294 [Healing Series] IFS for Adoptees with Kathy Mackechney
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/294
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. I can't wait to introduce you to today's guest. We're doing kind of a hybrid healing series episode with adoptee and adoptee therapist, Kathy Mackechney. Kathy shares part of her story with us, including how she was prepared for rejection during her reunions, but was instead surprised by eager acceptance.
Getting into the therapy of it all. Kathy is an Internal Family Systems practitioner and has developed the idea that not all of our parts get adopted. We unpack what that means, including what I think is quite a joyful idea that somewhere inside [00:01:00] us, we can access who we may have been had we not been separated from our original families.
Kathy is one of the first, if not the first, adoptee therapists to have an entire chapter published in a clinical text that focuses on how to work with adoptees. It is literally the chapter we should assign our therapists to read. Before we get started, I want to invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.
We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptee on Kathy Mackechney. Hi Kathy.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Hi, Haley. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: I'm so excited to finally talk to you. I'd love [00:02:00] it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Sure. I will just start at the beginning. I have always known that I was relinquished and adopted. My adoptive parents started telling me that before I even knew what those words meant.
And there was. A book. It's a really old book. I think it might be called The Family of Adoption, but I'm not sure. I still have it on a bookshelf somewhere. Really old book. This was the baby scoop era. 1968. They had this book that they read to me, and I remember actually sitting on this green vinyl couch in my parents home hearing this story and I guess I would say now wondering exactly what that meant.
Like hearing the words and [00:03:00] taking it in but not fully getting it. Joined this family. My parents have, my adoptive parents have two sons who are, they're biological sons, and they are eight and nine years older than me. Actually, one of them died a couple of years ago, so I have one remaining brother, but my parents tried for several years after my brothers were born to get pregnant again and were unable to do so and my mom really wanted a girl and yeah, common story. And my parents knew some people who had adopted and because they knew people, other people who had done it, they felt comfortable with the idea of it. So they decided to pursue adoption and being white professionals, I think that was easy for them.
So they adopted [00:04:00] me through the state of Oklahoma. And I was plopped into this family. We didn't talk about it growing up because at that time, when my parents adopted, they were instructed, as I think all adoptive parents were then, to tell me, and then just, treat me like they treated my brothers and act like I had come into the family the same way, so we didn't talk about it, and then I went to college, and in my freshman year of college, I was in this orientation class, this freshman orientation class, and I had an assignment to write a personal essay.
And seemingly out of nowhere, I mean we know these things don't come from nowhere, but seemingly out of nowhere, I suddenly was writing about having been adopted. And so I went to my mom with some questions and [00:05:00] she told me again what she knew, which was just the non identifying information that my parents had been given about my original parents heights and weights and religious preferences and hair color and I think that was it.
So I wrote my paper, turned it in, we didn't talk about it again. And then fast forward several years, and I had gotten my undergraduate degree in journalism, and I was working at a media relations agency, and I discovered that my boss had also been adopted. So she was a woman about my age, And she was pregnant with her second child and I don't even remember how it came up, but I learned that she had been adopted and that she had decided to do a search when she was pregnant with her first child, which we know is a common time for women to [00:06:00] decide to search for female adoptees to decide to search.
And she asked me if I had ever thought about that. And at that time, I was still in the fog. And I said, no, I know who my parents are and that was that, but I would say it was around that same time or shortly after that, that I started exploring adoption related issues in therapy. And I, I don't know how I learned about The Primal Wound, but that was one of the first books that I heard of and I read that and I read a couple of Betty Jean Lifton's books, Journey of the Adopted Self and Lost and Found, and I was starting to explore the impact on me.
And when I read The Primal Wound, I was like oh yeah I just, it was as though I could, point at page, at what was written on page after page and [00:07:00] say, yeah that's my experience. And, I started thinking somewhere in that same timeframe, so I was in my late 20s, I was thinking about turning 30, I was thinking about what I was doing at that time, friends of mine were having children, my first husband and I were, considering when we might do that, if we did that.
And I was also thinking about, like I said, what I was doing career wise and what else I might like to do. And I started thinking that I might like to become a therapist and I, this was coming partly from my experiences in therapy where I was having to educate my therapist. So I'd started [00:08:00] exploring these issues, I'd done that reading and I was going to therapy to talk about it and none of my therapists got it.
None of them had done any of that reading. None of them were familiar with it. Common issues for people who are adopted. And so I was having to educate them and I thought adoptees need someone who gets it. And I would, I had already been thinking about going back to school and getting a degree in social work and becoming a therapist.
So I decided before I spent all that money on grad school that I wanted to make sure that was going to be a good fit for me. Which is really typical of me as a result of how my brain works to take this very rational approach. And so I went to career counseling and I met this woman, Sandy, who is a psychologist who did testing [00:09:00] so she could administer all the tests for career counseling.
And through that process of meeting with her and doing the testing and learning, yes, it would be a good fit for me to be a therapist or any kind of helping professional. I also figured out that for me to know what I really wanted to do, what I most wanted to do, I needed to know who I fully am. And for me, that meant finding the pieces, the missing pieces and the missing people from the beginning of my life.
So I searched, I did a search. I started it in the summer. And I think this is so interesting. Nine months later. The gestation period later, I had the information that allowed me to send a letter at that time, a letter to my birth mom. [00:10:00] And I had prepared mySelf for every possible worst case scenario, like that she would be dead. She would be incarcerated. She wouldn't want to hear from me. Every possible form of rejection of some sort. And when I did not hear from her for weeks and weeks. I don't know how many weeks went by, a few months went by. I was prepared for that. I thought, okay. And then, one day, I think I started my search in August, and then one day the following June, the phone rang, and my first husband answered.
This was like pre the proliferation of cell phones. And he said, yeah, hang on a minute. And he handed it to me and said, it's your mom. And I talked to her. I got on the phone. The first thing that happened is I got on the phone and she said who she was. [00:11:00] And she said, are you my daughter? And I remember that moment because I hesitated because inside me, there was this yes response.
And at the same time, there was a well, no not exactly because I've been raised by someone else. And I called someone else mom. And anyway, so she and I talked. She had the information that allowed me to contact my birth father because he had contacted her when I was 18 because he had decided he wanted to look for me and he had given her his like address at that time and he was still in the same place so I was able to contact him and what happened is in both cases with each of them I experienced acceptance.
And wanting to be known and I hadn't prepared for that and so [00:12:00] that was totally overwhelming for me and my system and all my parts to have these people feel so happy to hear from me and want to meet me and have extended families that wanted to meet me and I was like, whoa, though I did meet my mom. She lived in Iowa. I was here in Colorado. We both drove halfway and met in Kansas. A couple weeks later, I flew to Connecticut and met my birth father. And then two weeks later, I started grad school. And so it was a whirlwind.
Haley Radke: Literally this is what I was so curious about. What is it like processing reunion while you're in grad school?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: It's such a great question, and I think there was not a lot of processing of it. There was some to some degree, but yeah, [00:13:00] grad school is all consuming, or at least it was for me. Reunion happened, but it also got put on hold. And I didn't, so I met each of them. I didn't meet anyone else beyond that at that time.
And I didn't see either of them again until as it turned out, 20 years later.
Haley Radke: What?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: I know. Yeah.
Haley Radke: Wow.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Cause, as life goes, oh, there was like, one of my brothers had a stroke. My mom had heart issues. I got through grad school and my first husband and I divorced shortly after that.
All of these major life events happened and time just, kept passing. And then a few years ago. Both of my adoptive parents died. My dad died suddenly and unexpectedly, [00:14:00] and that was a significant loss for me. And then 80 days later, my mom died. That was more expected. And that I'm sorry to say was also not as much of a loss for me as a result of the character of my mom.
But the next year, I think it was after they both died. I saw my mom again, my original mom, and there was more family there, all this extended family. And so I got to meet my uncle, I would say my beloved uncle, her brother and his wife and their kids, my cousins, whom I adore. And in another reunion, I met my birth father's sister, my aunt, with whom I'm in touch multiple times a week and is a real dear to [00:15:00] me and I've met both of her kids too. So I met extended family just a few years ago and that has been a whole other reunion that I could, spend a whole episode talking about, but won't.
Haley Radke: I do want to pause there because I think I've mentioned this before that in our Ask an Adoptee Therapist events that we have for Patreon, that question, or I should say the answer to a question has been given by several different therapists. If we're not getting, I'm not saying this is the case for you, but if we're not getting like what we need from our relationship with our first mother or biological father or they're not accessible to us, whether it be by their choice or they're not here, they've passed on or any of those things like there are extended family members who may have answers to some of the questions we have.
Or it may feel a little more free about talking about some of the [00:16:00] stories and those kinds of things. So it can almost be sometimes like a safer person to talk through some of those things because they're not so close to it.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100 percent just based on my personal experience. My mom, I would say, was never really able to go deep with me about it.
I don't think that's entirely because she can't go, I think it's I don't know. She was in the, she was in the fog herSelf for a long time. And when I first met her, she was still very much in the fog and believed that she had made the right decision. And actually she stayed in the fog until her dementia started setting in further.
This is so interesting. So she's pretty far into dementia now. And now the last time I saw her earlier this year, [00:17:00] this is what I expected. She no longer remembered who I am and that she had a second daughter or not a second daughter, a first daughter whom she did not raise and gave up her adoption.
She no longer remembered that. But the previous visit, which was about a year ago, or maybe it was two now, the dementia had set in like just enough that it's like it had wiped out the fog. And she said to me, I, my experience was that I got a more authentic version of her. I got more of her authentic Self.
And she said to me, and she had never said anything like this to me before, I wish I had raised you. And, like I said, that was the first time I'd ever heard her say anything like that. And it was a, I'll say for lack of a better way of saying it, a gift of her dementia [00:18:00] for me. She and I never really talked much about it, but my uncle and I have been able to talk a good bit about it and about the, and about what Linda my mom had told me that her mother had said to her in 1968 when she was pregnant with me, which was, you will not come home with that baby.
And my uncle and I were able to talk about what he thought my grandma would say now if she were alive and she could meet me and how sorry he thinks she would be that she said that. And my aunt has asked me, my aunt on my birth father's side has asked me lots of questions about my experience and both of them have just included me in those families and welcomed me and like my aunt is wonderful about keeping me, she's just giving me so much information about the family, [00:19:00] so much education and includes me like in sharing photos, family just everything, past and present.
Haley Radke: I love that. You have that. That's really special. That's really special.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: It is. I'm lucky. I'm lucky.
Haley Radke: So you became a therapist. You're trained in IFS. And I have some questions related to that for you, and okay, so we'll say Internal Family Systems is that's what IFS stands for, and can you in brief for people who might not be familiar with that style of therapy, if you could just say what that means. And you might have heard how Kathy's already talking, like, all my parts and like you have like little references to IFS. . But yeah, just for, just like a little primer for people who maybe are unfamiliar.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah. I'll do my best. In IFS, we believe that we all consist of different parts. [00:20:00] And the reference I like to make is to the film Inside Out for those of you who have seen it, that is a great depiction of what it's like to have different parts of us that simultaneously coexist and have competing thoughts and feelings and perspectives, and not one of them represents or has to represent who we really are. There's no such thing because we consist of all of these different parts and we all also have what is called Self with a capital S and Self is our essence and we are born with it. It is fully intact when we are born and Self could be considered the internal attachment figure for parts and it's through the facilitation of a Self to part relationship between Self and parts that parts are able to heal and release the burdens that they took on as a result of [00:21:00] the traumas they experienced and be liberated. And that is what opens up space inside of us for us to experience things differently and start to do things differently in our lives.
Haley Radke: What a fantastic explanation. I think that's very clear. Okay, so as I was reading your chapter in Altogether Us, which is, I mean to me it's groundbreaking to have an adoptee talking about adoption issues finally in some kind of psychological text that experts are going to use and refer to and to like actually talk about us. So thank you for that. We'll talk about that more a little bit later too. However, what I was like, I got really stuck on is thinking about this Self, capital S Self, the core of us, And for adoptees so [00:22:00] many of us struggle with identity literally, who are we? And you mentioned the Self can just be fully hidden from us can you talk about that? Because reading that, it broke my heart, yeah.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah. Yeah. I'd be happy to talk about that. Because our trauma happens so early, you could say it starts happening in the womb, but certainly at birth or right after birth parts, our parts don't get to experience any of life knowing Self with access to Self before that trauma happens.
So if the trauma were to happen later, so this would be the case, perhaps for some adoptees who aren't relinquished at birth, but are removed later after abuse and neglect, maybe parts have a little bit of time to experience [00:23:00] some access to Self before the trauma happens. But in, for those of us who were relinquished right at birth, that doesn't happen.
And so parts, they never have an experience of getting to know Self and who Self is. And having Self there. And also, we're so young when, we are newborn when that happens. And it's not that Self is young, and this is where it gets harder to explain the concept of Self, but parts are young, and that, so they're not as, I'll say, resourced in their ability to access Self.
And what happens I believe what happens is that parts believe that Self must be bad, and [00:24:00] that's why we were relinquished. That Self at its core is bad, and that's what got us relinquished. And there it is, right at birth, right after birth, this this belief that sets in. It's not that Self is bad. No Self is bad. It's impossible for Self to be bad. But that's what parts think and they think it early and then they grow up believing that often. And Self is there. Self is still there. Parts just don't know that it's there or they believe Self had to be exiled. And so they exile Self to keep Self out so that Self doesn't get us abandoned again.
Haley Radke: Okay, so I'm hearing, I'm going to say self hatred, but little s [00:25:00] self, right? So that's what a lot of us would be familiar with, like a self hatred. And then the other thing, what I understand from IFS is everything like Self should be like our energy source and we should be living out of that. And that's what like a wholehearted life looks like. And so if we've pushed Self to the side or are allowing like other parts to lead life without accessing that, like that's like a lot of our problems, right?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Am I getting any of that right?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah, actually, I think that is a beautiful description of what happens. And the thing is, even if we are living our life like that, there are moments when we access Self, like we often liken Self to the sun behind the clouds. We even when the clouds are there, you know when it's a cloudy day, we know the sun is [00:26:00] still behind the clouds, it's still there. In IFS, we think of creating relationships with parts that are like the clouds in order to get the clouds to clear a little bit and open up some access to Self.
And so even if we have been living our lives like you described, there have still been moments I can promise you when you have accessed Self, you've experienced a little bit of access to Self. Some Self has come through, the sun has shown through the clouds. And we start to identify times like that and that becomes a foundational base for realizing, oh, I do have Self and it's not bad, in fact, it's good. And I would like to access that more often.
Haley Radke: So [00:27:00] much of probably for adoptees who are doing IFS work, parts work, you're examining that as you're meeting your parts and processing things. We're going to set aside IFS just for a second. When you communicate with other therapists and professionals about adoptee needs what are you finding is most effective? Because I want to give adoptee's language that they can use with their friends and family when they're like processing these things and everybody around them, still sees adoption as like the best thing ever. And in your chapter, you talk about this, like there's two traumas, right? There's a relinquishment trauma and there's also the trauma of being adopted. Those are two separate things. And I love how you describe it. So what are you finding is the [00:28:00] most effective way to explain that to the biologicals, as you say, or the kept, we were calling them the kept. So.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: The kept, Oh, I love that. Yeah. I want to say right off the bat, a lot of them are not going to get it, or at least some of them are not going to get it no matter what. No matter how we say it, and our culture has been so steeped in the adoptive parent centric perspective, that's the water in which everyone has swum, and it's hard for people to see things another way.
And I don't know that I have a great answer to this, but for me personally, focusing on the infant mother separation and that this is a baby, a child who lost their mother their mother, the person that is, [00:29:00] was, and is their mother, that for me is the place to start. And that's, that seems to be what people can connect with at least a little bit. Like I describe in the chapter, this client of mine who refers to her trauma or to herself as a survivor of infant mother separation. And I love that because that, I think that captures it. And, if people want to hurry to, but then, but then the adoptive mother was there, then, That's where I slow them down and I'm like wait a second.
You, you can't skip over the impact of the infant mother separation. Let's linger there. We need to stay on that. What would that, what do you think that would have been like for you? Kept person, [00:30:00] if that had been your child, if that had been your mother, what if your mother hadn't been able to keep you?
It makes me think about my husband and I watched Adoption Reckoning the other night, and, about South Korean adoptees, and when they were describing how workers would go into hospitals and maternity homes and snatch children, I said to my husband, because his first child was born with a major physiological issue that was corrected shortly after birth, but that required intensive hospitalization and care right after he was born, I said, can you imagine if a hospital worker had come to you and told you that Zach was gonna have to be sent somewhere else for care and that you were [00:31:00] That and then he would have to be adopted to get can you I don't know that I'm doing a good job of describing how it could have gone. But my husband got it. He could only imagine what that would have been like and apply that and that helped him to even further understand and I think he was already there thinking about that before I even said anything, but let's stay on that let's stay on that infant mother separation let's just focus on that a while and what it's like to lose one's mother at birth and I don't want to give short shrift to the fathers. There's another family here, too. There's a father who was lost and the whole paternal family, too.
Haley Radke: And the other part that we don't talk about that much is looking at adoption as a trauma. So being put in most cases say stranger adoption, and then saying, [00:32:00] okay, Self, now we are going to act as though we were born here.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Right. Exactly. Yeah, just like I described, in what the social worker said to my parents, just, treat her like you treat your sons, but I wasn't like them. And that burden as is the case for all of us, it fell on me to try to fit into their family and be like them and sacrifice, I'll say, myself, that's not exactly Self in the way that we think of it in IFS, but it's applicable.
Haley Radke: Yeah. This is the perfect part. So you have workshops where you talk about, not all parts are adopted. Can you talk about that? Because that's such a brilliant concept. And so, let's just say for people who haven't done IFS work, like we have all these parts, which you mentioned. Let's give some examples. So I might still have like my infant self,
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: abandoned baby.
Haley Radke: [00:33:00] Yeah, so I did a little IFS session with Ridghaus, which we recorded for Patreon, by the way. Goodness. What was I thinking? Anyway, and met a part who was like a protective part and was, protecting a, an age of Haley that something happened, bad, and so there can be all of these different parts. So with that being said, please go ahead.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah. So that's great. I love that you are naming some of the common parts that us adoptees have, that we adoptees have, like the abandoned baby. For me, one of the first parts I discovered was an eight year old who, so she was at that age where there's a shift, there's further cognitive development, and it's right around that age that we start to figure out, wait a second, in order for me to have been adopted first, someone else had to give me up, [00:34:00] and she thought that it was her fault.
That was one of my young parts that I discovered. We tend to have, or it's not uncommon for adoptees to have a people pleaser part. A chameleon part that figures out like what the rules are and norms are in any given group so that we can fit in. A part that likes to know what's going to happen and tries to predict what's coming so that they feel in control of that. A perfectionistic part that tries to do everything really well and be all put together.
Haley Radke: I don't relate to that one either. None of those.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: No. Not you, Haley. A caretaker part. So those are some of the common ones that we tend to have, any part that helps us fit and belong and be accepted and not rejected and abandoned.
And so one day I [00:35:00] was walking, I was just walking through my house and it literally just popped into my head. And not all parts get adopted. And I just paused and I thought, yep, like I just felt the truth of that and I kept going. I went on with my day and it stayed with me and that evening at dinner I mentioned it to my husband. Hey, this thought came to me today and I shared it and he got it. He is not an adoptee, but he is the son of an adoptee. And I started sharing it with other adoptees I know, and they would all do the same thing. They would start nodding like it resonated and that felt true to them. And so I knew I was onto something and I needed to flesh it out because my first instinct was that's it. That's all you need. That's what you need to know. Here it is, this [00:36:00] essential truth. Not all parts get adopted, but I started fleshing it out and exploring more about what that means and I did a workshop on it at the IFS conference that year and then I turned it into this workshop that I give about every other month and just speaking for myself personally, when that first came to me, it was significant because it was, it alerted me that there were parts of me that had not been impacted by relinquishment and adoption.
And it felt like such a relief to realize that. And for me, it was celebratory hooray, not all parts are adopted, not all parts experience that trauma. And these parts are available to me to tell me all this information about my innate gifts and, all that good stuff. They are, [00:37:00] as Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS might say some of the juiciest parts of me, of an adoptee.
Haley Radke: I think, just to pause there.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.
Haley Radke: That is so hopeful because I think a lot of us think our original me who I was supposed to be is lost forever and that can't be recaptured. And so this is a way of thinking about those things that's no, they're still there.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And in IFS, when we go through the process, there, there are a lot of steps to it and I won't go into all those. But one of the things we do is we find parts and they are usually in or around our bodies. We usually find them somewhere inside us or right around our body. And my experience has been that with these parts that did not get adopted, they can be farther away.
So they can feel farther away from [00:38:00] us, from our bodies, but they are still connected to us as though by an invisible string, an invisible thread. For me, it was hopeful, and it is hopeful, and I've learned in giving these workshops it's not the same for everybody, and everybody's system is different, and so it's not a positive for everyone that there are, to find the parts, or that there are parts that didn't get adopted.
There are some parts that didn't get adopted that are upset about that. Who feel left behind.
Haley Radke: I could see that as like, right? When, if your adoptive parents are like, rejecting this part of how you act or this way you are. Cause that's not like them.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Exactly.
Haley Radke: No one in their families is like that. That's not welcome here. So that's where we put away those, again, put away those parts of our identities in order to be safe and fit in.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Exactly. Yep. You got [00:39:00] it. You nailed it. And that's something I talk about in the workshop that is one of the reasons some parts don't get adopted because the adoptive parents don't adopt them. They reject those parts either overtly or inadvertently.
Haley Radke: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay, I don't mean to interrupt. Is there anything else that you want to tell us about that? I think just having that knowledge, I think really can. Free us a little bit and like maybe we do at some point go and explore that about ourselves.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.
Haley Radke: I'm totally drawn to IFS.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yay. I love that. Yeah. And it's not for everyone. And that's okay, too. All parts are welcome, as we say.
Haley Radke: I think, I don't know. The more we can give adoptees the sense of agency, the more empowered we are and we can take control of whatever our, quote unquote healing journey will look like.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's [00:40:00] right. Yeah. And I believe that the more we can connect with all of our parts. Those that were adopted and those that weren't, the more we know all of our parts, the more actually we can access and know Self.
It's through those connections, those Self to part relationships, that we do get a fuller, richer sense of who we fully are or, what has been called Self.
Haley Radke: Yeah, perfect. I love that. Thank you so much. I want to make sure to recommend your chapter in Altogether Us. It's called IFS and Adoptees, Healing Parts Burdened by Relinquishment Trauma.
And you talked about this in our interview, you mentioned it a little bit in here, you're in therapy and you're going to train your therapist on how to work with adoptees. How unfair. Now [00:41:00] folks, even if you're not going to an IFS therapist, you can recommend to your therapist that they read Kathy's chapter in this book to familiarize themselves a little bit more with what it looks like to work with an adoptee.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's right. And in fact that was the intent of the chapter and all the chapters in that book to write it for someone who may work with an adoptee and is not themselves an adoptee and doesn't have that personal experience.
Haley Radke: It's so good. You touch on all the things. I pointed out a few things during our conversation, but thank you so much. You mentioned my friend Reshma's, Dear Adoption work. You have quotes from that in here. You mentioned Adoptees On in your resource section. Thank you.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Oh, thank you. You're welcome and thank you. [00:42:00]
Haley Radke: I think it'd be so cool if you've taken Kathy's workshop, will you comment in our like social posts about this because I'd love to hear from folks who've taken it. It sounds really amazing. I haven't personally done that with you, but I know that you're unpacking things for folks that was in a really helpful way. So yeah.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: And I would love to have you in one of them. That would be awesome.
Haley Radke: Great. Okay.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: You should come.
Haley Radke: We'll make sure to tell people where to find out when the next one is before we wrap up. But what did you want to recommend to us?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: I'm laughing because you and I talked about this a little bit.
Haley Radke: I'm pressuring her. I'm pressuring her to recommend this. It's not fully under her. It's under duress. Okay.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: That's right.
Haley Radke: If you feel weird about it. Yeah.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: I in full disclosure, I will [00:43:00] name, that my husband, whom I mentioned, this is my second husband, is the son of an adoptee, and he made a film several years ago, this is actually how he and I met, called Father Unknown, about his and his father's journey to try to find his father. His father was born and adopted in Switzerland. His father actually spent the first three years of his life with his mother before she gave him up to a Swiss orphanage for many years and then reclaimed him when he was 12 and brought him to the United States. So trauma upon trauma.
And then David and his dad, gosh, more than a decade ago now, went back to Switzerland to try to find information on his birth father about whom his mother would never tell David's dad. I mentioned, I said to you, but I feel weird recommending that because he's my [00:44:00] husband and it was recommended a long time ago.
Yeah. By someone else and you graciously said that I could also recommend one other person.
Haley Radke: Yes, but can you wait one second?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yes.
Haley Radke: Okay. A Father Unknown is so powerful and I love that it captured sorry to be sexist and grossly, stereotyping. I love that it captures all of this male emotion on this journey. It's really amazing to see on screen and it has been out for a little while. It's on YouTube now.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Yeah.
Haley Radke: There's no barrier. Folks can get, we'll linked to it in the show notes and yeah, it's really beautiful. And I can't, I'm not going to spoil anything because I feel like you and I talking is like a really cute part too. Like it's like a, I don't know, I can't say that if once you watch it, you'll get it. But anyway, no [00:45:00] spoilers. Okay, now go ahead. Go ahead. What's your other recommendation?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: My other recommendation is Carl Smith's Instagram account because it is such a great source of all the news in the adoption world. I think that might be where I first read about the PBS frontline documentary on South Korean adoptees.
And it's also where I learned about president Biden's apology for, the Indian native American boarding schools in the United States. It's just a great source of all the latest news and I love that and I am deeply appreciative to Carl for staying so up on all of it.
Haley Radke: Amazing. We will link to that. Carl's handle is DECSmith50 but we'll make sure it's in the show notes for [00:46:00] you. And speaking of that, where can we connect with you online and find out about any of your future workshops or writings that you have out in the world? . .
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: The best place is Instagram @adopteetherapy.
Haley Radke: And what's your website?
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Adopteetherapy.com.
Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much, Kathy.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Thank you, Haley.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing part of your personal story and you've been a guest on several other shows. We'll link to a couple of episodes for folks to hear a little bit more. I was thinking especially of Adoptee Crossing Lines.
You're talking about with a couple of other adoptee therapists and really deep diving this. That's another great place to hear a little bit more from you.
Kathy Mackechney, LCSW: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: My pleasure.
One of the questions I get asked the most often by listeners [00:47:00] truly is are there any retreats for adoptees? And there's a few out there. I've never gone to one. So I'm not in like the habit of recommending them, but Kathy is having her first ever, not all parts get adopted retreat. And if you're listening, when this drops, you have a couple months and It is in May of 2025. So May 22nd to 26th of 2025. And she is having it in Colorado. We are going to have a link to all the info in the show notes. So if you're interested, you can get in touch with Kathy and she'll have more details. So in the show notes, we should have a link in there. And if not, it'll be coming shortly, I promise.
I am so excited for the opportunities that many of our fellow adoptee therapists are [00:48:00] making available to us as a community. And if we want those things to continue, we got to support them. Anyway thank you to Kathy. And part two to that is, I'm going to say it out loud just in case you didn't realize the gravity of what the work Kathy is putting into the world how many of us have gone to therapists who have no friggin clue about adoption trauma, adoptee issues, they gloss over adoption stuff, like it's just like nothing. And we have to educate them. Right? How many of us? So I've heard from so many people, it's like their number one reason why they're like never going to go to therapy again because they wasted all this money trying to quote unquote educate their therapist unfair.
And so Kathy is doing that work for us. And hopefully the ripple effect, like we might not get to see it [00:49:00] right away, but it's coming that so many more practitioners will be trained to be helpful to us as adoptees. I'm so thankful and so excited. My plan is to be back with you guys in January. So we'll have a little bit of a holiday break.
And let my team rest up and me, God, I know I keep saying, I was sick for two months. It's been a real trip trying to get back on track with everything. So I think we'll be back in January. No, like for sure we'll be back in January. We may have one more episode in December, probably in January, but just so you know, transparent, haven't decided quite yet.
But probably will be back in January with new episodes and some of the people I have booked. Oh my goodness. I'm so excited. We're celebrating Kathy and the work she's doing in the world. There are [00:50:00] so many adoptees publishing books next year, 2025, like a fantastic resources for us, fantastic academic work, poetry, memoir, like so many amazing things are coming.
And I'm really excited because I get to interview some of those fantastic folks who are putting that good work into the world. Look forward to that and thanks for listening. Let's talk again very [00:51:00] soon.
