291 Kae Wangare Leonard
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/291
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today, we welcome Kae Wangare Leonard to the show. Kay is a writer, athlete, an artist born and adopted in Kenya by white Americans. She shares some of her story with us, including what does home mean when you've lived in multiple countries.
We discuss what it means to be an adoption abolitionist, and we have a little disagreement whether Kae's art, poetry, and prose is therapeutic or not. Just a quick trigger warning, we do mention and describe self harm during the course of our conversation. Before we get started, I want to [00:01:00] personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com./community, which helps support you and the show to support more adoptees around the world. Kae and I wrap up today with some recommended resources for you. And as always links to everything we'll talk about are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Kae Wangare Leonard. Welcome Kae.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: Such an honor. I'd love it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.
Kae Wangare Leonard: I am a Kenyan American adoptee. I was born in Nairobi, Kenya. And I lived the first couple months of my life in an orphanage. And then I was adopted into a family who had already adopted one other Kenyan child from the same orphanage. So it's just me and my sister. She is six months older than me. We are not [00:02:00] biological. And she was adopted, I think six months before I was. And my family lived in Kenya until I was four.
And then we moved back to the U. S. for seven years. So I did all of my grade school there. And then when I was 11, I moved back to Kenya for middle and high school. And after I graduated high school I went out to Oregon for a year and then I bounced around the East Coast and back and forth to Kenya a little bit. And now I live in the UK. I live in Brighton.
Haley Radke: This is an unusual story. So are you comfortable sharing a little bit about like why your parents were in Kenya and why the back and forth? I'm curious.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Both of my parents are Mennonite, actually. They grew up in Lancaster ish area, Pennsylvania. Grew up Mennonite.
Went to Harrisonburg, Virginia for university at Eastern Mennonite University. And then when they're both [00:03:00] teachers, so after they graduated college, and they could not have biological children, they started looking for different opportunities to teach elsewhere. They applied to a school in remote Alaska, they applied to school in Kenya and then they decided on the school in Kenya.
The school in Kenya is a Christian American education school, and it is owned and run by the Assemblies of God, Southern Baptists, and Mennonites. They went to Kenya and during that time in 1999, in and around there, there was an orphanage that a lot of people from the community would go to, to adopt children.
So I actually know, I think around 17 children adopted from that orphanage, actually same orphanage as me. And my parents, yeah, I picked out my sister and then six months later or so, picked out me from the orphanage as they did, like in the, as their friend group and as the community did during that time. And then [00:04:00] I had very severe allergies and asthma, was in and out of the hospital a lot with asthma.
So to get me medical help, the treatments in Kenya weren't suitable, especially for pediatric care. So we moved to Virginia so I could see some specialists and I did allergy and asthma treatment for seven years. Until I was able to breathe again, basically and such. And then, once the doctors gave the okay, then my parents decided to move us back to Kenya.
So we could reconnect with our culture a little bit more. So they went back to Kenya to teach at the school that they had taught at. When they had adopted me and my sister, and then we stayed there for seven years.
Haley Radke: Okay. I think you're uniquely suited to answer one of these questions that I think a lot of people throw at adoptees, who are like if we're going to abolish adoption, then what about all these kids languishing in orphanages? [00:05:00] So I'm sure you've thought about that a lot in your lifetime, and other kids adopted out of the orphanage. Were you able to ever visit the orphanage? Was it a part of the school? Was it around when you were living there? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah, when we lived in Kenya, we would go to the orphanage at least once a year. Back, I think, in the early 2000s when I was like four or younger. I think it was a lot easier to get there, traffic wise and such but as Nairobi has kept growing, it's a little bit harder to get there, but it's still very possible. Every time I'm back in Kenya, I also go to the orphanage.
I've been back as well with some of my other friends who were adopted from the orphanage. So we've all been back together. Not all of us, but some of us have been back together at the same orphanage. And then last time I went was I went on my birthday last year in 2023. And then I think I went in April as well, [00:06:00] back to the orphanage.
And yeah it's always been a very interesting. Very interesting, I think like pretty emotional experience when I go. I also think you don't always emotionally process. I just shove it in the back of a corner of my mind usually, when I go when sometimes I take some of my friends with me we volunteer we help feed the children we help do some of the laundry that kind of work. And then last time I went I was getting a tour of the place and then I talked to one of the social workers and a couple people have been there since the orphanage opened, so some of the workers and nurses and directors actually remember me.
On my birthday, I met the person who had driven me from the hospital to the orphanage when I was younger, because I think when I was like admitted to the hospital when I was an infant, I was four pounds. And so the person who ended up taking me when I was discharged from the hospital to the orphanage [00:07:00] happened to be there that day on my birthday.
So I ended up meeting him and a couple other workers. They have a mural at the orphanage with pictures of children's faces cut out and glued onto this mural, and it's suns and moons and caterpillars, rocks, flowers, along with the names that we had in the orphanage. They did it for one or two years only.
I can recognize, I think, at least 10 names on there, generally, maybe a bit more, this wall of faces, and I can see little me and some of my other friends, and yeah, that's usually my routine when I go back.
Haley Radke: What's it like for you to think about abolishing adoption and knowing I don't want to make an assumption, what would happen to kids who might stay in the orphanage for longer if they weren't adopted?
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah. I think that's a hard one. And I think that, but I also think that comes with [00:08:00] understanding maybe a little bit more of what abolishing adoption like can look like as it can be like, hundreds of different solutions. And so instead of just like in my mind when I think about the abolition of adoption, it's a lot about family preservation and supporting families and supporting communities to take care of kids and how can we actually care for our kids and also avoid displacement.
And when I was talking to people at the orphanage and talking about different Kenya adoption laws to just one of the social workers, a lot of it was asking, like, how, what's the process these days in finding biological families for these infants? Because back when I was abandoned, when I was adopted.
They did not have solid records family reunification is very hard near impossible. And so then the question becomes now so what do we do now? How can we better keep track of where children come [00:09:00] from? Where children can return to? And then what are the reasons why children are in orphanages?
So if it's a matter of supporting families or getting people out of unsafe situations so that they can parent better, or if it's a matter of like housing or job security or all of these other, different policy failures, how can we change policies? How can we stop systemically failing our families for them, like for the children who do quote unquote need to be in an orphage or be separated from their biological families for safety reasons, for health reasons, for any of these other reasons? Then it's just a matter of like, how can we keep them in community? How can we take responsibility and honor in protecting, keeping our children safe, raising our children as community members and as people that take pride in our culture and passing it down as well.[00:10:00]
Haley Radke: What's the culture like in Kenya for adoption? Is it more kinship care? What sort of I know international adoption from Kenya has been fraught and it's unusual. So I think it's because your parents lived there for a while, right? That they were able to adopt you. Is that right?
Kae Wangare Leonard: I think laws like changed in 2016, 2017, maybe something like that, where international adoptions, they started banning them a little bit more and tightening legislation around international adoption. But back then it was very common, or pretty common.
Haley Radke: Okay, so what does, what's the public sentiment regards to adoption in Kenya?
Kae Wangare Leonard: I don't want to speak too much on that as I am I'm still learning. I'm still trying to get a grasp on public sentiment on adoption in Kenya. [00:11:00] When I was back in Kenya, back in 2023, I was working on, I'm working on another book and I was asking people around and asking people who worked at the orphanage and such and I think that so many places that you go on globally, kinship care when it comes to Indigenous cultures is a common practice.
And Kenya has many indigenous folks to the land, to the area, and so kinship care and community care is definitely something that does happen, and that happens quite a bit in Kenya. And yeah, I think it's always been interesting, at least for me and my story, in interacting with people and letting them know that I'm adopted and hearing their varied responses.
Because a lot of times I'll get the, oh, you're so lucky, but then there's a whole aspect of you're, you've been removed from us. You're not us anymore. So that's been something I've been trying to navigate whenever I go back [00:12:00] and
Haley Radke: Sorry, can you say more about that? Kenyan people would say that to you? That you're, you don't belong here.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah, I get that. I get that some from people. And I think it doesn't does not help that I don't speak Swahili. I'm working on it, though. I am working on it.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Kae Wangare Leonard: But there is an aspect of displacement that comes with adoption. And even though I lived in Kenya, then being raised by my family, who is they're white Americans, they're Mennonite, and then being in the international community that I that I went to school in as well.
Yeah, it's, at least for me, there's a one step removed, if not a couple more steps removed. And when I was younger, I wasn't prepared to move back to Kenya when I was 11. I did not want to move back. I thought that the whole country had rejected and abandoned me. And I did not know what to do with those feelings, with those thoughts.
And I didn't speak Swahili. And it was like, why would I [00:13:00] go back to a country that doesn't want anything to do with me? And so it was tough when I was 11 going back, and I didn't really start making an effort to try to understand my culture a little bit more until honestly, probably until kind of high school ish, and then probably until I started getting some more friends in Kenya, but it's tough.
It's tough when you're adopted and when you receive a lot of sentiment that you're lucky to not be it was sometimes positioned as an us versus them you've been saved from this population of people and brought to this like white, American, Christian, raising and growing up in, and that's considered you've been saved, you've been lucky, you've been chosen.
And that, that, that can be tough to navigate, tough to know how to deal with those messages, tough to figure out how to still reconnect with your people [00:14:00] when you're actively being told that you're somewhat better off without your people. I might not be making linear sense. Apologies for that but yeah, it's it's confusing.
It's confusing for an 11 year old. It's 12 year old 13 year old and still i'm 24 now. And it is still what do you do with all of these feelings and what do you do with the rejections that you deal with and with stepping into an Uber and then being told, Oh, you look Kenyan, but you're not really Kenyan because you've been Americanized.
Or, then there's that, but then there's other people who will call me by my Kenyan name, Wangare, and will tell me, we're calling you Wangare because we want you to remember what it's like to come home. And there's people in my life who specifically Kenyans in my life, who only call me Wangare, or really work with me on let's learn this about our our culture, and let's teach you these words, and let's help you integrate in these and these ways back home.
I think it's just tough. It's, it really is. There, there's always that grief of what did [00:15:00] I miss and what don't I know and why are these gaps here? Who's going to accept me? Who's going to reject me again? How do I deal with other rejection or what do I do with this acceptance when I still am one, one, two, three steps removed from really understanding?
Haley Radke: You said the word home a couple of times and I wonder what that word means to you as someone who's moved around quite a bit, especially in your young adult years, I'll say young adult, listen, I'm in my 40s now. So you're still young adult to me.
Kae Wangare Leonard: That's a hard one. It's always been a hard one. What home is to me. So I think if you would have asked me, when it was three, four, five, six years old, I would have said home is Kenya. And that's what I knew. And I knew Swahili up until, I think probably the age of four or five. And Kenya was very much home. And then I got used to the U. [00:16:00] S. And I started riding horses in the U. S. I started playing football soccer. And I was playing basketball, was very involved within all of that. And that was very much the I don't know any different, and I wanna continue seeing what my life looks like in this other home after I've been removed and, yeah, removed from my Kenya home.
And so going back to Kenya, so many people would tell me that it's a homecoming, it's a returning. And I don't know if I ever really felt that until adulthood. I think it was always oh, this is. It became my other home in a sense, but it never really was like a, oh, it's a pilgrimage or, oh, it's a homecoming until I was 19, 20 or so.
It just happened to be like another place that I live, another place that I call home, same with Virginia. And then these days, like, when I think about [00:17:00] going to Kenya, it very much is a homecoming. That's such a tough question. What a home means to me.
Haley Radke: You're international, right? You live in, you're living in England now.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Do you hope to have a permanent address somewhere? Do you want to live in Kenya later on? Do you have goals or dreams of going back there? Do you want to live in the U. S.? Do you know? Or do you just, are you cool with just playing it as it comes.
Kae Wangare Leonard: I think so. I've, so I've moved maybe close to 16 times in the past five, six years now.
Haley Radke: What? Oh my goodness.
Kae Wangare Leonard: And I still have two more years left of my degree here. We'll see how this, the next one, two years goes. I do dream of playing for the Kenya national team for football. So that is definitely a goal of mine. Would love to play professional football somewhere. It really is like wherever football can take me.
I don't necessarily see myself [00:18:00] as having like a house somewhere that I live like all 12 months of the year all around. Maybe that'll come when I'm in like my 30s or 40s, who knows? But yeah, I just I'm not 100 percent sure. I think it will depend on football quite a bit. And then, yeah, I can write anywhere. So it'll just depend on football.
Haley Radke: Is that what you're taking? Is, are you taking English or?
Kae Wangare Leonard: I'm doing anthropology.
Haley Radke: Oh, okay.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yes. So the study of humans. I am loving it. I, a lot of people thought I was going to do creative writing or English, and I did not really want to get burned out in that aspect.
I think before. Before my arm was disabled when I was 17, I was going to go to art school. That's what I wanted to do. And then a lot of things shifted. And now I'm doing anthropology. And I want to have a focus to be able to use anthropological findings, whether or not that be my own research or other people's research [00:19:00] to bring into creative writing projects to be able to create, if not writing multimedia pieces for it.
Haley Radke: Okay, cool. Are you comfortable about talking about your disability and how that came to be? It's totally cool if you don't want to talk about that. And also, I'm so curious about how your art has evolved since then. I've seen some very cool videos of you painting in an unorthodox way.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yes absolutely. Yeah I Severed my radial nerve in my right arm and ended up pretty much paralyzing my right arm from just above the elbow, and this was my dominant arm as well.
I was put on some antidepressants and they lowered my inhibitions and I was dealing with some other shoulder pain from basketball and wasn't sleeping either. And so one night [00:20:00] I thought, if I just give myself pain somewhere else, I won't think about my shoulder, I'll just be able to go to sleep. I ended up stabbing myself in the arm with a knife at midnight.
Accidentally severed my radial nerve. Didn't know where my nerves were in my arm, nothing like that. And ended up having to have surgery the next weekend. For it. I had complete wrist drop, lost the use of my thumb, middle finger, and pointer finger in my dominant arm, and I was at AP Art Studio at the time.
Some art teacher had a talk with me and said, if you need to drop the class, nobody's going to blame you, but if you are going to continue, then you need to learn how to create art with your other hand. So we had maybe three months or so to work on doing art with my non dominant hand learned how to do that.
I was doing everything one handed with my left hand at the time, and then finished my art year with my left hand got overuse injuries in my left hand. My right hand [00:21:00] was, I was slowly starting to regain function, but it has never come back 100 percent fully, and so both of my hands don't work properly, and I took about a year or so off, thinking if I just give them some rest, some time off art, it'll be better, and they never improved.
So I took another couple of years off, upset about it all. And I finally decided I was going to create art by any means I could. So I put a paintbrush between my feet, between my toes and I got to work. So I paint with my mouth and my toes now.
Haley Radke: Do you do that as a relaxation? Is it more, I'm focused on creating art?
I know a lot of adoptees who use art as a part of a healing modality for them. They're getting the feelings out. It's like a physical expression of, unsaid things that we have in our body. What is it for you, Kae?
Kae Wangare Leonard: I think I use [00:22:00] art to story tell whether that be, visual art, or whether that be writing. I don't necessarily think of my writing or my art as therapeutic in any sense, really.
But the the process of thinking through what I want to what I want to convey, and then how I want to convey it, and the intentions in which I have behind it, and the thoughts that I put into my work. I think I take a lot of pride in that. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say it's necessarily therapeutic or anything like that for me, but it is a way for me to think through some things. And maybe a way for me to draw out some things that I might need to go to therapy about.
But unless I'm doing like a really quick sketch or a really quick little piece, which I don't do as much right now, generally, I'm doing like bigger pieces and bigger meaning pieces or just like heavier meaning pieces as [00:23:00] well.
Haley Radke: I saw that you really love sunflowers. That's my favorite flower all time.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yes.
Haley Radke: And we also have another thing in common. I grew up in a very small Mennonite town. So when you say Mennonite, like I get it.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit about if you're comfortable. What it was like to grow up in a fairly religious environment and where you are today. You addressed some of that in some of your writing. And I know it's complicated. A lot of us were adopted into Christian families with a sense of social justice in some way. And it, it can leave some woundedness in our thoughts about God and those kinds of things.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah. I think complicated is I think that summarizes I think a lot of my thoughts around religion, adoption, growing up in religious communities with adoption.
[00:24:00] I feel like I was taught and when I say taught, like maybe not directly from my parents, but also by from communities and such that like adoption was God's plan, or it was or was a straightforward like there was a biblical answer or there was a saving or there was like a, oh you're better off this way, or at least you're adopted into a community of what they like believers, which, when I think about that word, I'm like, believers in what, and
my family, so my family was more, was and is, or my immediate family at least, was and is more liberal Mennonites, like not as like old order Mennonites. In a lot of ways, I grew up with like my parents on a ledge of do we let them wear leggings? Do we let them wear a skirt?
Like or like shorter skirts and we let them wear skinny jeans. Do we let them drink like there was all of that. And like with me and my [00:25:00] sister me and my sister were and are very different but like I would clubbing back when I was younger when I was in high school and like I was partying and I was doing what?
You know when my homework was done my parents wanted to at least know where I was, so I wasn't sneaking out and lying. I was about to do what I wanted to do. But the school that my parents taught at was an international Christian school, and I lived on campus at the school as well, so on the compound of the school.
And I think if you're not careful, that becomes your whole world. And that messaging, in the messaging for people who go to the school, who work at the school, the other teachers, the community can be sometimes all you've received in. And you consistently, I think, be told, you were given up because you were loved so much.
And then you were chosen because you were loved so much. And it aligns with God's plan and God's [00:26:00] teaching, or this is part of fixing the brokenness of the world. Or all of these different messages that you can receive to justify mother loss and abandonment. Instead of just letting people sit with the hurt and sit with the grief.
I think that was maybe some of the most confusing for me. And then I came out as queer. In so many ways. The abandonment trauma that I had from adoption sprung back up because I was then abandoned again by a lot of the community that welcomed me because of adoption and it was almost like a betrayal and sometimes was told to me was a betrayal of my parents and of God and of adoption and a like. You were saved from this and brought into this like white American family who are believers, but now [00:27:00] you want to like, go live a life of sin, and you don't want to like, whatever else I and I think that was hard for me to navigate and losing people that I loved and losing people that I thought really loved me because I came out.
That, that was hard. That brought up a lot of, I think, adoption trauma and wounds and abandonment trauma. These days, I say I'm a lot more spiritual than religious. I think the Bible can be used as a tool of liberation. Should be used as a tool of liberation. I don't think it's the only vessel for truth. I don't know if I'd call myself Christian or not, but I do think that there is a lot of beautiful theology and lessons and liberating theologies and lessons like we can get from the Bible if we choose to use it that way, but it's not necessarily all of my focus.
So I do enjoy taking lessons I've learned and I do enjoy taking what I [00:28:00] was taught to be true about God and God's love and God's welcomeness and doing poetry around that. And spicing things up a little bit and trying to use it to free myself more than to constrain myself. If any of that makes any sense.
Haley Radke: I think our spirituality or religion or whatever, however you want to categorize it, it's so deeply personal, right? And I think my question is because I'm curious about how adoption has impacted that part of our unpacking as adults. And when we're looking back on what impact adoption has had on our lives, It's interesting that it twists that up too, so as you mentioned, you came out as queer and I've asked this of many of my queer guests before, so, forgive the repeat, but I'm curious as a member of the queer community where so many folks [00:29:00] will automatically think of adoption as the first family building tool available to them. How you. Navigate that in queer spaces. And do you feel some kind of pressure to be like hold on a second. It's complicated. We can't just go straight there. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Kae Wangare Leonard: Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's, that's been a journey. Yeah, I think like for me, a lot of things come down to we're not entitled to have a child and what do we think family is?
I think it's like another one of my questions always, and are we being, like, child centered? Whose child are you trying to get? I think when I think about queerness, when I think about what queerness demands of me, and how queerness, for me is a way to figure out how to exist and how to love in this world, in other, in alter in alternative ways, [00:30:00] I also have to bring that into family structures.
So what have I been taught about family and what have I been taught about what family is? Correct, quote unquote, or not. And then how does that, how do I bring that into, the future and into my conversations with others and what have they been taught? Because if we're taught that family is just, okay, you get married and then you have kids.
Oh, of course people are going to be thinking about okay, then I guess maybe next step could be, could we adopt. We could be trying to do that as like family building. But to also recognize. Family could be your friends, could be chosen, could be who you love, you can mother in a, gender expansive way, mother in many different ways, you can mother the kids down the street, the kids you coach, the kids you teach you can parent and be a part of all of these kids lives in a way that could also be fulfilling for you in terms of what family is for you.
Where is that voice and that pressure saying that [00:31:00] you have to have a child that you like legally have that responsibility slash own is like, where is that coming from? And if it's not coming from like you and you're want of just It may be a biological connection or, I don't know, something internally or connection.
Then, how can you go against that? And, how can you find other ways in which you can parent? And then it is just a, okay, maybe you're dead set on the fact that, okay, we want a child in our lives that we're on their birth certificate and we've adopted them and whatnot. Then, what are ways in which we can do this in more harm reductive ways?
And ways in which are more child centered, ways in which we don't displace kids as much, ways in which we're not putting as much value and price tags. on kids lives and expectations [00:32:00] then, I think, is a lot of my follow up questions.
Haley Radke: Thank you. I didn't ask you this at the beginning but I I'm curious. You said that there's, not really a lot of paperwork from the time that you were put in the orphanage and those kinds of things. Do you have a desire to find out more about your biological family? I know lots of folks go right to, oh you can just DNA test, which is tricky and complicated, especially for adoptees from other countries.
And it's not, I think a lot of domestic adoptees like just put that as oh, that's easy. That makes everything so much easier, but it's not necessarily the case. Are you comfortable sharing a bit about that?
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah, no, I appreciate you mentioning, yeah, it's not as straightforward because I think Kenya is now having a database from what I've [00:33:00] heard maybe or trying to start a database of DNA or searching for reunification, but I have never put my DNA in there just because there's so little that I know and so little that I know about My biological family anything and yeah, for me, I don't see a point necessarily, at least for myself. I don't really think that it would be on that. I'll be able to find anybody and I think there's a large part of me that even if that was the case that I'll be able to find somebody. I don't know if I'd be ready, but I don't think I really, even when I was younger, I didn't necessarily have in my mind this dream of reunion or biological family or anything like that.
Even when I would daydream when I was younger or think about what things might be like, I'm not sure that it was ever really an option in my mind to think about biological family.
Haley Radke: [00:34:00] So growing up with a sister who's also adopted, did you guys ever talk about what it's like to be adopted? What it's like to be black in a white family? Going back and forth do you ever talk about those things?
Kae Wangare Leonard: I think we talk about it slightly more now that we're a little bit older. I don't, I wouldn't say that we were that close growing up either.
So I don't think we would talk about that much when we were younger. When we moved back to Kenya, we all, we got to know other adopted kids from our orphanage as well. And so I think sometimes we'd have those conversations separately with our other like friends who were adopted from the same orphanage as me. Yeah, I don't think that we really talked about it much growing up.
Haley Radke: And now your views and the things that you write about can bring up a lot of [00:35:00] very big topics. Does she read your writing? Does she have thoughts? Are you guys on? For a lot, I'm asking because so many of us come into adoptee consciousness at very different points in our lives, and want to examine those things, and lots of people don't and sometimes that can create the conflict or the divide, or come on, just get over it already, or whatever.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Yeah. I, we definitely have. My sister is, she's a lot more degreed than I am. And she is currently, she's currently going into law school. I do believe that she does believe in like adoption abolition as well. She's very intellectual about things too, so we come at things from maybe a different angle.
I'm sometimes more of a burn all this beep down and, you know, come in blazing, but my sister, I think is a lot more diplomatic when it comes to [00:36:00] things, maybe a little bit more reserved, but I also think at the end of the day, our politics are like a little bit more similar than people might think, but we also don't talk about it that, that much, but yeah, like she, she will back like a lot of what I'm saying. If she's asked, I would think. Maybe she'd listen to this episode and be like, that's not true. But I do think that yeah, she would agree with a lot of things.
Haley Radke: It's nice that you have some support there in your family. I'd love to talk about your writing and this came about I recommended your chapbook already on a previous episode just a couple of months ago when people hear this.
Going Unarmed Into the Wail, and you also have just such a beautiful book on your website that folks can read, Lightning on My Fingertips, and I was rereading it yesterday to prepare, and I just thought, [00:37:00] some of your writing, it's so raw and vulnerable and insightful, and I know a lot of adoptees will really connect to some of the ideas that you're sharing. And I was wondering, would you read something from your work for us?
Kae Wangare Leonard: Absolutely. Ah, thank you so much for all of those kind words. I'm going to read the poem, Going Unarmed Into the Wail. Poetry, prose, and I wrote this back in, I'm pretty sure this was back in 2023 when I had just booked my ticket to go back to Kenya again and I was going to be in Kenya for a couple months and I was trying to reckon with, what it might mean to try to go back to Kenya. And remember,
I grew up in a family of hunters, I've never touched a gun, yet I've been [00:38:00] perfecting killing all my life. That memory, they always tell me where I ran faster than anyone had seen for a kid at age four, dead. The recollection of that story when I wore rainbow knee socks with pink cowboy boots and a tie dye shirt and walked away from potential friends. Gone. Ages 5 through 11, killing doesn't have to be quick. It doesn't even need to be intentional. Sometimes you're just trying to survive. Sometimes you book tickets to your mother's country and realize your tongue has died in your mouth, but you're not sure when it happened. What does it mean if the closest my voice sounds to home is the wail I make when I think no one is listening?
What is home other than haunted? Haunted as in memory, as in hunted, as in the estranged noise in my throat as I try to call forth belonging. What do I name the gasp I make when I suck in air between the howls? Is that not also home? I know I exist in the clamor of [00:39:00] grief, but I think I can also fit in the relief of the release.
My therapist says trauma can leave you an unreliable narrator. She also says we can't always decide what stays and what goes. She says a lot of other things I try to pay attention to, but retaining knowledge is hard when you're struggling for air. I grew up in a family of hunters. I've never touched a gun, yet I've been perfecting killing all my life.
I sever language from the images that stumble their way by the place I go when my eyes close. Anything that hurts too badly I try to embrace. I haven't learned how to keep the good alive. I'm not sure I can decide how to make the joy stay. I scorched my earth. I'm nothing like my family who takes down deer in the forests of Pennsylvania and uses their kills to nurse us in the winters.
I'm more concerned with forgetting. I don't share my takedowns. There's no feast at the end of my [00:40:00] hunt. Only hollowness and a wail that reaches into the abyss, sounding something like I'm still here. My family adopted me from Kenya when I was eight months old. I think. There's nothing more traumatic than mother loss.
There's nothing more I'd like to pretend to forget. But some days when I'm not threatened by the magnitude of sorrow or the asked attention of anger, I wonder what it would be like to capture without killing, to have a path I don't run from. If home is a haunting and a haunting is memory and I am the hunter of memories, that doesn't keep my prey alive.
Will anything remain? God, I've done so much in the name of survival, but I'm trying to move beyond. I'm not sure if it's possible, but I bought myself a ticket, a chance, an invitation to stop making prey out of my memory and to try to leave home and return home. I'm going unarmed into the wail. Don't come [00:41:00] after me.
You aren't invited into my intimacy. Wait for me and the gasp for air. I will come back up. I will come back up. I will. Remember.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Oh my goodness. So powerful. I think this is such a great example for folks to hear from you. So I know they'll go out and pick up your book and read some more of your work on your website.
You also have a lot of art pieces on your website that are just really amazing. I don't know why. I love the self portrait. It's yeah, it's so good. Anyway, people have to go and look because this is audio.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Thank you. I just, I think for me, but with writing and art and so much of it feels like an unearthing feels like looking in the mirror and figuring out like what I can see, what I can discover. A lot of my work focuses on me [00:42:00] in my relation to like the outside world, but like. Centering myself first, hence I do a lot of portraiture, and I do a lot of talking about myself, my own story with mother loss, and with proclamation, and with what it means to, the homecoming, and return home.
I don't know. I think that there's so much that adoption takes from us, and especially when you don't have knowledge of where you came from and you don't always have the ability to gain that knowledge of biological family and lineage and histories. You gotta, you don't have to, but I have decided that instead of birthing children, instead of wanting more of a biological lineage, it's going to be my art and it's going to be my storytelling and it's going to be what I can pull out of myself while I'm alive here and now, that. That's what I'm going to, labor and birth into the world and leave it at that. [00:43:00] That's the closest I get to understanding.
Haley Radke: I'm, as you're saying that, I'm thinking back to you being like, yeah, no, it's not therapeutic. No. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Kae Wangare Leonard: I need to redefine therapeutic. I'll say in the sense of I think people think Yeah.
That I do work and it might make me feel better or feel maybe more healed or feel, I don't know, any kind of resolve or closure. And my work usually does the opposite of that. It's, I think it's tough when you're pointing towards wounds and when you're pointing towards loss and when you're pointing towards grief.
And especially when you're trying to acknowledge it yourself or when you share it with the outside world to also see if they also see, where it hurts. And I think in that sense, there's not, it's not necessarily a relieving experience for me because it's something that, that you bring up and you unearth and you relive.
And then on, even on the flip side when [00:44:00] you think about joy, or when I think about joy, when I write about love, when I write about happiness, there's also always a, this is great, and there's still, there's something still missing. And I don't know, on one hand I think that it is part of what the burden I carry, as with mother loss, and with adoption, and with trying to rebuild.
And oftentimes, it just leaves a lot more questions than any answers, and maybe that's the point of therapy. Maybe I've been doing therapy wrong my whole life. But, yeah, for me, it really is kind of excavation.
Haley Radke: I think you're getting more feelings out than you may imagine. I think it's maybe more beneficial than you may imagine if I'm to be prescriptive in some way. I'm not a therapist. Okay. What do you want to recommend to us today? Kae.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Today. I want to recommend We Are Holding This. We Are Holding This is [00:45:00] actually what I published my chapbook, my second book with, but We Are Holding This is like a media hub for adoption abolitionists, people that have been adopted, trafficked, impacted by these family policing systems.
Their website says, We are holding this as an invitation for people directly impacted by systems of family regulation, surveillance, and policing to gather our creative expressions and to know one another through the liberatory practice of independent publishing. As this space grows, it will feature zines, newspapers, manifestos, and other printed materials you can hold in your hands.
The only theme is abolition, and I think there's something so beautiful and something so comforting to not hold who we are and what we've been through and what we've been put through alone. And to be in spaces with other people [00:46:00] who also believe in the liberatory practice of abolition, and adoption abolition, and the and, fighting against family regulation, surveillance, and policing.
There's something so hopeful to know that you're not the only one who believes what you do and who holds hope and who works towards this future that we hope is that we hope is coming quick.
Haley Radke: Thank you, yeah, I love of course I ordered through there to get your chapbook and I know they've got a lot of awesome things happening over there so that's a great recommendation.
Thanks so much. Speaking of where can we find your work and connect with you online to see your art and read your beautiful writing.
Kae Wangare Leonard: You can find me on my website, https://www.karenwangareleonard.com/, and I also have a free [00:47:00] newsletter. It's supposed to be weekly. It is weekly ish. But I have a free newsletter that comes to your inbox.
And that is the most consistent writing I am doing right now. I also can be found on Instagram @karenwangareleonard and I do put stuff out on my Instagram. A little bit less so now that I am working on other writing projects and I'm in school and in my football season, but I am able to be connected with people through there as well. Those are my two main.
Haley Radke: Perfect. Thank you. I look forward to seeing more football soccer videos, too. We didn't even talk about your athletics. Thank you so much, Kae, for talking with me today, sharing some of your story and your wisdom with us. I really appreciate it.
Kae Wangare Leonard: Thank you so much for having me and yeah, for reaching out for inviting me.
Hope that my, my ramblings made some sense [00:48:00] and, ha! And just thank you for the work that you do. And the work that you do with connecting adoptees together and bringing us into this space and knowing each other some more. Very vital, very receiving.
Haley Radke: Thank you.
If you're listening in real time when this episode gets posted, you'll know it's cold and flu season. Classic. Haley's sick again. I've been so sick. So apologies for the voice. I'm sure my editor took away all kinds of things that would have made it harder to listen to me. But so thank you so much, Jen.
I loved my conversation with Kae. And such an unusual story to be in and out of your country of origin and I love the dynamics of how she writes about that in her poetry and prose. So [00:49:00] I hope you'll grab her chapbook and check out her website and newsletter. Thank you so much for listening and let's talk again soon.
