29 [S2 E8] Mariette - A Restless Heart
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/29
Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 2, Episode 8: “Mariette.” I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I get to welcome Mariette Williams to the show. Mariette tells us about her experiences as a Haitian adoptee growing up in Vancouver, Canada, and finding out that her adoption was non-consensual.
We touch on some things that transracial adoptees may struggle with, and Mariette gives us her perspective on adoption reform. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome Mariette Williams to Adoptees On. Thanks for agreeing to share your story with us, Mariette.
Mariette Williams: I'm so happy to be here.
Haley Radke: Awesome. Would you mind just starting out with that? Just tell us a little bit about your adoption journey.
Mariette Williams: I was adopted at the age of three and I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. My parents actually adopted four other children besides myself.
There were actually five of us who grew up together in Vancouver. I moved to Florida for college and then at the age of 32, I decided to start looking for my mom. I went back to Haiti in 2014 and I actually found my birth mother. So it's been a crazy, crazy journey. And I was happy to be able to get closure through that trip, but the path to get there was really crazy.
Haley Radke: Okay. So how do you search in Haiti when you were in Florida at that time?
Mariette Williams: I was in Florida and I knew the name of the town that I was born in. And so I, it was honestly just so random, I was on Facebook and I just searched the name of the town and they have a Facebook group for whatever reason.
So I reached out to the moderator of the Facebook group and I told him my story and I said, I'm looking for my family. This is my name. This is when I was born. This is my information.
And within a week he was able to get back to me and he said, I know someone who knows your family, they've been looking for you. And then things went very quickly after that and within a couple weeks I was talking on the phone with my mom.
Haley Radke: Wow. So what was that like? What was your first conversation like?
Mariette Williams: We had to speak through a translator because she speaks Creole and I don't, so I had someone on the phone with me and I was asking her questions, and I just couldn't believe it. She was asking me some questions, asking if I was married, asking about my children.
So it was honestly just very surreal. First of all, she didn't know where I was. The adoption, my adoption wasn't consensual. So the person who had arranged my adoption, my mother really had no idea that I was being adopted out. So she didn't know if I was in Miami or if I was taken to the Dominican Republic.
She had no idea that I was in Canada being raised by another family. So one of the first things was she just wanted to know where I was, if I was okay.
Haley Radke: She didn't know you were adopted?
Mariette Williams: No, she did not know. And it actually happens quite a lot in Haiti. She had not signed any papers. She didn't know that I was adopted out.
So this entire time my family has been wondering where I was. They did not know that I was adopted.
Haley Radke: So how did that happen? You were just three, you said.
Mariette Williams: Yeah, I was three. Basically what happened is that my mom trusted a woman who would go around and promise families that she would take care of the children.
And at the time, my parents had several children. The youngest three were girls. And my mom had known this lady. She actually was like my godmother. She ran an orphanage and she basically pressed my mom saying, I will get them a sponsor. I'll be able to send them to school. You can send them to live with me.
But adoption was never the plan. It was that we were going to live with this woman in order for her to get us into school. But the entire time the woman was basically arranging adoptions for the children who are living in this orphanage. My mom, she told me when I went to Haiti to meet her that she would go to the orphanage. I was still breastfeeding at the age of three. She would go, she would breastfeed me, she would bring us fruit and she would visit us. And then, the last time that she had come back to visit us, this woman was gone and I was gone as well. So she took my sisters back home with her. And I had been missing this entire time.
So my parents went on to have another child after me. I'm not the youngest of the family. I have one sister who's younger than me who I met when I went back to Haiti. Adoption was never their plan.
Haley Radke: Oh, I'm so sorry. How did you feel when you learned that? That's shocking.
Mariette Williams: It is. It's funny, because I'm actually in the middle of writing a memoir.
I'm writing this all down because I get the same reaction whenever I tell people in my story. They're just like, that is crazy. It's just, it's amazing that you were able to find your mom. It's amazing that you were able to find your family. I have processed it, but at the time I was in disbelief. I was angry.
There's a lot of emotions, but it's been a while now. It's been two years, so I've been able to work through it. But yeah, I think when you have been told something your entire life and then all of a sudden you find out that the one thing that you knew about yourself, because as an adoptee you grew up not knowing much about yourself.
So the one thing I knew about myself was really that my family was poor, which they are. I knew my whole life growing up that my mom had given me up for a better life, and then all of a sudden you find out that's not true. That was never her plan. She never wanted to relinquish me.
It really shakes you because it's the only thing you really know about yourself, and then you find that thing is untrue. So it was difficult. It was.
Haley Radke: And your adoptive parents obviously didn't know this. How did they take the news that this unethical adoption practice is what happened?
Mariette Williams: So much time had passed. I think my mom said that she knew something was a little bit fishy because when she had gone down to Haiti, she was only supposed to be there for a week. She was supposed to go down, she was supposed to get my visa and we were supposed to leave. But she had actually ended up staying for a month because she said everything was a mess.
She was just like, the paperwork wasn't ready. She could just tell that things were just not what they were supposed to be. But in the back of her mind she was like, I just wanted to get you out of there. She was like, I knew things weren't on the up and up. But she doesn't speak Creole, so she also was in the dark with everything.
So her mind was just like, get her out of there and then we'll figure things out later. But, yeah, she said when she was there she knew that something was wrong.
Haley Radke: And she's maybe thinking Haiti's got some messed up practices here, but not thinking that you've been taken. Oh my goodness. Okay. Wow.
Okay, so you said you went to Haiti to meet your family. How much after your first phone call was that?
Mariette Williams: Okay, so I went back to Haiti in 2015. Yes. I went back to Haiti in 2015, I found my family in 2014. An entire year passed between me actually going down there just because of logistics. My passport had expired and I had to renew my passport, so I didn't actually go down for a year.
But within that year I was talking back and forth with my family. My brothers and my sisters, we mostly talk on WhatsApp. And it's funny because I took French in high school. Growing up in Canada, I took French. Haitians speak French and Creole.
So we have a language in common that we can both speak. So it's funny, we communicate mostly in French because I can understand French and kind of speak it and they can kind of speak it as well. So it's the common language that we can communicate in.
Haley Radke: Oh, that's so neat. But your biological mother doesn't speak French, right? She speaks Creole?
Mariette Williams: Most Haitians understand a little bit of French, but she mostly speaks Creole.
Haley Radke: Okay. So you go to Haiti and you have a translator with you. How does that trip go?
Mariette Williams: Yes, there was a story that the Associated Press had produced. It was about adoptions in Haiti, and so everyone sent me this article. They're like, Oh, you have to read this. You have to read this. And I was like, wow.
It's interesting because they were basically saying that they're changing the way adoptions are done in Haiti. They're lengthening the time, parents have a certain amount of time to change their minds after they've signed papers.
There's certain regulations that are in place that weren't in place in the eighties. And so I actually reached out to the reporters and I was like, I read the story. I was like, I actually found my family, and I'm going back to Haiti sometime. I would love for you to cover the story because it relates to what you're talking about.
So I actually went back and forth with this reporter for a few weeks and he was able to get the trip approved. So I actually went back to Haiti with the Associated Press and that's how they covered my story.
Haley Radke: And how was the trip? This is obviously an emotional trip back to your country of origin, and then you also have someone watching. That sounds really emotional.
Mariette Williams: This was my third time back to Haiti, so I had been back before. But it was funny that I was by myself. When I went on this trip to meet my family, my husband stayed home with my children. It didn't work out for him to be able to come.
So I was really by myself on this trip, which was, I think, a good thing because I was able to, I know it sounds crazy, but I was able to just go through things myself and like I didn't have someone watching for a certain reaction or being like, are you okay? Are you okay?
The reporter really was respectful of space. I was staying at a guest house and so when I was by myself, I was able to just be by myself, which is what I think I needed.
Haley Radke: Are there any special moments from the trip that you remember?
Mariette Williams: I had a translator with us and I was able to ask my mom about my birthday because my birthday has always been a guesstimate, like I've never really known. And so she confirmed my birthday, which was April 20th. She confirmed what day I was born. She said I was born on a Monday.
So I think for an adoptee, never knowing those details and then actually sitting in front of your mother and her telling that to you. I think for me that was one of the most special things.
Haley Radke: And how many siblings do you have? Bio siblings?
Mariette Williams: In Haiti, I have seven siblings. I have one who is younger and then I also have older ones, so it's a very big family.
Haley Radke: Wow. Did you get to meet all of them at once?
Mariette Williams: I did not. I met two of my sisters and two of my brothers, and then my other family members are scattered.
Haley Radke: I have seen the article that was written about your reunion and I saw that you had also written another response to that. The media can really blow things out of proportion and be slanted.
Anyway, can you comment a little bit about what it was like to have the media cover your story and just your thoughts on how it affected your trip?
You said [the reporter] was standing back, but when you came back and saw the story he had written, your feelings on that?
Mariette Williams: I was a little surprised at the story. First of all, I was grateful that he did accompany me to Haiti. I don't think I would've been able to do the trip completely by myself.
I was grateful that he was there. I have some really cool moments that he captured on camera, so that was really cool. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I was by myself. So I was grateful that he was there, but I feel like there might have been a story that he wanted to capture, maybe his editors wanted him to capture, before he even left.
And so it was like he had the story in mind of what he wanted to tell, then he just filled in the blanks and some parts of the story just weren't accurate at all. So that really disappointed me. And then when the story actually went out, it was funny, because he said, don't read the comments on Yahoo.
He said, people, for whatever reason, Yahoo commenters are just nasty. And I was like, oh, whatever. So I woke up, the day after Thanksgiving when the story first came out and some people were tweeting me. And one of the links, the first link that they tweeted was to the Yahoo site.
So I clicked on it, read the whole article. I was like, Oh, wow. And then I read the comments. The comments were really, really brutal, like he said, but they called me all kinds of names, you know, just ungrateful. There were all types of things they were saying about me. So that took a little while to get over.
I had lots of people on Facebook, people I hadn't talked to in years, emailing me like, Oh, I saw the story. It was in our local paper, the Sunset Note down here. It was in The Atlantic. It was everywhere. All of a sudden I was just bombarded. And so I just turned my phone off and said, I can't do this right now.
But, like I said, I'm grateful that my story was told. I wish that a few things would've been done differently with the story, but I definitely learned my lesson. It definitely toughened me up. I have really thick skin now for anything that's done online or said online.
A lot of these people wouldn't say these things to your face, but I think people just feel emboldened when they're behind a keyboard.
Haley Radke: Oh, definitely. Do you have any advice for other adoptees who've gone through a public reunion in some fashion?
