37 Liz - Speaking Out
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/37
Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 2, Episode 12: Liz. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I feel tremendously honored to introduce you to Liz Latty. Liz shares her story, we talk a lot about our dads, and we dive deep into adoptee activism.
I usually do this at the end of the show, but I'm going to ask you a big favor upfront today. As you're listening, if you feel moved, if you are hearing some of the things Liz is sharing and think, ‘Oh my gosh, I know exactly who needs to hear this today,’ please share this episode with them. I know it will bring encouragement to many of you to know you aren't alone on this journey.
Liz and I wrap up the episode with some recommended resources, and as always, links to all the things we're talking about are on the website, AdopteesOn.com. Stick around to the end because I'll be letting you know details about the season finale of Adoptees On. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to introduce to Adoptees On, Liz Latty. Welcome, Liz.
Liz Latty: Hi, Haley. Thanks for having me.
Haley Radke: I'm so excited to tell you that– I'm so excited. Oh my gosh. See, I'm sorry, I'm already starting to fangirl. I promise I'm not going to do that. You've written some very, very powerful pieces and I feel like you are really getting our voice out there. So thank you so much for your work for us.
*Liz Latty: Thank you.
Haley Radke: I'd love it if you would start off by just sharing your story with us.
Liz Latty: I was born in Michigan, in suburban Detroit, in the late 70s, and was adopted through Catholic Social Services at about two months old. I was in a foster home for about two months. Was raised about 10 miles from where I was born. I was raised with an adopted sibling, you know, we had no biological tie. And we had really different experiences of adoption, I think. I was sort-of always really deeply grieving from a really young age, and always knew that I would search for my family. You know, it was a closed adoption and so didn't really have much information. I started searching when I was about 18. It was a really very difficult, tumultuous time for me. I was raised by an extremely Catholic family, and I came out of the closet when I was 17, 18 years old. It was not a pretty scene. And so I was actually fairly disconnected from my adoptive family because of that, and was sort of really reeling from that rejection around my sexuality. So of course it seemed like the best time to search for my original family!
Haley Radke: Of course! Why wouldn’t you want to just bring all the feelings in?
Liz Latty: Yeah, of course, it's fine! It's great. So yeah, so I started searching when I was 18, but I was also sort-of living in a very transient state. And it was also before a lot of technology was available, too. e're talking about like the late 90’s. And because I was sort-of in and out of homelessness and transience, I didn't really have access to computers or internet or money or anything. And it took me quite a while to find my original family. I actually ended up finding a, you know, what folks like to call Search Angels. Though at the time I hated that they were called Search Angels, because I was on the heels of being rejected from a very religious family and community. The prevalence of religion in adoption was very difficult for me to deal with. You know, I was really angry at that part of my life. So I sort of resisted working with a Search Angel for a while, simply because they were called Search Angels. I was like, ‘I don't want any angels.’
But I did end up working with someone who was able to find my family within about three weeks. It was pretty quick. And then met my original mother and her family, and then found my father some time after that. Though that was really difficult as well. Yeah, I actually got my father's contact information, but found out that he was born-again evangelical before I contacted him. And I had already been rejected by a religious family for being queer, and so I was terrified at the possibility of that happening again. And so I didn't contact him for quite a while, almost a year after I had his information. But I finally did.
So I was in reunion with my mother for about two and a half years, and then that sort-of fell apart, for reasons that I guess I'm still trying to figure out 15 years later. But I am still in relationship with my father to this day, and I also have nine half-siblings.
Haley Radke: Whoa.
Liz Latty: Through him. Yes. And I have relationships with them, and with their mother, to varying degrees as well. So that's been a really amazing part of my reunion. And my adoptive family and I have worked long and hard to sort-of repair our relationships and build relationships together as adults and, you know, figuring out how to accept one another. Yeah, so that's my story.
Haley Radke: Well, we often don't talk about reunion with our fathers, so would you mind going into that a little bit? You said you were kind-of afraid to contact him, and you waited about a year. Do you wanna expound on that?
Liz Latty: Yeah. Well, it was really just because of the religion thing. And it was like the intersection of religion and queerness, which is just really volatile, often, right? As we know, right? I mean, I'm not saying across the board. Lots of religious folks are perfectly open and loving to various sexualities and gender presentations and all of these things. But, you know, historically speaking –and certainly my personal experience– had been really difficult. So I was really scared. And I think, too, though, that something about it being my dad made it a little bit less urgent. Which is strange, you know, but I think it makes sense, right?
Like, when I found my mother, and the first conversation I ever had with her on the phone, she told me his name and she told me their breakup. They had stayed together for two years after I was born. They were very much in love, teenagers, you know, at the tail end of high school, and had stayed together and had gone through this really painful trauma of losing me. Because it was not what they wanted, they were forced into it. And then had a really painful breakup. And she was like, “Here's his name. I don't ever want to talk about him again.” And we didn't. We never did. I was like, ‘Alright, cool.’ And as soon as I had his name, I was like, ‘Huh. That's so weird. I kind-of have not really ever thought about him.’ Like, I had, but not really. It was sort-of always about the mother. It was always about the mom for me. It opened a new window, you know, it opened a new window that I hadn't thought about and that I was really interested in, but it just didn't have the same urgency as it did with my mom.
And so I think that both the fear of being rejected for my sexuality yet again, and because also I think that often in religious communities, rejection of queerness is really violent. So it's a real fear, you know. I had been– they thought I was mentally ill, and were joining, you know, groups that were trying to “pray people straight”. And it was the height of the ex-gay movement in the mid-to-late 90’s. And they really thought they could cure me. They also thought it was like a symptom of attachment disorder and sort-of pathologized it around being adopted. That was pretty emotionally violent. I was just like, ‘I'm not doing that again. I'm not going through that again with another family.’
I had like his name and address and phone number on a little piece of paper, and I just folded it up and put it in a shoebox and put it under my bed for quite a long time. And then one day I just was like, ‘You know, if I don't do this, I'm gonna regret it.’ And I just pulled it out and I called him. And he said that he always knew that I would find him, that if I had any of him in me, that he knew that I would find him and that he was just waiting. And then we talked on the phone for an hour and it was really easy. He's super chatty and, you know, we're both really chatty and crack lots of jokes. He actually does comedy, and he is an actor and a musician, and it was just really easy. Again, I also sometimes think, ‘Well, is that…?’ you know, it was never easy with my mom. It was never easy. It was always a struggle.
But then, you know, it's been 15 years and certainly there's been difficult times. We've lost touch for years at a time, and then reconnected, and it's not been without its challenges. But the initial reunion, we lived in the same place at the time, and so he just immediately wanted to come over. He came over and I made my girlfriend at the time –who, we lived together– hide at the neighbors.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh.
Liz Latty: I know. Which I still feel guilty about. We're friends to this day, so she's forgiven me for all the trauma. And she understood at the time, too. She is a really loving person and very compassionate and empathetic. So she understood, you know, that I was just terrified. That it was real, you know. That I had been rejected already and that that fear was really real. And so she hid at the freaking neighbor's house while my dad came to meet me for the first time.
But then I went out to his house, which is about 20, 25 minutes from where I was living in Detroit, and met his kids and his wife. And she immediately just sort of claimed me as one of her own, you know, still does. They only had seven kids, actually, at the time, but two more –twins, my youngest brothers are twins– they came just a little while later after that, and his wife actually asked me to be the other person in the delivery room. So I was there for their birth with my dad. And my dad was actually the last person to hold me in the hospital before they took me away, when he was 16, 17. So that was a pretty powerful, pretty intense time.
So yeah, it's been 15 years of an ongoing rollercoaster. And I'm constantly surprised at how new things come up all the time. Like, I'm still finding things out that I didn't know before, or getting conflicting stories about things I thought I knew before. And I'm still finding myself with new questions all the time. I mean, my dad and I had actually lost track of each other– well, not lost track of each other. We knew where each other was, but we hadn't talked for about seven years, until last summer. And we saw each other last summer and sort-of started a correspondence again just this past year. So it's a new level, you know. It's just always new. Which I just think about and write about a lot, this idea, this experience of being on the other side of reunion long-term, and what that means. What it means to build relationships with people who, in the beginning all you share is this shared history of trauma, but otherwise you're sort-of strangers. And what that means over time, and how that grows, and ebbs and flows and stuff.
Haley Radke: Well, I found it interesting, Liz, when you said that your father said, “I kind-of knew you would find me and I was just waiting for you.” Do you think he ever would've searched for you? This is something I've asked my dad probably 3 or 4 times, and I think his answer is no, but he can't say it to me.
Liz Latty: I don't know. That's a great question. He might listen to this–
Haley Radke: My dad listens every week, so I'm like, ‘Is this going to make the final cut? I don’t know.’
Liz Latty: Yeah! I don't know about formally, I know that informally, he was constantly searching for me. Always. He told me, in fact recently, just this past year, he went much more into detail about our story from his perspective than he had previously.
And whew, it was really hard to hear, and I'm sure it was really hard for him to say. Just how deeply he was affected by this, which I think is another thing that we just don't think about with first fathers a lot too, right? That losing a child can really derail their lives, too, you know, even though they didn’t physically– weren't the birthing parent.
Haley Radke: When you were telling your story and you're talking about how we think of the mother first and you're like, “Oh, I didn't even think of ‘Do want I search for him?’” I think that's so common. I think because we have this picture of our mother and we're inside of her for nine months, it's easy to picture that connection. And the father is, you know, it's a one-time contact. Oh my goodness, how do I say that, right?
Liz Latty: I think that too, we're often –and I think I'm gonna say the word political, and I think it is– because of the sort-of political context of the narrative of adoption, right? Like, what we're told, what people think about birth families, right? That they're “unfit” in some way. I think often the idea is that the father isn't around. And that might be true in some cases, but there was never a picture of him in the narrative that I was given. But he was very much there. He was very much there, but that picture wasn't given. It's not that it was like, it was given and my parents hid that from me. That's not the narrative that they gave me. Like, that wasn't given to my adoptive parents, you know what I mean? A lot of the narrative in my adoption file is just false. It's just absolutely false about what was going on, and I think that may have had something to do with the religious nature of the agency, like, the stigma around– I don’t know. I mean, my father was cataloged as the father and it was like, ‘These are his siblings, these are his parents. Everybody's supportive. Everybody's on board.’ So it wasn't like he was absent, but there was no, I don't know– They were a long-term, committed, very much in love couple, and he was very much there. And she was in fact sent away while she was pregnant, and he drove up hours every weekend and snuck into the maternity home to visit her. And they stayed together for years, they moved across the country together after he graduated from high school, because she was a year ahead of him, so she was already out. And it really affected him. It affected them, it affected her, it affected their relationship. It affected everything. You know, a child just doesn't go missing with no consequences.
So he really talked about how painful that was and about how much shame was involved. And in fact, he left the state and didn't come back for over two decades because he felt that he had shamed everyone. And then when he finally came back, he just sort of imagined that I was in Michigan still, and anytime he would see a teenage girl or a young woman –I would've been around 18 or so at the time– he would just freak out every time, and have a panic attack, and start following her, and then it was like, ‘Oh my God, I'm gonna get arrested for following young women!’ It really affected his life, and he carried that wound too, you know? And I think that hearing that part of his story, while it was really hard of course. It's hard to hear that. It's hard to hear his pain, but it's also really validating. Because as someone who talks about adoption a lot, sort-of obsessively, and writes about it publicly, of course, we always get this pushback. The narrative that it's, you know, the narrative we all know, right? And what I'm always sort of harping on is there are consequences to this, and families are not interchangeable, and people then live with a lifetime of grief and trauma to varying degrees, and it affects everybody. It doesn't just affect the person who gave birth and the child. My mom's sisters were like, “You know, her father was the one that forced her,” to give me up, and they were furious at her father for years and held it over his head, you know? It reverberates. It moves through multiple generations and multiple family systems, this wound. To hear him say that and talk about how it had affected him for so many years and still does, was just sort of really validating in that way of ‘Yeah, I've been saying this!’, you know? Because I knew it was true. I knew it was true. I've seen it in other people and in myself, and in the way that my reunion unraveled with my mom. Sometimes the pain is just too big that we aren't able to find a way to connect with each other across it. And that's really unfortunate, but it affects so many people. It affects so many people.
Haley Radke: Well, I'm just in conversation with this beautiful woman who is a grandmother of loss. And when she tells me parts of her story, she is just heartbroken because she is the mother that convinced her daughter, “This is the right choice.” And this story is just a few years old that the child that's been lost to adoption. It does, it reverberates. That’s such a good word to describe it. It affects all the generations and further down as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Preaching to the choir. Of course. This is what I get to.
Liz, can we just go back to when you were first meeting your dad and stuff, and you're hiding your girlfriend?
Liz Latty: Yeah! I still feel guilty.
Haley Radke: I mean, I don't know. At least she had a different house to go to. She wasn't, like, under the bed or something.
Liz Latty: Yeah, well, it was just the apartment next door. We were living in really crappy student apartments.
Haley Radke: She had like a glass up against the wall–
Liz Latty: Yeah! Look, the closet is a very complicated place–
Haley Radke: I said hide under the bed, that’s what I– [both Liz and Haley break off in laughter]
Are you comfortable just talking about when you told him that you were queer, how that went? Because you were so scared of that part of your story.
Liz Latty: Well, I can tell you, it's interesting that you asked, because I actually just told him in October.
Haley Radke: Okay. Did he know?
Liz Latty: Yeah, he pretty much figured it out. Which I was very angry at, because I'd gone to great lengths to stay strategically closeted from him! Apparently not good enough. I blame Facebook's privacy preferences and my inability to apparently set them properly. Yeah, I just told them. It was kind of crazy. I stayed closeted from him, like, 14 years. Because I was so afraid. And then once my brothers and sisters were sort-of in the picture for me, and with their mom as well too, right? I was afraid that, you know, I knew it could go either way. Maybe they would be totally fine with it, but if they weren't, what if they didn't let me see my brother and sisters? That kind-of felt like my main motivation after the initial reunion. I was like, ‘I don't wanna get cut off from that.’
And then I came out to my older siblings as they sort of moved out of the house and I had relationships with them. Some of them are now in their early twenties, and so as they moved out of the house and would come visit me, or I'd visit them, I wasn't going to hide my life. If they were going to come visit me and I had a partner– I just wasn't gonna do it. And they were super cool. They're millennials. They don't care. Like, they are also very religious and all of the things, but they're also very much of their generation, and have queer friends, and aren't necessarily bound by what a church, or a clergy member or something, really says. So they were really beautiful and accepting and said, “We literally don't care. We love you. We think you're cool. We don't care.”
But, you know, I had asked my oldest brother, “What do you think that your dad would say?” And he was like, “Yeah, it could go either way. I really don't know.” That was quite a few years ago. And so I was like, ‘Eh, all right.’ We also didn't live in the same place by that point either, so it I didn't see him often or whatever, so it was just like, ‘There's just not really a reason to.’ But I really struggled with it personally, because I'm very involved in queer community, and I write about queer issues, and I consider myself an activist around queer issues. And I understand that the closet is a very complicated place for people, for lots of reasons. Not everybody can be out, depending on where they live, depending on what family they're in. It's not necessarily safe. But I still felt guilty, you know? I was like, ‘Wow. I am this totally out, super queer person, and I'm closeted to over half my family.’ And that felt really hard for me to live that way. So my father and I didn't talk for quite a few years, and then when we reconnected last summer, I was like, ‘I gotta tell him this time. I'm almost 40, first of all, I'm, like, too old to be hiding girlfriends and just, what, like bringing decoys to family events or whatever, you know? Like, come on.’ I'm just like, ‘I can't.’ I said, “You know what, look, we haven't talked to each other in quite a few years, if we're gonna reconnect I want it to actually be authentic this time, and I don't want to have to hide part of my life.”
A lot of people will often say “Well, why do you need to tell everybody?” But most of my friends are queer and trans. I date other queer people who are, like, very physically queer. It's like, you actually have to jump through a lot of hoops. It's not just about like broadcasting your sexuality, right? It's like, I actually have to hide a good portion of my life. And so it felt really important to me to connect with him on a really open, honest, authentic level this time. I was like, ‘What's the worst that can happen? He can not talk to me again? Well, we didn't just talk for the last, like, X amount of years and I survived. I need to know, and I need to actually know now because if we reconnect and start building a relationship again, and then it comes up in a year or two and I'm attached and then it is a problem and it is a deal breaker, that will really suck, you know? So I'd rather know now.’
I wrote him a very long email. And it was actually on National Coming Out Day in October, which is really weird because I'm not like an anniversary– I don't know, it normally didn't feel like something I would do on a specific day. But I just got sort-of emotional seeing other people's really sweet coming out stories posted on Facebook that day and I was like, ‘I'm gonna do it.’ And so I stayed up till 4 in the morning and I wrote him this very long email. Because I wanted him to know how painful my coming out experience had been as a young person, and how much that affected my life. I was pretty homeless and family-less for many years. I mean, I had my own family, like, chosen family and other queer folks.
And that secondary rejection on top of being adopted, it was like, ‘Wow, okay. Nobody wants me.’ You know? And I wanted him to know that. And I wanted him to know that it was also fueled pretty much solely by religion. And also how painful it had been for me to feel like I had to make the choice to hide from him, too. I told him everything. And I also told him that if he thought I was mentally ill, or gonna burn in hell, or could be rehabilitated or whatever, that I wasn't interested in hearing it, he could just let me know that it wasn't cool with him. But I was like, “I've heard every scripture, I've heard every rationalization around– whatever. I've heard it all. I'm not interested. I came out when I was a teenager and I'm almost 40. I'm cool. I love who I am. But I just need to know what your deal is and I need to know that I can be myself around you, and that I can bring people I love around you.”
I sent it to him and I was super terrified. Like, sweating and sick to my stomach, couldn't sleep, and couldn't concentrate at work the next day. And then around 3 in the afternoon, I got an email back from him. In the email I sent to him, I told him, “Well it's National Coming Out Day, so I have a little something to tell you.” And he sent an email back around 3 in the afternoon and he had edited the subject line, and it was all-caps and it said, “IT'S NATIONAL LOVE YOUR QUEER DAUGHTER DAY” with, like, 18 exclamation points. And then he just said all the things that everyone should have said to me when I came out. He recognized how painful it was for me, and he said that he was really sorry that I had had to carry that burden; that there was no Bible, no scriptures coming, no prayer circles; that he is really proud to be my dad no matter what. And then he took it as an opportunity to tell me he was voting for Trump. So it was a little weird!
Haley Radke: Oh my God.
Liz Latty: Okay, he is a comedian. He was like, “So you're queer. So I'm voting for Trump! Who cares?” So, I don't know–
Haley Radke: I'm sorry, I'm, like, bawling over here, and you can probably hear my Kleenex, and now you're– Okay.
Liz Latty: Yes! So, that's the kind relationship we have at this point. Complicated, right? But also really beautiful and it really felt like a gift, you know?
Haley Radke: Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. I am just, yeah, getting myself together. I cry every episode, what's new? Okay. I would love to touch on with you some– just a conversation about activism in adoption. You've wrote some extremely powerful pieces that have been, of course, well received by adoptees like myself, who have been trying to say this, like, “Will you listen to us? When are you gonna listen to us? That there's a trauma attached here!” Can you just talk a little bit about your work in this space, things that have been effective, like, what do people actually listen to? And what kind of responses you've gotten, so for example, to the fairy tale narrative piece.
Liz Latty: Yeah. I mean, overwhelmingly the responses have been really positive and folks have reached out to really thank me for helping them think about it in a different way. And I mean folks who are attached to it in some way, and also people who aren't, which is great. And then you get some trolls that want to tell you about how mentally ill you are and what a disaster you must be– you know, whatever. That has everything to do with where they're at and nothing to do with where I'm at.
So, in terms of activism, it's a scary place to be. It's a really scary place to be. I've been writing about adoption for a really long time. Pretty much since I was five. And I'm a creative writer. You know, I went to school for creative writing and have mostly existed and written and published in literary spaces more often than not, until really recently. I mean, The Rumpus, where What We Lost was published, is a literary space. It was certainly a personal essay, but it also had a lot of kind-of political and historical content in it as well. And then the last one that I did for The Establishment was much more straightforward.
Haley Radke: And that one is Adoption Is A Feminist Issue, But Not For The Reasons You Think. Also excellent. I'll put a link to both of those in the show notes.
Liz Latty: Thank you. Yeah, and I've sort-of been tiptoeing out a little bit more in terms of being overtly political around adoption. I've always been an activist, and I was sort-of nurtured and raised in queer and feminist activist spaces, and then kind-of brought those politics to bear on my experience of being an adopted person. And understanding this experience and the institution of adoption through those lenses, it's compelled me to talk about it more in a more straightforward political way. And I've learned from so many adoptee activists around me that have come before me, and that are considered friends and peers and colleagues now, and have been doing scholarship and activism around adoption for so long.
But it's a really scary place to be, to sort-of step out and talk about the political content of adoption and not just about your own story, because I think that you open yourself up to more criticism. And the argument becomes much more complicated, and requires a lot more precision and accuracy and research and all of those things. But I'm enjoying being in those spaces, and I think that one of the things that it helps me do and the reason why I guess I like to talk about adoption activism with other adoptees more and more, and as much as possible is that, you know, I feel really passionate about actually creating larger systemic change in adoption– or rather outside of adoption. Because I think that adoption is really just a symptom and a failed solution to larger systemic oppressions, and mostly shouldn't ever actually have to happen.
But I think that moving into the political content of it has really helped me in terms of understanding my own story better. And that's one of the things that I feel like I like to offer to adopted people, too, is that, between therapy and being a writer, writing about my own story of adoption, I was sort-of processing it through language and through personal narrative for a really long time. I could only get so far. And then when I started really doing more research and investigation and trying to understand the history of adoption and how it came to be the practice and institution it is now, and the way that it affects different groups of people differently and just all of this, all of the political content of it, it really took me to the next level of understanding my own story and being able to actually tap into a much deeper well of understanding and compassion for everyone that was involved in my adoption. I could have stayed really angry at my first mother for our reunion unraveling for a really long time. But getting more information about what she went through, and then sort-of understanding her not as one woman who made a choice or didn't make a choice, in a vacuum, right? Because that's just not how it happens. But situating her within the historical and political context in which she did and did not have choices, really helped to sort-of– It just helped me tap into compassion more and it helped me get to a next place in my own healing. And then of course, I think, as always, ‘Right, what happens when people make a life around trying to create change within a system or a life experience that they have survived, right?’ Which often happens. That's often how people come to a particular kind of activism or work, right? It's like, you went through this thing and it really changed you or, you know, partially defines who you are in some way, or whatever. And then you figure out how to make that into work, or make that into a life's work of some kind, and engage with other people and connect with other people, and work towards something that hopefully means that other people don't necessarily have to go through what you went through, right? I think too, that then that also helps healing. Because I think being adopted, specifically, can be such an isolating experience and such an isolating identity, and becoming involved in activism and in community helps. It puts some salve on that wound a bit, and it makes you feel– or it makes me feel, at least, it makes me feel active and purposeful and just clear-eyed, you know?
Which is not to say I don't sometimes slip back into feeling victim-y, because I do. And I think that's normal and just human and whatever. But I also have a much larger and broader context and understanding for what happened, that I'm able to pull myself out of that thinking pretty easily if I do have a bad day and slip into that or whatever. And I also have folks that I can reach out to that have also had this experience, and can connect with them. So I think that is really important. And I meet a lot of adoptees who are like, “Yeah, I can't go there. I can't– I'm not interested in the political arena of it. This is just my story. It's just about my family.” And then there's tons and tons of us who are invested in activism, and everybody's got their own journey, right? But I do think that it's important, and I think that there needs to be a lot of change, but I do wonder about how we're going to make those changes. I think there is such a broad range of understanding because there's such a broad range of experience in adoption and how people experience it, and then also how people come to it, that there's a lot of divide within the adoption community about what activism looks like, or what changes need to be made, or what reform looks like, or what abolishing the system altogether looks like, or whatever. Right? There's just a range of activisms. And that's okay, but we're sort-of small in numbers and we need each other. Change happens through numbers often, right? It really requires movement-building. And I think that I often see a lot of divide within the adoption community. And I guess I think about that a lot, and I wonder how we can better forge alliances with each other, and then also looking outward, align ourselves with larger movements that might not know that we’re part of what they're working for. You know, like, movements for economic justice and reproductive justice and racial justice. All of these things are the underlying oppressions that then, you know, adoption is sort-of this “solution” –I know it's not a solution, but, like, whatever– for.
Haley Radke: Right, and I think you said it before, it's a symptom of.
Liz Latty: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's a symptom of these things, right? And so I just wonder how does adoption community align itself with each other, and then also move outward and align ourselves with larger movements? Because we have to. I think we have to. We have to get bigger and stronger and louder. Yeah, I think about that a lot. But I don't really have any particular one answer about that yet. But I think that there needs to be a lot of growth in that area.
Haley Radke: I really appreciate your wisdom on that, Liz, and thank you for those comments.
Something that I touched on with an adoptee, her name's Erica Curry Van Ee, and what she said to me that I had never thought about before, was that adoptees are an invisible minority group. And she was talking about it in the context of, you know, receiving our original birth certificates and how this is a human right, et cetera. Which of course most of us have heard that before, but that was so interesting for me to think about. Because we have been maligned in some way, but yet it's also hard to speak about that, because you don't want to ever say “less than” to another group that has, you know, felt like they've been marginalized. I don't know. It's a sticky balance for me, but I really have been thinking about it a lot since she said it to me.
Liz Latty: Yeah, it's true. I think that's true. I think it is. Largely because we're just, like, displaced and dispersed all over the place, right? We have this narrative in this country that sort-of erases our experience as a trauma, as a symptom of oppression, right? It's just the redemption narrative that folks focus on. And because our pain, because our displacement, because our loss of culture and language and all of the things that adopted folks experience is largely erased underneath that narrative, I think it's true. I think we are invisible to some degree. Though I totally agree with you, in terms of, I think language is really important, right? Language is super powerful and it makes me think about I actually just on Facebook earlier, yesterday or something, I saw this posting about original birth certificates. I think it was for New York or something, I think there's a bill right now that's sort-of passed and it's not clean or whatever. So someone was posting about it and the slogan on the thing said, “Adoptee is the last minority to be denied their civil rights.”
And I just thought to myself, ‘My God, like, when are we gonna stop saying things like this?’ Because it's first of all, just so factually incorrect. And it's offensive and alienating to so many people and groups of people who are denied their civil rights in this country every day. And a lot of adopted people also belong to those groups. So it's not only alienating to folks who are not adopted, it's alienating to folks who are adopted and live at the intersection of, you know, being an adopted trans person, being an adopted person of color, being like– Come on. You know, it's just, it's like, that kind of language is really troubling to me and I just– I don't know. I think that it further deepens this gulf too, within the community, as well, right? Because you're also– you're talking– lots of adoptees– it's just it's–
Haley Radke: It’s so maddening you can't even find the words.
Liz Latty: It is! It's really tough, you know? And I see stuff like that a lot. And it's really difficult, and I think that we need to, as a community, think deeper and broader than that. And that the fight for original birth certificates is important. I still don't have access to mine. It's important work. But it is not the only work. And we can't do that work at the expense of folks who belong to our community as well. And other people who experience the loss of civil rights as well. It's like we're talking about movement-building or aligning ourselves with other movements, right? We're a small community, right? There's what, 5 million of us in the country supposedly –which of course we will never really know because nobody keeps records about us because they don't care– but we have to think about aligning ourselves. Our struggles are not necessarily different than folks who are fighting for dignity and civil rights in other ways. And so I think that we have to really examine that as a community and do better. And do better for everyone and also for our own work, right?
Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Oh my goodness. Well, we could talk about this all day, but– Yeah, what a great conversation. I really love what you said about that. We need to align with other communities and so we really need to watch our language. Because those things that we say can alienate. Yeah. So that's really important. Thank you.
Okay, so let's move to recommended resources. Yeah! I am bringing back something that I have recommended before, but it's so good, I have to recommend it again: Six Word Adoption Memoirs. I don't know if you've heard of this, Liz?
Liz Latty: I have, and I have met its makers.
Haley Radke: You have met its makers, oh my goodness. Okay. So they have been working on this for quite a while and they've just released a Six Word Adoption Memoir video for 2017. And it's so moving. It's a 20-minute video, and it features adoptees as well as first parents. There's even a father and son, and the father was adopted from an orphanage, and the son speaks to how his father's experiences affected him. Anyway, it's very moving. And talking about adoptee activism and things, and how powerful our stories are, you know, when something like this spreads, I think it brings awareness to some of the pain that adoption has caused. It's so beautifully done. Andrew Tash and Derek Frank are the ones behind the project, and I will put a link to that video. It's up on Vimeo, and they have of course a Facebook page. And this was kind-of exciting, I read one of their posts and let me just read it out here: “We shot 40+ stories and only a handful are contained in this video. We'll be working on more stories throughout the year.” So if you follow that Facebook page, you will be the first to know about when they've got new ones coming out. So I really recommend that everyone go in and follow that. And you've met them? I actually was in the same room with Andrew, but we never spoke and he emailed me later and I said, “Oh my goodness. Too bad we can't connect!”
Liz Latty: Next time around, next adoption conference around.
Haley Radke: That's right.
Liz Latty: Yeah. We met down in Atlanta at the AAC conference.
Haley Radke: Ok, great.
Liz Latty: Yeah, it was great to meet them.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I emailed back and forth a little bit with Andrew, just really nice guy. And yeah, I can't wait to see what else they have up their sleeves.
*Liz Latty: Absolutely.
Haley Radke: Okay, here's the moment of truth, Liz, what are you going to recommend to us today? No pressure.
Liz Latty: Oh gosh, I know, there's just so many that come to mind. And I think specifically, you know, I'm thinking just around our conversation around activism, a few books come to mind. I think it's just really important for us to know our history, right? And not just our history, our family history, but our larger history as people who have been affected by the system and institution of adoption. And so one really good online resource could be the Adoption Museum Project. Are you familiar with the Adoption Museum Project?
Haley Radke: I get their newsletter. It's actually on my list of things to recommend. So you beat me to it. Go ahead. Tell us about it.
Liz Latty: Yeah, they're a project based out in the Bay Area. You can find them at adoptionmuseumproject.org. They do different kinds of work around adoption through a social justice lens, and there's not a physical museum space at this time, but they do different kinds of pop-up events and installations, and field trips, and think tanks, and all different kinds of stuff around adoption, both the history and the future. And again, through a social justice lens. And they have a great newsletter. Laura Callen is the founder and she sends out a fantastic newsletter with lots of great resources in and of itself. Every month.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. They're so generous with their spotlight, right? They're always highlighting different people's work there, it’s beautiful.
Liz Latty: Yeah. So that's a good one. And then, if you want to geek out –I like to geek out– Kinship by Design is a great book for learning more about the history of modern American adoption. It's by Ellen Herman. And thinking, too, more about how systems of economic and racial injustice really are the underpinnings of adoption, and what that means for our future. In terms of activism, I think some other good resources would be, well, one book that comes to mind is Beggars and Choosers by Rickie Solinger. I would also encourage folks to learn about the reproductive justice movement, as well. And a good place to learn about reproductive justice would be the Sister Song website. They’re a women of color collective based in Atlanta.
Haley Radke: Great, thank you so much. Those all sound fantastic. Liz, thank you for sharing your story with us. It was so moving and I know it's going to help many people to hear your journey.
Liz Latty: Thanks, Haley. It was really great talking to you. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: You can find Liz's work on her website, liz-latty.com. Liz is on Twitter and Facebook at Liz Latty (@lizlatty). I can't even believe this is episode 12 and in my seasons I have 13 episodes. So… math… that means in 2 weeks I'll be airing my season finale. And I don't want to build this up too much, but it's worth the wait, I promise. Jessenia Parmer of I Am Adopted shares her story, and I kept her up super, super late because we just couldn't stop talking. You don't want to miss this episode, so make sure you're subscribed to wherever you listen to podcasts.
I'm also going to be launching a monthly newsletter to keep you in the loop. It's only going to be monthly, because no one has time for more email. I definitely don't. You can subscribe to that on AdopteesOn.com. Last but not least, this episode was brought to you by my fantastic Patreon supporters. I can't even believe this, I have 28 generous partners who have pledged to support me monthly so I can continue to produce this podcast for you. They literally make it possible for me to keep these adoptee stories coming. Thank you, friends. Thank you for standing with me. If you want to stand with us to make sure adoptee voices are heard, you can visit Adopteeson.com/partner.
Thank you for listening, let's talk again next Friday.
