267 Jessica Hairston
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/267
267_Jessica Hairston
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. I am so excited to introduce you to our guest, Jessica Hairston, author of Power of Our Wombs. Today, Jessica shares her complex origin story where both of her biological parents were struggling with addiction when she was born.
Jessica was apprehended and adopted soon after. We talk about the traveling trauma, that's a quote from one of Jessica's poems, that has impacted her family system, and the power of the word womb, which features prominently in her poetry collection. Before we get started, I wanted [00:01:00] to personally invite you to join our Patreon Adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources for you and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to adoptees on Jessica Hairston. Welcome Jessica.
Jessica Hairston: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really grateful to be here. Really looking forward to this.
Haley Radke: Oh, I'm so glad. Me too. I would love it if you would start and share some of your story with us.
Jessica Hairston: So I'm from Oakland, California. I was born June 19th in Oakland, 1998. And I, guess I'll say that I was born to drug addicted parents. And I mean, I can get into [00:02:00] where the story fits in the larger scheme of Oakland, but I was born to drug addicted parents. My mother had another child 12 years before me. My father had two kids before I was born as well.
So there was already a kind of a standing history of family struggle and family separation. It's kind of unclear. Some reports say they were married and others say they were not married. And then I have two younger siblings who share the same parents as well, mother and father. I was as commonly done with kids who are born to drug addicted parents.
And also found cocaine in my system as well. I was put in foster care pretty soon after. What I learned from going through my adoption records was I was able to do so a little later in life around college, my college years, my early college years. My mom was able to breastfeed [00:03:00] me for a few days while CPS and the courts were doing an investigation which revealed her first child from 12 years prior.
And the child abuse or housing was denoted as child abuse allegations with that child. So her drug addiction was definitely something that was really apparent and integral in her life. And my older sister was taken out of her custody around two years old and placed in foster care. And so the courts used that as evidence of being an unfit parent a second time around and promptly terminated her parental rights.
But what I did find interesting was that both of them put in for an appeal against the parental rights cutoff. And my birth father actually kind of labored, so to speak, for that reversal for almost four months. But ultimately the judge ruled no in his against his wishes due to the fact that he also was HIV [00:04:00] positive and had progressed into AIDS.
So at that time being off and on homeless and whatnot. They determined that he wouldn't be a good parent in the long run. So yeah, I was born in 1998 and my birth father passed away in 2008 when I was 10. Yeah, he was definitely terminal. And then my birth mother passed in 2016 when I was about 17.
Haley Radke: Really sorry for your losses.
When you were taken into care, did you maintain a connection with either of them?
Jessica Hairston: No, ultimately, no. My mom told me somewhere around high school that they, I don't know if this was something afforded to them because they were doing the appeal. And honestly, I'm not sure that lines up because I do think that this happened a little bit later when I was around because it took it took my mom or everything took about three years to be finalized or when I was about [00:05:00] three.
So I guess you could say that I was in foster care until I was about 10 months. And then at about 10 months, I started going home with my mom occasionally, and then I would go back to the foster home for a little while and go back and get used to her. And then about at a year is when I was full time placed with her.
And then around three is when the adoption was finalized. So I believe somewhere at the age of two is when I think she was, my mom would go down to the Alameda County building and do possible supervised visits. Story that I was given that she didn't show up for them. .
Haley Radke: So once you were adopted, you didn't have a connection with them?
Jessica Hairston: That is correct. I had a closed adoption.
Haley Radke: Yeah. And what about your siblings? So you had older siblings and then you had younger siblings. You were kind of in the middle of six, is that right?
Jessica Hairston: Yeah, there's six of us total. I have five siblings.
Haley Radke: What was it like for you [00:06:00] building relationships with them as young adults, essentially strangers to each other?
Jessica Hairston: I think partly there was this feeling of wow, how could we mostly all still be located in the Bay Area? I mean, it's definitely one of those adopting narratives where you're like, it could be you, it could be you, it could be you, it could be you, it could be you, it could be you. You kind of think any person that I'm passing, any person I'm sitting in this class with.
I did kind of have a lot of connection with community members, whether it was dance or like some little volunteer work that I would do with people who are, long standing folks in Black Oakland, and so I would kind of just throw my last name out there from time to time, which I did have and I could say more about that later, but got nothing back, actually.
Nobody's heard the last name. Nobody living that would know knew about that last name, so that was a little bit frustrating, but nonetheless, meeting them, it's been one of the most incredibly beautiful experiences, [00:07:00] wouldn't change it for the world. I was definitely that kid that wanted to meet them, prayed for that experience.
And I, to this day, I'm mostly close with my older sister on my father's side. She lived in Las Vegas now with her 10-year-old son, and my dad. So that's a really wonderful relationship. It's been difficult because essentially we met, I started to meet all of my siblings in 2018 2019.
So we got about two visits in before the shelter in place. And at the time the shelter in place, my sister lived in Roseville, which is like two and a half hours from the Central Bay Area. So we really couldn't even sneak and see each other, that's a really far drive. And so it was almost like five years before I really got the opportunity to really spend a good amount of time with them.
My relationship with my sister on my birth mother's side, it's also really [00:08:00] wonderful. It's been getting better. One of her favorite activities is to hike, so we go and we bond by hiking and talking. I also enjoy being able to meet her friends because being in foster care, she doesn't have any main parental figures in her life.
So meeting her friends and whatnot, or her foster siblings, those that is her community, and of course her kids as well. But at the same time, when we first met, it was a little bit more tricky because she wasn't ready to introduce me to anyone in her life yet. And she wasn't ready to have a full on relationship per se.
So I kind of had to just be patient and kind of just sit back and let her trust me and come to terms with that. She met our birth mother at 18 19. She invited her to her son's first birthday. And her mother kind of did not come inside and had an emotional breakdown and just kind of left the party and so that kind of stained her one and only chance or her one and only [00:09:00] desire to reconnect with her birth mother.
My sister is also biracial, so I was afraid possibly that meeting me would be triggering as I have the skin tone that my mother has and whatever features I have that are similar to her might be very feel like she's kind of talking to her. She took her time and I had to be patient and then a year or two ago, she invited me out to her son's graduation from high school, friends were there, and I'm always a little bit awkward around new people, but I think one of the things that kind of stood out to me was seeing a lot of the people in that space are fossies themselves, and so there's this sort of connection that I can kind of see, even if it's not spoken per se all the time, that's we've survived a certain kind of lifestyle together, a certain kind of struggle together and they support each other, but she has so much community within those people. They have their kids, they have, [00:10:00] there's just so many people at that party. And I guess I don't know why I thought there would be anyone there, but I, some folks who come, age out of foster care don't have really anybody in their corner.
And so I didn't exactly know where I would stand. I know that sounds crazy and a little bit selfish, but I didn't know. If my presence was needed, I mean, it seemed like all her friends were like her sister and I was like, oh I'm like our sister, but I don't have any of this history with her like personally and then on top of that, she didn't invite me.
She didn't introduce me to her children, her, like her son, who was the main focus of the party she not introduced me. Towards the end, when he finally came out and started saying hello to people, I, when it was my turn, I said, hello and congratulations. I even kind of gave him a gift who are you?
I have no idea who you are. And I was like, oh, I'm, I'm your mother and your sister by birth. And he was like, oh, and some of the other folks at the party some of the men at the [00:11:00] party or whatever, boyfriends or foster people from male foster folks also did not know who I was and were very interested to know who I was and who is this 12 year younger person in the mix.
And so that was a little bit overwhelming for me because it kind of retriggered this original fear when we first met that she didn't really want to integrate me into her life. And I don't think it was to be malicious, which is a very tender topic for her in general. But after 3 or 4 years, I was like this is, it would be good for me as well if we could at least talk about, I don't know, it's a tricky one, it's a tricky one.
Haley Radke: Speaking of tricky, having a birth mother who had trauma in her life and I mean, something causes someone to seek out escape and I'm curious if there are things that you found out about her or [00:12:00] your biological father. Characters, traits, things from their younger years when they weren't struggling as much from your siblings, or have the things that impacted their lives been a barrier for you to even think about asking those questions?
Jessica Hairston: Yes and no to what I've been able to find out, I know some things about my mother's side and my father's side of the family in general, what they come from generationally. It's, I know even by their teen years, they were already overcoming a lot of just poverty in general. I think my father kind of bounced around family member a lot.
And then there was undetermined accusations of our grandfather on my mother's side, touching his children sexually, and that possibly being a motivator for drug use to start. As far as character traits [00:13:00] go, there are definitely two people, or, my birth family is, they're not the most talkative as to, on one hand, a lot of people don't remember a lot from that time, almost 25 years ago or more.
And then of folks who are still alive, it's even harder because a lot of people are not still alive. My father has, I'm not even sure how many siblings he has, but it's many siblings. And a good chunk of them have passed away. And the same with my mother's side of the family. It's hard to find people who can give me information in the first place.
I asked a little bit of my younger sister. Who was raised by our cousin, adopted by our cousin, as when she was adopted, our birth mother did try to sort of come around when she was about, so I guess they had tried to do supervised visits when they were, she was a bit younger, 1, 2, 3 years of age didn't work out, same thing that had happened with me, [00:14:00] and then around 4 or 5, she started popping back up again, trying to have a relationship with my younger sister, but was kind of insistent on, if I'm going to be in my younger sister's life, she needs to call me mom.
She needs to be the sort of intimacy that kind of ignores the original trauma and... The separation that's been some years now and the fact that, her, our cousin is now her legal mom and it has to be feel tricky, my mother would have been 45, 50 at this point with someone who is 25 raising her daughter, but not being able to sort of exercise any real control of the situation.
And she was, they kind of just described her as being very, just emotionally aggressive demanding, and when she doesn't get her way, she kind of disappears, and that kind of thing, but that could very well just be someone who has been addicted to hardcore drugs for a very long time, and their personality and their thinking patterns have [00:15:00] been severely changed by that because, my, one of my other mother's sisters, We occasionally speak on Facebook, and I immediately noticed she told me she had done cocaine for 15 years.
But, one of the first things I noticed was kind of the inability to sort of make complete sentences or have sort of complete thought processes and really explain herself when she speaks. A lot of times I do not understand what she's saying. The thoughts don't follow a consistent, linear kind of understanding.
And so I think whoever they are, it's been a very long time since they've been who they were in the beginning, and I don't think anyone has the capacity to kind of decipher it, which is frustrating for me because I want to know, and these are the kind of things that I find important in general as someone I find, I love sociology, I love history, and of course, studying the Black experience and supporting people is very important to me, so There is sort of that saviorism within me to kind of support my birth family after all this time, but that's [00:16:00] very difficult to do.
I think I'm a lot like my father. I definitely look like him. Definitely his doppelganger of my, all my siblings, I look the most like him. Oftentimes my siblings mothers, who also had a relationship with him, will kind of, I'll catch them staring at me. They'll kind of be like, oh my god, here he is in the present tense after all these years.
But other than that, I don't know much about the personalities, very little about our health history as well.
Haley Radke: So I'm going to make an assumption that from the fact about your origin story, it possibly was untenable for your mother to care for you. And and we can talk a lot about all the upstream things that need to change so that we don't keep removing disproportionately more black and brown children from their parents, and you had a [00:17:00] really difficult situation. So placed in foster care and adopted, your adoptive mother was black. And... So you were raised an only child, at least minimum, same race adoption.
That's what I experienced as well. Do you have thoughts on that? Do you feel like you got to have a different experience than some of the, we talked to a lot of transracial adoptees and that extra layer of not understanding racism by their white parents is so difficult to overcome.
Jessica Hairston: That's one of the things I definitely wanted to speak on today, I, especially as I've been listening to more adoptee podcasts and just really diving into the world of adoption literature, I think that yes and no. But when I say yes, as a different experience from what transracial adoptees experience, [00:18:00] I don't have a lot of clarity of folks who've come from same race adoption, like myself, who're also Black, because it seems to be very uncommon from what I've experienced.
Not that it doesn't exist across all 50 states and the world and whatever, but I have actually met quite a few adoptees over my lifetime. We haven't all been able to maintain relationships over the years, which I think is interesting. But most of them have all been adopted by white folks, but living in urban environments, not in the suburbs or in sort of more, in less metropolitan areas.
But my experience, my mother is something I'm still trying to figure out myself, but she's very conservative, not like homophobic, not Christian homophobic. An evangelical, super conservative in that way. She definitely knows that [00:19:00] racism is a thing. She grew up during the Martin Luther King era. Her oldest brother was born in 1947.
But it was not exactly what you would think or expect. My mother is, her family is from Illinois. Her mother's side of the family is from Illinois, and that is where she was raised. And they were raised in the suburbs of Illinois. Definitely comes from poverty trauma. But as far as growing up, like I said, in an urban environment that has high policing, particularly after, the 80s and 90s and the war on drugs there's a lack of experience during the formative years like that and during years where you would have needed parenting or some sort of mentorship in an environment like that.
So what I experienced growing up was more like, as I got older, I started dealing with suspensions and expulsions. Between both public and private school, when I started to experience micro, macro aggressions, like being followed around the store being accused of stealing, [00:20:00] those were times where I did not experience a parent who was able to support me with coping mechanisms or understanding the level of racism that I was facing, and oftentimes was dismissed and gaslighted about the situation.
There's many experiences, like even when we would go out to eat at a restaurant and I'd say we're not being served or we're not being served properly because this is this would be racism. I have definitely detected some prejudice racism something's going on here And I think also it's a cultural thing the sense of she was kind of raised during a time where even if the older folks kind of understood the nuance, I think as a child she observed was just don't make a scene don't speak about it.
Just ignore it. Just sort of let it happen. Take the high road something like that. I don't want to say turn the other cheek. It's a, that's very, I won't say that, but it was definitely, that's what comes out. And I think she's someone who also struggles with conflict resolution in general. And so I think that is [00:21:00] not something that you can be.
That can that's not conducive to an urban environment. Obviously, you can't always control your surrounding. You can't control the way you respond or how you support your loved ones through those experiences. And yeah, I also lived in neighborhoods that had high crime, essentially, a lot of killings from within the neighborhood, gang, street, drugs, that kind of stuff, or police killings.
So there was also a lack of support with that as well, coming from, I presume, not growing up in an environment. She grew up somewhere where they were able to leave the doors unlocked. We were not able to do that. We had to live in places that had gates in the front to catch bullets, essentially, or blackout curtains and that kind of stuff. It was not, I was not able to go down the block very far. I'm barely allowed to step outside for during certain periods of the day. And just kind of experience all around gaslighting and just, like even today I'll ask my mom I'll [00:22:00] bring up something about when we lived in East Oakland.
She'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about. We didn't experience any of that. What are you talking about? She's completely unable to go back and be clear about that. And when I would go, when I was in public school, especially during certain time periods, I think it was popular for kids of a certain, and this is not to shame them, like you go through what you go through.
This is the world you come from. This is what it looks like a privilege if other folks are not going through that or not having to come up with coping skills for that. So I'm not trying to shame folks who I felt bullied me, but I feel like there was a lack of compassion or anybody who was able to sort of pull me in and support me with what I was experiencing as well.
And so a lot of times people say they see my name, they see Jessica, they see my mom, they think we kind of live in some big house on the hill somewhere. That I had everything set out for me. They fear that I'm adopted and I'm not in foster care. So my life must be great and there's not a lot of investigation into what else is going on in my life.
So I carried a lot of stuff alone. [00:23:00] And I found myself learning how to take care of myself from listening to other people's conversations, but not being a part of the conversation, not being asked to be a part of the conversation.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I think a lot of us have assumptions about what it's like to be adopted out of foster care, right?
You have this extra label put on you. And the trauma is there. The trauma is still real. It's layered. It's so complex, our relationships with the people that... or caring for us can be really complex and well into adulthood. I want to talk about your book, Power of Our Wombs. You are a poet and you share so many deeply personal stories throughout this.
And I wanna know, okay, first of all, do you have a word count on how many times the word womb [00:24:00] appears in this ?
Jessica Hairston: I do not.
Haley Radke: Okay. That's a challenge to you to go ahead and discover that, to search on your electronic file. I am curious what your relationship to the word womb is now that you have written so much about it, and I mean, obviously, it's related to being an adopted person.
Every human has a relationship to a womb in some form. And your poem stack of papers is really, I don't know, do you want to talk about sort of all that theme? I'll just leave it to you. What direction you want to go on that?
Jessica Hairston: Yeah. I think that part of the desire to, to write this book or to write it the way I've written it and use the word womb was definitely partly to push [00:25:00] myself to overcome my uncomfortability with the female experience, wombs, motherhood, pregnancy, because a part of the way I feel like my adoption trauma manifested or metastasized in a way was to sort of reject anything that reminded me of familyhood.
So as a young girl, I could not and I've heard this from a few other folks who are adopted. It's hard to look at pregnant women. It's hard to look at mother daughter relationships that look healthy. I had a science teacher one day that came in and announced her pregnancy and, or, well, later on she did a baby shower at our school and just out of joy and excitement, she like, turned to me because I was standing most closely to her because I came in late because I was avoiding the baby shower.
And she like put her hand out to have me kind of touch her belly and I was like, snatch it back so quick. I was like, oh no. I'm happy for you, but no, we're not doing that. So I know that sounds weird, but I needed to sort of get comfortable, investigate and sort of take my power back.
And [00:26:00] I think that it's just a fear that my inner child has. And now that I'm older, I have the power to sort of start that journey of positive association and positive recall, positive outlook on it. Not like toxic positivity, but I think that is something that I try to do in the book, which is sort of hold a balance of like the last poem in the book is Think About Mothers which was attempted to be a love letter, which, another thing is like writing about love, writing about joy to be difficult.
Sometimes it's easier to write about the feels More authentic to write about trauma, and it feels somehow inauthentic to talk about joy. And I think it's also kind of like pushing back on that overarching theme of just be happy, just be positive. Just be joyful. And so there's kind of like this uncomfortability I'm dealing with uncomfortability in this book.
And I think even now I, I've kind of self-diagnosed myself with endometriosis. And so now I'm kind of [00:27:00] dealing with the actual physical health of my own womb, whether that be, and even how does endometriosis start is the question, what has caused this rise in endometriosis in women in reading all kinds of articles, everything from early childhood trauma can start this internal scarring in the uterus or it could be something that is common in my birth family.
I do know that my brothers dealt with cysts, possibly fibroids as well. And then my sister has also dealt with cysts and just had to have a hysterectomy herself. So wombs really does cover a lot of stuff for me. And so Power of Our Wombs, the title is sort of speaking to the intensity of life emanating and surrounding the female reproductive familyhood and all of that kind of thing.
It's not so much to be like, we overcome, per se, because a lot of trauma around Wombs is. [00:28:00] Systematic, everything from birth control, everything from Roe v, Wade, and abortion rights, everything to adoption rights, birth motherhood, birth mothers, birth, family support. So yeah, I hope that answers your question.
Haley Radke: Well, it made me feel. So deeply, I think every time I saw the word, because for many adoptees have expressed something, some form of this to me in either private conversations or on air that you kind of feel like you got dropped by the stork or, you were born when a paper was signed and there's this extreme disconnection from the physical idea that you were in a mother's womb at some point, whether or not she wanted to be a mother to you and, then you also, God, this line, I don't know if I already said it to you or not, but the traveling [00:29:00] trauma.
And I was thinking about how, well, supposedly we're also carried around as eggs, one gen back as well. Yes. Yes. So there's all these themes to think about, and I think your book really masterfully brings us through some of those things that maybe we just don't want to think about. Yeah.
Jessica Hairston: I was going to say was yes, that, that life begins when the paper is signed. That's actually something I was thinking about this morning. I think one of the things that people don't fully understand, and I think I heard it on your podcast or a similar podcast was about adoptees, kind of, if this is your experience of not having birth or having pictures of yourself before a certain age.
So for me, it would be 10 months and, people who are not adopted said, well, that's not super weird, whatever. And [00:30:00] I'm like, well. I think when you parallel it with that, like you said, life doesn't really start until you are adopted. It kind of feels in an unspoken way, either things were quite literally survival mode both for me and for the foster family, so to speak.
There's no time to document my growth or my coming through a difficult origin story or, bringing into this world. And or my life doesn't I, I don't really it's not really valid. It doesn't quite exist. It doesn't quite meet the standards of existing until you're adopted. I don't really know how else to put it, but I often contend feeling frustrated, not so much because I need to see what I look like immediately coming out of the womb, but I, when you're dealing with trauma that started before you were able to speak.
Being able to do recall using your, using visual cues to kind of conjure up [00:31:00] memories that are just in the body. I feel like it's powerful and it should be available to us. And then if nothing comes from it, then nothing comes from it. It's not that important. It's not that important. But again, It's frustrating when everyone decides what's important for an adopted child, other than what, adopted kids would say and need.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. Hard degree with that. Well, I definitely want to recommend that people pick up Power of Our Wombs. I... Was trying to think of how to describe it. I had such a visceral experience while reading. It's very powerful storytelling Jessica and you've got these just deeply honest observations about painful circumstances and I think you're really bringing us on a journey with you.
The other thing that was unexpected to me and really helpful is you included a reading guide and you talk about some of the themes that [00:32:00] you're addressing in your poetry. And I think it will be really helpful for folks to reflect on. So I love that you did that. Yeah, I hope people grab a copy of Power of Our Wombs.
Is there anything you want to tell us about it that you think is important for us to know?
Jessica Hairston: I actually, I love that you mentioned the reading guide. It was a requirement, really, from the publisher, but I decided to sit down and kind of do it the way that I've done it, by breaking it up into these particular categories that I broke it up into family origins.
I tried to use language that had been used in the book. So what has been lost, which is kind of reminiscent of the first poem in the book. But I also, I wanted it to be, because I know that my writing style can be a bit visceral, a bit, really stirring of the emotions. And I think that's also partly to sort of push back on my own chronic dissociation.
But [00:33:00] I also include somewhere at the, after the reading guide, there was like an intuition. prompt. There's even a space to write to the younger self. So I really enjoy that you kind of went cover to cover with the book. Not everyone mentions that part at the end where I try to make it hands on, sort of interactive, so to speak, of getting both me and you to, not only me to look at myself, or you to look at me or think about the world outside of yourself, but also for you to look at you too.
Haley Radke: I think that's a part of it is definitely opening the door for us to do that. So thank you. I was just, I was flipping through the poems I've marked up and I, One Last Catwalk is just wow.
Okay.
What do you want to recommend to us? Cause I know people are going to go buy your book and so that's great.
They'll read along and enjoy. But what do you want to recommend to us?
Jessica Hairston: [00:34:00] I found through I'm not sure you may know or have seen, be familiar with the account on Instagram, Susan Ito, as a professor for news.
Haley Radke: She's been on the show. Oh, yes. Love Susan.
Jessica Hairston: Hey, oh my gosh, I missed that. Wow. So that's not my recommendation, but from her, I realized that I actually needed to branch out and connect with folks. And that's kind of what got me starting to follow these accounts. And I found BIPOC Adoptees from several accounts. Susan, from you, a few people, so I knew to go follow it. And took me to YouTube where I just got to really sit down and watch adoptees speak with Patrick on their stories.
And I think one thing that I really love about it is, and not too different from a podcast, is being able to listen to people speak about their experiences from adulthood. The last time I really had an integrative conversation with [00:35:00] someone else who was adopted was probably in high school. And we feel and that's a great time to be talking about.
I mean, there's no bad time to speak about adoption, right? But I think that we have our perspective is going to grow as we grow especially as we get to an age we may be starting families ourselves. So I really enjoyed those conversations those revelations made I think it's a great opportunity to see especially adopted folks of different BIPOC backgrounds speak about their experiences.
You get to see their faces as well. But I know you said only to say one thing, but I just in general have realized that there is a lack of adoption work and resources in my life, which sounds crazy after I've written a book and known about being adopted and even had friends about it. But there is a lack of really understanding the history behind adoption, how it's looked at different decades, how it looks internationally, and all of these things, so kind of really getting to sit down and look at the [00:36:00] field of study of it has been really enlightening, and anything that I was ever not sure was a real feeling that I've had has already been validated ten times over, which is sad in a way, because I think, someone had said, people try to say when an adopted person speaks up that it is, oh, your is an outlier. It's not. It's actually quite the norm, whether you're suburban, transracial or not, the identity issues, the abandonment trauma, the sort of be grateful and just all these narratives they're actually quite common. Unfair.
Haley Radke: Yeah. I mean, when people hear our stories and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm not the only one . It's no, you're not and welcome in. I hope you get connected. Welcome. Yes. Thank you for sharing that with us. I, when we're recording this. So they have a fundraiser going to help produce some of their content.
And so if that [00:37:00] is interesting to you, if that sounds like a project you want to support, we'll link to that in the show notes. So you can go check that out and support more adoptee voices in the world. It's important to me too. I think that would be wonderful. Thank you so much, Jessica, for sharing your story with us and for there's some really good nuggets here and there through our conversation of things I'm going to be thinking about for a while. So I really appreciate that. Where can folks get Power of Our Wombs and connect with you online?
Jessica Hairston: My website is new and it's up jhairstonwrites.com. And there you will, the first page will have a link to my book to buy, should be taking you both to the distribution website and possibly Amazon as well. There's also unpublished new poetry on the website. And you can also contact me through the website. Send me a message, send me an email. And my socials are on the website for [00:38:00] Instagram, kemaniii.j, my birth name. And, yes, you can find me most regularly on Instagram, at kamaniii.j with three i's. And, yeah, I'd love to hear from you all. The link to buy my book is also on my Instagram, plenty of places to find it, you can Google it, it should pop up.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you.
Jessica Hairston: Thank you so much for having me, this is a wonderful question session, fantastic.
Haley Radke: Thank you.
I want to remind myself how much of an honor it is for us to hear our fellow adoptees Stories and share them here. Sometimes because this is my job, I think I'm like, Oh yeah, I get to hear another story today or I'm recording and [00:39:00] I don't necessarily remember the gravity of it. And so I was just thinking about that after my conversation with Jessica and how many more young adoptees are becoming adults and thinking about adoption critically so much sooner than many of us.
And also sharing their stories a lot sooner than a lot of us ever did because we hadn't processed it yet and our stories shift and change over time, how we share them, what we're comfortable with, all of those things. And anyway, I really hope you pick up Jessica's book because her poetry is really evocative, and it made me feel some kind of way.
So if you're looking for something that will really make [00:40:00] you feel big visceral feelings. This is the perfect one to grab and support a new author. I want to thank all of my Patreon supporters. You guys make this show possible. I couldn't do it without you. And if you join Patreon, you get all kinds of extra bonuses.
I have. Adoptees Off Script Podcast, which is every week. We have our monthly Ask an Adoptee Therapist events. We have the Adoptees Only Book Club and some other community gatherings. We would just love to have you join us and you help keep the show going. So please join us at adopteeson.com/community and thank you for listening to Adoptee Voices. Let's talk again next Friday.
