256 Kira Omans

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/256

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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. We are so thrilled to talk with actor, audiobook narrator and adoptee advocate, Kira Omans today. Kira shares how looking deeply at adoption over the past decade has changed her perspective. We talk about what it's like to audition as an adoptee and to embody a new character and identity during a performance.

Of course we get to chat about adoptee representation in Hollywood and the media, including how watching just one documentary upended what Kira thought was her origin story. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

We wrap up with some recommended resources for you and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today or on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees on Kira Omans.

Hi Kira.

Kira Omans: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Haley Radke: I'm so excited. I know you're not a podcaster, but you are a technically skilled audiobook narrator, so your setup is, I'm like, yay!

Kira Omans: Thank you. I try my best.

Haley Radke: I'm a sound nerd. Geeking out over it. That's all. Anyway.

Kira Omans: Oh, good. I love yours, so we're even.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad to finally speak to you. Do you wanna, do you mind sharing a little bit of your story with us?

Kira Omans: Sure. I was adopted from Zhongshan, China when I was 10 months old. I don't really know very much at all about the circumstances of my birth or my birth parents. All I know is that I was left on the site of a bridge at a couple of months old, brought to a hospital, and then brought to the orphanage, and I was adopted around the time of the one child policy. Then I was brought to the United States.

I grew up in Alexandria, just outside of Washington, D.C. I have a brother who is adopted from Korea and a sister who's my parents' biological child, and I went to a predominantly white Catholic, elementary and middle school. Which I think really affected me growing up. I had a lot of instances of bullying and felt a lot of racial isolation and a lack of identity, and I was very much the type of kid in school who didn't speak.

So if anyone from my elementary or middle school knew what I was doing right now, I feel like they wouldn't believe you. Very much changed and in high school, I went to a public high school that was much more diverse and really found my voice doing theater, and I think that really helped me gain a lot of confidence.

I was valedictorian of my high school and got my BFA in acting and a minor in communication. And went on to do the Pacific Miss Asian American Pageant, which was my first and only pageant. I won in 2015, which really launched me into adoptee advocacy. When they were asking what kind of platform you had, what you wanted to speak about, I really wanted to explore that side of my identity.

So that was when I really started to get involved in the adoptee community. And it was so good for me, especially growing up and not really having a lot of adoptee friends or my brother was in the same boat as I did and he had an even rougher experience at the elementary and middle school that I went to. So it was just a time of evolution for both of us. I really feel.

I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago and now I'm a full-time voice actor and I also do TV and film. I narrate audiobooks full-time, and that has just been such a dream. I really love doing that for work.

As far as adoptee advocacy, I have written a few articles, been on some other podcasts, and last year did some collabs with both Hate Is A Virus and Adoptees for Justice. If you're familiar with those groups, they're fantastic.

Haley Radke: And, yeah just a snippet. Just a snippet. Okay. Yes. How did getting into theater like feel for you? You said you were really quiet as a child and like and now you're like literally using your voice and your work every day. How has that been for you, discovering that and just really cultivating that passion?

Kira Omans: I had such a fantastic theater teacher in high school, and I credit so much of who I am today to him because he really helped me come out of my shell, feel like I had something to say. Just because before in my elementary and middle school, I was so different from everyone. I felt so isolated. I felt like I didn't belong. And so I would just keep to myself so that I didn't get bullied. I didn't get made fun of in any way.

And I think it wasn't until I found theater and, I feel a lot of people who get into theater will feel this way, but who people who felt different, feeling like your differences are an asset. That having something unique about you is a positive thing. And so I think that ideal is really what helped me cultivate this passion and feel like, oh, it's good to have a unique identity. And that was the first time that was ever frame like framed for me like that.

I know my parents tried, but when you're a kid, you're, you only listen to so much of what your parents say. You only internalize so much of it, especially when the world is showing you something else. And showing you that being Asian in a school of predominantly white kids is a very bad thing and you're not gonna fit in.

So I think that being in theater and getting to experiment with all these different roles, was so much fun for me and really helped me be imaginative and helped me just find what I was interested in and what I was passionate about.

Haley Radke: I've talked to a lot of adoptees who are adopted transracially in to white families. Do you feel like you had internalized racism?

Kira Omans: Oh, absolutely. Especially around middle school. So I grew up doing Chinese dance and going to Chinese school. It was very important to my parents that I had that access to my culture. And around that time I didn't want anything to do with it. I was being made fun of for being Chinese, and I just wanted to distance myself from my culture.

I would laugh at Chinese jokes. I would do anything to distance myself. And so working through that has been its own process. I think that when I went to high school and made more Asian friends and felt like, oh, again, this isn't a bad thing. This isn't a weakness of mine.

That was when I really started to feel so much guilt for that and for trying to hide who I was and for trying to negate my experience as an Asian American woman. And so yes, I definitely had a lot of internalized racism and that's been something that I've still been processing. Because like in our society, there's so many, there's so many things that are built on white supremacy that, especially as an Asian woman, how the model minority myth plays into that and how Asian Americans are seen as more white adjacent anyway, and as Asian adoptees, even more so, processing that and seeing how those things don't serve Asian American people. It's a lot. But working through it. Okay.

Haley Radke: How old were you in 2015 when you competed in that pageant?

Kira Omans: Oh my goodness. 19, 20. Okay. I think I won it when I was 20. I think the application process started, I think the first round I was 19, but when I won it, I was 20.

Haley Radke: So was that one of the first experiences you had being a, around a lot of Asian people?

Kira Omans: Yes. That was really, I dive into the deep end, I feel, in terms of being immersed in the Asian American community in the DC area. Because I did Chinese dance and I love those girls and we went to cultural events and everything.

But as far as socially immersing myself in the community and meeting all of the different communities within that was a whole new experience. And I was the only adoptee who had ever participated in that pageant and I was the first adoptee to win it. I don't think that there have been any adoptees after me, and that pageant is so much a celebration of what it means to be an Asian American woman.

And so all of these women who were mostly from immigrant families had all of this experience with their culture. And me, I had to forge that experience on my own because I wasn't just raised around it. It was really interesting seeing the dynamics between the communities because there's so much cultural pride in whichever ethnicity you are.

So I had the PR director of the pageant tell me he wished I was Vietnamese because he was Vietnamese so that he could back me more in the pageant. And I was like, oh, that's different. Being Asian American was such a thing for me. And then being Chinese American, like having a subset of that was just a whole new experience.

Haley Radke: I guess I am, okay, I'm gonna ask you the question now, that I feel like-- you said that this pageant was one of the things that kind of launched you into adoptee advocacy. And as I have seen you in the community over the years, I have seen this gradual shift, as outside observer of your perspective of adoption. And so I'm wondering what your sort of public platform was at that time, around age 20? And now what it has morphed into as you're approaching those thirties?

Kira Omans: That's such a good question and something I've been wanting to talk about for a little while. When I first did the pageant, I was so pro adoption because it had worked out for me. And I love my family. That hasn't changed.

But my relationship to adoption has very much changed as I've immersed myself in the community, as I've tried to learn more people's stories and just read more and listen more. Like your podcast has been such a great resource for me. And just as I started to have a more well-rounded view of adoption, the more I was stepping outside my own bubble and seeing, oh, this isn't an objectively good thing.

It can have good, it can have good parts. For me, like it worked out like on paper. I have a very successful adoption story, but it's still not perfect. And it wasn't until recent years that I really started to come to terms with how adoption affected my life.

Where I've been so achievement oriented and still continue to be, and I'm trying to work through that, but have been so achievement oriented my entire life. And for every achievement I got, I felt like that was a sign that there was nothing wrong with me. That everything was fine. That... could someone who wasn't well adapted be doing these things?

And the answer is yes. Yes. There were things that I hadn't processed. There were so many things that I hadn't worked through that informed my opinion of why adoption was so good.

And so I think over the years, again, as I've learned from other people in the community, my opinion has evolved. That's not what I think anymore. Just in the simplest of terms.

Haley Radke: And I've shared before, my views have changed over time. And let's have grace for our past selves. I'm gonna stick on there one more question.

Kira Omans: Yeah.

Haley Radke: How does it feel to have some of those pro adoption messages still out there attached with your name as you have progressed in your views? And I'm saying that with this idea of, I see so many adoptees who are like excited about sharing parts of their story and things online. All of it positive and it becomes the fodder for a prospective adoptive parents to be like, oh yeah, you're saying something that may be negative, but look at all these positive things, right?

And so I have felt a sense of guilt over some of my past work. And I wonder if you carry that, how you're able to balance that grace for we didn't know it back then. Any thoughts around that, kira?

Kira Omans: Yeah, I have removed some.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Kira Omans: [I think] all of them, but I, yeah. I completely relate to those feelings of guilt of spreading this message that is the dominant message. And like you said, fueling that fodder for prospective parents, because nowadays that's not what I want people to take away from my work.

Like you said, giving our past selves grace. I do think about adoptees that are in a place like that and have a lot of empathy for them and how their journeys might be progressing. And just because I know that I wish someone treated me with a little more grace during that time. When I came out with certain messages, I got attacked online and that only made me want to retreat that made me want to stop doing this. That made me want to disconnect from the adoptee community entirely and feel like, oh, I'm not even welcome in this space. Which is one of the first spaces that I felt like I truly belonged.

And so my hope is that adoptees who see where I was at and have seen my evolution over the years can have hope and grace for adoptees who might be in a similar position to where I first started. Know that they might not think that forever, and approaching them with empathy might be more successful than chasing them out of a Facebook group, as I've seen before, or things like that where I just hope as a community we can all be more welcoming and aim to educate as opposed to isolate. Because that's my primary goal in advocacy now, is just to increase education surrounding adoption and give people a far more well-rounded view of the adoptee experience because it's not all adoption is love. There is a lot of trauma wrapped up in it.

Even for people like me who again have a very successful adoption story on paper, I still struggle with a lot of issues that I was not comfortable discussing before and issues that I suppressed. And it's only been very recently when I first started going to therapy that I started to realize so many things were linked back to my adoption that I just had never addressed.

And it has been such a healing journey for me to be able to process those. And I just hope that other adoptees are given the grace to do the same.

Haley Radke: I appreciate that. I have seen some of your writing and blog posts through the years. And one of them that I was rereading to prepare for today, you share about anxiety and panic attacks. And I'm wondering if you're comfortable talking about that at all.

I think anxiety is one of those things that can be undiagnosed. Like people sort of are like, I'm just a worrier, or, and it can become really debilitating. So are you willing to share a little bit about that?

Kira Omans: Yes, absolutely. I have always had separation anxiety, even as a child. And I think that my parents dismissed it as very much like, she just doesn't wanna go to school or she just doesn't want to go to swim lessons. But my parents would be right there at swim lessons and I would be sobbing. I just, I had such a hard time going to school. I didn't want to leave my parents.

My mom said that even when I was a baby, after I got over the initial fear of them that I would follow her to the bathroom. Like she couldn't leave me anywhere. If she put me down and walked across the room, I would start screaming. And as an adult, that still manifests itself. When I would go to college. I went to college 30 minutes away from where I lived. 30 minutes away from my parents, and I was having panic attacks every night and just so much separation anxiety. Moving to Los Angeles was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm very grateful to my husband for helping me through all those things.

But sometimes when he goes to work, I'll have an anxiety... or I'll just freak out. And I thought that was just like, oh, I just really love my family. I just really loved my husband. I love my loved ones. And so that's why that's there.

And it wasn't until I went to therapy where we started to discuss relinquishment trauma and how that can manifest itself in adoptees that I was like, oh, my system was taught from a very young age that being abandoned is bad. It like, it is very strange to even think about that and how that was such a shock to my system. And that how, even if I don't remember it, it's still there. And that was just a mind-blowing revelation to me. That trauma is stored in the body.

I was just taught my whole life and reinforced by other people that, oh, you're so lucky you don't remember anything. Because that means it doesn't affect you. Or that like you're so lucky you don't remember your time in the orphanage. You don't remember your parents abandoning you by the side of the bridge. All of that stuff still lives in me, and that was during a very formative period of my life.

And when I was just experiencing the world and how everything around me was changing. The language changed. The atmosphere changed, the people changed. Everything was changing. For the first year of my life, it was so tumultuous. And just because I don't remember that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't have lifelong effects. And again, it wasn't until I started going to therapy that I had that revelation, that I started to think about things very differently and that I started to address my anxiety at all. Because I thought it was so normal. And again, it was just very dismissed.

Haley Radke: I really appreciate you sharing that, Kira, cuz I, I know there's a lot of fellow adoptees that struggle with separation anxiety and I'm sure it's oh my God, this is weird, right? But to know you're not alone. No, it's not.

Kira Omans: Yes.

Haley Radke: So many of us struggle with that.

Kira Omans: Yes. And there's a reason for it. It's not that. I was told that I was being dramatic as a kid a lot. And as a teenager sometimes I was. But not everything. And I think that growing up with that mindset of 'I'm being dramatic,' I learned to minimize my problems.

And so knowing that I'm not alone, knowing there are other adoptees who experience that. Having a therapist who understands relinquishment trauma and is able to help me help even help me label that. Because that was such a scary word for me is trauma. I was just like, I don't have trauma. I'm fine. And because I felt that having trauma meant there was something inherently wrong with me as opposed to something happened to me that doesn't have to affect my future, but that I have inside me and that I needed to learn to deal with so that it wasn't ruining aspects of my life.

And yeah, very hard realization, but so much better to know that you're not alone. And I think that's just the number one thing I say to adoptees in general is you're not alone. And having that sense of community and having other adoptees that understand how you're feeling can be such a healing, such a healing thing.

Haley Radke: Okay, so how do you do auditions though? Because that sounds like the worst. Please judge me for my skills and then reject me most of the time and sometimes accept me. What?

Kira Omans: So over the years, I have gotten really good at getting excited for auditions, doing my best, having fun with the role, and then as soon as I submit it, forget about it. And just think about the audition as like an opportunity to show casting directors what I can do. All of that good stuff. And I will be honest with you, being an actor is so much easier than being in a pageant. That's why I only did the one. That was so difficult, and I'll tell you why.

As an actor, you're just playing a character like your take on the character. You might not look how they want that character to look. You might be too tall. You might not look the way they want you to look as compared to the other actors who have already been cast. That happened to me once where I was on the other side of the table and they had already cast me as a lead and I had to do chemistry reads with my romantic interest character, and the actor who was by far the best, who I by far had the most chemistry with, the production company said, oh no, he looks too old standing next to you.

And I was like, what? What? He is by far, objectively the best for the role. The director agreed. It was crazy, and honestly, that experience, while it made me sad, made me feel so much better about all my previous auditions that I didn't get because I was like, oh, they could have found something so arbitrary to not give me that roll over.

And whereas in a pageant, you're getting up there and being yourself. So it's not even, you're being a character in a pageant. You're being yourself. You're going up there trying to be the best version of yourself, and they decide that one woman's version of being herself is better than your version of being yourself. So it's very brutal in that way.

That's not how everyone thinks about it. But at the time, that's how I thought about it and I haven't forgotten that. So being an actor is way, way easier and less personal than being in a pageant to me.

Haley Radke: Okay. I have interviewed a couple of other adoptee actors and or talked with them in whatever circumstances. And I always think I'm like, you can't objectively know this because you're not in other actors' minds, but do you think you can be a better actor or like you're more skilled for it because you've had to adapt to a brand new family? Whereas most of those people just got their own family?

Kira Omans: I'm, I've never even thought about it like that. I don't disagree. I do know that movies and stories played such a huge role in my childhood. And I was a child who was very immersed in my ghost kingdom. Which was a new term for me that I learned recently about how like adoptees can create a hypothetical world where we are living with our birth relatives.

And as a child, that was like, that was so appealing to me. And I don't think I ever really lost all of that, like the imaginative aspect of it. And I think that some of those things are why I can be a better performer. Living in another world is something that I really enjoyed as a child. And something that I think has really stuck with me and part of me thinks that I created the life I did for myself so I can continue doing that. Which is a different matter entirely.

I just, especially all of the movies growing up and so many children's movies are about orphans and adoptees.

Haley Radke: Kira, I literally underline this from your dear adoption piece. "I blame Disney for glorifying abandonment."

Kira Omans: I still do. That part hasn't changed over the years. I, just Anastasia and Hercules and Rapunzel and Cinderella, and Snow White we're also orphans. I think that having that tragic backstory was so glorified, even from such a young age. And then we grow up and there are still these stories about how reuniting with your birth family is the only thing that's going to make you whole. That's the character arc. And just how adoptees always have such a promising future and they just, it just dramatized what I thought my life was going to be like as a kid. Where I thought oh, that's my story. So I'm going to have this grand adventure. And life seemed so disappointing in comparison when I actually started to live it.

Haley Radke: Let's talk about what you are seeing in the media now as far as adoptee representation.

Kira Omans: There is this fantastic post by Charlotte Carbone that I read, I think it was a year ago. Do you know her?

Haley Radke: Charlotte's our graphic designer.

Kira Omans: Wait, oh my goodness. How did I not know that? She's fantastic.

Haley Radke: I know.

Kira Omans: Am a huge fan of her. I've only connected with her online, but she did a great post about adoptees in media. And so I first started even thinking about it because of her post. And how adoptees and former foster youths are portrayed as having this traumatic and abusive past and being mentally ill in movies like Malignant and Orphan and other more adult centered movies.

And again, this is like right from Charlotte's Post that I'm speaking. Give her proper credit. And then in comedies and family oriented movies, adoptees are often portrayed as being prodigies like in Queens Gambit being gifted, spunky and misunderstood, like in Meet The Robinsons and Annie and Matilda.

And so these tropes are so dangerous in creating that one-sided story of adoptees. And there are movies and TV shows that have more nuanced discussions of adoptees and are more from adoptee viewpoints. Whereas a lot of the stories right now are from adoptive parent perspectives, like Instant Familyu and The Blind Side.

Those very much affect the public's perception of adoption and portrays adoptive parents as objectively good and birth parents as bad. And again, reinforces the savior complex. There are a lot of things that I'm seeing in adoptee media that I wish different things for.

Like adoption jokes and how you're adopted is still such a commonly accepted joke, I guess right now. I guess we're still working through that as a society. But how it just ostracizes the adoptee how you're adopted equals you're not one of us. Like they're different and that is what that means. Even if the character's not adopted, people will make jokes like that. I don't understand it.

But these dominant stories really affect the lives and the wellbeing of adoptees and birth parents as well. Just how birth parents are always the villain, I feel, or how overly dramatized those stories are and can give children and adults just such a drastically, like single-minded, like limited understanding of what the adoption experience is really like.

Haley Radke: I remember when This Is Us came out and I was watching the first season and like very hesitantly because, I don't know where this is going and right away. Right when poor Randall is a replacement for the third baby, dead baby, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't.

Kira Omans: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And I remember the discourse online was just so much like sympathy for the adoptive mother, that I just was like, I just can't, I can't do it. And I have heard from plenty of people that overall they really appreciated Randall's storyline and different parts of the adoptee experience being really realistic. And come to find out there was adoptees giving feedback on that, so that's exciting.

Kira Omans: Oh, exactly. I completely understand your trepidation though, because, while those situations exist, they're also the only ones that are represented I feel in TV and movies. Because they're more dramatic or because these stories writers tend to gravitate what's going to tell a better story as opposed to what's real.

And so when it starts out that way, which so many movies do, they tend to choose something like that and don't handle it as well and don't tell it from the adoptees perspective. That's when things can get really tricky and really difficult to watch and absorb as an adoptee. So totally understand where you were coming from.

Haley Radke: You have a really thoughtful critique of Instant Family on your YouTube channel, and I really appreciated it. Like you went through all the points. And as an actor, you're looking at it and you're like, I get the storyline arc. And you're critiquing it with also the eyes of someone who tries to make good stories that people wanna watch and will feel engaged in. And I think that's really helpful to add to the conversation.

So what are some of the things you're hoping to see as an actor? Would you ever wanna play as an adoptee, as a role? Have you ever...?

Kira Omans: I have. And this is unreleased, but I was in a series that was about an Asian adoptee that was adopted into a southern black family. And the series was about her experience going to an HBCU. And that was such a challenging role because, and it hasn't been released, I'm not sure where it is right now. Things tend to happen, but that was so interesting to play that kind of role because I was adopted into a white family. And so my parallels with this character were not really similar.

I had experienced a lot of the same emotions, but growing up in a black community was a whole new experience and something that production and the director and the writer really tried to help immerse me in so that I could play that truthfully. But it was very difficult.

I am not sure if I'd want to play an adoptee again. I think it would depend on the story, and that story was very much about cultures clashing and cultural appropriation. What is okay? Like those kinds of themes, which I definitely relate to. I think that in the future I would really have to look at a script, see how adoptees are being treated. Is, just observe the language surrounding how people speak about adoption.

Is this informed? Are they open to suggestions? Because when I played that role, I don't think that I was as well versed in the community and in the message that I truly wanted to share. And I don't think that it was a bad show, but I think that it did simplify things a little bit. Which is one of my complaints about adoptee storylines in movies and TV is that it's glossed over or it's simplified.

And one thing, I didn't enjoy Instant Family as a film entirely. I know a lot of people feel differently, but while I personally didn't enjoy it, one thing that I appreciated that they did is that they did acknowledge some of the complexities that they weren't entirely going to go into, but they did acknowledge that they were there.

And that's something that I wish more films would do. Because as much as I wish that they would delve into the complexities-- and I hope to see more of that, that there is more representation of a well-rounded adoptee experience and birth parent experience, and how that can really affect a person. Not all movies, especially children's movies are going to do that. And so even if you don't, I think it's really important that writers and studios do their research and at least acknowledge things, that they may not go into but acknowledge that there are other experiences and that there's a lot of nuance to being an adoptee.

Haley Radke: Speaking of appropriation, I think that there will be people listening who have two different opinions on this and may perhaps you and I will as well. But when Blue Bayou came out, there was like this great excitement, oh my gosh, there's gonna be this adoptee story coming out. And then immediately flipped into we must boycott Blue Bayou because it is appropriating a fellow adoptee story, Adam Crapser. And I'll link to, I'll link to an article that kind of reports on this if folks wanna read more about it. But even Adoptees for Justice you mentioned them earlier in our ,conversation, they put out a statement about it.

Kira Omans: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So I ended up not watching it.

Kira Omans: I didn't watch it either.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay.

Kira Omans: I didn't, I was seeing both sides, and I was glad that all of that came out before I saw it because I never want an adoptee's story to be appropriated. I never want an adoptee's story to be used in a way that they did not approve of or that they're not comfortable with. And Justin Sean, the director of that film, I had been to a premier of one of his other films and he, as a director, tends to-- and this is something I really appreciate about him, but he tends to tell stories of marginalized voices within the Asian American community.

So the film that I saw was about an impoverished family in Koreatown, which is so contrary to the stereotypes of Asian Americans today. That we're all rich and because of Crazy Rich Asians and Bling Empire. And so he was trying to combat that. And I think in Blue Bayou, he was also trying to take a marginalized community within the Asian American community. I think the intentions were there.

I was not involved in the film. I know that there are adoptees who say that Adam's story was not the only one that he drew things from. It's a really complicated situation. And especially as someone who works in the film industry, my impulse is to say representation is good representation. Just any portrayal of our story to get out there that's more nuanced is good. And that's not always true.

And I think that I was really torn on this one just because of Blue Bayou, I felt like there was far more discourse about adoptees without citizenship. Which to me, very good thing. Super important to me to fight for adoptee rights.

But at the same time, I don't want that to be at the expense of an adoptee. I don't want that to be at the expense of the community at large. And so I was very torn on that. I didn't release a public statement because I could see both sides and wasn't really sure how I felt at the time. It's just difficult. These things are complicated.

Haley Radke: So complicated. I appreciate you sharing your perspective on that. Cause it's sort of where I was like, oh my gosh. We do want more adoptee representation. That's what we say. And like you said, it highlights this very critical issue that people don't know that some adoptees still don't have citizenship in the country they were taken to. What. To this day, if you're listening to this when it's just being aired to this day. That has still not been passed.

Kira Omans: No. It passed the house. It didn't pass the Senate last year, which was really disappointing. But yeah, like you're saying, both of those things can be true at once.

We live in a very complicated world. It's not black and white. Both of those issues are very prevalent.

Haley Radke: I'm gonna skip ahead slightly cuz I'm, the thing I want to recommend, one of the things is the movie Return to Seoul. And it was co-written with an adopted person and it's the adoptees story, obviously dramatized, for screen.

Kira Omans: Of course.

Haley Radke: But it's her experience and. I don't know. I felt like it was one of the most realistic portrayals. Some, okay. I'm not gonna spoil any part of the story for anyone, so don't worry. There's some things that are not realistic. But when it comes to the search and reunion portions of the story, I felt they were really realistic and I was thinking of Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related, Jenny Heijun Will's memoir, there was like reminiscent of that. There was some things that reminded me of Alice Steven's novel, Famous Adopted People, for the adoptee who's acting out in a variety of ways. And so I was like, oh, this feels really resonant for me, for Korean adoptees. I'm not a Korean adoptee, but it felt, it felt like really that. It was so beautifully shot and everything like just as a movie. So I don't know. Have you had a chance to see Return to Seoul?

Kira Omans: I haven't yet, but so many Korean adoptees have recommended it to me, and I just need to be in an emotional place where I can handle that because, now, I have such high expectations, but I, everyone I've spoken to has such nice things to say about it.

And that's so promising. I'm so excited that movies like that are being made . We need to continue to support that. I say as someone who hasn't seen it yet but I'm just so excited.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I wanted to share that because I thought it was such in contrast to Blue Bayou, right? Because this is like just taking the stories of, and I don't know, I don't know the behind the scenes of Blue Bayou. But see an adoptee like actually co-write it and help with the representation, everything. I just was really thrilled about that.

The other thing I want to recommend is, of course, that folks go and check out some of your writing and follow you on social to see what you're up to. I love that you're an advocate for our community and I really deeply appreciate how you have allowed yourself to share deeply from your heart about how things have changed.

Like I appreciated you sharing that with us today on our recording, but modeling that for us online. I think there's a lot of folks in our community that get embarrassed about previous things they may have shared and disappear cuz they or have they've been bullied off the internet by people who are not kind. So I think that you've done such a great job of modeling that for us and so I really hope that people will follow your advocacy.

Kira Omans: I appreciate that. Thank you.

Haley Radke: And I also want people to be paying attention for your highlighting Asian American issues with systemic racism. You've had a huge voice in that. Especially through the pandemic and beyond. I think that's really important for us as a community to be aware of as well. There's a lot of white adoptees that need to learn some things, and so you've been taking us on that journey too.

Kira Omans: Good. I hope people find it helpful and I appreciate that.

Haley Radke: What do you wanna recommend, Kira?

Kira Omans: I would like to recommend a documentary called One Child Nation. It is directed by Nan Fu Wang, and it is such an excellent resource, not just for Chinese adoptees, but I think for really anyone who wants to better understand what can lead to some massive waves of adoption and really understand the people who are most affected by it.

Obviously I was raised with a very westernized view of the world. And this documentary really gave me individuals to connect with to better understand how such a policy can happen. It really opened my eyes to the historical context of my story. Whereas it was all very personal before my world was, my understanding of that was very limited.

It really filled in a lot of the edges of what was previously just completely shrouded in mystery for me, and gave me a little more insight onto what could have been the circumstances of my birth. Again, I'm not sure. I don't really have any information at all, but I think that it was such a raw exploration of the cultural values that can allow something like that to happen.

I had even saved a quote from it that China started a war against population growth, but it became a war against its own people. And I think that very much sums up a lot of the documentary. And it's a tough watch. I know you can testify but it was really valuable.

Haley Radke: I've watched it to prepare for our conversation and I did not know the journey I was gonna go on. It starts out with the filmmaker acknowledging that when her child was born seven weeks early and she was separated from them briefly, that was traumatic for her. And I was like, okay. Good. Okay. We got an idea that separating from babies is traumatic. That's good start.

And then I did not know, I did not wanna know what it was in for. I found -- I left extra time in our conversation for this cuz I wanted to talk about it with you.

Kira Omans: Yes.

Haley Radke: Like when you share your story with us at the beginning and you gave us some facts from your adoption documentation about where you were found, after you watched this, did it impact what you thought was the veracity of that information?

Kira Omans: Oh, yes. I called everything into question after I watched that documentary. I wondered if my birthday was real. I wondered if I just realized that I actually don't know anything for certain. I filled out my Freedom of Information Act papers. I got my FOIA documents after that because I was like, what do we actually have?

And like my parents have always been very transparent with me. They've never hidden anything from me. They've always told me everything that they know, but they don't know a lot. And so when I got those papers back, I saw that one of the translations was just written on a scrap of paper, like in my FOIA documents, is this scan of this handwritten translation of I was found by the side of a bridge. There is no known information about her birth parents, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, oh my goodness. What? I even sent the original Chinese document to one of my friends who speaks and writes, Mandarin. And I was like, is this actually what it says? And there were some discrepancies. And it's just, it was a whole thing.

I, after watching that documentary, I had so many mixed feelings on it. And, it really also affected how I thought about my relationship to doing a birth search or even doing a Homeland Journey. Because I just started to feel so resentful after I saw that, and not towards my birth parents, but towards just China, the vague sense of it, because I love so many things about my culture.

I love doing Chinese dance. I love Chinese food. I love going to cultural events and celebrating the holidays. But after watching that documentary, it became very difficult for me to separate the things that I loved about my culture and the values of the country that, that allowed such a horrible policy to be enacted and how that wreaked havoc on its own people. And I just began to wonder, why would I want to return to a country that valued my life so little? Like why would I want to find my biological parents who might be complicit in the infaticide that happened?

Did my birth parents actually abandon me because of what society wants me to believe, of because they wanted me to have a better life, or were they one of the parents who left their baby girls to die in gutters? And it was a really, obviously, very difficult experience to have. And I still harbor some of those feelings. I, I don't feel them quite as strongly, but that's why I think that a birth search and a homeland journey are such serious, complicated things. And that adoptees have such different relationships with that. There's some adoptees who are in reunion and are like very happy about that. There are some adoptees who are in Reunion and aren't happy about that.

Then there are adoptees who don't want to do the birth search or don't want to do a homeland journey, and that's where I'm at right now. And people don't understand that because they think that, again, fed from the media, that finding your birth parents and reconnecting with your homeland is the only thing that's going to make you whole.

And like we said earlier, who knows where I'm going to be in the next 10 years, but I feel like it's a very individual journey. And so watching that documentary, I know that was a lot, but watching that documentary brought so many complicated feelings out.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad you said those things because I felt upended after watching it. And let's give 10 trigger warnings. Do you know what I mean? There is so much horrific content including image, visual images. But just speaking to people who were just doing, just following orders was just shocking. And I could see if you were adopted from China, that could really do some damage if you're not in a good head space and have supports in place to watch that.

So I kinda wanna talk to you about it more, but I'm gonna, I feel like I will spoil too many things if I go into it further. But I'm really glad you recommended it and I'm not sorry I watched it. My worldview got changed cuz I had no idea of a lot of that.

Kira Omans: Like you said, 10 trigger warnings.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Kira Omans: It is a really difficult watch. I think the trailer does a decent job of summing up, like not, it doesn't truly go into everything, but gives you a general feel for what it's going to be like. And I would even say be careful before you watch the trailer just because it alludes to a lot of the atrocities that are explored in the documentary. And I even feel like I was in a good emotional place to be able to watch it before I saw it, and it still really affected me.

So definitely proceed with caution. Have a support system lined up before you go to see it.

Haley Radke: Yes. Yes. Before you plus press play on that. Wow.

Kira Omans: Yeah. Or if you do.

Haley Radke: If you do. If you do, yeah.

Kira Omans: Yes. It is it's very complicated.

Haley Radke: And we don't wanna shy away from hard things or be ignorant of our own history. But only do it if you're in a good space. Okay. I don't know that I've ever given such massive trigger warning for a recommended resource, but I still do. I second your recommendation there. Kira, thank you so much for taking us through your story and talking to us about adoptees in the media.

Where can we connect with you online and follow your future projects?

Kira Omans: You can look at my website or you can follow me on Instagram, which is just at my name, just at KiraOmans, and I post everything on my Instagram and sometimes on my Facebook. But Instagram is definitely the place where I would recommend you connect with me.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Kira happened to be one of these people that I felt like we were old friends connecting. So we actually went on to talk for much longer past our recording time and, rookie podcast or mistake, I didn't record any of that because usually it's just private. But we did discuss further One Child Nation, and I wish I had that to share with you because I'll try and summarize it just very briefly, a couple of my thoughts.

One of our fears in talking about the documentary is of course, that adoption, a saviorism aspect, shows up with adoptive parents, mostly white, leading that charge. And I think on Adoptees On, we do a pretty good job here of always including the nuance when talking about adoption. I think it goes without saying, but obviously I don't think that all the way, cuz I'm gonna say it. But I just wanna be clear. In no way are we endorsing the systematic removal of infants and children from their home country. Period.

So I just wanna be clear on that. And I think there is a real opportunity for us to talk more and more about adoption and how it's represented in the media. I'm really thankful for conversations like this where we can really go there and dive deep. And we're gonna continue to do that here.

So if you have recommendations of things you want us to watch and talk about and discuss with other thoughtful, creative adoptees. Let us know in the Instagram comments. That's the best way to suggest things to us. And we'd be happy to talk more about recommended resources that you have to suggest, but also unpacking some of the messed up content we have taken in over the years.

If you are a Patreon supporter, you know that I have a weekly off-script podcast where I talk with friends that are adoptees as well. And I have a few regular co-hosts and special guest co-hosts every once in a while. And we are gonna be doing a little bit of that this summer. We've already prepared for you a two-part adoptees off-script episode.

We're talking about the TV show, Friends, which is something we were steeped in. If you're in my age range, I'm turning 40 this year. How many times have I said that now? It's coming up. If you were, are in my age range, Friends, with this massive, huge TV show, huge hit. Everybody was watching it. Everybody was talking about it.

And the way they present adoption in that whole storyline is so problematic. And as the audience we're cheering for the adoptive parents. We DGAF about the mother and it's just, that's what we were steeped in. So especially if you're new around here and you're hearing us talk about adoption and the how nuanced and complicated, and there's trauma in adoption? And you heard Kira expres s this whole shift in perspective that she had over 10 years.

Like, of course we thought adoption was amazing and this like savior narrative, like absolutely was true because we were getting that from our adoptive parents. Whether they said it out loud or not. A lot of us, not all. And all the TV shows and movies and all the books, all everything that we were consuming in pop culture was telling us adoption is the best thing ever.

And it's- what a relief to finally be unpacking some of that and critiquing it publicly so more people can critique it. And we can add to that conversation and be more balanced about it. So anyway, that's just like a few thoughts I had I wanted to share.

But I hope that you if you enjoy Adoptees On and you like, really want to keep diving into community and what it means to be an adoptee activist and be engaged with adoptee news and all those things join us on Patreon. We're always talking about that stuff behind the paywall, where it feels safer sometimes.

I'm really so proud of the things we have planned. We've already started doing the Ask An Adoptee Therapist monthly event, and those are gonna be recorded and you can listen to them later if you can't come live. We have our book clubs and all kinds of things going through the summer and I'm mentioning summer because we always take a summer break here.

We only have a few episodes left in June, and then we'll be back in mid-September. So if you are gonna miss me there's so many episodes you can binge while we're on our break here on the main feed. But if you also wanna hear more from us and for me, you can go to adopteeson.com/community and join our Patreon and hang out with me at the Live Zoom events.

Listen to so many back episodes of Adoptee's Off Script, and join us for some of those really valuable nuanced conversations about just like Kira and I talked about today, adoption in the media and what we've been steeped in. So thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

255 Sarah Audsley

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/255

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

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. We are thrilled to introduce you to Sarah Audsley today, Sarah's debut poetry collection, Landlock X, is our June adoptees only book club pick.

Today Sarah shares about how a reunion with genetic family in Korea only opened up more questions for her. We talk about cultural differences, context that can be lost in translation and how she may be an anomaly with accurate records from the adoption agency. We talk through several of Sarah's poems and our excitement surrounding the growing body of adoptee literature.

Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. If you join us in June, you'll have access to our brand new Ask and adoptee therapist event, as well as the adoptee's only book club with Sarah Audsley.

Stay tuned to the end of the show and I'll tell you more details. 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 am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees on Sarah Audsley. Welcome, Sarah.

**Sarah Audsley:** Thank you so much, Haley. Thanks for having me.

**Haley:** I love a poet. I gotta tell you. I can't wait. We're gonna talk about your book a little bit later, but first, do you mind sharing a little bit of your story with us?

**Sarah Audsley:** Yes, and I love that you love poets. So my name is Sarah Audsley. I grew up in Central Vermont in a log cabin that my father built, and with white parents. And spent, you know, on my entire childhood in the same house and then always wanted to be a writer, was writing poetry when I was in elementary school and in high school, and then had clearly no idea that the writing world existed.

Didn't know that there were MFA programs, and it wasn't until I was in 29 until I realized that I really wanted to, that's what I really wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer. So I naturally gravitated towards processing my life and my emotions and my experiences through writing. I have a journal from when I was 10 and 12 years old, of letters that I wrote to my imagined biological father and a mother, which might be my next project to dive into looking at the, that handwritten journal.

Flash forward to today. I published my debut poetry collection in February of 2023 with Texas Review Press, and it's called Landlock X and I'm really proud of it. It took a long time to finally get to this point. And I'm also a Korean American adoptee. A transracial adoptee which I think is very important to anyone who's engaging with my work.

And then I've also gone back to South Korea in 2013 and did meet my father. That's a little bit about me.

**Haley:** Thank you. I'm curious. From you saying even at, you know, 10 and 12, these journal entries that you were writing to your biological parents, what led you to discover, can I search, can I look? What is that going to look like? What age do you come to that?

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, I think the journal entries, when I was a young person, allowed me an imaginative space to have dialogue between these people that essentially are also characters in someone's imagination. So I grew up knowing that my biological mother died from complications of my birth and that my genetic or birth father was not able to care for me, which is why I was adopted.

So the path to the search, which is pretty common in any adoptee's journey or experience- and I think of adoption as a spectrum of consciousness or awareness of how important it is to consider as part of your identity. In 2003 was when I first attempted a search, and that was, I had some friends whose parents were in Seoul in South Korea, and I sent them my adoption paperwork, which my parents had a file folder in the file cabinet in the basement. And I asked for those papers. And I sent them onto my friend's parents who were in Seoul. And at that time I got feedback back from the post-adoption services that my biological father was indeed alive. But he at that time was not a interested in connecting with me.

And I was also told that he had remarried and had a son and a daughter, so I had half siblings and that shows up a little bit in the collection. In the third section of the book, there's a poem called The Half Sister Unmet, and then there's a poem of Planet Nine, A Primordial Black Hole, New Research Suggests, which references the half brother.

That journey began in 2003 when I was 21, and I was interested in making some type of connection. And then it took another 10 years for my genetic father, biological father to be interested in contacting me because, as adoptees know, sometimes you don't have accurate records. Sometimes there is no paperwork at all, and depending on if the adoption is closed or open, they won't put you in contact with each other unless both parties want to be connected.

So on the cusp of 30 was when I received a handwritten letter and a translation in English and a photo from the post services with information from my father. And, the collection, the poetry collection opens with the handwritten letter from my father, and then the book is divided into three sections, kind of like a triptic, like a painting that has three panels, and the book opens with disorientation.

With the untranslated handwritten letter from our biological father. And then there are three erasers of the English translation that appear. Each one appears in the, each individual three sections of the book. So I wanted the book to open with disorientation for someone not to be able to read it. I can't, I don't read or write Korean, so I can't read the letter.

I need a translator to translate it for me. I also needed a translator to be physically there at the meeting when I met, when we had a meeting yeah.

**Haley:** I wondered if it was his actual writing.

**Sarah Audsley:** It is, yeah.

**Haley:** Because it's so neat. It doesn't touch one line on here, and then the content of it is, you know, I read it as deeply emotional as someone who is still closed off to you a bit could be.

And so I don't know, what did you have this feeling when you saw it? I get this feeling of oh my gosh, I don't know what this means. I don't know. And when I look at it, I'm like, oh my goodness. It's very like neat and precise and I don't know. Did you have a thought?

**Sarah Audsley:** So I think that when I look at it as an object to use in a poetic form, what the erasure form allows me, allowed me to do was to pull out or push back certain parts of the text and to repurpose and interact with the text in a new way.

On receiving the handwritten letter and the English translation and the photo, I wanted to respond, but it really did take me six months to, to compose like a six page letter to write back. And knowing that was also going to be translated, you know, that there was gonna be a process of sending something that would then have to be filtered through in translation.

The sentence that is the most interesting to me was, "she left you like that", which was describing the death of the birth mother, which was the catalyst for the choice for adoption. And that, just that very short sentence. It's only, how many words is that? 1, 2, 3, 4. Four words. Seems so like impactful and direct.

Also like a simple, declarative sentence of that. That's how it was. This is how it was. So the process of interacting with that translation was pushing forward all the I's. The capital I and the lowercase I in the first translation, and then the third one has pushed forward all, they you's, the word Y O U and then the letter U.

So you have you. And then you have I, I. And then the middle translation has pushed and pulled forward certain words, certain sentences, like "she left you like that" is highlighted. And I was really thinking about agency and the pronouns of the I and the you. And then the center middle translation really wants to highlight just certain words, certain fragments.

So it's interesting to, for adoptees interacting with our documents. And I see that as a way to process experience and also as a creative exercise and craft ability to craft your work your experience through the, a poetic form and a poetic tradition.

**Haley:** I have combed through some of your social as I do when I prepare for an interview.

**Sarah Audsley:** They're all about my dog. There's a period where there was no dog photos, and then they're all dog photos after that.

**Haley:** We love dogs here, so that's all good. That's literal, that's nothing to do with what I'm gonna do. Say I am gonna say something superficial later, but that's not, it's enough.

**Sarah Audsley:** Okay, that's fine. Go ahead.

**Haley:** No, in some interviews you've done and things, and you know what, I find you, you're very outspoken on reproductive justice and women's rights and those kinds of things. And it comes through in your work, I think. And so when I read this line, when he says, if you are married since you were 30 years old now, he wondered if you were married.

And I was like, oh. Interesting. How does that, you know, come across to you as well? That's this other curiosity like of his, this other connection to someone else? Possibly. And I don't know, I just thought, oh this would be hard for me to take. I think. I don't know. I'm, maybe I'm reading into too much, but do you have thoughts on that?

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, it's really funny. I think that the letter, the content of the letter really reveals cultural differences and opinions about what success looks like from a Korean father point of view. And yeah, I very much feel American and very much coming from a feminist point of view and the way I navigate my life and in the choices and decisions I make.

So the assumptions that are, that come with those types of statements and questions are wondering like, if I'm married or if I have a good job, is revealing of what success looks like in his, in a Korean father's point of view. And really yeah, one, one could think, well, you know, my success has nothing to do with you. In that I'm only genetically related to this human, this person.

And also shows a value system too, and certain things. I was like, oh well, I wouldn't value certain things that he values. So I find it both like revealing and also a little bit cringe worthy on some levels for the assumptions that, you know, that he is making. I, you know, I don't wanna have children personally. I have tons of friends who have kids, but that might be a metric of success for this person that now made me by semen and blood, which is a line from one of the poems in the book.

**Haley:** Thank you for sharing that. I think. It's so insightful the ways that you pull out these different pieces for us as a reader to take us along that journey with you and in doing so, I can imagine, you know, that might feel very scary cuz it's ex, these poems, they're extremely personal.

So much of your work is, it's, you know, it reads as autobiographical. And so I'm assuming that's true for most of it. And so, how has it been for you now to have revealed yourself in these ways through your poems? Now I know some of them were previously published, but to have them all together as a collection and I got to read this and be like, wow, I feel like I really know you before I even got to talk to you.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, thanks for that question. I've been thinking a lot about that question as bringing the book-- the book's only a few months old now cuz it was published in February and. I'm like deeply committed to poems and to the potential of poetry and for how it's deeply important to me in my life. And in Poetry Speak, we talk about the first person speaker, the first person as a speaker.

And I've been beginning to think of it as a persona that we get to inhabit and to process our lives and our experiences through this first person speaker. With that being said, it is a very close, you could read it as very close to me, to Sarah Audsley, as a person in the world. The, that the first person autobiographical information that you're reading is a version of the truth.

And the other thing that I like to have a little bit of a boundary or a barrier around it when I'm bringing that deeply personal work from the private into the public realm through publication, is that I firmly believe that it's art. And that the book is a work of art. And that through writing and then through revising over and over again and through the choices that I've made, that the first person speaker and my story has been transformed through the process of creating art.

And so yeah many, I have some several friends who have bought the book and one of them messaged me and said, oh, it's like spending time with you, Sarah. Which is a very friendly way of putting oh, I think I learned more about you and therefore know more about you and your life.

And I think that's true. Like I think you could read the book and make many assumptions and learn a lot, but I also hope that the book also achieves and contributes to adoptee poetics, and is in conversation with other adoptee poets and, also, you know, conveys feeling and meaning and does more than just quote unquote tell my story.

I hope that it also is a work of art in and of itself. And that's maybe that's my best effort or my best hope for the book. But I do think that any person now in the world with especially adoptees, I think we need to be careful about how we bring our stories forward. And because it is risky because there could be misunderstandings or, and there's also stereotypical story narratives around adoption.

And so I've been nervous about confirming or affirming certain biases around the adoption industry. But this, it, the book is grounded in my lived experience and there are moments of racialized moments in my progressions that I have experienced that make it, make its way into the book. So as I've been doing, moving that work from the private into the public route through readings and these types of wonderful opportunities. I'm open to having these conversations because I want to be having these types of conversations and contribute to the conversation.

And then the last thing I'll say is that, I think that anyone who is working in any medium, whether it's like visual art or performance or documentary or writing, and if you're adoptee, I feel like you have to be ready for that shift from the private to the public. And that at the end of the day, you get to choose how much you tell or how much you don't tell, and you can always say no.

**Haley:** Absolutely. You can always say no. We just what I tell people at the beginning of our interviews, if I ask you something you don't wanna talk about, please tell me and we'll just move on.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah.

**Haley:** You know, our stories are one of the only things we have agency over saying or not. Right. Especially as adopted people. Well, I love how some of the things you highlight in the book, like you, you literally have a piece about the Adoptee Citizenship Act and you know, so I was like, yes. I'm so thankful for that. Anytime fellow adoptees are highlighting adoptee issues to the general public, like it just feels frankly it feels subversive, which is silly that it has to be that way still, but very empowering for the rest of us to be like, okay, great. Somebody said it, you know? So thank you for adding to the chorus of voices around that.

Let's talk about art for a minute, because your cover-- I have not wanted to put the book away. It has been sitting on my desk since I got it because the cover is so gorgeous and you talk through the book, the color is so present in, in almost every poem.

It's mentioned multiple times in multiple ways and I saw you mentioned somewhere in some other conversation like, oh yeah I kind of would love to be a painter, maybe, or you know, so can you talk about the process of coming to this gorgeous cover by a fellow artist and then the importance of color to you.

It maybe, before you answer that, I'm going to say my superficial thing to you, which is in deep diving, your social Sarah, I became enamored with your earring collection. Because they're all huge and beautiful. And I was like, I would, I like those. I like those. I like those. So anyway, complimenting your taste in jewelry.

All right, let's go back to art and color.

**Sarah Audsley:** Thank you. Well, my favorite jeweler is Erica Walker and she lives in New Hampshire. And shout to Erica Walker. I'm a little embarrassed on my love for jewelry, for the amount of money that goes towards it. But there's something really wonderful about choosing what to adorn yourself with and it also kind of is, it's both decoration and also powerful in what you choose.

And also I think that it can also be like an armor and a shield. Like you could, you know, get dressed in the morning and put on your, the necklace that's gonna be, you know, the thing your talisman for the day. So that's my superficial answer.

**Haley:** Which is not superficial whatsoever.

**Sarah Audsley:** I also gravitate more towards stones and rocks from the earth and from the land, which is a nice segue into the book cover. So the book is called Landlock X and the cover art is by a visual artist friend who I met at Vermont Studio Center, where I work, where I run the writing program manager at Vermont Studio Center.

Nancy Kim is a Korean American artist who lives in Italy. And she was a artist in residence in I think 2019 where we met each other and we stayed in touch and I sent her the full manuscript before, pre-publication. So she read the whole book and we had a Zoom and I asked her if she'd be willing to do, provide the cover art for my book. And she was going to make individual pieces in response to the poems, but we just didn't have time because my publisher needed an image within a week and it just wasn't gonna be enough time for her to make, to do her, create a process to make individual pieces based on the poems.

So I was scrolling through her social media and I was like, I like this one or this one. And one of the choices was already in someone's private collection, so it wasn't available. But the one that we ended up with is called How A Yellow Hollow, and she made it in 2021. And it's paper pulp and silicon and acrylic paint.

And if you ever are able to physically get your hands on the book itself, we were able to wrap the image around the spine and there's minimal text in the, typically poetry collections have several book blurbs on the back, but we wanted to maintain the integrity of the image. So we included only one book blurb on the back and then four as the inside first page that you open.

And then I also decided not to put my photo on the back of the cover. My photo and bio longer bio, are on, is in the back of the book. So really wanting to maintain the image, I love the color. It is this hyper vibrant yellow, green chartreuse that actually also changes depending on what lighting it's in.

And the form of the cover itself evokes both land, it's both land and not land. It has both locking the water and also po like negative space and positive space. And you can also physically see like the impressions that her fingers were making in the paper pulp. So I'm, I love the cover too, and I really feel like it's both engaging and also gives you, you were like, oh, what is this?

What am I about to enter into? And the color yellow recurs throughout the collection and the color yellow for East Asian and myself becomes like a interesting color to meditate on. So it can be a racialized color. Some people are referred to Asians as yellow, and I was interested in that color, both in my, some of the experiences I bring forth in the collection, and also I'm surrounded by visual artists in my job and interested in painting and the creative process through the color yellow.

But also you end up just seeing it everywhere. Once you start fixating on something ends up becoming an obsession and you end up just seeing it everywhere. So yeah the color yellow recurs throughout the collection and both in its form that, in that the form that appears and takes in nature, like through birds or flowers or, and then also through the ways in which it can be used in art.

But then also how it's also color that becomes racially charged.

**Haley:** It's really this powerful theme through the whole book that I was, you know, paying attention to the whole way through, which is a testament to your strength in writing and trying to highlight that for us. I am, I don't know, I was just really struck by the way you describe things visually. And then when I found out you, one of your hobbies, is you know, climbing and being in nature and all of those things, I was like, oh, okay. I kind of get it. Like you're very interested in what nature looks like and being, you know, connected to place. And so I think those themes come through as well.

Can you talk a little bit about your love for being outdoors and exploring and what that means to you personally? We talk so much about, you know, therapy and you know, processing or adoptee stuff on the show and I'm wondering if that's any piece of it for you.

**Sarah Audsley:** I am not currently in therapy. I'm slightly resistant to it because I've found ways to process my experience in other ways that I would call therapy. And that is, you know, spending time with my dog and also spending a lot of time outside in nature. I do feel a deep sense of place and belonging in the landscape where I live.

I also lived in New Hampshire for 10 years before I moved back to my home state of Vermont. And that 10 year period was, you know, biking and climbing, ice climbing, back country skiing, cross country skiing. So moving in the landscapes and in accessing different trails and peaks and summits has been really important to me for decades now.

And what I've realized is that in a world where I might not feel belonging in either a racial group or, you know, because I'm adopted and feeling like you know Korean, but both Korean, but both not Korean, not having grown up in Korean culture or, so not feeling like I fit in certain ways, I always feel like I fit into the land and place where I live. And that has become very important to me to maintain that level of access.

So I typically don't really go to the city very much, but I do like to visit, I like to kind of dip in and out. So I'll go for very brief periods of time and visit friends who have more urban lifestyles and I do really love engaging with museums and like the food, like I, I am very much lacking in different types of cuisine and food access where I live.

But yeah the sense of place and belonging for me really comes from my ability to see an experience, a landscape in all different seasons as well. Which I think comes through in the work, in the poems, just paying it attention to the detail. One of the things that I really enjoy is visiting, revisiting the same hiking trail or mountain summit or river or stream or whatever in different seasons, and watching it evolve and change over the course of the regular natural changes that take place in, in nature.

So I am an introvert and I spend a lot of time alone walking my dog in the woods. And that has provided a level of belonging. And also, if I call it, you know, my, my church, my therapy is going into the woods.

**Haley:** So you've got writing and nature. Those are the like processing tools that you have cultivated over your 40 years so far on the planet. I love that. Now, I don't know if you're gonna be able to think of this immediately or not, and so no pressure, but I live in Alberta. And I'm wondering if you can think back to when you were in Banff, and if you were working on any of the pieces that ended up here, anything related to where I live, Sarah?

**Sarah Audsley:** So Haley's referencing, thank you for doing the really deep dive. You're a very good researcher.

**Haley:** It's not creepy when it, when you're an interviewer. Right.

**Sarah Audsley:** Exactly.

**Haley:** That's the job. Yeah.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, I spent, I had a five week residency at the Banff Center and The Banff Center is located in Banff, and they have a literary arts program. They also have performing arts and a really great indigenous writers program as well. And I was working, I was definitely working on poems for the book during that time.

Continuum came from that time period. The poems about my half-brother and half sister came from that time period. They started as epistolary poems, so you know, "Dear... Blah, blah, blah", "Dear... Blah, blah, blah". So poems with the direct address. Like writing letters.

**Haley:** Can we pause at the Half Sister Unmet?

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, sure.

**Haley:** That makes me so happy that you wrote part of that here, because when we got to the last line, I giggled so hard because. It's a spoiler. Can I read it? Is that okay?

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, please do. Yeah.

**Haley:** The last li like, it's like all this like sweet stuff about, you know, what sisters could be, right? What the relationship could be like, and the last line is probably we would've hated each other. I don't know why that just killed me.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, I, it's funny, it's, yeah. It's a little unexpected cause the po the rest of the poem is oh, it would've been like this, it would've been like that. It's like in an imaginative sort of space.

But the reality is like probably we would've hated each other.

**Haley:** I'm in reunion with two half sisters and a half-brother, and to, to my delight, we have all sort of cultivated these really amazing relationships.

**Sarah Audsley:** Oh, that's so wonderful.

**Haley:** And I'm a mother to two boys who would like to kill each other every single day so I just hit my sweet spot right there. I don't know, it was just, that's one of my favorites, just for that reason.

**Sarah Audsley:** It's true. It's, or you know, in this imaginative space, it could be anything, but, you know, it's also a nod to the complexities of what you're saying of being a sibling.

**Haley:** Well, let's do, let's kind of wrap on that topic before we do recommended resources.

Let's talk a little bit about siblings. So you grew up with a brother who was also adopted from South Korea, but you had no biological connection too. So you knew an adoptee growing up. Did you guys ever talk about adoption?

**Sarah Audsley:** Yes, my, my brother is a year and a half younger and we're not genetically related. So we, my parents had us involved in a Big Brother, Big Sister program which is based in Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Which is about 20 minutes from where we grew up. And in that area called the Upper Valley of Upper Connecticut Valley, which is in between Vermont and New Hampshire, there were actually a fair, enough Korean adoptees to have a little big brother, big sister group. Haley's just nodding her head and laughing a little bit.

**Haley:** Okay. I'm la Okay. I have two things. So one of my regular co-hosts that's on Patreon, Carrie Cahill Mulligan, she, I was just there to visit her. She works at Dartmouth and she lives there, so I've

**Sarah Audsley:** Oh, wow.

**Haley:** I've been there.

**Sarah Audsley:** Oh, so you know where I'm talking about.

**Haley:** Yeah, I do. And then part two to that, one of my other regular cohosts for Patreon is Sullivan Summer and she was raised in New Hampshire as well to white adoptive parents. And she's black and she is told me many times, so I should be able to summon the statistic up and I cannot in my, it's like less than 0.1% or something of people of color that live in that state.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, very white. Very white.

**Haley:** That's why I'm making the face like, wow, okay. There was enough Korean adoptees to have a group. Okay, carry on.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, I think it was like maybe like less than 10, you know. Maybe it was like six of us or seven. I don't know. I don't actually remember. But you know, during that mid to late eighties period, there was a large number of Korean adoptees that were exported from South Korea. And I think that the number I've heard is like around 200,000 Korean adoptees, but actually no one really knows, I think because of the inaccurate record keeping that was taking place.

So this is all to say that my brother and I were part of this Big Brother, big Sister program. And so we learned some things about Korean culture, and both of us grew up knowing our adoption stories. I won't share his, because that's his own story to, that he owns, and I wouldn't wanna share his story without his permission. But we have two different stories behind our adoptions or the ones that were told to us that from our adoptive parents that are, that is more or less backed up by the paperwork that we have available to us.

So my brother was not interested in returning to Korea with me when I went in 2013. And he has not reached out or tried to, done a search, or expressed interest in a reunion. And, you know, I'm totally respectful of his relationship with adoption and also with his knowledge and relationship and interest in his own story.

Even though we grew up together in the same household we've had different paths and journeys around thinking about how important or how not adoption is to our own individual identities. And my parents always provided the information that they had to us. So we grew up knowing each other's stories.

**Haley:** I think you have this like unusual case where your paperwork is like accurate and it played out just and they had so it's unusual, I feel like.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah, it is.

**Haley:** Compared to so many of the Korean adoptees that I've gotten the honor of speaking with. So thank you for sharing that. Has your brother read any of your poetry?

**Sarah Audsley:** I will answer that question, but I just wanted to go back to that comment on having accurate records. And being able to do the search and for the search to come to fruition or to have, to end up with a reunion. At that time, I didn't realize how rare it was for that circle to be quote unquote completed. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to have that experience.

But also I will say that it just brings up more questions. Because the more information an adoptee receives can end up just bringing up other questions. So in many ways, there, there is a rec-- it doesn't matter what-- I mean. It matters. It so matters to go through that process and it can be so heartbreaking to not be able to find, to have a successful search or to not get any information.

But that too can be the information that you have. So I just wanted to acknowledge and not devalue anyone else who hasn't been able to go through that process. And I also think it's really risky and it takes a lot of courage and vulnerability and kind of blind faith to pursue that.

And the other thing is that I never did a blood test to actually confirm that the person that I was looking across at the room was actually my genetic father. I just trusted, but I blindly trusted the paperwork to be accurate. Which is sounds, it's kind of weird to think about. But anyway I just wanted to make sure that I, we make space for everyone's ability to both search or not search, and that those things are out of your control. That having accurate documents are not --something that you just can't control. And what you have is what you have. It's kind of a weird inheritance.

**Haley:** Yes. Thank you for that acknowledgement.

**Sarah Audsley:** And then, so you asked about my brother, and my brother has a copy of my book as do my adoptive parents, and.

I don't actually know if he's read it. I think he has read the poem-- there's a poem in the book called Swarm, which is a childhood memory of,

**Haley:** Never forget.

**Sarah Audsley:** Yeah. Where you know, we're kids and we're biking on the property and we hit a log and all these wasps come flying out. And I got in trouble because I didn't help my bro.

I just got out of there. And I got in trouble for not helping my brother not staying to you know, get him out of there too. And this poem is it's, and it also has a very connected to the farming culture that I grew up with. And hanging, and references my brother.

So I think he is, I think he is read that and we just joke about it around the dinner table at my parents.

**Haley:** Okay. That's a scary poem. It's coming from someone who, last year, let the wasps carry on a little too much in my yard to the point where some of 'em came inside. Oh, do not recommend.

Anyway, let's do our recommended resources. I have nothing to do with wasps. I love that you said chartreuse in our conversation because that's the color I was going to use to describe your cover, which is gorgeous and I hope everyone grabs a copy of Landlock X. It is really phenomenal. And I'm not just saying that cuz you're right there.

I loved it. And I can't tell you the amount of time I have just stared at The Waiting Children art at the back where you have covered the photos of waiting children, waiting to be adopted with these beautiful flowers. And also made found poetry, when you like cross out some of the words in their descriptions, like it's just remarkable.

It's so powerful and unfairly, no one else can see it, but it's behind you as we record. It's just so gorgeous and heartbreaking at the same time. And I hope that through our conversation folks can hear how much I enjoyed your poems and reread. And in fact, we loved it so much. We invited you to do our book club this month.

At the end of June, Sarah graciously agreed to come and be our featured author for June. So we're reading Landlock X together. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can come and join us live for that Zoom, and if not, you just still need to get Sarah's book. It's just amazing. Amazing. And just for the people that maybe poetry can be intimidating sometimes, I found your work very approachable. And of course I've, you know, found new things upon second, third readings, but it overall, like it was not easy to read. I don't wanna simplify it like that, but it was very approachable and just loved it. Fellow adoptee. Well done.

**Sarah Audsley:** Thanks Haley. Yeah. Shout out to poetry. You can read poetry.

**Haley:** Yes.

**Sarah Audsley:** Don't be afraid.

**Haley:** You too. You too can read poetry and understand some of the meanings behind it. And we probably won't truly know all the things that you've hid for us in there, but some of those is what we interpret for ourselves as well. Right. So it kind of can go both ways.

What do you wanna recommend to us, Sarah?

**Sarah Audsley:** Thank you so much, Haley, for having me and for giving me this opportunity to talk to a fellow adoptee and to be in touch with people in your community. I'm so impressed by the community that you built, and also I think that's really lovely that you're asking anyone you're interviewing to have a recommendation for another resource.

And so my recommendation is Cleave, by Tiana Nobile. And .She is a fellow Korean adoptee and actually a dear friend from graduate school who invited me to join her in the Starlings Collective. We are an adoptee collective that has list of resources on our website and also we do also do an adoptee book club cause there can be many, several ones.

And it's so exciting to be together in multiple different ways and to have multiple access points for adoptees to engage with each other. I didn't have, definitely did not have this when I was growing up, so I'm super grateful. But Tiana's book, Cleave, is also a poetry collection and she was also been interviewed by Haley on Adoptees On podcasts.

So you can listen to the interview with Haley and Tiana and also pick up a book Tiana's book. She's a master of folding in research into her poetics, which Haley highlights in the Adoptees On interview with Tiana. Tiana is a dear friend and I think I see her as a sister and also as a fierce adoptee activist and advocate for our voices to be able to tell our own stories.

So I have deep kinship to her. Thank you for asking. Yeah.

I

**Haley:** love that you recommended her. I didn't know that you guys had that connection when I invited you on and I, I know I gushed about Cleave on her episode, which is 180.. It is so good. Oh man. Of course you're friends. Of course. That makes all, everything makes sense now. Okay. We will link to that. We'll link to the Starlings Collective.

I know Tiana has done several courses for fellow adoptees who are, you know, getting into poetry writing and I know you guys have done online events together and poetry readings and things, so make sure you are following Sarah and Tiana for sure.

Where can we connect with you online, Sarah?

**Sarah Audsley:** Sure. I have a website. It's SarahAudsley.com and SAudsley, so Saudsley on Instagram.

**Haley:** Perfect.

**Sarah Audsley:** Thank you so much for our conversation today. Thanks, Haley. Thanks for having me for all you do for the adoptee community.

**Haley:** I'm so excited that Sarah's book is our June adoptees only book club pick. We are recording that book Club event live on June 24th, and if you are a patron, you can join us. I hope you'll join us. Our co-host Sullivan Summer will be interviewing Sarah and many of our adoptee friends will be joining us as we discuss this tremendous poetry collection.

We have just announced some changes for the adoptees on Patreon community, and I'm really excited that we are gonna be having a new monthly event with direct access to some of your favorite adoptee therapists who have appeared on this podcast. If you have questions you'd like to submit to our therapists, you can join us at adopteeson.com/community, and there's a link to the Ask and Adoptee therapist form in Patreon.

Our first live event, if you're listening to this episode, when it goes live, is next Tuesday, June 6th, but we will be having these monthly a portion of them will be recorded and dropped into the adoptees off-script podcast feed. So even if you can't join us live, you will hear these therapists share their advice with us.

So I'm really thrilled that we can bring you this brand new resource. Okay. Join us for book club. Join us for Ask and Adoptee therapist. Thank you for listening to Adoptee Voices. Let's talk again next Friday.

254 [Healing Series] Adoptee Superpowers

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/254

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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, 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.

Today we are talking with Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker about adoptee superpowers. Don't worry, we are not going to express gratitude for a traumatic experience over here. It's more about understanding what are some common traits we hold and how we can embrace and make use of them to our advantage. Before we get started, I wanted to invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today or on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome back to adoptees on Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker. How are you?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I'm good, Haley. Thank you so much for having me back.

Haley Radke: I was like looking through my website to be like, when were you on last? Yeah. It's been a while. Yeah.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I know it Pandemic time got wonky, right? It's oh, it was just a few months ago, right?

Oh, no. Two years ago.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now you're a whole author and everything. You've been busy. Yeah.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: That's what I did during my downtime. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Just wrote some books. No big deal. Yeah. For folks that are new to you, can you just introduce yourself tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you're an adoptee and an adoptive parent and an adoptee therapist, so you've got all the titles, but we'd love to get to know you a little more.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Sure. Yeah, so as Haley said I jokingly call that my trifecta perspective, that I was adopted from India as an infant, and I'm an adoptive parent to a kiddo from Ethiopia. And then I'm also a psychologist who specializes in adoption. So I have a private practice based in Denver, but fortunately I'm able to see clients and over half the states in the United States. So that's been great. So yeah, it's just been amazing to be able to tie all of those pieces together in supporting the adoption community. And I think it, it gives a unique perspective because I definitely view my clinical lens through the adoptee lens. And so things like, creating the National Adoptee Therapist Directory that's something that I was very sure needed to be just adoptee therapists, not other people in the constellation who are therapists. And so things that I think just give me kind of that insight into what adoptees really need.

Haley Radke: I love that you said that cuz I was gonna bring it up. You know that list that everybody sends around when they're looking for an adoptee therapist? Chaitra made that. So thank you. I use it all the time and I also tell people, because lots of time, we'll just go a little sidetrack here.

Lots of times folks will email clinicians on that list and they may be booked up, but it's also a great way to be like, okay, your booked, but who in your area is also an expert that you trust that you could refer me to? So that's kind of like how I recommend people use it sometimes.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really smart way to go about it cuz there are, I mean the list is growing every day. I think it's all but two states that have someone listed, so that's pretty amazing. And yeah, there still are not enough of us but there are. Clinicians we trust in our local areas that maybe they're an adoptees, but we know that they're adoption informed. So I think that's a really good way to go about it.

And I wish that I had the time and space to make the list international, but fortunately, ICAV, Intercountry Adoptees Voices, they have an international list on their website that's growing. So I have that listed on the directory too, in case people are looking internationally.

Haley Radke: Awesome. I did not know that. I will have to look at that.

I was just talking with a Canadian adoptee therapist and I was like, we gotta get the Canadian list going. So perfect. Maybe someone's already doing that. Great. Wonderful. Okay, one of the things that I love about you is how you are able to reframe things for us on a regular basis, so as to help us look on the more positive side.

And I know that you see so many different clients and you've worked with adoptees for years and years, and so you have this really. Amazing insight into all the great things that have come out of a not great situation for adopted people. So I don't know if you wanna reframe it at all for us, but we're talking about adoptee superpowers today.

And that's the piece I struggle with, right? I'm like, okay, so these are good things, but we have to acknowledge that they come from a place of trauma. So what do you wanna say about that to us?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah. Oh, so much. Yeah. I mean, in general, I think it's absolutely true. We're coming from a place of trauma and separation and loss and grief and so many things that non adoptees just can't even fathom.

And that's partly why I think we are some of the strongest people on earth. And we've gone through so much and many of us at very young ages that to survive that, I mean, there's inherent strength and resilience in that. But I also think weirdly enough, there's a benefit or a silver lining to the fact that we have some idea of where our trauma is coming from.

Whereas, I mean, I think there are all kinds of people in the world walking around with trauma and attachment injuries who aren't really aware of it or don't understand where it's rooted because it's not as clear cut. So at least we have some idea where it's rooted and kind of how to work with it and.

Like anything else, things are on a continuum and so something that in one situation may be viewed as a trauma reaction, there are other situations where it could be an asset and it can be really useful to us, and it's probably why we're here today because we were able to use it in an adaptive way.

So I think it's important for us not to minimize our strengths and still acknowledge that they absolutely grew from something that was unfair and we shouldn't have had to go through. But it doesn't mean that suffering is the only outcome that can come from that, that we can take something from it and use it to our benefit as well.

Haley Radke: So the first thing that comes to mind for me is a huge piece of my personality, which I think is why I have been able to be an interviewer, is this empathy I have. And, sad face for me to learn that, oh, maybe that comes from being hypervigilant and so. That's not great. Thoughts on that? Do you think that's accurate? Is that the tie there?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Absolutely, and I mean, that's exactly it, right? That there are downsides to that. That empathy can be something that leads to, on one end of the spectrum, people pleasing or prioritizing others' needs and emotions over your own. Being, like you said, being hypervigilant to what everyone else needs and those social cues and minimizing yourself in this space.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you've created this incredible podcast that is the go-to for the adoptee community by being someone who can have empathy, who can listen really well and pick up on those small cues and nuances and bring those things to light because you're bringing something out of someone else right to help them shine, which is absolutely a beautiful skill in itself.

Haley Radke: Thank you for the second part, not for the first part.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I think that first part is something, almost every client I've worked with, every adoptee I've known, like so many of us can relate to that, right? We make ourselves small to try and make space for others because we're not sure that we're worthy of taking up the space.

But that's part of acknowledging these things on a continuum. That when we can see that yes, this can be a struggle sometimes or it can be a superpower sometimes, then we can take ownership of it and feel proud of it and feel like we have more control over when we choose to use those skills and how we choose to use them.

Haley Radke: I appreciate hearing that piece of it, right? If we're aware of it, then we can be like, okay, maybe I do need to set up some more boundaries cuz I'm being a bit of a yes. Man here volunteering at every school thing that I get asked for or whatever. I mean, I'm just making that up. That could be anybody.

What's another thing that you see in a lot of adoptee clients? That could be on this kind of spectrum.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: So what often is looked at as a trauma response is needing control and being really independent. And yep, your facial expression tells me that is resonates too, right? For many of us.

Haley Radke: I thought I was good on this episode. I just wanna say.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I'm sorry if you're feeling attacked.

Haley Radke: Too much in my business.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: And yeah, I mean, all these things are things that I resonate with as well for sure. But that idea of control is not a bad thing and independence is not a bad thing, right? Like we don't wanna take it to the side of the spectrum where we are in isolation or we're trying to micromanage and predict everything.

But even just recently, I did a webinar on helping young adults kind of prepare for that transition to college or jobs and moving out of the home. And a lot of adoptees, it's easier for them to make that transition because they want to be independent and they know how to schedule things and meet deadlines and keep track of what needs to be done, right?

So there are definite benefits to that again, and being in control. I mean, control is really just about safety and predictability, and I think control gets a bad rap because who doesn't want to feel safe and be able to predict what happens next? Right? That's human nature. So some of those things that get pathologized so easily and just kind of put as a label on the adoptee, these are things that are more general and human in nature and we're not necessarily seeing the strengths in them because that isn't how society has taught us to see these things.

Haley Radke: Okay. I still feel like you're reading my mail because I, too, was excited to get out there on my own. Okay. Wow. I really hope I don't hit every single point on your list here.

Okay. What's next?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: All right. Healing episode. Bring it on. Right.

Haley Radke: Okay. So empathy control, but what that's like a independence. It's like we're, we can be independent. What's another common trait that can kind of go either way?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Here's a, I sense the hesitance there.

Haley Radke: Sorry. My face. I just look afraid. I think so.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: How about when it comes to attachment that so many people will kind of accuse adoptees of being too quick to cut others off or to stick with relationships that are harmful, right? That we might have this push pull and that we struggle with boundaries. But there are benefits to that too, that if we're quick to cut people off, Yes, that may sometimes need some work, or we may miss out on things.

But also that means we're much less likely to have toxic or harmful relationships in our life. We won't tolerate it as long as most people. Or, relationships that may be more challenging or difficult, we may stick with those longer because, if we're afraid of loss or rejection, we're more likely to put up with kind of quirks and idiosyncrasies.

So again, even things like that transition into young adulthood, right? Like dealing with roommates for the first time. You're less likely to be like, I can't deal with this. And more likely to say, okay, everyone's got their quirks. Let's see how we can figure this out. But then somebody who is too much and, stealing your things or throwing up in your bed, I don't know, whatever roommates do you know.

Haley Radke: Did you have a roommate that threw up in your bed?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I had some, I did have some rough roommates though. There's my own episode of trauma. Right.

Haley Radke: I was, I went to Christian University and I didn't have anybody. There was no throwing up in my bed. That was the other dorm.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: That was my dorm apparently. Yeah. But yet things like that, then, right then we're more likely be like, okay, this is too much. I'm not gonna tolerate this. This isn't safe for me. So I mean, again, it's that we have some idea of where those attachment injuries come from and when we can own that and understand them, it helps us identify our needs more easily.

Haley Radke: Okay. What about, I'm gonna call it being a chameleon. What's that? Because I, I feel like some of us can sort of mold to the situation, or there's been too many Instagram reels lately in my feed that are like, Oh, you like this personality? I made it for you. I'm like, oh, do I do that? Maybe.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah. Again, I mean, absolutely. That is something that. We can struggle because we lose our own identity or even have a difficult time forming our identity because we're modeling it off of so many other people. Or that can mean that we are really good at being in different situations with different people and reading social cues more clearly, and knowing what's expected of us in that situation, what would keep us safe in that situation.

So it's a huge asset in a lot of ways. As long as that's not all we're doing. If we also have the ability to kind of come back to this grounded and core part of ourselves, and some of that is just kind of even reminding ourselves of what are my traits? What are these core traits about me that no matter what situation I'm in, I know that they're present and I trust that they'll help me navigate through it.

Haley Radke: There's this highly adaptable piece that, state the obvious Haley. I mean, you're a baby or child into a different family. Okay, I gotta fit in here so I can live. Right? That's the like, underlying message we get from our body.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Absolutely. And there is a difference between fitting in and belonging. I mean, fitting in is, adapting ourselves to meet the expectations of the environment or other people. So we have to filter ourselves and we are sacrificing some parts of us, and then belonging when we can bring our whole comprehensive self into a space and feel safe and accepted. I mean, that's really powerful and I feel like that's fairly rare too.

It is hard to find those spaces and those relationships. So we definitely wanna hold on to those when we can. But knowing that fitting in is not a bad thing either. That's what's required by our society in a lot of ways. So again, as long as that's not the only thing we're doing in all spaces, it's a great asset to be able to use for work and for other kinds of relationships.

Haley Radke: Are there any other traits that kind of pop to the top of your head about that you see in adoptee clients?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah, I mean, so many. Even just thinking about things like perfectionism. A lot of us, sorry, I'm hitting on something again. I can tell from a facial expression. Man, I wish this would be a video episode so people could see.

Haley Radke: No, because it's this therapy and for me. Everybody knows I have that. It's not a secret.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah. So I mean those things though, right? Like perfectionism, again, like to a certain extent it can hinder us, but in a lot of ways that is incredibly useful to be detail-oriented and opinionated and know exactly how you want things to go. Yeah. That kind of assertiveness can serve us really well in a lot of situations.

And like you mentioned, even, empathy earlier that so many adoptees, I know it's, I think there are a lot of people who will say they root for the underdog. But I think we truly have a different level of sympathy and empathy for people who have non-traditional backgrounds. Like we're much more likely to be attuned to the nuances of how they might be affected by our language or our actions, because we see ourselves in that too. We understand how important those things are in interactions.

So I truly believe most adoptees I know are some of the most empathetic people on earth, which again it's got its benefits and its downfall. But when we own it and understand it, we can set the boundaries we need so that it's not taking up all of our bandwidth.

Haley Radke: Okay. We are a sports loving family. Now I say we, I guess I'm including myself in that kind of, but mostly it's my husband and my two boys. And because of what I do, every time they hear an athlete, some super famous athlete is adopted, they're like, oh my gosh, you gotta get so and so on your show. What about these high functioning, high achieving, trying to prove you're lovable? That's what I read into it. What do you think about that?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah. That's, I mean, that's one of the identity pieces, right? That so many of us feel like to be worthwhile and have value that we have to contribute to the world in massive and significant ways. And I feel like maybe I even mentioned this on your show in the past, but you know, that idea of, if I'm gonna be a doctor, I can't just be any doctor. I have to be the one who cures cancer.

Or if I'm gonna be a scientist, I have to be the scientist who stops climate change from happening, right? And these are like teenagers in my office who have said these things. That idea that we have to be the best and the most, and do the most. Again, it's not a bad thing to be ambitious or an out-of-the-box thinker.

Those are great things for society and for us. But if we're pushing ourselves so far to something that's unrealistic, that's where it creates that pressure. So again, it's just about that balance of using the skills in the way that. That serve us really well and not feeling like we have to be a certain way or we should be a certain way.

Haley Radke: So for all of these things, right, I think we're all hearing there is a piece of that can be super unhealthy that we could focus on working on. How do you know when it's time to embrace that? Maybe you need to work on something like that. If it's in an unhealthy way that we're swinging to the not great side?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: It really depends on your comfort level. And I, I think this is one of those things that oftentimes adoptees can be pathologized by people who don't understand our experiences or needs. Especially making us monolithic instead of seeing us as unique people with our own stories. To really be aware that we get to choose what feels comfortable and safe for us, and that's fluid.

It's going to evolve over time and what feels comfortable to me right now might feel like a hindrance two years from now. And that's when I decide it needs to change. So I think it's really about attuning to ourselves and understanding what's fitting well for us in the present and what's fitting the needs that we have and what's not, what's missing and what do we feel like we could be getting more from.

So it's more about being honest with ourselves than anything else.

Haley Radke: You wrote this children's book called Marie Discovers Her Superpowers and it's so beautiful and like I just love your character in the book. Come on. That was so cool. Anyway, one of the things that Dr. Chaitra in the book is teaching Marie is agency over her story. And I think one of the things that we can be most, quote unquote valued for is for this interesting story we have to tell people. If they hear, oh, you're adopted. Oh my gosh, tell me more about that. Right? And even when I ask Hey, can you share your story with us? There's been a few guests that have been critical of that question and have felt from the general public, right, that they are being asked to entertain with my like personal life story. And so in the book, you're teaching Marie how to take ownership over her own story and decide when and where to share it. And can you talk a little bit about that as it's part of our identity. It is. I think it's one of our superpowers is having this, knowledge of our story and we don't need to be doling it out to anybody who asks.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Right. It's essentially, I wrote the book that I wish I would've had as a child. I was that kid that if anyone asked me anything about my story, I felt like a deer in headlights, and I could just like I just blurted things out without really feeling like I had any control over it.

I would walk away feeling like almost like it was a violation, that I, why did I share that? I didn't wanna share that. I didn't need to tell the clerk at the grocery store about where I was from, or how old I was when I was adopted. So this was a story that really was born out of my work with so many kids in play therapy. And being able to give them the sense of ownership and autonomy over their narrative that I wish I would've had.

In each of the stories in the Adoptees Like Me series, there's an adoptee coming to Dr. Chaitra's office for a session, and we're working through a particular issue around adoption. And so this one is about Marie who has gone to the park and had the experience of being asked a bunch of really insensitive questions about her adoption by strangers when they see that Marie and her mom don't match.

Right? So very common story for transracial adoptees, but also same race adoptees. Like you said. As soon as there's that awareness that you're adopted, people suddenly think your story is an open book. And I don't know what it is that causes people to lose their tact when it comes to that, but it really is something that we have to be in a space of having practiced almost like what are my options for responding and tuning in to what's my bandwidth in this situation?

Do I feel like I have the energy to educate people or do I feel like I trust them enough to share? So I really, I mean this story was with the goal of truthfully, I think, with anyone, not just adoptees in their stories, but with anyone, like we need to recognize that we have ownership over our narrative and we can choose how and when we share it.

And so the story was all about giving specific strategies for that because I think we all need that. It sounds good to say oh, I need to have boundaries with my story. But how, right? So giving practical tools like, here, you can respond this way, or you can choose to ignore it this way. I think that's a really helpful jumping off point for all of us to really start to, to own the ownership essentially.

Haley Radke: I love that. And I l like, I mean, all the things you share in the book are absolutely things adults can do too. Right? When people would say, when I was a kid, oh, you look so much like your dad or your mom. I would shout, no, I'm adopted. I would be like, trying so hard to differentiate myself, so I don't know what that is, but I've had the opposite. No I'm, I am adopted.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah. It's just as awkward though, right? It's this almost like this secret you're carrying and you feel like an imposter of people think one way and that's not it. I mean it's, yeah. It's just unfair that it's part of our story that's so personal and ends up being public in so many random ways.

Haley Radke: Yeah, cuz it feels weird cuz as soon as I said that, it's now it's out there and you can't unring that bell. So I don't know. Anyway. I really appreciate that. Do you wanna give us maybe one strategy that we could use when we're asked something like that? Let's think about, let's do online spaces, right?

So maybe we're commenting on Instagram post, something about adoption, and we get asked an invasive question that we're like, huh, stranger on the internet. I don't really, is this the place for this? What would you say?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I really like the, "I wonder" response. I wonder why you ask, or I wonder why that feels important to you, or, I wonder what you're expecting me to say.

Kind of giving people that question that helps them kind of go back into a place of self-reflection. Oh yeah, was it okay for me to ask that? Or am I being too invasive? And what is too personal? Where is the line? So I think that question back, and I wonder, is such a just kind of a gentle way of asking as opposed to why, which often feels accusing and people get defensive quickly. But just, I wonder why that feels like you need to know that? Then it makes it not quite as a- I don't know. It doesn't feel like quite as much of a, an attack when you add that to the front. I dunno. Therapy 1 0 1 kind of things.

Haley Radke: I like that. That's good. Is there anything else that you wanna kind of say around this general topic? Again I started this it out this way, right? There's this discomfort in me trying to make us look on the positive side. Whereas I also don't want us to sit in the negative side. So there's like this real balance and I don't know, is there anything else that we could be looking for more on the positive, like adoptee superpower side without covering up the hard stuff?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I think it's like you said, that naming that this comes from hard stuff is important, and we have built these skills as a way to survive the hard stuff. So we've earned it. We deserve to use these and feel proud of how we've used them.

Haley Radke: That's good. I like that. All right. Anything I didn't ask you wanna make sure I ask you about?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: So I will mention that even though the book is a children's book, I have been getting a ton of feedback from therapists and adult adoptees that it has been just as powerful for the adults. And I think because it is the book that I would've needed as a kid, it's speaking to a lot of adults who feel that same way. So I would say even if you're not a kid, go ahead and order Marie Discovers Her Superpowers because my understanding is that it is reaching the kid in all of us and it's giving, kind of, filling in the gaps of things that we needed.

So I hope that it can be something that people of all ages are discovering their superpowers.

Haley Radke: I love this line. Marie says, I never thought of myself as an adoption expert before. Wow. I'm definitely going to grab a second copy to bring it over to my therapist's office next time I have an appointment.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: That is great.

Haley Radke: Yeah. She loves all the adoption Brooks. I bring her, I'm sure.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Sure. Yeah.

Haley Radke: I wonder if she listens to my show. Ooh, I've never asked her. Okay. If you had a client with a podcast, would you listen to their show?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I don't think I would. I would definitely ask their permission first.

Haley Radke: Okay. Oh, alright. She probably doesn't listen then. That's fine.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: I know every therapist is different, it's worth asking.

Haley Radke: No, it's better. It's better cuz then she can't get extra intel in which to dig on. Thank you so much Chaitra, I really appreciate it. So Marie Discovers Her Superpowers is the first one.

What's the second book that's out?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: The book that just came out is Casey Conquers Bedtime. It's the second book in the Adoptees Like Me series, and that one is all about bedtime anxiety. So again, just normalizing and validating why adoptees might struggle with sleep and why it might feel kind of anxiety provoking.

And this one gets into E M D R work, eye movement and desensitization reprocessing. It's something that kind of helps our body to move through something that's really uncomfortable. So it's using kind of a resourcing technique.

But I love this story because it's really something that we used a lot with my kiddo with sleep anxiety that was helpful and it offers a way to use like movement and rhythm and music chanting some really powerful ways to move through that sleep anxiety, and again, take ownership over it.

Haley Radke: Do you have adult clients coming in struggling with sleep as well?

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah. It tends to look a little bit different because as grownups, right, we have a little more control over, I'm just gonna sit and be on my iPad all night, or work all night, or so it doesn't quite look the same as kids who have caregivers coming up to them saying, you need to go to bed, put this away, take this outta your room, go to sleep.

So this hopefully will give a little bit more of that control back to kids. And I'll mention that this series is something that I am self-publishing because I wanted to be really careful to make sure that a mainstream publisher didn't get to adjust the adoptee voice throughout the series.

So it was really important to me to protect adoptee perspectives in this and make sure it was directly coming from the adoptee voice. But self-publishing is pretty expensive. I did not reali-- just to give you an example, I had a plan for 12 books and I narrowed that down to seven and now down to six.

So I'm like, if I can get these six out, that would be so great. Cause they're on really common themes that I feel like adoptees struggle with. But I do have a fundraiser going on to help support the cost of self-publishing. So I'm hoping that people will check that out too. And there are some cool rewards with it that even if you just contribute $10, you get full access to my webinar library. All my recorded webinars for the rest of the year.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's cool. You've done some really amazing webinars. So that's a great, I'm just gonna make a comment on the publishing thing. I think a lot of people don't know. I've talked with several adoptee authors who are published by mainstream publishing houses who had to, let's say, sanitize some of the adoptee experience to make it more palatable for the general public. So I appreciate that you're not doing that. Wonderful. Love to hear it.

Okay. Where can we connect with you online support, the books, all the things.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Yeah, so you can go to my website growbeyondwords.com. There's one for the books at adopteeslikeme.com. I am on Facebook and Instagram, so you can find me in those places too.

Haley Radke: Perfect. We will link to all those spots in the show notes. Thank you so much, Chaitra. It's just an honor to talk with you again, and I appreciate you highlighting all those like good qualities that we have.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Absolutely. Yeah, I hope you can take ownership over your superpowers, Haley. Cause you have so many of them.

Haley Radke: I was gonna say, so some unhealthy thing like yeah, I'll shove all the rest of the dark closet, but don't do that. Don't, I'm not recommending that.

Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker: Thank you so much for inviting me to be on the show again, I really appreciate it and in everything that you contribute to the adoption community.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

I endorse Dr. Chaitra's new book and as I was reading it for the first time, I thought God, wouldn't have been amazing to have had these when I was a kid. I am so thankful. I feel so thankful for the adoptees who are putting out work like this in the world so that the future generations of adopted people can feel more known and validated sooner in their lives.

So we're not out here processing this stuff at age 40, 50, 60, 70, and instead, hopefully we've come to our identities at a younger and younger age. I am. I just feel so, so grateful. I wanna thank. So much my Patreon supporters, like without you, I literally could not do this show every week. Thank you so much to all the people who have been donating to our transcription project.

It means so much to me that you want this show to be more accessible to more adopted people. I feel really grateful. So if you wanna join and support the transcription project, it's adopteeson.com/donate. Or there's just a link right on the homepage, adopteeson.com, where you can see how far we have come and how far we have to go for that fundraiser.

And then if you wanna join Patreon, it's adopteeson.com/community. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

253 Dr. Sam and Sandria

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/253

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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. I am thrilled to bring you two fellow podcasters today. Dr. Samantha Coleman and washington are our guests from Black to the Beginning. They share their stories of being friends who just coincidentally found out a few years apart in adulthood that they also were both adopted.

We talk about the lack of resources for same race, black adoptees, and how Dr. Sam and Sandria are working to build the community and supports they wish they had when they first found out they were adopted. Before we get started today, I wanted to invite you to help support our transcription project.

If you go to adopteeson.com/donate, you can see how much we've raised towards our goal of 20,000 to cover the cost of transcribing the entire back catalog of Adoptees On which will help support more adoptees around the world by being more accessible. We would love your support for that project.

Adopteeson.com/donate. We wrap up today's show with some recommended resources for you, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopt eon.com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees on, Dr. Samantha Coleman. Hello, Dr. Sam.

Dr. Sam: Hey, how are you, Haley?

Haley Radke: I'm great. And also with us, welcome Sandria Washington. Hi Sandria.

Sandria: Hey Haley, how are you?

Haley Radke: I'm great. I'm so glad to finally be able to get the chance to speak with both of you. You're doing really amazing things for the adoptee community and so I'd love it if you would share a little of your stories with us. Dr. Sam, do you wanna start out.

Dr. Sam: Absolutely I can start, but Haley, I wanna say to you that I have a little bit of a girl crush on you because when we were first starting out, we were looking at various podcasts and it was like Adoptees On, like, yes, they are on point. So I just wanna let you know that you've been doing phenomenal work as well and have definitely been an inspiration. So wanna say that first?

Haley Radke: Thank you.

Dr. Sam: In terms of story, it's such a long one, so I'll try and bottom line it if you will. But I am a late discovery adoptee. I found out at the age of 26 that I was adopted. Or I'm gonna say the majority of my life really felt sort of out of place within my family. Could never really put my finger on why I felt that way. I made up a ton of reasons why I felt different. I was constantly looking into the face of my mother not being able to find any resemblance. So telling myself that I looked more like my father based on skin tone, personality, things of that nature.

So finding out at 26 and having it confirmed, if you will, that no, I do not belong to these people, was definitely a mind blowing experience. At that time, I really didn't know how to react. I think you get that type of news and you're just stuck for a second. But I remember vividly getting into my car, getting ready to drive home and like the flood of tears just came to the point where I could not drive.

So I called my husband, let him know this news. I'm like screaming at him in the phone. Oh my God, I'm adopted. And he's like, what? Just come home. And you know, that right there just started my journey into knowing that I was adopted. It wasn't until about four years later that within the state of Illinois, the adoption records were opened, or at least you could have access to your birth certificate.

So I went through that process of requesting my birth certificate. It took about two years for me to actually receive my birth certificate because there was a whole process of, you know, biological family could deny whether or not they wanted you to have access to that information and so on and so forth. So it took a quite a bit of time.

In the midst of that. I did have a daughter, so I got that information in 2012, but I had my daughter in 2011, so that was my first known blood relative. So after meeting her for the first time, that's when I got this information that started that, that process of true search and reunion for me.

I was really focused at that point on not necessarily finding people, because I still felt they're very much like strangers. So I was focused on finding my story, whatever it was, I didn't care how terrible it might have been, or even if it was just something that was, you know, lighter on the lighter side, if you will.

But I didn't care. I just wanted what the story was. So I spent not too long, it couldn't have been any more than 24 hours that I found, you know, precisely where my family was. I went about the business of contacting individuals, so I did all of the calling, the letter writing. I finally had an aunt who was willing, if you will, to give me a little bit of insight about my family.

And then she quickly swore me to a bit of secrecy as well, not to make contact with additional family members. And so I held that secret, you know, for a while until 2016. And in 2016, my mother's sister passed away at a family reunion, and I think that was an awakening for me, where it was like, oh, this is my quote unquote adoptive family.

I was very close to this aunt. This aunt has passed at the family reunion, and it really brought for me like, oh, this mortality thing is real. I don't have the time. Or we think that we have the time to continue to search or continue to do whatever it is that we want to do in life. And I'm like, I don't have the time to continue not knowing my biological family, not knowing my story.

So reached out to a sibling at that point in time and that opened up the gates to me being able to meet my biological parents. As well as my other siblings. So in 2016, decided that I was going to tell my friend group. So as I stated earlier, I only told my husband so nobody else knew at that point.

So between 2006, 2016, you're talking about a decade of me holding this and trying to deal with it myself. In 2016, I began to tell my close circle of friends, Sandria being one of those individuals in that friend's circle. And I remember, I wanna say it was , goodness was October, 2016.

Sandria: I think it was October, I think it was October.

Dr. Sam: October, 2016 is when I told Sandria we were on our way to an award ceremony. She was getting ready to be honored and I dropped it on her and I'm always in here because I think that's the segue into how Sandria comes into this mix. But that's the cliff notes version, of doctor Sam's story.

Sandria: Yeah. Woo.

Haley Radke: In your adoptive mother is the one that did tell you that you were adopted? Yes.

Dr. Sam: Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. Woo, Sandria.

Sandria: That is a story. Oh my goodness. I can still remember the day that Dr. Sam told me her story being in the car. And it's so crazy thinking about it in hindsight because, you know, she literally dropped this information on me and at the time I just didn't, I don't know, I didn't feel the weight of it and, you know, everything that she just shared with you, it just didn't hit me the same way.

Of course, that was 2016. I would not find out that I was adopted until two years later. So prior to 2018, life was pretty regular. Born and raised in Chicago. We're both Chicago girls. Grew up with my mom and my dad for the first six years of my life. And then they separated. And then an older brother, I have an older brother who's 10 years older. So for most of my life it was me, my mom, my older brother because he was so old, I pretty much was raised like an only child because he did not hang with me. We did not kick it like that. So kind of felt like the only child. Similar to Dr. Sam. growing up with those feelings of just feeling different, I experienced a lot of sadness, just insecurity, a few different reasons.

I did not look like, let alone anybody in my family, just other people. I am extremely tall. So you guys listening, you know, you can't see that. But I am almost six feet tall. I've been tall since I was a baby. So did not look like my five two mother, or, you know, my brother and my father had different features, but people would always tell me growing up that I looked just like my mom.

And so just dealing with insecurities of body image, but a lot of the insecurity was emotional, just not being able to put my finger on it.

So fast forwarding through life 2017, a cousin of mine sends me a message via Instagram telling me that I'm adopted. This is about six years after my mother had passed. So by this point, both my mother and my father are deceased. Her message is the first time I'm hearing anything like this, and I didn't know what to do with it. I wasn't sure of her intention with the message because there was a little bit of family friction, and so I wasn't sure if she was just saying something to be hurtful or if it was indeed true.

So I kind of sat on it. I sat on it for about three months. And then finally in April of 2018, the day after Easter, I called one of my aunts and I asked her, you know, is it true? And she confirmed that it's true, I'm adopted. She didn't have a lot of details, and in the moment when she told me it was a sense of validation.

Like it just helped to fill in the blanks of a lot of the things that I was feeling just as an adult and even as a child. So it was just that moment of validation because before that, I just kind of felt like, I don't know, like I'm the crazy one. You know? It's like your gut and your instincts are always being questioned.

And so having her confirm that information was just very validating. And so after I got information from my aunt, I called my older brother. He confirmed it as well. He had a similar story that he didn't have a lot of details. And then after that, I went to dinner with a friend of mine, had some nice Jamaican food, some rum punch, and just tried to let it all settle.

And then the next day I woke up just extremely angry. I had a hard time believing that no one had any information after 38 years, that no one had any details. And so I was just very angry, but also very determined to get answers myself. And so that day I started my Google search. Step one, how do I get my original birth certificate?

Figured out how to do that. Sent off for it. It came back about two weeks later. I filled out the health questionnaire, sent that off, and about two weeks after that received a questionnaire back. They had found a birth relative and I had all of her health information. It was a woman in Pittsburgh. I didn't know the relationship of the woman at the time, but I just knew she was a biological relative and I kind of sat on it. I didn't know if I should contact her or not. I tried to Google her, tried to Facebook her, do all these things and could not find this woman. And I'm just like, who is this person with no digital footprint? Like, who are you? And so a few weeks after that, she ended up reaching out to me via Facebook.

We talked on the phone and then a week later I was in Pittsburgh meeting her. She's a younger sister, one year younger. We were both placed for adoption. She grew up primarily in Pittsburgh. And then when I met her, she shared that we have three older siblings. So I am one of five born to the same parents.

The rest of the family was still here in Chicago. I would later find out in 2019. Someone from my biological family reached out to me via Facebook, which social media is just a whole thing. People keep finding me on social media. But I had a uncle reach out. He had come across my information via ancestry. My ancestry.com.

He was not aware that someone had placed child for adoption. And long story short, he connected me with my birth mother. And in 2019, December of 2019, I met my birth mother, birth father, and two of my older sisters that still live here in Chicago all within the same week. So things were moving pretty rapidly from for me.

And, you know, in terms of just being open and vocal, once I found out that I was adopted, I immediately started telling people because I was just so taken aback. I couldn't believe it. Even now it's still a little bit hard to believe. And so I just started telling everybody. I immediately started posting on my social media and I invited a group of my girlfriends out to dinner so I could tell them.

And it was just really important to me that people know and kind of have that experience with me of being in shock because the same way that I felt shock, I think everybody else felt shocked too because this was new information for them. And that's kind of the, that's the short story.

Haley Radke: Wow. So were your parents still together, your biological parents?

Sandria: So, no, they actually did not end up staying together. And I think even at the time when I was conceived, they weren't really on the best of terms. It may have been kind of on again off again. So by the time myself and then a year later, my younger sister yeah, they weren't together and they actually have not spoken in over 30 years.

They are not in communication now at all.

Haley Radke: Wow. But they parented the first three.

Sandria: I mean, my, my birth mom did the parenting.

Haley Radke: Gotcha. Okay. And Dr. Sam, how about you? Because when you mentioned birth mother and birth, you kind of did it in one go, were they together?

Dr. Sam: Yeah, so my birth parents, they were teenage parents. They split for a little bit, not too long. Came back together. And then they had two additional daughters, two of which they raised. So as far as I'm concerned, they've been together at least since my birth mother was 15.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Dr. Sam: So they've been together a long time. Yeah. And I would not have known that without the aunt sharing that information with me. And it's always interesting, and we've heard people say this as well, that when you're thinking about the birth parent, you're automatically thinking about the mother. And so I remember I was asking all these questions about my mother and my aunt was like, well, your parents are still together. And I'm like, whoa, really? In what universe like does that happen? Because again, you know, I'm thinking you all were teenagers and the fact that you're still together was crazy to me.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Well, I mean, both of your stories are unusual in that I feel like late discovery adoptees is a little more of an unusual story. Then your friends and connected and you know, so Sandria, you have this resource in Dr. Sam. What were your first conversations like together when you were like newly unpacking this?

Sandria: I'm trying to remember, cuz I know I reached out, but. It doesn't stand out. But I do remember that she was one of the first people because it was just like, it immediately brought back 2016, because I think in between those two years we hadn't really talked about her story a lot. Like it just wasn't something that, you know, just came up in regular conversation.

You know, we would just do our regular girlfriend thing, but once my story came up, it's like, oh, snap. Like I know somebody who has lived this.

Dr. Sam: And it's. Interesting too, when I think about our conversations, because we've recently, Haley, been talking about this, like what were, you know, our conversations, what support like would I have been looking for?

Right?

Sandria: Yeah.

Dr. Sam: And I was sharing with Sandria, and I think where we differ a little bit too is that I was not as open about it. And I likened that to a couple of different reasons. So by nature I'm private, but so is Sandria, but I, definitely a private person. And then also too, which I know a lot of adoptees struggle with, is that my adoptive parents were still around.

And so for me it was about still being respectful of that relationship with them. Not telling too much of their business. Like it was one of those things. And I've often heard adoptees say like, they don't even start searching reunion until parents are, you know, deceased. I think for me it was just like also being very conscious of that relationship.

And then even when I did start, like I said earlier, being even told by biological family, let's keep this quiet, right? So almost like how do I respect everyone's feelings here until I finally just hit that boiling point, like, this is about me at this point. I can't continue to cut myself off and be silent.

Haley Radke: Well, I really appreciate the platform that you both decided to start. And I remember one adoptee interview I did with a black adoptee. I mean, so many of them are transracial families and I remember at some point, you know, she reveals she's the same race adoptee. And I was like, oh, like, it just like, like I had that same like, oh, I didn't even think of that.

Which is, you know, stupid. Of course there are same race adoptees in the black adoption community, but when you guys were looking for resources and support and things online what'd you find Sandria ?

Sandria: So there was nothing. There was nothing there. And it's crazy because I know, I'm like, okay, me and Samantha are not the only two black adoptees raised in black families.

Like that's just not possible. And I remember 2018, April of 2018 started like just, you know, putting in hashtags and put in the hashtag black and adopted and it came up with two hits and neither of them had black people. And I just went down this rabbit hole and you would see a lot of things about like black animals and dogs and just, you know, just crazy stuff.

But it just wasn't associated with black adopted people. And so as we, you know, got into doing this work, we formed black to beginning in 2019 and. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I would try to find, you know, the online support groups in different communities and most of them catered to transracial adoptees.

So even if you found a space where there were other black adoptees, they had a different experience. And so just trying to find a space for same race, it didn't exist at that time. So once we went public with black to the beginning I think we came on Instagram in May of 2019. That was one of the first things, like it just wasn't a thing.

And of course, now, you know, in 2023 it looks a lot different. There are groups that you know, either speak specifically to black adoptees, whether same race or transracial, but there's also some same race black adoptee groups as well. But in 2019, that didn't exist. And so for us, that was a huge problem and that's what kind of forced our hand in like, okay, we don't know what we wanna do.

We're not exactly sure what Black to the Beginning is going to be, but we know that it needs to be something because there are no spaces no stories being told about same race, black adoption. So whether you are a black adoptive parent or you're the adoptee, or if you are in some type of kinship situation, like those conversations were not happening on a large level.

And so we knew we wanted to do something to bring that to the forefront.

Haley Radke: And Dr. Sam, so you trained as a therapist, so you've got that expertise in your background as well. And I went to your presentation both of you when you presented at the California Adoption Conference and you were talking about black adoption in pop culture.

And it was great. Like it was like 10 outta 10. If you can see that, go back and see.

Dr. Sam: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, it's so fun. Got to vote. It was great.

But I'm curious if you can talk us through a little bit about this myth that black people don't adopt. And from my understanding is that there are lots of informal adoptions and in black families and it's just not. You know, like labeled with the word adoption. And when I was trying to research like you know, baby scoop era and stuff, I'm like, are there, were there black birth mothers forced to give away their babies?

And I understand that a lot of the maternity homes were segregated and there were some for black mothers, but they were fewer and that a lot of them did keep their babies. So can you talk a little bit about that, maybe some of the history and what you see as maybe why some black people don't know they're adopted?

Dr. Sam: Yeah. So that is, so steeped in a lot of different things that black people have experienced from a historical perspective. So I think first and foremost, like realizing that black people do adopt formally. So going through private agencies and adopting children because that is what they want to do, either because they want to add to their existing family.

So sometimes there is again, this notion that black people are adopting to because they may have infertility issues. Not necessarily. We've come across families who actually had strong relationships with their church. We know that the black church was actually encouraging black families to adopt, and so black families were actually saying, okay, well we already have biological children.

We want to add to our families in that way. On the flip side, you do also have black families that did experience infertility, and they did see it as a viable option. We do also know that from a socioeconomic perspective, those families that were a little bit higher up socioeconomically were able to engage in more of the formal adoption you know, decision.

But I think what has been experienced in black families from the test of, or through throughout the time, even going back to our historical roots in Africa, like we are communal people. We believe in raising the children within our community. We talk about it taking a village. And so one that's a part of who we are as a people, period.

So therefore, if something happened to a child or what have you, other people would come to that aid in order to take care of the child. Right? So even with Sandria and myself, right, like we're girlfriends, but my daughter considers her an aunt. She does not consider Sandria Mommy's friend, right? So if something were to, you know, happen to me and I was like, Sandria, can you know, take care of my daughter?

Well then that's that fictive kin piece that comes into play. So I even remember, like as a child, there was always this notion of play mamas, play cousins, this whole thing. Like that's just a part of like black culture and what we, you know, have done. But then, Going into like more of the informal processes, we have to be able to really understand like the systems that have been in place that have really done some damage in regards to keeping families intact.

And I can go on all day, you know about that. If we think about foster care, if we think about access to, you know, good jobs and good homes and things of that nature, and how black families have been split up because it has been deemed that they do not have the appropriate resources to take care of children.

And so because of that relationship with various systems that are in place, black families then say, we're not gonna even go in that direction. What do we need to do to protect, you know, what we have going on here? And so therefore, if my daughter can't take care of her child, or my son can't take care of his child, we will bring that child to the family.

We're not gonna even bother going through, you know, the legalities of it, because at the end of the day, you're our blood and that's it. And that's a great notion, right? That, you know, the family stays together. But what we have realized is that it is still an adoption. And so therefore, if I am that child and I'm seeing my mother or father walk around in my midst, but I know that I'm being cared for by my grandmother and grandfather, I have questions, right?

So I still want to know like, what is the issue here? If this person is really a cousin, but they're being brought up in my home as a sibling, right? I may be okay with the fact that my cousin is my sibling, but that doesn't mean they're okay with it because it's like, where are my parents? Why aren't they able to, you know, be with me as you know, mother and father or what have you?

Or a lot of times we may see like differences that occur. And I think what's also different between being formally adopted and being adopted into the biological home is that when you're adopted, you don't know, right? So you don't know what it is that you might be missing. Not yet, at least, right? But if I'm walking around and I'm looking at all of these different people all the time, and it's like, I still don't know the story, still no one is willing to, you know, have conversations, you know, with me about it.

Sandria: So I think with the informal adoption piece we've done it. We will continue, you know, to do it. And I think we're just at a point now that in order for black people, especially those adoptees that grow up, right, like we need to be at a place of emotional and mental wellbeing. And that begins with families acknowledging that even though we are blood, this is still an adoption and we need to be able to attend to whatever it is that might come up for you around identity, around loss or what have you. Because it's just as valid.

I think in terms of our work, because we understand that word adoption or adopted can be triggering. Like it, it does still come with some shame and, you know, people use it as a joke, like it's not. Nobody necessarily wants to be adopted or thought of as adopted. So when you talk about these informal adoptions and kinship relationships, it's probably more common than a lot of people realize.

But people aren't self-identifying as an adoptee, even though they may have grown up in a situation where they're not being raised with their biological parents, they don't self-identify that way. And so with our work we're trying to find or trying to be that bridge. So how do we get black people to have an awareness around this conversation and actually see the similarities between someone like myself or someone like Dr. Sam and somebody who was raised with their grandparent. You know, like there's similarities there.

And so I think, you know, through the work, through the podcast, different stories that we've been able to share, trying to unearth those types of stories, that way you can bring it to the forefront and maybe even give people some language or some type of maybe confidence to say like, oh this was my experience.

You know, like, I kind of am, I am adopted. We actually had one guest who, you know it was almost like she had a light bulb moment during our conversation because it's like, you know what? I am adopted. It wasn't formally, you know, there isn't any legal paperwork, but everything that I'm experiencing is very much me being adopted.

There just isn't any legal paperwork tied to it. So I think just trying to give people that awareness and an understanding that, there shouldn't be stigma, shame, because as Dr. Sam mentioned, we've been doing this, we've been taking care of other people's children within the black culture, but beyond the black culture we take care of others.

And so I think some of that stigma and shame, it's almost like once adoption became something that could be commodified and, you know, all these different rules and just systems around it, it's like, oh. Maybe this isn't something we want to talk about so publicly or, you know, it's it's got that scent of shame on it when in actuality this is something that, that we've always done and we did it without shame. So it's, how do we get back to that?

Haley Radke: Thank you. So I have a feeling we have some different perspectives on adoption here. I hear you describing those things and I think, oh my gosh, it's family preservation, right?

Keeping the unit intact and even if we're not talking about it, we should be talking about it. I hopefully know that is my biological mother. And even though she's not acting in my life as the mother figure at this time, so there's still some kind of knowledge. I'm like, that's better than stranger adoption, I hope, like. Right.

So I'm curious through the years and all the different conversations you've had with, you speak with all members of the adoption constellation and using constellation in that it's not just biological mothers and fathers or adoptive mothers and fathers or us. It's all the extended family as well.

What are some of the perspective shifts that you have had over these years about your attitude towards adoption? You know, some of us call it like coming out of the fog or, you know, finding this adoptee consciousness and different touchpoints in that. Have you had a perspective shift, Dr. Sam, a perspective shift?

Dr. Sam: That's a good question. I think the perspective that I have held and hold in a lot of different areas of my life is that to each his own. And I think we have our perspectives based on our life experiences, based on various worldviews that have been shaped by a number of different things. So I remember when we were starting this work and looking at, you know, a lot of different resources and posts that were out there.

So, for me, for a point in time, it almost felt a bit scary where it was like, yikes, there's so many people that think that adoption is, you know, this super terrible thing, that it is something that should be abolished. That adoptive parents really don't have any right to say anything or what have you.

I just don't hold that perspective at all. The reason being is because of my background, I've seen a lot of nasty (expletive) like that is the best way that I can say it in terms of families and things that have, you know, been done. And I don't think that sort of behavior or treatment of children is going to end any time soon, unfortunately.

Therefore, I do believe that if there is a family that can take care of a child, that opportunity should be afforded to that child. I don't think it's just like an opportunity for a parent to that child. And I also say that too, because I have seen children go through group homes. So when people are like, oh, well no adoption, well then what would you like to see happen?

Do you want to see the children like not have any family to go through group homes to essentially be floating around in the wind and depending on the system to take care of them, but then when they get older and then they have to depend on the system, you wanna like moan and complain about that too?

I just don't stand with that. Right. So I, for me, I want everyone to take their experience for how they want to take their experience and they can move forward in whatever perspective works for them. So I think I'm just I'm at a place that whatever works for you is what works for you. I haven't seen too many shifts though, right?

In terms of my perspective, I think at one point there, it was kind of like me going back and forth around this whole late discovery adoptee thing and whether or not I would have wanted to have known earlier. I know Sandria and I differ, you know, on this, right? And that's okay. And I still maintain, I don't know whether or not I would have wanted to have known earlier.

I can't say that because that was not my experience. What I do know is by listening to some of these stories in this quote unquote, what I think is fake openness, that just simply telling somebody that they're adopted and not having any further conversation with them is just as bad if not even more traumatizing than not saying anything at all.

That's my judgment. Right? So for me, I can't say right, but I did, I wavered a bit. Like should I have wanted to know earlier? Yeah, I don't know. Like the verdict is still out. I can't speak to that. But that's the only perspective that I probably did a little bit of wavering, but ultimately to each his own, because we each have a unique story.

That is one thing that I've learned. We're all in this community together, but each story is different. We just have a few common threads.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I was so glad. I'm so glad you mentioned that, cuz that is literally a note I had to take down to be like, oh, that's an interesting perspective. I've never heard anybody say that, so thanks for addressing that without me even asking.

How about you Sandria?

Sandria: So for me, I think the first thing I had to get a perspective because adoption wasn't anything on my radar. It was not a part of everyday conversation. I didn't think about it. And so once I found out that I was adopted, I think that immediately. Just, I don't think I was ever in the fog, like I'm immediately out the fog because I just feel like we need to talk about it.

I felt a level of disrespect, if that makes any sense. Like I just felt like the system as I'm seeing it, you know, as I'm starting to research online and I'm not seeing any groups for same race, I'm just like this can't happen. Like, this is not gonna sit with me. And so, you know, I'm gonna talk about it, I'm gonna share my story regardless of what family thinks or, you know, whomever.

I think the perspective, just kind of in broad terms, I do think in its layered, I, it's very nuanced because I think about. If I just look at my situation, my birth parents, specifically, my birth mother, she had already had three children prior to me. She was 19, about to be 20 when I was born. She had my oldest sister at 14.

So I'm just imagining myself as a young woman, a young mother already with three children, and now here comes a fourth child and then a year later, a fifth. And so I'm just thinking about, and I don't know for certain, you know what her true feelings were, you know, maybe she really did want to keep all of her children.

Maybe if she had more support, more resources, you know, maybe that could have been a more viable option for her. But I do recognize that in some situations, some people are not ready to be parents or they don't have a desire to parent. And so what happens to those children? You know, like, is it better to preserve a family and be raised with parents who did not want you who may emotionally abuse you, if not physically abuse you?

Like what? What happens in that situation. And so I think unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you think of it, there will be a need for others to raise the children of other people. But I think going back to Samantha's point, you know, it's like to each their own, there's that choice. But I do think there could be something damaging, like what is family preservation at what cost?

And so that's why I say it's nuanced and it's layered. You know, if you can give people the resources than everything that you need, then you probably can keep fam more families together. But sometimes that is not always the intended outcome or the outcome that people want. Maybe they just do not want to parent. And that's a reality.

There has to be some type of mechanism for that reality as well. I would say beyond that, another shift is just being open to the other stories that are different from my own. So even with our podcast, we're not just speaking to black adoptees who were raised in black families, we are speaking to transracial adoptees, we're speaking to birth mothers and you know, adoptive parents.

And so leaving space for people to share their experiences and their stories, even if their perspective might be a little bit different because sometimes it can be hard listening to an adoptive parent and maybe they might say something that feels a little bit triggering or a little bit like, oh my God, that's what you think.

But you know that is what they think at that moment, and that's how they feel, and that's their experience. And so I think just allowing myself to be open to all the different stories.

Haley Radke: Thank you both so much for that perspective. I know it's, you know, you've said things that listeners will be like, oh yeah, me too for that, or, oh, not for me, or this, you know, I know that there will be people on all sides of that.

I am so excited to share your podcast with folks. I think Black to the beginning as this concept that you have brought into the world is tremendous and the conversations that you've had on the black adoption podcasts are really tremendous. I've listened to several and, including an adoptive parent, and hearing their perspective was really helpful to me.

I just appreciate how people show up for each other in those conversations. Like, I really feel like your guests are showing up for you and really engaging in very deep conversations much like we've had today. And I just think the richness of that is just adding to the resources for our community. So, you know, again I started the show with this, but thank you so much for bringing these conversations and your network to the adoptee community, and I really am so, so thrilled that this is available for folks.

I think, I don't know, there's just something about the vulnerability that bringing ourselves to these conversations in this place of a learner is so impactful. So thank you. I think everyone will get something really valuable if they start listening to your show.

Is there like one or two in particular you wanna point people to that you think adoptees on listeners would really be like, oh yeah, we'll connect with this for sure. Oh, that's putting you on the spot. I know your podcast shows, this is like, every episode is my baby. I can't which one, which pick a favorite. Pick a favorite. Right.

Dr. Sam: I always remember them by names. Not necessarily numbers.

Haley Radke: All right. You see the name? We'll put in the show notes. No problem. Yeah.

Dr. Sam: So Chana Timms, so that was...

Sandria: season one.

Dr. Sam: It was a season one. I believe so. She's a biological mother. Christopher LeMark that was season two or season one.

Sandria: I think he was season one as well.

Dr. Sam: Was he season one as well?

Sandria: Season one was on fire season.

Dr. Sam: Like, it seriously is gonna make me like look through because all of the and this is like for anyone that's been on our show that might be listening to this, it has no bearing on, you know, the intensity of our conversations with them.

I'm just thinking about the ones that spurred me into action. And based on what you just said, Haley, I remember Chana Tim's episode spurred me to into action because I had been estranged for a bit from my biological mother and my siblings. That particular episode moved me to action. So the, of course the rest of our guests have been phenomenal. And to your point, the vulnerability that they give, you know, to us is a true gift. So I'm just thinking about that because of my own life circumstance. But ,there's been you can't lose by listening to any of them, right?

Haley Radke: That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay, Sandria, what do you wanna recommend to us today?

Sandria: Yeah, and no, both of those are really good ones. Chana and Christopher LeMark I would put in I think this one is also season one Dr. Phoenix.

Dr. Sam: Yes, Dr. Phoenix.

Sandria: She is another late discovery adoptee. Hers was kinship, so she found out that her favorite aunt was actually her biological mother. But that episode really stands out because at a point as she's telling her story, we just kind of had to stop and hold space because she was crying.

And it's one of those things, you know, they tell you in radio like, no dead air don't have dead air. But we just had to let the dead air be. And you know, we didn't edit it out because that's what happens, you know, people are being so vulnerable and transparent and for a lot of people this coming to the podcast is their first time really telling their story.

So this was a moment, you know, I don't think she had ever really told it as comprehensively. And so as she's telling it to us, she's telling it to herself. And it just really moved her and just caused her to think about some things. And so for me, that was really powerful because it's a reminder we always say, you know, we're living in real time with this.

Like I've never, I've only been adopted for five years now. So it's like this is all in real time. And so even for her, she's known about her adoption for several decades now. And even after several decades, it still has an impact. It's still, her story is still touching her in different ways. And so that was powerful to me.

Haley Radke: It's a sacred space, right? It's like coming into a holy space.

Sandria: And then you're bringing, you know, whoever you know, publicly is listening into that space. So we do not take it for granted at all. We are truly honored and humbled. And then I would just say, kind of on a fun note this might have been season three? Darius Colquitt very fun episode.

He, once you listen to the first five minutes, you already see that this episode is about to be a party. But he's another L D A, but just the energy that he was able to bring to his story and then you see how he's able to, you know, take this story and transmuted into his art. He is a creative artist in theater.

And so you just get all of that. And so I think one of the things we try to do is, you know, yes, some of our stories are very sad or angry or whatever it is, but we try to point out like, you know, that's not the totality of our stories. Like how do we progress? How are we healing? What are we doing to get to the other side?

So even if we're not to the other side, it's important that guests are able to share what they're doing to get to the other side and just give some hope. And so I really enjoyed his episode. He's a good time. So yeah, if you can listen to that episode, that's another great one to start with.

Haley Radke: Okay. Thank you so much. We will absolutely send people to those episodes. What do you want to recommend to us for your recommended resource, Sandria?

Sandria: Yes. So before there was a Black Adoption podcast, one of the things that really helped me I came across this documentary called Little White Lie. It is by Lacey Schwartz. She is not an adoptee, but her story is so similar to that of a Late Discovery Adoptee.

It's a P B S documentary. I think you might still be able to find it on Prime, but it is just a powerful watch. So even if you are not a part of this adoption constellation, but you know about family drama and messiness, this documentary has all the layers of that. Highly recommended.

Haley Radke: I watched it yesterday on Prime because I was going through your presentation again.

Sandria: Wow. Yes.

Haley Radke: And I was like, oh yeah, that's another thing I hadn't seen. Yeah. Racial reclamation is a big piece of it for yeah. Wonderful. Okay. Dr. Sam, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Do you have something?

Dr. Sam: I do have some recommendations, but it actually goes in a different direction. So part of what Sandria tapped into is that yes, we can have sad, happy, embarrassing, frustrating, angry stories, you know, all of those emotions that come into play. But one thing that we know as adoptees that we're continuously searching for self, and that will be a never ending journey.

And so one thing that is important for us, you know, at Black to the Beginning again, is to not stsay where you're at, but to be in the driver's seat of where it is that you're looking to go. For me, just even from a professional standpoint on what I do on a regular basis in terms of leadership development, I work very heavily with assessment data. And so even when I speak with my clients, I tell them often that assessments are like horoscopes. Some of them are extremely spot on, some of them are a little bit off, but in between all of it is the truth.

And you know, for someone that is seeking more information about themselves or trying to get in touch with behavioral tendencies and what they need to dial up or dial down on in order to achieve certain results in their life, it's even more crucial for adoptees.

So I recommend for adoptees to get into some other things, right?

Like just. Thinking about how you're gonna lead in your own life. So search for what's called a free DiSC assessment. That's d I S C. And that will give you some insight into your behavioral tendencies. And I think being able to, one, understand who you are, gives you an opportunity to look at other people that are around you and how to engage with them as well.

And in the future, stay tuned because we will be talking to you all or offering you all opportunities for coaching around your personality, your behavior from an adoptee perspective. So check it out. Free DiSC assessment.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness.

Sandria: I love a good assessment.

Haley Radke: Yes. I love that. I love how it's evident in your work that you don't want people to stay stuck and listen, I'm with you. With you a hundred percent. Okay. Where can we connect with you online? Where can we listen to your podcast? Give us your socials, Sandria.

Sandria: So if you go to BlacktotheBeginning.com you can be linked to everything. You can find the podcast, you can find our Instagram, our Twitter. It's all there if you go to the website.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. And I'm assuming if people follow there, we'll find out more about what Dr. Sam said. So, yep. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And again, thank you for your work on behalf of fellow adoptees, honor to serve alongside of you.

Sandria: Thank you.

Dr. Sam: Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: I feel so. So thankful for all of the adopted people who are stepping out and creating their own adoptee shows, podcasts, blogs, Instagram accounts critiquing adoption, YouTube channels, books, memoirs or otherwise. I mean, there are so many adoptees, building, creating, writing the things that we needed when we were going through it.

And so I really appreciate Dr. Sam and Sandria doing that for our community. And I know there's so many of my guests are doing that as well, and so many of you are doing that. So thank you.

Hopefully we will have, you know, so many things available when adoptees are ready to dig into their adoption stuff, we'll be here waiting for them, right? So, thank you. I think our community is just growing in really amazing ways and I try my best to highlight as many folks that are doing a wonderful work for you as possible. So if you know of someone that you wanna make sure that I interview and Adoptees On to hopefully boost their platform and get more people listening or reading or whatever it is you know, feel free to let me know.

I'm always looking for new folks that to share with all of you. So last thing, I just wanted to let you know that this show is literally listener supported. I couldn't do it without you. And I have all these great thank yous for Patreon supporters, including a weekly podcast called Adoptees Off Script.

A book club for adoptees only, who are only reading adoptee authored work. We have off-script parties. We have some new things coming up that I can't tell you about yet, but just really exciting resources for you. If you wanna support the show, make sure it keeps existing. Go to AdopteesOn.com/community to find out all the details.

We would love to have you over there. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

252 Anne Elise

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/252

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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're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. I'm so excited to introduce you to today's guest. My friend Anna Elise. Anne lives abroad and we talk about some of the intersections she sees between living as an American expat and being an adopted person.

We also talk about our love of reading adoptee, authored work, rejection from our birth mothers, and what it's like growing up with an adopted brother who was keen to live out the defiant, quote unquote, acting out adoptee stereotype. Today's episode as brief mentions of suicide and traumatic death.

Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com.

Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Anne Elise Burlinger. Welcome in.

Anne Elise: Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: Okay, so I know you because you have been a patron of the show for such a long time. I should have looked it up when you started, but we've connected more and more in book club, so it's been really special to get to know you in that way, and I'm so excited to hear more of your personal story today.

Anne Elise: Oh, it's an honor to be here. Haley, your book club is the one and only book club I've ever been in, so. Me too.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. Anyway, why don't we start with your story.

Anne Elise: Okay. I am a domestic, same race adoptee. I was born in Alamosa in southern Colorado at the very tail end of the baby scoop era. And my birth parents were 20 and 21 years old. My birth mother was an out-of-state student at the college there, and my birth father was a young hippie.

They were a couple of sorts and they'd been together for. Well, over a year before I was born, but never with any intention of getting married. And my birth mother kept her pregnancy successfully under wraps. And once I was born, she told the social worker that she wanted to relinquish me and not have her parents or my birth father's parents find out about me.

Haley Radke: So did. So did your birth father know she was pregnant?

Anne Elise: Yes. He was the only one who knew she was pregnant. Okay. And I only know this from him. We are in Reunion and she wouldn't discuss the pregnancy with anyone and she did successfully hide it physically too. So I have to chuckle in my darker moments that the Alamosa District Court served as a bastard disposal machine.

Haley Radke: Oh, no.

Anne Elise: I was in, in fact, disappeared from my birth parents' lives. My birth father did inform his family later and he, to his credit, signed up with some of the registries during the eighties and nineties in an attempt to, to find me, reconnect with me. But I have to assume that my birth mother never told anyone. I experienced secondary rejection from her in 2000.

But as I said, I am in reunion with members of my paternal birth family. Cause Colorado opened its sealed records in 2016. I was able to get not only my original birth certificate, but the adoption file and it was other documents in that file that gave me his name. And identifying information.

Haley Radke: I've heard lately more and more about how, back then, some government organizations would refuse to have the birth father's name on birth certificates, which that's not news. But also if the mother insisted and wrote it out, I had a Canadian adoptee tell me that, that whoever was working in the office, they would literally cut out white strips and put it over wherever information was on the birth father section and photocopy all the papers. So some of them have these like shifted you know, I mean, I guess essentially white out sections just to hide it from us.

So you're saying that that information was in other places in that adoption file?

Anne Elise: Right. Colorado at that time, as far as I understood, if the birth parents weren't married, If the parents weren't married, the father was just left off. The mother's word about who the father was, just they just didn't they didn't record it on the birth certificate.

So my original birth certificate doesn't even have my name on it either. It has a date, a time, a sex. All of the fields, the boxes for my birth mother are filled out. Nothing is left out there, and then none is recorded for the birth father and my brother. I had a younger adopted brother from a different family of origin.

The situation was the same for him. Only we knew because he connected with her, that she named him. She named, she gave him her father's name because she naively thought he would be given that information and that would enable him to find her. But later, you know, she requested a copy of the original birth certificate and my brother too, and those, those were released then in the same condition mine was. Virtually empty except for the birth mother. Yeah. Now there is in the file, a report of adoption, and that's where everybody is listed. The adoptive parents are listed, the birth parents are listed, and then I was listed too. But that, no one, no one talks about that document.

Haley Radke: Certainly not.

Anne Elise: Yeah. Yeah. So my file tells me I was placed in foster care three days after my birth, and I stayed at that placement for three months and was given the name Valerie. After that I was placed with a prospective adoptive couple in Northern Colorado and they did adopt me. As I indicated, I have a younger brother, but I was the first child they adopted, and that went through when I was a toddler and my parents believed they adopted me as a baby. That was, you know, how we told that story inside the family. But the paperwork really shows a different story that I was indeed, like my brother, adopted from foster care.

Haley Radke: Interesting. Because as a toddler, so when you were like two?

Anne Elise: Well, the decree of adoption went through right around my first birthday.

Haley Radke: Oh.

Anne Elise: So, I mean, that is the cusp between infancy and toddlerhood. Mm-hmm. But I was walking. So.

Haley Radke: Right.

Anne Elise: The first full year of my life, my status was not clarified as to who I belonged to. And I don't think there was any real doubt in the minds of anyone, the social worker or my adoptive parents at that point.

But there has to have been some angst, you know, some undercurrent of nervousness before the court issued the final decree that, you know, transacted the baby. I just, You know, Jan Beatty and her, her recent and stunning memoir, American Bastard, just notes that, you know, these baby transactions take time.

And I think that's, that's the reason I was in foster care. And the reason that if we wanna be very accurate in describing how it all happened that I, I was in, I was adopted from foster care. Not as an in infant. And I think that is a feature of the adoptions that are handled by the state and the state welfare departments. That there's just more vetting going on.

It's not a private adoption through an attorney or just, you know, a handoff in the delivering room where the doctor brokers the baby, basically.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. I, you know, I appreciate you kind of diving into this part. Because I also was adopted through the province, and my adoption wasn't finalized till, I think it was nine months. And so that's what my paperwork indicates too.

Anne Elise: Mm-hmm. Very typical. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Yep.

Anne Elise: So my adoptive parents, they were both university teachers. They had me and they adopted me. And, and my younger brother, he was two years younger, so we were close in age, but very, very different in personality, temperament.

And as Nancy very points out, we did exactly what was expected. I was compliant in acting in, and my brother was defiant and acting out. And I think having a non-genetic younger sibling who was really impacted by the trauma of his relinquishment and adoption, kept any kind of rosiness from coloring my view of adoption or even parenting in general.

I think from a very young age, I had a front row seat too what tragically unfolded as a failed adoption. It took 45 years, but I think in the end, that's the correct description of what happened. I should probably mention at this point that my adoptive parents and my adoptive brother are deceased and that I'm the only one left now to tell the stories.

Haley Radke: I'm sorry.

Anne Elise: And so as a young child, I had a very real desire to know who my parents were and where they were. Then at that point when I was asking the questions, but my, my adoptive parents were just not equipped for the situation. And both my brother and I were conditioned not to talk about it and to stop questioning and my brother and I, strangely enough, never talked about adoption among ourselves.

Not once, never nothing. And I regard this now as one of the central tragedies of our childhood.

Haley Radke: So even in adulthood, you didn't necessarily talk about it?

Anne Elise: Not the adoption experience. He did go into reunion well before I did, but I didn't talk to him about it. We didn't compare our families of origin or anything like that. The conditioning to be silent about it, to, to push it underground was really strong. And again I think our family dynamic was such that my brother and I weren't natural allies.

Haley Radke: It feels like such such an intimate conversation to have with someone. Right?

Anne Elise: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think we have the language for it.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And if you're al not already, like deeply close and sharing these, whatever my hopes and dreams, to go from whatever level you are to go talking about adoption stuff, it's so deeply personal. It feels like a huge leap.

Anne Elise: Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't even start talking about adoption in these kinds of ways until very recently.

You know, I need to I, I find myself reflecting often on the observation that many adoptees wait until their adoptive parents have passed before really looking closely at their adoption and their a childhood and where they're at with it. And I think that really kind of, describes my case because I noticed once my parents passed as, as much as I missed them, as much as I grieved that, that I suddenly, not suddenly, with time I found myself feeling things and thinking things that I don't think I had permission to feel or think before.

And so I think there was a, it was just off limits. It was a no-go area.

Haley Radke: Right. Appreciate you saying that and referring to it as like conditioning and things. Cuz I think sometimes when people hear us talk about it, like, oh, it wasn't safe to talk about that in my house or whatever. It's like people think, we brought it up one time and we got yelled at or something. But that's really not it. Maybe we did at some point when we were younger, ask some question and then you can just tell. Right? You can tell what's a safe topic and what's not, and what makes your parents uncomfortable and, okay, well gotta keep the peace. Like we can't go there. Right?

Anne Elise: Absolutely. And I, I was really inquisitive. I think I was pretty relentless as a young child. So under 10. And I remember when I was in fourth grade, we had done the Anasazi, the Four Corners, area in Colorado. As part of, you know, elementary history. And my parents took that opportunity in spring break to go and visit the Four Corners and Mesa Verde, and that's not all that far from Alamosa.

So they took me to Alamosa too, to show me where I was born. But what they showed me in effect was, this is an absolutely cold trail. We don't know anything. That's the hospital you were born in. That's it. That's what you get. And that's when I just realized that if there was information out there, it was out there, but it wasn't with my adoptive parents.

And so, you know, I go underground for 30, 40 years.

Haley Radke: Well, no shame, right? That is Well, that's true for most of us. I think just for mental safety.

Anne Elise: Right. You just have to get on with it somehow. Yeah. The rest of life, you've gotta, you've gotta grow up, you've gotta, you know, you have things to do. You, and, but it never, it, it's always there. It's, it's always there in the background.

Haley Radke: Well, I'm really sorry for the loss of your brother.

Anne Elise: Thank you. Thank you. It, it's been a complicated, complicated thing to process. It was a untimely death. It was a, a sudden accident. It was not suicide, it wasn't drug related. But, you know, it was a, was a really misfortunate event. And I remember going back and forth with the coroner because they did need to make a call between suicide or natural death. Natural cause. And I think in the end, I think she made the right decision because she was looking at the time in which he died, the place in which he died, in the circumstances under which he died, he froze to death.

But of course, I knew the full arc of his life. And for me, one could also have argued that it was the results of a very long suicide attempt.

Haley Radke: Yeah. There's deep, deep pain. We can see deep pain, right? Yeah. I'm sorry.

Anne Elise: Yeah. Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: So at what point did you start looking into what adoption meant to you? Was it really after the death of your adoptive parents?

Anne Elise: No, that's a good question. I, I remember when I was in my undergraduate years, Rickie Solinger's exhibit, Wake Up Little Susie, came to my campus and I, I wandered into it one day. It was in the student center and it blew my head off. Because of course, you know, I knew that other adopted people were out there.

My, there was my brother and there was also like half a dozen other kids in my school that I knew of. We never spoke about it with each other, of course. But I knew that adopted people, adopted children, were out there. What I had never really given any thought to was that there were just as many birth mothers out there.

And what I hadn't realized is that, this was part of a larger social phenomenon, the Baby Scoop era, and that it was news to me that many of these women hadn't wanted to give up their babies. And it was also news to me that most of these women had even less information than I did. I mean, I knew the height of my birth mother, her eye color, her hair color, but she didn't know anything like that about me.

And so it, it, it really hit home to me. What I think I had felt all along was that I was someone's missing child. You know? I had parents, I had a family, but I was also at the same time, some somebody's missing child.

Haley Radke: It hit that hits differently, right? It's like, oh my gosh. That's literally the difference when a child is either apprehended or relinquished and you're, there's a permanent, permanent severance. You're out there somewhere and who knows, who knows where you are.

Anne Elise: Yeah. And that, that showed me for the first time, cognitively, that that was a dimension of this experience.

Haley Radke: When did you decide to look into it further? I know you said Colorado opened records in 2016, but prior to that, did you try and search?

Did you like, what were the things that you did in the late 1990s?

Anne Elise: So yeah, it must have been about 1998, 99. There was internet, but there wasn't any DNA and information on the internet hadn't been heavily monetized yet, that you could just go on and find out someone's birth date or where they lived and that sort of thing.

That, that was much more, there was less out there, but there weren't any of the barriers where you have to pay to get stuff that, that came slowly. Later, there was a group in Colorado, it was run by an adoptive mother, but she, she was quite an ally. She was pro adoptee. Very feisty. Very. Very informed as much as one could be, or, or she was up. She was very informed with the state of things in the, at that point in time. And she did everything she could to help us searching.

Colorado was buttoned down tight. I think that if you were lucky enough to have a full name and a birth date for a birth parent, there was some sort of network that would connect with the D M V, the division of motor Vehicles to get you that information.

But that was all contingent on the birth parent also living in Colorado. So, you know, there were stories in, in the, it wasn't, it was like before Facebook when you'd have like these email lists. And people, it was just, it was great. It, it was these long email almost correspondence relationships where, you know, people, a person would write a message and then everyone else would take a day or two to craft their responses.

I mean, it was much slower than the Facebook exchanges of today, but they were also much deeper. It was kind of like playing chess at a distance. I mean, real effort was put in to these discussions that took place online. I even have some of them archived still. The support that what we have today, I think in, you know, our adoptee communities that existed then as well.

And so I dived into that. I basically became a little private detective. Yeah. And, and as it was all paper-based, we would comb through the non-identifying information to just sort of, what's fact and what can be speculated and based on that, what's likely, what's probable, what's possible. And in 2000, you know, I, I actually returned to Alamosa with my fiance now husband, and we went to the Alamosa High School and paged through yearbooks looking for pictures of men who had similar faces to mine.

My gut instinct was just that I looked more like my father than my mother. It was just my gut instinct. And we went to the college there and went through those yearbooks too. And that's where I found out not just what my birth mother looked like in a very grainy black and white photograph, but that I also found out the state she was from that had been withheld.

That was another, another thing we were told, she was an out-of-state student, but never told which state she came from, and then just no information was given about where my father was from or where his family was from. In the end, he was from an Alamosa family or other prominent Alamosa family, but that was never given.

So I grew up in Colorado. My adoptive parents were transplants to Colorado. My mother's from Minnesota, my father from Chicago, so they weren't coloradoans. And so I never felt that I was necessarily a bonafide Coloradoan in either. So while I felt connected to Colorado, I never felt like I had deep roots there.

And so, yeah, that was strange. I would, I knew as American, but I ultimately didn't know which state I was from.

Haley Radke: Did that make it easier to move to a new continent?

Anne Elise: Yes. Yes. And the fact I had lived abroad as a child.

Haley Radke: Sure. Tell us about it. I think you've lived a unique unique life to someone who's lived in the same province their entire life. And you know, I lived in the same town for 14 years now. I live where I was born. It feels so strange to me to hear about people who have moved and live confidently in different states, countries abroad. It feels scary and I don't know that I would do that. I don't know if I would have it in me, but if you feel unrooted, perhaps it's easier. I don;t know.

Anne Elise: One very formative thing that my adoptive family gave me for which I am, I'm really grateful. I will always treasure this, was the opportunity to travel internationally from a very young age. When I was 12 years old, my dad, who was a history professor, did a Fulbright Exchange and we spent time in Genoa, Italy.

And my mom was a passionate francophone. She was a French teacher and she had strong ties to France. So we spent a fair amount of time there and elsewhere around the world in, in the years that followed. And I think this was a crucial aspect in my relationship with my adoptive mother because at age 12, right on the cusp of my teenage years, the time when you would expect a child to rebel, I witnessed her superpowers when we were in foreign countries where English was not spoken.

She took control, she spoke the languages, she figured out how things worked, she made phone calls. She networked with locals and other expats. She was very outgoing and savvy. And Continental Europe was the perfect setting for her. And I remember very consciously thinking to myself that there was a lot I could learn and absorb from this woman.

And so we became much closer during my adolescence than we had been during my earlier childhood. And that has served me well. That served me very well. But I think it was moving into a completely different sphere that made that possible. So I mean, also even putting adoption aside, I, I think it would be fair to say that I had been primed to seek a life far away.

And I stuck close to home. I really did. I stuck very close to home throughout my university years. I attended the university where my parents taught both for my bachelor's and my master's degree. But I knew, I knew when I made a move, it would be to a place very far away.

Haley Radke: That's really interesting. When we moved to this house, I thought, I'm never moving again. So they can take me outta here when I'm, when I'm elderly. But do you think, what is this connection with adoption and living an expat life? Do you feel like there's any, I don't know, through lines for you or things that you've compared for yourself? I know it's not most or a lot of us, we've not experienced that.

But you've lived, how long have you lived where you lived?

Anne Elise: I moved to Germany in 2000 in the fall. So, 23 years, 23 and a half years.

Haley Radke: So the year that your birth mother rejected you.

Anne Elise: She rejected. It was just one phone call that an intermediary made on my behalf. And that was in the beginning of September, and I moved at the end of October. So, yes, it was right on the heels of that.

Haley Radke: Okay. I want you to answer my question. I just asked you, but I need to pause. And I had a listener email me and ask me, oh, is there any service that essentially, she was asking what an intermediary was and if that was available. And I replied back and I was like, you gotta do it yourself. Don't let an intermediary do it. And if you're not ready, you're not ready and don't do it yet and get supports. That's essentially the gist of what I told them. What are your thoughts on that? Being someone who let someone else do that phone call for you and that was the result.

Anne Elise: That's interesting. In my case, and I'm speaking only for myself, I'm very grateful that I did not make that call. It was a devastating call. Even for the intermediary. She stopped doing that work shortly after.

Haley Radke: Oh my God.

Anne Elise: Yeah. I don't, I, I think I'm a little too discombobulated to... my birth mother was taken completely by, surprised by the phone call. Yeah. And she got triggered. She got sent out into orbit.

I think, now, reflecting upon it years later, that she didn't even understand the conversation. And my, I was seeing a counselor at the time who guided me through the searching for her and the contacting and he helped me in the aftermath of that. And his take on it was very interesting. He was a medical doctor who had become a psychologist and he, looking at the transcript that we got from the intermediary about of the call, he likened it to a person with a liver abscess. That life is fine, you have no indication of what you're carrying inside you, and then suddenly your liver ruptures. And the toxins flood your system. She just became overcome by the shame and guilt of it and wasn't able, wasn't able to respond in any coherent manner. She did not she, I mean, even from the outset of the call when the intermediary said, are you this person?

Her response was, well, what do you want? She never would, you know, it wasn't a yes, I am this person. Mm-hmm. It was already standoffish and things just went very, very south. From there, as I can gather, it was devastating to me like nothing else in my life. It took me years, years to process the rage and the un ari sadness.

Yes. Because I didn't know at the time I hadn't seen my file, but she had relinquished me wanting me at that time basically to disappear.

Haley Radke: I think that's something I've, I, I start cautioning people about Reunion and I think, I think if you listen to enough episodes of this podcast or other adoptees telling their story is like, we have to be in a place where no matter the outcome, cuz it could be anything no matter the outcome, we have supports in place and are still, you know, I'm just like picturing ourselves as like this pillar we can, we have the, the strength in ourselves to be okay no matter the outcome and, when you're like eager in doing your search and you don't necessarily picture ever having something like that be the outcome, it's easy to go fast and just get to the next, and you wanna get to know them and, and you just don't even picture that this could be some horrible outcome.

Anne Elise: Well, my instincts told me even at that time that, you know, I was the one pulling the brakes on everyone else.

Haley Radke: Interesting.

Anne Elise: Even the intermediary was, oh yeah, I think your birth mom is, you know, she had her theories and I was just like, no. We don't know anything until we know . I had feelings, I had, I had feelings of hesitation very definitively.

And I don't think I was flabbergasted. I wasn't, I wasn't blown away by it. I knew, I knew that could be an outcome. You know, I had done my homework. I had read, you know, the books and looked at the statistics . you know, you look at, I think at that time the thought was that less than 5% of birth mothers rejected contact.

But I mean, if I reach out to my birth mother and she rejects me, it's not like 5% is being rejected or 5%. It's, it's an all or nothing.

Haley Radke: It's a hundred. He's a hundred percent rejected.

Anne Elise: Right. So that's, I knew going in that, that statistic didn't mean anything. Yeah. In the individual case.

Haley Radke: Oh god. So it's like, More like trust your intuition and the people around you, they go, go, go. And you're like, I don't know guys. But it's, that's tough, right? Because if there it's, it's someone that's an intermediary. I've done lots of bees. Yeah. I get how it goes, you know? Oh my gosh. That makes it so much worse. Okay. Okay. Well, I don't know if I gave the right advice then. I still think I did.

Anne Elise: I think you did. Haley. I, I can only speak for myself.

Haley Radke: Yeah, yeah.

Anne Elise: You know, we hear many adoptees tell their stories about how they reach out and it's fine. I have this theory that it doesn't matter how you reach out. A cryptic postcard. Call out of the blue. Bleed your heart out onto 10 pages.

If the person you are contacting is open to contact, waiting for contact, it doesn't matter how you contact them. But if they're not open...

Haley Radke: then it also doesn't matter how you contact...

Anne Elise: it doesn't matter what you do. Right. It's not gonna work.

Haley Radke: Okay. All right. Well, thank you for you know, letting me go down that little trail. Let's go back to the expat experience and through lines to adoption.

Anne Elise: Okay. What I can say is that when you move, you take everything with you. And that life as an expat has a lot in common with the adoption experience because I think when you stay at home in you, in your, in the setting you grew up in, in the culture you grew up in, a lot of things just.

Stay dormant or a little bit under the surface, and not necessarily that you're not necessarily confronted by them, but when you go to live in a foreign place, in a foreign culture, even a place where the language is different, suddenly you really are a stranger among strangers. And that's not entirely a new feeling for the adopted person.

And the interesting thing is that no one has an invested interest in denying this or making a secret out of this. You're the outsider. It's so refreshing.

Haley Radke: You love it. Okay. Okay.

Anne Elise: Well, I'm not saying it, it's still lonely and has its very isolated moments. I. And you know, suddenly it's like, yeah, I don't belong, but it's all out in the open.

You have to confront it. You have to say, okay, what do I make of this? How okay am I in failing at the chameleon thing?

Haley Radke: Interesting.

Anne Elise: Because I'll never speak German the way a native born German speaks German. I'm going to always be an expat. I, I'm always going to be a foreigner here in some capacity, even after 23 years.

I mean, I, I can't say I'm German.

Haley Radke: So there's some sort of comfort in, it's recognized by all that I am not, I don't, I, I'm not from here. And in adoption, we don't get that.

Anne Elise: Right.

Haley Radke: We can't necessarily see, you're not from here. Even if we do, you should be there and you should be thankful for it.

Anne Elise: Right? Well, yeah. I mean, I don't wanna get too far into the, in immigrant experience cuz that, that, that really gets into the weeds, but, you know, it's just a fact. You're different and it, it goes beyond genetics or physical attributes or, you know, it's, it's just, you know, you're from somewhere else and it's interesting and people will ask you questions about it.

And although the question, the question, where are you from? That people are now starting to realize that that's not the way to open conversations with people who are obviously from somewhere else. Or like, how long have you been in Germany? Because every once in a while someone has been born there. I just came across this statistic the other day, but one in four Germans has a migratory background.

It's 25% of the population, not Germans, but people in Germany. So that includes me. So it's not a lonely experience either. I mean, if I go out onto the main street here, I will see women from the Middle East in head scarves. I will pass clusters of women with children speaking of a slavic language.

I'm not a freak. I'm not that exotic. You know, there, there are a lot of us out there who, you know, are wandering into the local library saying, okay, so how do we get a card?

But you know, the language barrier is very real. And I think that it can in one way make you feel very unseen. And when I was learning German in the early years, I remember wanting, often wanting to communicate more than I had the ability to verbalize. And I would find myself in a situation where I knew what I wanted to say, and it was quite nuanced and perhaps complex and informed by the whole set of experiences that formed me in my life.

And none of this could be discerned by the person I was talking to. And. I remember watching people German, the German people I, you know, I was trying to communicate with, think they understood enough of what I was saying of who I was to start forming judgements. While at the same time I was aware that they had only grasped a really narrow slice of what I was trying to say or who I was.

So, in being visibly foreign, it can practically also render you quite invisible to people. They just don't see who you are because you are not within the world as they understand it. You know, I've just said that, you know, you can feel invisible. But the other side of that coin is when you do master a new language, when you do become literate in a new culture that is so empowering.

And so I, I can say that I feel like I crafted a major part of my adult identity by leaving where I grew up, going to somewhere completely new. I made me, me as much as anything else did. .

Haley Radke: So like this, the ownership over identity is very empowering. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Anne Elise: Yeah. But I mean, you know, it, it's a, it's a complex life because oftentimes, you know, adoptees will mention feeling like an imposter or a chameleon. And, you know, those two things certainly come up. I think when anybody goes to a new place, finds themselves in a new culture, a new setting I can say in my experience that the feelings of being an imposter has rec, those they have receded.

My adoptive mother, she placed great view on when in Rome do as the Romans. And it was really important to her that when we were abroad, that we just not appear to be American. And that it was, it was highly desirable to appear, to be native wherever you were. You needed to not be foreign. So part of the accepting that you don't belong, that you're just, you're different from the people you live among the feelings that can come with adoption like.

Being an imposter or having to be a chameleon, those really kind of just recede because they're not useful. They, there's, you know, you can try to be a chameleon, but like I said, you're from somewhere else. It's no big deal. And past a certain point, the effort that goes into not being yourself, the returns just don't come in past a certain point.

So I found it very freeing to be in a place where I'm not expected to be like everyone else. You get cut some slack in a way to be different, to be a little eccentric or to be a little clueless. I mean, people will cut you some slack. And I don't think that adoptees are always given that grace. And I don't know that they always give it to themselves.

Haley Radke: Isn't that the truth?

Anne Elise: But, you know, I also have to say that, you know, I am guilty of perfectionism and that always does sometimes creep in and the desire to get every detail right. And, you know, in all my interactions, daily interactions in German, you know, not making any mistakes that that's there too. But it relaxes with time because you just realize you can't, you can't beat yourself up about that.

Haley Radke: You have a very, a job that requires precision though. Correct?

Anne Elise: Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's something else. I think that that would tie into the hypervigilance, and I think that is what goes into overdrive. When you find yourself in a foreign setting, you know, getting the lay of the land, figuring out how things work, where to go to get certain things, how to avoid problems, what's important, how to fit in, what not to do, what not to say, where things are, how the system works. It goes on and on. I mean, it's a, it's an information, it's information collection in overtime in the beginning.

And I would think it would be really exhausting for people to live abroad if their baseline for taking in analyzing and remembering information isn't already high. And I was a very hyper-vigilant child and young adult. And so in a way I was very suited for the kind of adaptation that needs to happen when a person immigrates to a new country.

Adopted people definitely have an edge here and. That might be my superpower as an immigrant.

Haley Radke: Okay. That's great. I love that you have this thing you can have a claim over and be proud of yourself in, and, and I think that's amazing.

Anne Elise: Yeah. Yeah. When I, when I think about it you know, I don't have a glamorous career. I don't. Like I said, I mean, you Googled me prior to the interview and came up empty handed. But I do, within the life that I live, I have accomplished something amazing when I just step back and think about it. But I had to let everything go. I had to, I, I left the place I had, I left Colorado, the only place I had lived in the United States.

I left my parents behind. I wasn't there for the most part. I visited certainly, but I left friends. It has come at a price, certainly, but I think this price is something we might all pay, because what I've noticed, you know, when I travel back, it's that I can't go back to the place I left because 23 years is a long time and that place just isn't there anymore.

And so I think that in some ways, you know, we move around in the world, but time moves around, it moves past us, and so even if we stay in one place, our whole life in a way we migrate through time. And the place where we were born and grew up and had our own family and grew old, even if that is geographically the same space, it will be radically different over time.

So in that way, I think we might all be migrants and the big challenge then in life would be to keep oneself anchored somehow.

Haley Radke: I think that's a piece of knowing ourselves. Right?

Anne Elise: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Having a, this strength in our identity and who we're becoming because we're different people from 20 years ago.

Anne Elise: Right. The self-reflection or the self-knowledge or, yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Well that's fascinating to think about and not to discount a, like using the word migrant and I think, oh my goodness. We're white women with privilege talking about this and there are people who have extremely different experiences.

Anne Elise: Yeah, no, I don't. From the very, very first days in Germany I was never under the illusion that had I been an African American, that I could have done what I did. No, it's absolutely contingent on my blonde hair, blue eyes, German last name, white skin. Yeah, no question.

Haley Radke: Okay. Acknowledge that. And let's talk about before we do recommended resources, I desperately wanna talk reading with you because.

Anne Elise: Oh yeah, let's do that. Let's do that.

Haley Radke: Anne, you are such a. I don't know. I always think, oh my gosh, she is so intelligent. She picks up on all these little things here and there that I.

Anne Elise: It's hypervigilance.

Haley Radke: My God. See, hypervigilant is a great, it's a great, great quality. Anyway,

Anne Elise: Sold on it. That and compartmentalization, I think, I think compartmentalization is, is super. I don't know what psychologists have against it. I mean, this storage. It solves so many problems.

Haley Radke: Okay. That's good. That's good. Okay. So, I'm curious how reading about other adopted people's experiences or I know you read a wide variety of things about adoption. How has that impacted your journey as an adopted person sort of exploring what adoption's impact has had on you.

Anne Elise: Oh, wow. Okay. I was reading other adoptees talk about their adopted experiences was for me, like discovering what's referred to as an occluded narrative.

Haley Radke: I don't know what that means. Please tell us.

Anne Elise: Yeah. The occluded narrative is the story that just isn't told. It's just not told. It's like there isn't a voice that can or will tell it, and there may not necessarily be any ears that can or he will hear it. It's just a story that's not told.

I mean, this is, I don't know if this is the best example, but it's what comes to my mind. So we'll just go with it. When I was doing my masters in Shakespeare, I was working with Measure from Measure, and this a doesn't have a whole lot of characters. There's a Duke and a nun by the name of Isabella and they're the main characters. And at some point during the play, the Duke is moving through a doorway and this doorway is to a convent and it is manned by a nun, as you know, serving as the gatekeeper, the porter. And she has a name, I believe, if my memory serves.

Her name is Francesca, and he comes along and she lets him through. They, I think they might have in exchange. I'm not sure. That's it. We don't know anything about Francesca other than she's a nun in this convent and she serves as gatekeeper. We don't know how she became a nun. We don't know what she thinks about it.

We don't know anything about her life. That is a story inside the story that just is not told. And so for me, finding a body of literature written by adoptees, it was like finding these narratives. They aren't told.

Haley Radke: Do you see you when you read?

Anne Elise: Yeah, A lot of times. A lot of times. Or I'll read a sentence or a paragraph that resonates so deeply, it'll feel like it's, you know, it could have come from my own experience that, you know, this person had verbalized something that I am so in sync with. That I recognize immediately what they're saying and why they feel moved to say it. Yeah, it's really deepened my understanding of the adoption experience. It's certainly cut down on the feelings of isolation or confusion. It's been very normalizing to read others what they have to say and what their journeys.

It's been really, really validating and valuable and it's really heartened me to look more closely at myself and my own life. And with courageous honesty, they can stay open and soft and not turn bitter or hateful or spiteful. But yeah, it's been really useful in keeping the human aspect of it. At the forefront because you know, one of the first things anyone will say about adoption is that it brings out the best and the worst in people.

And at least I think adoptees reading other adoptees in my experience has so far brought out the best in us.

Haley Radke: I get to talk to so many adopted people, as you know. And one thing I really appreciate that's different for me is when I'm reading a memoir by an adopted person, I can really like pause and you know, sort of think about it longer. And I don't, I mean, I don't write in my books, but I can add a note in some fashion. Listen, we don't dog ear here. I know some of you write in your books, so. No, no, not you, not you Ann, but other people could. Anyway.

Anne Elise: No, I didn't even break the spines on my books. Oh, my books are, are so special to me.

Haley Radke: That's right. That's right. I wish you could see my bookshelf. I know you've seen it before, but I've seen it. You can.

Anne Elise: It's color coordinated. I love that.

Haley Radke: Which is useless when I'm trying to find a book, I just have to say, do not recommend. It's pretty, but it's useless. Anyway, I, I don't know. I think that timing piece is what helps me yeah. Think more deeply about what someone said, and I can't just like, move on to the next thing until it's sort of sunk in.

Anne Elise: So, yeah. What I notice when I read Adoptee Voices or read read the writings of adopted people is that I really, I, I, I can sometimes respond physically. Cold, sweaty, hands shaking and shivering, get very restless. I know when I read, you know, just, you know, reading passages from Sarah -Jayne King's Killing Caroline, for instance.

You know, I still think back, I, I have markers in that book because her situation is not the same as mine. But her parents disappeared her from their lives too. I mean once you start reading, you, you see some of the you see that other people have very similar experiences. When someone is able to speak insightfully and honestly about it, it's, it just, it gives a sense, a sense of connection.

I mean, it's, it's me reading words on the page, but I. But they are, they, they resonate so deeply. They, I mean, you know, I, as I just said, the reaction can be physical. It can be, it can be very, very magical.

Haley Radke: There are so many great adoptee othered books. People have no idea. We've read a lot of them in book club.

I'm really glad we've preserved a lot of those conversations and audio too. But being there in person is like, so fun. Yeah. Anyway, with fellow readers. Okay. Okay. I love talking about reading. Let's move to recommended resources. Mine is a long form piece that came out in the New Yorker at the beginning of April, 2023.

It's called Living in Adoption's Emotional Aftermath. It was written by Larissa MacFarquhar and the byline is adoptees Reckon with corruption in orphanages, hidden birth certificates, and the urge to search for their birth parents. And this article features three prominent adopted people in our community.

Many of you will recognize their names. Of course, our friend Deanna Shrodes, Angela Tucker and Joy Lieberthal Roe are all featured in this article. Which Larissa was interviewing these folks for months and months and months and months. It has extensive reporting, fact checking, all of the things that the New Yorker is famous for, and it tells the perspective from three powerful adoptees.

It's really incredible to see this kind of coverage for adopted people. In mainstream media with like no caveats and no right, like no other voices chiming in. And I think the impact it's had in our community is profound To see, like someone like me is like in the New Yorker. It's so amazing. And if I, if you do read this article and you go looking for the other social media posts associated with it, y'all don't go in the comments.

Okay? Don't go. Because as much as a lot of us love this article telling the truth about adopted people some of the readers do not appreciate adopted people criticizing adoption, as you may imagine.

So anyway, if you haven't seen it yet, we'll link to it in the show notes, but I really appreciated the honesty in which, you know, Deanna Joy and Angela all like poured out to Larissa and I think she did a really wonderful job sharing their stories. So, did you see that article, Anne? What were your thoughts?

Anne Elise: I did, I did. And I, I read, I read it through and was really impressed. Really impressed. Yeah. I think it's a big step forward in journalism. That kind of, that that article got published.

Haley Radke: Yep. And when I say long form, okay. When I saved it as a pdf, so I, you know, eventually wouldn't get paywall out of it. It's 65 pages. So it's it is quite extensive. So, you know, set aside like a real long afternoon coffee break to, to read that if you'd like to. Okay. What do you wanna recommend to us?

Anne Elise: The first thing is for your entire listenership, and that is a a new bye way podcast called Adoptees Crossing Lines. It's 30 minute episodes in which three hosts all adult adoptees of similar and different backgrounds. Talk about various aspects of the adoption experience, and I haven't listened to all of them yet. I've listened to two, one on adoptees and grief. And adoptees as parents. And I found the discussions informed, insightful, articulate, honest and helpful.

Really helpful to me in understanding my own my own journey. So I'd like to highlight that.

Haley Radke: Can I read the description for folks? It says, we are three people with three very different experiences of being adopted. In this podcast, we deconstruct the romanticism, holding up the adoption industry and expose the lies, abuse and pain that gets silenced.

We are here to unwrap the shiny bow around adoption and speak our truths as adoptees. In doing so, we explain what it means and what it feels like to come under the fog. This isn't your feel good podcast. We are angry, healing, and honest adoptees. So I think for a lot of us that is. Our kind of show. I love that you brought that to us. Thank you.

Anne Elise: Right. Yeah. And second, my second recommended resource is for a specific subset of adoptees, namely those who grew up with an acting out sibling, biological, or adoptive. I want to mention a book titled The Normal One, Life With a Difficult or Damaged Sibling. It's written by Jean Safer there's very little in the literature about siblings in general, let alone non-genetic siblings.

But this book, even though it has nothing to do with adoption, gave me a framework, gave me a way in which to better understand the family dynamics I grew up in and how they affected me and continue to affect me and what I can do to acknowledge that. Not accept it, but acknowledge it. Because looking back, a lot of my life decisions can be traced to my sibling relationships.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I really appreciate your candor in sharing about your brother with us, and I think this will be helpful for a lot of folks.

Anne Elise: Yeah. My hope is that what I have been able to share here will help others to know that they're not alone. If you felt it, we've felt it too.

Haley Radke: Yes. Yes. Okay. Where can we connect with you online un Googleable one.

Anne Elise: Yeah, Facebook.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Anne Elise: And find me on Facebook.

Haley Radke: All right. We'll link your profile in Facebook, so if people wanna send you a note, they are able to. Thank you so much. Anne. You don't know this probably, but you are very dear to me. I always think of you when I think of book club and we haven't talked that frequently, but you're, I always carry you around with me.

Anne Elise: So just so you know, Haley, let me take the opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart for creating this space that is so safe for adoptees. It's been an honor to, to join it, to have found it, and to have found such a warm place here. And thank you too for this conversation.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. That's very kind.

You know what, Anne comes to almost every single book club we have had on Patreon for supporters of the show, and she figures out the time zone change. She is there. She is, is truly, truly an avid reader and it's such a delight to hear her takes on whatever we're reading together. If you are interested in getting a little bit more into adoptee authored reading, I would love to have you join us.

AdopteesOn.com/bookclub has the list of the books we're reading this year and we have some really excellent titles coming up, so I hope you will consider joining us. And if you have read some of the adoptee authored work that guests of the show have written we have a bunch of recordings of past book clubs that are available on Patreon as well.

So that back catalog is becoming extensive, just like this main feat is. So I'm really proud of all that work we've collected together for you. Adopteeson.com/bookclub has details for that. If you'd like to help with our transcription project, you can go to AdopteesOn.com/donate to find out more details.

And I'm so thankful for each of my guests for sharing their stories with us and being so vulnerable. It is truly an honor to get to share these with you our listeners. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.