226 Harrison Mooney

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/226

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Haley Radke: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice.

You are listening to adoptees on the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today we are so honored to introduce you to Harrison Mooney, author of the incredible new memoir, Invisible Boy, where he exposes the trauma of transracial adoption. Harrison shares with us why family preservation is so important to him and how he was able to reconnect with his biological mother after a lengthy time of silence between them.

We talk about the complexities of being in a situation where it didn't feel safe to say the whole truth about adoption and about how good it feels when you're finally able to speak freely. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we will be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com.

Before we get started with my conversation with Harrison, I want to invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community over on adopteeson.com/community. Which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. Okay, friend, I'm so excited to share this episode with you. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Harrison Mooney. Welcome, Harrison.

Harrison Mooney: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. My pleasure. I'd love it if you would start the way we always do here, if you would share some of your story with us.

Harrison Mooney: Yeah, so I was adopted as a baby. I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and adopted at 11 days old.

As I understand it, there's a waiting period where some forms in Canada have to be filed or something. But my biological mom had me for five days and then they took me away. You know, she didn't really want to give me up. So she tried to hold onto me and she said every day the nurses would come in and kind of wrestle me away from her.

Because they didn't want her to get too attached to this baby that grew inside of her body already. Anyhow, I was adopted by a White, very Christian family. And we lived in Abbotsford, which is a little suburb just outside of Vancouver. Very religious, small town vibes.

It's getting a little bigger now, but it still just feels like the smallest, jerkiest town and we were radical Christians. So, I grew up understanding that God had built this family, that he'd taken me from, you know, a vessel and given me to this other family because, you know, they were Christian and they were God-fearing and they prayed and asked him to do that.

And so I really leaned into my faith and to Christianity. And as my family got more and more radical, we went to more and more charismatic churches. You know, I did my best to fit in and to ignore the white supremacy at the heart of these institutions and mine, in particular.

And at the same time, I wasn't really being taken care of. I wasn't given any guidance for how to be Black in these spaces. And it wasn't until I was about 19 and I got a call from the adoption agency. At that time they were called the Hope Adoption Agency.

I was told, now that you're 19, you're an adult, so you're allowed to know some things about your biological parents, and they want you to know that they love you. And I didn't know what to do with that information, but that kind of thing just rattles your foundation, you know?

It’s really like, okay, well, so somebody else is my mom, somebody else is my dad, you know? I mean, I guess I had always known that, but you don't have to engage with it until it's right on top of you. And, you know, that started a journey of, I guess, self-discovery.

I eventually went down to the adoption agency. I learned my parents' names. I was so much more comfortable in White spaces than Black spaces at that point that I reached out to my dad first. Or at least I met him first and that didn't go very well for me. But a little while later, I reached out to my mom and I met her.

And that was incredible. I mean, the moment that I met her, you know, my life was completely changed. And I don't know that I knew that at the time. At the time you're just trying to process it and, you know, get through it, try not to cry or throw up or just run. But it was actually seven years between meetings.

I met my mom that first time and we made plans to have dinner a week later. And then we both just didn't do that. And, yeah, seven years later I called her and we tried again. And you know, in that time it took, we had a few really good years of building a relationship and recovering what was lost.

I wrote this book Invisible Boy to really explain to her what my life had been like after she gave me up. And she read the first draft and we cried together and we commiserated and we shared stories that were just so similar. And then a month after that, she woke up one day and there was blood in her eye.

She went to the doctor. It turned out that she had leukemia and she died in May. So, now I'm post a lot of things. I'm post this book that I wanted to write my whole life. You know, I wanted to meet my mom and have a relationship with her and I wanted the 30 years with her that I got with my adoptive mom.

Yeah. Now, I'm reeling a little bit, you know. I've done this big thing and I've suffered this great loss, and I'm not quite sure where to go from here, but I'm really glad that I started this journey and I'm really glad that I met her and that I had an opportunity to know her before she died.

Yeah, it's an ongoing journey, but that's mine.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I'm so sorry for the loss of your mother, and I've heard you say a couple of times, “I'm proud of my sorrow.” I wonder, would you be comfortable sharing a little bit about what you did to summon up the courage to get back into a real relationship with her?

I'm hesitating because so many of us have had the luxury and privilege of meeting a biological parent. If we're so fortunate. And maybe having a brief reunion and then one or both just cut off contact because of numerous reasons.

But the reconnection following that, what led you there? What did you do? How were you both ready or not? I mean, that's really interesting.

Harrison Mooney: Yeah, it was so difficult because she meant so much to me and I meant so much to her, but you could tell, you know, like when I looked at her, I felt all this love that I wasn't used to feeling.

And I felt this attraction, you know, like an attraction to my mom. Like it was platonic or whatever. But it also felt weird. It felt stronger than my fondness for my friends, or it was an attraction that I didn't really know how to handle.

And I know that she had that too, and that just freaked us out. It was weird, you know, how do you deal with emotions this strong? And after everything that we'd both been through, we had all of our walls up and I think we were both quite withholding. Every time that we saw one another, it just made us want to drop all those walls and just like hug, and in my book I said I wanted to climb into her lap and ask her to tell me the story of how I was born.

That was just a real tangible feeling and it was intense. So, yeah, after avoiding each other for those seven years, I invited her over to the house and we made dinner for her. I listened to the episode with Tony Corsentino, and he talked as well about having his family over and making dinner for them.

It's part of the people pleasing thing. It's part of, Hey, I turned out really well and really responsible and I mean, look, I can even cook for myself. So, we did that and I remember after dinner we went outside and we smoked a joint together and I thought it would put us at ease and instead it made us so anxious and we couldn't look at one another.

And so we actually went back inside and we stood on either side of my wife and we talked to one another while looking at her because we couldn't do that. But I said, while staring at my wife, to my mom I said, I know that this is just so intense and awkward right now. But yeah, it won't feel that way in 30 years. This is the work, and it's the work we have to do to recover what was lost and to get where we want with one another. And every time I see you it's going to be less awkward.

And it was, we got to a point where we could chat and she came over and we could look one another in the eyes and the first day that she left, she said, I love you. And I said, thanks. And I've done that a few times in my life, but as our relationship went on, it just became clear that this is safe. You know, you can say, I love you, too. And I did.

At that time I was even struggling with my terms, you know, I had my adoptive mom who I was calling my mom, and I thought of as my mom. And then I had my birth mother, you know, this kind of formal distancing term that we have to just put some space between us and the woman who gave birth to us. But I didn't like it. I felt like I love her. She's my mom. I wanna call her my mom. And it took a long time.

I mean, it took the whole process of writing this book and it took therapy and just a lot of thinking and feeling sad. But, you know, one day I woke up and I thought of my mom and I thought of my biological mom, and it felt like a lightning bolt and I didn't know how to explain to other people. Like, no, you don't understand.

Like, I woke up today and when I thought “my mom,” I pictured a different woman than I've pictured every other time for my whole entire life. You know, I did it, and it was just so rewarding. And so, yeah, when I say I'm proud of my sorrow, it's because I just put in so much work. I went against all of my instincts for self-preservation and avoiding conflict and discomfort.

I just leaned right into it because I want her back. I want her in my life, you know? And I'm not going to let what happened to us keep us apart after we found one another. So, she's gone now, but I knew her. I loved her. And when I think of my mom, I think of her. And I can't tell you how proud I am to mourn my mom. When the first time I met her I couldn't think of her as anything else than a birth mother. I couldn't tell that I loved.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. The work, it goes unseen usually, and so to actually spell it out for folks who are likely along that path somewhere, I think is so valuable. And you alluded to or you mentioned these feelings of self-preservation and, you know, we often talk about the traditional adoption narrative and trying to blow that up here in this adoptee-only space, we've been working for a few years on it already, followed by multiple decades of other adoptees who've done the work before us. And I am curious how that's shifted for you now having your work out in the world.

There's a scene in your memoir where you're sort of hijacked to come into this meeting with a bunch of White adoptive mothers and this intense pressure to be like, Oh yeah, adoption was great. Like, I'm so glad a White family adopted me and answering those questions in the way they hope and expect is out of this place of self-preservation.

Can you talk a little bit about that moment and then what would you say now versus coming from a place of strength and not that fear of having to pull it together?

Harrison Mooney: Yeah. That moment in the book comes when I go down to the adoption agency and I'm there to learn my parents' names, but I get there and there's a support group happening for the White moms who adopted all these other versions of me.

And you know, they're all sitting around and when I get in there, they kind of jump up and they're really excited to talk to me. And it turns out that they knew I was coming. And so in their minds I was kind of their special guest and I realized then, I think, often as adoptees, we have this sense that we're really alone.

You know, we have our own language for what's going on but we learn that in our house, and it's so hard to connect with other adoptees and it's often hard to think of ourselves as part of a larger structure, this whole system that's scooped up so many of us and displaced so many of us and just left us confused and with this weird sense of loss that's like invisible and mostly unexplainable, but we feel it and it just handicaps us at every moment.

It's so bizarre. So that was the moment where I started to realize that there were just so many other people caught up in this, and my experience of being raised by these White parents who just had no idea what they were doing, that was quite universal. I think a lot of people had gone through that, but it made me mad.

Well, why are you all doing this? Like, why wouldn't you just even treat your adopted kids as people and be like, Hey, I actually don't know how to handle your Blackness. Do you know how to handle your Blackness? And then when I say, No, I don't, because you never taught me, we go looking together for a way for me to claim my identity.

I just feel that work could be done, but it's not. And I got so mad and I wanted to tell everybody, Look, you know you guys aren't equipped to raise Black children, like every one of you is disqualified. But yeah, I mean, these were 12 versions of my mom who I was terrified of.

So instead I said what you're supposed to say, which is, you know, “I'm grateful” and “I had a great life.” And “Wow, like I moved up a couple classes with this adoption. So look at me now.” And actually, you know, growing up around White people gave me a White voice, and that makes me really good on the phone, and that makes me very hireable in Vancouver.

I could say all kinds of things that people want to hear, but now I'm mad and now I've written a book and now I've done work that I know a lot of people haven't done, and I have some experience now in attempting to restore a relationship and in going back through your trauma and working on what to say to people and, you know, when I wrote the book, I said, this is my big powerful statement: Adoption is not necessarily good.

That's what I said. But, you know, as time has gone on and after writing this, I lost my mom. I mean, now I say it's not good. It's not a good system. And when people push back, and they do, because of course there are success stories or folks who are still in the sunken place and haven't realized how bad this is for them yet, or, you know, whatever else.

I get that those stories are out there. But, you know, because of that, there's always going to be a pushback. And that pushback is: Well, what would you do differently?

And my answer is: Adopt families, not children. My mom was 16 years old when she put me up for adoption. She was in the foster system, she was adoptable. And what makes me so upset is that instead of helping her and taking her in, she needed a home. She could have used all the resources that I got.

Instead of doing any of that, they just ripped me out of her arms and left her to die. I feel it's just so unconscionable. It makes me so upset and that I have to explain to people why that's a stupid system for helping me makes me mad. So, that's what I say now.

Haley Radke: Well, we are all about family preservation here, so yes, yes, yes, yes.

I don't know why, I've heard the word “adoption agency” like five million times. But at some point when I was reading and thinking about your memoir, I just kept thinking of the word “agency”. And the irony that adoption agencies are called agencies when we have no agency and they stole it from us. It's kind of funny to me.

Harrison Mooney: I know. That's fun. Can I just say that I intentionally included agency in their name because of that. And Hope Adoption or I think sometimes they were Hope Adoption Services, but I wanted to make it very clear that, no, they're out here peddling agency and I'm just delighted that somebody noticed that.

Haley Radke: Wasn't it something even worse? Before they were called Hope Adoption Agency?

Harrison Mooney: They were called Burden Bearers International.

Haley Radke: Well, we are a burden. Okay. I am going to go back to this idea of agency and I don't know if you're comfortable talking about this.

Harrison Mooney: I probably am.

Haley Radke: You probably are. Okay. So your biological father almost succeeded in quashing this book. And so as an adopted person who's had so much agency removed at the beginning of your life, what was it like to have him try and usurp your voice as an adult?

Harrison Mooney: Oh, it was so difficult. It was frustrating because I knew him. I knew from our first meeting, which is in the book, it's chapter 9, what I was in for if I decided to step back into his life or to reconcile with him. He is a man who didn't listen to me and he didn't really seem to care that I'd lived a whole life.

He wanted me to pick up where he left off. He called me by a different name. He said weird things about Blackness, about his kids. When I was writing the book, I called him and I told him, Hey, I'm gonna write this chapter and it's gonna have this first meeting in it, and it doesn't necessarily make you look the best, but I'm hoping that you'll understand that this is part of a larger thing that I'm trying to do.

It has a lot to do with how White parents engage with Black children. And, you know, he didn't take that well and I didn't send him a copy of the book before I submitted it to the publisher. But when my mom was on her deathbed, he came to visit her and got ahold of it and he read just his part and got outraged.

And he sent, he says, a cease and desist, but it was just a nasty email to HarperCollins customer service. And he called me a liar and he said that I defamed him in the most corrupt ways. And he came to my mom's house while I was there and he yelled at me and I fled the house.

And this is one of these things that I'll probably wind up writing about, but as I was running down the stairs to get away from him, he stood at the top of the stairs and said, You know, you're not even really Black. You only wanted to hang out with your mom because she makes you feel Black, but you're half White too.

And I said, Oh, you're blowing it. And he said, Get the hell outta here before I do something I'm gonna regret. And then I fled the house and I knew that somebody was going to do that. This book is not shy. I didn't hold anything back. I knew that some people were going to get upset.

I just didn't think it would be him. I didn't think that he'd get that upset. But, yeah, that's kind of where we left it. The last time I saw him was at my mom's funeral and he stood a ways off with his arms crossed and we didn't speak. And I'm sure he'll come around again.

I think that honestly he has more need of me than I do of him at this point, so I don't think I've heard the last of him. But, man, let me tell you, having your dad yell at you like that? I mean, it sucks when it's your dad who raised you, but when it's like your biological father and he's…oh, yeah.

I don't know. I haven't told that story before, so it's not polished. But it was a tough one. It was one of the worst days of my life.

Haley Radke: I'm really sorry you had to experience that.

I don't know what to say. You know, the silencing just doesn't end. Sorry to tell you this, but I've interviewed a lot of adopted people who've written memoirs and it's cost them so much, which is not a surprise to you.

One of the things is, when you've got this platform, which is amazing and it comes from all the work you've done over the years as a journalist and sharing other work that you've done.

And I'll tell you this, I don't know if you know this. I went to your book launch Zoom and one of the first events I think you did for the book when it was out in the world. And I had to turn it off immediately because the first question you were asked was “What do your adoptive parents think about this?”

Harrison Mooney: Oh, yeah. Right away.

Haley Radke: And I almost vomited. I was like, it's not even safe. You said everything you need to, this person obviously didn't read your book because they maybe would know, and that was the first question they landed on. And I just thought, God, it just doesn't end. So I'm not asking you what your adoptive parents think.

I'm asking you, how does that feel for you to still be like, wow, did I not put it all out there for you yet?

Harrison Mooney: Yeah. That's a fun question because, you know, as much as I've done this and I feel very brave and I feel I pushed through all these fears. I'm still really afraid of my parents, my adoptive parents, and when people ask, what do your parents think about this?

It makes me tighten up. I try not to think about what they may or may not think about this because there's so much else at play, right? They almost never looked at my other art, like I was in a band. We released an album. I gave them a copy, shrink wrapped.

And a year later I came over and it was still shrink wrapped. And I've written some short stories for journals and I'd say, Oh, I have a short story in this journal. And they didn't read that. I was in a play. They didn't come to that. So I feel like there's a really good chance that they never read this book, and that's heartening and somehow more hurtful.

I would love it if they didn't read the book because then they won't get mad at me. But at the same time, I mean, these are my parents. They're supposed to care about my biggest achievements. This is the best thing I've ever done. And I've been working on this in some way or another for like 20 years.

So, you know, the book's been out for two weeks and it really is devastating that I haven't heard from them at all, even to yell at me. But I don't like getting yelled at. I had to decide when I was writing this book that I don't care in the end what they think about my story because this is my story.

One of the major themes of this book is just the reclaiming of narrative. You're told that you're a bit player in somebody else's story. We prayed and God gave you to us. And I held onto that for so long, but then you want to be your own person. You want to be the star of your own show.

As I got older I realized the scope of my show, and the reality of where it began and where I am now and realized that my adoption was really more of an abduction. It's just that when you're in charge of the narrative, you can call it an adoption.

I realized I had to tell that story and come what may, so it was really terrifying. And there were times that I would write something that I knew was truly transgressive. Like, you're not supposed to say that about your family. You're not supposed to share those stories about your family.

And the fear that I would feel in those moments was so visceral that it felt like there was a scary man standing behind me. And there was one time where I decided to write something and I could swear that I felt him back there and I jumped and I screamed, and then it turned out that I was sitting outside on a sunny day.

I felt like I was in a dark dungeon and it was terrifying. But I mean, that's what you have to do in order to tell your story sometimes. You've just got to push through all of that abuse and all of that gaslighting and all of the ways that people say, Hey, you can't tell this.

You're not supposed to just say that. Well, screw you. I'm gonna tell it. I don't care. If I can't tell my story, I don't exist. And I do. I exist. So yeah, I've written it and I'm sure that my parents would have big thoughts about it and I don't give a (beep).

Haley Radke: Love it. What a great answer. Okay. I've heard you talk about a worry that you had that people from your past, the history that you're sharing about in your memoir, which really is like childhood to young adulthood as a main scope of time, that folks might dispute what you've shared.

And that you felt. Again, as a journalist, you felt the need to collect evidence and corroborate your story. And on the show here, we've talked a lot about so many of us are estranged from our adoptive parents or they've died and sometimes we're mourning the fact that they have been what we see as the history keepers, you know?

They still have the photos, they still have the family movies, you know? Home movies when that was a thing.

Harrison Mooney: What are those?

Haley Radke: I know I'm just a couple years older than you, so I related to the timeframe that you really shared about. Can you talk about how you got folks to corroborate your memories and how that felt?

And you just mentioned the gaslighting after being told so many of those things didn't happen. And in your memoir you recount multiple times where you would bring up an incident of racism that you experienced. And anyone you shared it with, they'd be like, Oh, no, no, that's not racist. That's, no, no, no.

Harrison Mooney: You're seeing things.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Could you comment a little bit about that? On looking for corroboration, but also how we can gain back our memories or have corroboration from somewhere else if we don't have a connection with our adoptive families.

Harrison Mooney: Yeah. I think the first thing is your memories are true. Right?

They're your memories. And even if you misremember something, the way that you misremember it, that impacts who you are, that impacts how you walk and you talk, and what you're recovering from. So writing this book, I was very confident that what I remember happened, but also that my memories are factual.

I'm not making anything up. I'm telling you what I recall, and if it turns out that there's something that has been narrativized or something where I've misremembered it in some way, that's also part of how memory works. So, you know, these things get twisted, but we need to be able to stand up for what we remember.

That said, if you write a book that insinuates that real living White people are racist, you're probably going to get sued. And I knew that. And so I looked for every single person that I wrote about. I'd call them, I'd email them, you know, I'd tell them what I was doing. And, I had a little bit of a trick because they never understood my experience.

And so even as I explained it, I knew that it was just washing over them so I could tell them exactly what I was doing and they'd be like, Oh, oh yeah, you know, that sounds good. But then I would ask them, what do you remember about this moment? What do you remember about this moment? And there were times that, you know, our recollections aligned and then there were times that they remembered it completely differently.

And that was interesting too, I think. Well, you know, how come I don't remember saying that thing? And I think often with memory, our memories are also trying to protect us and this kind of fragile version of us that exists. And so, you know, there are times that we'll omit something from our memory because it makes us feel bad about ourselves.

I did a workshop last night where we were working on memoir writing and storytelling and I asked one of the students to tell a story and she told the story about a time that a neighbor girl drank some wine from her mom's liquor cabinet. And then what we did is we asked her a bunch of questions about it.

Because any time that somebody tells a story, they've told you more about themselves than they realize, and, I mean, you can always find the pressure points. And so I asked her eventually, Did you have any wine? And she said, You know, I don't remember. I was like, Okay, well, see. Then I said, How much of a transgression would it have been for you to have wine?

She was like, Well, we were very Christian and it would've been a big sin. Again, I understand that whether she did or didn't, her memory is that she did not. That's how we work to preserve ourselves. So I love talking to other people and hearing their kind of Rashomon version of my story.

I know that they didn't engage with me as a full human being in many cases. So yeah, they don't actually remember my reaction. They don't remember saying these things to me, and they don't want to think of themselves as a racist, so they're going to omit that stuff from their own memory. But some people are really cool.

You know, you'll call them and you'll say, Oh, this is what happened, and they'll be like, Oh, I did do that. I'm really sorry. And then we'll talk all about it. I had to do that when I reached out to Ashley, my ex-girlfriend from my teenage years. I was part of gaslighting her.

I was on my family's side and they hated her. And I didn't know how to serve two masters in that case. I really think that she suffered as a result. And so when I reached out to her, the first thing that I had to do was just say, Hey, I've been doing a ton of reflection on my life. Turns out it was really messed up and I figured that out after I left Abbotsford

But now that I know, Oh my God, I'm so sorry. And it was really healing and it was just really incredible for her then to be able to corroborate our time together and those experiences and the things that I remembered and in the end, all of that research made me feel so much more confident in my story because all of the controversial parts, I have somebody who was there or somebody who can back it up or somebody that I told the next day, like, you won't believe what happened at my parents' house.

And then being able to do all of the other research to just find historical context. And political context. Yeah, it's made me very confident in the story I'm telling. And knew that I had to be able to stand on this as hard as I can because the detractors are coming. But you know, I'm really glad I did it.

Haley Radke: Well, let's go to recommended resources because I absolutely want to recommend Invisible Boy. It's, oh my gosh. Harrison. It's so good. I mean, I hope, you know, I mean, I think you know, it's good. But it's in, I don't wanna hurt anybody's feelings, it's in my top three adoptee memoirs of all time. I'm not just saying that cause you're just here, but,

Harrison Mooney: Oh, you're gonna make me cry.

Haley Radke: I'm a White woman. Same race adoption. So I'm actively unpacking racism. And of course I still carry that with me, so I don't identify with those parts of the book. But as an adopted person, I identify with so much of what you shared. And then, as a quirky coincidence that we have in common, I was raised in a very conservative Mennonite town in northern Alberta called La Crete.

Harrison Mooney: Isn't that suspicious?

Haley Radke: My parents weren’t Mennonite, but it just happened that we lived there. But some of your references to nineties kids’ evangelical culture working in a Christian bookstore, I was like, oh, I remember those songs.

And so you triggered lots of memories for me. Some in a good way. Some in a not good way. And you're so funny. I mean, God, there's so many funny moments, which is really strange when you're reading some really hard, hard things. So I unreservedly recommend your book. I hope everyone picks it up.

I love voices because I'm a podcaster. It's super important to me. I listened to a lot of it on Audible and it's so lovely that you read it. How was that like?

Harrison Mooney: I loved it. I just loved it. Yeah. It was the most fun thing I've ever done. I want to read the audiobook for every book I write. I want to be a freelance audiobook guy.

I can do other people's books. It's so fun. It took a little bit for me to get into it. I think when I started, I was nervous and you're working on your cadence and there was a lot of lip smacking and they told me to eat an apple. They were like, eat an apple and that will get rid of the lip smacking.

And it was a bad apple, obviously. It wasn't like a lip smackingly good apple, because that would've increased the lip smacking. So, I did that, but then eventually I got into it and I just had so much fun. There's a moment towards the end where I actually break down.

I'm reading my own book that I had not read. I wrote this in the middle of a mental health crisis, and then I tried not to look at large parts of it. It was like I don't want to engage with that. When I get it back from the editor, if there were no marks on certain pages, I'm not even gonna go back.

Those pages are done then. So the haircut scene, I wrote it and I did not read it again. The ending, I wrote one time, never looked at it again. But then reading the audiobook, I had to engage with this stuff, and now I was on antidepressants and kind of getting a hold of myself.

And so looking at this book and kind of seeing the dark place that I went to and how vulnerable and just kind of naked I was writing this book. Yeah, it really rattled me. And, so when I got to a part towards the end where I speak in tongues, or try to, and I just felt the tears coming on and my voice cracked.

It was like, Oh, no. But yeah, they didn't make me record it again, so I assume that you can also hear me breaking down as I read my own audiobook.

Haley Radke: It's so powerful. I love hearing your voice say your own words. I'll just show you. No one else can see, but look at all my book darts. So, it's funny when you're listening to the audiobook and I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta mark that. And I didn't even open this while we were talking today, but I was like, oh, I gotta go mark that. So I would quickly flip to where that section I thought was so I could put the book dart right there.

So there we go. You gotta get Invisible Boy, everyone. And what do you want to recommend to us, Harrison?

Harrison Mooney: I want to recommend my friend Jenny Heijun Wills' incredible memoir, Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related. And I know that you guys have probably talked about it before. It's a big award-winning book, but man, what a book. And I just met her recently and we had just an incredible conversation about our own adoptions.

And we did a panel called “Transracial Adoption: Is It Any Good?” With me, Jenny and the Vancouver writer Wade Compton. And the thing that I just loved about Jenny was she's gone ahead of me in this space. She's answered all these questions before, and so there were times that I asked her the questions that, you know, where I was starting to get, and she would just smack me back with the strongest answer.

She's so strong. I've met a lot of adoptees and I feel like most of us are people-pleasers, we're willing to contort into whatever shape and that's how you fit in in a space. But Jenny is, I mean, in her own words, a brat and just from the moment she was born, it seems like you could not tell Jenny what to do.

And you know, her book was the first adoption memoir that I read where I was like, Yeah, I want to be strong like this.

Haley Radke: Yes, I love your description of her. I've been in spaces where she's the one to just like, instantly be like, Oh, nope, no, no, we're not doing that.

She is like, oh my gosh, one of my favorite, favorite people. She's been on the show. She was on episodes 133 and 218. We did a Book Club with her. Maybe we'll get to do a book club with you?

Harrison Mooney: I'd love to.

Haley Radke: Okay, lovely. Next year, 2023.

Harrison Mooney: I'm saying yes to all book club invites until it seems like it's not fun for me anymore.

Haley Radke: Okay. Hopefully you have a good experience for all the book clubs. No, it's amazing reading. We have a Book Club for Patreon supporters of Adoptees On, and every month we read another adoptee-authored book and then we're discussing it with adoptees, which is such a powerful experience.

So I'm so thankful for your work on your memoir. I can imagine it feels like you're standing naked in a field and we're all getting to see all the hard parts. But your bravery will help others be able to share their experiences as well. So thank you. Where can we connect with you online and follow your work and see what else you have going on?

Harrison Mooney: So I don't have a website yet, because I still haven't gotten any money, but as I understand it, the money's coming. It's tough. You don't get rich writing a book.

Haley Radke: What?

Harrison Mooney: No, no, no, no, no. I'm on Twitter at Harrison Mooney. I'm fairly active on Twitter. You know, some days I tweet a lot. Other days I just lurk and retweet.

But If I do anything interesting, I'm gonna tweet about it. And I'm on Instagram at picturesofharrison. You know, I'm in the process of turning this account from an account that was just for me into one more like a professional account. So, you know, right now there are a lot of pictures of my kids and there will probably be fewer of those as we go.

But who knows? They're very cute and I just want to post pictures of them all day. Maybe I'll be allowed to, I dunno.

Haley Radke: I know once your kids are old enough, I'm always asking them like, am I allowed to post this or this? So yes, it changes over time, doesn't it?

Harrison Mooney: Yeah. I've been asking them, too, but they're four and two, and they say yes but they don't actually understand the privacy considerations. Like maybe this isn't actually ethical for me to be like, Hey, two-year-old, can I post you on the Internet?

But you know, we're all working out the ethics of the digital era at the same time on the fly.

Haley Radke: Indeed, indeed. Thank you so much, Harrison. It's just been an honor to talk with you today.

Harrison Mooney: Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was just an absolute delight.

Haley Radke: It's such an honor that I could have a conversation with Harrison and I really hope you grab his book. I really did love it and I'm sincere. Hopefully he will come back in 2023 and join us for Book Club. So we have a Book Club that is semi-monthly over on adopteeson.com. A lot of our readers felt once a month is too much.

So this month we are reading Surviving The White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll, and she is joining us if you're listening to this, when this episode has gone live. She is joining us on Monday, October 24th, for a live Zoom call with Patreon supporters of the podcast to discuss Surviving the White Gaze with my co-host Sullivan Summer.

And we're really, really excited about that conversation. And if you're listening after that conversation was recorded and the audio will be available for Patreon supporters in their Patreon podcast feed. So I invite you to join us. If you want to see more info about Book Club, it's adopteeson.com/bookclub.

And we have read so many fantastic books. So definitely check out the list on the website.

The other thing I'd recommend is ask your local public library to buy these books and have them available. It is a huge gift to other adoptees who might not have the money to buy every new book every time we talk about a new book on the show and expose other people to adoptee-authored work.

So your libraries often will have a form on their website or if you go in you can tell your librarian, Hey, this is the hot new memoir. You guys should carry it. And I know, especially libraries across Canada will be stocking Invisible Boy, so you should be able to request it from your library.

Okay. Thank you so much for listening and reading with me and thank you so much to my Patreon supporters. You make the show possible. So thank you, thank you, thank you, and let's talk again next Friday.

225 Ethan Ferkiss

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/225

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Haley Radke: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today we are joined by Ethan Ferkiss to share his heartwarming reunion story. Expecting rejection or indifference, Ethan wasn't prepared for his search to end in what he calls the “jackpot scenario,” a full-scale welcome.

But as you can guess, navigating new relationships with four adult siblings, his biological mother, and his biological father has been a whirlwind and can be overwhelming at times. We wrap up with some recommended resources for you and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com.

Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Ethan Ferkiss. Welcome, Ethan.

Ethan Ferkiss: Hey, Haley, how are you?

Haley Radke: I'm so good. I'm really excited to chat with you and I'd love it if you would share some of your story with us?

Ethan Ferkiss: Yes, of course. I'm very excited to be here too, so thank you. My adoption story, you know, for years was very short. It could fill a pamphlet, and then all of a sudden, about a year and a half ago, it blew up into a novel, but I'll start at the beginning.

I was born in 1967 through Catholic Charities. I was three weeks old when I was adopted, and I was raised in and around Washington DC and for years, all I knew I had was two wonderful parents.

A really loving, engaged, wicked smart mom and an academic dad and two very fun older siblings. And it was an amazing childhood. My father was a professor, so we were exposed to his college campus. We grew up in Washington DC which at the time was such an amazing place, I mean, it's still a beautiful city, but growing up during the Bicentennial years when I was a kid, it was just amazing.

Plus, we got to live in Vancouver BC, Trinidad and Tobago, and Berkeley, and so it was just a larger-than-life childhood of ideas and destinations.

My mom was integral and I think she recognized that I had some extra energy. I think it's that energy that adoptees have that lives in their bodies. I used to be so demonstrative and I used to just have so much energy and I was just this engine and I did have this little frenetic energy and I would have meltdowns, but I was talented and so my mom was able to put me in so many activities to harness and focus me and so I did anything and everything. We threw ourselves together in everything, whether it be chess or homework, and I really just responded to her.

She told me when I was a kid that I was adopted very early on. She said it in a very loving way. She said, you know, you have a biological mom and dad. But they couldn't take care of you the way that they thought you deserve. And we really wanted you.

So at the end of it, I just thought, well, this is how it goes sometimes. It's normal. I'm loved, I'm wanted, and she said it in such a way that I was intrigued by these two people, but I just thought it was, anyway….

I lived my life. I enjoyed my life. And then throughout the years, I would just have a passive kind of wonder about who they were, especially the birth mom. That's where the connection is. It wasn't until last year that I realized, well, at some point it would be nice to meet my birth mother, if possible.

And so I took a DNA test, and this was Christmas of 2020. And then a few weeks later I got the test results and I had a first cousin, which is pretty remarkable to get such a close hit. So I reached out to the first cousin. I said, Hey, we are apparently first cousins. Here's a little information about me:

I live in Seattle. This is what I do. These are the kind of things I like. And as I'm adopted, and as far as I know, if there's anybody on your side of the family who knows who I am and wants to meet, that would be great. And if they don't want to meet, I totally understand. Because that's what I had actually prepared for. These are often old secrets that people just carry with them.

There was no pressure on my side. I just thought, well, there's probably gonna be a half-brother or half-sister because she was young when she had me. I just put it out that way. And as it turns out, his name is Ryan. So he went to his dad, my birth mom's youngest brother, and he told him who had surfaced in his 23andme.

So his dad went to my birth mom and then they started reading her the letter that I had written, and they could see the wheels turning in her head. As soon as they read the part where I said my birthday was March 31, she just broke down in tears, they told me, and she told me, too. And she was just so happy and joyful.

And it turns out I've got four younger siblings. I'm the oldest of five. They knew about me. So this all broke open very quickly.

So as soon as Ryan, my first cousin went to his dad, who then went to my birth mom, my birth mom was like, Oh my God, I can't believe it. So she wrote me a letter. I had mentioned in this email to Ryan, my first cousin, that I worked at the local TV station here in Seattle, one of them.

So she wrote me a letter. I was working from home and this letter sat in my inbox at work for two months. So on my end, I thought she just wasn't interested because Ryan said he was going to reach out to his family and he would get back to me and a couple months passed and I was thinking, you know, it's too much. I get it. She's not gonna reach out.

This is obviously an old secret and I was fine with it. On her end, she had heard from me through the grapevine, she had written me a letter, and then I hadn't responded, and this is two months. So we're both just in this limbo thinking the other person's not ready for whatever reason.

So she finally tells her oldest daughter Suzanne, who turns out to be my younger half-sister by two years. She says to Suzanne, Hey, the son I gave up for adoption, they knew about me, years ago has surfaced. I wrote him a letter but he hasn't responded, and Suzanne's wicked smart. She said, You know, mom, he's probably working from home, that letter is probably sitting in his inbox at work and just rotting there.

So she reached out to me on LinkedIn. She said, Hey, I'm your sister. It exploded from there. I was overwhelmed. The fact that I had four siblings who knew about me their entire life. There's this letter waiting for me at work.

You know, this is late at night and I hadn't been to my work in over a year, and I said, Oh, I have to go get that letter. And I went that night, it was like midnight. I went in and got this letter and I'm very sentimental and so I just carefully opened it up and it was such a beautiful letter. And she said: I am ready for anything you want.

Relationships, stories, and there are just so many coincidences and remarkable events that we realized happen in no particular order. After college in Washington DC, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had the idea of bicycling across the country one day, and this was before the Internet.

I didn't know if anybody had ever bicycled across country. I don't know if it was possible, but anyway, the idea kept on growing and growing. Eventually, I bicycled across country. It was 4,400 miles and it was such an epic, wonderful trip. And it was the first and only time I really spent any sustained time by myself.

And it was physical, it was spiritual. It was just hour after hour in this beautiful landscape, all back roads. The coincidence ends up where I pull into Seattle. August 1, 1990. I meet a friend from college who's living there, and we go to a nice little dive bar that still exists here called The Comet.

And so we have a few drinks and I'm happy to be in Seattle. I'm happy to be off the road and to explore my new life in Seattle. Turns out, when I met my birth mom last year we're sitting down, me and my wife Stephanie, and Irene, my birth mom, and we're just having a wonderful time talking with one another and she's just bighearted and speaking in poems and she's gleaming and she's just a beautiful woman.

Everything was popping up and one of the things that popped up. She said, Yeah, I've lived in Seattle since 1989. I moved there in 1990, and I said, Well, sometimes I would go to The Comet back in 1990. And she said, Oh, that's where me and my girlfriend would go after our work shift in 1990.

So my salmon senses, not only on a bicycle, took me from DC all the way to her home city where she was living, but it took me to her favorite bar at that time that first night.

And there's been these types of weird little coincidences unfolding ever since. My half-sister works just a mile down the road from me. They've lived in and around Seattle for years. We've passed each other probably too many times to count, but never knew it.

When you're an adopted person, you sometimes just wonder how close have I come to my people? Have I passed them on the subway? You'll scan the bus and you'll look for details that might look like you, and that says nothing about your family. I love the family I grew up with.

It's just, it's like wanting to know, people wanting to know their ancestry. It's the same thing for adopted people. They want to know their story. And I love stories. I worked in the local TV station for like 20 years and I just wrote stories. So this was a story I wanted to know.

I had a deep feeling that my birth mom was this remarkable woman, because my mom, my adopted mom, who I call my mom. She gave me some background information. Your birth mom, she got pregnant and then she ended up in DC and I was like, Wow, that's a real adventure. And you see what a commitment that is to turn your life upside down to go across country.

And for some reason, I just knew she was doing it because she had this big heart. Because otherwise you just go to the fastest place, you go somewhere and you leave and like you go to, I don't know, somewhere, California, but she did this whole journey and it turns out, I found out later she found refuge with her grandmother who knew what was going on with her, but didn't ask and she didn't pass any judgment.

And she felt very safe with the grandma in Texas. So her journey was from Bozeman. Down to the Alamo in Texas and then eventually up to Washington, DC, and for some reason, I firmly believe I feel the connection between her. I think that journey that we took across country, it lives in my body.

I think I picked up on her sense of adventure, her sense of she was a kid that was in over her head, but still determined to figure out the best route forward. So her cross-country trip was a little different than mine, but 23 years later, I just went right back the other way towards her.

She listened to her inner voice and she just trusted. She didn't know where it was all going to end.

I didn't know that I was born at Georgetown University until I talked to her. You know, I'm 55 years old, and I just knew I was born in Washington, DC. I thought I was born at the St. Anne's Orphanage, but it turns out I was born at Georgetown University and that's where I went to school and I lived across from the hospital when I was in school there. And I would pass that all the time.

So she's a wonderful woman and it's been such a great delight to connect with her. She lives in Olympia. I'm in Seattle and we see each other and text each other and we send each other cards. I know it sounds cosmic and kooky, but I feel the connection with her even when we're talking and, you know, I really appreciate that.

You know, along with the story, I have the journalist in me working at an old TV station here who was like, Well, okay, who's the dad? And at that first visit when we're sitting on our couch in Olympia, she just straight out told me. Well, his name's Michael Beldon, we can use his name cause he's, as it turns out, he's a proud papa now.

So I grew up the youngest of three, found out a year and a half ago I'm also the oldest of five. And then when I reach out to this gentleman, Michael Belden, who lives in Arizona, I'm expecting rejection again. But we're on a road trip, my wife and I are on a road trip, and it just surfaced to me and it's like, well, he's probably 80.

I should probably call him. And so I did call him. Stephanie went in to get some groceries and I called him from the van and I said, Hey, this is a weird call. Is this Michael Belden? He goes, Yep. And I go, Well, you might not wanna talk to me, but I'm your biological, and I didn't get the word “son” out. And then he's like, Oh my god, my boy.

And he's crying just like he's such a bighearted, sappy, wonderful guy. And it was so funny to just be like another flood of happiness, and unexpected. I didn't plan it out. I didn't think I was going to call him until this voice was just like, Okay. It didn't subside. So I called him.

Turns out he was pretty sick. His friend reached out to me the next day and I could tell there's something wrong with him, but he was being a tough guy, and he was like, No, I'm fine. Anyway, his friend said, Look, we think he's in real dire straits, but he's living alone in Arizona and if there's any way you could make a U-turn, we were in Utah, make a U-turn and check in on him.

And I didn't have to think twice. There was no other choice. I wanted to make sure he was okay. And so I called my brother, my adopted brother, Michael, because we were going to meet and I said, Hey, I just found my birth father and he might need some help. And he's like, Go for it. So I have a really supportive family and we went down there and I go up to his door and it's 110 degrees out.

And I knock on the door and I see where I get some of my kookiness. He answers, he's a little bit sick and tired, but he's so happy that I came down and he enters in his underwear. So my first hug with my biological dad is just, you know, he's built like a rock.

It's so funny. Both my birth parents are 5’4” and I'm six foot half an inch. And he's built like a knuckle, like a rock. And that's why I'm hugging this naked man and he bounced back after that. He's 80 and he's doing really well and his health has just shot up this last year and a half.

And I check in on him and he's got a wonderful friend who lives on the east coast who checks in on him. And he's just so happy to have a boy. It's like his happiest thing. He's always calling me up, and he's also a writer.

So I have an adopted father who's a writer. I have a biological father who's a writer. I was a writer for more than 20 years at a local TV station.

So I found all these details. My birth mother went to DC. She really excelled in that city. It was so funny to see she was this young, beautiful woman showing me pictures of places that I grew up in and it's so wild to see my birth mom was living just about four blocks from my first house where I was growing up.

Haley Radke: I'm curious how it's been for you to move from someone who said, I had these passive wonderings to now having real humans in your life, extra bonus relationships with all these people. It can be so overwhelming.,

Ethan Ferkiss: Well, yeah, I appreciate that question.

You know, my birth mom Irene said we had such a lovely time connecting one-on-one with Stephanie there, my wife, and then she said, We're gonna have a party for you. And she looked at me, paused, made sure we had eye contact, and she said, Get ready for the tsunami. And so she knew that connecting with her is amazing.

And then it is overwhelming. There's so many people. And at that first party it was amazing to be in a room filled with relatives and seeing everybody's jawline and nose and eyebrows and short legs and long torsos. And I'm like, Oh my God, this is a whole room of us. And they’re all wonderful. And this is all first draft for all of us.

They welcome me with open arms, but there's also this part where it's almost, you've really gotta breathe cause all I had prepared myself for was the possibility of “I'm not ready to meet you.” And I would've been fine with that.

I wasn't ready to have this big family welcome. And it sounds like it's the hugest blessing and I know it's the best kind of problem to have, but it was still a little disorienting because I'm kind of a solitary guy and I have a small circle and I grew up with a small circle, and that's where my comfort zone is.

And I've actually had really wonderful conversations one-on-one. My first conversation with Suzanne, the oldest daughter, my half-sister, was about three hours and it was wonderful. And then I've had a wonderful conversation with another sister, one-on-one, when I took her to the airport.

My favorite times have been when we've had a chance to talk one-on-one. You know, when you're with a family, there's a group dynamic with any family that's established and there's behaviors and trying to crack that is disorienting. But each person has been wonderful to talk with.

I realized at one point I was so discombobulated by how do I navigate this feeling? And it's just so much. Not much in a bad way, I just mean I don't know how to fold it in and it's so much information. It's like trying to read an encyclopedia in a day, like you just can't, so I realized I needed to just internally make some soft boundaries so I could make sure I'm still in my heart.

Because honestly, one thing about me, I got out of my heart. So my mom, my adopted mom died when I was 14. She was the one person who was, her life and death were very pivotal for me, because her life was just everything to me. And then she died suddenly and I went external. I had nobody safe to help me navigate through this grief.

My father, as accomplished as he was as an academic, just wasn't available in the relationships, which is typical of his generation. And so I, and also at the time in the early eighties, you're supposed to just move on, you know, and I'm a processor. I need to process, I need somebody to talk this through.

I need to know where I'm at. And I didn't have somebody to process that through. And it was so confusing for me. So then after my mom's death, like I said earlier, she helped me harness this adoptive energy that lives in our bodies when you're adopted. So not only did I have the unprocessed grief of her loss, because I didn't get a safe place for me to grieve and then I just stuffed it all down.

And then I also had this amorphous adoptive energy because without my mom's presence it was just kind of getting diffused. I got through high school and college on the surface. Great. But emotionally was I rooted in my heart as fully as I could be? No, I knew I was a kind of a mess at points.

Sometimes I just start crying and I was like, what is wrong with me? I didn't beat myself up too much, but I knew something was wrong and I think the bicycle trip across country was my way of just saying, Hey, I need time to myself. I love adventure.

And so that gave me the time and space and that gave me my first recognition that I was living externally, like trying to accommodate somebody else or trying to make somebody else like you or whatever, you know.

I was scrambling to get my father to be a team. But he wasn't available for that. So by the time I hit 22, 23, I finally started to take a hold. I need to do something. I need to start examining some stuff inside of me. Because the past will stay present until you process it.

I try to explain to people I love and care for who say, Well, I just don't wanna live in the past. And I firmly believe that the past will live in you until you process it. And I was a young kid, when nowadays if you're 14 and your mom dies tragically, suddenly, there's a lot of support.

There's a lot of recognition. The narrative has changed, and people know that you need to process it, think about it, acknowledge it. And it was the early eighties for me, so I didn't have that. And that's where I felt a little bit like, Oh, I'm slowly, softly trying to figure out how to fit into this external world.

And I was placing me out of my body. I didn't know how to navigate through it. So I could tell I'm coming out of my body. Because it was so overwhelming and it's, again, not anything against them. Everyone is doing their absolute best and they've been nothing but great. But I realized, Hey, I need to just softly say, if you want to get to know me, let's get together one-on-one and do it.

And my birth mom Irene even recognized that. I think there was a push to have a big party before I even met her first. There was a push to have a big party and we both said, no, no, no, no. Because real connection happens one-on-one, getting to know people one-on-one.

And like I said, every time I've had it, conversation one-on-one, with all of my half-siblings. I've had a chance to talk with my half-sisters. I haven't had a real chance yet to talk with my half-brother, but you know, everyone goes on a different timeline and I'm trying to just respect and figure out what everybody needs on their end, too.

I don't know what it brings up on their end. Even the most awesome reunion opens up a floodgate of dynamics that you have to navigate, and if you want to do it, seat it in your heart and you just have to take it slow. I hadn't prepared for that. I thought I just had to prepare to understand if they didn't want to reach out to me.

That's what I prepared for. Again, it sounds like I'm complaining about a real blessing because it has been a blessing. I'm trying to just emphasize the fact that as we fold people in, you just have to listen to yourself and make sure you're doing it in a way that you remain in your heart. Because I don't know if this is something that happens when you've had tragedy in your life or if I know that it happens when you're adopted.

A lot of people can disassociate when the external world doesn't make sense. I know that's common in a lot of adoptees, I think I'm prone to that. I slowed down a little bit just so that I could speed up the process of getting to know them.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing about the challenges, because I think that's what really gets glossed over in a lot of conversations.

And even with the good, like it really can bring about, I mean, just meeting one birth parent is completely life shifting, and so navigating that on its own, but having all of these extra layers, even if it's all love and joy and you know, wanted good things, it's so much for one person, especially if you don't have anyone else to talk about it with.

Like, right, because I can hear you. I can hear you saying, no, no, but, it's good. Because you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, and yet it's hard.

Ethan Ferkiss: Right. I don't fear I'm going to hurt their feelings. I just have a real hard time explaining. I was a writer. I could write this stuff much better than I can talk it.

So if I was slowing down and overexplaining, it's just when all of a sudden a lone wolf needs his pack of 50 beautiful people, you're still going to need your lone wolf time a little bit.

And fortunately, really blessedly, I have this dynamic that adoptees have that some people talk about getting out of the fog. You know, I was in the fog for a long time, compounded with the grief of my mom. And then when you only cope with it in not the healthiest ways because that becomes kind of a habit and you just push your feelings away and then at some point you don't even know how to navigate through your feelings and you're just lost.

And I had patterns I would repeat in the fog. I would have this coping mechanism. I didn't want to get too close with anybody in an intimate way, a real heartfelt way, because that was just too scary. So either I would sabotage it or I'd find somebody who truly wasn't available. So it was the two sides of the same coin, but it's all the same drama, the same play that can be played out because we just can't.

It's too scary to go to your heart. One thing that I had with Stephanie that I've never had with anybody else is we find each other after challenging moments and our love grows. And so now here we are, 15 years in, and I now have the environment and security of a loving relationship that puts my heart at ease.

I learned how to love myself and it was a struggle. I learned to truly love someone else and accept her and she with me and that puts you in a position to start truly exploring other aspects of your life. I listened to your guests and so many of them are doing this incredible effort to, you know, to journey back home, the hero's journey.

Everyone has their own individual hero’s journey and all it is is just figuring out how to get back to the basics of your heart. And, you know, I have to admit it. It is hard to talk about. We live in a society where nobody wants to talk about hard stuff. And I appreciate your show a lot. I appreciate books I've read because we are human, we're frail, we can get derailed.

And I know I felt like I was on fumes by the time I was 22 or 23, and I still struggled. I still repeated coping patterns throughout my thirties and forties that worked as a kid to get through. But just over 15 years ago, I got out of a relationship and my coping mechanisms are no longer working.

I'm a mess. I've got to figure this out. And I was able to like, finally, I had some footing cause I guess it's the cliche rock bottom. I was just like, this is not working. So I've been climbing out, but it's only been like the last 15 years that I've made sustained progress and it is that for any listener who isn't familiar with this energy that adoptees hold. I didn't know about it when I was a kid, and so you just think there's something kind of crazy about you, but it's this pre-verbal energy that's in your body. And until you have a framework, thanks to your show, you can't start exploring what it truly is.

And then so often when I couldn't sleep before. You know, I have battles of insomnia and I wouldn't really dread it. I would just look at it as an opportunity to explore what's going on inside of me. It was sort of like Encyclopedia Brown or Sherlock Holmes and having the love of Stephanie, we recognize that we could help each other grow, and when we find each other, it's just amazing, always.

So that's helped me get out of the fog, finding somebody who is honest and just as raw sometimes, and willing to come back and admit when, you know, I'll just start from scratch or admit when we may be overstepped or something, and take it from there.

Haley Radke: I know that you have this storyteller's mind. How have you used that? Have you to unpack some of your adoption stuff or the grief of the loss of your mom as well?

Ethan Ferkiss: You know, I am still in this process. Like this family reunion has just happened in the last year and a half, and I'm trying to figure out how, in terms of writing or some type of something to share with others, I don't know where I'm at in terms of that.

I mean, I should, this stuff does need to get written down at some point, but what I do is I just take long walks with my dogs. I'm writing the story in my head and heart still, and I'm trying to just process it through my body and I just try to listen to myself and it's a story for myself and for people I care about.

And I reached out to your show because I would listen to your show at night and fall asleep to it. And not everything reverberates. Everyone has individual unique portions, but it resonated enough that it shook free this energy one night where this is going to sound kooky, but we speak in words, which is intellectual, but our body speaks in something different.

And for the one and only time in my life, I really felt, Oh my God, that was what it felt like to be separated from your mom. Cause you know, you're with your mom for nine months and you're just the same heart rhythms, everything. And then one day, you're in her arms and then you're not. And my body was speaking to me when I could feel this and it was overwhelming and I wasn't victimized by it or anything.

I was just soaking it all in. I was like, Oh, that's what that baby felt. And it was because I was able to loosen it up, because other people are talking about it. Your guests are writing it in their books. I couldn't listen to what was inside of me for years because it was too chaotic and I didn't even know how to orient myself.

But now that I've got some tools, it's not so scary. And then you just have to listen. The story's still being written inside of me and how I'm processing it and maybe we'll see where it goes from there.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and so much of the ups and downs and for telling us about your mom. I appreciate that.

I wanted to recommend a couple things, but do you want to start today? What do you want to recommend to us?

Ethan Ferkiss: Well, I've been saying it, all the books that other guests have mentioned are great: The Primal Wound, The Body Keeps the Score, You Don't Look Adopted. But once you do that, I think at some point I would recommend taking time to listen to your inner voice.

I know that sounds hokey, but it could be late at night. So if you're having insomnia, maybe don't dread that you're having insomnia. Maybe your body's just trying to loosen something up and listen to it. And so that's been my greatest resources.

Respecting, recognizing an inner voice and trying to see what it's telling me. It's actually led me a great life. When I was 23 and I was bicycling across country and all I ever wanted was a beautiful little home, somebody to love, and, you know, my health to explore. And I have everything I want.

And that was the result of listening to my inner voice. And that would be my recommendation is do your best to listen to your inner voice.

Haley Radke: I love how you shared that through the interview and you're also following in your biological mother's footsteps. Like literally. So that's really special. Yeah, no, I think that's a good call.

Okay. Well I love that you mentioned one of Anne Heffron's books, cause I have two recommendations. The first one is a new book that she put out this year. It's called Truth and Agency: Writing Ideas for Adopted People.

So if you are wanting to write, but you're struggling a little bit, this one has tons of prompts and ideas and you can just, you know, flip to any page and start there. You can read it front to back. Either way it is so fully Anne. I mean it's lovely. So it's called Truth and Agency: Writing Ideas for Adopted People and the other book that's brand new this year. I've just been meaning to recommend but I haven't had a chance because I got it in the summer.

It's a book of poetry and it's by Sun Yung Shin. She has a number of books of poetry available, but this came out in 2022 and it's called The Wet Hex. She is a Korean adoptee and this book is beautifully written and thoughtful and full of challenging ideas. You need to read it slow. And there's a whole section that also has drawings that go along with it that's very interesting and provocative.

It's one of the best books of poetry I've read lately. And so it's called The Wet Hex. It's 10 out 10. Love it. So yes, those are my two books to recommend.

Ethan Ferkiss: I'll check 'em out. That sounds great.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Where can we connect with you online?

Ethan Ferkiss: Well, I do have Twitter, it's Ethan Ferkiss and Instagram. If you wanna see a bunch of videos of my puppies.

Haley Radke: Always. We love dog videos.

Ethan Ferkiss: Yes. So that's Ethan in Seattle, all one word. And I am on Facebook. Just look me up under my name, Ethan Ferkiss. And if anybody wants to talk about reunions or what they're going through, it's such a treat to be able to talk to a fellow adoptee.

And so, yes, I would love to hear from anybody who's interested.

Haley Radke: Absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing with us. I really appreciate it.

Ethan Ferkiss: Thank you. I appreciate it too.

Haley Radke: I think it takes so much courage to share your reunion story, whether you are a year and a half in or 10 years in, if we're lucky enough to get a reunion. We're all kind of just like figuring it out as we go. So it's such an honor to be able to share these with you and, you know, Ethan was kind enough to say he listened to so many of your stories on Adoptees On and that helped him process through things.

So I hope his story now will pay that forward to you if that's something that you connect with. Another way you can help the show continue and help more adoptees feel supported when they're going through these things that no one else is talking about is joining our community. adopteeson.com/community.

You can join our monthly Patreon. There's a Facebook group for supporters. There's weekly episodes where I talk with my friends about what's going on, either in the news about adoption stuff or just our personal lives navigating through adoption things, or we're talking about adoption reform or spicy takes on whatever pop culture or books are talking about adoption and getting it wrong.

We do all of those things. We also have an adoptee-centric book club where we read books written by fellow adoptees, and that is one of my favorite things that we do. There's so many amazing recorded events that are available on Patreon as well with adoptee authors and fellow adoptees discussing these books.

So again, we'd love to have your support, adopteeson.com/community, and join us over there and we can talk more adoption. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

187 Dr. Liz DeBetta

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/187

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Haley: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 187, Dr. Liz DeBetta. I'm your host Haley Radkey. We are coming to our summer break. What better note to end on than this encouraging episode with Dr. Liz DeBetta. Liz has been on the podcast before and shared her story of coming to her late thirties before examining the impact adoption had on her life.

Today, though, we are strictly diving into one of her areas of expertise, which is using writing as a tool for healing. Writing is accessible. It has physical, emotional, and mental health benefits. Writing can help us create a new narrative for ourselves. Liz recently led a group of adoptees through a transformative writing group, and she shares with us some tools we can use to start our own writing practice.

We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, www.adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On Dr. Liz DeBetta. Welcome Liz.

Liz DeBetta: Hi Haley. So good to be here.

Haley: I'm so excited to talk to you. The last time we talked was episode 118, so you can scroll back. You were still working on your dissertation, so I was so, like, pumped when you put “Dr.” on your paperwork because you're done. Woo!

Liz DeBetta: Yes, it's true. I got done in, you know, in the midst of the pandemic.

Haley: So you're still planning the party then?

Liz DeBetta: Yeah, we had a Zoom party with a bottle of champagne and some takeout sushi and a few friends on Zoom and that was pretty much it. So yeah, there hasn't been a big in-person celebration yet, but a good excuse to have one.

Haley: That's right. Absolutely. I'm going to point people back to that episode to hear some of your story and the background on how you got to doing some of the things we're going to be talking about today. But I would love it if you just give us a little intro into who you are, and how you got to the point where we are now for adoptees to be writing as a method of healing.

Liz DeBetta: I have been writing since about the age of 14. I had a really smart, insightful teacher and coach who knew that I was going through some stuff. I can't, I don't recall if at the time he knew that I was adopted.

I'm pretty sure that he did. But either way, he knew that I was dealing with some really big feelings, and so he suggested I start writing poetry, which at 14 years old, I really thought was the dumbest thing in the world. Because poetry, like, who writes poetry? Come on. And then one day, we were sitting in his office and he read me this poem that he had written for his college girlfriend and the poem was called “Blue Fire.”

I'll never forget it. It was a poem that he wrote while he was on a date with his girlfriend. He had taken her to see the ballet, which was her favorite thing. And he spent more time watching her watch the ballet than watching the ballet himself. And he wrote this poem about it. And I was profoundly moved by this experience of this man sharing this poem with me.

And then from that moment I was like, oh, maybe this isn't so dumb. So I got a little colorful journal notebook and I started writing. And at the time I didn't know why I felt the way I felt. I didn't know why. I was depressed, I was sad, I was angry, I was confused, I was scared.

All these things. And I just wrote, and it was for me. I never shared any of that with anyone. And so I did that for a lot of the years. Any time the world got too much for me, or my own feelings got too much for me, I would just go to my notebooks and I would write. And stuff just sort of came out.

It wasn't anything that I was ever really super conscious of. Yeah, I mean, it is a conscious process, but I also feel like there's something really unconscious about a lot of the writing that I was doing, especially early on. And I have a theory about that, which I'm still playing with just from an academic, theoretical, scholarly standpoint.

But anyway, I did all this writing and, in retrospect, it really helped keep me balanced. It helped me organize the really intense feelings that I had. And gave them some place to live other than inside me.

And so, fast forward, all of these years later, when I got into my PhD program, I didn't really know where that journey was going to take me, but I did know that I was really interested in continuing to pursue creative writing as one part of it.

And one of the courses that I got to take in my program was Poetry for Healing. And it's a whole field. There's a whole field of poetry and writing for healing that I didn't even know was a thing. And I was like, this is the thing I've been doing my whole life. I've been using poems to help myself manage the difficult stuff.

And so then, when I learned about all of that and I learned that there are actually physical and emotional and mental health benefits to writing through grief, writing through pain, writing through trauma. Writing about it and making sense of it. I was like, oh, this is so exciting. And again this is the thing I've been doing.

And so then, as I moved toward thinking about my dissertation, which was a creative dissertation, I decided that I wanted to do an exploration of some of my early writing. And as I looked back through some of my first poems,

Haley: Because you kept all your journals and things, right?

Liz DeBetta: Yes, of course I did. And I will tell you something. Not one of them is finished. They are all from different parts of my life and I have never completely filled one of them. And I think there's something really telling about that, because I think we're always on a journey and we're always unfinished, right? So it's a metaphor for that, I think, in those notebooks.

But yeah, so I started going through these early poems and I could very clearly see all of my pain and my grief and my trauma and my loss and my confusion. It was all there, right? I started looking at the language and the images that I was constantly using and the mood. And the tone of so many of those poems was really dark and just a lot like a feeling of being lost and having all these questions.

So there was an implication of all these questions, but never finding any answers. So it was really interesting to start to look at that and then to look at how to take those early poems and create a new narrative. So a big part of my dissertation project was a one-woman show where I incorporated some of my early poems and then some newer poems where I was rewriting parts of my story that were still unknown to me.

So like questions about the circumstances of my birth, for example. I didn't have any answers about that. I didn't have any information about that, right? So many of us don’t. And so some of the more recent poems were about just me reimagining what the night I was born was like.

And so I created this whole narrative that was punctuated by all of these poems to tell a story about what it's like to live with the trauma of being adopted in a patriarchal society that's disadvantageous to women and children, right? That says that two parents are better than one, and that a young single woman is irresponsible and shouldn't be able to keep her baby, right? And of course, lots of these things are generational, but they're still happening. So it was really important to use art and the creative process to tell a story publicly that people need to hear. So I guess that's it in a large nutshell.

Haley: I've heard you speak about writing as a public testimony and it's interesting that your project was this one-woman show where it's literally giving a public testimony. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I don't think, of course, not all of our writing will be performed and you are an actor. You have got a theater background as well. So there's that piece for you.

Liz DeBetta: So in some of the research about creativity, using creativity to heal trauma, Dr. Sophia Richmond writes about creative transformations of trauma, and one of the things that comes up in her work is this idea that the art, whatever it is, whether it's a poem or a piece of personal narrative writing or a painting or a drawing or a piece of music that is composed. Whatever form the art takes becomes a container for the artist to put the trauma into and to reshape it and to fashion it into something.

And then that's one part of the way that we start to heal, when we can put our feelings into something outside of ourselves. So the poem, the one-woman show, the whatever. And then the other piece of healing, at least according to her, is having that art witnessed and sharing it publicly.

And that also comes up a lot, there's a lot of connections to that in lots of the other research. It is this idea of not only writing or creating, but then giving it to someone else and saying, here, witness this. Because I'm heard and I'm seen, and also the act of public performance is, I don't want to get too theoretical, but it is another way of creating empathy, right?

Because when you are a performer or a speaker, when your body is in physical space with an audience, the audience members are part of that experience with you for the time that it's happening, and they can't turn away, right? Like they've chosen to be there. They've chosen to sit there in this live experience, to take in what is happening, right?

And to engage with my body as it tells the story. And what happens is then that space, that theatrical space becomes a container for empathy and for critical thinking. And so part of the process for me then was also a couple of audience talkbacks where people got to ask questions.

Not only about the writing and the performance process, but like my own experience, and why I chose to tell this story. And what it ended up doing for a lot of people was shifting their perspectives and having many people say, I had no idea. I never thought about adoption this way.

I had one woman who grew up with adopted siblings and she said, I have this much better understanding now of what was going on, like why my family dynamic was the way that it was. It's probably because my siblings were going through some of the things you described in this performance and none of us knew.

Haley: How does that feel for you personally to know that you got to shift someone's narrative.

Liz DeBetta: That's exactly why I do this work. That's the thing that became really important to me. The more that I worked on my PhD and my dissertation study was like, okay, I can take all of these parts of myself, right?

I can take my background as a theater artist and my background as a writer and a teacher, and a thinker, and I can smash them together in a really unique way to do something positive in the culture of adoption. Because the more that I studied all of the literature, the scholarly literature, I was like, nobody's telling these stories.

And we know in the adoptee community, we know how often we're silenced. We know how often, “but what about…”; and people speaking for us and about us. And so it was part of my own healing process to do this important work, but also I look at it as an act of cultural mediation and cultural healing, right?

If we don't start to tell these stories and make people listen, then nothing's going to change. So it's really affirming to have people, multiple people, after they've watched my show say, Wow, I have totally changed my perspective. So that's why this work is so important, and that's why every opportunity that we have to get adoptees’ voices centered and telling our stories, we should. Because I think the time is well past when we should be paying attention. It's 2021 and, like, we gotta get comfortable talking about trauma. Like we can't. Sorry, but sorry, not sorry.

Haley: It's time.

Liz DeBetta: Yep. Yeah,

Haley: I have this Adoptees On Healing Series where I'm always talking with therapists about various things related to trauma and healing and things.

And, you've used the word healing and I'm curious what that means for you. What things have shifted for you or changed for you as you've written poetry and literally studied this and performed and all of those things. Do you feel like healing happening? What is “healing,” what does that mean for you?

Liz DeBetta: I think, healing, one of the things that I wrote and I say in the show is that healing is not a linear process. For me it's been concentric and twisting and turning in on itself. And because it's a journey, right? And it takes different paths at different times.

But for me, what I've come to realize, especially over the last couple of years, is that healing is about finding wholeness. About finding ways to feel whole and to feel real and to feel grounded. To not feel like I'm gonna fly off in a million parts, which is another thing that I wrote. This constant feeling of I'm gonna fly away into a million parts. If I don't keep control, right?

And yeah, a lot of the healing comes through owning these parts of my story and really sitting with the feelings, I, and I think a lot of adoptees, can relate to dissociating and not feeling, and not wanting to feel, and being afraid to feel or being taught our feelings aren't valid. And so we just shove them down and pretend everything's okay, and then we don't know. We don't know what's okay and not okay. It just becomes a mess. And I have that experience of really not feeling and sort of existing in a numb but overactive space for a long time.

In terms of my experience of my body. So a big part of healing, too, for me has come in having a new experience of my body. And learning to stay in my body, to be present, to feel safe, to not want to escape all the time. And that was a big part of why the performance aspect of my dissertation project was important because the performing and the living through the words that I had written and through the story I was telling and really experiencing all that in my body through the rehearsal process and through the performance process helped start to move trauma too.

I started to feel different, like I would finish rehearsals and things would hurt. And yes, it was a very physically active show. I did a lot of movement and breath work and stuff, but, like, things hurt. My hips hurt. And that's a place where we know that trauma gets stored. And I started to notice the places, the sort of what I call holding patterns, right? Like my default holding patterns where I was like, oh, I have held my hips and my gut and this whole center of my body really tightly for my whole life.

And now I can start to release that. I can let it go. So it's also feeling those physical changes that tells me that I'm healing. And then I guess another big thing that's happened is I've been doing EMDR, too, for the last couple of years, so that's been a really good companion to all of this other work.

But the way that I don't have my recurring nightmares anymore, and I know that a lot of adopted people have these sort of very similar recurring nightmares around searching for something that we never find. And that's certainly been my big recurring dream of looking for someone or something and spending the whole dream panicking and not being able to find whatever it is or whoever it is I'm looking for.

Or starting out the dream with my partner and then getting separated and then never being able to find him again. And now when I have this dream, it resolves itself and by the end of the dream, we're back together. And to me that's huge.

Haley: That is huge. Wow. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing all those things.

I am doing EMDR again, like I'm really in depth right now, but I feel often scared of writing. Even privately because I am worried about the things that are gonna come out, it's like admitting things to yourself. But that’s just my personal note. I know that you ran a group for seven weeks with other adult adoptees and were leading them through all of these different writing prompts and different exercises, and I would love it if you would talk a little bit about that because I think it's such an amazing thing to talk about, writing on your own. But then you've brought in this other aspect of writing in community and what that could do for people.

Liz DeBetta: Yes, I think it's really important for people to write and writing is scary, right? You're not the first person. You know, yes. You have to confront things, right? But it's also a way of getting it out. And so for the group that I just worked with for seven weeks, I was really interested in creating a space, an adoptee-only space, and creating an opportunity, as you say, to write in community. And what we, I called the group migrating toward wholeness.

Because, like I said, that's healing. I think, for me as an adoptee and for a lot of other adoptees, especially as adults, is to try to move toward a sense of wholeness. And so the group was comprised of 11 other adoptees. Aged from their mid-twenties up through their sixties. So we had multiple generations represented.

I specifically chose domestic closed adoption adoptees for this first group because I was interested in seeing what the commonalities in our experiences might be despite the age differences. Just from a researcher’s standpoint.

Haley: And that's your personal experience as well.

Liz DeBetta: Yeah, exactly, that's my personal experience. And I am a creative person and a facilitator, a sort of guide. And this aspect of social justice, like this is real social justice work when we can create spaces for adoptees to come together and find ways to tell their stories and to heal in community.

Whether the writing that gets done gets shared publicly or not is a side bonus. But there was the act of writing and sharing in the small group, because we were witnessing one another for those seven weeks. We got together every Saturday for seven weeks for two hours. The first week, people just shared their stories and we just listened to each other.

And from that first session everything was really emergent. I didn't really pre-plan a lot because I wanted to work with who was in the room with me. Who was there and what was I hearing and what did I think people needed to start to think about and write about.

And so the prompts came out of things that people were saying, the questions that I posed to them. Each week we had two sets of questions. There was a set of writing questions and then a set of writing prompts. So those were just some direct quotes followed by ellipses that they could just finish the sentence and keep going.

Or, several questions that came up related to things people said, related to the experiences that were shared. And then I also offered them each week four questions for reflection, because one of the important things to do is not only to write about the experiences and start to discover what you need to say, but also to reflect on it. Like what's happening as I write, as I'm working through this process, like, what's going on in my body, right?

Am I sleeping better? Does my breathing shift? Things like that. And also there were some things that were really hard for people to write about. Because for some people this was the first time they were giving themselves permission to write about being adopted and their feelings and, like, go there, right?

So to your point, Haley, like some of them were like, I saw this and I was like, this is scary, but I'm gonna do it. They jumped in and what happened was incredible. It was an incredible process and we wished it didn't have to end. We ended up adding an additional session because by the time we got to six weeks, we were like, okay, we need more time.

We need a little bit more time together. And for some people, this was the beginning of creating space to feel what they need to feel. What they've been told has not been okay to feel. And many of us know that something really special happens when adoptees come together in adoptee-only spaces. It's automatically a safe space.

So, I think I talked a little bit about this in the presentation that we did after the seven weeks with the group, but it is this idea of reflective resonance, which we as adoptees do automatically. When we listen to one another's stories we're not listening to respond.

We're listening to hear. And to be supportive and to be empathetic and say, yeah. What I'm hearing you say is, this is really hard for you. Or, this has been a really challenging way to go through life. What happens, usually, because we're socially conditioned to listen, to respond, which is not reflective resonance.

And so this happened so much as adoptees, when we try to speak in other spaces that are not exclusively adoptees, we get spoken to, we get spoken over. People are not listening to us and reflectively resonating with us. They're not going, “Oh wow, that sounds so hard.” They're going, “Oh, but not all adoptees.”

Or, “but what about the adoptive parents?” And this is something that comes up a lot, like in conversations I have with my own parents, which is incredibly frustrating at times. But I give my parents a lot of credit because they've also been on this journey with me for the last couple of years, and they're trying. They're really listening and they want to know, and they want to understand, and they feel bad that they didn't know 40 plus years ago what they know now.

And I know that it's incredibly difficult for them to listen and to hear. Anyway, back to my point about this idea of reflective resonance. I think we do this instinctively as adoptees where we just listen. We're here and we can be mirrors for one another.

And so I think a lot of this work, part of the healing comes in the more that we can create adoptee-centric spaces, I hope that there will be a shift in this to more widespread reflective resonance where people can start to receive the stories. But the first step is creating spaces where we feel safe together, and that creates that community of braveness.

Right? And the ability to explore the feelings. Knowing I'm sitting here with 11 other adult adoptees whose experiences very closely mirror my own, despite the fact that we're in different parts of the United States, grew up in very different circumstances, in different decades. But here we are saying so many of the same things.

That gives me permission, or anyone who participated in the group, the permission to really go there and to have the opportunity to not be afraid to dive in. And that's really powerful.

Haley: I was just asked about this and the person challenged me, or adoptees, asking what is this adoptee activism thing? Are we just in an echo chamber? And my response was I feel like we're practicing on each other and building up the muscles. And I love that you said bravery because it takes courage to share our story wholly. That is against the traditional narrative. Knowing that the responses we've gotten in the past may continue, the “but what about” and “I don't believe you” and all those kinds of things.

So building the muscles in order to share outside starts out with having the safe space. I love this reflective resonance, I love that term. It's so perfect. And could you speak a little more on having an intergenerational group? Because when we share stories on this show and there are younger adoptees or older adoptees and some of them will say I was in the Baby Scoop. Or you identify yourself by that sort of generation. But what was it like to have people from different decades participating and speaking to each other in that way?

Liz DeBetta: I think it was really important. I think what it did was it showed us that we are not the problem. Right? It showed us that we are not the problem. That the culture of adoption and the system of adoption as it has existed since the mid-1940s is the problem. Because we had adoptees who were in their mid-twenties who were still products of closed adoption.

And adoptees in their sixties who were definitely part of the Baby Scoop who had been really effectively silenced by their generational guilt and the shame. But all of us talked about this guilt and this shame and this needing to fit into a mold. And someone else's idea of who we should be, right?

There was so much crossover in what people said and shared and parts of stories and just the internal experiences. I guess that’s really what I'm talking about is having this multi-generational group of adoptees talking about internal experiences that were very similar.

Haley: And you had only closed domestic adoptions represented in your group. And even when I think of some of the younger adoptees that I've spoken to who were products of an open adoption, that thread continues. So I love that you said that. It's not us. It's not me, it's you, system.

Liz DeBetta: Yeah, exactly.

Haley: Yeah.

Liz DeBetta: And I think it was really empowering and affirming for us to come together and for the younger adoptees to connect with the older adoptees. And again, I think the most profound thing was that for several of the group members, this was the first time they were doing this kind of thing.

And so there was a tremendous amount of trust that they placed in me and in each other that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't adoptees only. And hearing each other share different parts of their stories or pieces of the writing that they were doing from week to week gave other people permission to keep writing and to keep sharing.

Haley: So we've both talked about doing EMDR and various therapy at other points in our lives. And you mentioned your social justice activism, and I'm curious if you have thoughts on the accessibility of writing. And if you think it's accessible and if that makes it just another reason why it's such an important tool. Because of course we can, I've said this on the show before: therapy is inaccessible to a lot of people. It's just very expensive and it's inaccessible sometimes. So can you talk about writing and what your thoughts are on that piece?

Liz DeBetta: Yeah, I love that. And it's so (beep) that therapy is inaccessible for so many people. When so many of us need it, not just adoptees, but so many people in the world. It's a part of our physical health, right? Taking care of our mental health. So we need to do better about that.

But yeah, I do think that writing is accessible to anyone regardless of circumstance or situation or ability because you can get a notebook and a pen or if you have a computer, you can open a Word doc or a Google Doc and type if that's accessible.

If you have some physical limitations, you can speak to text, right? Like you can speak and the technology will type for you. And so I think that recognizing that writing can also be a very private act, right? It doesn't have to be something that you choose to share, but it can be something that you do for yourself because it is therapeutic. Because it helps you give shape to things that feel chaotic. That's in some of the literature about why writing is a therapeutic thing. It’s that when we create a narrative for ourselves, we're giving order to something that formerly felt chaotic.

When we use something specific like poetry, we're getting right to the heart of the emotions, right? We're taking out all the unnecessary language and we're using images to connect to the really deep, intense emotions. That can then help us make sense of them.

An image that I work with a lot has to do with ghosts and tombs and bones and things, and I think that it's really important to not just write the things but then go back and like what? Why did I write this, right? What are the ghosts? And for me, like I know the ghosts come up because we know there are ghosts in the adopted family, right?

Most people hopefully know about Betty Jean Lifton and her work specifically on ghosts in the adopted family. But that actually came up in the group. One of the group members was like, I just learned about this and I was like, yeah, here's the article. But it's true.

We live with these ghosts and so I, as a writer, have to pay attention to what's coming up and what that tells me about my internal experiences and things that maybe I still need to process. But the writing is a process and an act of processing too.

Haley: You've taught us a lot during this whole conversation, but I just want to double down on it, and I think you'll talk to this when we're doing our recommended resources as well, right away, but it's a process. It can be a tool for healing. There's research and it's proven. And even as you were listing off the things that “healing” meant to you and the impact doing this work has had on you, you were mentioning physical, emotional, and mental things that have come about. So it's not “Oh, I'm just gonna scribble in my notebook.” There's meaning behind it and there's things that come out that are really beneficial.

Liz DeBetta: Yeah, I think one of the important things about using writing as a tool for healing is that we're not just word vomit.

We're not just writing that all these terrible things happened. We're describing them, right? Specifically, we're using really deep, detailed descriptions of experiences, and that can come out in, like I said, in the images, in the details that you used to talk about who was there, when was it, what did it feel like?

But then we're also thinking about not only what happened, but how did it make me feel? How did it make me feel then, and how do I feel about it now? And so always like having that sort of conscious process of checking in with ourselves and saying, okay, I am writing, and I need to write about this.

And often that's what happens, right? Is like the feeling, or at least for me anyway, the feeling gets too much and I have to do something with it. I can't keep holding it inside me or it's going to eat me up. I don't want to hold that. I don't want to sit there for a week feeling (beep) inside.

I want to do something. And it comes out as a poem usually. I did this yesterday. I was having a really complicated set of emotions surrounding Memorial Day. My brother, who's also adopted, is a vet. Severe, complex trauma from both being adopted and his time on active duty.

And there's a lot of really complicated stuff going on with him and my family. And we watched Da 5 Bloods on the night before. And that story is about a group of Vietnam vets and one of them said things that were so close to some things that my brother has said, and it hit me really hard.

And I woke up yesterday and I was feeling all of this stuff and I was like, I gotta do something with it. So I wrote a poem to help move some of that stuff, and so that's an active agency too, right? That I can do. That I have control over the things that are going on. I can choose to do something about it.

So I chose to sit down and feel what I was feeling and write it. And that's another reason why writing is both powerful and accessible for everyone. Louise DeSalvo in her book Writing as a Way of Healing says that writing is an act of freedom we often felt we didn't have. She also says that through writing we change our relationship to trauma because we gain confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle life's difficulties.

Through writing and changing our relationship to trauma, we come to a feeling that our lives are more coherent rather than chaotic and that we can solve problems. And she says also that because our writing, our work of art, is a concrete object, it becomes a memorial and a testimony to the resolution of the mourning process.

And so that sort of connects back to what we were talking about earlier with the container, right? Like the poem is the container. And so I'm going through a mourning process of not having a relationship with my brother anymore because he's really damaged and it's really sad.

And he's really angry. And so that poem became the concrete object where I could memorialize and create a testimony to my own grief and that sense of loss around that relationship, but also where it's coming from.

Haley: Thank you for sharing those things. So powerful. Before we do our recommended resources, I'm wondering if you would give the folks listening, a writing prompt or two if they're new to this, if it feels scary to me. One or two things that we could start doing. What's beginner level?

Liz DeBetta: The thing that's popping up right now is two things. I often like to find inspiration in other things. So sometimes like a word or a phrase or part of a sentence from something else that I've read will inspire me, and I'll start with that. So if you have a particular line or quote that speaks to you for some reason, that could be a good way in. Another thing I like are letters. You can write letters to yourself, and this was actually one of the really hard activities. So maybe this is not great, but I'm gonna suggest it anyway.

Like we can write a letter to our younger self. For some of us as adopted people, that's really hard because we still haven't really fully embraced that little person. But it can be really helpful to do that as an exercise, over a week or two weeks or a month. Take 10 minutes every day and engage with that part of yourself and say the things that you needed to hear. Things that maybe never were told to you that you, as your adult self in your full power now, have the ability to say, “Hey, I see you, I'm sitting with you and we're okay.” Or just letters to people that you need to say things to. And you don't ever have to send them. And if it's hard to write in the first person, shift that and write in the third person.

Because then it puts you outside. When you shift.

Haley: You're the observer.

Liz DeBetta: You become the observer instead of in the story, right? And then as it gets easier, then you can shift back. And you can rewrite it in that first person narrative when it feels more comfortable and when it feels less intense.

Haley: I love it. All right, so we got the beginner level and intermediate level.

Liz DeBetta: There you go.

Haley: Oh, that's so good. Okay, what do you want to recommend to us today?

Liz DeBetta: Okay, so there's so many really good books, but what I chose today to share with everyone is a book called Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo, who's a writing teacher.

And the book is based on 20 years of research that she accumulated in teaching writing and also connected to some of the stuff I talked about earlier. She pulls in a lot of the research, but also her own experience. And what I like about the book is that it's both about the way that writing can help us and it's backed up by the research.

But also she makes sure to continually discuss the idea that we need to have balance when we write. If we're just writing about negative experiences, that's not going to be good for us, right? We need to write both about the negative and the positive and create what she calls balanced narratives.

Each chapter is followed by some writing activities and exercises, so for people that want to start writing and aren't sure how to do it, this is a really nice kind of overview of all the things that we've talked about today, like this idea of using writing for healing and how we do it and why we do it.

Haley: I like that. I like that balanced approach. Because I could see how, if you're just constantly writing all the horrible things, that's what gets stuck, right? You're not shifting anything.

Liz DeBetta: Exactly. Yeah. And that can actually create negative health outcomes. But it's because you get stuck in a negative feedback loop when you’re just focusing on the bad. But actually there's good too, right? There's always good.

Haley: Yes. Thank you. That's great. Fabulous recommendation. You mentioned earlier that you had presented on your seven week group and the outcomes, and I think I've mentioned before on the show this year that the Rudd Adoption Conference was virtual, and so their focus was adopted adults. Connections across generations. And so your presentation was the last one to wrap up this year for 2021. And so I'll make sure to link to that. So you talk more about the group and what's really special, and Rudd actually linked both videos you have. There's two participant videos.

There's a shorter one and a longer one where people in your group are reading some of the work they did with you and some of the writing. It's very powerful. And then they're also a part of your presentation and talking about some of the things you shared today about the impacts and I was there live, on Zoom. I think I was making dinner, but I was listening and it was just wonderful and accessible and really interesting.

And I highly recommend you go and check that out. And the other presentations that Rudd offered are also on their YouTube channel, so I'll link to those things. Then the other thing that you and I have in common, is we're both Adoptees Connect facilitators. And now that, I was just gonna say, now that Covid is wrapping up, I don't know, it's not really everywhere, but a lot of the Adoptees Connect groups are meeting in person again, we're still doing online here in Alberta because, yeah, that's just how it is.

But the founder of Adoptees Connect, Pamela Karanova just announced that they are now planting more groups. So if connecting with other adult adoptees has felt important to you, and if anything, what Liz was sharing about the power of community today felt important to you.

I would encourage you to go to the Adoptees Connect website and see if there's a group near you that you can join. And if not, you're the person. Tag you're it. You can start it. You don't have to be a therapist. You don't have to have any credentials. You have to be an adult adoptee who's willing to connect with other adult adoptees.

And that's been one of great gifts in serving the community and I've felt very blessed by doing it. Meeting new members and we have new people coming all the time to our group. We're still really small, but it's really cool to connect with other adult adoptees, especially people that haven't been in the community before and have no idea about the impact adoption has had on them.

And they're reaching out for resources and you could be the person that starts a group in your area. So I'd recommend you go and check out Adoptees Connect. Do you have any thoughts on Adoptees Connect, Liz?

Liz DeBetta: Yeah, I think that, again, we talk about the importance of adoptee-only spaces and adoptee-centric spaces and Adoptees Connect is one of the really important opportunities that we have to come together in community. It's about building a community where we can just come together and share ourselves and our stories in a non-judgmental, social way.

And we, my group in Salt Lake City, just got together a couple weekends ago for the first time in person after hosting on Zoom off and on throughout the pandemic. And we had two new members. It's been a slow grow for us here over the last couple of years, but people are finding each other and people are coming. I think the more opportunities we have to create community together, I think it's another tool for healing.

And why it's been important for me is that I can bring more people together.

Haley: Absolutely, yes. Thank you. So speaking of that, where can we connect with you online and where can we sign up if we're interested in doing this writing experience with you?

Liz DeBetta: Yeah, so I have a waiting list is the best way to put it. So lots of folks are interested and in order to keep myself sane and organized I will send you the link to the original Google form that folks can add their info to. They'll just have to skip through the part that says, are you available for all sessions? And just say no. Because it's from the Rudd, the original Rudd writing group that is already over. But for everyone that is including their information on that Google form, I will have your contact info and then as things develop, I will be able to keep in touch and let you know what's coming next. Things are still a work-in-progress, but I hope to do much more of this, as much as I can.

Haley: Love it. Wonderful. And what's your website? And I'll make sure to link to that form and your other contact info in the show notes. But where can we find you?

Liz DeBetta: So my website is currently not live. It's a work-in-progress, but it is my name: LizDeBetta.com. So easy. In the interim folks can look for me on Facebook.

Haley: Sounds good.

Liz DeBetta: And if it's okay, I would love to leave you all with a poem.

Haley: Yes. I can't wait.

Liz DeBetta: I also think about poems as gifts. And so this is for you and for all of us who might need to hear this right now.

“I am here, finally, fully, frightfully aware of me, myself, and I. I who has been afraid to be here, afraid to be me, afraid to present myself, my flaws and my imperfectly perfect self. I am here now knowing nothing is impossible because I am possible. I am me moving through grief, moving through pain, moving through fear to find peace in myself, with you, and in my circumstances. I am here unapologetically. For the first time the fog has lifted. I am free. Free from shame, free from guilt, free from my own self-doubt. I am free to be me, myself, and I.”

Haley: Thank you for that wonderful gift.

Liz DeBetta: You're welcome.

Haley: Oh my goodness, I cannot believe this is the last episode until the fall. It's our summer break and normally I would go to the end of June, but just because of COVID and having the kids at home, I know I've told you about this in the last couple episodes. This is just how it worked out. So I am taking the break.

I'll be ready and refreshed to come to you with new episodes in September. And there's a huge back catalog, so I am sure you couldn’t have possibly listened to all 187 episodes, have you? Scroll back if there are things you haven't checked out yet. There's so many good episodes. I'm sure you can find a gem or two to listen to during the break.

And there's still going to be new episodes for my monthly Patreon supporters. So if you go to AdopteesOn.com/partner. You can find out details of how to join us there. We are still hosting our monthly book club. This month we are talking about The Guild of the Infant Savior with Megan Culhane Galbraith, which is a fabulous book. So excited to be reading that with her this month.

We have Barbara Sumner in July. We are going to have a round table in August. So many good things coming up, even during the summer break. So if you can't get enough and going through the back catalog is not gonna do it for you, come join us on AdopteesOn.com/partner for the Patreon bonuses.

There's a weekly podcast there called Adoptees Off Script, and they're all ready to go for you. There's over a hundred episodes there. So if you really want to go back and binge listen, there is more. I am so grateful for each one of you for listening. I am truly honored that I get to do this for you, to be in your earbuds and on your hikes and walks and commutes and when you're doing the dishes.

Thank you for allowing me into your ears and I know it's so annoying that I say thank you a lot. I'm sorry. It's a Canadian thing. It's an adoptee thing. It's a people-pleasing thing. It's just my quirk, I guess. Anyway, thank you so much for listening and I look forward to talking to you again very soon.

In September, we'll be back with brand new episodes of Adoptees On so make sure you're subscribed or following wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's talk again soon.

182 Gregory Luce

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/182

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Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 182 Gregory Luce. I'm your host, Haley Radke. I am so excited to introduce you to Gregory Luce today, the attorney behind adoptee rights law. We get to hear some of Greg's personal story today, including the five-year court battle it took for him to receive his records.

We talk about some of the typical arguments adoptee activists hear from legislators against original birth certificate access and what impact DNA testing access has had on OBC legislation. Greg also challenges us to make sure we're listening to all adoptee voices.

Greg is a lawyer, but he's not giving us legal advice during this episode. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On: Gregory Luce. Welcome, Gregory.

Gregory Luce: Hi, Haley. It’s good to be here.

Haley Radke: Okay, first of all, I'm so thrilled to talk with you, because I've followed you for years on Twitter, have learned so much from you, but I'm really excited to get to hear some of your personal story. So, would you mind sharing some of that with us today?

Gregory Luce: I am a D.C. born and adopted person. I was born in 1965 in the District of Columbia and seven days later, I ended up in Silver Spring, Maryland with my adoptive parents and I have an adoptive brother as well. My story’s probably pretty typical for most domestic adoptees, maybe most white domestic adoptees, but I grew up always knowing I was adopted.

I did wonder quite a bit as I got into my adolescence and then wondered quite a bit more, and sort of had a breakdown when (as I think a lot of adoptees do) when they are about to become parents or have just become parents. And that was my sort of breaking point in trying to figure out who I am, where I came from, and to get information about that.

And that was in–let’s see, it goes way back to 1999/2000, as I didn't really know anything about getting records. In fact, I think back in 2000, I was surprised to learn that I have two birth certificates. I didn't know that there was an original, and once I found out there was an original, I was going, “Whoa, they’re hiding that from me. It's in a court somewhere and I can get it.”

So I researched it a little bit. And I'm an attorney, and I was an attorney at that point, too. So I knew what I was doing for the courts in the District of Columbia. It just said, “Fill out this form, submit $80.00 and you'll be heard by the court.” And so I did that and I got an order back saying, “Yes, we are unsealing your records.”

And so I'm like, “Woo hoo, that was easy.” It didn't mean what it said it meant, though. It meant that they were going to unseal my file and then kick it over to the adoption agency. And then I got a letter shortly after from the adoption agency saying, “Well, if you pay us $500, we'll search for your parents and see if we can get your parents’ consent.”

And I was not interested in that. I wasn't prepared for a reunion. I wasn't prepared to meet my parents. So I said, “No, thanks.” So then, shortly after that, maybe six months? I had forgotten that I'd done one of these (they used to be private) these private registries. I think they still exist.

This private registry was related to the D.C. area. So Maryland, Virginia, D.C., maybe parts of West Virginia. And, lo and behold, there's a match. And in the fall of 2000, I met my birth mother through that. And we met towards the end of 2000, and then I think, if I’m still remembering correctly, she died 169 days later.

So, we did get to know each other. It was a wonderful reunion. She had been battling cancer for quite some time. And it’s my belief she held on for this amount of time to know that I was still alive and doing well. I ended up inheriting all of her records. I was an only child. She later married my birth father and they later got divorced as well, but I had thousands of documents from her.

And so I rebuilt her life and rebuilt her life, so I would understand it. I became essentially her biographer, or her historian. Then, about in 2015…and these things always take so much time. You sit on it, you think through it, you're not quite sure what you want to do. Life gets in the way. But in 2015, I said, “You know, I'm going to give it another chance and this time I'm going to go whole hog and I'm going to throw the book at the court to try to get my records.” And so I wrote a 35-page petition and memorandum and filed it with the court.

It took five years and two denials from the court, as well as the Court of Appeals case in D.C. when they finally said, “Yes, you can have your original birth record and your father's name will be unredacted.” Because their final decision at the trial court was, “Yes, you can have your records. We need to figure out the privacy interests of your deceased mother and even though you know the name of your father, we're not going to give you his name. We're going to redact that.” And I got a redacted original birth record. That was what I appealed and won on that part. It's changed D.C. law a little bit in that respect.

It means that consent of the birth parents is not the linchpin there. It has to take into account the paramount interest of the adopted person, but they do still attempt to contact the birth parents in D.C. to determine if they would release or what their preference is for releasing records.

I'm in a long snail mail relationship with my birth father. We write letters, plunk them in the mail, and open them, and read them, and reply maybe a few months later. So, that is ongoing and very slow, and I think eventually we'll meet at some point. But through all that, I mean, after coming away from 2015…for the two years it took me just to navigate the courts in D.C., I said, “You know, this is nuts. This is crazy. I'm a lawyer and it takes me this much effort to challenge the court and to try to get my records. What's it like in the rest of the states?” And that's when I began my sort of a new turn of my legal career and I became (what I call myself) an adoptee rights lawyer. I think I'm the only one in the country, because there's not many attorneys that do this full time. And I began the Adoptee Rights Law Center as a law firm that represents adult adopted people.

That grew into not only birth records and identity documents, but also representing inter-country adoptees who either are having trouble proving citizenship or need to secure citizenship because they did not get it done when they were young. So, that's where I am today. It's been a crazy four years now? So when you say we haven't spoken for years, I still think I started this last month. It just feels that way to me, but it's been four years of doing this and there's so much that has happened in those four years. So I'm glad it feels new to me still.

Haley Radke: What kind of law did you practice before starting this?

Gregory Luce: All kinds! I clerked for a judge for a couple of years. I did employment law for a few years. I was a technology person at the State Bar Association. I ran a nonprofit that organized low-income and tenants in their buildings to fix their buildings up.

I don't stay in positions very long. I just hop around because I get bored, but this is the one that's kept me (I think the longest of any), is this work here. Because it's so meaningful and so personal and it's actually really, really gratifying. So yeah, I did it all. I did litigation, family law, you name it. The only thing I haven't done–I have not done criminal law. Although, I think I did get thrown into court one time for a client and had no idea what I was doing.

Haley Radke: I remember when you started your Twitter account and just thinking, “Oh, this is really cool. This is fascinating to me.” I'm Canadian, so, but of course, most of my guests are American, and so I follow very closely what's happening down there in terms of legislation and things. So, it's amazing to me. You kind of glossed over this, but you changed D.C. law. That's amazing to have the interest of the adoptee as paramount. I mean, that's a big deal.

Gregory Luce: It is. It's not unrestricted right (which you get through legislation), which is the next step, but that's why I got into this. It was to figure out a way to change the law and figure out a way to make it so you do have an unrestricted right to request and obtain your original birth record if you're a domestic adoptee. But obviously, what happens with the court, is it takes such a long time and you have to have someone like me, that's willing to stick in there for four or five years in litigation. And there's not many people who really want to do that.

Haley Radke: Also, frankly, most of us wouldn't have the resources to pay for your services for that long,

Gregory Luce: Right. Yeah. If I were to have paid myself for what I did, it would be $40-$50,000. That's what my legal fees probably would have been in the end if I had hired an attorney. Some people will say, “Why didn’t you hire an attorney?” Well, that's the reason.

That was the other part of forming the Adoptee Rights Law Center. I'm in a part of my life where I call myself a stay-at-home lawyer, where I've been taking care of the kids while my wife works and doing sort of part-time work. We didn’t need–I'm privileged not to need to work to earn money in that sense. I mean, it's something we still need to worry about, but not in the sense that many other people have to worry about. And so I started out with almost entirely pro bono cases, because I knew that adoptees did not have the resources to pay $1,000, $2,000, $5,000 to file a court case.

And I've continued to do that, because there's so much demand, though. I have been fairly careful now about what cases I take pro bono, and then those cases where a client can afford, I'll have a low flat fee that would cover petitioning a court and getting records…the whole case, as opposed to an hourly fee.

So that would range. It's cheaper than hiring, at least in Minnesota. It's cheaper than paying $1,000, which is what it takes for the major adoption agency here to launch a search. And those searches depend upon consent to get any information back. So, I'm cheaper than the adoption agencies on purpose, and still try to keep my services pro bono. And most of my inter-country adoptive cases are pro bono. Not all, but most. So, that's sort of my way of giving to the community, but also keeping busy in an area that I really love.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I didn't know your story before you shared it and I usually make notes, and I do research before my interviews. I had a note to ask you about what your thoughts on mutual consent registries were. And then it turns out that that's actually how you found your birth mother!

Gregory Luce: Right. They never work. They are notoriously ineffective. And lo and behold…

Haley Radke: Sorry, I should just make a little note there. The reason I wanted to ask you that was because that's given as a reason. “Well, mutual consent registries are available, so that's what you should use to search.” From some legislators, I've heard that argument.

Gregory Luce: Right. No, they're just so terribly ineffective. No one knows about them. You have to sort of get lucky to find out about them. There has to be a match. They often don't work anyways, even if there is a match there, because something's messed up in the search algorithm or the search database. I just read a story in New York, where they currently have an unrestricted right now; they changed the law. We've changed the law. We helped change the law there. These were two siblings. They both registered for the registry there 27 years ago and they just found out from the registry–27 years later. So, the registry did not work in that case, and that's typical, I think, for many of these registries and they're just completely ineffective. Of course, that's what’s so interesting about my story, is that it worked. And it worked six months before my mother died.

So, just quite amazing that that's what happened. It worked six months before she died and six months after I first petitioned the court. And the court had nothing to do with her registering. She just happened to register, I think, in October, 2000. And I had registered, I think, back in 1987, or something. So that was 13 years there.

Haley Radke: I remember filling out those things as a teenager. We had the Internet, I had an old computer. Well, it wasn't old–it was new!

Gregory Luce: An Amiga or something?

Haley Radke: Yeah, I don't know! We'd get an Apple for a while, and then, I don't know when we switched to PC, but I remember just randomly filling out these online database things and nothing ever came of that for me. But that was in the olden days.

Gregory Luce: Obviously, I had forgotten completely that I had registered. Up pops an email from the administrator of this registry and everything's changed from there.

Haley Radke: I find this really interesting, because you have worked on changing statewide legislation, but also, it's just one off, going to unseal one person at a time kind of a deal.

So, can you talk about the differences of those things? It's fairly obvious to me, but for a lot of people, they don't understand closed records, etcetera. You've got this hole nailed down. Can you tell us about that, please?

Gregory Luce: Yeah, and it's a great question, because it's something I think about all the time. There are two approaches you can take when you believe you have a right to obtain your original birth record. One is to change the legislation so that they recognize that right, or in many cases restore it in the state that used to have it. And the other is to find a legal argument that would make the courts recognize that right as a right.

The legislation is actually probably easier to do (as hard as it is). It's probably easier to change a law than to establish a right through the courts. And so you have to have these dual tracks going, though, in which you're trying to pursue this right through legislation, but you're also trying to convince legislators that it is a right. And they recognize it as a right, because part of creating a right is advocating for the belief that it is a right. And that's really important to realize that you don't so much… It’s the pressure that you put on society through legislators that will lead to them saying, “Yeah, you're right. If you put it that way, it really is a right.”

And then how you define that is going to be the big question, both for legislation and for the courts. If you're narrowly looking at it and you're narrowly saying, “We have an absolute right to the original birth record,” that's going to be much harder to prove than, “We have a right to identity.”

And this is where I'm sort of moving and how I'm analyzing these things legally, is that there's a much broader right to identity, to heritage, to citizenship, that relates to birth. That is the right that's really an issue. That's why I'm so excited in some ways to be connecting with the donor conceived community who have the same identity rights that come up. They call them genetic identity rights, or any number of different rights. And it's a very complicated area, but it is. It encompasses this broad right to your own identity. I think that's where we're going to find a lot of support moving into the future.

The right to the birth record is a right that arises out of a right to a full identity. And so I'm seeing organizations arising and there's one in Switzerland now called child-identity.org. I think there's a hyphen between child and identity. It looks at identity from the point of view that birth certificates…everyone in the entire world does not get a birth certificate.

There are many countries that have pretty lax systems to even record a birth. And so that in itself is a right–to have a birth certificate or a birth record. I've had clients who haven't had them. And that creates all sorts of problems in moving through the world, but this organization in Switzerland (and there are many others, probably like it) takes a really broad look at identity.

And within that is a right to a birth certificate and a right to know who's on your birth certificate, to know your parents, and who they are. There's no general right to relationship unless that relationship is through the birth parent before they relinquish or surrender a child. But even then, there are going to be some rights that attach to that relationship.

But any adult doesn't have a right to a relationship with another adult. We're not talking about relationship rights. We're talking about identity rights.

Haley Radke: Right. Okay, I have never heard it put that way and that's really fascinating, because I was just looking it up and I wanted to ask you this, too, because I was watching some of the videos that you've made and I wondered if you could tell us what happened in California in 1935?

Gregory Luce: So, my theory with California…I don't think anyone really knows, but my theory with California is caught up a little bit with the Georgia Tan scandal. Georgia Tan was definitely involved with a lot of Hollywood adoptions and you had celebrity adoptions as well in California.

What was happening there was that you can request the birth record of anyone in California. You still can, actually, but in the 1930s, people who knew this and knew possibly there was an adoption would request the birth record of that child and would try to blackmail the adoptive parents to say, “We're going to tell.” Which is what's so odd to me. “We're going to tell the kid that the kid's adopted.” That was the blackmail. Not that they adopted a child, but we're going to tell the kid who’s adopted. So, it's wrapped up in that whole fiction that if you were born to the parent and blackmail was possible, because it was so secret that you actually adopted a person.

In 1935, California became the first state in the country to seal the birth records to everybody, including the adopted person. But the genesis of that was around potential blackmail that existed at the time. So, my theory is there's Georgia Tan, there's celebrities, there's actual blackmail going on, but it had nothing to do with protecting the birth parent, which is what eventually became the narrative in the U.S.

Haley Radke: I love that you said that, because what I was reading was talking about hiding from the adopted person the fact that they're illegitimate and covering that? So, that's a really interesting twist.

Gregory Luce: Right. Yeah. It would have been very different in Idaho. You don't have a whole lot of celebrity birth adoptions in Idaho or Oklahoma or wherever, but yeah, illegitimacy was a huge factor. Hide the child's illegitimate status by essentially legitimizing them through adoption. That was the other main, major impetus to do that. But in most cases, as you probably know, the records were not sealed to the adult later. That started to really come into play in the 40s and 50s, into the 60s, even into the 70s. In fact, I think Pennsylvania became the last state in ‘84 to seal their records.

Haley Radke: Because, in that video that I mentioned, Greg has this green map and then California goes red and then the states just go “blink, blink, blink…”

And so now what are your feelings on–Ok, first of all, I can't believe you said you think this is easier through legislation. That kind of blew my mind.

Gregory Luce: Let me say this, though. I think I would probably quit or threaten to quit every day doing legislation, because it's so exhausting, but I do think it's the route that's easiest, if you're looking at time. That's the easiest one to change, but it is very frustrating,

Haley Radke: So, easier, but not easy.

Gregory Luce: No, not at all. In fact, the divisive…I think the divisiveness is actually overplayed within the adoptee community, but I would say just the opinions within adoption itself are very exhausting. And a lot of those actually are coming from legislators and how they view adopted people and all the stereotypes they bring to the equation of determining whether this adopted person deserves a birth record. We saw that played out in Maryland this past session. That was pretty painful to watch.

Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit about that and what you mean by how they see adoptees? I know I was in a session with you at a conference where Claire McGettrick was talking about some of these things and about how to approach legislators. And from us coming with this person–we come with all the adoptee…I'm an adoptee. We come with all our baggage, and feelings, and whatever–that there's not really a place for that, necessarily.

So, do you have some comments on that?

Gregory Luce: Oh, you mean coming with the difficulties of being adopted?

Haley Radke: I would say coming with the feelings arguments versus what you said, “It's a right to identity.”

Gregory Luce: Yeah, the feelings... It's a hard balance, because you have to be human when you advocate. You have to convince legislators that, yes, we are human and yes, we have feelings, but you don't want to overplay those. You have to balance that with the right that you're asserting. And so that can be difficult sometimes. Some people come into legislation believing this may solve their issues–that getting the birth record will solve other emotional issues that they may have associated with the adoption. And it doesn't, necessarily. It may contribute to solving issues, but the right to your record and your identity is the first step. That's the basic right: your record.

And so that's where you have to concentrate: on that record. Maybe its potential for use, but not what it can simply do by possessing it. It's very meaningful to possess it. I almost cried when I–I just got my original birth record unredacted in November of 2020 (so less than a year ago), after 20 years of trying to find it, and it was very meaningful to get that.

That's the fruit. That's always the first step to whatever you do with it, once you do have it. So, I think it is a real balance to figure out how you approach legislators and convince them that it is a right. You don't back down on that. If you back down on, “This is a right,” then they know how to split you off from others who don't believe it's a right, or think that you're overplaying what it is. And so you have to be really firm that it is a right. You're not going to back down on that, because you're trying to convince them that it is.

I think that’s very hard for some people, especially adopted people, to be firm in this right, because you're taught for most of your life that you don't deserve it. It's not yours. It said you don't deserve it. You're going to mess things up if you get it. You weren't supposed to know. All these myths that go along with that make it hard for some adopted people to say, “No, no. I don't care what you think of me. Think about what I need as an adopted person and the right that I have to have my own birth record. It’s not your birth record, it's mine.”

I think that's the hard part, to deal with legislators. It may often come to this with all of the myths of what an adoptee is. And often we're perpetual children. That's really at the heart of it, is we're not treated as full adults. We’re treated att the time we’re born as children. And that's the hardest thing to listen to and see underneath it all is that we're not treated as fully human. And that's what we saw in Maryland. I think we saw there the myth that we're going to destroy families. We're going to “out” birth parents. We're going to show up at the door and they would have to hide these birth parents from the shame that they had. But it was shame that was produced by the state. And so it's shame that's perpetuated by the state today. That's what I think they don't recognize, either. That it's perpetual shame and it's perpetuated by the laws that we currently have.

Haley Radke: And what are you hearing from legislators or other people that you're in contact with doing similar work in other OBC rights access organizations with the argument about DNA? What's less shameful? Getting connected to the third cousin who then digs up who your birth mother is, versus having your paperwork?

Gregory Luce: Right. That's a great question, and I take it by making sure we don't put all our eggs into the DNA basket, so to speak? Meaning, part of it and an argument is always, “Well, it's become irrelevant in many ways to not provide this record.” A lot of legislators still don't get that. They're so protective of the myth that existed when a child was relinquished in the 40s, 50s, and 60s–that it doesn't matter to them. So, what I often say, too, is that these methods of trying to find out just the names of your parents are so deeply embedded in who we are as adopted people (not all adopted people, but many), that we've been using different methods for decades to do that.

We've been using private investigators. We've been using searchers where you pay $2,500 in cash in an envelope through an intermediary. We have Search Angels. The methods have just changed. And DNA has become inexpensive and easy to use, and that's just the method we use now, but it does not substitute for a request for the birth record and you're provided with that birth record upon request.

But you're right, it does…And I've used this in court. If you have DNA and you get these matches to third cousins, second cousins, more increasingly first cousins, and you then get–I usually use Search Angels with my clients, because I don't do the investigation to try to find people. That Search Angel will take that list of matches and then start going down that list. What I've done in many of my court cases where we don't know who the birth parent is, we narrow it down. And then I get an affidavit from the Search Angel explaining exactly what she (usually she) is going to do over the next two months to try to locate and identify that birth parent. That means calling 200 people, contacting people on social media, and using existing databases to find them.

And so I put all of that in an affidavit and I say to the court, who, to be honest, is the fact finder…They're the ones that are looking at all these facts and making their decision, like legislators really should be doing in the sense of creating legislation. The judges in almost every case say, “Well, I'm just going to release you to the record–the birth record.” Because that's way better than this route you're outlining here, of contacting 40 people and asking the question, “Do you know if a cousin or an aunt or someone gave up a child or surrendered a child to adoption in 1975?” That question then reverberates across generations. As opposed to requesting the record, and receiving it, and doing what you want with it.

So judges understand that and they respond to it. They're the fact finders, neutral fact finders, hopefully. Legislators have not yet fully understood that, and some don't really want to understand it. I tell people that this issue is bipartisan. It really is. You get staunch Republicans who are fully in favor of the right to your own birth record.

You get Democrats who are very similar. It skews a little bit Democratic, depending upon what abortion politics are in play in that state. But the biggest factor, and Annette O’Connell in New York really brought this home to me, is age or generation. It's a generational difference. The younger the legislator is, in general, the more they're not going to care. They’re not going to see the big deal. I mean, they're going to care, but they're not going to see the big deal of releasing an identity record. Whereas, the older legislators are locked into the myth that developed around adoption in the 40s, 50s, 60s, into the 70s, and are unwilling to let go of that myth. So it's really skewed by age, more than anything else.

Haley Radke: I know you're an attorney and I know you have this view of the courts and the judges and most of us would not understand, but when you are talking about fighting for your own record and literally saying, “I already have my birth parents' names and I already have this information.”

What are you feeling inside? It just sounds so ludicrous. “How can you not give me this paper? Because I already know what’s on it.” Are you not like, “Is this all a farce? Am I being punked? What is happening right now?”

Gregory Luce: Those are good ways to explain it–being punked or the absurdity of it was often really brought home by that whole process. They're hiding things for the sake of hiding things. At some point, they're just, “We were so locked into hiding this birth record, that that's the reason we're hiding it. Because we're hiding it.” And that circular absurdity was really what was brought home to me.

I've written about this on my personal blog, and the one question that I got from a social worker…So in D.C., again, when you unseal the record, they then refer it over to an agency to look at whether there's consent already and then look at whether they should contact the birth parent. My mom was deceased at that point and I had had a relationship with her for the time we knew each other. I had inherited all of her records, so I was part of her extended family. But the question I got from the social worker was, “Do you have proof of the relationship with your mother?”

And it was such an absurd question to me, for a number of reasons. One is, well, the proof is the birth record that I'm trying to ask for! There's the proof right there–her name's right there and I'm there on that record as well. But what I wrote about was all the records that I have. The absurdity of what I was–I was almost using satire, in some ways, in what I sent back to the social worker.

And that satire was–I gave her Christmas cards that we sent to each other. I gave her other cards that we sent to each other. I gave her–I have a recording of her on New Year's Eve saying, “New Year's Eve.” It's on my– back in the days where you had actual machines that recorded voicemail. I have a video of being at her home in Florida for Christmas. So, do I send all of those things in to the social worker just to prove that I had a relationship with her? It was just so absurd. And I think that may be where a lot of people would give up, and I would not blame them, either. A lot of adoptees probably give up as part of this process. Sometimes, it's so hard, especially the court process, but I knew I was right.

I knew that I had a legal point here to make, as well, and I stuck with it. Over the years, I've learned how to deal with the absurdity as well. And I think that's what I like about being a lawyer, is I can deal with that absurdity in a constructive way, but I do feel for my clients who have to deal with it on a very personal level.

I have a client in the last three weeks who has really gone through the wringer of–We've got a birth record, but she wanted a baptismal certificate. She wanted the original baptismal certificate. I don't know if many people know, but in the Catholic church, they issue amended first baptismal certificates that make it appear as if your adoptive parents were at the baptism, which physically, this was impossible. She wanted her original baptismal certificate and then we got a court order for the agency to supply it. The agency said, “Well, you need to pay our fees to do that.” The fees approached around $400, just to open the file and to release an original baptismal certificate. $400! And it was just so absurd.

There's not much you can do on that, because you're dealing with (usually) a private adoption agency. So, they really have a lot of power there. And so she paid. I think we negotiated the fee down, but, again, the absurdity of hiding things for the sake of hiding them is really what comes home to me and to my clients as well.

Haley Radke: Well, when you were describing–I got emotional when you were describing what you were sending over as satire, you said, to the social worker. I was thinking, “Who has the right to privacy here?” Sorry to say this, to use this wording, Greg, but it’s just what has come to my mind–prostitute my precious memories when I only had 164 days with my birth mother. And now I have to show you all these precious things to me. That is…I don't have the words for it.

Gregory Luce: It was, no, it was stunning. It really was. That's why I tended to write about it. That was one way of therapy for me is that won out–I would say is writing. Yeah. It's stunning what you have to give up of your own personal self to get your records. And this was to get my original birth record. It ended up the courts–well, not the courts. They kind of made a mistake in my case. I mean, I asked for three sets of records… And this is what I always tell people–there are usually three main records that you're seeking. One is the birth record. It's generally very hard to get, but generally of those three, it's the easiest to get. The next are court records, which are a little harder to get, depending upon the state. Some states will give them to you as part of the birth record.

And then, third, are the agency records. It could be the public agency, or often, it's a private agency. Those are the hardest of any to get–usually it's in a private agency. The courts don't really want to order a private agency to relinquish records. And in my case, they gave me 77 pages of agency records.

They redacted my father's birth name, but I already knew who that was, so I just would fill it in every time that redaction came along. And they just did a poor job redacting it anyways. Sometimes his name was Aaron, sometimes it wasn't. But I got the hardest records ever to get, but then they're also the most revealing. They are probably–If you were to think about three sets of records, they are the most valuable, because they have the most information of who you were at that age and what went into the machinery of your relinquishment and adoption to a new family. And so, I learned quite a bit from those agency records.

There was a Georgia adoptee that was at an event recently. And she also got a scad of OBC records and they were incredibly helpful. But then what they couldn't answer for her, was she was in foster care for five months, and there are no records related to that. That's often the hole that people have. I had a seven-day hole, where it was probably in between the hospital and the maternity home. It's not that hard to fill in those seven days, but for people who have five months to fill (where foster care records aren't typically provided anywhere)--that's much harder.

But you're right. It's this whole issue of…you could call it prostituting yourself to prove that you're entitled to your own information. It’s just bizarre and absurd, and I don't wish it on anyone and I'm not going to insist on clients to follow through if they don't want to. I don't have that power, but I certainly leave it up to them as to whether they want to, how hard they want to fight for that, and what they have to give up to get it.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. We're going to do our recommended resources, but before we do that, is there anything else that you want to say to adopted people, or share further about your story, or anything that you really want adopted people to know?

Gregory Luce: I guess, I usually don't have New Year's resolutions at all, or they just have never been important to me. I did have one this year, and it's been really important to me. I think it's something that resonates with adoptees and that is: listen. It’s to listen. And not saying you listen to those voices that you hear all the time, especially in adoption. It's often the adoptee is not centered when there's discussion about adoption. But I'm talking about, “What are the voices we're not hearing right now in adoptee rights work?” And a lot of those are transracial adoptees, inter-country adoptees, and in-race adoptees. So these are the voices I think that, one, are the future of adoptee rights work. And it's the voices that I think we need to not only listen to, but follow. And I'm seeing a lot of that, but I think we still have a lot of work to do to get there.

I think we're going to start talking about the resources, and Adoptees United is one of those. We're making a very conscious effort to build our board so it's diverse and inclusive. And we'll have more information about that board, probably pretty soon now.

Haley Radke: I went to your Adoptee Rights Town Hall for Adoptees United, which is one I want to recommend and I wrote down a quote from you.

Gregory Luce: Oh no, oh no. Sometimes I cringe that I'm recording and oh no.

Haley Radke: Oh, come on. You are entirely staying intact here. You said, “Domestic adoptees need to be better allies to inter-country adoptees.” You said that before you made your New Year's resolution. So, there you go, you’re staying intact.

Gregory Luce: All right. Well, good. It is work that we have to do, and I truly believe that. The other voice that I think we need to listen to, too, especially, is our young adoptees, I have no idea, really, what issues they’re having. We are about to add a young, 25-year-old, transracial adoptee to our board. What he listens to and thinks about is very different from what I listen to and think about as an older, white, domestic adoptee–in a very good way.

If you listen, and you truly listen, I think that we're going to make some progress. But we also have to act, and acting means that you act positively, and what you learn and listen from those who will be and should have more power today. That’s how I do it.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you. I really appreciate you sharing your story and so much wisdom about adoptee rights. I love that your name is Adoptee Rights Law Center. It’s very.--That’s it. That is it.

Gregory Luce: No, it sounds like I’ve got a staff of 30! I’m a center, you know.

Haley Radke: Someday!! Come on. You’ve got to live into it now. That's awesome.

I want people to go and make sure they're checking out your writing there, because I learned a lot from you about integrated birth certificates from a post that's there. Recently, you wrote about (this is a good title, too) “The Five, Most Pernicious Myths about Adult Adopted People.”

Gregory Luce:Yeah, it’s true! We've talked about some of those today.

Haley Radke: Yeah, we did. But Adoptees United, especially–can you tell us more about what that organization is meant to do, and what your plans are for Adoptees United?

Gregory Luce: We're going state-by-state, legislatively. And that was, for me, Minnesota court cases and also inter-country adoption and also inter-country adoptee work. But we were really limited and having to reinvent in every state or every issue, the infrastructure, the logistics, the messaging, all of that. So we wanted to form a national non-profit organization that could, one, raise money, and two, educate people on these issues and become a national voice on adoptee rights issues in a very specifically oriented towards adoptees/adoptee rights.

It wouldn't be an umbrella organization (nothing against umbrella organizations), but we're very specific on limiting it to adoptees, but also building coalitions. The coalition was largely responsible for what happened recently in New York. Coalitions work because they bring different organizations together that may not want to work together without having some structure behind it, or some bottom line commitment to what we're all after.

And so Adoptees United helps form those coalitions that help with the logistics of websites. It helps with the logistics of emails and it helps the local advocates, which make all the difference. Those people who are in the state trying to make change, to focus in on their advocacy work that is actually physically going to the legislature, and lobbying for the legislation that we need. So it's a national organization that could raise money, provide education, and also provide logistics behind legislative efforts across the country. And also, hopefully, as we very consciously build our board, become a very diverse and inclusive voice as well.

I see myself–I'm the president of Adoptees United, but I see myself more as an administrator to get it to where it needs to go. I'd like not to be the head of it for two years from now. I think it needs to have leadership that changes to reflect where we're going with adoptee rights. So that's why we have Adoptees United now. It's going really well. And I think part of that is, to be honest, the ability to draw in people on Zoom and on our Zoom events, like the town hall meeting that you went to,

Haley Radke: Can adoptees (and if not), what's the best way–Can adoptees that are interested in changing legislation in their state, but they don't know where to go? Can they connect with Adoptees United? Or where's the best place for people that are itching to do the work go?

Gregory Luce: That's what I would recommend, is contact us at Adoptees United. There's a form there to fill out, or they can certainly just contact me directly at Adoptee Rights Law Center, because I'll just hook them in.

But that's how it happens. It's a combination of the events that we do and what grows out of those. Because they're now actively trying to build coalitions in California. There's a real interest in a Southeastern United States Coalition. It's not just Florida, or Georgia, or Louisiana, specifically, but these regional lines I think are a really good model for the future.

And partially that because we're such fun, and let's say, we’re such fungible creatures, adoptees. We may have been born in one state, but we likely live in another state at this point. And therefore we're not a constituent in the state that holds our birth records or any records. And so you're disenfranchised in that way, but regionally, we'd be more powerful than that.

We're trying to build these regional coalitions. We have one that's the Capitol Coalition for Adoptee Rights. And that was the one that was involved in Maryland and we'll probably see D.C. happening next when Maryland got defeated. It’ll probably going to be a couple of years before we go back to Maryland, but D.C., may be the next one as well.

Yeah, so it's building those regional coalitions and in the bigger states like California, maybe a state, only a state-level coalition, because it's so big.

Haley Radke: It is big. I've had a lot of California listeners, so hopefully we'll find some people for you here.

Gregory Luce: Oh my God, it is. It is by far the most requests I get from adoptees is how to get your birth records from California. And it's such a restricted state.

Haley Radke: Wow, I'm so excited. Glad we have it. I think it's great. I think it's really great. So I hope that you guys are able to follow Adoptees United, watch out for their events that are coming up, and if you're itching to do some work. If you’re ready, they're ready for you.

What do you want to recommend for us today, Greg?

Gregory Luce: Boy, there's so many books that I have. American Baby is one, the book by Gabrielle Glaser.

Haley Radke: Look at all my book tabs.

Gregory Luce: Yep. I happen to have one of the few paperbacks because I have the galley version.

Haley Radke: Oh, you so fancy! You got referenced in this book.

Gregory Luce: I know, I saw that! That was so generous of her to do that, but I've been in touch with Gabrielle for awhile now. She's been doing such a terrific job of getting the issue of secrecy and adoption out there and discussed. And I think it may have even led to that Steve Inskeep piece that we saw more recently, but that's a book that I'd recommend. Cleave is a book of poetry. I have it around here…Tiana Nobile?

Haley Radke: Oh, I just went to her poetry–the lunch. It was wonderful.

Gregory Luce: Oh, cool! So another one is done by Megan Galbraith and it's The Guild of the Infant Saviour. I'm looking forward to that one. I think that's out in mid-May/end of May.

Haley Radke: Yes. It's coming out soon and she's going to be on the show. So, we're very excited. You can look forward to that.

Gregory Luce: Good! I have a whole pile. And then I still came across all sorts of books from the past that were written several years ago, Invisible Asians is one by a professor in Minnesota. One that's out right now is Surviving the White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll. That's a memoir. She's a Black adoptee, grew up in a white family in New England and is a cultural critic for…well, has been a cultural critic for many prominent publications in the past.

So, I always recommend books. You know, I often don’t have time to read them. So, I just listed a bunch of books that I have, and I haven't even read yet, but they look so good.

Haley Radke: They look so good! I have read them. They are good! I haven't read all of the ones you mentioned, but I’ve read most of them. Oh my gosh. Oh, that's hilarious. If you would like more dry humor from Greg and wisdom about adoptee rights issues, where can we connect with you online?

Gregory Luce: The best way is probably Adoptee Rights Law Center and that's at adopteerightslaw.com, or I'm more active on Twitter than any other social media and that's @adopteelaw on Twitter.

Haley Radke: Wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing with us today.

I hope Greg will come back, because I had so many more questions for him and I just want to know more about the people who are doing such great work on our behalf and what passions propel them. And I just want to get all their wisdom so that I can help you advocate and me advocate for other adult adoptees.

So, what a gem. Love Greg. He is such a gift to the community and has done such great things. He's too modest. He's very modest and he probably wouldn't have told us half of those things without a little pressing. So I'm so thrilled that Adoptees United exists and is going to hopefully connect more advocates nationwide.

So, I do encourage you–If that's something that's been on your heart, get after it. We need more people speaking up for OBC. And I know there's lots of people already doing it, so join in with them and see how many more states you can get opened up down there. Anyway, I am so grateful for Greg's voice and so many of the other guests we've had recently really sharing such powerful things with us.

And I'm also very thankful to my Patreon supporters. You know I couldn't do the show without you, so thank you so much. You know who you are. You know, some people list off names of Patreon supporters, but I've never done that, because I know some of you are very private and you don't necessarily want people to know, but I see you.

I know you, and I'm really grateful. I wouldn't be able to do this without you. So, if you want to join my friends that are supporting the show every month, you can go to adopteeson.com/partner to find out details of how you can support the show and keep it going.

And also how you can access my other weekly podcast. I do two podcasts a week–I feel like that’s too much. Anyway, it's Adoptees Off Script and we have a monthly book club over there, we have lots of silly news reports (it's not silly, but sometimes I get a little bit silly over there), news reporting on adoptee things that are happening. We break down news articles that are– you'll find out the real Haley and how much I want to hear adoptee voices over anybody else’s.

I'll just leave it at that. Sometimes to my detriment. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

150 [Healing Series] Mother Loss Part 2

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/150

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Haley Radke: This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to adopteeson.com/partner.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee.

This is Part 2 of our discussion about Mother Loss. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Stephanie Oyler and Amanda Transue-Woolston. Welcome back.

Amanda Transue-Woolston: Thank you for having us.

Haley Radke: Okay, so last time we talked about some very sad things you both shared about the loss of your first mother, Stephanie, and Amanda, the loss of your adoptive mother. And you really talked us through some of the practical things that were just happening for you in the moment.

And we even mentioned that you're kind of in shock and you're kind of going through the motions at that point, and not necessarily that there was anything that you could have prepared ahead of time for this sort of loss.

Now let's put on therapy hats, social worker expertise hats. Looking at mother loss, Amanda, I got this quote from your Facebook page you shared:

“Because I am adopted, I will lose more than one mother more than one time throughout my lifespan.”

That's pretty powerful. Do you have some thoughts on that?

Amanda Transue-Woolston: Yes. When we talk about the “adoption triad,” which I don't use personally but it's very popular, we think of the adoptee, the first mother and the adoptive mother, and it's like this triangle with equal sides, which we know is not a thing, first of all, because there's power imbalances and representation imbalances in adoption and also because there's so many other factors and players involved.

I love the idea of the constellation so much more. But that idea of the triad, I think, causes people to see, if they're going to agree with me, that adoption involves a lot of loss which is still hard for people to comprehend. They're thinking, well, okay, you lost your first mother and then your adoptive mother died. The end.

And it's even more where I personally pull in the visual of the constellation because I lost a foster mother. I lost my first mother one time, but then I also reunited. So I eventually will also be involved as an adult in her end-of-life planning because we're close. And then also I have the loss of my adoptive mother, and I have this kind of ambiguous loss of never having gained much information about my foster mother either.

And being a therapist and being a social worker and working with children, I have an understanding of childhood development and I know better than to think that I'm not affected by these losses of my first mother or my foster mother just because I was young and couldn't remember those times.

I know better, and it's actually more concerning that I didn't have language at that time to process because you carry it around with you. And when emotions arise now, as an adult, I have to wonder when was the first time I actually felt this way? And was it when I was a child? And what is behind the feelings that I feel now as an adult, just in my everyday life? Because I don't know a lot about the first five months of my life. I won't have answers.

Depending on how many placements you had, depending on if your foster or your adoptive placement was disrupted, depending on if you were reunited later, you can lose multiple primary parental figures over and over again and also be in a position of having to teach people what that is like for you, if they're even willing to put aside their own assumptions that it doesn't matter or that only one of those mothers or fathers is allowed to matter.

When you get past that part, now you have to teach them what “mother loss” is.

Haley Radke: Talk about grief through the life cycle. Like, wow, do we get layers?

Stephanie, even when I was talking with you and Amanda about having this conversation, I broached the subject of I feel like this was pretty recent for you guys. Do you want to wait a little bit longer? And you guys both were like, no, no, no, we're ready, let's go.

Stephanie Oyler: You know, everything Amanda just said really, really hits home. I mean, just the amount of loss, and I'm thinking of the kids I work with even now, and just how people don't recognize it. They don't recognize anything but the loss of a mom, like the one mom who raised you.

And even going into the foster care piece, you know, I was in a couple of different foster homes. I was in one foster home for a pretty long time, and that was pretty significant because I was described as a very different child in their home. And then redescribed and re-, I don't even know, I was just a whole different child when I moved into my adoptive home.

So just the idea that I want to be able to know who I was before that point and I'm probably never going to get that opportunity.

It is a lot of loss. It's a lot of, it's just a lot of loss.

Haley Radke: I'm curious, both of you have mentioned that you have your children and how were you able to tell them about losing their, I'm not sure, sorry if this is presumptuous, Stephanie, but if you presented your first mother as a grandmother figure to them or not, and then Amanda, your kids losing their grandmother, how were you able to present that to them?

Was that really challenging? You know, I think, just that extra layer why I'm asking this is: For a lot of us, we feel like we're starting a new legacy once we have children and keeping our family intact. So I think there's this whole extra piece to it. Sharing this loss with our kids.

Stephanie Oyler: So my son is younger and he's a little bit crazy, so bringing him around my first mother would've been difficult because she had a lot of mental health issues and she took a lot of things very personally. She didn't understand certain things, so my son met her but I didn't really bring him around.

My daughter I did, and she's nine. She was eight when my first mom passed. She was there. She actually came into the room to say goodbye, and it was very difficult to explain because she understands adoption to an extent, but she didn't understand death. So I think the idea of that being a first real loss for her and then also just getting to know my first mom, she was a grandmother figure, but not in the same sense as my adoptive mom.

So I think it's still complicated even now. We're still kind of having conversations around it. There's actually been a lot of loss over this whole Covid situation. Our dog passed away a couple months ago, so there's been a lot of conversations around it and a lot of confusion.

So that's just an ongoing conversation, just developmentally, with both of them.

Amanda Transue-Woolston: I've asked myself this question and it's hard. It's been hard for me because I want to give people advice that I personally connect to. And it's hard for me to say how much of the explaining for my children was on me because it was really my husband that told them because I was in Florida.

So when he picked them up from school that day, I was already in Florida and he had to tell them why I left and where I was. And so I don't exactly know how he did that. I assume it would be very similar to the way that I would because he's been a paramedic for a long time. He works in a big city. Death and trauma is kind of just what he does every day. So my children are very familiar with that just because, you know, fire service and emergency service becomes part of a family culture.

My children also have participated in my interest in positive death culture literature and media. And so there's a death-positive creator that I really like. Her name is Caitlin Doughty and she's written books for kids. So I've read those with my children.

A lot of that was a part of me wanting to continue staying competent for my work in hospice, but also, even though I'm not working in hospice anymore, because within two years prior to my adoptive mother dying, my biological paternal brother died. My biological father's sister died. My grandmother, who was my kid's great-grandmother, my mom's mom, she died and was close to my children.

Other people died. There was more. People that we knew. It just seemed to come in waves. And so we had had this conversation already. And also our dog had died too.

So we don't use “pass away.” We don't use “went to heaven.” We've always said their heart stops. Their brain is not functioning anymore. Their personality words, the ability to take in information doesn't happen anymore. The body immediately starts breaking down, you know, and this is what happens when you bury something that's been alive. It becomes part of that whole cycle of life again.

And so we've always been very literal and concrete about death. And so they, my kids, seem to be able to apply that to when their nanny died. My youngest son, he has some mental health disabilities. And so he seems to understand, but I do answer some rather childlike questions. He's nine but he's developmentally younger in his thoughts, and so I do tend to answer more questions for him, and so sometimes I'm unsure how much he understands or is it a matter of how he's expressing himself.

Does he not know how to tell me that he understands, or does he generally still not kind of get what's happening? His first reaction was, what is wrong with Florida? Because his great grandmother had just died in Florida almost about a year prior. So he's like, Florida is where people go to die?

He did not really want me down there with my dad because I stayed in the hospital room with my dad. I slept on the chair and on a cot for eight days when he was in the ICU. So, that was the whole thing, them trying to get me out of his room. I was like, no, I'm not worried about any of you people here liking me. I'm not leaving my dad's side. That's just not happening, nope. We are loyal, we adoptees. We can be loyal to a tee.

So, anyway they didn't want me in Florida because Florida's a bad place. So that was my youngest son's first reaction. It's also been very weird because of the pandemic.

I feel like when people died when I was younger, I processed a lot of it through the awkward questions other people would ask me as a kid. Like, do you miss your whoever-it-was? It was just weird things people ask because they don't have to talk to kids.

But nobody really had contact with my children or my family, so it's hard to know if we're understanding and explaining normally because we haven't even had my mom's funeral yet. So this is completely new territory.

Stephanie Oyler: Yeah, it’s so interesting because I started to think more about my son in the mix, and he was in the hospital as well. He didn't go into the room. We kind of gave him an idea of why we were there, but just recently he's been very concerned about death. And I'm sure it's part of the pandemic that we're in and the dog dying and then my first mom, and he actually asked my adoptive mom when she had dropped by, we haven't seen her that often just because of all the restrictions and whatnot.

But he actually looked at her and was like, oh, I thought you were dead. And I thought about it and it just dawned on me the connection between the grandmother piece as well, because my first mom was considered a grandmother, and then, you know, she disappeared and then now we're in a pandemic, and then my mom disappeared, my adoptive mom.

So, yeah, I think it's just a lot more coming up with him just around death. And where do people go? And, well, I wanna visit them. He's five, so he's younger. Well, how do we get there? That's been a lot more, I think it took him a little bit to realize that when someone passes away or they die, they're not coming back.

I think that was something that's just now kind of recently started. So the conversations are coming back up, it's just ongoing. As we move through the emotions and the processing and just how each wave is different and how different things can trigger emotions or memories and just how that's impacting right now.

Especially with all the extra stuff happening around the pandemic.

Haley Radke: Totally, totally. Oh my goodness. There's so many things that kids just are expected to kind of jump on board and know right now that we, even as adults, don't know either.

Now I'm curious, in the same vein of having conversations and things, what both of you mentioned in our last episode was some of the ridiculous things people were saying to you as you're in this state of shock and grieving, or not even necessarily to the point of grieving yet.

But do you have any advice, coaching, anything that, now with hindsight, you can think, okay, if I had phrased something this way, this might have shut down some of those inappropriate questions? You know, it should. The onus shouldn't be on us. I totally get that. But if there is some piece of advice that you could give another adoptee who might be in a similar situation at some point.

Things we can say to shut down those inappropriate things. Especially when you're dealing with someone who doesn't understand the grief piece we're going through, like we mentioned disenfranchised grief last time.

Stephanie Oyler: I think it's hard to give advice because when you're in the moment, it's really hard to think about what you're going to say. So I think that that's where I trip up.

I think what I should have said was, this was my mom and I'm hurting. And that probably would've shut it down. But I think I was just so taken aback by the fact that people didn't even realize that this would be a painful thing for me and a hard thing. That it just kept me tripped up in what to say.

And I don't know if I have advice on how to combat that because I just feel when you're in the moment, your emotions are your emotions. And I guess I would say it's not a reflection on your relationship. It's not a reflection on the experience that you've had with your first family or whoever at that point.

It's just that people don't get it. And that doesn't mean that it's any less important or you grieve any less. And just being kind to yourself in that, because I think I was hard on myself in the sense that maybe I didn't speak about her enough.

Maybe I should have expressed that I had this relationship with her, and then people wouldn't think that I didn't, and they would understand that it hurts. So I think that's the piece, just being kind to yourself and allowing yourself the grace in the moment when you don't have all the right words.

Amanda Transue-Woolston: Yes. I think that Stephanie's strategy of preparing yourself to safeguard yourself from the reactions that people are going to have is the best, most self-loving way to get yourself through that process.

One thing that I keep in mind for anybody that's going through any type of death and loss is that people tend to respond to the grieving in ways that meet their own needs first. And I don't think that people realize that they're doing that.

And so to give an example, my aunt came to the hospital when I was with my dad and she kept taking me aside for coffee, and I didn't want to leave my dad's room. So it's her wanting to take me aside, she needed to feel like she was doing something for me, even though that's not necessarily what I needed or wanted. Her desire to take me aside for coffee.

She got so frustrated with me because I wouldn't cry in front of her, and she actually gave me feedback that that made her feel like she wasn't being helpful or that we're not very close, because I wasn't crying in front of her. And so it was that people tend to feel like this is what I have to give you and I need you as the grieving person to make me feel as though what I have and what I want to give is helpful to you.

When we mix adoption into that, it becomes even more painful because a lot of people have their own assumptions about adoption. Even therapists who aren't adoption competent will approach adoption as though it's something easy.

And if you just had that one right thing that a therapist could tell you. The adoptee must not realize how simple this is because it's simple in the mind of the person or of the therapist. So I'll just say a few phrases at you and then you'll get it. Like, oh, well, you don't need to be sad because she loved you so much, she gave you away. And it's like, oh, that never occurred to me. Thank you so much!

But people have those grief snippets that they want to throw at you with adoption too. Like I can make you feel better and I can make myself feel good for being the person that made you feel better in your grief by reminding you that you still have your other mother. Like, you still have your adoptive mother and she's the one that raised you anyway. Or if you just realize this adoption thing was so simple by these one-liners that I have to throw at you.

I didn't hear as many as Stephanie did, but one thing that I did hear was the story with my aunt and then doctors and nurses making comments in the hospital about if I was related because I don't really look like either of my parents. And I told one of the nurses that my mom had died and I wasn't crying again because I don't feel comfortable crying in front of people.

And she just looked at me and was like, oh, well you must be the stepdaughter then? Because I wasn't acting the right way and I didn't look the right way. And so she felt the need to parse out why I wasn't and that was her selfish curiosity that wasn't about me.

All that is to say we need to safeguard ourselves for how people will seek to meet their own needs in grief through us needing them or us telling them they did a good job or whatever. And they will mix adoption themes into that.

You can try to educate and you can try to explain yourself, but it's okay not to, as well, because the more you explain to someone who may not be interested in learning, the more you just give your power and your time for yourself away.

Haley Radke: Well, that's some amazing insights from both of you. Thank you. I know that as friends and colleagues, you guys have been talking with each other about these things and your losses and have been kind of going through this mourning together.

Can you tell us any other things that have kind of popped up for you that are really different, you know, grieving the loss of an adoptive mother versus a first mother. I don't know about “versus,” it doesn't sound right to say it that way, but I hope you know the spirit of the question I'm asking, not necessarily for just comparison's sake but just it's different circumstances.

So do you have any thoughts on that?

Stephanie Oyler: I know for me it was very difficult to go into the hospital and speak to doctors. I don't want to say uncomfortable, but I just felt like an imposter. Like, she didn't raise me. Am I allowed to do this? Are they going to want me? I almost felt like I had to tell my story every single time I went. I was adopted and this and that.

I spoke to a couple other people who were in similar situations and that's a common theme that I've seen. Just the idea that we're put into this situation to make these decisions, life or death decisions, and sometimes we just ask ourselves: Are we allowed to? Is that okay?

I feel like an imposter because she didn't raise me. And am I allowed to make these decisions for her? And what if it's not what she wants? And I'm confident that I made the right decision. I did know my mom, and I did know that this is what she would've wanted, but it still creeps up. Am I worthy of making these decisions?

So I know that that was a really overarching theme. Every time I walked into the hospital, every time I answered the phone to a doctor, every time I spoke to the agency who provided case management services with her, I just felt like a person, almost like on the outside, coming in to make the decisions, if that makes sense.

Amanda Transue-Woolston: Yes. So we've covered a lot of the overarching themes that Stephanie and I would need to cover if we were making a book or we were making a resource. What is everything that we would need to cover? We've covered a lot. We've touched on a lot of it so far in this two-part series.

Some other things that I know we've put on our list. We talked about spouses and children. We talked about belonging and relatedness. How do people perceive you as being related depending on birth or adoption. We've talked about finding support.

It looks different if you are biologically related but weren't raised with that family versus being raised with the family but not sharing that genetic connection, when it comes to instructing others about how to respond. Or adoption competence and finding support.

Some other things that we talked about were the idea of obligation, because that is family systems theory. Murray Bowen, who is the father of family systems theory, actually proposed as part of his theory that it's being cared for as a child that obligates.

The better you are cared for as a child, the stronger your sense of obligation will be as an adult to take care of a parent. But adoptees kind of throw that for a loop because they have had their caregiving often split up between multiple caregivers or contentious relationships with their adoptive parents. And then they have biological parents that may not have raised them, but they will step in and make those end-of-life decisions.

And that obligation is, I don't want to call it “obligation,” but that's the theory. It's there, even though the early childhood caregiving wasn't there. And so we challenge that theory. And what is that? What makes adoptees step in regardless of childhood connections.

Inheritance of heirlooms. When you have no legal ties, when your legal ties are severed from your biological family, you are not legally entitled to anything. I mean, there may be some exceptions in a few states.

When you are adopted, you are legally entitled to whatever, but your family may not agree that those items should be yours because your family may feel that [you are not family].

Personally, I inherited a necklace from my mother that was made from her grandmother and her mother's wedding rings. And I know she would've wanted her wedding ring added to it, and I've already put in my will that it's going to my niece, my niece who is genetically related.

I don't even want to know what my family thinks about me keeping those things, you know. It's fine, but your legal relationship versus your nurturing relationship affects how entitled you feel to these items versus whether someone else thinks that you should have them.

We talked about being entitled to grief. That was another one. And the differences between making next-of-kin decisions.

So for us, neither of us were legally, technically the next of kin, but when you're in that position anyway, we had talked about [how] there's a lot of emphasis when we're children on keeping biological and adoptive families separate and making sure that adoptive families have all of the decision-making and all of the rights and everything.

If the original first family is present at all, they're there for visits and stuff, but they're not parenting, and we're alienating adoptees from their resources in that way. But when first parents and adoptive parents are aging and there aren't systems in place to take care of them, we have encountered, as social workers, [cases] where it's like, oh, they have a long-lost adopted child, let's find them because someone needs to come make decisions for Mabel.

Then all of a sudden, they want to pull us in. And then it doesn't matter. Like, oh, you met them once when you were five? Yes? Please, someone come and make these decisions because we don't care for our elders like we should. And that's when all of a sudden adoptees are allowed to be resources.

We hear that. I was hearing about that when I was still in social work school, where a caseworker for someone who was experiencing financial abuse, elder abuse, they found that they had relinquished a son like 50, 60, 70 years ago, and they went and found that son, reunited them so that he could become her new decision-maker. And he did. And he was glad to do it, you know, and so that's when, oh, who cares about secrecy? Someone needs to step in and solve these problems.

Haley Radke: Well, that's pretty fascinating. Wow.

Amanda Transue-Woolston: Yes. So there's all this other legal stuff about do we go with a feeling of entitlement through nurture? Or do we go through a legal entitlement through adoption? Or do we go through, we're biologically related? And adoptees are always adoptees and consistently show up on all fronts.

Whether or not we're accepted or embraced, adoptees tend to be the ones that are accountable and willing to help.

Haley Radke: Like I said, I find that really fascinating. Thank you for those points.

And you know, we're sort of wrapping up. The one thing that just keeps popping up into my head, you're both speaking from the point of view of you were connected to and had a relationship with the mothers we've been talking about.

How many adoptees have you heard from where they find out via a Google search that either an estranged adoptive parent passed? Or a first parent who maybe they had a brief reunion with and that ended? Or maybe they weren't reunited at all? And you know, there's all these themes of I'm left out of the obituary, nobody even phoned me to tell me. Those sorts of things.

Would you mind speaking to someone who's had that experience? And just as an encouragement, you know, even if you aren't acknowledged in that way, what are some ways you can still process the loss and take care of yourself? Because I feel like that would be extremely hurtful.

Amanda Transue-Woolston: It is hurtful. For me, I know it's hard to speak on because I haven't been left out of anything when it comes to my adoptive mother because everything has been on my shoulders.

I made all of her end-of-life decisions. I handled all of the disposition of her remains and all of those choices. It was a car accident with a reckless driver, so I've handled all of her wrongful death investigation and the insurance companies. I wrote her obituaries and I'm planning her whole funeral. And my dad, love him so much, my dad is just like, yeah, Amanda's got it. So, I don't want to be left out, but I'm too involved. I don't have boundaries with this.

The only thing when my aunt died, I wasn't told about any of her funeral arrangements. I wasn't involved. It was important to me. My biological father was, my readers are familiar with him. He was not a very good person. And of course, that affected my aunt through her whole life. It really alienated her from others, and I would've loved to have done special things for her when she died because she still celebrated my birthday, my growing up, even though she never knew if she would ever see me.

But her own sons were just kind of like….I can't even find that they put an obituary in for her. So I heard she died through town gossip in Maine, which the entire state of Maine is a small town. So that is not directly related to my mother's losses, but that is an example and I can empathize with other adoptees about that.

And I know Stephanie, it was all on you too, right?

Stephanie Oyler: Yeah, it was all on me. And I'm actually in the process of kind of planning everything out for her as well. But I do see and recognize the loss of wanting to find your family or wanting to find your mother or father and searching. And then to find out that they passed away.

And sometimes I've spoken to people for whom it was within the last year of their search and they just weren't able to meet them in time. And just the incredible amount of loss, not only for the parent, but the relationship that could have been and that was almost there. I can't imagine that loss.

And I, as well, empathize with that. And I can't imagine that as I'm grateful that I was able to have a relationship with my first mother and to experience and make memories with her. So there's just so much loss, I think, in adoption.

There's so many ways it can go, so many twists and turns. There's that all of a sudden it's loss again. It's a theme from the very beginning. And yeah, I really do empathize with situations like that as well.

Amanda Transue-Woolston: One other piece that I think is important to mention is the racial cultural ritual differences that I think are important to pay homage to.

I was not transracially adopted and as a white person in the United States, everybody wears black and, you know, sniffles at the graveside. I feel like that's generally accommodated in the funeral industry.

And when it comes to embracing the death rituals and experiences of communities of color, that's not as well represented and what the everyday person knows about death and dying.

And so I think it would be so cool for Stephanie to be interviewed, if she's comfortable in the future, about when you are a person of color trying to plan and have your rituals incorporated and the person that you're grieving may be of a different race than you. Or you're trying to plan for your mother who was a person of color with a white funeral director and they don't know how to manage hair or makeup or skin in a respectful way for someone that's different than them.

We talk about adoptees of color not having their hair taken care of properly as children. But even into adulthood, do adoptees of color have an opportunity to learn their original families’ death practices and also overcome the racism in the funeral industry that they may encounter?

And so that's something that I know Stephanie can uniquely speak on, and I definitely want to support her and other adoptees in doing that when they're ready because I'm not equipped to talk about that myself.

Stephanie Oyler: I think that's a really important thing. And actually it didn't affect me when I went to the hospital, but I was nervous going in because my mother is white.

My first mother was white and my father was black. And I don't really look like anybody. So I was nervous in the fact that I'm coming in as an adoptee. I wasn't legally raised by her and, on top of it, I have no paperwork saying that's my mom, you know. And just like how that was going to play out.

But I definitely agree. There's just so much to unpack with cultural pieces of that. So I agree with Amanda on that.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you so much for bringing that up as well. Like we've said, right? All the complexities of layers.

Wow. There's so much to unpack. And I'm excited to hear that you guys are going to be working on this, and I'm sure that as we follow your blogs and other efforts, we will hear more about this from you in the future, which is wonderful.

So speaking of that, Stephanie, where can we connect with you online?

Stephanie Oyler: You can find me at adopteelit.com. I just launched my business and it is a consultation business for adoptive parents, a mentoring business in the sense that for adoptees, both minor and adult, and then an education business that I hope to provide workshops on. And I also have a blog that is linked directly from that website.

Haley Radke: Perfect. And Amanda, how about you?

Amanda Transue-Woolston: I have my professional website, amandawoolston.com and my adoptee blogging website, declassifiedadoptee.com. All of my social medias are there. I forgot to mention last time, I have started a podcast for The Declassified Adoptee, in that I have been asked for years to make my content more accessible by turning it into audio, and I chose a podcasting format for that.

I am doing a dramatic reading, I guess you could say, of my written content at wherever you subscribe to your podcasts, for folks who find it easier or more preferable to listen instead of having to read. That's another accessibility option for them.

And I have to give credit to Stephanie because that was inspired by her because we are also working on a podcast together, which was her idea. That is different, that's a real podcast. It'll be a real podcast show.

I'm also on Stitcher and whatever else under The Declassified Adoptee.

Haley Radke: Perfect. Thank you so much. Look forward to hearing more news about that and we will make sure to share it on Adoptees On when you guys launch. Thanks so much for your wisdom. Really appreciate it. It's been such an honor talking with you both today.

Make sure you are following Stephanie and Amanda to see what they have coming up. I promise it is going to be worthwhile. And I love seeing more adoptive voices out there, more adoptees sharing in different ways that really help our community heal and actually look at the impact adoption has had on us and how we can move forward.

I really appreciate that so much. So, thank you so much, Stephanie and Amanda, for sharing with us. Grateful for your work. And I look forward to cheering you on in all the new things that you have coming up.

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