95 [S5] Sean
/Transcript
Full show notes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/95
Episode Transcription by Fayelle Ewuakye. Find her on Twitter at @FayelleEwuakye
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You’re listening to Adoptees On. The podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 95, Sean. I’m your host Haley Radke. We are officially back with new episodes. Today we’re continuing on in the Adoptees On Addiction series and in this episode, I get to introduce you to my Adoptees Connect co-leader and friend, Sean. Sean shares his story of alcohol addiction, the moment of clarity that helped him realize he had a problem and that includes Justin Bieber, so wait for that little anecdote. And we also discuss what Sean has learned about the impact of adoption on his life, just in the past couple of years. We wrap with some recommended resources. And as always, links to everything we’ll be talking about today, are over at adopteeson.com. Let’s listen in.
(upbeat music)
Haley – I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, my friend Sean, welcome Sean!
Sean - Hello, thank you for having me!
Haley - I’m so excited because you’re my in real life adoptee friend. So I’m really excited to hear your story today, why don't you start out with that.
Sean – Oh my story has many arms, Haley, you know this. And to be honest with you, I’m still very much, I think deceived by sort of the way I was raised and the things that I’m realizing now about my own adoption. It’s still fairly fresh and unfolding as you know, as we go along. And so I find myself sort of second guessing my own gut a lot. To be honest, it’s a confusing time, and maybe it’s just the way things are with sort of realizing with your situation with your adoption. But enough about me. I think you were here to talk about addiction.
Haley - Well that too, that too. I think it starts with your story though.
Sean - No no, to be honest, I think in might in my case it might actually start with my story. I mean to be clear I think that everyone in a way is addicted to something. We’re all dependent on something and whether it’s healthy or unhealthy or hurting you or helping you, I think that everyone has things that they depend on. The problem I feel comes when there’s a stigma attached when people come out with it. You’re automatically branded with a scarlet letter as if everybody doesn’t have it. Sometimes I feel like that opinion’s changing, you see a whole bunch of things about mental health and addiction coming out right now, but it’s one of those situations where I’m not sure if I’m just surrounding myself with people who agree with me, or if the sentiment is actually changing in society, so who knows. Maybe that’s just the way things are right now. My adoption story, I was relinquished at birth. It was a planned relinquishment, meaning my mom before I was born, knew that she wasn’t going to keep me. That’s something I didn’t know until about two years ago. My biological father was a, sort of recently moved to Canada immigrant from Trinidad. We since have a relationship and he has admitted he didn’t know that I existed. Obviously my mother did. She was a 19 year old born and bred from Alberta, small town girl. Small town being Alberta small town, meaning the population was like around 300, very small.
Haley - That’s really teeny.
Sean - Well, I mean Alberta small towns are exactly what you would assume Alberta small towns to be in every possible way, right?
Haley - Yeah.
Sean - So I could only imagine some of the pressures that she must have felt, with the makeup of me in a situation like that, in the mid 70s. And basically that was the end of that, and so it goes. I was adopted to a white couple in their 30s, which automatically made me a transracial adoptee. They had another adopted kid, also white, he went through the foster care system, he was about 3 years older than me. And when we were growing up, we moved around a lot. We bounced every year, two years or so across the country, from places in the same city, from places in the same province, we didn't really have a strong sense of roots. Addiction wasn’t really a topic in any form that was brought up in my house. But there was always alcohol in the house. I would say that, I’d be confident in saying that everyday there was somebody, you know, you come home from work and you have a Scotch or you drink beer while you do your housework. And that’s just sort of the way things were. It was completely normalized. And I still, despite my own beliefs about alcohol or drugs or what they do to your body, what I think now, I still have this strange misconception that it’s completely normal to just have drinks everyday if you want to. I’m fine with it even though, as of right now I don't. I guess my upbringing, you know, in sort of the environment I was in created this perfect storm. And when we, after our last move which was to Edmonton, after you know, some inner struggles and stuff that I didn't even really understand at the time, I decided to move out. I was fairly young. 16 or 17, still in high school. And I moved to an apartment across the street from my high school. Which you would think would be great, because you know, 17 year old kid, and I’m devastatingly handsome. You don't have to laugh so hard at this.
Haley - You’re super confident, also.
Sean - But you know, you’d think it was this great ideal situation. You have an apartment, you have your friends, but you know, I was more doing it because that’s what I had to do. And I still didn't drink. That much. No more than, no more or less than any other high school kid would have at the time. But what I did find after I moved out, was that I really liked being around people. I had this huge craving for being close to people. I would honestly say that that was probably my first addiction was closeness. But whenever I would meet somebody, or enter a relationship, I was fearing that the end was gonna come. Because I, that’s sort of what I knew. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to look at relationships in a completely different light and actually look forward to them instead of fearing what was gonna happen, you know, 6 months, a year, 5 years, down the road.
Haley - So living right across the street from high school, 17 years old, what’s that look like for you? Like, daily kind of life on your own.
Sean - I mean, I would hop a balcony and run to class and then come back with people whenever I could, my landlords loved me. I paid them in cash because I was working in nightclubs. It was fantastic. But as far as the relationship stuff go, or anything in that matter, if something felt good, I did it, you know? I had autonomy in my life. I was underage and independent and justifiably independent because I was working and making money. And you know, trying to go to school even though I was probably failing horribly at it. Come to think about it, if I dig a little bit deeper, I guess I was a bit of a train wreck. But I definitely had a hard time discerning between healthy and unhealthy situations. For the record, the healthy ones are always the ones that are more fun when you’re a 17 year old kid who’s independent. But that’s usually when things start to break apart, you know? When you don't have the foundation to make the right decisions and you’re sort of thrust in this life where you have to. That was high school.
Haley - During that time, you’re working night clubs?
Sean - I was working in nightclubs, I was sort of attracted to the, like the musical community. That’s sort of the thing that drew me in is, I didn’t have a strong sense of community where I was, I had scattered groups of friends. Which were, some of them were very close, but they weren’t attached. I didn’t feel like there was one central group which maybe common, maybe not. Maybe it just affected me a bit more. So I did every once in a while, search for communities to be a part of. And when you;re somewhat disassociated or you feel like you are, you have a couple places you can look. You can try a church, but I wasn’t raised with a religion and didn’t really feel an association with that. You can try community groups but again I didn't feel like there was one central group that identified, that I could identify with, or that I was a part of. So community groups weren’t really an option for me. I didn’t go to university right out of high school. It took me about 4 or 5 years to go back, so school groups weren’t gonna be a thing for me and then the other option would have been night clubs. And I was already a bit of a musical person, you know, I went to school to take musical production and I was writing musical columns for newspapers and stuff. So naturally this was the way I would go. Unfortunately, that kind of environment, even more so, normalizes addictive behavior and it masks it, it hides it. You know, you can walk into a nightclub, be completely hammered drunk, and people might not even notice whereas you could never go to your job like that. Your day job if you had it. And then for me, I didn’t know whether it was an environmental thing, you know the way I was raised just made me think that it was okay to do this stuff. Or biologically, if it was bred into me that I was more susceptible. What I did know was that I struggle with relationships, I didn’t feel connected to my community, yet working in the environment that I worked in, I literally stood on a platform and played to, served to my own community. Community in quotes, right? And then the other question is, was my family even in the crowd? I didn't know how many brothers or sisters, aunts, uncles, anything that I had. And I was catering to a black community in a city without an enormous black community, right?. So I had no idea who was there and who wasn’t there and if they knew I existed and any of that stuff. It was a very confusing time and so drinking was my thing. That’s what helped me become social. Especially being or feeling like I was an outsider.
Haley – What did that drinking look like for you? So you’re a young man, you’ve graduated high school, you’re working, what does it look like day to day?
Sean - It’s tough to identify because at the time you don't really recognize anything is a problem. Because like I said, I was in an environment where that was just what people did. And so you can really hide any negative behaviors that you have, right? And with that said, it’s easy to let that get away with you. You know, addiction, drinking, drugs, anything that you do, it can be a lot like riding a bike with no brakes down a hill. It’s only gonna gain momentum. And the farther you ride and the faster you move, the harder it is to stop. It doesn’t care who’s in the way. People can yell and scream and they can jump around all they want, but they - dig it - move it. Beep, do you have a censor noise? You just duck out, don't you.
Haley - Jen beeps it.
Sean - Oh is there, what’s the beep? Is it a high pitched?
Haley - She does a couple different ones, it’s always a surprise to me what the beep’s gonna be.
Sean - For this, and I want you to leave this part in. For this episode only, could you make ‘cause I, and I promise I’ll keep it to a minimum, but every time I swear, could you put in a sound bite of Macho Man Randy Savage going, “dig it”!
Haley - No. But good to ask.
Sean - That’s right, that’s right. you could just, do mine if you want to. Where was I.
Haley - You’re trying to get away with swearing on a clean show. Okay. You’re talking about momentum and how just snowballs and it doesn’t matter what people are saying to you, you’re in it, it’s moving.
Sean - Well and you, when you’re doing that, you never are able to address it, right? Because you don't even know what’s happening. So I went along with my life, you know. I went back to school, I started writing professionally, I started working in office jobs, I moved. But how you’re acting and how you’re meant to act are so misaligned for so long, you're bound to crash. And all of those things that I just named, those were all just sort of things in the way of my brakeless bike. Eventually all you can do is jump off. And that’s gonna hurt for a while. It might hurt forever.
Haley - Well, what were some of the things that you ran into?
Sean - In terms of what?
Haley - Well like, did it affect it your job, or relationship, like, do you have examples of any of that?
Sean - Well, I mean, in my case it was a very slow on ramp and then like a really hard fall off a cliff because you're drinking so you're tired all the time, so you find a doctor who will give you pills, because you can't sleep and that’ll help with that but then you know, you sort of normalize your schedule based on these synthetics. And then eventually you convince yourself, at least in my case, that as long as you're keeping it legal, as you're doing the things that are okay from doctors and stores and stuff like that, you're better than if you were doing the stuff rom the illegal sources. As long as I was maintaining, I was succeeding and I became very good at juggling things. You know I had a good job. I had a few good jobs. Had a few relationships. My priorities more became about the juggling, not the health or the weight or the behaviors that I was acting out on. And to be honest I didn't recognize my problem. And that’s what, for me, my addiction is, it completely hid my problem. Whatever it was that was motivating me, it was telling me that my decisions were justified and it took me a while to realize that it was always lying, always lying in all ways to you. So everything, you know, all of the stuff that I just named were things that were completely ruined if not heavily damaged by whatever it was that was guiding me at the time.
Haley - What does going off the cliff look like?
Sean - Oh man, do we wanna go there? Going off the cliff landed me with, you know, I isolated myself. And I did it to myself. It wasn’t anybody sort of pushing me or anything like that, I made it impossible to sort of be around me at the time. So I completely isolated myself from anyone and everything. And there were friends who, you know I said I moved, I moved to a different city. There were friends back home who hadn’t heard from me in you know, 1, 2, 3 years. And had no idea what was going on. My closest friends, you know, wouldn’t hear from me for 6 months to a year. Yeah, it was a very isolating time. But, like I said, I didn’t recognize that’s what I was doing. And so when things would fall apart or when I would finally see it, I kind of went through the motions. I did the therapy route. I tried to quit the things that I was doing. I tried to change my situation, get different jobs, find different people, all of that stuff. But I don't think that I was honestly giving it a full effort. And partly was because I don't think that I was ready to accept the help that I needed.
Haley - So did you know at that point that drinking and trying to supplement to stay awake with prescription medication, did you know that was a problem? Did you see that?
Sean – I think that I saw it as the patterns that I was doing to maintain. Like I said, I was holding, and probably not to the outside world, but to myself, I was holding things together. Like I said, jobs I was able to keep them for a while, or at least get new ones whenever I needed them. I had a wide enough net of associations and good people around me that you know, if I lost some people along the way, there were some more people somewhere else who would bring me in. So I don't honestly think that I ever recognized when and where rock bottom was when I was there. It wasn’t until long after, when I started digging out that I saw where I had been.
Haley – I’m curious about this, you said you went to therapy. Like, did your therapist ever ask you about drinking? Like did you bring that up? Or were you just talking about other stuff and it wasn’t really addressed?
Sean - I don't think that, I don't think that drinking or any sort of dependency or adoption was ever really addressed in therapy until recently. You know, I went to a therapist, I went to a couple therapists when I was living outside the city. And I remember one of them would just hand me a piece of paper every time that I walked in with this grid of different faces. Like, different emotions and faces on it and she would say, circle every one that pertains to you right now. And there would be I don't even know how many, 40, 50, 60 faces on the thing and I would want to circle all of them, right? Because I had no idea where I was and this is the treatment that I was given. And meanwhile, I'm sure that to people who knew me or took the time to you know, pay attention, it was probably pretty obvious where everything was coming from. Yeah. And that I think that is another one of those things that I’m hoping is changing as times go on is that we’re seeing that there’s a definite link between really any type of childhood trauma, but specifically adoption relinquishment, foster care, abandonment, those kinds of things. And the number of people who are dependent on something and hurting themselves in the process. I think that there’s an obvious connection there.
Haley – Yeah, definitely that’s, anecdotally, that’s the pattern I have seen but I’m curious to see if there will be studies coming out addressing any of that, you know?
Sean - And it’s another one of those things, right? Are people really coming around or are you and I just surrounding ourselves with people who see it the same way?
Haley - Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, let’s think positively. Okay, so going back to you, and your story, you said kind of, it’s only when you look back you can see where rock bottom was. And like, what eventually you led you to quit drinking?
Sean – Luck, situation, the right people. There was, I don't think that there’s one clear path for it that you can, if there was –
Haley - Okay, you gotta elaborate on saying luck, okay?
Sean - I had a number of situations that happened. And they, and when I say luck, I don't always mean good luck. But there were a number of situations that happened in succession, in my life that sort of led me to realize what was happening. First one was, my first daughter was born. And everyone has said this when their first kid is born, is that they see things in a different way. Yeah, when she was born it really made me kind of reassess where I was and what I was doing. And then shortly after that, about a year later, my adoptive dad passed away. From relatively young, from health related issues, mostly just not taking care of his own health. And then I had a really close friend who was my age and I started to see his health deteriorating, from the same things that I was doing to myself. So those three things, I think, you know, it was like a 1, 2, 3 punch. Made me realize how, where my life was going, what was happening, what I was doing to myself.
Haley - So what part of that led you to stop drinking? Like, what was the, did you have a moment, did you have somebody come to you and be like, look at this.
Sean - Well I used to tell people that when my first kid was born that I saw some pictures of myself and I was holding like a beer can in the background and I didn't like the way it looked. That’s complete bull – dig it-. Now you have to leave it in. The truth is I was sitting down with that close friend that I mentioned and we were, it was Grey Cup. It was Grey Cup weekend, it was the Grey Cup weekend, where Justin Bieber was singing at the halftime show. And so I can justifiably say that Justin Bieber is the reason that I had to stop, I had to. We were having a conversation and something that he said while that halftime show was going on. He meant it one way, I heard it a different way and I’ve related it before as, you know when there’s a movie, when you’re watching a movie and there’s an explosion that goes off, but the second before the explosion, all of the air gets sucked out and it’s complete silence. When he made a couple of comments, I kind of felt that for about 3, 4 seconds. This complete silence in the room. And I had this moment of clarity and that was the thing that just kind of made me say, alright, I kind of see it now. I see what I’m doing, I see how I'm hurting people, I see how I’m hurting myself, this isn’t the way that I wanna go. And so when I say luck, it was, like I said, a perfect storm of things, all kind of intersecting at the same place. And then I was in the right place to receive the message at the time and made a decision. And it is a decision. I think that you have to make a decision to stop doing something like this to yourself. I still keep bottles of alcohol in my house. As long as I have them there, everyday I wake up and I’m making a choice not to use them. And maybe it’s gonna be like that forever. For me, that just might be the way that my treatment works. Other people, I’m sure, are different, I hope so. Because it’s not the most fun road to take.
Haley - But you just stopped drinking. Like you heard Justin Bieber, the air got sucked out of the room, and you stopped drinking.
Sean - It was a, and I tried, to be honest, I’d tried in the past with obvious lack of success at various times. Sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week. Sometimes when I’d start a new job or try to go back to school, I would cut it out for a while. And then always slipped back into it. As of right now, I’m at my 6 year mark. So it has been a while.
Haley - Congratulations.
Sean - Thank you so much. But like, I say, it’s a decision every day. And at least as long as I hold that in my back pocket, I know that it’s a choice that I’m making and not something that I have to do or else.
Haley - So you know, we kinda touched on this. We don't really know, but we’re presuming that there’s a link between childhood trauma and addictive behaviors. And you know, thinking back to, your growing up years, and you are relinquished and adopted, and then the lifestyle too, just so transient, place to place and just not that stability. Is that a pretty clear link for you personally?
Sean - I think that it’s important in one way or another, especially for people who have any kind of attachment, abandonment issues, to have some sense of roots. Moving is fine. As long as there is another form of foundation. Connection with a birth family, you know, strong awareness at home of what the situations are that are going to come up. I just believe that the, especially with adopted kids, there’s an extra level of consideration that needs to be taken, before you’re ready for it.
Haley – And for you as a transracial adoptee, did you think that any of that has a part in it, growing up with a white family and really struggling with identity in that respect?
Sean - It’s definitely another layer of it, right? the more things that you add to it, whether you're an adoptee from another country, or from another race, or there’s a giant age gap in you know, biological kids, or any biological kids and adopted kids in the house, or giant age gaps in the kids in the house, all of these things are things that have to be considered and addressed. And at least when I was growing up, I don't think that these were things that therapists were focusing on.
Haley - Nobody was recommending that at the time, right.
Sean - Nobody was at the time, right? Yeah, no, I think this is another one that is more recently being accepted. And even now I’m sure that if you went to 10 therapists and said, here are my things, what do you say, they would tell you something else. They would tell you it’s another thing, it’s your mom, or it’s your you know, there are a number of whatevers. Because I think that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what it is that adopted kids go through. And there isn’t one truth. There isn’t like, you’ll talk to adoptees and everybody has a completely unique, completely different story and they’re all true. And they’re all false, because we all, many of us lived for so long under these false assumptions about who we were to whom.
Haley - Will you talk about that a little bit, ‘cause I know it’s only in the last couple years you have sort of, you know, using the lingo, come out of the fog and like looked back at your experiences and with a new lens. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Sean - Well I still consider myself very much in some form of a fog a lot of the time, to be honest with you. And I think when at the top of the show when I was giving my, here’s my disclaimer, that’s what I was alluding to was that, a lot of my opinions are still being formed. I’ve heard it referred it to before as a form of disassociation which is, you're sort of gauging the things that you're now seeing under this different light, versus the things that you were raised to believe. And I kind of feel like that’s been an ongoing process for me for the last few years. My reunion story is fairly recent. You know, I didn’t even apply for my full adoption record until I was in my late 30s, I’m 42 now. So yeah, every little interaction I have, every little piece of information that comes out is something else that I have to reconsider. And I don't know if there’s ever an endgame to that, or if this is going to be a thing that I’m going through kind of forever, but that’s been, that’s what my reunion experience so far has been, it’s been very eye opening. It’s been very fairly difficult at times. And conflicting in a lot of ways, because there are so many people involved.
Haley - Yeah. You do have a very interesting reunion story, I don't know if we have time to go into that. But we’ll save it for another time. Can you just talk about personally, how your views have shifted, and I know everything’s in process, but and just how you see yourself now versus, just a few years ago when you might not have realized the impact adoption has had on you.
Sean - Well I’ve always felt extremely unsettled. And when I first moved out, when I was 16, 17 years old, for the first few years, I bounced around from apartments as well. Just the same habit that we had growing up. I was in a different place every 6 months to a year probably for a while. Just because that’s what I knew. You know, you move into a place you get comfortable, you leave half your stuff in a box and you go find somewhere else. I think recently, and this is one of the things that my reunion has delivered, here’s one of the things that my reunion has sort of presented to me is that, there is much more a feeling of roots. There’s a connection that I can feel that, I didn’t know outside my kids, you know, in the past. My first daughter was the first blood relative that I ever knew. So that was, like I said, that was a very eye opening change for me, was having a blood relative, somebody who, you know, they can be distanced. And they can go away, but they’re always tied to you. I've never really felt that until she was born and now I kind of feel the same way with my family, they're very familiar.
Haley - And I know that you discovered, you know, some, like you’ve always loved music and that’s always been really important to you. And then in reunion you discovered this connection as well with your biological family. How does knowing that shift you, does it?
Sean – Yeah, well. It’s funny how DNA works, isn’t it? I was sort of, and I grew up with a, my adoptive family had musical people in it, my grandparents played multiple instruments and this and that. But I was never really classically trained to play anything. I was just sort of drawn towards playing music from when I was a kid. And when I moved out and started working professionally and writing in the industry. And I found since reuniting with my family, that pretty much everybody in the family has a musical talent. And many of them have and do do it professionally, teaching, performing, writing, playing, singing, all different kinds of musical talents in the family. So it’s interesting to see this thing that for the longest time, you know, pushing 40 years, kind of made me feel like, why do I have this and the rest of the family kind of doesn’t have this? To go into a situation where oh this is just the way things are, there’s music.
Haley - I just imagine, for you, that that just must feel like, there’s a reason for this. And of course I love it and not that you needed permission to, but it’s kind of like, here’s the answer. I found that in my reunion too, when I connected some little idiosyncrasies, it just made things kind of, makes a little more sense.
Sean - Yeah it does, it’s, reunions can go a multitude of ways, right? And we’ve probably heard stories of them going in every different direction.
Haley - Yep.
Sean - But the one constant, is that you get answers. And you get some of these gaps filled in, whether the filling in is a positive or a negative for you, that’s up to the situation. But you do get the answers that you’ve kind of been seeking, at least in my case, that’s what it was. Is the answers were there and the people existed.
Haley - Yes, okay, thank you. Is there anything else that you wanna talk about on the addiction side, anything else you wanna tell us or give advice to us about or anything like that?
Sean – I don't think that there’s any advice that can be given because it’s like I said, every situation’s gonna be completely different and mine, you know I had my thing that I was caught up on, but that’s a completely different situation than everybody else out there. To take care of yourself. Get good people around you, see therapists. Seek therapy if you can. And find a good therapist.
Haley – And I know you’re really fortunate with that, because you’ve found an adoptee who is also adoptee competent therapist.
Sean - Oh did I ever luck out at the exact right time. Yeah, it’s having somebody who you know, he was, he pointed in the direction. Having somebody who was able to look at it under that scope, was a huge benefit throughout my entire journey. And who knows where I would be if I didn't find that, right?
Haley - Yeah, I get it. I totally get it. You know, one of the things you mentioned was having great people around you, and I think that’s awesome advice for all of us that are adoptees. So let’s go into our recommended resources. And Sean and I are friends because we are running the Adoptees Connect Edmonton group together. And yeah, which is awesome, awesome. So exciting. I mean, I guess we’ve been meeting for about a year now, is when I, I’m trying to think back to when I exactly started, I don't know.
Sean – Well we used to hold the meetings at your house, because I was going like, are you sure you wanna do that? But yeah, I think it’s about a year.
Haley - Yeah!
Sean - Yeah, I’d walk over, go over to Haley’s house, we actually don't live that far from each other. But I’d go to your house and you'd have cookies and fruit trays and it was fantastic.
Haley - And coffee.
Sean - And coffee all the time!
Haley - Yeah, well, so it’s been about a year, and we have approximately once a month meetups and we have met a few different new people, new to the adoption world, people. We’ve had people that are in adoption land that didn’t know that we were meeting in Edmonton. It’s been a wide variety. And so without breaking confidentiality of course, ‘cause that’s like, key. Let’s just talk a little bit about that. Just how the impact of being in person with other adoptees in your own city, like, it’s so cool!
Sean - Well that’s something that didn't exist a while ago, at least nothing that I found. Because you, I approached you before we even met, I think on Twitter. And you pointed me in the direction of some online forums, discussion groups and that kind of thing which helped me sort of build a lot of the confidence. So if we’re doing recommendations right now, my number #1 recommendation is this very podcast. For anyone who speaks to me about it. Because this is, you are one of the people who kind of helped me jump off that bike. But yeah, having people in your own city that you can go and sit down and meet with, once a month or so, and just share stories and talk about things in a completely safe environment, has been amazingly helpful. It gives you association, it gives you a community which we’ve talked about a few times in this show and how important that is. But how have you, because you’ve been sort of in your reunion transition whatever phase it is that you’re in right now, you’ve been going through this a lot longer than I have. What have you seen with the community versus sort of before Adoptees Connect existed?
Haley - Well I think the in-person factor, I had no idea how important that was. And this isn’t personal to me, but I have seen people have like, huge “aha” moments in our group just talking about something that you and I now that we’ve been in it for a little while, we would just be like, of course that’s why this is the way it is. Like of course, right? but someone who is new or hasn’t been around a lot of adoptees, like has this breakthrough. That is incredible. And someone like that, might not necessarily know to go to a forum online to look for an answer about something. Like they might not necessarily know it’s anything to do with adoption related and as we’ve said like, maybe you’re going to a therapist to talk about this issue, but they might not know it’s adoption related.
Sean - Right. No, you're absolutely right. and since everybody’s in a different phase of this kind of journey, it’s a beautiful thing when you can see somebody have one of those revelations. Whether it’s based off of a common conversation we would have or something that we’re realizing at the same time. Just having that dialogue is what helps bring the ideas out.
Haley - Yeah, absolutely. So that piece I had no idea could happen in a group. And essentially we’re meeting with like, people we’re becoming friends with but, this could be a first time meeting, you're strangers. And the only connection you have is that you were adopted. That’s pretty impactful. As far as the adoptee community, I have seen it grow so much in the last couple years and of course that’s one more thing where, am I just filling my feed with more people that have already been in this. I think probably that’s a piece of it, but also I think the message is reaching more people that are completely disconnected and are just struggling and looking for an answer and then they find something about adoption support and they’re like wait, what? Do I need support for this? I don't know.
Sean – Conditioning, right? it was never even on my mind as a major thing until I really had some time to sit down and think about it. And had the right people you know, helping guide whatever confusion I was having. Because you know, everybody is in a different phase of this whole thing. Everybody can give you helpful advice. Everyone has something to offer on the conversation.
Haley - Yeah. For sure. Yeah, so that’s our first, it’ll be our joint recommended resource is Adoptees Connect. Specifically if you’re in the Edmonton area, you can go to the Adoptees Connect YEG page on Facebook, and just send us a message. It’ll go to me or Sean and we can add you into the secret group, we’ll have postings up there when our next meetings are. We usually, Sean has convinced me to move the meetings out of my living room to coffee shops so, if you’ve ever wanted to see my living room, I’m so sorry, you can blame Sean for meeting at a neutral location. And I’m now gluten free, so you know, you don't have to eat my gross gluten free cookies. So bonus all around.
Sean - Are these cookies or biscuits?
Haley - Hockey pucks?
Sean - Hockey pucks? Oh, gotcha.
Haley - I haven’t attempted gluten free cookies yet, I’m just like, I’m just new, very new in this whole gluten free world.
Sean – you’re gonna have to let me know how that goes.
Haley - Well you just remember, I used to make the best cookies, like I just did and so now it’s very sad to be in this new space. Okay, now this is totally not serious, and we’re gonna get back to a serious recommendation with yours in a minute. But I picked out a Facebook page that I’ve been enjoying very much and this is not for everyone. But if you like to make fun of adoption, and you like a little satire in your life and you feel a little snarky, then this is for you. Okay. It’s the Facebook page called No Baby Saviors.
Sean - I’m very familiar with that.
Haley - I know! And I’m so sad because I was like, oh I’m gonna show Sean something new and he’s really gonna love it. And then I went and looked and you already liked the page, so it’s nothing new. But I'm gonna just read a couple things from their page because it’s so funny. And then you can decide for yourself if you want to see more of this snark. And so they, describe themselves “as an irreverent satirical look at the U.S. adoption industry. A place where ‘brave’ birth mothers and white privilege have a cup of tea.” Now as we’re recording this, The Bachelor is just launching again, so here’s a Bachelor themed post from No Baby Saviors. So the graphic is a bouquet of roses and it says, “Stay tuned this week for the hopeful adoptive parent rose ceremony on The Birth Mom.” Here’s the description. “Watch as 36 hopeful adoptive couples do ridiculous stunts to compete for the attention and trust of a single white birth mom. They only have 3 weeks to make a lasting impression. She’s about to pop! Will they be able to hide their crazy long enough to win the coveted role of the parent?”
Sean - Who will be chosen?
Haley – Oh my gosh, “will they keep all the absurd promises made during the highly emotional and critical moments? Will mother and baby ever see each other again? The Birth Mom premiers tonight on NBS, don't miss it.”
Sean – Wow.
Haley – I mean, you know, it’s funny because it’s partially true sometimes.
Sean - Partially true sometimes.
Haley – Okay, take us back to the serious. What do you wanna recommend?
Sean – Oh my recommendations. So there's an author named Jeanette Winterson who was the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. And while she was writing Oranges, she’s an adoptee. And while she was writing Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, she was also writing a bit of a memoir of certain points of her life called Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal. And it talks about her upbringing, her struggle was with a sort of aggressively religious adoptive family and how that’s affected her in her adult life. It’s a really great read. That would be one of my first recommendations. And then second, there’s a video that I’ve heard other adoptees recommend on your show and I’m gonna do the exact same thing. It’s not the most entertaining video in the world, I believe it’s just called Adoption and Addiction by Paul Sunderland. It’s an old, British man standing in a lecture talking to a classroom for like 45 minutes. Like I said, it’s not gonna grip you. But the information within the things he’s saying, the stats, the trends he’s seeing, really resonated with what I was seeing on my side. So Adoption and Addiction video. It’s up on YouTube completely free by Paul Sunderland is my second recommendation.
Haley - Well, and there’s a reason that multiple people have recommended it on the show. You know, it’s and expert who has a ton of experience in this field, he knows exactly what he’s talking about and this stuff he shares is kind of like mind blowing. So if you have any addictive behaviors like Sean said, many of us do, you’re just kind of puzzled about it, definitely check that video out. It’s very interesting. Even if it is dry.
Sean - Very dry.
Haley - Very dry. Just like our weather here.
Sean - Isn’t it?
Haley – If you wanna come and hang out with me and Sean in person, you live in Edmonton or the surrounding area, come and hang out with us at our next meetup. It’s been so amazing to build friendships and to feel in person supported, like it’s so great, I'm just so honored to be able to do that with you.
Sean – And we’ve been seeing new people come out all the time.
Haley - Yeah!
Sean - Right, constantly getting a new flow of members coming through, so it’s been great.
Haley - Yeah definitely. And you know, sometimes it’s me and Sean so we can you know, just come hang out with us. It’ll just be the three of us. And sometimes there’s 4 or 5, so you never know. And again, our Adoptees Connect is on facebook.com/adopteesconnectYEG and if you’re not from Edmonton and you’re like why do you keep saying YEG, that’s our airport code.
Sean – That is our airport code, we’re the yeggers.
Haley - So if you are on Twitter and you’re in Edmonton, you always hashtag YEG. That’s just sort of, that’s the thing around here. So anyway, thank you so much Sean for sharing your story. and I so appreciate leading the Adoptees Connect Group with you. And you’ve just been so supportive in that. And I’m just really, really honored to have you as a friend.
Sean – Thank you so much for doing what you do, every single week!
Haley - Yes, every single week! Thank you.
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Haley - If you’d like to connect with Sean there’s two ways. If you’re on Twitter, you can find him there, his Twitter handle is linked in the show notes which you can find if you click through on your podcast app or head over to the Adoptees On website where you can find the show notes for all of our episodes. Or if you’re not on Twitter, you can send a note to our Adoptees Connect Edmonton Facebook page and Sean or I will see that. And you guys I’m so excited to be back making new episodes. We've had some really, really great interviews with some special guests that are coming up soon. Thank you so much to my monthly Patreon supporters. Your support covers all the costs of running the show like, hiring an editor to edit each episode of the podcast, all the website hosting costs, and all of those things that go into producing a podcast which, oh my goodness, are numerous. So I’m so grateful for your support, I wouldn’t be able to do this show without you. If you would like to partner with us, and keep Adoptees On going, you can go to adopteeson.com/partner to find out more details. And there’s some really great perks coming up. We have been working behind the scenes to have a more regular Adoptees On Patreon feed that is only for monthly supporters. And you're gonna see some guests whose names you recognize on that very, very soon. Including Sean. So if you wanna hear more from him, that’s another way you can do that. Adopteeson.com/partner. Thank you so much for listening. Let’s talk again next Friday.
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