92 [S5] Stuart
/Transcript
Full show notes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/92
Episode Transcription by Fayelle Ewuakye. Find her on Twitter at @FayelleEwuakye
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Haley - You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 92, Stuart. I’m your host Haley Radke. We are in a series focusing on adoptees and addiction and today my guest is Stuart Watson. Stu shares his stories of how he used his investigative journalist skills to find his his biological parents at age 45. And this discovery that alcoholism and trauma was inextricably linked in his DNA. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always links to everything well be talking about today will be on adopteeson.com. Let’s listen in.
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Haley - I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Stuart Watson. Welcome Stuart!
Stuart - Thank you! I appreciate this!
Haley - It’s so good to chat with you in real life almost.
Stuart - Well Haley I’ve heard your voice many times.
Haley - Well I’d love it if you would start the way we always do, would you share your story with us please Stuart?
Stuart - Oh my word. I was born April the 8th 1959 in Macon Georgia at a hospital. My biological mother was a nursing student and my biological father was a marine corps veteran of the south pacific in world war II. He was wounded in action, came home, and became an alcoholic. And he was a lawyer by trade, he went from 10th grade in the US to law school. And so he got a GED and went off to law school. And as part of his alcoholism, he was sent to prison. He would forge checks to keep the drinking going. Even though he was sworn to uphold the law, he wound up in trouble with the law, and went to jail repeatedly over these property crimes. Over a whole series of property crimes and he was given the choice of going to jail and in Atlanta Georgia. Or going to the state mental hospital to dry out. And that mental hospital is in a place called Milledgeville. Which is just like Bellevue in new York and bedlam in London. In Georgia, the United States, if you wanted to say someone was sent to a mental institution, you said they were sent to Milledgeville. Well my mother was a nursing student and she met my father and this mental hospital which was the only one in the state of Georgia and so it was one of the largest in the United States. And next to Piligram Hospital in the state of new York, the central state hospital was founded, built by slaves, and originally called the lunatic asylum. And on the cornerstone it still says lunatic asylum. So they met there where he was a patient and she was a nurse. And they began dating shortly after he got out of this drying out. And she actually said that she sat in on his commitment proceedings and that his diagnosis was acute alcoholism without any kind of mental disorder to go along with it. And so he was not what they would call nowadays dual diagnosed. But at any rate, long story short, she got pregnant and he disappeared. Which is a familiar story in the adoption universe, the constellation. She got pregnant, they weren’t married in 1959 and so I’m a baby boomer. I’m a little white boy who was born in the south. And so I’m a part of what they call, I believe they call it the baby scoop era. The era between the early 1940s roughly between world war II and the early 1970s when the pill became more popular and also when abortion became legal and also when curiously enough, the number of single female white head of households in the US spiked. And so what happened was, a lot of folks, just 17 years after I was born, chose to keep the baby. And so there was a huge shift particularly among caucasian Americans. It was a big shift. And so I am part of an entire generation, well over a million, at least a million and a half of white infants who were placed for adoption. And I was sent to foster care for four months where they called me William and then four months later I was adopted by another attorney whose very, kinda strait laced by the book and his wife and they became my mom and dad. And I love them very dearly. And got along great with them. But along about the age I was 45 years old, and I did the research to get what they call here the non-identifying information and that led me to some clues. And by profession, I was an investigative reporter. So I knew how to use public records. And so I took, I expected that non-identifying information to be very sketchy. And in fact I got 8 single spaced pages which were prepared by a social worker plus some original documents which told about for instance, and IQ test they did with me, and also what my birth weight was and some initial, what time I was born etc. and so there was some clues in there, and the biggest clue, I’ll kinda give it away, was that my father was a lawyer who went to prison. Now there are a lot of lawyers who probably belong in prison, but my father, he actually went there. In June of 1004 I went down to the state archives at the age of 45 and I began looking through a big book with the handwritten names, it’s called The Book of Convicts. Was the handwritten names of every person, male or female, black or white, who went to prison in the state of Georgia during those years. And I wrote down the names of every white male probably from the Atlanta area, so we’re talking Dekalb or Fulton county who went to prison for like bad checks, basically. you know, forgery or some sort of fraudulent check writing. And I had a list of about 2 dozen names and I began just googling them. I began just fishing around and I found a man and you know, his name was Henry Scott Schmidt Jr. And he was an attorney in the state database it said, for the Georgia bar association it said that he was deceased but he was an attorney, he had passed the bar and also he had been to prison. And so then I began looking at him and I saw that he married a nurse who was 12 years younger than him. Well, in the non-identifying information it said that my birth mother was a nurse and that she was 12 years younger than him. And I thought surely he did not marry my mother after he got her pregnant and then abandoned her and abandoned his child. Well that’s exactly what he did. He came back 9 months after he was out of prison and out of the state mental hospital. He had detoxed and he shows back up in her life and she took him back but she refused to take him back until he would agree to marry her. And so 8 months, 8 and a half months after I was born, December the 31st, New Year’s Eve, 1959, they snuck across state lines into Alabama where there was a friendly justice of the peace who married my mother and father. And what this means, Haley, is that I have a full blood brother and a full blood sister. And I am in reunion with my birth mom, my brother, and also my sister who I see. And so we have a wonderful reunion. So I not only had you know, relationships with my mom and dad and with my adopted sister, but I have relationships with them. And so also to kinda the point to my story is, my biological father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death. I became and alcoholic, I was 10 years sober when I found my biological family and then my full blood brother and my full blood sister both became alcoholics and you know, substance abusers and addicts just like me. and so what I surmised from all this is that, the notion that addiction, whatever you wanna call it, substance use disorder, addiction, alcoholism, has a very strong family component. A very strong genetic DNA lineage. We don't exactly know what genes those are. I don't think we’ve narrowed in on em, but we know that it exists, it’s not just anecdotal. And also we know there’s a strong environmental component and so I’m busy researching and writing and trying to understand as a lay person what my own biological history and what my upbringing and what my culture and what my life, you know, means in terms of these really pretty fundamental facts about myself that I was taken away from my birth mother on day 1. She never held me, she never nursed me, she never even saw me. she wasn’t even supposed to know whether I was a little boy or a little girl. And that, so you have that profound separation but then you also have the addiction component. So that’s the long and the short of it.
Haley - Oh my goodness, there’s a lot there. Okay, I wanna go just to, you said you were 45 years old when you decided to look for this non identifying information.
Stuart - Correct.
Haley - What brought you to that point of decision, like I’m gonna search?
Stuart - I had made some little baby steps. I had 10 years before that, sent a letter and a check for $250 and they said, oh we’re developing this registry and blah blah blah and we don’t need your $250, but we’ll put your name on the registry. Well these registries in my experience are very passive. And they depend upon a social worker, in my case, not working for a church, but working for the state of Georgia. Because I was adopted through the department of public welfare, so I was basically a ward of the state. And so the state placed me into foster care and then the state handled the adoption. Not a church, not a private agency, not an international agency, the state. So the state sanctioned the adoption and the state sanctions the secrecy and the state acting on behalf of the culture, promotes the lies. And here’s the lie. I have a birth certificate which says I was born in Albany, Georgia. Well I was not born there, I was born in Macon. So that is a fiction, that is an inaccuracy which was promoted by the state. So then another agency of the state decides what information you can have about your own biology, about your own origins. About your origin story. and that agency is interested in promoting other fictions. They will put in, into your non identifying information, they throw several red herrings. And these are designed so that you cannot locate, you cannot circumvent the process of having these intermediaries go to you. But the net result was, both myself, my cousin who’s adopted and my sister, found all of us, all three of us adopted in the state of Georgia, we found that the Georgia system at the time, did not act to facilitate reunion, it acted as an impediment to reunion. In other words, the state cooked up this whole process and so the state had no really vested interest. You know, they like to tell themselves a little bit of a feel good story about how they were helping these biological families reunite. But they really had no interest in it. And as a matter of fact, the way that they handle these notifications did not facilitate, like my birth mother had an interest in knowing who I was and knowing what happened to me. she had a very strong interest in reunion. But she was never contacted. So you would have to have, you know, I pictured at the time as like a joining hotel rooms where both doors are locked. So as an adoptee, I could join the registry and all that meant was, they would unlock and open my door on my hotel room. But they would not knock on the adjacent hotel room so she could open her door or so she could even decide whether she wanted to open her door. So they didn't know at the time, well these laws evolve. And over that time, I became older, I have four children of my own, biological children so I became keenly interested in knowing who my biological parents were. you know, for a whole host of reasons. And so that led me to writing another letter, getting the non-identifying information and then just, it was embarrassingly easy to go to the state archives and figure this out. you know, once I sat down to do it, it just took a few months’ worth of pulling newspaper clips, etc., etc., to piece together that, oh my god, they got married. This is who it was. And then I wrote my birth mother a letter.
Haley - Wow, and you say that’s embarrassingly easy, but a couple months of detective work – my province, I’m fortunate enough to have open records. When I applied I got both their names.
Stuart - Wow.
Haley - So there’s like levels of easy I guess. And then there’s the DNA people who are searching and oh my goodness. Let’s not get too far into that. I’m curious about you said you had 10 years sober already when you connected with your family. Do you wanna tell us about that, about I guess that part of your life and how you came to become sober and any influences you think you already mentioned genetic influence of alcoholism in your family, but I’ll leave you to kind of share that part of your story.
Stuart – Oh sure, the long and the short of it is, is that drinking alcohol did something for me that I don't think it does for about 87-90% of the population. And that is, it has a kind of magical effect. Most people, cannot, well first off, there are more people in the United States who never take a drink than there are who are alcoholic. And that’s something that we forget about a lot. For religious reasons or just personal preference or health, they never drink like I drank. And so drinking for me, was an incredible social lubricant. It connected me to other people. You know, I could talk to the girls, I could go to parties, it just really connected me in a way that I don't think it works for a lot of people. And drinking primarily for a lot of people is a social thing, let’s go have a drink, let’s grab a beer, lemme buy you, lets have a glass of wine and we’ll relax and we’ll talk. Well the net difference for an alcoholic such as myself is that drinking goes from social to nonsocial to antisocial. And here’s what that looks like. It goes from the life of the party, just a lot of fun, this is a big blast, this is great, to I’d really rather drink alone, to leave me alone. Which is okay, until I realize that I was slowly drinking myself to death. And that this was not going to be a quick process. And this doesn’t have anything to do with whether I got drunk driving charges, I did not. With whether I lost jobs, I did not. With whether I went to prison, I did not. With whether I got divorced, I did not. But it has everything to do with slowly deteriorating mental and physical health. And that began to advance in my, in my 30s. and I began to realize it wasn’t until I had every reason, baby girls at home, my wife, a good job, I had every reason to not drink to excess and yet I did anyway. And then I determined that there was no way that I could not drink to excess. If I drank, I drank to excess and I did it on virtually a daily basis. And so I did things that should have round me up in jail like drive under the influence which is completely morally and legally indefensible, you know. And yet, it caused harm to me, it caused harm to my relationships, it cut me off form my baby girls and so I had every interest in seeking help. Now people find this kind of help for addition usually one of about three ways. They find it by going back to church or some other religious institution, they seek help through the enforcement of their faith or their religious beliefs, they have a spiritual conversion. Or they go to, let’s say a detox, a rehab, a group therapy, the Veterans Administration hospital, they find a group of similarly situated people that in this kind of therapeutic approach, they can find the kind of support they need to stay away from a social connection at a bar. Or they work through some kind of 12 step program, the granddaddy of them is Alcoholics Anonymous but now there are dozens if not hundreds of these programs. They address everything from a physical dependence on a chemical or a drug, cocaine or heroine or methamphetamines or alcohol or any of the other heroine, the opioids or nowadays, a process. you know, the use of pornography or video games or food or even smoking is a process, is a whole romance and a culture around it. So smoking and food involve substances but they also involved a process. Well all these means of recovery, they all have one thing in common. And that is a connection. They provide a new try. They provide a new family if you will, a new community and that community has an incredibly strong bond. But what are adoptees looking for? A community. A connection. A sense of family. And so the secret sauce, I’m convinced whether it’s a 12 step program or your church or your synagogue or your temple or your mosque or your ashram, wherever you go, or at the VA, or at the group of veterans at the local McDonald’s or the Starbucks for coffee the secret sauce is community, is a popular, I don't mean to turn this into a lecture, but there’s a very popular YouTube video in which the premise, I think it’s a TED talk from a guy in Europe is that the opposite of addiction is not being clean or sober, the opposite of addiction is being in community, is being connected. Because there’s no person who is more cut off than the person who is completely addicted. They are completely antisocial but you know you are talking directly to an addiction when you hear three magic words, leave me alone.
Haley - Wow, that’s really interesting. I haven’t ever heard it put that way before. And how profound when you say, what are adoptees looking for? We’re looking for family and connection. Oh my goodness. That’s like, wow. Okay, so you, how did you find your community and connection and your new tribe? How was that exactly for you?
Stuart – I’m a big 12 step person. It worked for me. but I completely acknowledge my brother, he goes to the VA and he hangs out with fellow veterans. He was a marine. Our biological father was a marine who was wounded in action by the way, we can talk about trauma and wounding and what it’s connection is to addiction. Because that connection, I’m convinced, is just as large as is the genetic connection. And my sister, she goes to church, and so neither one of them go to 12 step meetings that often. I go to 12 step meetings very often, never go to church, and I don't think I’ve ever really been to group therapy for addiction. And so, we each have sort of found our own way and I, you know, I just think that people need to find the community that works for them. And you know, keep looking until they find that community. But just because if somebody goes to church and they go, I don't believe that, I don't like it. Then go find another community. And it really doesn’t matter where that community meets, it just matters that it’s somebody who will accept you no matter what, you know. They’ve got your back.
Haley – Let’s talk about the trauma. You said you love your adoptive parents and your adopted sister and plus you can love your biological mom and siblings. And yet there’s still a trauma there. And you were in foster care for 4 months. That’s a big stretch of time before going to your adoptive family. So you’ve got that and then your biological father had trauma from the war and yeah, like, what are those connections that you’ve made from that to alcoholism?
Stuart - Until the last several years, I did not feel like I was allowed to have trauma. Because I thought, unless you were a concentration camp survivor, then you should just shut up. Unless you were in Rwanda and survived a genocide, you should just be quiet. Because I thought trauma was a big competition. And I thought well, Stuart, you were never shot and you were never sexually assaulted and you know, you’ve never been to war and so you should just be quiet. You’re not allowed to have trauma. It’s not trauma unless you’ve got a scar to show and an incredibly story to tell. And so it wasn’t until I had a friend who did go to war and he was shot multiple times and he was lucky to survive that he said, trauma is not a contest. And I can’t even tell you what that did for me. because he gave me permission. He said, I’m not gonna compare my gunshot wounds to your being torn away from your birth mother’s arms on day one. you know, I never even got to her arms. I never even lay on her chest. And I had a therapist who said to me, well, if trauma was a contest, you would win. He said, because being torn away from your mother is more traumatic than being shot. Okay, so my biological father got a piece of shrapnel in his back which remained there until he drank himself to death at the age of 46. And on his death certificate it says acute alcoholism. Well the easy to thing, the layup is to say, oh I get it, he’s PTSD, veteran of a horrific battle in the South Pacific in WWII, so there’s the trauma. The huge insight I had was, the trauma was, before he joined the Marine Corp, the trauma was that his father rejected him. And sent him away. That was the trauma. The wound from the shrapnel is a layup. That’s easy. The more difficult thing is to be back up before the soldier becomes a soldier and to see what the trauma is. ‘Cause sometimes the trauma is not the gunshot. That’s what we see. Sometimes the trauma is the rejection. The trauma is you know, we call it, we have all these words for it, relinquishment and surrender and adoption and blah blah blah. No, it’s an amputation. It’s a missing limb. It’s phantom pain. It’s the nerve endings are still there. What happened? What was that? And we have no memory but we have the experience. It’s written into the neurons and we keep saying why do I feel this way, why do I feel this amorphous, this grief, this terrible loss and missingness that I can't explain it. I had a great life, my parents were wonderful to me. they took me Europe, they put me into one of the best schools. They paid for everything, I never went without. So what do I have to complain about? I’m nothing but being a victim. I’m a big whiner. And then you start to read books like, the Body Keeps the Score, the Vandercook book. And you start to understand the physiology of how pretrauma, prememory, the memory’s still growing. I mean that skull is still growing together. So they have no memory to record what happened. That means I can't go into deep hypnosis and take sodium pentanol and go into a trance and work real hard and recover this memory. The memory’s not there, I can’t tell you the smells or the sounds or whatever, that memory is written, that feeling is written in. so it is a trauma that is a somatic experience it is in the body, it is visceral, I feel it. It is not something that I can tell you what color clothes was the nurse dressed in all white or you know, how bright was the light. I can’t tell you any of that. What I can tell you is what I feel in my bones, I feel in my nerve endings because that’s where it’s written.
Haley – That is such an interesting observation about even about how society looks at trauma. What’s the visible trauma or the things like, you can see, you know? That a war happened and you participated and yet this adoption thing is hidden. It’s a hidden trauma from society and to have that acknowledged is so important in community. Now have you experienced you know, going to recovery groups, have you ever shared about adoption issues? And then, have people understood that? Or have you had other experiences when you share about adoption trauma with people who are not necessarily adopted?
Stuart - Well first of all, the recovery community’s extraordinarily supportive. And so because of, it’s a tight knit group, it’s 12 people in a lifeboat. And so the 12 people in the lifeboat are all depending upon one another for their very survival. So yes, the recovery community’s extraordinarily giving and loving and supportive. people who have not had the experience may not understand it, but that doesn’t mean they're not supportive. But you also need to know that people in who treat recovering addicts and alcoholics of all stripes, they are pretty much, they’ve caught on and adoptees are significantly overrepresented in treatment centers. you know, I don't know about prisons, but certainly in treatment centers, and so what you will find is that there are treatment centers where just like the question of, what’s your drug of choice and when did you use and when did you last use and how much did you use and how often, amongst this, the question is, are you adopted or you know, tell us about your infancy or how you were born or how you grew up. They get al it. And when they do, they see when they begin to collect these numbers, you see adoptees or motherless children of all varieties because face it, we’re also talking about the child was removed for its own health, right? and placed in some kind of isolation in which the mother was never able to touch the child while the child was covered in wires or was fighting for life. I’ll tell you a really quick story. a very good friend of mine in recovery took his own life a year ago. And he and I were sharing stories and he was not adopted. But he abused alcohol, abused drugs, had long term recovery just like me. I have over 25 years of sobriety. He had over 30 years of sobriety. And he took his own life. Well, he and I were comparing notes and he said he was removed from his mother and placed in a bassinet where he fought for his life for several months so he’s not laying at her breast. He doesn’t have the physical contact. And next to his computer was a little yellow sticky note which he put next to the monitor. And what it says was, what am I grieving. What am I grieving? Here is the amorphous grief. you know, here is the ambivalent grief that we can’t put our finger on. Why am I so sad, I don't have anything to be sad about. And what does anybody who doesn’t understand, what do they say to you? Buck up, put a smile on your face, come on you’ll feel better. You got nothing to complain about, stop being such a victim. Well that’s because you can’t point to it. It’s because you don't know and it’s not just like if you’re raped, everyone can understand how you would have PTSD from being raped. If you’re shot, everyone can understand how, if you see your best friend die, everyone can understand that. How you would have PTSD but if you say, oh this thing happened to me. and it happened in the first four months of life and I don't even have any memory of it. Well what are you whining about? Well what have you got to complain about? Go get some real troubles, get back to me when you’ve got a real problem. And it’s not until now that people are starting to see, oh, it doesn’t matter the reason the infant was separated from the mother, it just matters that the infant was separated from the mother. Adoption is a smokescreen. The problem is, the amputation. The problem is not the adoption. The problem is not the bassinet or the neonatal intensive care unit, the problem is the severing of this tie from the mother. That’s the problem. Adoption is, foster care, orphanages, whatever, they're just a hacked together solution. you know, they're just patchwork until we acknowledge the fundamental problem. This amputation. We’re not getting anywhere, we’re just getting back into a blame and shame spiral and finger pointing, oh it was the crack or it was the, you know disease or it was the mother who got pregnant without, or it was the father who ran away and abandoned her. No, let’s just talk about what the fundamental trauma is, it’s not from the person who picked the baby up. It’s from the separation, it’s from the separation.
Haley - Well I haven’t heard that before. That people that are like addiction therapists and things are really picking up on this adoption trauma that this is starting to get noticed. That this initial separation can cause all of these issues for this. This is great to hear, great to hear that the larger community is starting to understand that. What do you think, I don't know, anecdotally I guess, because we’re both lay people here speculating. What do you think is gonna happen with that? If seeing adoptees overrepresented in addictions facilities in particular, that’s a huge red flag, so it’s neat that they’re noticing I guess, but what are they gonna do about it?
Stuart - Well what they are doing is treating it. And the noticing as we say the first step is admitting there’s a problem. So when we notice it, that’s a huge, because it means they begin to address this. So there’s a tendency, when you’re talking about particularly a substance, to place a great deal of focus on that substance, right? we know this so we think that the, the answer to opioids is the answer to heroine is methadone. So we just need to get these folks some methadone. No no no no, methadone’s not the answer. Savoxon. So the answer is savoxon, no no no no, so the next drug, we have to treat and certainly we have to treat the physiology of this. Because there is one component. But that’s only one component. There are multiple other components and trauma is one of them. So if you treat the physiological component, right, so you detox the alcoholic and there’s no longer any more alcohol in the system, problem solved, spit em back out, send em back out on the street. Well if the trauma still exists, then they’ll be right back in the door. Now I must say that the language of 12 step programs deal with a great many things. And it’s wonderful. You do not see two words very often. Well three. You do not see trauma, you do not see, or wound. You do not see grief. And you do not see abandonment. It’s like these things are not addressed by name. the things that you see are rage, or resentment, fear, sexual shame, you’ll see addressed. But shame per se, you don't see addressed. That’s where you know, Brene Brown talks about this. You’ll see outside but if you bring that language into traditional orthodox 12 step, you will find blank looks. Because there’s not a tool to deal directly with trauma, wounding, shame, abandonment, grieving, profound grieving, ambivalent or amorphous grief. you know there’s not a tool for that. So thank god for outside help. Thank god for the therapists, the treatment centers, the rehabs, that are getting with the program and starting to recognize this connection and it’s not just this neonatal abandonment. It’s this amputation, it’s also a whole host of other things like a sexual assault victim who deals with her overwhelming shame and grief and rage by numbing it out with whatever, by whatever means necessary, food or bottles and bottles of wine, or whatever. That person needs some help specific to this sexual assault and trauma. Well so does the adoptee. And the more forward thinking rehabs, I don't care if it’s south Florida, southern California, whatever, the more forward looking rehabs they're on it. They look for it and they are on it. They’re dialed in. but a lot of folks aren’t. well that’s, I don't know, I find some of that news kind of encouraging to know that more adoptees will be supported in that way.
Haley - Stuart is there anything I didn't ask you about that you wanna make sure we talk about before we do recommended resources.
Stuart - My mom and dad died the same day in the same room of the same disease and they both had Alzheimer’s and they had a lifelong together and it was, oh my god, it was tough. But it was not until after they died that I realized that I developed a sense of compassion for them. Because my dad, my adopted dad, his birth mother died when he was 2 years old. And so he was raised by another woman. And he loved her and everything but he had something in common with me. and we never spoke of this. And my mom her father was an alcoholic and she was the little girl who kept the secrets. So she was by definition, an adult child of an alcoholic. And she knew of my recovery, she knew of 12 step work, she knew of my getting sober. We never spoke of this. And so after they died, I developed a sense of compassion for them. That I did not have when they were alive. And I just see and hear so much vitriol from the various portions of the adoption constellation who have gone to their separate rooms, they’ve retreated to their corners and now they hurl insults at each other and I just, for every motherless child, there’s also a childless mother, you know? A childless father who cannot conceive and who is suffering. And I’ll just say that I have tremendous compassion for them. I don't know that getting a baby from the other side of the world will reduce that shame of infertility. I don't know that it will even lessen the shame of not being able to conceive. However, I have just a tremendous compassion for parents who cannot conceive. They cannot conceive their own biological children. And I just, I do not blame them I guess for trying to want to be parents. To respond to a really, a primal urge of their own. That’s all.
Haley - Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Alright. Let’s transition and go ahead and talk about our recommended resources. And first I would like to recommend this podcast that I binge and I really enjoy, it’s Season 3 of The Offshore Podcast. And the season is called The Blood Calls. And it is, following an adopted person who is searching for their biological family and it’s also looking at the ethics and troublesome practices of adoptions from the Marshall Islands. And so while you’re following a reunion story of a very young man, I think he’s I don't remember exactly, he may be early 20s. He was adopted from The Marshall Islands to the United States and while you’re following his story of searching out his biological family, the reporters are doing a really great job of finding out some of the very sketchy adoption practices. Ad so I brought this today because I know Stuart, you are an experienced investigative journalist and you know, the series has got some problematic language for me, you know instead of saying expectant mother they use the term birth mother even for women who haven’t officially decided to place. And they then cover some things that we know are even happening in the United States, even happening in Canada. And it’s very interesting. So even though I’m not gonna give it like my full endorsement, I really did enjoy it, and it’s one of those ways where adoption is being exposed to the wider culture. This would be something that lots of people would be interested into. It’s an interesting story. it’s captivating, you wanna know what happens next. And the whole season is out so you can binge it. But it shows some of the really shady practices that are still going on right now. So yeah, I would recommend you check that out if that sounds interesting.
Stuart – I will!
Haley - Yeah, it’s season 3 of Offshore and yeah, check it out, let me know what you think.
Stuart - Yeah, I love podcasts, I love your podcast and yeah, I binge listen, absolutely.
Haley - Well there's only 8 episodes, so it’s a quick listen. What did you wanna share with us today, Stuart?
Stuart – Well you limited me to one resource, Haley.
Haley - Yes, I did, yes I did.
Stuart - Now are you gonna be that mean, are you gonna be that restricting here or can I mention other resources.
Haley - Well, let’s see how you do with the first one, and I’ll give you a pass fail and then we’ll see.
Stuart – The first one I’ll take 5 seconds, it’s Warming the Stone Child. It’s an audiobook which you can get from Audible, you can probably get if you can download audiobooks from your library. You can get it in CDs if you’re old school. And it’s Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Warming the Stone Child. And what appealed to me most, she’s a youngian and so a lot of it is her telling stories. And so it’s only appropriate that you hear her voice in telling these stories which are essentially fables or parables which allow you to see the incredible super powers developed by motherless children as they grow up. And you know, the whole I don't care whether it’s Harry Potter or Batman or Superman, that it is the motherless child who grows up to be the superhero and spoiler alert, the superheroes’ super strength among adoptees is as healers. And how often do you get together with a group of adoptees and oh my goodness, everybody’s in the healing profession, right? everybody’s a therapist or they're a nurse or they're a doctor or in some ways, they’re out healing people. Well I’m not in the healing professions, but there are plenty of people that I hope can help to heal wounds and bring people together. And she talks about you know, cultivating and acknowledging that, with our greatest trauma came our greatest super power, which we need to go forth and exercise.
Haley - And I think, Dr. Estes, I think she’s adopted as well, so.
Stuart - Yeah. It’s very meaningful to her, these stories, these universal stories of the motherless child. I don't care if it’s Little Red Riding Hood or whoever, these stories.
Haley - Okay, you get a pass, so I will allow. I’ll allow one more, go ahead.
Stuart - If you want to understand the history of adoption, there’s a woman named, and she’s a PhD too, and her name is Ricky Solinger. S-O-L-I-N-G-E-R. Ricky is R-I-C-K-I-E. and she’s written 11 books about women’s reproductive rights in the United States. And she determined that she could not write about Roe V Wade and the history of abortion in the United States legal or illegal until she first wrote about single pregnancy and race before Roe v Wade and essentially until she wrote about the phenomena, the historic phenomena of adoption in the United States. And So the book is called Wake Up Little Susie. And it is not a story, it contains many stories, hundreds of stories. But it is primarily a history and it has an extensive bibliography. But it explains the social phenomena, the historical phenomena, which was the Baby Scoop, which was almost exclusively, there were some Native Americans, but it was almost exclusively a white phenomenon. That is, African American babies were kept within the community. They were kept by and large with the birth mother or the birth grandmother, auntie, somebody. But little white babies, there was a market, there was a great demand of these soldiers coming home from WWII who along with the house and the picket fence, they wanted a little baby or two, a little boy and a little girl to go along with it. Ans she explores all of this. Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie.
Haley - Great! Thank you so much, Stuart. Thanks for sharing your story with us, thanks for sharing some of your thoughts on recovery and the links to addiction for adoptees. And I’d love to be able to share your information so people can connect with you. Where can we find you online?
Stuart – On Twitter, @stuartclt, Charlotte North Carolina is where I am, and so Stuart is S-T-U-A-R-T-C-L-T, that’s stuartclt, that’s Twitter I’m on Facebook, Stuart Watson, I’m on LinkedIn, Stuart Watson, W-A-T-S-O-N. and there are a lots of Stuart Watsons, I’m the one who’s the investigative reporter in Charlotte. I thought I had something else. Oh yeah, and I’m making a film with my birth mom and my biological brother and sister and with my adopted sister and with tons of other people who are experts and not experts. And there’s a little trailer to the film. The film has evolved in the three years since the trailer, but the trailer’s at Helen, that’s my birth mother’s name, H-E-L-E-N dot movie. Not .com, but helen.movie. so you can see a little three minute trailer.
Haley – Awesome. Well I’m excited, I’m gonna check that out.
Stuart - I’m excited!
Haley - Thank you so much Stuart, it was just an honor talking with you today.
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Haley - Oh my goodness I had so many things I wanted to ask Stuart about and we just totally ran out of time. And he missed sharing with you that he is working on a memoir and so make sure you go and follow him on social media so you can learn when that’s gonna be coming out, how exciting, I can’t wait to read it. I’d love to stay connected with you so make sure you’re signed up for the monthly newsletter. You can do that at adopteeson.com/newsletter. And I usually share a little essay about something I’m learning or just a quick note about updates about the show or what’s coming up next. So you can expect about once a month to hear from me, no more frequently than that, I promise. So I won't spam your inbox. And yeah, I’d love to connect with you there. So adopteeson.com/newsletter. And I just wanna say a big thank you as always to my supporters of the show. You know who you are, I’m so grateful for your monthly support and I couldn’t do this show without your ongoing support. If you wanna stand with me and other adoptees and help spread message of Adoptees On, please go to adopteeson.com/partner and find out how you can support the show. Thanks so much for listening, let’s talk again next Friday.
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