287 Ande Stanley
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/287
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. On today's show, we are welcoming Ande Stanley, creator and host of the podcast, the Adoption Files. Ande is a late Discovery Adoptee only finding out accidentally when they were already in their thirties.
We talk about how that happened and the reactions of adoptive family members to Ande finally being in on the secret everyone knew, but them. We also discuss how Ande found their way to the adoptee community and how some initial bad interactions, instead of deterring them, [00:01:00] led the way to Ande becoming a community builder.
I do want to give a trigger warning for today's episode. We mention suicidal ideation at multiple points during this conversation, and there are also mentions of sexual violence. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adoptee on.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 today are on the website, adoptee on.com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Fellow podcaster, Ande Stanley. Welcome, Ande!
Ande Stanley: Hi, it's a pleasure to be here, thank you for inviting me.
Haley Radke: I'd love it if you would share a little bit of your story with us.
Ande Stanley: Okay I am a late discovery, baby scoop [00:02:00] era, intercountry, same race, adopted person. And I can remember when I first started interacting with adoptees and seeing things like LDA and BSE and ICA and realizing I had absolutely no idea what people were talking about. Thankfully, over the last four and a half years or so, I have met a lot of really wonderful people who have been willing to help me become more educated, which has been really nice.
Haley Radke: Four and a half years ago, what made you start looking around for adoptee info?
Ande Stanley: I found out by accident in 1999 when I was 33, but unfortunately, at that time, and for a very long time afterward, I lacked the resources that would have allowed me to feel safe, asking questions [00:03:00] about what I believed about adoption and to begin processing my feelings around the betrayal trauma and the adoption trauma and the rejection trauma and all of the feelings.
And my role in my adoptive family and in my married into family and in my church was a very narrow, very well prescribed role. And when I began receiving messages that my very reasonable questions and feelings were making people uncomfortable and upset, I did what, the little good little Christian soldier that I was at the time.
I basically shut down and did my job, which was to be selfless and to make myself available for the needs of other people and to make them happy. And then in [00:04:00] the early 2000, I became disabled and in 2013, they told me it was permanent. So I began seeing a therapist, not for anything to do with all of the adoption stuff, but to manage how I was feeling about my mobility issues and my chronic issues that I was experiencing and as I began to talk more with him about boundaries and about trauma, some of the adoption stuff started to creep into the conversations and around that same time, I was leaving the evangelical church that I had been a part of for 30 years. And I was also spending a lot of time flying back and forth to Indiana to take care of my adoptive [00:05:00] mother, whose health was failing, and I was realizing that I had a very limited amount of time left to ask her all the questions that I wanted answers to and a lot of things came out during that period between about 2015 and 2019 that were extremely painful for me to navigate. I did not have a support system. And I had attempted for about two years post discovery to really reach out to receive the support that I needed without success.
I'd had some very unpleasant experiences in a purported adoption support group that consisted of primarily adoptive parents who jumped all over me. And so it just left me really leery [00:06:00] and I got to a point where I was in a very dark place and I was actually considering ending my life. And my therapist had been encouraging me to end the isolation that I had put myself into because I just didn't trust people and I was desperate.
So I just went online one day and started typing in, Adoption and kept getting all this pro adoption stuff. And then I thought, okay, adoptee and I just fell into an adoptee space, but I didn't know how to behave in that space. And I had become incredibly good at what I call the three C's, being calm, capable, and just composed, and those are pretty deadly.
They allowed me to survive [00:07:00] in the context that I grew up in, but they were not a good coping mechanism for being able to interact in a support space. And I behaved badly and I got kicked out. And I deserved it. I actually
Haley Radke: Would you say what behaved badly means? Because to become capable and composed would, yeah, say more.
Ande Stanley: I have a background, my degree is in psychology and I have a drug and alcohol counseling certificate and someone in the group who I did not know was also very fragile had asked a question and I had responded from this position of kind of authority. Because my role in my family was also to be the smart one who had all the answers and I [00:08:00] was used to as a, female presenting person having my credentials challenged all the time, we have a credibility problem as adopted people and as female presenting people in our culture.
And so I felt I have to tell people why I know these things. And I was, they reached out to me and said, you need to stop this. And I said I don't understand. They asked a question. I'm just trying to answer it. And they said, if you don't stop, we're going to have to remove you. And I said, but I just, I don't understand.
And I said, I'm sorry. I upset him, but I still don't understand why I'm in trouble because, and they just finally said, you know what, you're gone. It was actually a really good thing. Cuz i had to choose how i was going to respond to that and i had to think about why did I default to that when [00:09:00] I was also
just incredibly fragile at that point but nobody knew that because i was so good at putting on this front. And I decided that instead of talking, I would sit back, and I would listen, and I would read, and I would talk to people, and I would begin to interrogate all of those beliefs that I had about adoption because I had been immersed in this pro adoption narrative and because of a background with family members in medicine and in law enforcement and my own work with at risk kids, I knew that there are circumstances where children do need alternate child care.
I [00:10:00] didn't understand the laws. I really didn't know what I was talking about. And I needed to either withdraw and isolate myself again, or begin to engage in a more thoughtful, considerate way. And I knew that if I withdrew and isolated again, I wasn't likely to survive. And I don't think the people who are listening who know me will have ever heard this and I am forever thankful to the people who listen to my story of having behaved badly and listened to and believed my commitment to change and to learn how to interact respectfully and from a more trauma informed [00:11:00] perspective.
Another member of another support group that allowed me into their space read some of the things that I had been writing and recommended me to a women's adoptee writing group and they welcomed me and were patient with me and kind. And I've become friends with some of them and they know who they are.
And I really want to encourage people to make connections because those connections are what allowed me to still be present. I think so many of us are going through things that nobody knows about.
And if we can come to conversations, With people with the understAndeng that there may be a lot more going on under the surface that we don't know about,[00:12:00]
then perhaps we can come from a kinder place.
Haley Radke: Thank you for being so candid about that. I know you're not the only person who's experienced that. I was just talking with a friend of mine, and she was like, the first time I went into adoptee spaces, I said some things that were from the, naive perspective.
She hadn't unpacked everything yet. And she was like, I got so scared to engage because of all the vitriol that I received. And she was like, I don't even want to be in those spaces anymore, because it can be push someone fully out and who knows what their mental state is at the time, like I, I've seen that damaging stuff too.
It's really tough. So thank you for sharing. And I'm so glad you had those folks come alongside you. It's so interesting to me to hear you share that journey. And now, like I've heard a lot [00:13:00] of episodes of your show and I'm sure your perspective has really changed. Sometimes we talk about becoming radicalized adoptees here and it sounds like you may identify with that as well.
But can you take us back a little bit? Because you said you found out that you were adopted when you were 33 and there's a gap in there before you're like really processing some of that. Can you, do you, are you comfortable sharing how you found out? And I know you had to put it away for a while, but since then, how have you unpacked that?
I'm sorry, I don't have a late discovery experience, but when I hear people that have had that, it makes me so angry.
Ande Stanley: Yes, I agree with you. I'm of the opinion that anything past day one is late. And the amount of damage that causes exists on a spectrum. So the longer you go without that information, [00:14:00] I believe the greater the harm.
I found out by accident, my adoptive mother was downsizing and had decided to send each of her children a box of photographs. She accidentally sent me the box that she intended for her daughter. And in the box was a photograph, dated a month before I was born, and she was clearly not pregnant. And I had been questioning my identity for years.
I felt very wrong in the space that I was raised in because I was so different from the rest of the family. And whenever I would ask questions, I was treated as if I was making things up. I was fantasizing. I was trying to cause problems. And [00:15:00] I learned to be silent and just carry that around with me. So I had finally decided to embrace the identity that I had been told for decades belonged to me.
And then I see this picture and I could not, I couldn't deal with it. So I put the picture back in the box and I put it on a shelf. And then my adoptive mom came out to visit and she wanted to go through the pictures with me and my kids. And I thought, oh, this is going to be interesting. So I brought the box out and she's sitting next to me and our, my two kids are sitting on the couch with us.
And I opened the box and I hand her the picture. And she said, where did you get this? I told her you sent it to me and she got up, got her purse and left. And then she called me later that [00:16:00] day and invited me to lunch at a very popular lunch spot. I arrived, she had chosen a table in the very center of the room, surrounded by people with their families.
It's the middle of the day. And I sit down and she looks at me and she said, you're adopted. And I locked myself in the restaurant bathroom for 30 minutes and just sobbed to the point where I could hear other people in the bathroom, like little kids going, mommy, what's wrong with that lady? And that was how I found out, and there was a tremendous amount of pressure to accept the idea that I had been lied to for a reason, they were protecting me, it was better for me, they were keeping me from the pain of what came before, and eventually over time I realized that [00:17:00] these were just stories that my adoptive mother told herself to make herself feel better.
About deceiving and manipulating me for years for her own ends.
Haley Radke: Didn't you have a younger adoptive brother? I know he passed, but did he know he was adopted? Did you know he was adopted?
Ande Stanley: No, he never learned that because he passed away when he was 12. Our adoptive father died when I was 12 and he was 11, and then he died, my brother died.
And the thing that I find really interesting that out of the four children in the home, two were biological, two were adopted, the two adopted children, we had a very strong bond. The two biological children had a very strong bond with one another, but out of the four of us, the only two children in the home who had night terrors were [00:18:00] myself and my adopted brother.
We both had recurring nightmares. I would patrol the house at night looking for intruders. My younger brother would sleepwalk. So I, in retrospect, looking back, I can see that there were clearly these signs. And when I began going to therapy for my disability, my therapist was talking about PTSD and CPTSD.
And I had always attributed my insomnia and my nightmares and my flashbacks and a lot of these things to the trauma of having lost my adoptive father and my adoptive brother at a very crucial point in my life. I was in puberty. I was entering middle [00:19:00] school, sexual attraction was beginning to be a thing, I found myself attracted to both girls and boys, I was raised in a Catholic space, so this was absolutely not okay, and I knew that if I talked to my adoptive mother about this, she would send me away.
And she subsequently became an alcoholic following the death of her husband. So I'm being parentified from the age of 12. I'm the one calling the ambulance when she's falling down drunk and breaking her face. And I'm still having to go to school and be a good student and present as being calm, composed and capable.
So when I was speaking with my therapist. He asked me, how old were you when you were patrolling the house? Nine. And he said, [00:20:00] that's before these things happen to you. And that's when we began to talk about my being adopted. That is actually the point at which. I began to think, oh, maybe this has affected me more than I realized.
So we began to explore that. And he was the first therapist I had been to who actually described what had happened to me as a loss. He was also the first therapist to acknowledge the religious trauma that I had experienced in the Catholic Church. And then as a member of Pentecostal and Evangelical churches.
He was the first person who really gave me permission to begin talking about the fact that I had always been discouraged from associating with other adopted people. My adoptive mother, when I [00:21:00] was growing up, she always described adoptees as weird and that there was something wrong with them. Yes, she had a brother who he and his wife had adopted two children and they grew up knowing.
And they knew I was adopted. Everyone knew I was adopted. My in laws knew I was adopted. Everyone knew, but nobody told me.
Haley Radke: Your in laws knew you were adopted?
Ande Stanley: oh, everyone. My, my adoptive brother and sister, Adoptive parents, biological children, their spouses knew, everybody knew, neighbors knew, and
Haley Radke: Wait, so your in laws, brother in laws, sister in law, whatever, it's like they knew, did they think you knew?
Ande Stanley: No, they knew that I did not know. They had been told that they couldn't tell [00:22:00] me. And my sister in law actually told my adopted brother, you need to tell her. And he would not. In fact, to this day, he will not talk to me about the fact that he participated in lying to me for years and years and we no longer have a relationship.
Haley Radke: Sure.
Ande Stanley: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Shocker.
Ande Stanley: I know they think I'm a horrible person because if
Haley Radke: I guess they kept secrets from you.
Ande Stanley: Yeah I was told that I need to apologize for becoming upset With people lying to me. I know. That's not at all messed up.
Haley Radke: I'm still stuck on the photo. What about the photo? How did you know? Like I could see myself looking through a box of pictures and like you said it was a month before you were [00:23:00] born. Was there something written on it or like how did you know the date?
Ande Stanley: My adoptive mom was the most organized person I have ever met in my entire life.
She was a bank manager and on the back of all of the photos that she took, she wrote the date that the photo was taken. And, I am, I used to say I'm the elephant in the family, because they are all teeny tiny people. So I'm looking at a photograph of her and her daughter, and she is wearing your typical 60s Jackie Kennedy sheath dress.
With a swing coat and she weighs all of maybe 95 pounds. There's absolutely no way that this person is pregnant. The baby would have had to weigh like a pound and a half and I've seen pictures of myself starting when they, I was in the hospital for 2 weeks after I was [00:24:00] born and then I was taken home with them.
They were my foster parents initially and so I've seen pictures of me starting when I'm about two or three months old. And I was not a little baby. I was a chunk.
Haley Radke: Same. Same. You're a young mom at this time. And my kids are 10 and 12 now. And I'm thinking, you're getting this life shattering information.
It's impacting all of these relationships, and of course you got to put it away. You got, you have a hat to wear you've got roles to, you, you said this earlier you're like, I, this is too much, I have to put it away. I get that now, I really get that, you have to, there's no way to dig into that until you're safe to do so.
Ande Stanley: Yeah, the, I had an 8 and 11 year old. [00:25:00] My husband was working 60 to 100 hours a week. I, I was in a leadership position in my church. The church was very, oh, it's wonderful. You're adopted. Who cared that they lied to you? This was God's plan for your life. It was just reinforcement. And my family was also used to me being very calm in most situations.
The problem when you've been taught to sublimate your emotions is that when you do let your emotions out, they often tend to be too big and too much. So I would swing between numb and just a mess. So they were used to me most of the time being very outwardly having it together. When I fell [00:26:00] apart after discovery, it scared the crap out of my spouse and my kids.
And at that point, I just didn't think there was any reason to really begin. I had never even dealt with the grief from my earlier losses. So this was just another trauma to stick in my, I have this imaginary airplane hanger, and in my hanger are all these containers stacked up full of all of the things that I have shoved into them over the years.
And occasionally I will visit my hangar and some of the containers will wobble around and make strange noises. And for the longest time I was absolutely terrified of opening any of [00:27:00] those containers because I honestly believed it would annihilate me.
Haley Radke: I love that language because we've, I'm sure guests have said before oh, have a little box.
I'm going to tuck away in my closet, but the enormity of scale of these things, like that feels right. There's a train storage yard really near here with those giant sea cans. I'm picturing those, I'm picturing those stacked up in your hangar. It's
Ande Stanley: Yes, in fact, one of the effects of therapy and beginning to deconstruct is this goal I have one day of finding an animator who's willing to work with me to take that imagery and portray myself [00:28:00] because I always wanted to fly. I took flying lessons and I wanted to be a pilot and then I became disabled. And the medication I have to take, I'm not allowed to have a pilot certificate. So I have this picture of kind of being dressed in this sort of steam punky kind of pilot's outfit with the hat and the goggles and my tool belt and dragging these containers out into the light and eventually repurposing them into this plane that I can fly away in.
And to take those things and create something that allows me to soar. And I just haven't found that person who's willing to work with me, dirt cheap.
But that's something that kind of illustrates for me that process of deconstructing of [00:29:00] critically beginning to analyze. What the adoption narrative is and how it has impacted me and how the intersection of all of these different kinds of traumas have added layers to. What I need to navigate in order to have the coping strategies, because I know that the triggers and things will be lifelong, because every stage that we enter into adoption impacts us in an additional or a different way.
So to think that we can just be done with it is, in my opinion, unrealistic, but I think that the process of healing. Is that we learn how to better integrate the things that happen to us and to create new neural pathways so that when we're confronted with those triggers, [00:30:00] we don't default to the ones that worked for us to help us survive when we were younger.
And that's why, when people talk about the fog, I actually prefer the language of safety. That it's not that we were in some kind of walking through some kind of mist or fog, it's that we did not have the safety to begin looking at our beliefs and our feelings. And as we acquired that support system and the feelings of safety, that's when we can begin to look at those things.
And that there's nothing shameful or bad about being in the fog, because I do see people criticized for it, and I've probably done it myself on occasion, [00:31:00] but they're just not in a place where they have the safety to be able to consider things. And maybe they never will. And that's their journey.
Haley Radke: I know you've been a moderator in creating some adoptee safe spaces online.
And I really appreciate that because it serves the community and hopefully does make that space for people to start exploring some of these things, and as they unpack all the different things we go through, whether it's trying to access records, or if we do get access to a reunion, navigating that, and all those kinds of things.
I'm, I feel really thankful for all the people that are willing to do that kind of work, because it's so emotionally taxing. And I'm curious about that for you. How I guess I'm seeing it now oh, you're experiencing [00:32:00] community and then stepping back and listening, I think all of those things probably added to your skills in that area to be gentle with people now when they're wanting to unpack those things. Is that any of that ring true for you?
Ande Stanley: I really do think so. The first person who allowed me back into a support space was incredibly gentle and kind, and also very willing to provide me with pointers, tips, information I had also, as I said, I had a degree in psychology and I had a drug and alcohol rehabilitation certificate.
I had facilitated groups for people struggling with substance disorders and as a survivor myself of sexual assault, I had facilitated groups [00:33:00] for people who had experienced sexual violence in their lives. I didn't know how to translate that to the adoptee spaces, because I didn't really know much about how other adopted people were impacted by adoption.
I really, I tell people I may be 58, but in adopted person years, I'm barely 25. So I really had to listen and learn and I do think that those things have helped me along with the skills that I already had for working in human services. I used to do intake and get to ask people endless questions, which I loved and so I brought those things and then I had [00:34:00] to learn the language and the impacts of adoption, because unfortunately, when you get a degree in psychology and in human services the only time we visited the topic of adoption was when we talked about the heinous twin studies that were carried out. We discussed that, which was horrifying, and we discussed the plight of the Romanian orphans because they were talking about nature versus nurture. It had very little to do with how these children themselves were impacted lifelong.
Being adopted was seen as the solution to their problem, rather than just another trauma and another step that they had to go through that may or may not end up being beneficial [00:35:00] to that child, so it was very disconcerting to realize that I was so ignorant. And, but that's okay. None of us are capable of knowing everything.
It has been difficult at times because people in these spaces, we're all coming into them with our trauma. And many of us are in highly activated states, which if you spend a lot of time studying the nervous system, you'll learn that when a person is in an activated state, they're not operating with their prefrontal cortex.
They're operating from this hind brain that's saying, do whatever you need to do to survive. And they're not really capable of taking in a lot of what might be shared with them or said to them. And they may not realize that the things that [00:36:00] they're saying and doing are they're valid, but those of us who are moderating or who are admin, we also have the potential to become very activated by the things that we're hearing in this space.
One of the best things that one of my professors told us in class was know the things you cannot manage and ask for help when that happens. So we had to spend time identifying our biases and the things that we absolutely could not tolerate interacting with. So for me, for example, I could not deal with, I'm trying to find the most politic way to say this I attended Catholic camp during the summers growing up, and some people familiar with the Catholic church might know where this story [00:37:00] is going.
The founder of our camp, who was there, who knew me, who I have letters from him, he visited our home when I was growing up, was one of the first pedophile priests tried and convicted in the Catholic church in the United States. I have difficulty dealing with clergy members and pedophiles, so that was something that I had to know, that if somebody came into my practice and said, I'm here because I did such and such to these people, I needed to be able to say, I need to step away.
I need to find somebody else to deal with you. So in working in these spaces with adoptees, I've had the tremendous advantage of being able [00:38:00] to say to the other moderators admin, I can't take this one and that has kept me, I think, from completely just burning out at times.
Haley Radke: That's so wise and helpful for other people who are working in the same kind of spaces, because, yeah, it's a lot in and now I see where you're some of your interviewing skills come from and all that you're using all your tools from your life to do the work. I identify with that. I do. You're also a caregiver and you have a lot on your plate, but I've seen, so that's an understatement.
That's an understatement. How about that? I've seen you do things to like, take care of yourself in other ways. I saw you post about your embroidery on Facebook and what other things are you doing to like, take good care of yourself? [00:39:00]
Ande Stanley: Oh, gosh. So this will sound familiar to a lot of people with small children.
Sometimes I just sit in my car.
I've been working on this manuscript for years and I keep joking that I'll dedicate it to the Starbucks drive thru when the time comes. Because I'll sit in the Starbucks drive thru and write. I garden. And I also, because of my disability, I have to stay physically active. I can't sit for very long, so I walk.
A minimum of, several miles a day, and I've done some marathons and some other activities. I write. I do the podcast. It's a struggle actually to find time to care for myself. So ongoing therapy has [00:40:00] been a huge part of that as well, but I realize I'm privileged too, because not everybody has access to therapy.
Haley Radke: Yes, or the, I heard you reference this when you were talking about going to a recent conference and it's not everybody has the money to travel somewhere or like the time to take a weekend off and do those kinds of things, and I'm in that same space, like a privileged space to, yeah, to do this work, even all of those things.
And so hopefully some of the things that we're making will support people in those ways and fill in some of those gaps. I think my understanding of Adoption and critiquing the system, so much of it has come from listening to, hundreds of adoptees share their stories and experiences with me and I'll say with us because you've [00:41:00] had the same opportunity to chat with so many fellow adoptees and hear their stories. And we're, I will just go to recommended resources cause I absolutely want people to listen to your show, The Adoption Files. And I love how you talk about access to our records and you share. We didn't really, we didn't really even touch on this today.
So hopefully people will go and listen to your story about trying to access your records in the UK and the hoops they make you jump through and therapists and just like all this nonsense. It's really outrageous. And so you share a lot of that in your show. But you also talk to other impacted members of the constellation and one of my favorite conversations you had was with my friend, Katie Nelson Burns, who runs the Family Preservation Project and is a part of the Board of Saving Our Sisters.
And that was just like, so good. I just [00:42:00] love that conversation. And thank you for bringing all those things into the world. I just love more adoptee voices, more people talking about the complexities of adoption and the problems in adoption. And the other thing I want to link to in the show notes for people is you wrote this really amazing piece for Severance and I think it will be really helpful and relatable for especially late discovery adoptees.
So I'll make sure to link to that. Is there anything you want to tell us about your show? What led you to create it? And, maybe talk about the name a little bit because I loved X Files.
Ande Stanley: This is funny. People think that I named it after the X Files, but I've never actually watched that show.
Haley Radke: No! You said it somewhere and I was like, oh, it is like the X Files.
Ande Stanley: Somebody else called me like, oh, you mean like the X Files? And I was just, no. What happened is, I was on my own figuring all of these things out, it was 1999, computers, [00:43:00] it wasn't a thing, and I learned that I could apply for my, not just a copy of my original birth certificate, but my adoption file.
Because the UK allows adoptees at the age of 18 to apply for and receive their certificate and a copy of their actual files, and so I was pursuing my adoption files. When I was welcomed into this women's writers group, I listened to other adopted people talking about how they had been denied access to everything.
And I had naively assumed that of course everyone has access when they, at least when they turn 18. Why wouldn't they? It's their information. And I began to hear the emotional and financial and physical consequences [00:44:00] of being denied this most basic human right, knowing who we are and where we come from.
And I was absolutely appalled at the rhetoric that was being used to deny people their documents because I'm thinking. Adopted people in the UK are receiving their documents all the time and I'm not familiar with any riots or any problems that have been caused. By us having access. This is. This is crap, and one of the reasons why I left the Evangelical Church, it's not the only reason, but one reason was in the 90s, I began to hear this very pro adoption rhetoric being used in the churches, and because I had read the Bible many times, and eventually went to school to be a pastor, I knew that the scriptures they were using to justify this were being used completely out of context.
And [00:45:00] they were not promoting plenary adoption and I had been doing some writing anonymously because I still wasn't ready to talk publicly about things and one of the women in the group said you should write a blog. So I started a blog and then she said, I listened to podcasts all the time and I don't hear anyone talking to adopted people about the actual laws in the state where they were adopted or in the country where they were adopted and all of the things they've had to go through to try and get their information. She said, why don't you do a podcast? And I said, I hate computers. And she said, you can just do it. Just try it. So I did. And I constantly blame her for this whole thing. I'm like, crap. She's the adopted genealogist. It's her fault this whole [00:46:00] thing happened. I know she's fantastic. And she's one of those people that I have to thank for still breathing.
But I thought this is ridiculous. So I began interviewing people with the intention of talking about their adoption files. I had received mine. The fact that most people are not allowed to do that. It's just so heartbreaking and then as I began to speak with more and more adoptees about the laws in their state and how those laws have impacted them and how they cope with that, I began to understand that this is not something that ends with the adoptive person because I'm looking at my own children and my grandchildren and how this has impacted them.
And Jamie Weiss, who's fantastic, she's been a part of the Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights. She said one day to me, those documents that have been falsified follow you your whole life. [00:47:00] Your marriage certificate, your death certificate, all of this contains information that's not actually real.
And so when your descendants are trying to find information, if they don't know that you're adopted, Then, to them, they're using documents that contain untrue information. So I began to see how family members are also impacted by this. And so I started talking to family members. And then I had a couple of first mothers introduced to me.
Renee Gellin was the first one. She and I spoke. And it began to change the way that I perceived what my own mother had gone through and what other, pregnant people in crisis are experiencing. And that began to make me think if we want to change the laws, if we want to shift the narrative, [00:48:00] we can't just address obtaining unrestricted access for adult adoptees. We have to go back to the root of the problem, which is the cultural beliefs around family, around entitlement, around race, around nationality and ethnocentrism about sexism and misogyny. We have to look at the religious ideologies that are shaming people and coercing people.
It has to be, for me, a more holistic approach. And I absolutely respect the people who are addressing narrow aspects of this topic, because it's so huge. It's impossible for one person to take on all of it. But in talking with different people, I hope to just [00:49:00] jumpstart maybe some conversations among some people who may never have considered that if we ultimately want to change this.
We have to go all the way back to before a child is born and we have to interrogate our beliefs around who should be a parent. And how parenting should occur and how the actual people who experienced the family severance are going to be impacted lifelong.
That's and it's evolving, it's funny because my most popular episodes have actually been the ones where we talked about how adoption is a little bit culty.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Ande Stanley: And that really seems to resonate with people. And the more I've talked with people, the more I've realized there's that intersection between religious trauma and adoption trauma, because so many of us are adopted into [00:50:00] religious spaces.
Haley Radke: Right.
Ande Stanley: And there are so many messages that we receive in those spaces. There's, there are a number of people who are beginning to work in the fields of religious trauma, religious abuse. This is not cult abuse, though there are adopted people who have been adopted into or who have joined cults and they do need that assistance.
This is trauma that occurs in what we would consider mainstream religious institutions. And there's a lot of harm. Some of the people who are addressing that, one of them just read her book, it's When Religion Hurts You, by Laura E. Anderson, PhD. And in reading this book, I would encourage people, even if they, haven't experienced religious trauma to read this book because a lot of what she talks about [00:51:00] embodiment about the neural pathways, we form coping strategies, how we're impacted by the living legacy of trauma, which is a theory put forth originally by Janina Fisher.
About how trauma we received in the past continues to be something we live with throughout our lives, how we manage that, how we set boundaries how we become more in touch with our own bodies so that we can recognize when we're activated and understand how that works. She touches on all of these things.
In her book. So there's a lot there.
Haley Radke: Sarah Edmondson endorsed it. That's perfect because she's the podcast, as A Little Bit Culty.
Ande Stanley: Yes, and that's where Lynn was like, let's call it that. We're both we [00:52:00] both listen to their show all the time. And I think I had to. I think I had to put a disclaimer in there.
We're sorry. We're not trying to rip you off. It's just and we've had the privilege of being invited to participate in a network of professionals and others who are working in the field of coercive control. Some people who are listening may be familiar with Janja Lalich, who is a very well known sociologist who works in the field of cults and cult recovery.
You'll see her on a lot of different Netflix specials, The Program and some others speaking about cults, she is the kind of the founder of this group that I'm a part of. And it's been really great to be able to begin introducing the concept of how adoption involves coercive control [00:53:00] from beginning to end.
And the other members of the group had not considered that, and now we're starting to receive feedback like, oh, yeah, I can absolutely see that because of how many adoptees are in the troubled teen industry. I can absolutely see that because I'm watching how when we do assessments for family placements, how the default is to just take the child away and give them to someone else.
And it just feels like a tremendous privilege to be able to participate in that space and hopefully, again, shift the narrative so that people understand that this is a failed experiment.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. I look forward to seeing what comes out of that. It sounds like that's, talking about [00:54:00] shifting the narrative.
That's a big piece of it. Thank you so much, Ande, for coming on and sharing some of your story with us. And thank you for your work and how you're supporting the adoptee community. Where can people find your show and connect with you online?
Ande Stanley: As I said, I'm not a huge fan of computers. They intimidate me.
So I can be found at the Adoption Files podcast. It's hosted on Spotify, Apple, Amazon. I was so excited when Audible accepted it because I'm a huge Audible Books fan. And then I have a Facebook page called the Adoption Files. oh, WordPress. I have my old blog posts and my podcast are also on WordPress under the adoption files.
Haley Radke: Perfect. We will link to all of those things in the show notes so people can find you [00:55:00] and listen to your show. Thank you.
Ande Stanley: Thank you so much for having me and thank you for everything that you do and for everything that you continue to do.
Haley Radke: I just feel such a sense of gratitude whenever I talk to someone who has made a great effort to give back and to serve the adoptee community in some way.
And, there is always a time when it's our time to come and receive things from community, especially when you're new in community and you're exploring this and you're the one asking the questions and taking advice from people and taking. So to be the receiver, and I know that I have been a receiver of wisdom for many years from folks.
And I feel so thankful that [00:56:00] they're willing to share that. And then to see the receivers become the givers and leaders in community is so amazing. Because what would we have done if there wasn't anyone who went before us to give that info? And the more adoptees that come of age and are finding out like, oh my gosh, there's more adoptees out there and they're finding our podcasts or community from whatever, Instagram or Tik Tok, the more of us they need giving back in this way, the more blogs we need, the more social accounts we need, sharing about our experiences. So thank you for all of you who are willing to do that and be givers of information and sharing sharers. I was going to say, as we as your time in the adoptee community evolves, right? It's pretty [00:57:00] special if you can give back in that way.
So thank you so much, Ande, for what you're doing. I really appreciate it. And I know you're representative of many who have been moderating Facebook groups and starting their own podcasts or blogs or TikTok accounts or whatever it may be. Thank you so much for listening. We are going to have two more episodes in August.
We're going to have a two parter with one of my favorite people coming up in a couple weeks here. So let's talk again very soon.
