281 Janet Sherlund
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/281
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're welcoming Janet Sherlund to the show. Janet is the author of the brand new memoir, Abandoned at Birth, Searching for the Arms That Once Held Me. Janet shares some of her story with us, including her challenging relationship with her adoptive mother, her struggles with anxiety, and the reason she finally felt free to write her memoir.
Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeon.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. [00:01:00] We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeon.com.
Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Janet Sherlund. Welcome Janet.
Janet Sherlund: Thank you, Haley. I love being here and I really look forward to speaking with you.
Haley Radke: I'd love it if you would start. Would you mind sharing a little of your story with us?
Janet Sherlund: Sure. I was given up at birth and I was adopted about a month later, five weeks later, I was in foster care in between.
Was raised in a family with two parents and a three adopted siblings. So there were four of us all adopted and you know had the same experience that I think all the adoptees listening to this had of that big black hole in me and the emptiness and the not understanding what was going on and what was wrong with me and really thought about, I wondered who my birth mother was, every single day of my life.
I cannot [00:02:00] imagine a day that I didn't wonder where I came from, who I was, what was my story. I just knew it from, we, I knew from the get go that I was adopted, we were never, lead to believe otherwise, but I just had this longing to know who she was and where I came from and who I looked like and what my ethnicity was and it was there literally every day of my life and I started studying about adoption in college when I took a class in early childhood development and found there were, this is in the 70s, discovered that there are people writing about it and researching it and talking about it.
But I didn't write my book until I'm now in my 60s, and although I wrote bits and pieces of it along the way, when something major happened, I'd write about it, but then I didn't know what to do with that, or actually, more honestly, I was afraid to do something with it. I was afraid to write this book while my adoptive parents were alive.[00:03:00]
I didn't want to hurt them. And I don't think that's really why it turned out. It turned out that they both died while I was writing the book. But I really, that was really, I really feel that was a big part of my hesitation in doing this earlier. It's how could I possibly publish a book and have them find out about it, or friends talk to them about it or, God forbid, they read it.
When people now talk to me about I know an adoptee and they don't, they're fine. They don't care. And they don't want to search for the whole, the drill. And one of the things I always say is, you have no idea how much the fear of hurting the only families we have holds us back from looking at our truth and finding it.
I said, it's, that's really real. And so it took me until my sixties to really just be compelled to write this book and let it out
Haley Radke: Janet, do you wish you had done it sooner? If you could take the courage you have now [00:04:00] and pass it off to younger. Janet. Do you wish you had?
Janet Sherlund: Oh my god. Yes, I There was the other thing about writing this book I thought when I was writing it that I was just going to be telling a story that I had lived in that you know, I thought I knew all the components.
I thought about adoption every day. I read about and studied it. I did an independent study class in college on it. I wasn't a social worker, sociologist or anything, but I talked about it. I read everything I could. I had been in therapy my whole life. I figured, I thought I knew it. And when I started writing the book and had to write the book, I, and actually I sent the first pieces to a retired book agent and it was really more, it was more prose.
It was poetry. My original intention was I want to try and capture the feeling of being adopted. I want people, first of all, I want to share that with other adoptees and say, you're not alone. [00:05:00] And then I wanted people who just don't get it to get it. I wanted them to have that moment of aha, a feeling, to then take that emotional intelligence back to the conversations about it.
So I was just writing these moments that I thought captured that, and I just thought I'll just string those together and people will get it. And the book agent said to me no, we need to know your life, we need to hear the backstory, we need to know what your family was like, and we need to put this in context and do this with you.
And when my husband walked into the room after that phone call, I was crying. And he said, What's wrong? Didn't she like it? And I said, No, she loved it. But she told me I have to write a memoir, and I don't want to go there. I don't want to do that. But I was finally convinced that was the context that I had to put it in.
And so I did it. But, so in writing the book, the knowledge of myself I gathered, even though I had done all this other work before, was mind boggling, and I thought, Oh God, I wish I had come to this earlier in life. [00:06:00] I wish we'd had those conversations in my family about being adopted.
And I wish the world understood it better. And I wish that I had understood my pain and grief and loss in a way that was beyond, the therapy and the reading and things. It was just a whole nother level. And yes I really wish that I'd had this knowledge and was able to put it together earlier in life.
I would have had a much freer life.
Haley Radke: Interesting. That's an interesting choice of words. I had written a question for you in case this didn't come up naturally, but what it's like to speak freely now that people have passed and there you go. I guess the freedom is here.
Janet Sherlund: It is.
Haley Radke: Did you speak to your siblings who were all also adopted about being adopted.
Janet Sherlund: My sister. Yes, my brother It was funny Chris back in the 50s and 60s when we were being raised people just didn't talk about it, like it [00:07:00] just wasn't a thing it was and because maybe we were all adopted it was the same reality for all of us. We knew we were. It was part of our bedtime story, how they went to the agency and picked us each up.
And I was in second grade when we adopted my youngest sister. So I was part of that, that journey. I saw the social workers come and visit the house. I knew the whole drill, but no, we really didn't talk about it, but I was raised in a house where no one talked about anything. That just wasn't the way we were raised, but as we got older and after we left the house and as young adults my sister and I would talk about adoption and being adopted But it wasn't something I shared with anybody and in fact when I did say to friends things like oh, I really wish I'd see could see who I looked like or and they just dismiss it.
They'd say oh, that's not important. I don't look like my parents or any that really necessary factor of being mirrored in the world, which we all have, that we don't get as adoptees. [00:08:00] Anyone I mentioned it to, and I didn't know anyone else was adopted, and I wasn't talking about it with my siblings, but they just dismissed it and made me feel stupid for asking it.
That's not important. I'm not like my parents, I have different interests and I look different and that's a what are you talking about? And it was a whole different level of course that I was talking about and they were if not seeing themselves reflected in their mirrored and their parents they were seeing it probably in a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or a sibling and they just there was no context for them to understand what I didn't have and what I was longing for.
Haley Radke: So in your story, I saw this continuous need to prove yourself, right? So you said you had this independent study in university where you wrote about adoption. You've sent it to the adoption agency. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because well, I also made a note that it was in 2010 so only 14 years ago that they still [00:09:00] required an interview with you before they would like, the constant infantalizing of adoptees is so frustrating.
Janet Sherlund: Yeah. And in New Jersey where I was adopted and raised, my records are still sealed. I'm in my sixties. Both my adopted and birth parents are dead. And, but they're still, God forbid I know who I am and where I came from. But yeah, I wrote when in college I, and I went to Colgate University and when in college I started finding all this literature and stuff about adoption and early childhood development that was so captivating to me. I asked the university to allow me for one of my classes to do an independent study and identity and adoption. And I had an A plus on my paper and felt so validated. So when I wrote to the adoption agency, just really begging for any non identifying information, I didn't even dare ask for identifying information, but not anything. I sent that paper to them to like, try and prove that I wasn't just some, crazy, [00:10:00] lonely maladjusted adoptee who was seeking to sooth themselves with some fantasy. It was like, look, I've studied this.
I'm legit.
Haley Radke: But they still didn't send you your identifying information. No.
Janet Sherlund: No. They still sent me a fantasy fantasy letter. That was 1977.
Haley Radke: Okay. I, you say something I have never heard before that the agency, the adoption agency that your adoptive parents used would present parents with their a new baby in a certain way. Can you describe that?
Janet Sherlund: Yeah, because I experienced that with my little sister.
And so their original location was in this big old Victorian house, and I think it was South Orange, New Jersey. And we all went to get my little sister. And we'd go in and they had this, big hallway with these tall ceilings and these ornate pocket doors, really heavy, [00:11:00] old pocket doors.
And we're standing there, we're talking to the social worker and I don't know, my parents are always signing some of my papers or something. And then it was time to see the baby and they, the social worker like pushes these big, heavy pocket doors to the side. And there's this old, in this big, this lovely like parlor room, there's this cradle with the tall bonnet, like the tall bonnet, little like roof on it.
And we all go, and the baby's lying there and it was really a, it's really a show. And here she is, your new baby.
Haley Radke: I don't know why I fixated on that fact. I guess I never really thought about the handover, but just making this big show of the new infant you've purchased. It's just
Janet Sherlund: yes,
Haley Radke: there's something there. Oh my goodness.
Janet Sherlund: Absolutely. Absolutely. That was, that was in the early sixties. So I think we adopted her in 61. And so there was still [00:12:00] very much that, that sort of ownership or that, that the children, the adoptees were, you being passed from one person to another person.
And, it was just a very odd kind of, Presentation. You're right.
Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit about your life growing up? I find it fascinating how we become so loyal to our adoptive parents in a way that can be completely detrimental to our own selves and our sense of identity. And you had a bit of a challenging relationship with your mom in particular.
Janet Sherlund: Yeah, of course. I. There are four of us growing up and it was split 50 50 in the very textbook adoptee coping mechanisms that two of my siblings were Hellions and just, pushed every boundary [00:13:00] and tested every relationship and two of us were the good kids, the and I was the worst of them all and and being, the good kid I was so insecure and so afraid of my I had such a need, to be wanted that I just, I was just the good kid.
I was also later found when I went to discover more about who I was, that is part of me. That's how I was born, but I just was, I just had this real need to please. And I had a wonderful father, who was just kind and generous and, elevated everybody that he was around. And that was, he was wonderful, but my mother was, she adopted four of us, but she did not like being a mother.
She was a real achievement oriented, academic and, had multiple degrees and taught. She's a mathematician. She's a math major. And she really should have discovered after one child that, oh, this isn't for me. It was the 1950s slash 60s. And, and you had to have children, that's what, everyone did if they wanted to [00:14:00] fit in.
So they adopted four of us and she wasn't, or I never remember her hugging me and, or any of us, and she was very judgmental and she was just very achievement oriented. And we were just very different people. The things that I innately liked, the arts and visual things that she could, no, interest in our concept of and it was it's funny so two people two very close my husband and my best friend when they read the book said we didn't realize how sad your life had been and I said, yeah I didn't either until I wrote the book and I knew I was anxious as a child and I knew there was something I didn't think of myself as depressed, but I think sad.
I knew there was that big black hole there. There was that big black hole in me every day, all the time. And there was just, I was just tuned into those feelings. Just like there are some [00:15:00] people who are more introspective than others. I think I was just born like that, but whatever the reason, I was very much tuned into the, I want to say almost chemical stuff that happens in adoption.
There's so many things that happen that aren't, that we don't have words for. And there was just this level of, I think, grief and loss that just sat with me and lived with me and I just had nowhere and no one talked about that. I didn't know it, but when when you're in your 60s and you're looking back and you're putting it all together to put it in a book and tell that story. It just, I can't believe that I lived with that every day of my life. It was really quite sad. To use the word again. And but it also freeing and that it explained so much.
Haley Radke: You mentioned [00:16:00] earlier that you've been in therapy a lot. You've been studying adoption stuff for, did you ever have a moment where you were like, oh, this is because I'm adopted. We often use this like coming out of the fog or coming into adoptee consciousness lingo. Did you experience that?
Janet Sherlund: Yeah, there absolutely. And many times I had made the connections and thought about them and even in therapy had these, real moments of enlightenment and connection.
And so that's why writing the book surprised me. I thought I'd already had those things. I didn't feel like I was in the fog, but it was just, it was a whole nother, the whole nother level. And there's something that I think it really, when I first started writing the book, I called it the blood calls. And that was a reference to a comment my housekeeper made the day I was going to meet my biological mother.
But it was also and then the publisher said, no, you can't do that. It sounds like a vampire novel. So that's why I changed the name. But what I, [00:17:00] the point I was trying to make is there's stuff that happens I think between human beings and in clans and families too that we just don't understand or don't have words for it.
It's almost like we see it better in animals There's an understanding of belonging. There's a biology to belonging it's like when you finally meet blood kin and you feel this level of peace and comfort and connection and you don't even know who you can't answer five questions about them but you feel this in your cells, it's almost like our cells can recognize that they've, that these are other cells like yours that have evolved through the ages and there, there are feelings and understanding that we have in us that go beyond our consciousness and that go beyond those aha moments.
It's just, it's you're in an ocean of stuff and you're underneath the water and there's all this stuff floating by you and stuff and I don't know, it's just I think of it when they talk about animals who recognize their babies in, in a field of [00:18:00] identical young animals of their elk or, the way they talk about animals sensing our emotions and our feelings.
And, we're animals too. There's something, I don't know what it is, but there's something about belonging. There's something about being with your blood. There is something that is just very primal and we haven't figured it out yet. But I think one of the issues that we face as adoptees is that we suffer when that's taken from us and no one understands it.
They don't think it's a big deal and it is such a big deal. And just to wrap this, but there are stories in The Primal Wound Nancy tells a story of this child who's, in the hospital being treated for being burned all over and is crying out for its mother. But the mother was the one who burned him.
And, you hear that story again and again that children even in abusive households, want to stay with that parent. And is it just a [00:19:00] nurturing connection? I don't think so. They're not getting any nurturing in that family. But there's something that is compelling in us as human beings to stay with our own. And when that's broken something real is broken.
Haley Radke: Yes. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your reunion experiences?
Janet Sherlund: No, not at all. I had two reunions. I met both my birth father and my birth mother. And they were the polar opposite one was absolutely fantastic and one was awful when I went to the my adoption agency, I discovered they were doing searches and they filled out the application and waited the year till they were gotten through all the other people they found my mother and turns out she lived like in the next town from me, but found my mother and I was so excited and she refused to meet me. Now, I was in my 50s, [00:20:00] and she was in her 70s, and, hadn't lived in her hometown in, 50 something years.
She had moved away when she was first pregnant with me and never gone back. She was working outside the home. It was just like, it didn't make sense to me. What do you mean? We could, no one has to know. We can meet for coffee. You work. Just, but no. She refused to meet me. Didn't reflect well on her she said, it's yeah, no kidding. This is reflecting worse on you. But so the agency said we have the name of your birth father. Would you like us to reach out to him? I said, I never thought about my birth father quite frankly, I had also been told in 1977, via that letter from the agency that you referenced that he didn't know I existed.
So I thought, how's an old man? He doesn't know I existed going to do anything for me, but then I thought about medical information. Maybe there was some medical information. So I said, yes. And it was transformative. In finding out about me, his [00:21:00] response was if she's my blood, she's my daughter.
We met in the moment we met that big black hole filled up in me and I couldn't answer two questions about the man, but it is that it's, again, that's one of those things. It's just so primal and cellular. And I was just home for the first time in my life. And it took five more years to meet my birth mother.
Finally, my social worker. I worked with have been saying the whole time you need to reach out to your siblings. She has five other children and you need to reach out to them. You're all adults. And I kept saying that, I know they were raised by her. They wouldn't want me to, I just didn't.
Haley Radke: Because your mother had kept you a secret. None of them knew.
Janet Sherlund: Oh yeah. They didn't. Oh gosh. They didn't know anything about me, but I just thought they'd be like her. I don't know. I just, I didn't want to do that. And then again, that back to being the good adoptee I realized at some point that I was saying, she'll be mad at me if I do.
As the woman [00:22:00] who was refusing to meet me for five years that I don't even know, and I don't want her to be mad at me. Seriously, that's just amazing.
Haley Radke: That's really relatable Janet, just so you know.
Janet Sherlund: I know, so I'm like, she won't be mad at me. Oh my God. So I finally, I do a write to them and, blow their minds.
They were I, overnighted this letter to all of them. I actually got mad reading Joan Didion's book, Blue Nights. I was mad at the stuff she was saying about her then deceased adopted daughters being found. Anyway and I love Joan Didion, but that really made me mad. So I wrote that letter.
They got it all the same day. And I would, the social worker's right. Finding my siblings was wonderful and really helped. I did eventually meet my birth mother because of their telling her she better stand up and do this. But it never she never wanted me in her life and she was cold to the end it was really, you [00:23:00] know rejected me in the end too.
It was there was never a connection there. She just couldn't she just couldn't go there and it was very painful I will say that the fear that some adoptees have about searching is that they're going to face that second rejection or they're going to find something terrible. And that's true, but I wouldn't ever recommend someone not do it, that fear.
If you have the, if you are rejected by your parent, it is very painful, but if you recognize that and you understand that and you work through that's helpful, and if you find something you don't like, like an awful, like my birth mother is not a great person, it is disturbing to think that you could come from someone like that.
But I think it's also a good cautionary tale. I think to be a really fully realized and at peace human being, you have to [00:24:00] know the good, the bad, and ugly about yourself. And I could see traits in myself that she had full blown as an adoptee I could always look at something negative in myself and maybe pass it off as i'm just in a mood or that's something or And when you see but you see those things full blown in someone you come from I was like, oh man, don't let that in, keep that arm's length.
So it was, I would really urge people to search and to deal with whatever they find. And when you come out the other side, you will be stronger and happier for it.
Haley Radke: Have you read The Girls Who Went Away or any of the other books on what mothers experienced when, they chose, quote unquote, or were forced to relinquish?
I wonder if you've thought about that in context of your own mother, your own birth mother. What impact losing you to [00:25:00] adoption had on her? I think about that for my mother, too, because I also experienced secondary rejection from her. And, I don't know I summon up a lot of grace for I don't know, reasons, but, I just, the impact losing a child can have on someone, I just wonder about that.
Janet Sherlund: Yeah, I do wonder still, and I wish we had been able to talk about that. But yes, I had read all those books before that. And even in my letters so the way the agency did it is that you would write a letter to your birth parent and tell them, who you were, why you were looking for them, send them some pictures. And so it was, I see you laughing.
Haley Radke: Okay. First of all, they made you do an interview first.
Janet Sherlund: Yes. Yes.
Haley Radke: And then you had to write this prescriptive letter that they had to approve and send before.
Janet Sherlund: Yeah, they had to approve first and then they sent it to them. Yes. Yes. [00:26:00] It's very controlled.
Haley Radke: Huh.
Janet Sherlund: And in that letter, I told her that I understood her, feelings and that I didn't want to out her and that I understood to the best of my ability what she went through in the 1950s when she had me and so I wasn't insensitive to that. She had gone on to have five other children with, she was married within months of having me to a different man and had her first child there within nine months of that. And so she had five more children and it's interesting in talking to those siblings, she was a cold mother and all business and we were all trying to figure out whatever, what happened to her, what went wrong? Was it different before? And I don't know because she didn't share those aspects of her life, even with her own children.
Haley Radke: With the kept.
Janet Sherlund: With the kept children. But it was interesting that in the [00:27:00] adoption agency, the notes they had about her, they, she was very unusual for the women of her time.
So this was an adoption agency dealing with lots of adoptees and birth parents and she was a puzzle to them. She was in such denial and she, just rejected me, I didn't want anything to do with you, you didn't want to see me, she said I wasn't even real to her, so she had an incredible level of denial coming into this experience, and I don't know what that's from, it's got to have impacted her, she was a young, vivacious, beautiful, popular woman.
And in 1953, when she got pregnant and, it has to have impacted her life when she talked about her life, looking back at it in, I was born in 1954 she talks about what she was doing and doing that year and there's no indication that along the way during that year she had a baby. She just completely wiped it out of her memory bank.
So, I've [00:28:00] read the books and I've tried to put myself in their shoes and understand the times and the judgment. I've, watched the movies and all of that. It still seems that she had an extra dose of denial in her for, and she had, her family life wasn't great so I'm sure there are other issues along the way, but it's still hard to be on the receiving end of that.
Haley Radke: You had two rough mom experiences. I was just looking at my notes from your book and at one point your adoptive mother says, I've always been grateful that grandma Leaf treated you kids like you were real grandchildren.
Janet Sherlund: Yeah, that was pretty horrendous. And I think that's, I think without this more open conversation about the pain and trauma and adoption and educating, which I know now things have changed and I think they're, people are much more open about it and talking about it. But I think that also reflects, it reflects my mother, certainly, but I think also the [00:29:00] thinking of at the time and she didn't know any better. But I was so shocked to hear that was one of those life moments that you just never get over, it's like what so I my feelings are correct I am NOT a real child and there is a difference.
Yeah, that sort of nailed that for me.
Haley Radke: So bringing that into your own motherhood. What was it like for you to have your boys and parent them? And I'm assuming wanting to do something a little differently for them.
Janet Sherlund: Yes, a little different. I love being a mother. I have two boys and they're both great grown men now in their own lives, but I love being a mother.
I was a stay at home mom by my choice. I wouldn't have considered, this was back, they were both born in the eighties and at that time there was a real. There was a real status to being, a career woman and think working girl, that movie. I think it was the thing to do was, have your own career.
And that was what I just wanted to stay home and [00:30:00] I wanted to be a full time mother. And I wanted to be the perfect mother, which of course I was not. I try, I, I tried to be, and I just wanted, I wanted to be there. I wanted to respect them and who they were as individuals. And I just wanted to be there and be present and be and support them and be engaged and just made sure they felt loved and appreciated.
But yeah, I, it was the opposite of, I met at my, this isn't in the book, but it's funny. One night when my first son, my oldest son was only like 15 months old and Rick was traveling and we lived in New Jersey. He was traveling to California on business. So he was far away and this is before cell phones, it's the eighties, right?
I become violently ill. It turns out I had kidney stone. I did not know and I am like, I'm in mortal pain. And we have to, I realized at like midnight that I have to go to the hospital, but I have my little 15 month old toddler upstairs bed and no one. So I call of course a [00:31:00] neighbor and she comes over and then the other neighbor drives me.
But I call my, then I'm there and they figure out I have a kidney stone and they're going to admit me. So I call my mother and ask her to come and, take care of the baby for me. And she was really annoyed. Because I had just been down in that area. I had meetings down that way. And now I've come home and now you want me to drive all the way back down there.
And I'm like,
Haley Radke: Oh no.
Janet Sherlund: My God, so yeah, it was that was like even as a grandmother she just wasn't there. It wasn't her. It wasn't her thing.
Haley Radke: Did you ever talk to your boys about being adopted and what that was like for you?
Janet Sherlund: Yeah, I'm sure I did. I can't remember a specific conversation, but they were very aware of it. And in fact, talked about it. My older son, especially as he grew older and he said but mom, I want to know, I want to know more about your family and like where we come from. And there was a real interest in, on his part to know more about [00:32:00] himself that we didn't know through for me.
Haley Radke: Did they experience any of the reunion moments with you?
Janet Sherlund: They weren't there for the reunion, but they met, no one met my birth mother, but they all met my birth father and, yeah, interacted with them and said he my birth father and my oldest son are two peas in a pod. So that was really a special for him I think that was really special to be able to see himself mirrored in that way.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. So important. You share at multiple points in the book about your journey dealing with anxiety and panic attacks. Do you mind talking a little bit about that and how you've worked through it?
Janet Sherlund: Yeah to this day I'm not sure I really understand the complete origin of that. I have to assume based on what I've learned and with the [00:33:00] doctors I've worked with over the years that I had, that my body was born with this hair trigger of adrenaline so that when I was, faced with an uncomfortable, anxiety provoking situation instead of, eking out a regular amount of adrenaline, it shot out this, huge amount of it.
And then my body went into chaos and had all these strange symptoms. And, but I also believe and have talked to therapists and doctors about this, that the fact that as an adoptee, I lived every day in a state of heightened anxiety. Like I was never complete. I was never centered. I was never, I was always this big black emptiness in me.
So I was living in a state of chronic anxiety. And that's exhausting and wears all of us down. So you constantly wear down and put pressure on that adrenal system. And then, and there's something, there must be something hormonal about it too, because my [00:34:00] first panic attack was towards that pre adolescent age.
And interestingly enough, then left me like after I had my children. And but it was, that was such a life altering factor to have these full blown horrible, you thought you were dying or going crazy, panic attacks from a young age. No one could explain them to me. No one told me what was going on. I don't know if they understood them back then, but it kept me so dependent on familiar people and familiar places and it took away choice in my life.
I couldn't choose to do things go places engage in ways that other kids my normal kids my age were doing and it really throughout my whole life that I had them. So throughout my from, 12 to 30 years, it's roughly that I wasn't free to make choices. I was making choices based on avoiding panic attacks.
And that's just such a waste of all those years. I [00:35:00] wasn't free. I wasn't making choices out of free will. And when I did, I tried to push those boundaries and I did. And I think I wasn't homebound. I did push those boundaries, but I always paid for it. I always had panic attacks, and they were just, they were terrifying to go through. Just terrifying. And I'm really glad that I finally found a doctor who understood what they were and helped me, prescribe some as needed beta blockers back in those days, and got me through, and I luckily haven't suffered from them since then, but I think it was twofold. It wasn't just physical. There was that constant state of anxiety and chaos in me from being adopted that really fueled the hair trigger.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I know that there's a lot of folks listening that have experienced panic attacks and anxiety as well.
Janet Sherlund: They say, I've read things about how [00:36:00] much more of a higher incidence there are of that in adoptees, and I don't have any data to back that up, but it really makes sense to me. I think the one thing I say is, you're not crazy and just find a doctor who knows how to help you and work with them and you can get through it, but it's. It's really scary.
Haley Radke: All right. As we're wrapping up, I'm curious to know, are you involved in adoptee community? Do you have adoptee friends? Do you, yeah.
Janet Sherlund: I know. It's funny. I, not really. Yes, I have adoptee friends and it's so wonderful to, speak with someone else who knows what you're talking about, but I haven't been involved in the adoptee community the one that's out there now in online and you know in podcasts and posts and it's wonderful.
It's wonderful to see all those discussions and to hear people being so honest and to calling out to have our voices heard. That's very special I avoided [00:37:00] those during the three years I was writing the book because I didn't want to be influenced by someone else's story or journey or focus. So during those three years, that was a big, that was a big chunk of the time this has grown so large.
And I just needed to listen to myself to write the book and to just tell my story. And now I'm, now that the book's done and I'm talking to people, I'm putting my toes in those waters and discovering. And I think it's so wonderful. My gosh, I wish this had been around when I was young. I, it is the best thing.
And it is, my book was really written with two intentions. One was to really try and capture that experience for adoptees to say, yes, you're not alone, but the other was to try and let people who don't get it glimpse the feeling because I think when you have a feeling it's more powerful than words or data.
I think it's you know, the Maya Angelou quote "people will forget what you did and what you [00:38:00] said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel" and I just wanted to try and get people to feel this for a moment so that they could bring that consciousness and that intelligence to the decisions they were making on political issues to, to adoptee rights to the donor conceived individuals to international adoption to, reproductive rights.
Think about these things and think about them from the individual's perspective, not the birth parent or the adoptive parent, but the person whose life is really impacted by this. And so the sharing of these conversations going around everywhere, I'm very interested in now and tuning into as many as I can, and I'm so happy to see them taking place.
Haley Radke: Welcome in. We're happy to have you.
Janet Sherlund: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Janet's book is called Abandoned at Birth, Searching for the Arms That Once Held Me. And what I really love is you don't pull any punches. You talk, you're sharing your story and [00:39:00] then you overlay constantly like a lot of adoptees struggle with this and this like your giving those facts all the way through, which is so helpful for people who aren't adopted and don't get it which makes sense from what you just explained to us. I read it in one sitting. I was captivated. I wanted to know what happened. And I think that folks will really be interested in hearing your whole story. And really, a lot of us will relate to many things that happened in your life. And yeah, it was just a pleasure to get you to know you to get to know you through your book. How does that feel to know people are going to read it and be like, Whoa. I really know Janet now.
Janet Sherlund: It's a very vulnerable feeling, it's one thing to write a book. It's another thing to, to talk about your book and, face to face with people and it's I was very [00:40:00] unsettled ever since I realized I was actually going to get this published. I've been very unsettled. I've been, I felt very vulnerable, but I also know that everyone seems very interested in it and the topic and people who don't understand it seemed to be going oh okay, and that was the point of it. And so I always think the more personal we get the more universal we become and I hope that you know that achieves that in a few places at least in the book and but yes, I do it is a little uncomfortable to feel all the yeah, I was right. I was very candid in the book
Haley Radke: Yes, deeply personal and very easy to connect with you and as an adoptee, to see those things pointed out that a lot of our listeners will totally get, but a lot of folks who have no concept of what it's like to be adopted will really learn a lot from them. I also wanted to mention by the time this airs, this book is going to be in the [00:41:00] world, but Gretchen Sisson has a brand new book called Relinquished, The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, which is such an important book. It's so well written. I followed Gretchen's research for a number of years, and she really talks about reproductive justice, and there's this fallacy that folks are choosing between abortion and adoption when she proves that's not the case and it's very interesting, very timely, and I hope folks will read it. It's, just, oh, yeah, it's so timely. Excellent research from Gretchen.
Janet Sherlund: Good. I'll read, I will read that.
Haley Radke: Yes. Yes. It's wonderful. What did you want to recommend to us today, Janet?
Janet Sherlund: I'm reading as many books on adoption as I can get my hands on, always have. I keep going back to The Primal Wound.
I just, I, every [00:42:00] time I read that, I see something new, see something different. I don't know how Nancy did that, but the, she got it, that book, when I read that book for the first time, it made me uncomfortable. It was so honest and so truthful, and I, it just shook me to my core. And I keep going back to it.
I just think it's brilliant. And I haven't seen it trumped yet. I must say, and I know there are all the other, big bibles out there and standards of adoption work. And there's, I think I've enjoyed every book I've read, but. For me that's the gold.
Haley Radke: That's the one. All right.
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and your insights. I'd love it if you would share how folks can connect with you online.
Janet Sherlund: Thank you. I have an Instagram @janetsherlundofficial, and my website is abandonedatbirthbook.com. Or janetsherlund.com will get you to the same site.
Haley Radke: Okay. Perfect. I know folks are going to enjoy reading your book and thank you. Thank [00:43:00] you for writing it and having more adoptee work in the world.
Janet Sherlund: Thank you. Thank you, Haley, for all you're doing for all of us in this world. Appreciate it.
Haley Radke: Thank you. I hope you do take me up on my offer to join our Patreon community. We have so many amazing events and sometimes we're recording far out, and so I can't always tell you about them live on the show, but if you go to adopteeson.com/calendar, you can see all of our upcoming events and it's updated regularly with new book club events, new ask an adoptee therapist events, our off script parties with Pam Cordano. We have so many opportunities for you. And another thing we've been doing are some writing workshops. So it's [00:44:00] pretty good value in my opinion, for all the things you get, plus you get our weekly Adoptees Off Script podcast. So I would love to have you join. Your support helps keep this podcast going and it's also helping fund the work for the brand new show that I'm working on behind the scenes.
So I would love it if you would please join adopteeson.com/community. I'd love to have you. And if you want to just try it out, there's a free trial so you can check it out, poke around and see if you feel like you want to hang out with us which I'm sure you will. And give it a try.
I'd love to have you and get to know you over there. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again very soon.
