269 Dr. Liz DeBetta
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/269
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, we welcome back Dr. Liz DeBetta, author of Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal, Migrating Toward Wholeness. Liz shares some reunion updates with us, including some very sad news about her sister.
We discuss what led her to choose to remain child free. And of course, we talk about how writing, rewriting, and examining the stories that have been placed upon us can help reconnect us to ourselves. Today's episode has mentions of sudden death, abuse, and abortion. [00:01:00] Please take care in listening. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about are on the website, adopteeson. com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Dr. Liz DeBetta. Welcome, Liz.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Hi, Haley. I'm so excited to be here.
Haley Radke: You're a third timer. Did you know that?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: I did. I'm, and I'm like, ah, yay, three times. I'm so excited. It's so great. It's so great to continue our conversations and sort of track over the years, right? The changes and the shifts and the growth and the exciting things that are ongoing and continuing.
Haley Radke: I know, right? Okay, so Episode 118, you share a lot of [00:02:00] your story, and at that time, you're working on your Ph.D. Oh, that was in 2019. Then we go to Episode 187, and that's from 2021. And you are leading some adoptees through writing and healing. And now we're recording in 2023, and it's a book.
So exciting, and we're going to get to that. But first, I'm curious if you can update us a little bit on your story. One of the things we talked about was you were meeting for the first time your sister when you and I met in person in D. C. a number of years ago, and you were just a couple years into reunion with your mother, and what's been happening with that for you in the last few years?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah, so it's actually a little sad because my sister Pam died suddenly last summer. Oh no. Yeah. I'm so [00:03:00] sorry. Thank you. And in August of 2022, I got a phone call from Mary, my first mom and, or voicemail, I should say. It had come in late at night and I woke up in the morning and was puttering around and doing whatever and my, Jeremy my partner was out in the yard doing some yard stuff and I listened to this voicemail and I'm like, and she was like, I'm sorry, I have to leave this voicemail for you, but I'm really, I just heard that Pam died and I don't know what's going on and I'm trying to find out, but I wanted you to know and it was such a visceral response that happened to me in that moment, like I literally felt in my body the pain of that loss and it was the first time that I haven't experienced losing someone who was actually [00:04:00] biologically connected to me and loss is hard in general, like I think a lot of adoptees can relate to that, right?
But, especially death, like death for me has always been a really hard thing to, to grapple with and to deal with and to accept. So this hit me pretty hard and it was unexpected. She's, she was less than two years younger than me. So you know, and we were establishing a relationship and we were looking forward to spending more time together and our lives were pretty parallel.
We both. Chose not to have children and, had pretty good careers going and were, pet people and I was really excited to try to, get her to come visit now that I was living a little bit closer to the East Coast and spend and try to spend more like time and do maybe sister weekends.
And so that's one of the, hard parts of this adoption journey is the continued [00:05:00] losses. And there's no, it's not easy. And then, a couple of months later, this is also related to reunion it was really crazy, and I'm still not clear 100 percent what happened with her husband, who was withholding a lot of information from my first mom and from, Pam's siblings, my other, my half brothers, and her dad.
It was like, a lot of trying to solve a mystery, trying to get answers and like trying to figure out who knew what and I was like on the other end, just trying to hold space for our mom for my first mom in this terrible loss and then like I kept thinking like now she's, now she's lost two daughters, right?
I mean she has me back in a sense, but like we're still slowly [00:06:00] developing a relationship I think as anyone who has been in reunion with first parents fully into adulthood. It's hard to establish a relationship when you've missed the first 40 years of life together. And so eventually there was some kind of rift and they weren't allowed to go to the memorial that her husband planned.
So they ended up planning a separate one in New Jersey in October of last year. And I felt like really strongly that I needed to be there. And I decided that I was going to go and Jeremy was like, do you want me to go with you? And I was like, no, I think I need to do this by myself, which I don't know if that was the best idea, but it's the decision that I made.
It was the thing that I felt like I needed to do. And I also didn't know what exactly what I was walking into [00:07:00] because I had never. Spent time, we had spent time with Mary, in restaurants and like public places and had lunches and things, but I had never been to her home. I had never met my other brothers.
I had never met any of the extended biological family and I was really concerned. I was like, I don't know what I'm going to walk into and like I need to be able to manage myself and not take, not have to be concerned about it. taking care of Jeremy in that situation. Not that he needs taken care of, but you know, like just the awareness of also being attuned to another person's nervous system because, we all have our family traumas and he's got his own stuff and so I just, I went to this thing and I think, people in adoptee land will understand the crazy thing that happened, which was like, I ended up meeting all of, I met [00:08:00] my two half brothers and I met some cousins and some aunts and uncles who are Mary's siblings and everybody knew who I was and you know so it wasn't like weird in that way because they were she was like oh this is my daughter Liz and I was like okay hi while we're also there to grieve the loss of Pam so it was this really charged and fraught and strange dynamic and then Mary's ex husband, who's the father of my half siblings, and who was her boyfriend at the time that she went to the adoption agency, and is the one that signed the papers with her.
And is the one whose information is on my non identifying information, but it's not actually my biological father was there and sat down with me while I was trying to eat my lunch and [00:09:00] unloaded all this stuff about we did the right thing. We were trying to do the best thing that we could and you turned out okay, right?
And I'm just like, Oh God, I don't even know what to do with this. And I, I'm telling you this right now, a little over a year later, and I think I still haven't quite fully processed that interaction. And I just in that moment was like, okay, I'm just going to keep eating my lunch. I'm going to listen.
I'm not going to offer too much because this man is also grieving the loss of a child. And for whatever reason, he thinks that he needs to make himself feel better by sharing this with me. I'm just gonna let that be but it was really bizarre and like I said, I'm still not a hundred percent sure that I've really processed that conversation and so like maybe I'll write about it at some point
Haley Radke: Oh [00:10:00] my goodness. That is a lot Liz. I'm so sorry I think it'll be very relatable for many of us and There's this thing in grieving where you're in community with other people that again in reunion you lose because you didn't get the chance to know her that and you're probably not connected with her friend group and all of these external people that we would be like communally grieving with in whatever way that is.
Talking on the phone with them or commenting on Instagram about, oh these memories we had and there's this other part of her life that you don't have access to and now you won't. Like it's just this multiple layers of loss.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah.
Haley Radke: I also think, not that you need my stamp of approval on anything, but like in the moment, it takes a great strength to [00:11:00] not respond to something so hurtful.
And I don't know I probably wouldn't have said anything either. It's like not the moment to be like actually thanks for separating me from my mother for my entire life. Thanks for that. It's just not the place and it's just going to make things worse. But yeah. Oh, you're going to write a poem about that?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Probably. Yeah. I mean, as I said, I'll probably, I probably will write about it. There's always things to write about. There's always things to, to process through the writing and it's just, they come up when they come up and yeah, as far as all the things I could have said, and maybe that's the prompt, right?
All the things I could have said, and I'm going to write that down right now because I said it and I don't want to forget it.
Haley Radke: Oh, that's good. All the things we could have said. And I think there's probably a lot of those moments that folks can think about right now that they've had where [00:12:00] someone has said something to you and you're sort of in shock so you don't even know how to respond to them because it's so out of pocket and interesting.
That's good. You gave us a prompt already.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah, but yeah, the other part of that is that like one of the big things is that like she wanted to keep me and that is has been like the biggest part of the conversation that she and I have had over the years and the way that like she still feels so guilty because, every time we talk she apologizes, and sometimes it's related to, adoption stuff if that's coming up in the conversation, but often it's just like a continual apology for something.
Oh, I'm sorry. I haven't been in touch. I'm sorry. I'm so forgetful. I'm sorry this and it's and that's that's just like what I have come to know as her continued sense of guilt around the, being forced to [00:13:00] make this choice. by this man who refused to raise another man's child, which is the other part of it.
And so those are things like in that moment, could I have said thanks for being an a hole and refusing to raise a child that wasn't your own and making. No, but what does that look if in, at later this later point now a year later where I have some distance from it to be able to do that writing and to reframe that conversation in a useful way, in a healing way, in a way that allows me to say the things.
Haley Radke: Has your connection with your first mother changed at all in the last year? Do you feel like anything shifted? When I understand when a parent loses a child we're not supposed to outlive our children it really can be so hugely impactful on them. And she was the only other daughter, right?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: [00:14:00] Yeah. I mean, I will say that our communication has been less frequent and just, yeah, just more, more sporadic in general and, I'm not a hundred percent sure what's, what exactly is going on. I know that she had some other changes. after Pam's memorial and after the holidays last year in terms of one of my other half brothers who had been living with her, who she finally had to say okay, you have to get out.
And so there's the, just having to push an adult child out and deal with that. And realize that the need to not enable an adult child who is not making excellent choices, let's say, and I don't know the full depth [00:15:00] and breadth of that story, but my sense is that there's some ongoing stress there and then her own grief and probably not wanting to burden me overly much with, that, and then of course the other side of it is that, in my own family, my own adoptive family, like there's a ton of stuff that's really stressful going on that I can, I, have and can talk to her about, but also that I feel this can't be the only thing.
Like I can't. Continually burden her with that because then that's like, how does that make her feel right? Even though it's this both and, right? It's the both and of adopted of adoption of being adopted is that we can both have had really good, loving supportive for the most part experiences in our adoptive families and also have challenges in adulthood with those [00:16:00] families and the ways that we are choosing to live our adult lives or the stressors of in my case, a younger sibling who is disabled and his care as he ages, as we age as our parents age, and then the stressor of another slightly older adopted sibling who, has caused a big rift in, in our family and me being over here orbiting around on the outside with all of this knowledge and all of this experience sort of watching that kind of semi train wreck
Haley Radke: I think any time we're critical of our adoptive families it might feel like to our birth parents that this is just one extra thing like, oh, [00:17:00] so you gave me up and I got stuck with this issue.
So that's also your fault, right? I think that's what probably lands with them. So I absolutely understand that level of keeping it separate, keeping them protected and for better or worse, it's our debt to our detriment, right? Okay. Yeah, they want to be supportive if you're in a good relationship and they want to be supportive and helpful and you want to share the real, but, oh, it hurts.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah. And it's not, and it's not that I feel that I can't because I do, I have had some really great open and honest conversations with Mary over the years but at this point, it's also like sometimes I don't have the energy for that, right? I don't, I just don't have the spoons to navigate, to sort of balance those relationships in ways that allow me to fully engage.[00:18:00]
Because I have to protect my own peace, cause I've spent so much of my life not protecting my own peace and not having boundaries for myself that , at this stage of my life, I'm really fierce about my boundaries. And I'm really fierce about protecting myself and my best interests and that of my family.
And but it is painful. It is painful to sometimes have to disengage or, to not be allowed to engage in some cases.
Haley Radke: You shared before that you and Pam both had decided to be child free. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to that decision? Did adoption play any part in that for you?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah, so I'm so glad you asked me about this because this is such a big part of the conversation [00:19:00] that we don't often have in society in general. And, particularly what in relation to adoption and like the culture of adoption and the culture of family and family building. Particularly in the West, in North America, the sort of privileging like the white heteronormative nuclear family structure, like the sort of cisheteropatriarchy of that.
And I can break that down if we need to, but, just this privileging of white heterosexual couples and having children at any cost and feeling like that's like your main goal in life. And so for me, I spent many years really wanting to have a family, really thinking that was the thing that I needed and wanted, because that's what I saw in my family.
That's what I saw all of the women I [00:20:00] knew do, like all of my aunts and cousins and women, other women that I knew in my life growing up in New York City. They had all got, they all grew up, they got married, they had babies. That's just what you did. And I got married for the first time in 2006 and, assumed at some point that my first husband and I would think about having a family and then he was against it for the first couple of years and then things went from bad to worse and I realized I was in an abusive situation and so I had to get myself out of that and really grateful now in retrospect that he kept making excuses not to have children.
Because then I would have been stuck with him, you know I mean like he's not a person that is safe [00:21:00] or that I would have liked to have to be tied to in any way even for the sake of children I thank the universe there and then I spent the next few years, post divorce really figuring out, re figuring out a lot of who I was and what I was doing with my life and getting back to some things that were important to me.
And I ended up beating myself up during those years. I was, sort of, I was in my, early to mid thirties. And my younger cousins were getting married and having babies and they were, and I was like mad. I was, I got really angry at times like that I was like failing at life that I was like failing at whatever the thing was I was supposed to do.
And then when I was 35 or maybe 35 or 36. I [00:22:00] had started dating this person and about six months into our relationship, birth control failed and I got accidentally pregnant and I freaked out. I was like, what? This is not, I can't do this this is not a thing that I want I didn't even know for, I mean, let's just have the conversation so many women, I didn't even know until I was, like, at least eight weeks, you know what I mean?
I had no idea. And then I was like, oh, shit. Okay. I got to do something and I have to figure this out. And I chose to have an abortion. And that was a whole other sort of huge hoop to jump through hill to climb, whatever metaphor you want to put on that. Even in New York City, as a, pretty privileged white person, I still had a real difficult time accessing appropriate [00:23:00] care.
In fact, I was sent to a women's clinic at one of the main hospitals, and they made me go to all of these like classes before they would even let me see a doctor. It was, and like now I think about it now all of these years later, and there was this huge assumption made that obviously, I wanted that child.
Obviously, I was going to go through with that pregnancy. And so go to all the classes, check off all of our boxes, and then we'll let you see a provider. And in those interactions, nobody ever asked me what I needed or what I wanted. It was always about the unborn clump of cells that was growing.
And then when I finally got an appointment with the doctor, I said, what do you recommend for patients who don't want to continue with pregnancy? And the physician [00:24:00] assistant who was in the room doing the preliminary part of the examination looked at me like I had six heads and was like I'm going to have to ask the doctor like nobody had ever asked them this question.
It was bizarre. And then like they required, I'm going to say they forced me to have a sonogram and look at it as if that was going to change my mind. And then like really reluctantly gave me this like small piece of paper with four or five suggested providers for termination. And when I started making those phone calls, four of them were no longer in practice.
And one of them was not taking patients. And so I had to go through, fortunately my best friend is a nurse practitioner and I called her up and I was like Kathleen, I need help because this is what's happening to me. And she was like, holy, okay, [00:25:00] let me figure this out for you. And so at the time, like that was a hard decision for me to make because I had been raised Catholic and I had all of this, external guilt.
About just the, cultural narrative about abortion and how it was like a terrible thing and like that. I was making a terrible choice, but a couple of years later, I was in a new relationship, a very stable, loving relationship. The one that I'm currently in. Will be in for forever.
And that's what really, having a partner who was willing to have hard conversations with me is really the thing that allowed me to start thinking about what I wanted. And so shortly after we moved to Utah, Jeremy came to me and he was like, I know that we've talked about having kids [00:26:00] and I know that this is something that's important to you, but I'm really thinking, rethinking my own feelings about it. And I really think I don't want to have kids. And I was like, okay, I'll have to like, think, I have to think about this. Like I had to take that in and let that sit. And there was a little bit of a grief process because I was like, oh, like this is a thing that I have held on so tightly to for my whole life that like, I just thought I was going to do it.
And then, after he said that to me and I, spent some days like In my own head, thinking about it and like thinking about what does life look like alternatively? What is our life like? What is our life like now? What do we want our life to look like?
Why, like why do I even, yeah, why do I even have to have kids? Do I even want to have kids? And it like was the first time somebody had asked me. Or allowed me to ask myself what I wanted and then I realized no, actually this is maybe not what I want and I have just been taking the [00:27:00] swallowing the social construction of here's the, like the external directive of here's the thing that you're supposed to want. Here's the thing that you're supposed to do. So just do it and don't question it. We don't often question a lot of these things. And that's when we end up in situations that are not necessarily good because we don't ask the questions before making the decisions. And I think a lot of people do a lot of these things without thinking, people get married without thinking about like the bigger picture and the longer term. Outcomes, shall we say. And the same thing, sometimes people have kids and don't really think about that either, right?
Haley Radke: That might be some of us listening. We're the outcome of those things.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah. Yeah. And so it's just so and then to the other thing that I have come to realize is that I really couldn't imagine myself being pregnant and giving birth because I, at still very much at that point, felt like I had not [00:28:00] been born, like I had, I did not know, I didn't have any information about who my first mother was in my biological family. And so I still felt very disconnected. I was like, I can't even imagine like this process. But I think the big thing was like really taking a step back and being given permission to ask myself what I wanted because I have a really, loving and supportive person in my life who like as I said is willing to have really hard conversations and I you know, I was like, oh, okay.
No, actually this is not what I want and I remember saying that to my mom and to my best friend And after the fact, and they kept saying, but are you sure, but are you sure? And I kept saying, do you think that if I really wanted to have children, that I would have chosen to have an abortion a couple of years ago, I would have had that baby.
Plenty of people do. [00:29:00] Plenty of people figure out how to make it work. If I really, in my heart of hearts, wanted that. Yeah, so that's, I think, yes, I think, yes it's a bit tied to being adopted and not having that sense of biological continuity and that fear of and I knew too, actually, that I didn't, I was not willing to have a child and not raise it as my own.
And then, so I didn't want to be in a situation where I had to repeat that pattern and potentially lose a child to adoption because I couldn't, or, so it was like. Not an option. And I think I also too was like really, had really deeply internalized the message that my, my entrance narrative told me, which was that in order to have children, you had to be married.
And I wasn't married at the time. I was in a relationship with a person I didn't necessarily trust. It was a new, fairly new relationship. And I was like, I'm not sure about this person. I'm not sure where this [00:30:00] relationship might go. And do I really want to do this by myself? No, so it's like lots of layers of all of that, too.
Haley Radke: I really appreciate you talking about this. It definitely isn't something that people share freely about, and I know there's lots of listeners who are child free by choice and want to be having this conversation and want to feel seen in this conversation and so thank you. You said this word that is activated for me. So you, your new book is called Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal Migrating Toward Wholeness and you used entrance narrative. And those are some notes I have from the book entrance narrative, concealed narrative. So can we shift and talk about that? Because a lot of light bulb moments in [00:31:00] conversations I've had with you are looking back at our stories we've been given as little ones when we're first adopted and told our adoptee story. And this is your mommy love you so much she gave you up and now you're here and all those kinds of things. And looking at healing in adulthood, and what is the true narrative?
So can you explain what entrance narrative is and the concealed narrative and any other narratives I'm missing from my notes?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah so the entrance narrative is the story that's typically told to us adoptees about Why we were adopted how we fit into our adoptive families. Often it includes information that our adoptive parents might have been told by the social worker. In many cases, lots of these stories turn out to be [00:32:00] fictionalized to a degree. And so they actually fall into the category of what Dr. Amanda Baden, who is a friend of mine, and also an adoptee and researches adoption. What she calls micro fictions. These micro fictions are these things that, these little stories, these little fictional narratives that have to be told to make up for the things that we don't know in adoption.
And so that's entrance narrative. And if you think about concealed narratives, like the concealed narratives, I think are the things that are hidden in something like the entrance narrative. So for example, I was just talking about how in my entrance narrative, I was told that so my entrance now I'll tell you the entrance narrative and then I'll pick it apart and sort of give you the what the concealed narrative there is and what that might mean.
I was told that my birth parents were young and they [00:33:00] weren't sure they were going to get married and but they knew that if they were going to have kids and raise kids that they wanted to be married and that they wanted me to go to a Catholic family and to people with college degrees And so that's pretty much the story I've been told my whole life about why I was given up for adoption, why I ended up in my family, right? Because my parents both have college degrees and happen to be Catholic. And so the concealed narrative there becomes this message that in order to have and raise children, you should be married. And that it's better to have two parents than one. Also concealed in that is the idea that sex before marriage is shameful in some way. Because if you have sex before you're married, then you aren't allowed to parent. And you, and it's better off if you give that baby to somebody who has done the right thing by getting [00:34:00] married.
And then the less harmful concealed narrative there is that education is important, like it's important to have a college degree or that like somehow, but also then the flip side of that is that somehow by virtue of the fact that my parents had college degrees that they were somehow better. They were somehow better than the, than these young people, these young irresponsible people. And that's the other, sort of concealed thing there is like the implication that they were young and irresponsible and therefore, it was better to give me to somebody who was had a home, and actually that is something that shows up in my one woman show on mother.
There's a whole section about that, there's a whole poem, maybe more than one poem actually, where I pick that apart and deal with it.
Haley Radke: Can you tell us about that? I love the name, Un-M-Othered, by the way.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah. So Un-M-Othered started as part of my dissertation in the course of my Ph.D. Work I... got to the dissertation stage and I was like, [00:35:00] what am I gonna do?
Like I knew I was, you know writing about adoption and I was writing about, through a feminist lens and you know through the lens of women's and gender studies and I was thinking like, okay you know I was sort of critiquing patriarchy in that process and then it just it became apparent that I needed to take some of my writing and my background as a performer and put it together and so I wrote this one woman show called Un-M-Othered and it's written in poetry and little chunks of personal narrative the full title is Un-M-Othered A Story of Adoption and Patriarchy and it's about my experience of being an adopted person and the lack of agency and choice afforded to women in patriarchal culture, particularly when it comes to reproductive choice, right?
So like the [00:36:00] choice made in the absence of choice is not a choice. And and the disruptions of, so the title itself is Un dash capital M dash capital O othered. And that rhetorically is very specific because the dashes indicate the separations that are inherent in adoption, right? The separation from the first family or the first mother and the adoptee and then the separation the adoptee feels from them between themselves and the adoptive family and then the fact that like adoption in and of itself is an othering for everyone involved and that actually if we think about it both first mothers and adoptive mothers are unmothers.
Many adoptive mothers become adoptive mothers because of fertility issues, so they're not able to mother, and then because first mothers are, in many cases, lack the ability to choose, they are forced [00:37:00] to surrender children, and they become un mothers in the process.
Haley Radke: I'm staring at the word. It's just on my screen while we're talking because I have the event here. And... I mean, the word othered is just like lighting up for me. I love your description of all of that. And you know what, that's the experience I had reading the first chapter of your book. It just lit me up because all the things you outline and say are the things that so many of our guests have articulated in pieces here and there and here and there.
And you just have this way of just saying the thing, we have false stories given to us. We are looking for healing. We are disconnected. These are ways that I have been exploring this and unpacking this. And, [00:38:00] when I came to the realization of the wrong things in adoption and I just felt so seen and I have.
Too many book darts. In fact, I got annoyed because my book darts are actually like these beautiful things, but they kept sticking out because I was trying to put one on this side and one on this side, and it was just irritating to me. So I just, I don't know. I just. It's felt so seen while reading it and I'm shifting to recommending your book, I guess, but I still want to talk about it more.
So let's, I'm still leaving space to talk about it more. Can you talk about how you came to bring this book into the world as a creative. I know we mentioned earlier that you had led a group of adoptees through these writing prompts through several weeks. We talked about that last time that you were on the show, and now it's like [00:39:00] it's a book, and it has all the prompts in it, and people can follow along and do these things on our own if they choose to. But what made you come to this to actually have it be a thing, a real thing in the world. Sorry. I'm so excited for you.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah, thank you. I'm so excited too. And I'm so happy that you said you felt seen in reading, reading it because. And I think I, I say that in some way in the introduction and, throughout the book is that the, really, this is like my gift to the adoptee community that I hope that's what it does for people, that everyone who picks it up feels seen and valued and heard.
And one of the things that I say before each of the writing prompts is that. Your story matters and so do you and this is true for all of us. And so like the reason that it needed to be out in the world and I needed to take what I have learned and experienced and give it to other people is that this [00:40:00] is really a lifetime in the making.
I mean, one of the stories that I tell in the book is about how I started writing at 14-years-old, not knowing that I was helping myself in any way just at the suggestion of a really insightful teacher who said to me why don't you think about writing poetry which I at the time thought was stupid and I might have this is a story I might have probably told on the first time we talked, but like I thought it was so stupid until he shared a poem with me and then I thought, okay also at the time I was like deeply in the, not only the adoption fog, but the patriarchy fog.
And I thought if a man can write poetry, right? And I got this little notebook and I started writing these poems and, fast forward to many years later when I was, in the midst of my Ph. D. study, I took a course on poetry and healing, and I was like, oh, this is the thing I've been doing my whole life.
I [00:41:00] have been using poetry as a way of managing these really deep, intense, dark, overwhelming feelings. But now I actually learned that it's a field and it's a legitimate, it's a legitimate field of study. It's a legitimate tool. And that other people have written about it in different ways, like about how we can use writing as healing.
And so I got really interested in that. And then, in the writing of my dissertation and writing Un-M-Othered and putting together that piece of creative writing, that was an act of using writing and healing and then further putting it in public performance was like the added layer of then making that story known and being able to speak those words out loud and not just on a page.
That was also another added layer of both my healing and also opening up conversations about so many of these things that we'd rather not talk about. And then during the [00:42:00] pandemic had the opportunity to run that writing group because I knew, I was like, I, this is a thing that has been so valuable for me.
And I had finished my dissertation at that point. And I had all of this information and all of, this also like lifetime body of work. And I wanted to see how it affected other people. I wanted to share it with other people. And then that group, those 11 adoptees at the end of seven weeks, were all changed in some way and profoundly and I said, okay, now I've done this work and I think I can start thinking about putting it all together and then sort of the way the universe is, I had the folks at the Rudd Adoption Research Institute who were supportive of that particular group and that was part of the presentation of that work was the culminating presentation for a year long online conference on adult adoptees.
And they, one of them said to me, you need to write a book. And I was [00:43:00] like, yeah, I do, I will. And then a couple of months later, one of my grad school mentors who was on my dissertation committee said me, hey, I am on the board of the editorial board of Brill and we have a new, a series on creativity and healing and we're looking specifically for books on creativity and healing.
Do you think you might have something you can propose? And I was like, let me think about that. We were having dinner and then the next day I woke up and I was like, yes, I do. This is the book. I said, yes, I'm gonna write the book about adult adoptees and writing to heal.
And, I wrote the outline, I wrote the proposal and I wrote the, the sort of outline via the table of contents, right? What I knew what each of the chapters were going to be, but it wasn't until I started writing that the book really started to make sense because then I went back to all of my original poetry [00:44:00] and started looking at it in a way that I hadn't before and so much of the book was really me using my lifelong stash of poetry to illustrate the things that the concepts that I was talking about, right?
And to come up with a methodology to say here's how here's me doing this and showing you and then here's how you can do it yourself. So it's really, I think, at this point now that it's been out in the world for a couple of months and I've had time to talk about it with people and think about it.
It's really the book I needed to write. It's the book I needed to put in the world now because people need healing. Like I have, I've. So many conversations with other adopted people and I've held so much space in different writing groups with adoptees and every time it comes back to the same thing.
[00:45:00] Thank you so much for this. Like I needed
Haley Radke: This is a line from your book one of the biggest benefits of writing our stories as adult adoptees is the reconnection to ourselves and the agency that comes from valuing ourselves enough to write and share our stories, which I think you've really expressed well during our conversations even all the way back before this book was even an idea in your mind. And then here you say I consider it my life's work to help others heal using my experience as a guide I mean, I really think you're walking that out Liz
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Yeah. That's exactly it. I feel really compelled and called to do as much as I can to help people heal because it took me so long. It took me so long to find the right help and to be able to tell my story and to be able to figure out that I even had a story and to be able to feel safe and comfortable and integrated enough,[00:46:00] and think that's, for me, the most important thing, especially at this point in my life, is being able to take what I've learned and what I've experienced and use it for the benefit of other people.
Haley Radke: I mean, same. In different ways,
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Right? Yeah. And you are and have been doing it for so many years through this podcast, right?
It's like you see, we see a need and we fill it. And also within the adoption community, within the adoptee community there's so many of us that are doing. So many parallel but different things that are helping and that are healing and we need all of us.
Haley Radke: Yeah, definitely. Speaking of that, what did you want to recommend to us today?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: So I'm going to recommend a couple of things. We sort of talked a little bit about Un-M-Othered, and there is a collaborative project that Rebecca Autumn Samson and I had launched back in [00:47:00] August called Operation Fog Lift. And it is a joint project where we do a screening of her film, Reckoning with the Primal Wound, and a performance of my one woman show, Un-M-Othered.
And then we do an audience talk back and we have an upcoming Operation Fog Lift, New York City edition coming up in February. That will be the weekend of February 2nd. And the event itself is on February 3rd. It's a half day event, so plan time, folks, plan time.
Haley Radke: And this is 2024, if you're listening to this in the future.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: And that, our sort of goal with Operation Fog Lift is to help people, come out of the fog using the arts as a tool for opening up conversation and healing in community. So it's for adoptees. It's for the general public. It's for, it's really for anyone. But it does have particular meaning to [00:48:00] adoptees because so many people have told me they see themselves in my story and that it's so helpful to hear me talk about my journey.
And then also, Rebecca's film is really powerful in uncovering some of the really difficult truths that folks don't want to talk about through the lens of the documentary and her story that people also feel really validated by and then having the opportunity to come together in community and be witnesses to those two things is really vital for creating our own spaces to heal and come together and connect and talk and find solidarity and then we will be doing or we should I, uh, the day after Fog Lift on Sunday, February 4th, I will be offering a small writing and healing group as a post event [00:49:00] for any, for a group of up to 15 who attend Fog Lift.
So that's one resource. The other resource is I will have Haley share a link to sign up for my mailing list and I have in January in 2024, I will be beginning a ongoing series of online mini writing retreats for adoptees, as well as, starting to offer one on one writing and healing coaching for folks who are interested.
And so signing up for the mailing list will help me to connect with you and provide you with information about those dates as they become available. And just, I think I'm the resource, right? You are the resource. Folks can just reach out to me, by my website if they have questions or want something sooner than January.
Haley Radke: Perfect. What is your website?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: It's https://www.lizdebetta.com/. Real [00:50:00] easy.
Haley Radke: Easy peasy. If you want to hear more from Liz about writing for healing, I mean, we really dive into that in episode 187, and you give some writing prompts in there if you want to get another idea of other things that you can write about if you want to get started on this.
And then, of course, your book has so many prompts, so many things to consider, and it's just really tremendous. Amazing thing for folks to grab. We will link to that in the show notes. If you're listening when this goes live, there's a coupon code for you for 25 percent off as well. And I'm really excited that this is in the world.
Thank you so much.
Dr. Liz DeBetta: Thank you. Me too. I'm so thrilled that we got to spend time talking a little bit about the book and talking about some other like really deeply important things that are part of the complexity of our experience as adopted [00:51:00] people. Definitely. Thank you for, being with me in the, being okay with saying all the things.
Haley Radke: Saying the hard things out loud. There you go. Yeah. That's what we're good at. Liz, besides your website, where else can folks connect with you online?
Dr. Liz DeBetta: They can find me on Facebook and Instagram. Also real easy @LizDeBetta.
Haley Radke: Perfect. Thank you so much.
I am. So thankful to Liz and the other adoptees who are leading and teaching in this area of writing to heal. I think it is such a valuable resource and if it stirred anything up in you, go for it. Go for it. I really encourage you to engage that creative part of yourself. I also want to let you know that we have an [00:52:00] Ask an Adoptee Therapist event this month.
We would love to have you join us. If you are a Patreon supporter, you should have access in your account to the Zoom link. If you would like to apply for a scholarship, that is available on adopteeson.com/scholarship. We will likely be talking about holidays and boundaries and those kinds of things, but if you have a question for our adoptee therapist, you can go to adopteeson.com/ask and submit your questions and we will address them live in our call and then Patreons get the audio recording sent to them the week after so they can listen and re listen to all the helpful tips from our adoptee therapist. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate, especially those of you who are supporting the show and making this [00:53:00] possible.
Let's talk again next Friday.
