring my own experiences, would have been of great comfort to me.
This book could have been the first step for me to stop internalizing racism, and maybe it would have shortened the length of time I [00:48:00] spent denying my own adoption experience.
Haley Radke: How does it feel to be a part of this growing chorus of adoptee authors?
Lisa Nopachai: Hi, my name is Lisa and I wrote the story Glide for the anthology. I'm so happy and grateful to be a part of this collection of stories. The only story that I ever grew up reading when I was a teenager, young adult about adoption was a chicken soup for the soul story. And it was about a girl who was adopted and everything was tied up in a bow at the end. And it was like the typical grateful adoptee narrative.
It kind of was my paradigm and framework growing up as to what my adoption experience should have been like, because that's all I knew. And so, I'm so happy to be able to be a part of this anthology where, there's just so much more, so many more shades of gray. [00:49:00] I think in our culture, there's just a lot of black and white and dichotomous kind of thinking where it's, there's a good guy and the bad guy.
And I have two small children they're four and six and even in the shows that they watch about learning their ABCs, there's, there's good guys and there's villains, and I think we just kind of see life through this framework in our society. And so, yeah, I just think that it's so easy to stick adoption into that framework where there are good guys and bad guys, and that's how it's so often portrayed.
But you know, I think there's more and more people who are embracing the gray areas and just saying that, it's okay to have complicated feelings. It's such a complex situation to be in. And we can hold the struggle and the pain and the loss and the grief and the questions of identity and belonging together with joy and gratitude.
And we can struggle with so many things. And that's [00:50:00] okay. And it's not only okay, it's normal. And we just have such complex lives. And yeah, so I think it's really empowering to be a part of this anthology. And that's why I like the anthology approach so much is that it's a whole bunch of different stories and everyone's is so unique and so different and everyone, has different losses and different struggles.
But at the end of it, there's this implicit invitation to, share your own story and that the reader can just add their own story with the honesty and with the self compassion and self love that they
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: deserve. I'm so honoured to be included in this anthology with all these great authors. It gives me hope to see more and more of us putting pen to paper to communicate our experiences of grief, loss, trauma, racism and forced migration in a world where adoption narratives are still mainly written by non adopted people and still favour the adoption industry [00:51:00] over family preservation.
When other people speak for us, we tend to be reduced to passive objects whose sole purpose is to be rescued, feared, or fetishized. But when we get to speak in our own voices, we reclaim our humanity and show the world we are people of flesh and blood.
Eric Smith: Being a part of this growing roster of... adoptee the authors now as a grown adult.
I can't even tell you how much that means to me. I mean, I keep saying I can't even tell you, but I guess I'm going to right now, but I didn't have any adopted friends as a kid, they just. They weren't around, or if they were around, I just, I just didn't know them or they didn't talk about it.
And now finally having all these friends and all these colleagues who know what I'm feeling like about these very specific things that are hard to explain and define with people who aren't it just means a lot. And it means so much to me to know that we're writing this work that's going to mean a bunch to kids like us who needed it so badly.
Mariama J. Lockington: So, in [00:52:00] short, it feels great to be a part of this anthology, and exciting, and I just, I'm so honored to be part of this cohort of colleagues who are writing stories and sharing their truths. Even if it's through fiction on the page in this way. So, I've been screaming about this book from the rooftops already at every event I've done.
I've been like, this book is coming out, pre order it, write it down. And that won't end once it comes out. I'll be screaming about this book for a long time because I think it's, really pivotal. It's a pivotal moment.
Haley Radke: Tell us a little bit about the piece you've written in the anthology.
What can we expect? What are the themes you're hoping to share more about?
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: As far as I know, I'm the only one who's contributed with a comic rather than written prose. So there are two versions of my story. One for the printed book and one for the audio. I hope my story communicates some of the painful loneliness many adopted people experience throughout their lives.
We may be surrounded by people trying to love [00:53:00] us, but non adopted people can't possibly understand what we go through. Adopted people are often told that we've been given everything, that we're lucky and have been saved from terrible circumstances, so what more could we possibly need? But many of us feel a deep hole in our beings that can only be understood by other adopted people who've gone through the same thing.
So my story is also a celebration of adoptive friendships and solidarity .
Mariama J. Lockington: My story is called Cora and Benji's Great Escape, and it is about a 16-year-old girl named Cora. She's black. She's adopted. She's the oldest of four adopted siblings. Her parents are white, and when one weekend she and her family go to one of those adoption retreats or camps that sometimes adopted families go to to meet with other families that look like them and learn she's not excited to go to this camp.
She's sort of outgrown it and doesn't understand what it, what's in it for her. She only sees it as well, it's just our white parents. You get to talk about the racism that the kids kind of don't do [00:54:00] anything, but she is excited to go to the camp because it's an opportunity for her to see her best friend, Benji, who's another black adopted girl like her.
And the two of them really don't get to see each other very often. And when they do see each other, one thing that they like to do is share. poetry with one another something that Cora doesn't share with anyone else in her life, only Benji. And so the two meet over this weekend, they're kind of rolling their eyes at everything that's happening, but they plan an escape for a couple hours.
And I won't spoil it, but they plan some type of escape to get away from this camp and go experience what the larger world has to offer them once they're of age and out there as young adults. So I'm excited about it and I hope, hope folks enjoy it and it resonates in some capacity. I'm Mariama J. Lockton. You can find me on Twitter as long as Twitter exists @marilocke. I'm also on Instagram and TikTok @forblackgirlslikeme. And my website [00:55:00] is mariamajlockton.com. Thank you so much, Hailey, for featuring us in this pivotal moment and to Shannon and Nicole for gathering all of us together to put together this wonderful book.
Eric Smith: As for the piece that I wrote in the anthology it's called Truffles. It's a cute story about a adoptee living on a farm with her family. She's transracially adopted, doesn't look like anyone around her, and really wrestles with every holiday. It's something similar to what I dealt with as a kid. And when she finds a puppy lost on her family's truffle farm, she decides to raise it alongside the family's truffle pigs in hopes that maybe this pup might find a family alongside the animals on the farm and sort of parallels her experience of not quite fitting in with her own family.
I'm hoping that the themes it touches on about, identity and family and transracial adoption. It shouldn't really ring with people who feel the same way. As for where people can find me [00:56:00] online, you look me up at ericsmithrocks, that's my website, dot com. I have a couple books out and about including Jagged Little Pill, the novel, and the upcoming With or Without You.
And yeah. Thank you for having me on here to talk about this wonderful anthology. I'm just, just so happy to be a part of it.
Haley Radke: I want to say a giant thank you to Stefany Valentine for sharing her story with us. Thank you to Kelley Baker, Mariama J. Lockington, Eric Smith, Lisa Wool-Rim Shoblam, and Lisa Nopachai for contributing to this episode as well. A huge congratulations to Nicole Chung and Shannon Gibney for this marvelous collection.
And I want to list the other authors for you as well. Some of them have been on the show before, and some are might be new to you. Mark Oshiro, Susan Harness, Matthew Salesses, Jenny Heijun Wills, [00:57:00] Sun Yung Shin, MeMe Collier. Meredith Ireland. The book has a forward by Rebecca Carroll and an afterward by JaeRan Kim. Sure. I'm sure some of you recognize a lot of those names and I think as our community, it's really important to support this important work. So my apologies if I mispronounced anybody's names. I am so excited for this book to be in your hands very soon. And I was so honored to get an advanced copy and be able to share about this right before it came out.
So thank you so, so much. And a huge congrats to all. Thanks for listening to AdopteesOn and for supporting adoptee voices in this world. Let's talk again next Friday.
