266 Susan Kiyo Ito

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/266

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is the indomitable Susan Kiyo Ito. She has been writing, advocating, and leading in the adoptee community for decades, and we are all the richer for it. Susan's brand new memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, has just been released, and it is fantastic.

We talk about how Susan first discovered an adoptee memoir at her local library at age 13, and how that changed the trajectory of her life. We've got adoptee activism history, relatable reunion problems, and the power of sharing our adoptee experiences in community all throughout this [00:01:00] conversation.

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 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 Susan Kiyoh Ito. Welcome, Susan, to Adoptees On.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Thank you so much, Haley. I am thrilled to be here.

Haley Radke: I respect you so much. You've been in the community for sorry, no, no age shaming here. We are thankful for our elders for years and years. And so I know lots of people know you, but would you start and share a little bit of your story with us, please?

Susan Kiyo Ito: Sure. And I, I love being an elder. I feel really good about it. So no shame. [00:02:00] So my story is that I am a biracial Japanese American adoptee. I was adopted by Japanese American parents at the age of around four months. I was born in New York state, and I was raised mostly in New Jersey. I searched for my birth mother when I was a college student and took me about a little bit less than a year to find her.

And since then, when it's a long time ago since then we've had a kind of up and down reunion and that kind of forms the basics of my book, of my memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere. That was a very brief story. I don't know how much, that was like the nutshell version. I don't know how much more detail you want me to go into, but if you would like me to expand on any part of [00:03:00] it, I'm more than happy to.

Haley Radke: I'm sure we'll get into all kinds of parts of it. Well, I know that you are a writer decades long. You're a professor, you teach people how to write, and you're a voracious reader. And I remember talking to you about something that you share in the book, reading The Search for Anna Fisher. And I'll admit, when I was reading your book, I was like was she old enough to read this book?

I was like, kind of fact checking you as I read, because I was like, how old would you have been to read something so formational? So, can you tell us a little bit about that book? How old were you when you found it? Because I know you weren't making stuff up.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Yes. Do you know that book, Haley?

Haley Radke: I haven't read it.

No. But believe me, I've been looking for a used copy because I want to read it.

Susan Kiyo Ito: It is an incredible collector's item. I think I found one on eBay or somewhere. So I actually do have a copy. It's incredible. [00:04:00] So The Search for Anna Fisher was published in 1972, I believe, 72 or 73, which would have made me 12 or 13 years old.

And I was obsessed with our town library. I lived in a little town in New Jersey. We had a very tiny municipal library and I remember going to the library and looking in the little card catalog and looking up adoption. What is it about adoption? What, what have people written about it?

And this was about the time when I had moved into the adult section of the library and I wasn't in the picture book section anymore. And I saw this book called The Search for Anna Fisher by Florence Fisher. So I went and looked it up, took it out and it blew my mind. I think it's one of the very first adoptee memoirs that was ever published.

And the thing that's amazing is, this was the early seventies is how [00:05:00] radical she was. She was all about, I need to know who I am. I need to know where I come from. I have the right to know. And it was kind of when I look back on it, reading it recently shocked at how so many things have not changed since the 1970s.

And, people were really, she was really wanting her original birth certificate and she went to her agency and asked for her records and she got the runaround just as I did, and a lot of things had not changed, but she was really determined to find her roots, and it really radicalized me.

I mean, a lot of people talk about quote unquote, coming out of the fog when they're in their adult years, in their thirties or forties or later, and I came out of the fog when I was 12 because and Florence Fisher pulled me out of that fog. It was like, yeah, it was like a bolt of lightning inside me.

[00:06:00] And at the end of the book it said, if you are an adoptee and you're interested in finding more about your roots, we have formed an organization called ALMA, the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association. I mean, super radical. And they had a P. O. box in New York. So I wrote to them immediately at the age of 12.

And they wrote back and said, sorry, you're too young. We'd love to help you but please contact us again when you're 18. And I did that. Literally, I turned 18. I'm like, oh, I'm old enough for ALMA now. And they wrote back to me and said, welcome. We'd love to meet you. And we're having a meeting in New York City. We have we meet every month. And I started going to meetings at the age of 18. And it was life changing. I mean, it changed everything for me.

Haley Radke: I mean, I alluded to this in our little intro there, but you literally have been going to these things since you were [00:07:00] 18-years-old. So you've seen all the things you've seen all the cycles, the new people coming new ideas that are the same old ideas.

All of that. But what I want to ask you is how does it feel now to think there's going to be an adoptee somewhere who picks up your memoir and that is going to be the first connection that they've had to feeling not alone and like they're not crazy and you're going to impact their adoptee consciousness.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Okay, you just about made me cry here. I had not thought about that specifically like that. And the thought of that is just kind of mind blowing. It feels very full circly to think about that. I will. share something happened recently, where, as a biracial Japanese American [00:08:00] adoptee adopted by Japanese parents, I have often felt as we said, the unicorn among unicorns.

And I have been taken in many ways, by other Asian American adoptees, Korean adoptees have been extremely welcoming and kind to me. Although our experiences are very different. I'm not an intercountry adoptee, but you know, they kind of feel this, I feel this kinship with them because they've been just really wonderful to me.

So if there's an Asian adoptee gathering, they'll include me sometimes. And it's, a Korean adoptee had written something on Facebook about a gathering that they had, and somebody had written a comment that said, it was really nice being with all of you, but as a half Japanese adoptee adopted by Japanese parents, I always feel so different, and I feel like I don't really fit in.

And the original poster was like, oh my goodness. Have you read Susan Ito? You've got to read Susan Ito's book. She's also half Japanese, [00:09:00] adopted by Japanese parents and it blew this person's mind. It blew my mind and we immediately connected and we've been you know, in communication, and that was like a little hint of that, it's like somebody who I have felt I have met maybe less than a handful of people like me adoptees like me in this exact same situation, and to find someone out there who was also feeling very isolated, very unique and alone, very unicorn ish.

It was it's it's It like made everything worth it or just so exciting to have that moment.

Haley Radke: I love it. It's like goosebumps, right? You're like, Oh my gosh, my people, like you really get it.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Yeah. Yeah. And I haven't had a chance to have a conversation with them, but I'm very eager to learn how our stories are similar and also different.

Because all of our stories are so unique, even if they have a lot of similarities. [00:10:00]

Haley Radke: So I think the last time we talked we were preparing for this class that you were teaching and got to lead around adoption narratives. And just like really tremendous opportunity for people to get invested and learn from you and so many voices.

And I'm curious now, over these decades of work and teaching a class like that, and of course you infuse a lot of adoption themes, I'm sure, into some of your writing classes. What are some things that have been impactful as you share about the truth of adoption with people who are not adopted and who may not have a connection to adoption.

Susan Kiyo Ito: That's an interesting question. I mean, I think just on the very basics of things like so many people who are not adopted [00:11:00] do not understand about closed records. And our inability to access our original birth certificates, people have no idea. And to me, that's one of the very first things I learned.

I learned that when I was 12. I learned that from Florence Fisher. And I think it's something that so many people take for granted. Of course, they have their birth certificate. Of course, they have their, they know their heritage or they can, their ancestry matches up with the people that they grew up with.

I think. And often I'll talk about non adopted privilege, some other people have had other words for it, these things that people really never think about, it's like breathing air, that things that they know, pieces of themselves that they have access to, that we don't have, and It's kind of stunning to understand that.

So I think that's one of the things, just all the ways in which, because I think [00:12:00] we're taught or, media and society tells us that, adoption is such a win thing. It's such a great thing. It's such a, it's such a gift. It's such a, all the things, right. And I think people are shocked that there are other things that there's loss and grief and all kinds of things that they never think about because if you were to look at me and my family, they're like, oh, but your parents are so great and they love you so much and you had such a wonderful family and all that, that a lot of those other things are really under the surface and not visible, and not things that people either know or understand.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I think we're always looking for these ways to tell our friends and family like actually, this has had an impact on me and finding those like safe first kind of topics. [00:13:00] I was Oh yeah, when you were started off with the OBCs, cause I'm like, I find lots of ways to somehow say I have a fake birth certificate.

Isn't that weird? Isn't it weird that adoptive parents can actually just in some states, choose where their adopted kid was born, supposedly Oh, you didn't know that? Oh, yes. I didn't know that. Huh. Yeah. There's a couple's, I don't know which states they are, but they can actually change the location of where you were born.

Wow. Talk about a fake document. It's so maddening, I can only laugh, right? Messy. Messy. So, speaking of adoption is messy. I have heard you express gratitude for your adoptive parents and the connection you were able to keep with your culture. And I heard you talk about going to a very Japanese church [00:14:00] on Sundays.

And maybe to your chagrin at the time, but all of those things that people that are normally interracially adopted, the common thing is for a child of color to go into a white family and be stripped of their connection to their heritage. And in a, I'm going to, I'm going to ascribe a racist action by the adoption agency.

They would not allow your parents to adopt a white baby and made them wait for 10 years for you. So, do you have thoughts on that? Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Susan Kiyo Ito: Oh yeah. It's it is, it's really complicated. And sometimes... I don't know whether to call myself a transracial adoptee because I didn't really exactly match my parents because I am biracial and [00:15:00] half white and sometimes I consider myself same race adoptee.

Or same culture adoptee because my birth mother was Japanese and so are my parents. And so sometimes I'll call myself three quarters or whatever. And, but to have that sense of continuity has meant everything to me. And not feeling many intercountry or transracial adoptees who were raised in a completely different family and community than the one they were born into, and how disconnected and painful that is.

I have witnessed so much of this in many of my friends and... Adoptees that I know that I read. And I don't know if it's a little bit of survivor's guilt of I didn't have to, I didn't have that. And I am grateful for myself that I didn't have that. And it makes me really conscious of the [00:16:00] pain that must be like to not have that.

I recently this summer traveled to Japan. And it was really profound for me. The last time I was there was probably almost 20 years ago. And it just wasn't as conscious in my mind then. But being there and feeling this deep connection, not only to the family that I grew up with, but knowing that it's that I wasn't just borrowing their culture because I grew up with them.

I wasn't just like in it because they were in it, that it actually is also a part of my birth culture as well. And it made me feel doubly, triply connected to it. And yes, this is where I came from on every level, and it was very emotional for me and very meaningful and made me feel even more, just even more connected and [00:17:00] appreciative that I had that.

And knowing that it's kind of a rare thing, even with quote unquote, same race adoptees, like an adoptive family might be Italian, but the birth family is, some other kind of European it there's there's a rupture there. It's like our family didn't go back to this country.

Our family is from another country. And I feel like, I was able to experience that and it, it means a lot to me. Although I, I don't think it was for my benefit that this happened. I think it was just, it was how it turned out and maybe some racism on the agency's part. And I don't know what, but for whatever reason, this was the outcome.

Haley Radke: Well, I, there's, some parts of your story. I'm like, okay. She always knew she was adopted. Good job, mom and dad.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Well, good job, mom and dad. But at the same time, it was like any other transracial adoption. Like they couldn't really [00:18:00] hide it from me. It was kind of obvious that I didn't quite match them.

I matched them sort of.

Haley Radke: I think you say somewhere that you always knew, so they'd obviously told you from a super young age.

Susan Kiyo Ito: They definitely told me. But the thing that I really appreciated about it is that they were super matter of fact about it. They weren't precious about it. They weren't like, you were chosen and you were this and you were that.

I mean, they were just like... Yep, you're half and half. We're not, you're different. It's okay. We adopted you. We couldn't have children and we went to the agency and we waited a long time and then you came. I mean, they were just like, there was no, I don't know, there was no either guilt or preciousness about it.

They're just very straightforward. And so not that it wasn't a big deal, but I felt like there wasn't a lot of baggage attached to it, which I think I've heard a lot from other people that it's wrapped up in a [00:19:00] lot of heavy stuff.

Haley Radke: Yeah, and I've I don't know, I've listened to a few conversations lately or and read a few things where people were kind of sharing it wasn't outright said, but I knew on the tone around it's not safe to talk about.

And, you wrote a letter to tell your parents you were searching and they're like, well, how can we help? Right? And some people, some adopted parents would get that and be like, Oh my God, all my greatest fears are being realized. And I'm so thankful that you had some complicit in your wild west search tactics.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Totally. Well, I love actually talking about this letter cause I was so nervous. I was away at college. So my parents were both born in New York City, and my mother grew up in Brooklyn, and so what I love doing a little imitation of her when she called me up after receiving the letter, and she's what took you so long?

We've been waiting years for this. [00:20:00] She was just so tough, and so New York in her response. And then they were like, so what do you need? Well, how can we help you? What do you need? And I was like, okay, and I actually did have things that I needed from the adoptee support group. They had a search consultant who had a number of steps that they were recommending that people do.

And, I did all those things. And, but it was just, it was kind of comical, their response. Cause I was so afraid, I was so afraid of how they were going to respond and it was laughable. And it was beautiful. It was laughable and beautiful because I think about it now. I get very emotional, but

Haley Radke: Well, I mentioned the wild west search tactics.

I don't want to spoil that. I want people to read it you got some good stories in there

Susan Kiyo Ito: Yeah It's the things you have to do when you don't have the internet didn't exist yet. It was all just paper, telephones, [00:21:00] phone calls, lying, stealing. Yeah. Things like that.

Haley Radke: Oh, man. So good. Okay. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, and, how do I put this you published an you edited A Ghost at Heart's Edge, which is an anthology, in 99, a long time ago.

I have poetry that you've written, I've I've seen you do readings the, like you've been writing and writing a long time, all these different pieces and all the way along and I think you mentioned to me at one point, you were like, oh yeah, I've got this memoir. I keep picking them, putting down and I don't know what I'm going to, it's like why now?

Why, when why are you ready now to share this story? Why not sooner? You had most of it written sooner. I feel like, I don't know. [00:22:00] What do you think, Susan?

Susan Kiyo Ito: This is a really hard question, but I think I got to a certain point. So I don't think this is a spoiler that eventually a few years ago, my adoptive mother died and then my first grandchild was born.

And I think those two events really made me feel like an arc had completed itself in some way. And before those two things happened, I really felt like this story could just go on forever. And it did, I mean, I had ended this book about 10 different times, this is the end. No, this is the, okay, like one more year, something else is going to happen.

And then life would go on. The story would change. And often it just felt like I was stopping it in some very random arbitrary place. And when I got to this point a couple years ago, I think I really felt like that's, this is it. I think I've said all there is to say about this. Of course there's always [00:23:00] more, but it felt like a real I wouldn't say literary because that's a little, that's a, it just felt like a real narrative arc had taken place.

And I felt ready to finish.

Haley Radke: Well, this is one of my favorite things about your story, is having the wisdom to go through all those things, have time to look back on them and process, and we're all the richer for the lessons that you've learned over these years.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, looking back on it, it seems like it's the only way it could have happened.

But if you would have told me this 30 years ago, I would have thrown a fit. I would have been like, there's no way I'm finishing this book when I'm in my 60s. That's torture. That's no, I would have, I mean, and I did [00:24:00] have a lot of tantrums when people suggested that the story was not over.

Some people suggested that I did not have enough distance, when they read parts of it along the years. Some people suggested that there was more stories still to come, and I was very resistant to this idea I did not like that idea, and, but that's the way it turned out, and now, of course, in retrospect I'm glad.

Haley Radke: Well, let's talk about this idea that the fact that adoption is a lifelong experience because you give us this window into reunion specifically with your birth mother and the ebbs and flows of that relationship makes it so real and visceral to so many of us, right? You're telling the highs, you're telling the lows yeah.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Well, I think for many stories, the meeting or [00:25:00] the search and the meeting is the end, it's the climax. It's the end of the book and then they lived happily ever after or whatever, or maybe then they, I don't know how they lived, but That's often the point that people are aiming towards will there be a reunion?

Will their searching end up in some way, et cetera, et cetera. And just the fact that is barely the beginning. And the rest of the story is really where the story lies.

Haley Radke: And that's where you start.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Right. And I think it echoes a lot of those I don't even know the names of it. Those like drama TV shows where, it ends with the reunion or with people meeting each other. And then that's the end of it. And then we don't get to see what happens after that, after the cameras go away or whatever, and yeah, and this is where the whole thing has been for me, has been, the, I think when I first started writing [00:26:00] my story, it was much more focused on that part, the before part, because that, that's got its own drama, right?

And that could have been a whole book, but really I'm glad that I waited. And then, I just kept going.

Haley Radke: Okay, so you've been through it, we already talked, there's ups and downs. Do you have advice for fellow adopted people who may have experienced similar things to you? We know lots of adoptees who have had to keep their identity is secret or their relationship with their birth parent is secret because the birth parent has not been open with the people around them and managing that as a person who would like to be announced as.

That can be like soul tearing in some way.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Yeah, that's a really it's a really apt way of putting it. Soul tearing. Yes, I feel the tears in [00:27:00] my soul a lot. And I don't know if I have advice. I mean, I don't know what would I have told my younger self? I kind of feel like I had to go through it the way I went through it.

And I, in some ways I'm still going through it. I would like to tell myself to be kind to yourself and treat yourself with dignity and I can't say, I mean, I don't think I could say to somebody else, if somebody won't treat you with dignity, then it's not worth it because I certainly didn't follow that advice.

I felt like the title of the book, I Would Meet You Anywhere. I would have done anything to have this relationship. And I did do anything in a lot of ways. And in a lot of circumstances, I think I would say it's very hard to have ambivalence in a relationship as I did. I don't know if it's you can really compare.

I don't know if it's easier to have outright [00:28:00] rejection. I don't know if that's easier. It's, you or if it's harder, to have that, but at least one has a sense of this is where I stand and I felt like for me it was like back and forth and back and forth and sometimes I was in good graces and sometimes I was not.

And, I had given, I had come to peace with this, the circumstances of my birth and being relinquished. I had come to peace with that and even though it was a loss and it was all those things, I think I understood it, given the context of those circumstances, what was much, much harder for me was being turned away from as an adult, when there was an established relationship, like there was a relationship, and then it went away. And then there was a relationship and then it went away. That was really hard. That was really hard. And I think much harder for me to cope with, then I understand [00:29:00] the circumstances, when I was a baby. I don't think that's advice at all. I mean, I think the only advice is surround yourself with people who can be with you in what you're going through.

Do you know people who will listen to you, people who will hold you or understand you or love you or see you and that your worth is not connected to however this relationship is going. I mean, I have to tell myself that every day, but I think, I mean, and literally, I call people up all the time, or I go to my husband, or just expressing how incredibly complicated and difficult it is, and to have people just be there and listen to me, they can't fix it, they can't change it, they can't do anything about it, except just really listen to me, they can't talk me out of it.

I think [00:30:00] that's the thing. A lot of people who love us try to talk us out of it. Look, you've got such a beautiful family, but look, you're so lucky. Look, you're doing work that you love. Look, it's oh, look, you've got a book public. You know what I mean? There's many things in my life that are absolutely.

Beautiful that I am really grateful for and it doesn't take away how complicated and painful a lot of parts of this are.

Haley Radke: It's something I completely related to in your book. I had a very brief reunion with my birth mother. It was not quite four months and I've never had any contact with her since I've reached out multiple times and just nothing and literally, if she found me I'd be like kay drop everything go like I like today, you know I feel that viscerally and there's just something we just want the connection. Yeah, I so related to that.

Susan Kiyo Ito: And when you know when for you, you wouldn't be [00:31:00] friends with somebody who treated you that way, and I wouldn't be friends with somebody who did or said things the way that, our relationship has been, but this is different, and you've got different feelings, as you said, very visceral about it, and you're willing to do things that you wouldn't in other circumstances, and I think that balance of self dignity and self love and really wanting something.

It's a hard one to, it's a hard one to straddle.

Haley Radke: One of the hardest parts to read was this part where you were working in a lab with mice. And I won't say more than that, really, about it, but the picture I got, and I wonder if this is what you were trying to create, was that, God, they're just never going to quit experimenting on this whole adoption thing as [00:32:00] adoptees, we're, like, trapped in this thing, and...

Susan Kiyo Ito: Haley, that is a completely unique response to that piece. I love that. I love that insight that you just said.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Because I had not thought of that consciously while I was writing it. I mean, I was basically like I had this really weird job at this same time that I was negotiating this very new relationship with her.

And it all came together in this confluence of madness. It was wild. But I think the thing that I so I don't think it's a spoiler to say that I worked in a laboratory that had mice. And I was the caregiver of the mice, the caretaker, caregiver, I don't know. And one of my jobs was like, tracking their genealogy, and keeping their little charts of who was parents of who and who.

And [00:33:00] it just kind of blew my mind that I was doing this for these mice. And I didn't even have it myself. Like I knew who the mouse nicest parents were, but I didn't know my own parents and I was dealing with, possibly having a meet up with my birth mother and possibly not. And it was just all these sensations were all.

Coming at me at the same time. It was something else. But I love that experimenting on adoptees and adoption. I love that.

Haley Radke: That adoption is this grand failed, experiment. I won't swear because it's clean on the show. But yeah.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Wow. I love I'm going to write that down because a lot of people have had a lot of visceral reactions to that piece.

And for different reasons, but I love that. I love that take on it.

Haley Radke: Well, we all are going to take something different from your story, right? Yes, okay. I [00:34:00] remember you sharing when your adoptive mom passed, and I'm really sorry for your loss. But one of the photos you shared was just her joy, expression of joy on her face at a basketball game.

And so I know you, you share about her in the book and, but that's the piece I remember. About your mom, said she loved basketball.

Susan Kiyo Ito: She was an incredible sports fanatic from the time I was, a child. And I had a boyfriend at one point who joked that he was going to get her a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

She, I don't think she actually had one, but she would have loved it. She would have loved it. She went to nickel. It was ladies night was a nickel at Yankee stadium. She was obsessed with the Yankees because, she grew up in New York. And so she would go for a nickel to the baseball games by herself.[00:35:00]

And cheer on the Yankees. And then when she moved out here, we would go to baseball games and then she started going to basketball games with my husband and they went for many years, he would take her three, four times a week and they would go see the Warriors and she was into it. That was her thing.

Haley Radke: I love when we have these like happy memories of someone and then our friends, our people can get connected in that way. And just how you talked about her and your husband are just like a special that stuck with me for sure. So, I already said, you've written all the things, you've done so many things you even had a one woman show at one point, The Ice Cream Gene, okay, tell us a little bit about that.

And where I wanted to go with that was, maybe you can't tell because, pull behind the curtain. We were talking before your book is released. [00:36:00] What is it going to feel like to have this story in the world, the exposure of some deep, things that are so important to you versus performing something like this on stage in front of a live audience where you could see their faces?

Susan Kiyo Ito: I have been thinking about this a lot, Haley, because so I started performing The Ice Cream Gene, I don't know, more than 10 years ago. It started actually because I was at an adoption camp for families with adopted children of color and another I was speaking or actually I was directing the camp and a woman named Lisa Marie Rollins came and did a solo performance called Ungrateful Daughter and it was her experience of being a transracial adoptee.

It blew my mind. And I ran up to her afterwards and I said, what are you doing? How did you learn to do this? And where can I sign up? And she said, Oh, I'm taking this solo performance workshop with W. Kamau Bell. And I was like I'm signing [00:37:00] up. And so I signed up immediately. I started studying with Kamau.

This is before he became totally famous in his own right, but he was teaching solo performance classes and it was amazing to embody my story. It was his method of solo performances. It's not just like storytelling or standup comedy or whatever. It's, you're embodying your story. So there's a lot of really physically living it and being in it.

And it was incredible for me to live the moment of meeting my birth mother. It's like the opening, it's the opening scene of the book. And it was also the opening scene of The Ice Cream Gene where I'm making my way from the elevator to the hotel room and I'm counting and looking at the door numbers and I'm counting the door numbers.

And then I get to the right door and then it's two minutes before, and it's like the audience is like waiting there for it to be the exact time I'm supposed to knock on the [00:38:00] door. And it was incredible. It was it like it gave me permission to tell the story in a very embodied way. That's all I can say.

But looking back on it, it was also in many ways, one would think it's like it's so exposed and it's so like out there you're on a stage and everyone's looking at you and all this. But It was very contained. I knew who was in the audience for the most part. I was like, I was at an adoption conference, or I was at a small theater in New York, or I was at family camp, or I was somewhere, there were, there's a lot of like small theaters in the Bay Area.

And I knew that's, those were the only people who were seeing this. It was like the people in the room and me. This book is like one, there's so much more story that was not in The Ice Cream Gene. It's a million times more. And I have no control over who's reading it and who's responding to it and what people are thinking or what people are saying, or it's, it feels like a [00:39:00] much more naked experience than getting up on a stage and doing it physically.

And I would have thought it would be the opposite. Oh, I'm just like, typing away, and it's very, it's just words on a page, I don't know, and this feels much more vulnerable than actually doing The Ice Cream Gene. I'm like, can I take it back? Can I do The Ice Cream Gene again? Because that actually feels like it was in some ways yeah, safer and more controlled. But it was also, it was a big moment for me to like actually claim the story in my voice and in my body. It was, it was different and very empowering.

Haley Radke: Do you think some things in you were moved, healed, processed through doing that helped you finish your memoir?

Susan Kiyo Ito: Definitely. Definitely. I mean, I think it was a good step. When I published A Ghost at Heart's Edge, it's [00:40:00] got like 50... other writers in it. And I was very careful. So I have two pieces in it. One is a poem about Albert Einstein's daughter. And another is a short story set in Central America, which was inspired by some people that I knew there was nothing in it about me.

It was like, I want to write about adoption. I want to publish about adoption. It's very important for me to get adoption stories out there. But I didn't want to put any of my own story out there. So that was like 1999, very protected, but still wanting to have a voice in the world. And then, few short pieces, and then The Ice Cream Gene.

And then that led to this. And this is like the biggest reveal that I can imagine. Somebody just a friend of mine, or actually a colleague of mine just read it and they were like, Oh my God, I just read your book. And I'm like, yes. And they're like, it's so personal. And I think they were shocked because they probably didn't know 95 percent of what was in the book.

We worked [00:41:00] together, and having somebody that knows me on a professional level, see all these incredibly intimate details of my life. I think it was stunning for them. And then they were like, are you sure you want me to read this? I'm like, yes, anybody can read it.

But it also is I don't know, it's can I actually put some blackouts, like in certain areas of my life? You people don't read it. You don't read it. You don't read it. You all that I don't, you can read it. But unfortunately, you don't have that control. So I just have to, I said to somebody recently.

I have to put on my big girl pants and take responsibility that I did this. I wrote the story, I put it out there, and now whatever is coming, I have to take, whatever the consequences are, good consequences, hard consequences I have to deal with it, personal consequences, and I have to just remind myself that [00:42:00] nobody put a gun to my head and made me write this book or publish it.

Nobody made me do it. I have chosen to do it. And it's very scary, but it was my choice.

Haley Radke: Well, we will be all the better for it. As I said at the beginning, you're one of the elders in our community. And I look up to you and I have seen the investment you've made in all the people that have come after you and what I find so amazing and I feel so grateful for is that you've had to move your venue for your book launch party because so many people want to come and celebrate you.

And that might feel hard for you to accept. I don't know. But I'm celebrating that for you because you're so well loved and deserve to be [00:43:00] celebrated. So.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Thank you, Haley. Yeah, it's a little, it's a little wild. There's officially going to be probably almost double the number of people at my book launch than were at my wedding and my wedding was like the biggest deal ever.

You know what I mean? I just felt like I couldn't handle anything bigger than that. And my daughter's wedding, it was like they were like major productions, granted, there's not all this aspects, but you know, I'm going to have food and we're going to have entertainment and we're going to have all kinds of things.

Yeah, it's a little overwhelming, but it's also great. And I think of all those people literally over decades, I would go out to dinner with my husband and we'd meet another couple to be. How's your book coming? This was maybe 15 or 20 years ago. And I'd be like, it's coming. It's coming. And I was so embarrassed, humiliated it's not coming at all.

Or I'm just writing the fifth draft of it. And it's a novel now. And it's a memoir [00:44:00] now. And it's short stories now. It changed form so many times. And then people just stopped asking. And I think a lot of people just didn't believe it was ever going to happen, including me.

Haley Radke: Well, I Would Meet You Anywhere is so amazing.

I genuinely loved it. I couldn't believe I was so lucky to read it early. And I'm so excited for our community to have it. It's just like this tremendous, to me, it's this is a love letter to adoptees. It's see, I've gone through these things. You can do it too. I've gone through these hard things. You can do it too. And I just, there's some very tender personal parts. There's some very funny parts. I mean, yikes. Wild West. We'll just, I'll keep going back to that. You'll know it when you read it, that's for sure. It's just so good and I know it's going to [00:45:00] reach outside the adoption community because it's just so well written and you can just tell this is your accumulation of wisdom and love and story and yeah, it's just so beautiful, Susan. Like well done. Well done you.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Thank you so much, Haley. It was such an honor to have you read it. It made me so happy. I was really excited to have you as a reader.

Haley Radke: Aw, that's so kind. What do you want to recommend to us?

Susan Kiyo Ito: This is a really hard question, but I decided to, and I know that you said you can only recommend one thing.

And so I did, I'm doing a little cheat here. I am going to recommend Angela Tucker, my, wonderful, amazing adoptee, activist, author, friend. Angela has two resources. One of them is her newly released book, You Should Be Grateful. And that book, how many adoptees have heard this [00:46:00] throughout their lives, right?

You should be grateful, you should be grateful, you're so lucky, all these things. And Angela really addresses this head on, includes not only her own experience as a transracial adoptee, but the voices of many others, and takes on the institution of transracial adoption, and it's really brilliant and really moving.

She also has an organization called the Adoptee Mentoring Society. And I think this is a resource that is so important because adoptees need mentors at all times of their journey, at all stages of their journey, whether they're adults, young adults, teenagers, seniors. Adoptees need mentors. And so, Angela has worked at training mentors to be there for other adoptees, mentoring adoptees.

And I just think it's a tremendous resource and value for the community.

Haley Radke: You shared a little bit, just briefly, about leading PACT camp for many years. Do you have a thought [00:47:00] about the impact that can have for a young adopted person to have a fellow adoptee walking alongside?

Susan Kiyo Ito: Oh, for sure. Well, PACT Camp is a family camp for adoptive families with children of color, so many of them are transracial families and some of them are same race or parents of color with children of color of another culture or race.

So many children are raised in isolation, racial isolation, and they don't see families that look like theirs. And so when they enter camp for the first time, and there's like hundreds of families, I mean hundreds of people there, and they see families that mirror theirs, the look on their face is like shock and awe and joy, and they're mentored by many foster alum or adoptee counselors who are their mentors and who are there with them so they can see young [00:48:00] adults who mirror their experiences and it is so meaningful and at the same time I mean they're having fun they're having the time of their lives and the adoptive parents are learning what it means to adopt children of color, and they're getting really important lessons themselves about race and adoption, about openness, about all kinds of things, how to navigate how to help their children navigate through the world when their children have experiences that are very different from their own.

So I think it's invaluable, and I was very proud to be a part of it for the many years that I was.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you. We thank you for your decades of investment in the adoptee community in so many different ways. And please tell us where we can get your book and where we can connect with you online.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Thank you. You can order my book anywhere books are sold. I, of [00:49:00] course, encourage people to go to their local independent bookstore or bookshop.org online. You can also go to your library. I really encourage people to ask their libraries to stock it that way you can read it for free if you want to. And I think I, it's really great having it in libraries.

I'm a big fan of libraries. So that's where you can get it bookstores or libraries and I think there's also going to be an audio book it's not quite there yet, but I think by the time you hear this, there will be an audio book on Audible. Yeah, and then my website is www.thesusanito.com, and then there will be a page with all of my events. Many are online, and many of them will be in person.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. Come celebrate with Susan. Yes,

Susan Kiyo Ito: See me in person. I would be like so tickled to have anybody come up to me and say, I heard you on Adoptees On and here I am. That would [00:50:00] just make us so thrilled. Me too. And we can take a selfie and send it to Haley.

Haley Radke: Please do. Oh, that would just be a delight. I can't wait for people to start reading your book. And we're going to ask you for book club next year. So I hope that that's yes. Okay. I got a yes. Wonderful. Wonderful. Can't wait to read it with y'all. Thank you so much, Susan. It has just been a delight.

Susan Kiyo Ito: Thank you Haley. I, this has been such an honor and I've been looking forward to it and I feel so happy to be here with you.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

I know we have talked about this before on the podcast. But if you're new here or maybe haven't listened to everything, there's so many episodes. I think it's really important [00:51:00] for us to acknowledge the people who have been doing this work ahead of us. Susan and I were talking about The Search for Anna Fisher and how groundbreaking that book was by Florence Fisher.

And since we recorded this episode, time shifting it's going live. Today for you, but since we recorded it, Florence Fisher actually just passed away. And so I want to send out my condolences to those who were impacted by her loss. And we think of the immeasurable impact that her memoir had.

And her work for fellow adoptees and the other forerunners in adoptee activism, it is just so important that we recognize those folks. And I hope we [00:52:00] can highlight more of them here. And we are doing some great work as a community as a whole right now, really getting voices out there and we didn't invent it.

I think it's really sweet. Some of the really young TikTokers think that they started something and really, there was a lot of people paving the way for us a long time ago. And no shame to those folks, because believe me, I was thinking the same thing 10 years ago when I was talking about adoptee stuff on Twitter as if, we were some of the first people talking about it.

So. Thank you to our foremothers and fathers. I don't know, in adoptee activism, and a big thank you to Florence Fisher. Thank you for [00:53:00] listening to adoptee voices. If you think this show is important and want it to keep existing, please join us on Patreon, which is at adopteeon.com/community, and you can find out all the benefits of joining and supporting the show. And, that helps produce this podcast. Otherwise, it wouldn't exist but you do get lots of great benefits like our adoptees only book club and the ask an adoptee therapist events and some other community gatherings. We would love to have you at and I'd love to meet you there. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday

265 Louise & Sarah

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/265

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] 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. You might know today's guests and recognize their voices from their podcast, Adoption, The Making of Me. Louise Brown and Sarah Reinhart are here! Today, we hear about how their friendship started, they dish about some of the fights they've had, and how they've sustained their close friendship.

We also talk about all the books they've read in community with their audience, and which ones have been most impactful on their understanding of the impact of adoption. I think you're going to love this conversation. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon community [00:01:00] over on adopteeson. com slash 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 AdopteeZone, Louise Brown.

Hi, Louise.

Louise Browne: Hi, how are you? Great. Good to see you.

Haley Radke: You too. And Sarah Reinhart. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Reinhardt: Thank you. Happy to be here. It's finally happening.

Haley Radke: Listen, fellow podcasters. I always say it's one of my favorite things because you get it. Yes. Yeah. You just get it. And our setup was so fast today. So well done all.

I would love it if we could hear a little more of your personal stories. Sarah, do you want to start?

Sarah Reinhardt: Sure. [00:02:00] I am a baby scoop era adoptee. I was born in St. Louis, but I found out later that was just kind of by chance because my birth mother was her water broke on the ascent out of JFK. So she spent the whole flight in labor.

She too was adopted and she was with her adoptive mother who knew nothing about her pregnancy. The jury's out on whether or not. She knew she was pregnant. She told me she knew, but some of the things that I've since found out make me wonder, you know, like she only gained seven pounds. There was never a prenatal visit.

I think I might have been premature. I don't know. I don't that. I don't know. But at any rate, I was born. In St. Louis, her mother said you are not keeping this baby and [00:03:00] she was not allowed to hold me. So I was taken away and I know that I spent five to six weeks in foster care and then I was adopted into with my parents and I've raised about two hours away from St. Louis and in a smallish town called Jefferson City. And then my parents, two and a half years later adopted my brother, no, no biological relation. And then when he was five months old, they discovered they were pregnant with twins. They did an x- ray in 1969 or whatever it was to discover there were twins.

So then there was the four of us. And when I was seven, and it was pretty, as far as I can remember, I don't remember a lot, but it was a pretty decent seven years and then my parents got divorced and then probably the year leading up to that wasn't great. I remember fighting and [00:04:00] tension and my dad left for awhile.

Then he came back and then they tried again. And then suddenly my mom was gone. And then that was kind of that. And they didn't give us much of an explanation. Then we would see her. She moved about 30 miles away and went back to school and two of us would go every other weekend. So I would see her every other week, briefly lived with her, but that didn't work out.

And then she got remarried and moved to Miami, Florida. And then when I was 12, my dad got remarried. And so then step siblings entered the picture. So there was a lot of, you know, when I look back now, for many, many years, I, you know, because there weren't therapists that talked about relinquishment trauma or adoption trauma or any of that, I put a lot of stock into the divorce.

Everybody [00:05:00] focused on how that affected and not the adoption stuff. So I conflated a lot for many, many, many years, but that's my story in a nutshell. Obviously, there's a lot deeper stuff. I, when I was 15, I ran away from home and went to Miami and lived with my mom and my stepfather that short lived. He wasn't there for long.

And then from there, I went to New York and then New York to L. A. I just kind of bounced around and moved around. Sometimes I think that's because I was sort of born up in the air. You know, it's hard to ground me, so it took my child to ground me. It took having a baby to have any kind of grounding in my life.

And, and that was when I, that was, that was the first time I, as many of us, Louise and I've talked to a lot of people on the podcast, it seems to be that pivotal moment in which you go, wait a minute, where do I come from? Hang on a second. And then I sought out my [00:06:00] birth family when my son was a baby, found my birth mother, which is why I know my origin story.

They had been wait, she and her, my siblings had all been waiting for me to find them because she did not want to give me away. She, she kept her name with the registry all those years, hoping I would find her one day. And I did, so they just welcome me like in a, in a big way, but I, you know, not knowing anything felt guilt, loyalty, all that stuff and always kept her at an arm's length, which is a big regret that I have now because she passed in 2009 and it was way before I am where I am. And so I was close to her, but always not that close and always pushed her away. So that's a sadness. And my birth father. He did not know about me. He got drafted into Vietnam. They had dated in college and then they broke up before she knew she was pregnant.

He got [00:07:00] drafted into Vietnam. He had horrible PTSD. I have siblings through him, but I recently found out his death was caused by suicide. I didn't know that until just a few weeks ago. So that's another piece that lately I've kind of been grappling with wow, suicide. There was a suicide and suicide runs in families and that's me in a nutshell.

Haley Radke: That's a lot of compounding trauma factors. Oh my goodness. Yes. Wow. Thank you for sharing that Sarah.

Louise, do you want to share yours?

Louise Browne: It's interesting hearing Sarah's differently you know what I mean? Listening, I'm also a host. I was like, I wanted to say, oh, so I'm Louise. I was also a baby scoop adoptee.

1968 was born in Colorado. My bio mom, Linda was a young woman, 19-years-old. She could not [00:08:00] financially keep me. I really think that's what it came down to. I think she wanted to keep me and had a lot of pressure as I'm getting to know. I recently have been reading some things and just discovering some things through some biological relatives, her sister and others, or I just think she had a lot of talking in her ear about how it would be better to give me away. To give me up to relinquish me, she'd be giving me a father and a mother. A father was very important to her because her father was not in the picture and most of her teen years and that kind of thing. And she went through a lot of hard stuff in her teen years. So she was her letters. I have some letters from her and they're all very they're very sweet.

They're innocent about, you know, This is going to be so good for the baby. She didn't know if I was a boy or a girl and all these things. And I think it really affected her later. She's passed away. She passed away in 1975 when I was in the second grade. So I've never known her, but I know a lot about her.

I was adopted about four [00:09:00] days after that's what I can piece together. And I'm like, Sarah, I'm still trying to get like the information from here to there, but I do know I was with my biological mom for at least three days in the hospital. And I have pictures of that. And that's kind of one of those things where you're like, oh my God, I was this person to somebody else.

And then went directly to my family. I do not think I was in foster care very long. I think there was maybe a day or two of just transitioning me. It was a private adoption. I went to live with my parents and an older brother, five years older, who is their biological son. My mother could not have more babies because she had Rh negative blood and carried a full term baby two years before me that died that she had to deliver and there was no help for her.

For that, you know, there was no counseling. I don't think anybody ever talked to her about it because she started talking about it before she passed away in 2018. She [00:10:00] started to bring it up and talk about a little bit and that's some push down stuff for years. Right? So my heart never knew that it was a weird thing.

How you come into a family and never really know why you're in that family. So, I had a pretty idealistic adoption, as they say, the good adoption. I think you used the word when we met with you, a compatible adoption. Got along very well with my family, especially my father. My mother as well. I pushed back a lot.

I thought, I think growing up, I thought I was very just off or weird and kept it to myself. Like, why aren't I fitting in? I do everything to fit in, you know, observe, watch, mimic my older brother. I was in awe of him, all my relatives. And even to this day, I feel like I'm sort of a person who keeps the family together.

My adopted family, I'm sort of a fixer still, even though I try not to be so much anymore. I'm aware of it, but it's, if I don't do that, maybe they'll leave me [00:11:00] or I won't have them. But I never knew I had all these feelings, probably so many adoptees, right? We've interviewed so many people and it's the same story.

I was sort of, I'd say heavily in the fog. I wouldn't say sort of heavily in the fog until two years ago, three years ago, but when my son was born, like Sarah mentioned, when she had her child, that's when I really was like, wait a second. I mean, I really got close to him didn't want to ever leave his side probably over parented him was too needy You know all the all the stuff we do and I was really curious then okay I didn't know my biological mother had died.

I knew nothing about myself so I thought oh I should look and then I was busy and I didn't look but my biological family found me on my mother's side so it's one of those things that like you think you want to look and then you don't do it and then somebody finds you and you're like, wait a second, I'm not ready for this. Right? So my biological grandmother was dying of Parkinson's disease and [00:12:00] they had been looking for me for about 10 years. I mean, like on and off and paid a lot of money to agencies and Colorado was a private adoption. It was just very hard to figure out who I was. So they found me. I was excited about it, overwhelmed, nervous, went into reunion very quickly with no, I mean, I wish I knew Sarah at the time or somebody, but no knowledge of what to do with this because I wanted to meet my grandmother because she, you know, I was the healing part for her.

So it was all about that. You know, she's lost her daughter. So long ago, tragically, they found me on the missing link. Everybody knew about me, not everybody in the family, but the closest family knew about me and had wondered how I was or I was missed me. So I went into a very excited, but then did the pullback thing, right?

So went in, got to know everybody, then pulled myself quickly back from it all. Probably hurt a lot of people along the way, not meaning to just kind of disconnecting. [00:13:00] I had a lot of guilt about it. My parents guilted me about it, but then started to open up about it. But even then I had my own internal guilt about it.

Oh, I shouldn't really talk about it or upset anybody. Let me balance these two things for years. For years, I went through that. So recently both my parents have passed away, my adopted parents and you know, I grapple with that. I miss them a lot. I was really close to them, but I sort of feel like we started to just talk about this right before the end.

And so. And, you know, in my wishful thinking, I think that they'd be happy I'm doing what I'm doing and learning about who I am. And I just go with that because I want to know who I am and it's time. So that's my story.

Haley Radke: Oh, thank you both. There's all these things I want to dig into too, but I'm going to save it.

I'm curious. I think the story is [00:14:00] that your sons, who first grounded you, are also who brought you together. Is that right?

Sarah Reinhardt: Mm hmm. Yes. That's how we met. Our sons were in school together.

Louise Browne: It was like basketball after school. Sarah was super cool. I'd see her hanging out and I was like, Oh, I got to know her.

We had a friend who introduced us as well. So.

Haley Radke: Okay. So how many years ago was that?

Louise Browne: 2007 or eight, seven or eight.

Haley Radke: Okay. So the people who listen to you want to know, have you had any major friendship bumps in the road? Because Adoptees are very good at cutting people off and, or pushing people away before we get pushed away.

So, how has your friendship gone? Have you had any, you've got a [00:15:00] business together? I mean.

Louise Browne: Haley, these are good questions.

Sarah Reinhardt: Really good question.

Louise Browne: I'd say, yes, I think we, well, I mean, we, first of all, Sarah and I owned a business together that was a very stressful business, right? Sarah was like, we had a gourmet ice cream truck, the food truck in Los Angeles while we're raising sons and we're both single moms.

I mean, they had active fathers, but just that pressure alone would bend a lot of people. And I don't know. I think we, we did have some bumps, but I think we kind of gave each other a little grace too. Sometimes we'd be like, all right, because if we really love each other.

Sarah Reinhardt: We definitely had a connection that seemed that it wouldn't break no matter. I mean, I feel like I probably pushed Louise away more than she pushed me away And so if not for her sort of steadfast like I'm not going anywhere even though it was that wasn't a verbal, it was just more of a show up [00:16:00] by her action, I probably would have been out the door.

Louise Browne: You know why? Because I'm the good adoptee and Sarah's the poor soul.

I'm the, I'm the fixer loyal to a fault. And Sarah's the I'm pushing you away. But, you know, we both have the same stuff. You know, it's been really actually cool about it now. We just tell each other, we love each other and just, I don't know, this podcast, I feel like I know her so well and vice versa that I'm like, you know, I don't know, I just give her grace because I'm, I have my own issues too.

Yeah. That's it, right? What's your thought?

Sarah Reinhardt: I, no, I, I agree. I was just thinking of, we had, you know, two pretty big bumps in this whole time and we really managed to get through them. One of them was the truck during, during that period of time and we managed to, you know, we rose above it. We talked it through, [00:17:00] we got through it and then another time was, I don't know, what was it, six months ago?

Louise Browne: Or so yeah, when we started to just get super busy with the podcast and you know, we're both working full time, you know, because you did this for a living and we're working full time trying to have a podcast super busy. And we were just like, but we stayed on the phone.

We're like, we talked to Louisa.

Sarah Reinhardt: Yeah, I was ready to hang up. And Louise was like, no, let's like, we're, talking this through.

Louise Browne: I love that you give me credit. I think you were more mature in that one than I was.

Sarah Reinhardt: I think I was more mature in the first one. This one, I think you were more mature.

Louise Browne: Yeah, we have, we worked it out, you know, I mean, it's pretty cool because we've done two really ambitious projects together and I couldn't do them. This is interesting. A friend of mine asked me recently, would you do this on your own. I'm like, I would never have done either of these businesses on my own and not without Sarah because [00:18:00] Sarah has her own close friends. I have my own close friends. We have some mutual friends, but she's the person I somehow do these projects with. It's like we have that.

Sarah Reinhardt: No, my son says that, you know, he's mom, you and Louise really have like something. I mean, so many people say that, so that, that it's our dynamic with each other that makes it work.

You know, both. The truck and the podcast. There's just some sort of magic that the two of us have together that on our own we wouldn't have.

Louise Browne: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Do you remember the first time you disclosed to each other that you were adopted?

Sarah Reinhardt: Very well. We were playing pool with our mutual friend.

Louise Browne: Shout out to Karen.

Sarah Reinhardt: Karen. I, I guess she introduced, I mean, we'd see each other at school, but she was the one who put together. It's the three of us go out. And so we went out and we were playing pool. And [00:19:00] I don't remember exactly how it came out, but we were both like, I'm adopted, I'm adopted too. And then, then Karen was kind of. The third wheel as it were in that.

Louise Browne: We were like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, me too. Blah, blah, blah. You know, Karen still jokes about it to this day. She's I was there. I should have just gone home.

Haley Radke: Finally, you're the majority in the room. What does that mean?

Sarah Reinhardt: I mean, really?

Haley Radke: Okay, so you decide to start a podcast together. I want to hear how that came about. And you guys always read a few chapters of an adoption themed book before you share your interview with the guest. How did you come to start the show? And how did you pick The Primal Wound for your first book?

Sarah Reinhardt: COVID happened. I had moved to Kansas City from Los Angeles, Louise had moved to the central coast.

And we were just, we had a lot of idle time, I guess, even though we're both [00:20:00] working, it still was, you know, how early COVID was. And Louise was like, you know, we should start, we should start a podcast and maybe we should do it about, you know, women in their fifties with second acts or something. And I was like, it doesn't really resonate.

So I just said, let's do something about adoption. That's something we both know. And the book idea just came, came about. Neither one of us had ever read anything. And I had been hearing about The Primal Wound. Somehow, you know, when things just. Just happen when they're meant to happen and there's signs that keep coming your way that book just kept crossing my path so I said we just decided to try this sort of book group aspect of the podcast and that's because that's the only one that I knew that I'd ever heard about I didn't hear about any other books?

Cause who was, I wasn't looking as far as I was concerned. Adoption was a wonderful thing. We were lucky and chosen and, and that's just the way it was. And that was the [00:21:00] attitude when we started the podcast.

Louise Browne: I had had The Primal Wound given to me, I think by a marriage counselor or something. It sat on my shelf for years, my, with my ex husband in our living room.

And I think I threw it away. So when Sarah brought it up, I go, Oh, not that book. I remember that book. I'm scared of that book. And that's kind of, we're that naive. Honestly, it was kind of, I kind of say it's a good book to start with. It sounds because I know adoptees sometimes have problems with it not being written by an adoptee, but it's not.

It's sort of a nice entrance into it.

Haley Radke: If you, if you like having all your problems exposed to you, in one shot, sure.

Louise Browne: We went through this, exactly, right? It was like, but, you know, because we've read many things since, that I think would have been a harder thing to tackle, right? I don't know, it was hard as it was.

Sarah Reinhardt: Yeah, I, mean, I think it, I think that that we chose that book because it was the only one that I'd ever heard about adoption. I'd never heard anything else. [00:22:00] I'd never heard anything but positive stuff about being adopted. And but then I read about that book. I was like, huh, there's, we should, we should tackle this.

And then, then we did.

Louise Browne: I still remember texting Sarah from the back porch going, oh my God, like two chapters in maybe what, like rereading things like this makes sense about me, you know what I mean? Do you resonate with this would be we're kind of like it was it was weird being in that position I don't know at that age Mm hmm, right.

Haley Radke: You kind of feel naive like what how did I not know this?

Yes, so as you're reading Primal Wound chapter by chapter, you're also interviewing Adopted people and I think you do a couple of other constellation members at first. What are the things? That are sort of like, let's call it clearing out some of the fog for [00:23:00] you. Is it more the book, is it more you're texting each other being like, can you believe this?

I'm just like this. You're just like this. Or is it hearing story after story of people that have unpacked a few things, maybe a little further along the way than you? What was it? Is it all of those things?

Sarah Reinhardt: I think it's a combination of all of those things, because you're right. In the beginning, we were like, yeah, you have a relative adopted come on the show.

I mean, we really literally were just we didn't know anybody. I mean, we knew other adoptees. They didn't all want to come on. They didn't want to come on. And so our first guest after the two of us talked to each other was, was a woman who was the sister of someone that I lived across the street from. And, then, so I think, I think initially, like the, our first guest isn't necessarily unfogged. I don't think I think, you know, still thinks of adoption is a wonderful, [00:24:00] wonderful thing. But as we went on, then we, I don't know, it must have been like midway through the first season. We're like, each chapter we read, we're like, oh, my God. And then, you know, kind of connecting all starting to connect the dots.

And then and then I think we had a few guests that were really gracious with us because they were further along than us. So they were very gracious to have been on with us and been patient with us and, you know, saw us going through this. Coming out of it ourselves.

Louise Browne: We had a lot of support from the adoptee community right away.

People are kind. And I think also one thing Sarah and I remember a conversation we had where we, I think we are going to have a birth mother on and she canceled something happened, but we, we both said, you know, we should just speak to what we know because it is a sensitive subject too right. So what do we know?

We are adoptees. We can say we're an adoptee. We can speak to this. Even if we all have different feelings or different ways, we come about it. And so we narrowed it [00:25:00] down pretty quickly that maybe we shouldn't be having the whole triad on. And that's not our role. And just some things will come up. I think we started reading more articles. I mean, just as it went through, we narrowed it down pretty quick.

Sarah Reinhardt: And guests would tell us, you know, we have, we had a guest say, you know, you should read Journey of the Adopted Self. And, you know, I know it's talked about in the Primal Wound as well. Betty Jean Lifton is. Yes, I think there was a moment when we had an adoptive father on and he said something and I, I really feel like that might have been my.

My coming out of the fog, like really no turning back moment when he said they celebrated gotcha day and it was just, I had such a visceral reaction to that and I think in that shortly after that, I think we said okay, we're just going to have adoptees on. Yeah, going going further. Yeah, but that I really now that I remember that was it where I [00:26:00] just it probably showed on my face too.

And I think I think I don't know. Yeah, we don't we don't celebrate that or, you know, something. So, yeah. And then that was it. No, no turning back.

Louise Browne: We don't even say it for our dogs. Really?

Sarah Reinhardt: No. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Exactly. Louise, do you have a moment like that? Or do you remember something?

Louise Browne: It was pretty much the same moment. Sarah and I were texting each other oh, and then should we air this? I mean, he was a sweet person who was open. You know, he was open actually to us talking to him about it. And he said, I want to learn about this because of the situation he was in. And I think that's when we kind of got on the phone with each other and said okay, we need to focus on our feelings about this now and, and what we know. And we don't want to do that.

Sarah Reinhardt: It's been, you know, years and years and years of everybody else's voices. It's adoptee voices that[00:27:00] we want to hear and have told and be a part of, you know.

Louise Browne: Even though we were in the fog, I do think Sarah and I throughout our lives. We've talked about it. We've had moments where I mean, I used to try to tell people, you know, what it's like when you're adopted and people don't listen.

So then you're kind of just quiet oh, you know, where you have. So we started to get stronger with our voices okay, hello, been saying things for years. And now I'd like to say things, you know, and then not be so worried about everybody else's feelings, really. For me, and yeah, maybe for Sarah, too.

So, you know, we're always worried about everybody else. So.

Haley Radke: You've got over 80 episodes, I think, right at the time we're recording this. And I've, done a couple hundred. Well, you've talked to so many adoptees between all of us. And over the years, I've been podcasting for seven years now. I'm going to call myself that I feel like I've [00:28:00] become radicalized. So I definitely was critical of adoption in the beginning. I don't think I was fully like realized all the complexities behind everything and the money machine and all those kinds of things. I think it's amazing when folks can listen to you and hear this progression through your season.

I think it's. Through your seasons. I think it's happened with several adoptee podcasters that I've spoken to.

Louise Browne: Yes, sir.

Haley Radke: But I want to ask you about some of the books you've read and let's sort of, I don't know, rank them, but express to me what things you learned through them that sort of pushed you more and more into the place that you are now and your feelings about adoption?

Okay, so Primal Wound very much was eye opening, obviously. Did you read Journey of the Adoptee Self [00:29:00] next? The adopted self?

Sarah Reinhardt: Yes, that was our second season. That was our second season.

Haley Radke: Okay, so that's by Betty Jean Lifton, who is an adoptee. And how was that experience for you, reading that?

Sarah Reinhardt: Big.

Louise Browne: Yeah, that, that was the one that really I, we got depressed, like we both suffered a little bit of I mean, that's when it started to really be emotional, like heavy for us.

I mean, I think it took emotional toll on both of us a little bit too, just okay, whoa, maybe that's why it wasn't a good one to start with is what I was implying before, because it really was. I mean, I just remember reading parts of it and being like, I can't finish this tonight, this chapter. And we'd only read like one, we read in real time.

That's one thing we really do on our show is we do not read ahead. So that way when we record, it's, it's real, it's raw. We read a couple hours before we record, which I think comes off better than if we're trying to backtrack or [00:30:00] something, but there's times that we're like, oh my gosh, it was really hard on both of us.

Sarah Reinhardt: Well it because it was somebody who with lived experience. Yeah. And Nancy Verrier, she was an observer. She wasn't, she was, didn't have lived experience, so it was a different mm-hmm. a different thing. And it was, it was it, you know, it was reading like, wow, this is how I felt my whole life. Yes. Never could give voice to it.

Never had anyone to talk to about it. It all made sense. It finally, it finally made sense. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Then you went to The Mistress's Daughter by A. M. Holmes, which is a memoir. So good.

Sarah Reinhardt: Love that book.

Louise Browne: We did a memoir series. I was going to say that. Memoir season. Yeah. Season. That was probably, I don't know, favorites or not.

Just that book. Everyone should just read that book anyway.

Sarah Reinhardt: She's such a great writer too. You know, she's just. She's just [00:31:00] I just love her. She just is brilliant with words, you know, and put the way she puts her words together and she's got a lot of humor and she's so. Just so brilliant, you know, and there was

Louise Browne: some laughter too.

We needed some laughter. Honestly after season 2 it was nice to have a little like levity once in a while

Haley Radke: So I know that this next one I'm super biased cuz Megan Culhane Galbraith is my friend I love her so you read the Guild of the Infant Savior, which is so creative and different.

Sarah Reinhardt: Oh my God, just so interesting and yeah, that's where we really, you know, what we learned about.

She's a true artist, you know, and a historian.

Louise Browne: We learned a lot about just some of the things that we didn't know about the mothers with the colleges and all those experimental things. Like she really did some,

Haley Radke: yeah, learn the whole, learn home economics on a borrowed baby.

Sarah Reinhardt: Yes.

Louise Browne: Super impressed with that.

Well, we love her too, but [00:32:00] yeah, it was, I mean, these are, I feel like should be on every adoptee shelf.

Haley Radke: So, you guys, I'm so sad. You can't see my bookshelf. I have a hundred and seventy adoptee authored books right behind me in this very room. So,

Sarah Reinhardt: oh my god. Wow.

Haley Radke: I'm so excited when you read something adoptee authored because I also have this thing of who gets to tell our stories. And I'll ask you about that once we finish this list. So I have American Baby next. Is that right? Or am I missing one?

Sarah Reinhardt: We had Damon's. Damon Davis.

Haley Radke: Okay. Damon. Mm hmm. So also fellow podcaster.

Sarah Reinhardt: Yes. Yes. And you know, he, he, his book, he tells, he writes his book exactly as he tells his story, which, which we had had him on the podcast. So it was kind of nice to actually just read his words. That we'd heard.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I remember when I read his book. I heard it in his voice because [00:33:00] listening to his show. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Louise Browne: Yes. How he talks. Right? Yeah.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I love him.

Louise Browne: So distinctive.

Haley Radke: And so American Baby.

Louise Browne: Yeah, American Baby. I was going to say when, when you were saying rate them, I think American Baby, everyone should read not just adoptees. I think it's the history.

Sarah Reinhardt: Right? I think it's that, it's that, that, that book that would maybe shine the light on the horrendous practices of adoption. You know, it's not what I like about it is that it's that she is just historically reporting on the facts. She's not. It's not her experience.

It's a reporter's lens. Just the facts, ma'am. And then highlighting this, tragic. Horribly sad story of a mother, you know, who didn't want to give up her baby. I mean, it's just something that everybody should read to know the history of the [00:34:00] privacy laws and the baby scoop era and all of that stuff and then stuff that is still going on.

Louise Browne: I feel like people could read it too. Does that make sense? I've told a few people about it. I have a friend that's going to read it with her book club coming up and they're not adoptees, but I think that it doesn't offend. You know how it's kind of like this. Well, okay, great. Well, you're an adoptee.

You're putting this in my face type of thing. It's not this is somebody who writes for the New York Times and other publications. This is a history just reading about anything else we need to learn about, about people who have been compromised or whatever. Right. So I feel like it's a book for everybody, even though it's incredible for adoptees.

I just feel powerful about it.

Haley Radke: Lends more credibility to it.

Sarah Reinhardt: Well, that's what I was going to say in, terms of out in the public, in the world, right? If you want to tell somebody about what, the adoption experience is like as an adoptee or as someone in [00:35:00] the triad, you know, being Margaret, the mother in the book and David, the son, it's not coming from, I, know that there's some criticisms that adoptees are angry and get over it.

And, you know, I feel like this book would give people the do you know what I'm trying to say? I'm sorry.

Louise Browne: It would actually give them the reasons that they might be angry. They'll go oh, they should be angry. This is not okay. Right? What she's saying. It's putting it out there. I think I just think it's a powerful book. I mean, she's

Sarah Reinhardt: putting it out there from a journalist journalist, someone who's a journalist and telling the story as an observer as a journalist. Not like. Nancy as a adoptive mother, you know, Gabrielle is none of those things. She saw a story. She went after it. And in that, you know, in a cinema verite kind of way, it unfolded. And, it was super powerful as a result of that. And I think , it's a good vehicle to get the message out in a way [00:36:00] that isn't just an adoptee. Being emotional. If that's how people look at us

Haley Radke: And Sarah, you're a journalist, right? You're trained as a journalist.

Sarah Reinhardt: What? No, I used to do some magazine writing a long time ago, and I'm a writer.

I did like screenwriting and TV writing and now I'm doing like essay writing. Storyteller. Yes.

Haley Radke: Yes. All right. And now you're reading actually by another adoptive mother, The Baby Thief, the story of Georgia Tann, who lots of people don't know about. And wow. I mean, so eyeopening.

Louise Browne: It's really a hard read.

It's we were like, why can't we move on to an adoptee book right now? Cause we, had our Patreons vote on our season, which was kind of neat. It's also very important. I mean, it's just so horrific and really Georgia Tann is, you know, she's the reason a lot of adoptee practices, adoption practices are the way they are [00:37:00] now in the United States from that historical happening with her.

So it's an important book as well.

Haley Radke: Like closed records.

Sarah Reinhardt: Yep. Right.

Louise Browne: Closed records, the narrative. Just the narrative and she really it's called The Baby Thief because she stole children and sold them and horrible besides that horrible practices within that. I mean, just it's and it's, it's not a fun read.

That's for sure. None of these are fun reads, but it's a hard read.

Haley Radke: No, that's what I find too. When I'm reading,

Louise Browne: I was listening to a smutty type thing last night on my walking on the walk. I'm like, Oh, it feels so good to just listen to this because it's deep work, right? It's

Sarah Reinhardt: yeah. Yeah. I did hear they are making a movie out of The Baby Thief.

Louise Browne: Yeah. God.

Sarah Reinhardt: So. There will be someone I work with actually had [00:38:00] said, Oh, I didn't realize Georgia Tann was a real person. She'd read a novel where they used Georgia Tann, used her real name, but she thought she was just a character in a book. She was a real person. So, yeah, interesting.

Haley Radke: I wonder what impact that will have on the public's view of adoption then. Just depending on the framing.

Sarah Reinhardt: It just feels you know what it feels like it almost these times, if I can use this analogy, maybe it's it feels like the, you know, how in the 60s, 1960s with all the, you know, civil rights issues and this and that, and it still has been another 50 some odd years and it's still, you know, slowly, I feel like that's what's going to happen with us.

There can be a ton of information out there. It's, just going to take awhile to, really have people admit it, I guess, is really what I'm sure, you know. [00:39:00] I think we talked about, you know, we've, we've definitely triggered some adoptive parents with, our podcast. And I don't think you get triggered without knowing that there's some truth to it.

And I, so I think the louder we are, the better there, there's so many of us out there talking about it. But it's so ingrained. It's so ingrained think that it's such a wonderful thing.

Louise Browne: We see things now. And I was all bent out of shape recently about a Dateline, right? Because it was a Dateline and and they were highlighting the boy who killed his adoptive mother or whatever.

And he was adopted from another country but it was all about this bad kid. And I saw such a different story with it about, because after watching, and this is Dateline, but I was like, going to write to Dateline. Hello, you need to investigate the other. So it's, it's funny how you see things now, movies we used to like things in the media, you know, the Hollywood [00:40:00] ending of reunion or just, you know, movies that I used to be like, oh, that's such a good movie. Now I'm like, Oh. No, it's not.

Haley Radke: So many, so many things are ruined.

Sarah Reinhardt: I know so many things. I mean, I used to love, I love Juno when it came out. Now I'm just, yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So what are your thoughts then? It has to be explored a little bit when you were talking about American Baby, about who gets to tell our stories. And why isn't it accepted when an adoptee is sharing that story? You know, Megan's book, we're calling her a historian. She's uncovering some of these same expose things that are credible about the Domicon babies, for example, you know,

Louise Browne: I don't know that people want to hear about [00:41:00] not fitting in and families or that you were depressed or the things, you know, I really think people do think still that babies are blank slates. And if you give them love, love is a great thing. There's nothing wrong with giving a baby love and a home, but I think that they don't want to hear that the child's going to have internal.

Everybody wants to know who they are and where you're from. It's a natural thing. So even if you're in the fog or not in the fog, you're an adoptee. You wonder who you are, right? And you have your almost all of us have the same patterns and little things that we do. That's why adoptees meet each other and go oh and you just get each other and you can't explain that to other people.

And I think. It's a really hard thing, unless you've been through it, how do you explain it in a way that people can hear it without turning them off or making them feel bad or because it would be nice to have conversations where people could talk and not be angry. I mean, we've had adopted parents write us who are very thank you for [00:42:00] right for doing this.

This helps me because they're, reacting differently in their home to their child and we've had the exact opposite. So.

Sarah Reinhardt: But to your question about who decides who gets to tell those stories, I mean, I guess it's just an individual decision. You know, we, when we started off with Nancy, then from there, we thought, well, we're, we're going to do read all the adoptee books.

And then American Baby came along and that kind of opened up the door to Georgia Tann that you know, well, we had Patreons that wanted to us to read that book. Again you know, maybe. Maybe we should just focus on adoptee voices, but I do think there are other if we want the message out into the mainstream.

Maybe we have to be open to also reading about. I don't [00:43:00] know that I would do the. In terms of I don't know that I want to maybe in retrospect, I understand people's beef with Nancy Verrier book. I understand that beef. I don't hold that in the same category as American Baby again because because it was a, it was a journalist telling a story.

If that makes sense. It wasn't an adoptive mother. With her own feelings about it, if that makes sense.

Haley Radke: I know you haven't read it on air. I don't know if you've read The Girls Who Went Away. I think that's

Louise Browne: on our stack.

Sarah Reinhardt: That's one of the next.

Haley Radke: Okay, because this is a story of all these, the baby scoop era. Voices of mothers of loss. And it is written by Ann Fessler, who is an adoptee. Right. And so that's the twist on, oh, it's an adoptee is going to tell the mother's story, right? And I think it's really interesting and nothing [00:44:00] wrong or right either way. It's just up for discussion. And I agree. There's so much criticism on The Primal Wound for that.

And I mean, I used to tell people like that was the book that I mean, we recommended it so many times on the show. And now we have so many other resources. It's Yes, there's riches everywhere.

Sarah Reinhardt: It's yeah, it's kind of the ground floor, isn't it? Or the entryway into it

Haley Radke: for a lot of people. Absolutely.

Louise Browne: And I'm great. I'm grateful to that entryway, because if I didn't read it, I wouldn't be where I'm at. And so I think there's room for a lot of it, right? You were saying that you're radicalized, which I think happens, right? I do, I also think what Sarah is saying, you have to have a lot of different ways of communicating out there with other people about this topic.

And sometimes I feel we're all in our own little, in general, just in the country. We're all in our own little vacuums, right? Let's [00:45:00] talk here. Let's talk here. But I do I did like American Baby because it was like something I could send to my brother could read that and be like, oh, wow, this went on. And then he and I could have conversations that are different. If that makes sense. And I don't know that he would get it if I sent him Journey to the Adopted Self. He'd be like, I'm not reading that. You know, it wouldn't relate. So I think for adoptees there's reading and for everybody there's reading and maybe eventually it's all the same. I don't know if that, if I'm making sense, but

Haley Radke: I'm so. Deep in, I have no concept anymore of which book did which thing to me because, when you read so much, like I, before I have a guest on, if they have a book or books, I've read them. It like I have read so much My friends make fun of me because sometimes I'll hesitate calling myself an adoption [00:46:00] expert and they're like, okay who else has read that many books on adoption besides adoption scholars.

So yeah. Anyway, thank you for your thoughts on that. I know. Yeah, people have all kinds of opinions. My last thing before we do recommended resources, as I did want to touch on representation, and, you know, we are folks with a platform, and we've built it, and we give people the mic, and when I started, in my first season, I was very hesitant on interviewing anyone who had a kind of a different experience than me, whether that was someone who is internationally adopted, or I mean, most of the guests I had were white people adopted to white families.

And we talked about the complexities of that. Not all, but most. And so, over the last years, I've [00:47:00] worked so hard to spread my platform to many more people. And I have people apply to be on the show all the time, which I'm sure you do too. And there's also this responsibility, I feel, for vetting people and not platforming harmful people.

So, do you guys have thoughts on that? What you've seen in the space, what you've been working towards doing things about just making sure we are sharing our platform in a responsible way. And I think we have a duty to the community to make sure we hear from all voices.

Louise Browne: I feel like we've had a couple people on where we were like, you know, where we're like, Oh.

Should we tell that story or you kind of catch yourself mid interview? Oh, you know, but then we're like, this is their story. Everybody has a story to tell. Right? So I think we've been pretty good about, [00:48:00] we would like to get anybody's perspective. We've tried to get actually more perspectives and I've interviewed people from all over, but even recently, we had a guy on from Scotland and some people are like, well, I don't understand them as well, but people in Scotland do.

And they like to hear from the Scottish people as well, or whoever it is. Right? We have had some situations where we're not sure it's going to be what we want to say, but we're like, okay. If we ask the right questions and don't put our opinion on it, they're still allowed to tell their story. We haven't had any real haters. Well, Sarah can speak.

Sarah Reinhardt: Well, not since not since we went adoptee only, but definitely in our, in our first season. This is how naive we really were. We had a adoptive mother on who had a savior complex, and we trashed the interview. We did not didn't that even and that was pre fog, honestly. [00:49:00] And but we knew this is not

Louise Browne: what made us both feel weird.

Actually, just internally as adoptees. And so I

Sarah Reinhardt: mean, we've definitely I mean, we've had a guest here and there that, you know, maybe is what's the word I'm looking for that angry, rightfully angry, but they have the right. We try to make a safe space for people so that if it seems like it's going to go south, you know, we try to, we try to give room at the same time of reigning it in, if that makes sense.

But. Yeah, I mean, there's so many voices out there and and it's we like you said, I mean, we a lot of our listeners are similar to us in age and the baby scoop era white women, you know, we have a that's the majority of the people that reach out to us and how do we get to the other to other voices?[00:50:00]

It's kind of hard to get to those other voices sometimes because of who we are. Maybe I don't know

Louise Browne: I always think I wonder who's listening that isn't saying they're listening, right? So when you put a podcast out you're thinking I wonder who's going to be touched by this interview. I always wonder that like when someone's speaking, like right now you're interviewing us, who will listen to this and it will resonate and somebody else will go, I don't like them.

Right. But it's a, it's an interesting thing because I think women in general speak up more and want to come out and tell their stories more just. Being, you know, with the language and their podcast listeners, the whole thing. So it's hard to get other people in, but when you get them, they're excited, you know, it's exciting to have someone tell their story to and feel safe with you.

It's oh my gosh, this person trusts us. I just try to remember that each time we interview any, anybody, like someone's trusting us with their story. This is so big. Sometimes we're the first person they've ever [00:51:00] told for some people.

Sarah Reinhardt: I had lunch the other day with an adoptee who was coming through Kansas City and when she'd been on our podcast and she's that's the first time I've ever talked about it.

Even to her friends, you know, she'd never talked about it. And that is, then you, just think, wow, I've really. It that helps somebody that helps somebody, whatever little piece you can do in the world to help another adoptee, you know, to have an adoptee that because, you know, I got to 55-years-old or whatever before I realized the impact of it.

And there's a lot of people like that out there that are just kind of waking up and then they have a safe space to come and talk and feel non judged and feel like, oh, yes. Somebody that relates to me.

Haley Radke: Definitely. Well, I will just say, I will continue to [00:52:00] challenge myself and challenge other adoptee podcasters to make sure we are you know, sharing from a wide, wide perspectives and, and from, from people from other communities too.

Not not adoptees, only adoptees.

Sarah Reinhardt: No, we've had several international adoptees. And, you know, again, it's like we go through, probably you go through the same thing when you people apply to be on and, you know, we might, Louise and I might have to have a conversation about, okay, maybe what we've been doing is first come first serve, but maybe there's a better way to go about it.

And maybe there's a better way to reach out and find those voices that you. Yeah, that have not been as represented on the show doesn't have to be first come first serve. Why did we decide that we can revisit that? It doesn't have to be that way. You know?

Haley Radke: Yeah. There's so many podcasters. I don't want you to take that as a, you guys aren't doing something. I don't mean that. I mean, for all of us.

Sarah Reinhardt: No, but [00:53:00] it's, you're having this conversation is just, you know, kind of light bulb. Yeah. Yeah, let's have that talk. Cause We had

Louise Browne: in season two who I think we were doing like a season two mid interview, cute poster thing. And she said, oh, I don't see that many people of color on there.

And I said, and she's an adoptee. I said, would you come on please? And she's oh, okay. I didn't know, you know, I'm like, no, please and spread the word because we're trying to figure out how to spread the word too. Mm-hmm. with our limited means and our, you know, just Sarah and I at night have we doing our social media?

You know, you do all that.

Haley Radke: Okay. Yes. And I think as hosts, then we have extra work to do as white ladies to make sure we are doing our anti racist work and asking good questions and all those things to make safe space. Right. And I think you guys are excellent at doing that. There's others that could improve and, you know, we're all, [00:54:00] we're always improving.

Anyway, I want to encourage folks to listen to your show. Adoption, The Making of Me. It's so well done. I love how you have the book. Thank you. The book discussion up front. You're really taking people on a journey of learning about different things through your eyes and through the eyes of the authors that you share.

And then you share an interview with a fellow adoptee for most of your episodes, their personal story and all those like things that we love to connect to and we can always find something to relate to. I think you guys have great questions. I think you're very empathetic. I think people that like this show will probably like your show.

It's very relatable. Yes.

Louise Browne: Thank you. It means a lot coming from you, because we think very highly of you and to your listeners, you're going to be on our podcast coming up. So that's exciting too. But it, it's very it [00:55:00] means a lot coming from you, from you actually, because you have been in the space for a long time.

I think Sarah called you the godmother of the space and a good, and that's kind of like to us, you know. You put, out great work and you do great work. We've heard it from a lot. When we were first getting into this, we heard it from other people. They would talk about you to us or oh, you know, you get that person that you're like, oh, look at her.

She's doing great. So, and we're not that tuned into so many other podcasts. Like we only, you know, really know probably a handful of myself because we're just overwhelmed most of the time. I mean, just.

Haley Radke: Nobody has time to listen to all of them, but I'm so thankful for them because, you know, Sarah, you're talking about, you have this first come first serve list.

So many people apply to be on the shows and we just don't have enough time in the day to interview everyone. And so it's amazing that there's more and more places for people to [00:56:00] go and hear their have their story be heard even for the first time. Yeah. Very special. So. What did you guys want to recommend to us?

Sarah Reinhardt: Well, on the shelf and I was going to bring this up to Louise let's do another memoir soon, is You Don't Look Adopted. And I have not read that. I'm very curious to read that. Have you read that, Haley?

Haley Radke: Absolutely. I have. Yep.

Louise Browne: And I'm in a writing group. Yes, of course you have. I'm in a writing group with Anne every Tuesday night.

Okay. And I'm like, and the, the most of the adoptees in the writing group are there because they read her book and I'm there because we know her, because we've had her on the podcast. And I'm like, I'm reading this. This year, but I didn't want to read. I didn't want to read it without Sarah because it's one of the books They want us to do so I'm like in a holding pattern.

Haley Radke: Oh Okay, yes I think from what I've heard from a lot of adopted people who've read her book and I agree with this [00:57:00] is a lot of people will read it and think oh my gosh, this is how my brain works Right. Yeah, it's very got some very relatable stories in it. And yes, absolutely. That's a great one. We'll also put in the show notes all the names of the books that you guys have read through your seasons.

So folks can pick those up because we discussed them a little bit already. And yeah, great recommendations.

Louise Browne: Also, can we recommend I think also just having the platforms that are out there like Fireside Adoptees, there's certain things that I'll even look at for two minutes every day and just be like, oh, it kind of resonates and makes your day feel better. You know, things like that, like it doesn't have to be a book, but just resources. I think there's so many.

Sarah Reinhardt: There's lots of resources, Adoptees Connect Fireside Adoptees. Gosh, there's so many. Yeah. There's a new podcast about adoptees at work. Yeah. And it's all [00:58:00] about how you come to work. As an adoptive person, you know, how obviously every area of your life is affected by this event that occurred at birth.

And how does it manifest elsewhere? And that she's focusing strictly on, how we show up in the workplace, which is valuable. Very valuable. Yeah.

Louise Browne: There's some really cool, I mean, just new things out there we've been seeing. So just the resources, Joe Soll, I mean, everyone tells us about him and anyway, those are some things to, recommend.

Your podcast. Can we put that on the list?

Haley Radke: I think they're already listening to that. Well, we'll put links to all those things in the show notes. And where can we connect with you guys online? And where can we find your show?

Sarah Reinhardt: Our website is adoptionthemakingofme. com on Facebook, we're the same Twitter is, yeah, I mean, you just put us in the search bar where we're all [00:59:00] over

Louise Browne: anywhere you get your podcast pretty much.

Sarah Reinhardt: Yep. Yeah, we don't have any exclusive deals.

Haley Radke: Is there a lot of money in adoptee podcasts? You know, guys don't have big advertising deals. Oh my gosh.

Sarah Reinhardt: Exclusively on Spotify,

Haley Radke: That's podcaster humor for anyone listening.

Louise Browne: Can I tell a funny story about that? When Sarah and I started, we were, you may know this. We were in our closets. Okay. For good sound proofing. And we tried to get, you know, you do that where they try to give you. You can get advertisers, whatever we kept trying to get a clothing thing because we're like in our closets.

We can wear whatever you want us to wear. And we're also on YouTube, right? So nobody, nobody bought it. Nobody cared.

Haley Radke: No, no. I did turn down an advertising [01:00:00] deal. Really? Yes. For ethics. I was so unhappy with the way they, their business model was, and it was something for adoptees. And I was just like, No,

Sarah Reinhardt: really?

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Louise Browne: We haven't. We haven't been there.

Sarah Reinhardt: Have that turned down yet.

Haley Radke: If we don't have our adoptees as a highest cause, what do we have left?

Sarah Reinhardt: Exactly. And we did, that's not true though. We did have somebody reach out and say, oh this adoption, I don't know, it was a bunch of websites or newsletters for adoptive parents.

And I said, I don't think you quite understand. We are not, no, we don't celebrate National Adoption Month. No, we don't want to be on anything that is going to promote any kind of adoption. So, yes, we have, we had a couple of things come our way that we did turn down, [01:01:00] but it wasn't a big advertiser or anything, but yeah.

Haley Radke: Good for you. There you go. Now, you know, Louise and Sarah are really are. So, thank you ladies so much. Such a joy to hear from you.

Sarah Reinhardt: Haley. Thank you. Thank you. Haley. This was really great. And you are, you're just your depth. And yes. Perspective and your questions are just, were just so thoughtful and, and great and appreciated.

Louise Browne: Yes, very much so. Thank you.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

Oh my goodness. They have such a great energy. It was so amazing to talk with them. And I know you're going to love their podcast. I know, you know, adoptee reading is super important to me and that's something we do in community over on Adoptees On Patreon and so we have a book club nearly every [01:02:00] month and if you're listening when this is going live in November. Our book that we're reading this month is called Probably Ruby by Lisa Bird-Wilson, who is an indigenous adoptee here in Canada. And it's a fictional book, but it's just so insightful into the adoptee experience. I really, really loved Probably Ruby. It tells a story of an adopted person from all different perspectives.

I think Lisa has described it sort of as this like web around the adopted person's character. And anyway, it's wonderful. So I hope you'll read along with us and come to our live book club discussion with Lisa Bird-Wilson and Patreons already have all the info for that and have the zoom link and we would love to have you join us if you join our Patreon that is how this show continues to be made plus [01:03:00] you get some extra fun bonuses. So we'd love to have you over there, adopteeson.com/bookclub has book club details and please join us. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

264 Healing Series - Adoptee Remembrance Day

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/264

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] 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. Adoptee Remembrance Day was first commemorated on October 30th of 2020. We've done a variety of episodes over the last few years, beginning in 2020, with an interview with the founder of Adoptee Remembrance Day, Pamela Karanova.

We've had listeners submit recordings of their thoughts, their poetry and prose. In deciding what to do this year, I was considering what would be most impactful for our community. And I chose to do a healing series episode about suicide. This is the thing we [00:01:00] whisper about, we hide, we allude to, we can be ashamed of, and we're getting braver about discussing.

I've invited Lina Vanegas, who holds a master's of social work to talk to us today about suicide. We will be mentioning suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and death by suicide at multiple points during this episode, so please take care in deciding whether or not to listen. I don't usually do quite such an extended introduction, but because of the topic, I want to let you know exactly where we're going in this episode.

We talk about the research on adoptees and suicide, stigma surrounding death by suicide and appropriate language to use. Finding supports as someone who has suicidal ideation and what to be cautious of, support for survivors of suicide attempts and suicide loss, and how to best support fellow adoptees who reach out to us when they are feeling suicidal.[00:02:00]

Links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson. com. We also will have a transcript of this episode if you want to go through some of the... points that Lina makes later on in how to best talk to someone who is feeling suicidal. Okay, deep breath. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Lina Vanegas.

Welcome, Lina.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Hi, Haley. Thank you so much for having me as a guest today.

Haley Radke: I am so glad we get to speak. I know you've been talking about what we're going to talk about today for a long time, and I know your expertise in this matter is really important to our community. But would you start because it's your first time on.

Can you just give us a little snippet of your adoptee experience, please?

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Yes, I identify as a displaced person. I was bought by a white [00:03:00] couple. I was sold from Bogota, Colombia to the Midwest. I reside in the Midwest and I was raised by them. I am in reunion with my family and that has had lots of challenges as many of I'm a social worker. I do a lot of speaking engagements, talking about suicide, mental health, trauma, and adoption. I host a podcast, a joint podcast. I started to teach a class on transracial adoption because I feel like that's a topic where there's not a lot of information on, and we need to fill that gap.

Haley Radke: Okay. Expert in all the things. I wanted to do an episode for Adoptee Remembrance Day. We've done several different versions of this over the last few years that Adoptee Remembrance Day has been going. And I really wanted to talk about suicide and suicide prevention. There are a lot of stats and things [00:04:00] that we kind of throw around at the community level that sometimes we're getting wrong, sometimes we're getting right.

But I'm curious why, personally, why this work has been so important to you. And then let's talk about the stats and studies and if you think it's accurate or not, all that.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Yeah. Well, for me, the work started out very personal. One of my husband's, the father of my children, he died by suicide.

He was adopted. And then five years later, my mom from Colombia died by suicide. So that really touched me on a level I can't even put into words. So as a social worker, I was like, I need to come back to this. I need to talk about this because it's something that's not being talked about at all.

And there is like literally no support. I started from a personal level, it was like lived experience was huge. And then as I've [00:05:00] supported adoptive people, I have some clients that I work with, there's not a day that goes by where I'm not talking about, they're not talking about suicidal ideation, suicide attempts or deaths, from suicide, working with other adoptive people being in community with other adoptive people, it reinforced again, this is where I need to be, this is what I need to be doing.

That's how that began.

Haley Radke: And when you started in the community talking about suicide and things like, you've probably heard this thing that people say all the time, adoptees are four times more likely to die by suicide, which is incorrect. That's referring to one particular study, and it's four times more likely to attempt.

So let's make sure people are getting those things correct. But the you've seen some of the research. I know you've linked to that some of some academic articles in a presentation I went to that you gave. Can you talk a little bit about that? And first of all, what we think, what is out there for us to understand?

I, what I've seen is that some of the studies have adoptive [00:06:00] parents reporting on their teenage adoptees. I don't know if we all told our adoptive parents all the things when we were teenagers, but probably not. Anyway, your thoughts on that.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Yeah, definitely not. We're not, I would say most adoptive children are not in a space where they can, where it's safe for them to tell adoptive parents because if they did tell their adoptive parents, it's usually very misunderstood and it's just looked at as like the suicide or the attempt or the ideations are looked at just as that.

So it's pathologized and they're labeled and, forced into care, forced on medication, but the root cause isn't being looked at, that's being ignored. So that's not going to help children. That's not going to help adults. That's not going to help us. So, yeah, a lot of the narrative and research. And conversations about adoption are led by adoptive parents, and that is extremely problematic because [00:07:00] it's not their lived experience. And yes, there are some adoptive people that are adoptive parents. They need to clarify that they're also an adoptive parent, right? I feel like there's not transparency in that.

And I also feel it's a big thing. Like we could get into a whole conversation about adoptive people adopting, that's like for another day. But yeah, so it's there's not transparency in the conversations in terms of the research, the study that you're referring to the 2013 Key Study.

Yes, that was a very small study in Minneapolis with Korean adopted people and the results where they were adoptees are four times more likely to attempt suicide. Yes, I do think it's probably higher because as we add an intersectionality as we add in like disability is someone's identifying as trans or queer, if we add in race, all of those things are going to increase attempt rates. If you just look up LGBTQ plus youth, [00:08:00] you're going to see that's they have high attempt rates, right? So I think it's higher than four times more likely just from what I've seen in the people that I support, it's a good place to start, but we can't put everything into that. It's one small study, right? There's a study that's not really talked about. It's from 2001, and it's titled Adoption as a Risk Factor for Attempted Suicide During Adolescence. And this is a really important one because it's going to confirm what a lot of us already know and what we already just kind of said.

The conclusion was attempted suicide is more common among adolescents who lived with adoptive parents than among adolescents who live with their biological parents. Yeah, I mean, that's a huge thing. And then there's also another study from 2010 and it's going to be extremely complex for us, because as adopted people, most of us do not have our medical history.

So, in this study, it's [00:09:00] titled Maternal or Paternal Suicide, Psychiatric and Suicide Attempt, Hospitalization Risk. The finding was that maternal suicide is associated with an increased risk of suicide attempt hospitalization and that's something we wouldn't even know if we don't have medical history.

So I think that's something important to talk about. I mean, and there's other stuff out there, but I think studies, they have their place, right? And a lot of them are academic and, we could debate who's doing them and if someone is biased and don't understand adoption per se, and maybe it's an agency who makes money.

That's their whole livelihood. They're going to make their research fit what they're looking for it to do. So we could get into that too. So it's like research is great. We also have to remember. Lived experience is everything. We need to listen to people who have lost someone to suicide, listen to those who have [00:10:00] attempted, listen to those who live with ideations.

That's really where we're going to learn. And if you don't have that lived experience, you need to listen.

Haley Radke: When you were talking about the other intersectionalities, the other things I was thinking about is how we're overrepresented in mental health issues and addiction issues as well, and all of those things.

When we talk about our lifetime, like we know personally so many adopted people who are struggling with the basics of housing and jobs and in all of these extra things that are upstream issues that we're not paying attention to either. So it is so it's so hard to think about that, right?

Because our community's really hurting and I just feel like this issue is more prevalent even than we might know.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: It really is. I mean, I've kind of got into doing mutual aid [00:11:00] just because a lot of the people that I support. They, they need that, and as I've kind of talked to other people that do mutual aid, yes, that is a huge problem.

If we do not have our basic needs met, we can't feed ourselves. It's going to make sense that we are going to not want to be here, and until we can get that met, we can't even deal with the trauma or some of the, other issues if we're struggling with addiction or suicidal ideations, you know what I mean?

So it's imperative that our basic human needs are met and we could go on. This is like another conversation to I feel like we should have reparations. We should have a basic income as adopted people. We should have free college. We should have grants to start businesses.

We should be able to not worry about health care. We shouldn't have to worry about food. We shouldn't have to worry about transportation, all these things, right? These are big things. And those are barriers. A lot of the time for us being able to get help, if I'm [00:12:00] unhoused and I'm struggling with addiction and I don't have care, if I don't have mental health care, I don't have transportation, I'm unhoused.

So how am I going to, I don't have a phone. How am I going to call somebody. How am I going to text somebody? How am I going to get support? So it's like we need to have a basic level of support before we can even deal with what else is going on. So thank you for bringing that up because that is really important.

Haley Radke: Well, let's talk about the stigma around suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. I know there's lots of us that just don't say anything because we're scared of what the repercussions could be. And there's also this thing around language. And I think some people may have heard on this show and lots of other media properties.

Changing their way they talk about suicide. I don't know if folks [00:13:00] know this, but there's media guidelines on how you're supposed to talk about suicide when you're covering it. And one of the things that we do not say anymore is "committed suicide" because there's this implication that it is I'll like, I'll let you explain it.

Cause you do a really good job of that, but I use died by suicide and can you explain that a little bit about the why we don't say "committed suicide" anymore or why we shouldn't say because lots of people say it. I should clarify.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: I really appreciate you bringing that up because that's something that yeah, that's a that starts the conversation off in a very a different way.

And when we say commit. We're placing blame on somebody, we're placing judgment, we're stigmatizing them, we're associating it with, we're associating it with a crime. People commit rape, people commit murder, people die from suicide. So do you see how if we come at it with a more inclusive way, then the [00:14:00] conversation is going to feel more inclusive.

And as someone who has experienced loss right from suicide and when people say that I feel much more validated if they say, died from suicide instead of saying "committed suicide" because it places blame on the person that I loved and it also places blame on the people that are here, the loved ones, because there's a lot of judgment in that.

I like that you brought that up. And the way we talk really creates a foundation for, having a safe conversation, affirming conversation, inclusive conversation. The words definitely do matter. It's a little thing, and it might take a little bit of time to get used to saying it, but it will go a long way if we say, died from suicide instead of "committed suicide" or "committing suicide".

Haley Radke: Is there other language things that you think we should pay attention to in reducing stigma around suicide? [00:15:00]

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Yeah, people say, associate suicide with being selfish. And it's not selfish. That's a judgment, right? Any kind of blaming language or judgment language. We should not do that. It's not our place to blame people.

It's not inclusive. It's not affirming. It's not empathetic. Anything we can do where it's we're having empathy. I think that's really the key in the conversation. So checking like, is this an empathetic? Is this a validating thing? And if you don't know, you cannot ask, and then if you offended somebody, obviously take accountability for it, because we're all learning here, right?

So it's like we come from a place of empathy. That's what we do. But if we're not sure, we can always ask. We can Google it. We can look to the experts. But, the more we can be empathetic, the more we can open these conversations and destigmatize the conversation because it simply shouldn't be stigmatized.

People will say, unalive themselves. I don't like that terminology. People will say [00:16:00] completed suicide. I don't like that either because it's also, it makes it so much more complex and it just puts so much into it because it's like they died from suicide. Think of it like cancer.

Do we say someone completed cancer? No, someone died from cancer. Think of like medical things. Like people don't complete a heart attack. People don't complete a stroke. So we have to come from that angle. I think that will be a more successful way to talk about it. And we make, we all make mistakes, right?

So it's like we, we can learn from them. We can definitely learn from them. We're all learning. We're all growing. That's why we're here.

Haley Radke: I'm curious if there are things that people said to you after the loss of your mother or your ex husband that were super unhelpful.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Oh, yeah, there are so many.

I could write a book on that. And that's what also kind of propelled me into this work. It was a very lonely time. I was going about it alone. People don't [00:17:00] understand it. People who I thought were my friends are no longer my friends. People... Would place blame. Well, why did this happen? Well, did this person get help, as if that's the end all and be all right.

Also just placing like judgment. A lot of judgment. I think one of the issues is there's a lot to unpack here. The truth of it, are you going to tell the truth? And of course, I'm going to tell the truth. People were like, really in awe that I'm speaking of the truth because I've talked to a lot of people who come up with other ways that loved ones die because they don't want to say it was suicide.

And so I am one for truth and transparency. And if I don't speak the truth, then I'm part of the problem. So that was one thing where I lost friendships because if people are not supportive of the choices that I make, then I can't have you in my life. And that's a huge one. I'm going to speak the truth on this.

So that was a big thing. People [00:18:00] try to distance themselves as much as possible. Or they'll say, everything happens for a reason, and that's not something you should say to anybody, really, who's lost somebody. Would you tell someone who lost their family member to a heart attack, everything happens for a reason?

No, I would hope that you wouldn't, and if you do that, please don't do that. So those kind of toxic positivity things, or people bring religion into it, and that's not helpful. So there were, yeah, there were a lot of things where I was like, yeah, there's not good support here. I feel very alone.

I don't have a lot of resources. I'm having to grapple with my own unlearning and relearning and decolonizing from all of this because we're all indoctrinated to everything, right? So. I was indoctrinated into a certain way of looking at suicide like we all are. And so as I was going through this process, I really threw myself into reading from other people [00:19:00] who have lost loved ones to suicide, listening to voices of people who have attempted Or, and just trying to understand, and I realized yeah, this is so stigmatized.

This is so judged. This is so misunderstood. So it also just kind of catapulted me into this the work that I do. So, yeah, I mean, it's a lot of unlearning we all have to do. And I didn't have it all figured out in that situation. And I didn't have the knowledge that I do now. I wish I had. I wish everybody who's in the situation, everyone that's impacted by suicide, which is probably everyone in the world.

I wish we all had this information because it would make a huge difference.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I hope we're always teaching people to take good care of each other with a little more empathy and thought into our interactions, especially when someone is going through such a difficult time. You mentioned somebody saying why didn't he find help or something so [00:20:00] stupid.

Okay, let's talk about that. How do people find support? And where do you sort of guide them to when we know there's a lot of complexity around asking for support that can sometimes come with harms?

Lina Vanegas, MSW: That's a big question because even I want to kind of demystify the fact that people get support and that everything's okay, because there are people that do everything that we're told to do and then they might still die from suicide.

So just because you got support doesn't mean that, everything's going to be happily ever after, right? So we have to demystify that because we don't want to put. That puts a lot of creates a narrative of well, if you do this, if you take this medication, if you go to so many, therapy sessions, if you get enough sleep, if you eat healthy, if you do all these things, and you're not going to die from suicide.

And that's a narrative. And that's not [00:21:00] factual. That's not true. Yes, that could happen. But every situation is different. And not one situation is better than the other because that didn't happen to them. It's we're all complex human beings. So we have to demystify that in terms of help and support there isn't much, there isn't much for adopted people.

That's again why I do this work, right? As we're thinking about, well, what would we do? And I think the the first thing that would come up is people would say, call a crisis line or call the 988 line. Yes, they're there for people to call when they're in crisis, but I do want to say that they do police, they surveil, and they report.

So if I call, and I'm a transracial adaptive person, I'm from Colombia, so I'm not a white person, right? Or if someone's calling and they're trans and they're a black man, right, that's going to add a lot of complexity to it because we know that the police are going to be involved. So it's it could be [00:22:00] dangerous for people with intersectionality to call these lines because if they report something and the person taking the call deems them to be a risk to themselves or a risk to somebody else, they can do what is called non-consensual rescuing.

So basically the police could be called to the person's house. We know what happens with police violence. So, and if someone's in crisis and the police are not really trained to deal with crisis and mental health, or trauma, and so this could escalate. The other thing is often people are forced into care.

They're forced into psychiatric detention. It has been proven that when you force people into things, whether it's addiction, whether it's mental health, whether it's suicide prevention, it doesn't work when you force people into things and you strip them of their [00:23:00] autonomy. You take their clothes, you take their phones, you lock them in a place they can't leave and they have to prove that they are okay to leave.

The nurses, the doctors, the state has that power. So that. Is enforcing medication on them, right? That is not going to help somebody that is going to harm somebody. And there is research out there. There's a book called Your Consent is Not Required by Rob Wipond. I apologize if I'm not pronouncing his name right. That's an important book. There's a lot. I love that there's support, but when people are calling these crisis lines, if we disclose too much information, we run the risk of the police coming out and being forced into care. We also run the risk of police violence, or being killed by the police, or being, further traumatized by the police.

So, that is a big issue. There are, there is the trans line and the black health [00:24:00] line. Those are two lines that don't do, that don't police. So those are the two lines that I know that don't participate in the non consensual rescuing, but we don't have anything particular to adopted and displaced people at this point.

It would be great to have a warm line where we could call and we don't run that risk of being police. There is nothing now in terms of support there's not really an organizations either. It's tough because there's not anything unique to us. So that's again why I do this work and get the message out there and hopefully other people are going to start doing the same. I'm feeling hopeful because I get invited into a lot of suicide prevention spaces. So those people are like listening and they're like, amplifying the lived experience and realizing, and they're unlearning. They're like, wow, like I didn't know this.

So that's important too, because people are listening and I am hopeful that. Things are going to work. [00:25:00] We're going to get more support. It's not going to happen overnight, but I do think you'll give it like 10 to 20 years. I think the support will be greater. And I know that's a long time, but things are slow.

Unfortunately.

Haley Radke: Well, let's talk about what we can do now. I know a lot of us who are on socials will receive DMs from people who are struggling and either are struggling and don't say outright, I'm having suicidal thoughts, or they do express some form of desire to not be here anymore. And so what are things we not take on the responsibility for someone else's wellbeing.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: It's hard because a lot of us are not, there has to be like a whole, we could do like a whole training on how to do this, right? So I'm giving snippets, so this is not, it's, it is just a piece, right? So I think the key is we [00:26:00] listen, like listening and having someone be heard and not being judged or stigmatized.

So if I say, I don't wanna be here, Haley. And you were to say, Oh my God, you have to go to the emergency room. Like that kind of thing. And you went like alarmist mode that is not going to make me feel safe. It's going to escalate the situation, right? So instead, if you were like, Oh, I'm so sorry, Lina, that must be really hard.

And you just listen. I think we need to be heard because so often as adopted and displaced people. We are not heard. We're spoken for. So I think the listening piece is really key. The validation piece is really key. Most of us are not trained social workers or therapists or clinicians, right?

So, It's we can't take on that role, and we shouldn't try to take on that role. So we could say, are you safe right now? You can ask them if they're safe. And if they say yeah, I'm safe. I, or if they're [00:27:00] not safe, we could say is there someone that could come over to be with you?

I don't want you to be alone, right? But we also have to be clear with our boundaries because a lot of us are struggling too. So if I reach out to you and you're like, struggling too, and you're like, Lina, I'm really sorry. I hear that you're struggling, but I'm also like struggling too.

And I'm not in a place to have this conversation at this point, or it's too close to home. We have to kind of set some boundaries to in terms of the situation, because you might be dealing with the same thing. And me talking to you might, it might activate you even more. So it's it's a very complex conversation because we want people to be heard, but we don't want to try and fill the role of clinicians.

We're not here to fix anything. I think the key is listening and validating. And really, the thing the message I want people to know is there is nothing wrong with you. If you're struggling with suicidal ideations, if you struggle with them, if you live with them, there's nothing wrong with you. If [00:28:00] you've had suicide attempts, there's nothing wrong with you.

There is nothing wrong with you. The situation, the lived experience that we have with being separated from our families, that is what is wrong. This is simply a side effect of that. So, I want people to know. It's not you. There's nothing wrong with you. It's completely normal to feel these feelings and emotions or however you feel given the lived experience.

There is not one right way or wrong way to feel. And the fact that so many of us live with this or have died from this. It makes a lot of sense given the situation.

Haley Radke: I always want to be like, please stay, like the world needs you and it's better because you're here. And in those kind of things that I think can come across as platitudes, even if we really mean them deep down.

Do you think those things are helpful?

Lina Vanegas, MSW: I don't say any of those things. I know it's [00:29:00] like it's good intentions and I think like the impact is larger because we don't want to, if I come to you and I say, I don't want to be here. And then you said that you're the most well meaning person, right? I could feel guilt.

I'm already ashamed of how I feel and it might make me feel more guilty or when people say, oh, but you have a family or what would your kids do? All that kind of stuff. It just it's more of a burden that people that are struggling don't need to hear. So I think the listening is the most key. Because we're not heard.

We don't really need to be fixed because there's nothing wrong with us. We just need a place to speak. And the more we can speak this out there and not be judged and not be stigmatized and not be, committed. Look, I'm losing the term committed. Committed to psychiatric detention. The more we can normalize these conversations, and I think the less shame and guilt and secrecy people will have, and I think that will go a long way, because if I can just come and say, I [00:30:00] don't want to be here or whatever, and I just met with, I'm so sorry I, that makes complete sense, that kind of thing, it's going to go a long way for me.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I wondered if you might say something like that, because even as I was saying it, I was like, oh, I'm putting an extra weight. Please stay so that I will still feel okay. There's something underlying in that message as well. Okay, this has been super helpful.

Thank you. I know a lot of us know someone in our lives that we have lost to suicide. What are things that you do for yourself to take care of yourself? And how can you recommend for us to do so? And after having a, like a conversation like that in the DMs and, still wanting to take care of ourselves.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Yeah. I think it's like. What works for me and what works for you might not work for somebody else. So I don't want people to think that what I say is the only way, cause it's [00:31:00] not. So it might resonate with you. It might not. I think boundaries are extremely important. If we can set boundaries and kind of know how much we can give to people at a certain time, cause if I'm struggling, I need to focus on me and I'm not going to be able to help somebody else or I might not have the capacity to listen to them right and hold space. So that's an important thing for me movements key. I love my Peloton. I love to move. I love to sweat. I love that. I have a network of people that I can call who are also adopted. So if I'm struggling, I can reach out and say hey can we talk? I'm having a hard time. Do you have space for me? I've been in and out in therapy my entire life, so that's a piece, but I'm not saying that's the end all and be all because it's just a piece. I've tried alternative, acupuncture that might work for you.

Other things might work for you. I like spending time with my dog and my kids. So, there's a lot of things [00:32:00] that I do, but I think the boundaries are important and just making sure that we're taking care of and we're in a place. And making sure that we're not prioritizing other people over us, because that's kind of as a adopted and displaced people, we're kind of conditioned to do so.

So we need to check in with ourselves and, how am I doing today? What, what can I do for myself? And maybe I need to relax more. Maybe I need to play video games. Maybe I need to journal. Maybe I need to sleep, those kind of things. Being, focusing more on ourselves. I think about boundaries have been a huge thing in terms of the work that I do.

And I think just being a human being, we all need to have boundaries and we need to check in and see where we are. And some days we're just we need to take care of ourselves. And other days we might have a little bit more to give.

Haley Radke: Thank you. You're welcome. Lina, this was so helpful. Please tell us about where we can find your podcast and connect with you online and make sure we find out any upcoming events or [00:33:00] things that you're teaching on because I know people will want to hear more from you.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Thank you so much, Haley. My podcast, it's a joint podcast with Sol Yaku, and we're available, it's called Rescripting the Narrative. We're available on Spotify and also Apple Music. Lina Leads with Love on Instagram and also on Twitter, and I'm Lina Vanegas on Facebook. My website is under construction.

I, we have an event, Mila and I are, The Empress Han, she goes by The Empress Han on social media. We have an event coming up in November for National Adoption Awareness Month. We do monthly events and this event is going to be a community involvement, community building event. I did research, lived experience research on adopted and displaced people and I am going to do a presentation so I can provide that research to everybody that participated in that. I'd love to connect on socials. Love to see you at my events. And Haley, thank you so much today for this [00:34:00] conversation and, for the space that you create so we can have these conversations.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I appreciate that so much. I went to one of the events that you hosted with Mila and I was I love how you hold space for people. It's so important. So thank you so much for your contributions to the community. It's been lovely talking with you today.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: Thank you so much, Haley. Have a great day.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sticking with us through a very challenging topic. I want to make just a couple of extra notes. What we don't understand is that there's kind of any time we can start feeling in a dark place and things that we can do for ourselves, before that ever happens, is building up our community and contacts and supports [00:35:00] so that we do have a friend to touch base with if things are getting difficult, and I hope that we are making meaningful connections and building out friendships and figuring out how to access therapy and other supports. So we have this rounded community around us. When we're able to do those things, I know when you're in the midst of depression, I mean, getting out of bed and brushing your teeth in the morning feels impossible, so trying to find an internet friend is impossible during those times.

So, I want to encourage you to try and build your community when you're feeling well. And I also want to say that some of what Lina said about supports for adopted [00:36:00] people can feel really disconcerting oh, I can't, there's nowhere for me to call, like there's nowhere. And we do have a variety of listeners listening around the world.

I know that even here in Canada, there are some local crisis lines that are not policed and would be considered warm lines. And so in your area, there may be supports that are safe for you to contact. I have not done research on all of those things all around the world because that is just not within my capacity.

But I don't want to dissuade you from ever calling out for help. If there's something local that might actually be a great support to you. My sister volunteers at a crisis line and we've talked about how safe their [00:37:00] whole setup is for the volunteers, for the folks who call, it is not policed, all of those things.

Like it's a really impressive setup. And so there are places that are doing this well that you may have access to that we just haven't heard of yet. So maybe someone can build a list, a safe list of places for us to go to. And yeah, so I want to encourage you those couple things. Build your community, especially when you're feeling quote unquote, more well, so that you do have friends in place when things are tough, and maybe look for some crisis lines in your area that you think would be safe to send someone when they were in a time of hardship and save it for yourself to [00:38:00] know and save it to have on hand to send to a friend if they need it.

We're sort of all in this together, right? And the more we can do to support our community in this way, the better. I really appreciate Lina teaching us today. I hope that some of the skills we talked about in just listening will be helpful for us and hopefully we never have to use them. But we, you have it in your back pocket.

You don't have to ignore the DM from someone who is in crisis and you will know how to just listen. And acknowledge what they're going through is normal. I'm sending my love to you. Thank you for listening to Adoptee Voices here on Adoptees On. And let's talk again next Friday.

Okay. If you listen to the very end, I'm including [00:39:00] a little outtake here. When I recorded this, I was very sick and I don't know how my voice held up, but Lina, bless her. She got to see me blow my nose, cough down tea, like it was going out of business. It was a whole thing. So that's my comment here. At the end of her, here's how I set that up to her.

You're really going to get to know me today, Lina, and I'm very sorry.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: No, I'm looking forward to it.

Haley Radke: I keep it together.

Lina Vanegas, MSW: It's totally fine. There is no such thing as keeping it together.

It's all a facade.

Haley Radke: It is a facade. I'm excellent at a facade. We all are.

263 Stefany Valentine - When We Become Ours

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/263

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] 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. Today's episode is a bit of a celebration. The first young adult adoptee anthology of short stories, When We Become Ours, releases on October 24th, 2023. The first of its kind, edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung, with 15 adoptee authors, is cause for celebration.

Congratulations to all the contributing authors. We're first going to hear an interview with an emerging author, Stefany Valentine, who shares her story of being adopted at age 12 while her biological father had a terminal [00:01:00] illness. She's the first step parent adoptee we've had on the show, and I think you'll find it fascinating as we talk about the lack of consent to her adoption, the cultural losses Stephanie suffered, and how it wasn't until her mid 20s that she realized her biological mother had been removed from her birth certificate.

Next, we're going to hear from five more contributing authors who share about their stories in the collection and what it's meant for them to be a part of the project. I could have done a whole season interviewing all of these amazing folks. I'm sure we'll hear from more of them in the future. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.

com slash 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 AdopteesOn, Stefany Valentine.

Welcome, [00:02:00] Stefany.

Stefany Valentine: Hello! Hi, I can't believe I'm here able to talk to you. I'm so excited to be here.

Haley Radke: Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, I'm excited too. I may have binged too much of your gorgeous Instagram and TikTok. Oh, thank you. Thank you! I know folks are gonna go check you out after we talk, so why don't you start and share some of your story with us?

Stefany Valentine: When I was born, I didn't plan on being adopted. I didn't really plan on being born, but here we are. So it's a bit of a lengthy story. I'm going to try to give you the spark notes version of it. My dad was a Mormon missionary. Went to Taiwan, met my mom. They decided to have kids. Ta da. Now you got this. Half Taiwanese, half white, girly, and so I grew up in Taiwan, and then they got divorced, and so I was kind of like cut off from my heritage that way, and then my dad got married, and then my dad got diagnosed with colon cancer, homeboy died, and then I got legally adopted [00:03:00] by my stepmother. When I was 12.

So, from that point on, my biological mother had absolutely no ties to me. I don't even know how to find her, even if I wanted to. Yeah, so, and now I am a 30 year old author. My contribution to When We Become Ours is a short story about Sora. She is, it's kind of a, an analogy with my... adoption story. So when I was adopted to my stepmother, she's a white woman.

Her kids are Korean, but she speaks Korean, cooks Korean all of that stuff. So I was, I grew up around a lot of Korean influence. And this analogy that I have in, in my short story is about a girl who was born on the moon, who gets raised by parents who live in these colonies that orbit the earth and the analogy is, Oh, well, you're both from outer space.

That should be close [00:04:00] enough. Right. But for me, being a Taiwanese adoptee raised in a Korean household, like there was definitely, definitely some overlap in similarities because they're both East Asian, but I still truly. Missed out on so much of being Taiwanese as a result of being adopted.

Haley Radke: A lot of folks that we have talked to on the show before are adoptees who were adopted as infants in closed adoption. We've talked to some adoptees who've experienced an open adoption. We've talked to adoptees who were in foster care for short or long periods of a ti time and then were adopted. I don't recall having a stepparent adoptee on the show before.

Oh yeah. So, yeah, I think it's really neat that in When We Become Ours, this first YA adoptee anthology that we're sort of [00:05:00] celebrating today that your story is represented as well. Can you talk to me a little bit about when you realized, and this is going to sound a a little bit silly, of a questions because of course there's trauma involved when your parent dies. I'm very sorry for the loss of your father. But can you describe, like, when did you realize that there was such a thing as adoption trauma? And is it weird that now legally your bio mom is not on your birth certificate? It is your step mom. Those kinds of things. When did that realization happen?

Stefany Valentine: I'd love to just like back up just a little bit and talk a little bit about like the legal adoption process, if you're okay with that, because there is something that comes to mind specifically for that. And that is that when I was legally adopted, I was 12-years-old. And at that time, I remember there never being a discussion of consent.

Is this really [00:06:00] what I wanted? And it sucks because as a kid, you, you don't really have the full picture. You have to trust in what your parents decide to do. And I understand that like in that specific situation there, I grew up with nine siblings. So I've got four biological Taiwanese siblings. I got For Korean siblings.

And so it's just a, it's just a chaotic situation where my dad is dying of colon cancer. And now he's Hey, I don't want you, my, my biological kids baptized to your Taiwanese side. You're going to be adopted to her because I'm your, I'm your dad. And this is what I say you're going to do. And I understand that his back was in a corner and her back was in a corner.

And then as a result, all of us kids had our back in a corner, but. Still, where, where was the consent? I was never educated on what that meant, and if I had been told, hey, you're, you're never gonna, your mom isn't gonna be on your birth certificate anymore. Like I would have said I don't want to be adopted, but you know, it happened and here we are today like the moment that I realized and so [00:07:00] so growing up we grew up in a Mormon household, right?

And I love talking about religious trauma as well because religious trauma and adoptee trauma I feel like they go hand in hand so much because in terms of religious trauma, I feel like there's so much kind of propaganda or like you get like this indoctrination. You have this save a life mentality, right?

And like with the adoption narrative it's you're saving a life with a child so they kind of go hand in hand and when you realize oh my gosh like my whole life was kind of a lie. It's you kind of have that same sort of dissonance that are very, very similar. So I feel like for me, when I became an adult, and this is honestly so embarrassing, but I was in my late twenties when I realized, wow, I have a lot to unpackage with my adoption trauma.

And wow, I have a lot to unpackage with my religious deconstruction as well. And it only started because I got on TikTok and someone happened to be talking about their adoption trauma. I didn't even realize that was a thing [00:08:00] until someone was like, yeah, I was told that I should be happy that I was adopted.

But I was never actually happy and I was like mind blown because I had always been told that I should be happy like I should be grateful I should be grateful that my stepmother adopted me because no one else would have wanted me and I I always felt deep deep down that that wasn't true so being able to hear someone else Literally say the words that I've been thinking out loud it meant the world to me and so now I feel like I'm such a huge advocate of sharing stories because one I mean I'm an author that's what I do share stories and two there's so much power in seeing your experiences handled by someone else.

Because now I, I'm not alone. I'm not alone in feeling this way. I'm not this, I'm not this alien. I'm not this freak. I'm not this like weirdo who doesn't fit the mold of what society thinks that I should be. There's someone else who literally knows what I'm talking about and I I get to use minimum words when explaining it because they just get [00:09:00] it.

Haley Radke: You had a lot of feelings when you were talking about your birth certificate. When your father was alive, did he maintain any connection for you with your mother?

Stefany Valentine: I feel like my biological mother, she... made home videos and stuff, but I don't know what happened to those home videos she took a bunch of pictures and to this day I feel so grateful because I have a photo album of like me from ages I believe One, two and three up to three years old I have photo albums with like my first days in pre k my first first years with her I have I swear I'm gonna cry, but I have one picture of me with my biological mother.

I know that there are so many adoptees who don't even have that. I feel so grateful to have that, but at the same time it sucks that that's the only one that I have. It's tough. I think the reason why I'm so emotional is because I'm still, I'm [00:10:00] still new, I guess, to my adoption trauma, and to this day, I haven't fully, it's kind of like a pimple I haven't popped this pimple there's still some juicy stuff in there, and, and these are the emotions coming out.

I haven't had a platform to fully purge all of these emotions. So they just keep coming out like this.

Haley Radke: We do lots of crying here so don't feel like you gotta yeah, I empathize so much with that and my experience is very different. I was adopted as an infant and I too have one photo with my biological mother and it's over there.

But on my wall, you can't see it but it's when she was 38 and I was 22 and wow, so it was like, I just have this one thing. And for a while my, I didn't know where that picture was. And when I found it, it was like having a reunion all over again.

Stefany Valentine: Yeah, I know the feeling. Yeah. Cause it's like, it's like you have [00:11:00] these faint memories of that

and you're like, in a sense did I dream it or is it even real? And then when you see it, you see that picture in your hands, you're like, wow, it really did happen. And it's it awakens things within you that you didn't realize were lost.

Haley Radke: You mentioned growing up with Korean influence. How have you been reconnecting with your Taiwan culture as an adult?

Stefany Valentine: I feel like one thing that haunts me the most is the fact that Mandarin was my first language and I don't remember a single word, like the only thing I remember because I remember going to school in Taiwan is I know how to count to 10. I know how to count to 10 in Mandarin and that's about it. And it was very empowering during lockdown in 2020

I was like, you know what, it's, it's, it's about time. It's about time I start like reclaiming my hope, my culture and my heritage cause, I [00:12:00] miss it. I've always missed it. So I started relearning Mandarin got some tutors, and the most useful and beneficial thing for me has been using an app because I get to go at my own pace and I get to squeeze in a a three minute lesson here, a ten minute lesson there, or whatever.

But the coolest part, I would say, is that when I started relearning Mandarin, I realized that parts of my mouth the muscle memory, my tongue, my lips, my throat, it can make those sounds and it was so like validating to I never would have noticed that my my muscles still remembered Taiwan, even if my brain didn't because I had that experience, I put it into a young adult novel and that was the book that landed in my agent.

And then a couple of years after that, it landed in a book deal. So, and I'm grateful that I'm able to combine so many aspects of of my life and put it into literature, because like I said, there's so much power to sharing stories, sharing the authenticity of those [00:13:00] stories, because that's how we see ourselves in the world, is that authenticity.

And it helps us to not feel so alone. So I love that.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. It's, it's so true. And it's interesting that on TikTok is where you first heard from other adoptees. I want to just go back one more time to this idea of adoption trauma. I see it as sort of different pieces, right? There's family separation trauma, right?

You're disconnected from your biological mom, your father dies, you are losing those connections, and then there's this other piece of the adoption where you've got this legal severing of identity and then this societal expectation of gratitude and then whatever we're getting from our family that we're [00:14:00] placed into.

So do you have thoughts on that?

Stefany Valentine: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so because I was 12-years-old, I remember going to court. So this is I guess a funny story is so there's nine of us, nine of us kids, right? My dad's like yellow jaundice, dying of colon cancer. You can see it in his skin, right? And there's my white mom, blonde hair, blue eyed

and then all of us little dark haired Asian kids, right? And we're all going through this courthouse. My youngest brother, he happened to have a tape measure with him. One of those ones where you pull out and they snap back when, because he's a little kid and he just likes toys, right? So all of us, we're going through the metal detector, like one by one, and it gets to my youngest brother and the, and we're all, we're all scared because we're like, what's going on?

We know we look out of place here, like people keep looking at us. We keep looking at them and we just keep walking and the metal detector goes off for my brother and he is, he's I don't even remember how old he is at the time, maybe like maybe eight, [00:15:00] six, six to eight years old or something super young.

And he's oh my gosh, what is happening? And so all of us, we're all freaking out because that's our baby brother and they're like, do you have a weapon on you? Asking it to a child, right? And so he pulls out this little tape measure thing and they're like, oh yeah, well, you can't take that with you because it's dangerous.

And all of us were thinking like, okay, like I know we're young, I know we're kids, but like, how is that dangerous? So anyway, we go there, we go into the courtroom and I remember the judge literally just taking a look at us and being like, yep, this is final. You're legally adopted. And that was it. And so all of this buildup, all of this, like fear, this trauma, we didn't even understand what was going on and lack of consent again.

Like I, I didn't want this looking back in retrospect and in the moment, I knew for a fact I didn't want this. And a part of me was always wondering why couldn't I just go back to Taiwan? But nobody asked me, we go, we do that, finalized. And then it wasn't until I was looking at my [00:16:00] birth certificate in my mid to late 20s that I was like, hold on a second, where's my biological mother's name?

And that, that was the moment that I realized in my late 20s, after all of this, this is like how little I was educated on the adoption process as I was going through. It was just, here you go, we're just going to send you through it. It wasn't until I was like, in my adulthood that I was looking at my birth certificate

I was like, hold on a sec. There's no way. I do not, I look nothing like this lady. There's no way my stepmother is my biological mother and yet her name is on my birth certificate. It was, it was very traumatic and kind of silly, I guess, how the whole process went down, but I'll never forget it. And I honestly haven't shared that story out loud.

This is probably the first time I've ever had the opportunity to share that experience out loud. Because this is how little I get to talk about my adoption trauma. And I feel like that's why I have so much to purge, so much to, so much to exhale, because it's a lot, it's a lot to... I've lived with [00:17:00] this, like since my childhood into my teen years and now into my adulthood.

I'm still learning how I feel about it and how, how it's still affecting me to this day. There was a, there was a time in my life when I kind of, I don't know what the word for it is, but I'm, I'm gonna refer to it as like internalized adoptee trauma. Where people will be like, well, don't you miss your biological mom?

But I've been told time and time again that I should be happy that I was adopted. And so, even though as a kid I had opportunities to talk about it, I had that kind of like indoctrination ingrained into me so, so much that I was always like, no, I really am grateful to be adopted. I would vocalize it, but deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down

I wasn't, so that's the only way I can learn. I can express it. But I growing up I kind of had that internalized adoption trauma where I, I fed into that, that harmful narrative of adoption is good. Adoption saves lives. This is great for kids. I fed [00:18:00] into that narrative. And now they're like, I've grown up and I'm able to have that emotional competence, have therapy that I need to put words to my feelings and everything and of course to have the validation of an entire community of people who have gone through what I've gone through?

I I'm able to be on the other side of it where it's hey like I am able to see that sort of like internalized adoption trauma in the people around me and even in my own siblings at times because it's such a difficult emotionally exhausting thing to undergo and to unpackage like you have to let go of so much of your past and you have to really sit with that discomfort of this so messed up and then and then you get through it and now you're able to talk about it on platforms like this and share stories so that other adoptees don't have to feel alone.

Haley Radke: Well, let's talk about some of your loves, which is reading and writing. I know there is. So, there's [00:19:00] just this lack of authentic adoptee representation in literature. We've talked about that before on the podcast. We're treated as a trope we're the plot twist, we're the secret murderer revealed at the end.

I mean, all the tropey things.

Stefany Valentine: Absolutely! Oh my goodness, yeah! So... Like growing up let's take Harry Potter, for example that's our that's our classic adoptee, right? But oftentimes in literature you see the adoptee trope because it is a trope unfortunately in publishing even though it's literally like something that needs to be handled with delicacy and care, but it's used so that one gives immediate sympathy to the reader so oh this poor adoptee doesn't know who he is,

whatever. Number two, they always pair the adoption the adoptee to the orphan thing. So, oh, not only is he gonna be adopted into this household, but he's he's [00:20:00] orphaned, doesn't have his parents. Oh, man, poor kid. You, the reader, you better sympathize with this, because me, the author, I don't want to go into the emotional baggage that comes with the trauma of losing both of your parents at a young age.

And it gets really frustrating, and it's, it's, because as, as a writer, I see through it. Not only do I see it as a reader perspective, but I see it from the craft perspective, where it's man, minimum effort was taken and yet the funny part is the adoption trauma is the character development and I'm not I don't want to call out like every single author who's ever attempted to write an orphan or an adoptee because there are certain like nuances that come into play for instance different genres like what age group you catering to and just how much trauma do you get to discuss per age group and then another thing too is like you know what does your editor want so that that's a whole other other ball game that gets added into the equation.

But to me, as a writer, I often see that the adoption trope is used so that as an excuse [00:21:00] for lack of character development and to get immediate sympathy from the audience. And it's, it's, it sucks because that is the character development. That exploring that adoption trauma, exploring being an orphan as a kid, that is the character development.

There is so much internal conflict and internal turmoil and external motivations that you can pull from this, this void that happens when you are severed from your parents. I feel like maybe because it's been done time and time and time again and hasn't been explored in depth that unfortunately people see it in literature and they're like, oh, sure, I can use that in my story.

And another thing that I feel like I see, too, is a lot of the time the orphan slash adoptee trope is very prominent within sci-fi, fantasy, the speculative stuff. And from a craft perspective, a lot of speculative fiction [00:22:00] tends to be about the outside, the world building, the politics, the the magical elements, how the, how the spaceships go from point A to point Z, it's very, very external.

And so it takes away from the character's internal exploration of my adoption trauma, or the character's orphan trauma. In a sense, I guess you could say that the the genre at play takes away from the author's ability to discover and unpackage a lot of that. But that said with a character who has had a lot of that internal trauma, a character's motivation comes from within.

And so, at the end of the day, I feel like if a character has this true adoption trauma part of their motivation is always gonna be like, I just want to know who I am. That can be such a powerful driving force that nobody, like it's just sitting there, it's this untapped potential in literature and it's, it's wild to me from like now that I've had a chance to like really process and unpackage [00:23:00] my adoption trauma, how so many authors don't see that and yet they continue to use the adoptee orphan trope.

To just give you a generic character that's been done time and time and time again.

Haley Radke: What do you think about, I'm going to call it the ethics, of authors writing characters that are adoptees without checking in with adoptees. There's a couple of very famous books, one in particular. I'm not gonna name names, but the author has been quoted in several sources.

We did a bit of a deep dive on this on Patreon a long time ago. And the author said, oh, yes, I researched extensively. I talked to adoptive parents. I talked to birth parents. I talked to social workers lawyers who work in adoption. She listed the whole list of people she researched, [00:24:00] but did not talk to an adopted person.

Stefany Valentine: Yeah, I feel like I feel like you and I, we know we see the elephant in the room, right? Because that's the thing. That's the thing with the adoption narrative is it so much about how adoption is ethical, how, how great it is, how much you're saving lives and you're saving babies. But then when you actually ask the adoptees, we're like it ain't sunshine and rainbows okay. Like ours, our origin story is that we have no origin story. That's the trauma, like that, that in itself needs to be handled with care, completely gets overlooked. I feel, and I'm so grateful for platforms like your podcast. And When We Become Ours and like the whole storm of adoptees coming forward and sharing our experiences, I am so grateful for this movement that is coming, because I feel like a lot of publishing because publishing is such an old storytelling is probably the oldest art form in human society across all [00:25:00] cultures yet we're still uncovering new ways to become better storytellers and one of the ways that do become better storytellers is to be authentic to be vulnerable to be human because as we develop and as we evolve, as in a society we are capable of picking up on these subtle details and these nuances, and they need to be examined for the sake of art and for the sake of humanity, explored very carefully and in publishing specifically. If not, then we risk falling into the same cycle, which is like this underdeveloped is underdeveloped storytelling that we tend to see over and over again.

And not only that, but it just, it continues to perpetuate these harmful stereotypes and the harmful narrative that is the adoption industry. I, I'm just grateful for people who are speaking out about it and speaking up, too, and sharing their stories.

Haley Radke: Well should we talk about it? Let's, let's go to recommended resources When We Become Ours.

It's so exciting to see [00:26:00] it in the world. I don't know if regular listeners will remember, but I talked to Nicole Chung a number of years ago and she was talking about, oh my gosh, one of the things I really want to do is help publish an adoptee anthology. And I recently got to talk to her again and she, and we're like, let's celebrate because it's here,

it's coming out. I'm so impressed by the collection that Nicole and Shannon Gibney have put together. The authors that you are listed among, 15 authors, some of them are best selling authors, some of them are new up and comers, and I just, talk about own voices, like this is it.

Stefany Valentine: Oh my, oh my goodness.

And okay, so I haven't read the whole thing quite yet, but during the developmental processes, I was kind of able to take sneak peeks at some of the other stories. And I'm still waiting for my hardcover to come in and everything. But [00:27:00] I read this one.

Haley Radke: You'll have it in your hands, Stefany. By the time this comes out.

Stefany Valentine: Yeah. Yes. So the very, very first story in this anthology is one Cora and Benji's Great Escape. And I swear within the first page of reading it, I was in tears I was laughing, I was crying I was angry, and I was like, man, this is a whole other genre, I guess, or this whole other aspect of adoption trauma that I need to unpackage still, and it's so basically it follows the protagonist, I believe is Cora.

She's a black adoptee and her mother is white. And her mother is kind of like one of those mom fluencers. Who's like hashtag salt and pepper family, because, the mom is the salt and the pepper is the kid, and I feel like as adoptees hearing this especially transracial adoptees, like all of us are like, oh, like we've got that cringe, right. So I remember reading this and I was like, oh oh, the cringe is so real. But then like how this mother just kind of [00:28:00] like, I don't know if this is the right word for it, but like kind of fetishizes or what's the word I'm thinking of? Exploits, how the, how the mother exploits her children.

And I remember this one time in my, in my childhood, because there's nine of us, right? In this adopted family, there's nine siblings at one point 8 of the nine, we were, we were in elementary school and my mother, none of us wanted to do this talent show, but my mother, my adopted mother was like, hey, all of you guys are going to wear these shirts, they're gonna say, we are the Valentine family because let's be honest, like Valentine is a pretty cool last name. And then the fact that there's nine of us total, like it's, it's pretty eye catching. None of us wanted to get on stage and dance at this talent show and yet she forced us to like... go up there and dance and everything. And I was like, oh my God I can't unsee it now. Like mom, what were you thinking? But at the same time though, it's I get it, mom. Like you were doing the best you were doing what you could with what you had. And we were all kind of in a pickle, [00:29:00] but man, like reading that story and just like the whole hashtag salt and pepper family. I was like, oh, oh, I feel so seen. I've been there. Oh, I've done that. The cringe is real. And she captures, she captures everything about that experience. So, so, so well. Oh man, it was beautiful, beautiful story.

Haley Radke: That's so good. We love Mariama.

That is that story, literally, when I got to the Salt N Pepa line, Stefany, okay, I emailed, I think I emailed Nicole or Shannon, I can't remember which one, because I was like, that's it, because I don't know, we're not going to say the name, but everybody who knows, knows there is a momfluencer who has called her platform this thing.

Not salt and pepper, but related. And [00:30:00] it's so gross. It's so gross. And I think fetishization is a great word for it, actually. And I think it's accurate because we don't talk about people of color as food items. Thank you.

Stefany Valentine: I know right? Oh, it's just a whole other level of cringe. But oh, I love I, I hate that I love it.

So I hate that I feel this way but I love that I feel this way because it's so true. And and that's it. That, that level of nuance, that level of detail, that, that level of care can only be written by someone who has first hand experience that, and that is what I love about this anthology, that is what I love about talking about adoption trauma, and being an author who writes adoptee characters and gets to explore all of this because there's so much intersectionality and there's so much nuance and and the only way to tell it with this much raw human emotion is if you have lived it [00:31:00] and I feel so honored to even be a part of an anthology like this because like this, this story is this anthology is going to it's gonna make so many people feel seen.

It's gonna, gonna help kickstart so many healing journeys.

Haley Radke: Yes. For young people. Yeah. One of the questions I asked, we're going to hear from a couple of your fellow authors once we wrap up our conversation. But one of the questions I asked was like, what would it have meant to you? To have something like this to read when you were a young person and how meaningful that would have been.

So I just think it's so special. I love that it's short stories. And I'm going to ask you a little bit about why you chose sci-fi as your genre of choice. But I think there is something about short stories. Well, For all of us, but I'm thinking especially for your target for the young people [00:32:00] that when you read a short story, you can have this, immediate emotional reaction in a short period of time.

And often those things unlock something for us often those are like the memorable story that you will think back to. And to think there's so many of those in this book all together like it's just really special. Okay, why sci-fi?

Stefany Valentine: Oh, yeah, so, what one of the reasons why I chose to write my story in sci-fi, was because There are so like so much of the adoptee trope that we see is in speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and it never gets explored internally because we're spending so much time building the world, building the conflict, building the plot, and these are all external things, but what if we had a speculative fiction story with an adoptive protagonist and that was the protagonist [00:33:00] motivation was the adoption like it starts from within and it bleeds into into her world.

And this is why I wanted to specifically use this analogy of well, the protagonist is an extraterrestrial she's not like from Earth, like she's a lunar creature, like a lunar alien or whatever, if you want to call it that, but so are her parents, they're, they're both extraterrestrial, but one of them lives on the moon and the other one her parents exist, or they come from colonies that orbit the Earth's atmosphere, so that was the analogy I wanted to use for my adoptee experience with being a Taiwanese girl, adopted into a Korean household.

Yes, we're both extraterrestrial. We're not the same. And I, I feel like specifically with so much of so much racism surrounding East Asian countries, a lot of the narrative is, oh, well, you guys look the same, or you guys speak the same, or you guys [00:34:00] eat the same. No, we don't it's 2023. No, we don't.

And I really wanted to encapsulate how yes, we do share some similarities, but we are different and I, I missed that. I missed that so, so much about growing up in a Korean household. I missed the fact that I never asked my, my adopted mom if we could try to cook something Taiwanese if you, if we could just cook like a Taiwanese food

'cause she was always making like Korean food. And I'm not gonna lie, like my mom's an is a, is an amazing chef. To this day I can't go to get Korean barbecue without comparing it to my mom's cooking because she, she cooks it's so much better than any restaurant camp. Like we went to LA one time, we were in K-town and everybody was like, you've got to go to this Korean barbecue place.

It is the best in town. My husband and I, we go there and we were both like, dude, Mom literally cooks way better. Like we had leftovers of hers that are better than this. Are you kidding me? So I'm, I'm, I'm super grateful. Don't get me wrong. I'm super grateful [00:35:00] for the Korean food that my mom cooked for us, but it's not the same.

And and so now that I live by myself, I'm, I'm exploring Taiwanese food and it's been so rewarding. How smells awaken the deepest memories within you. I made I bought a Taiwanese cookbook and I made something called Three Cup Chicken. And just the smell of the ginger and the garlic and the oil.

It was, it was me walking on the streets of Taiwan all over again. I remember that smell vividly. Just mix in a little bit of car exhaust and that's literally... what Taiwan smelt like so much of my childhood, my, my young years was wandering the streets of Taiwan and it took me back, took me back to before, before all of this trauma, like before, before I had any idea, had just how much heartache was in store for me it took me back to those simple, to that simple

time and it was it was incredible. So yeah, like it's it's been it's been very rewarding and healing and fulfilling for me to reclaim that [00:36:00] part of me because like I want it back.

Haley Radke: Well in many of the stories include some aspect of food and I love that. Thank you for sharing that. We like I said, we're going to hear from some of the other authors and they'll talk a little bit about their work, but I absolutely recommend that folks pick up When We Become Ours.

But what do you want to recommend to us today?

Stefany Valentine: I want to share some, some TikTokers that I love to follow because their content makes me feel so seen. So, the first one is adoptee _ thoughts. So this creator, she's been sharing a lot about her reunification journey, meeting her her bio mom, and on top of that, just being an adoptee educator, and she's also written some books about adoption as well.

And that's Melissa, right?,

Haley Radke: Melissa Guida Richards. Yeah, she's been on the show before. We love

Stefany Valentine: her. Ah! So, so wild. So cool. And [00:37:00] yeah, we follow each other. I love her content. She's doesn't hold back. Like she says it as it is. And that's what I love about it. Because I feel like when you, when you, when you have to deal with so many people who still fall for, I guess, I don't know if I'm saying this

Right, but it feels like the adoptee propaganda when they're still like, oh, like, why can't you just be happier? Why do you have to make your life so much about trauma? When you have to deal with all of that constantly on the internet, like it kind of gets, it's annoying, gets redundant.

And I love that Melissa is so so strong. She's, she's an incredible person. She's very patient,

Haley Radke: I would say. Yeah. She's patient with the nonsense.

Stefany Valentine: Yes. Yes. I absolutely love that about her. Another TikToker that I absolutely love. It's @first.birth.mom. I love a lot of her content as well, because I feel like we relate to each other so much, not only about the adoption trauma stuff, but about growing up Mormon, how [00:38:00] Mormonism overlaps with the adoption narrative really encapsulating the grief of missing the, the, the longing something that adoptees really share and I, and I love, I love that she, I love what she does for the community in, in just being vulnerable and expressing herself.

The last one that I wanted to share, I don't know if I'm saying this right, but it's eunaeemily, she's a Korean adoptee and she makes Korean cuisine. And she does like these voiceovers while she's making Korean food talking about, and she talks about her experiences growing up as an adoptee.

What I love most about her content is it's, it's so empowering. Any, anybody can start cooking. Anybody can start like feeling that void of that cultural connection, like re reclaiming that cultural connection through food and that's what she does is she she cooks and she shows her adoptee stories her adoptee experiences [00:39:00] and like not only not only is the food porn like to die for but the stories to the stories they hit home they she's so vulnerable so raw so unapologetic, and I love that.

I love that about when adoptees share our stories we don't hold back. I see the courage in their words. It's never said outright, but it's said in every other way. Body language, tone of voice, the way that the words are paired together. There is so much strength. It takes so much strength to have to be able to share this experience because I feel like sometimes like I to this day sometimes get anxious sharing my adoptive experiences because I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

I don't want to maybe cause more harm for people who might still be in that sort of like internalized adoptive trauma headspace like at the same time, though. I've lived my entire life catering to that narrative, and like, when am I going to [00:40:00] finally, like, when are we, when are we going to become ours, damn it, or darn it.

Haley Radke: That's a great place to to end, amazing. Well. The way you described some of those creators, Stefany, is what I see in you super authentic, vulnerable, seeing some things out loud that maybe other people haven't had the courage to share yet. And you're Sort of helping open the door for that. So, speaking of that, where can we connect with you online?

Stefany Valentine: Yeah, so I am @booksbystefany , S T E F A N Y, across all platforms.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Folks need to make sure they're following you there so they can check out your debut First Love Language. And it seems so, so many people thrilled about that [00:41:00] romance coming up.

Stefany Valentine: Yay. Thank you.

Haley Radke: Yeah, it's so exciting. Thank you so much for sharing some of your story with us, Stefany, and for celebrating, celebrating the book launch!

Woo!

Stefany Valentine: I know! God, oh, so excited! Ah, man I just keep thinking about me, if I was a kid if somebody else, even if just one classmate had said man, I really miss my biological family or if even if just a classmate was like, yeah, I'm adopted too It would have been a game changer for me game changer, but like it's so mind boggling that like it's such a hard topic to discuss and I'm so glad that not only is this anthology coming out, but there's this whole movement, whole wave of stories coming out and I want to make, I want to make discussing adoptee trauma mainstream. I want people to, to know the nuances, man. Very excited about that.

Haley Radke: Yes. And, and I'll spend one moment honoring our [00:42:00] forerunners just talking with someone who read one of the first adoptee memoirs in 19, in the mid 1970s. So we are Wow. Yeah, we're standing on, standing on generationally. We are not the first.

Stefany Valentine: Absolutely. It's, yeah. Domino effect, man. Mm-hmm. , seriously. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. , thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

Haley Radke: We are going to hear from several authors who have pieces in When We Become Ours, and I will make sure to link to everyone in the show notes, so you can connect and follow their work. I asked them a few questions, and we're going to start with, what would you say to your younger adopted self that you needed to hear?

This is Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who is also the author of the graphic memoir, Palimpsest.

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: Dear Wool-Rim, yes, Wool-Rim. This is how your name is supposed to be pronounced. [00:43:00] It's soft, beautiful, and poetic, and means forest echo. They pronounce it in Sweden incorrectly, and I understand why you resent it. Also, I want you to know that you were never abandoned.

Don't believe what people are telling you about why you ended up being adopted. Your mother loved you and wanted to keep you, but she wasn't allowed, and lost you as much as you lost her. She's thinking about you every day and has not forgotten you.

Mariama J. Lockington: Hi everyone, this is Mariama J. Lockington. I'm an adoptee, an educator, and author of books for tweens and teens, and I am so honored to be a contributor to When We Become Ours.

Something I would want to tell my younger, adoptee self today is simply just to tell her that she is enough, that all of the isolation and loneliness and feelings of otherness that she is feeling are valid, alongside all of her joy and curiosity and dreams, and that she's not alone. That one day [00:44:00] she will find people who see and hear and love her for all of her nuances and complexities.

Haley Radke: What would it have meant to you to have a resource like this when you were a teen?

Kelley Baker: Hello, my name is Kelley Baker and I wrote a story called Deadwood for When We Become Ours. I would have really appreciated a book like this when I was growing up to help validate and normalize my experience as an adoptee.

I think grown ups tend to simplify adoption for children, but in reality, adoption is very complex and nuanced. I wish my younger self knew that it's okay to have complicated, difficult, or even surprising feelings about adoption, and you deserve to feel seen and supported to process those emotions.

Community has been an important part of my journey towards healing, so I'd love to connect. You can find me on Instagram @kelleydbaker.

Mariama J. Lockington: It would have meant the world to me to find a book like When We Become Ours on bookshelves, I was an [00:45:00] avid reader as a kid and I was constantly searching for books with characters that were like me with transracially adopted black girls or black characters and, families that were multiracial. And I didn't find those books growing up. So one of the reasons I write the type of books I write for young people, centering adoptee characters is because I'm writing into this void from my own childhood in the eighties and nineties.

And this book is just, it's just going to be so life affirming, even to me now as an adult, I haven't had the opportunity to read many of the other stories in the anthology yet. So when I get my hands on this final copy, I'm honestly going to, make some tea, put on a cozy sweatshirt, get under a blanket and just relish in the opportunity to read, numerous stories that center people who are like me in some way, even if we come from different contexts that center the adoptee experiences, the good, the [00:46:00] bad, and everything in between. And I just know that it's just going to be such like a soul affirming moment, even for me now as an adult reading this book.

Eric Smith: Hey, everyone. My name's Eric Smith. I'm one of the contributors to When We Become Ours. I cannot stress enough how much a book like this would have meant to me as a kid. I grew up and some of what I'm about to talk about probably means nothing if you have If you're not a big video game nerd like me, but, I grew up with video games like Final Fantasy 3 and Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana and all these golden age of Super Nintendo role playing games where you had protagonists who were the forgotten adopted kid or that the orphan or the foster youth who somehow has magical powers and saves the day and saves the world.

And while that might sound great oh, wow, cool. You're, you're, you're people you looked up to were, were superheroes. It's also not great because, I didn't have magic when I [00:47:00] was a kid. I didn't have any, I didn't have a giant sword that solved all my problems. So having a, a book that had, real stories from real people that could answer real questions would have been so helpful because then I would have had the language I needed to communicate what I was feeling.

Those video games didn't give me that language, they gave me an escape, and I needed, I needed to face what was going on and a book like this would have really helped out a lot.

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: I want to say that I would have loved it, but when I was a teen, I was so busy fitting in, dreaming of waking up white, and hating myself for being Asian.

I still didn't understand how adoption had impacted me, and that I could draw strength from other adopted people. So I'm not sure there would have been room for me to appreciate this book then. But the more positive me would like to believe that reading a book like this, with voices mirroring my own experiences, would have been of great comfort to me.

This book could have been the first step for me to stop internalizing racism, and maybe it would have shortened the length of time I [00:48:00] spent denying my own adoption experience.

Haley Radke: How does it feel to be a part of this growing chorus of adoptee authors?

Lisa Nopachai: Hi, my name is Lisa and I wrote the story Glide for the anthology. I'm so happy and grateful to be a part of this collection of stories. The only story that I ever grew up reading when I was a teenager, young adult about adoption was a chicken soup for the soul story. And it was about a girl who was adopted and everything was tied up in a bow at the end. And it was like the typical grateful adoptee narrative.

It kind of was my paradigm and framework growing up as to what my adoption experience should have been like, because that's all I knew. And so, I'm so happy to be able to be a part of this anthology where, there's just so much more, so many more shades of gray. [00:49:00] I think in our culture, there's just a lot of black and white and dichotomous kind of thinking where it's, there's a good guy and the bad guy.

And I have two small children they're four and six and even in the shows that they watch about learning their ABCs, there's, there's good guys and there's villains, and I think we just kind of see life through this framework in our society. And so, yeah, I just think that it's so easy to stick adoption into that framework where there are good guys and bad guys, and that's how it's so often portrayed.

But you know, I think there's more and more people who are embracing the gray areas and just saying that, it's okay to have complicated feelings. It's such a complex situation to be in. And we can hold the struggle and the pain and the loss and the grief and the questions of identity and belonging together with joy and gratitude.

And we can struggle with so many things. And that's [00:50:00] okay. And it's not only okay, it's normal. And we just have such complex lives. And yeah, so I think it's really empowering to be a part of this anthology. And that's why I like the anthology approach so much is that it's a whole bunch of different stories and everyone's is so unique and so different and everyone, has different losses and different struggles.

But at the end of it, there's this implicit invitation to, share your own story and that the reader can just add their own story with the honesty and with the self compassion and self love that they

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: deserve. I'm so honoured to be included in this anthology with all these great authors. It gives me hope to see more and more of us putting pen to paper to communicate our experiences of grief, loss, trauma, racism and forced migration in a world where adoption narratives are still mainly written by non adopted people and still favour the adoption industry [00:51:00] over family preservation.

When other people speak for us, we tend to be reduced to passive objects whose sole purpose is to be rescued, feared, or fetishized. But when we get to speak in our own voices, we reclaim our humanity and show the world we are people of flesh and blood.

Eric Smith: Being a part of this growing roster of... adoptee the authors now as a grown adult.

I can't even tell you how much that means to me. I mean, I keep saying I can't even tell you, but I guess I'm going to right now, but I didn't have any adopted friends as a kid, they just. They weren't around, or if they were around, I just, I just didn't know them or they didn't talk about it.

And now finally having all these friends and all these colleagues who know what I'm feeling like about these very specific things that are hard to explain and define with people who aren't it just means a lot. And it means so much to me to know that we're writing this work that's going to mean a bunch to kids like us who needed it so badly.

Mariama J. Lockington: So, in [00:52:00] short, it feels great to be a part of this anthology, and exciting, and I just, I'm so honored to be part of this cohort of colleagues who are writing stories and sharing their truths. Even if it's through fiction on the page in this way. So, I've been screaming about this book from the rooftops already at every event I've done.

I've been like, this book is coming out, pre order it, write it down. And that won't end once it comes out. I'll be screaming about this book for a long time because I think it's, really pivotal. It's a pivotal moment.

Haley Radke: Tell us a little bit about the piece you've written in the anthology.

What can we expect? What are the themes you're hoping to share more about?

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom: As far as I know, I'm the only one who's contributed with a comic rather than written prose. So there are two versions of my story. One for the printed book and one for the audio. I hope my story communicates some of the painful loneliness many adopted people experience throughout their lives.

We may be surrounded by people trying to love [00:53:00] us, but non adopted people can't possibly understand what we go through. Adopted people are often told that we've been given everything, that we're lucky and have been saved from terrible circumstances, so what more could we possibly need? But many of us feel a deep hole in our beings that can only be understood by other adopted people who've gone through the same thing.

So my story is also a celebration of adoptive friendships and solidarity .

Mariama J. Lockington: My story is called Cora and Benji's Great Escape, and it is about a 16-year-old girl named Cora. She's black. She's adopted. She's the oldest of four adopted siblings. Her parents are white, and when one weekend she and her family go to one of those adoption retreats or camps that sometimes adopted families go to to meet with other families that look like them and learn she's not excited to go to this camp.

She's sort of outgrown it and doesn't understand what it, what's in it for her. She only sees it as well, it's just our white parents. You get to talk about the racism that the kids kind of don't do [00:54:00] anything, but she is excited to go to the camp because it's an opportunity for her to see her best friend, Benji, who's another black adopted girl like her.

And the two of them really don't get to see each other very often. And when they do see each other, one thing that they like to do is share. poetry with one another something that Cora doesn't share with anyone else in her life, only Benji. And so the two meet over this weekend, they're kind of rolling their eyes at everything that's happening, but they plan an escape for a couple hours.

And I won't spoil it, but they plan some type of escape to get away from this camp and go experience what the larger world has to offer them once they're of age and out there as young adults. So I'm excited about it and I hope, hope folks enjoy it and it resonates in some capacity. I'm Mariama J. Lockton. You can find me on Twitter as long as Twitter exists @marilocke. I'm also on Instagram and TikTok @forblackgirlslikeme. And my website [00:55:00] is mariamajlockton.com. Thank you so much, Hailey, for featuring us in this pivotal moment and to Shannon and Nicole for gathering all of us together to put together this wonderful book.

Eric Smith: As for the piece that I wrote in the anthology it's called Truffles. It's a cute story about a adoptee living on a farm with her family. She's transracially adopted, doesn't look like anyone around her, and really wrestles with every holiday. It's something similar to what I dealt with as a kid. And when she finds a puppy lost on her family's truffle farm, she decides to raise it alongside the family's truffle pigs in hopes that maybe this pup might find a family alongside the animals on the farm and sort of parallels her experience of not quite fitting in with her own family.

I'm hoping that the themes it touches on about, identity and family and transracial adoption. It shouldn't really ring with people who feel the same way. As for where people can find me [00:56:00] online, you look me up at ericsmithrocks, that's my website, dot com. I have a couple books out and about including Jagged Little Pill, the novel, and the upcoming With or Without You.

And yeah. Thank you for having me on here to talk about this wonderful anthology. I'm just, just so happy to be a part of it.

Haley Radke: I want to say a giant thank you to Stefany Valentine for sharing her story with us. Thank you to Kelley Baker, Mariama J. Lockington, Eric Smith, Lisa Wool-Rim Shoblam, and Lisa Nopachai for contributing to this episode as well. A huge congratulations to Nicole Chung and Shannon Gibney for this marvelous collection.

And I want to list the other authors for you as well. Some of them have been on the show before, and some are might be new to you. Mark Oshiro, Susan Harness, Matthew Salesses, Jenny Heijun Wills, [00:57:00] Sun Yung Shin, MeMe Collier. Meredith Ireland. The book has a forward by Rebecca Carroll and an afterward by JaeRan Kim. Sure. I'm sure some of you recognize a lot of those names and I think as our community, it's really important to support this important work. So my apologies if I mispronounced anybody's names. I am so excited for this book to be in your hands very soon. And I was so honored to get an advanced copy and be able to share about this right before it came out.

So thank you so, so much. And a huge congrats to all. Thanks for listening to AdopteesOn and for supporting adoptee voices in this world. Let's talk again next Friday.

262 Healing Series: Difficult Relationships

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/262

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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. Welcome, friend. We have a Special episode in our healing series today, where we talk to adoptees who are also therapists. And I would say today's episode is kind of like a little bit of a tune up for anyone who has experienced or is in a period of estrangement or separation or on a break from a close relationship, whether it's adoptive parents bio parents, somebody close in your life. And we're kind of talking through some of the things people don't talk about and some things to consider. So I think this will be really helpful for you if you are experiencing any of those things.

And our guest Marta Sierra also talks through some things that might be impacting your life and you just don't even realize it till you hear her say the thing. I don't know. Every time I hear her talk, I always have little light bulbs go off. So this is definitely one I will be really listening to, to make sure I get everything out of it and that it like sticks for me.

Before we get started, I want to. Personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. Okay, let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptee on Marta Sierra. Hello Marta.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Hi Haley.

Haley Radke: I think you're one of the most, how do I say this? One of the most commonly hosted therapists on our show. One of our favorites. And we've talked about a lot of hard things in the past. We talked through estrangement attachment issues.

Is loyalty a trauma response? Lots of heavy things. And we're just gonna keep going.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes.

Haley Radke: We're gonna keep going on that path today. So... One of the things I've noticed a lot of people in our community struggling with are these interactions in difficult relationships, whether it is we're still in relationship in a challenging spot, or we have chosen estrangement, but that's still taking up space in our brain.

What do you think about that?

Marta Isabella Sierra: Absolutely. I think when you brought this topic to me to revisit, it's about how does it stay alive inside of us? I heard you kind of asking that question and how do we tend to that? Both maybe in action, but also in response to the parts of us that are still very much alive in the dynamic, no matter where it currently sits.

Haley Radke: You told us this thing that was so wise that I've just like kind of clung on to it for a while. That you think adoptees have an internal mandate to put others first, before ourselves. And if you listen back to that, people, I think you'll understand why.

So I don't know if you want to speak to that a little bit, but then I wonder how that plays out when we're still in this, whether we're setting boundaries and continuing to do labor of holding things together, or we're out and we're just having these internal thoughts still of the challenging relationship

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yeah, I think the self abandonment just runs so deep. And it's not something where we set a boundary and then that feeling that urge to abandon ourselves to make things easier for the other people.

I don't think that goes away. Even something that can feel as final as ending a relationship or severing ties, there's still going to be moments where that decision is either reflected back to us or triggered in media that we're watching or a friend is going through something similar, even like distantly adjacent.

And we and it kind of like trips that wire in our nervous system that makes us go well, should I abandon myself now? Maybe now I should do it. Maybe now! You know, like that part is almost like Kind of my image right now is like doing double dutch in our mind like it's ready to jump in and abandon at any moment.

Haley Radke: Oh Geez. When you word it like that then of course, no, of course, we're not gonna make that decision, but that is what we're doing. Okay.

Marta Isabella Sierra: You know and again, I think depending on your experience in your adoptive family system or whatever caregivers you were around growing up, if that self abandonment was rewarded in any way, and I even mean rewarded as far as like people left you alone for a couple of hours. If it was rewarded in any way like that, again, like we have, I think to shift any of this, we have to come from a place of compassion that like this abandonment served an important survival purpose. And yeah. It's not doing that any more.

Haley Radke: Okay. I think we'll probably get to some tools later. I have another question that is kind of related because I almost just want to bring it to you. Okay. Our attention that I don't think we realize and there's not enough acknowledgement around this that we're doing extra invisible labor carrying around these relationships with us.

And as you said, like anything could just be a reminder here and there and. There is a weight that carrying this, I don't think we're acknowledging. And I'm wondering if you have thoughts on how we become more aware of this and, in hopefully inducing self compassion. Because if we're going to count the cost of maintaining these relationships or having these triggers in our lives, how do we be kind to ourselves? And be like, okay, of course we're having these reactions, of course, and what can we do about it?

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yeah I loved the way that you articulated that emotional labor, Haley. That we're always in this state of managing our anxiety. Really, our fear, our terror is what I hear you talking about, like this way that, you know, I think I've said this definitely a million times in life, but definitely I think sometimes on here too. Like we just, I've never met an adoptee that couldn't stand to calm down and that includes myself, like we're just, we just vibrate on this other level.

And so how do we, yes, A) not make it a problem. That's there, that's happening, that it makes sense that we carry a lot more fear than your average person. And that's going to be about you know what to do.

And that even after we decide quote unquote what to do and maybe take an action step that doesn't necessarily soothe that one part that's afraid. It might soothe a lot of other parts and there may be relief and you can be crystal clear that you've made the right decision for yourself and these younger parts of us still feel afraid and still need attention.

Because its so difficult for us to let go. Because letting go, the separation was so traumatic and so these young parts still believe that holding on and squeezing and refusing to let go is the best way. And it's just not always the best way.

Haley Radke: I have lots of friends that are adopted. Which I feel very thankful and grateful that I have that in my life. I know not everybody has that privilege.

And recently I asked someone, because I was kind of feeling like alone. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I keep perseverating on this. But I asked someone, I was like, well, how often do you think about your adoptive mother? You know, kind of, and she was like, are you being facetious? I'm like, no I genuinely want to know.

She's- every day. Every day, Halye. Like, why are you? Of course I still think about her.

Is this

Marta Isabella Sierra: a trap?

Haley Radke: Yeah, exactly. And I was like, oh okay, so it isn't just me.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And yeah, so, I don't know, maybe, is there anything you want to say to us about that? It's, that feels normal.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes. I absolutely think it's just not within our control. Our thoughts are not within our control.

I saw like a funny Instagram that was like, what I need is to just not have thoughts. And I was like, yes! Wouldn't that be incredible to just not have thoughts? But we don't have control over our thoughts. And nor our dreams, you know. For me in estrangement, some years out, like that is still a place where they enter my consciousness with or without my consent.

And. It can be really hard to wake up from that, literally. And I know it's just going to be something I have feelings about for the rest of my life. So, yes, what can be gained when we radically accept that we're going to just never stop having feelings about these people and these relationships?

That anybody that was classified to us as family. And where there's been pain or distance or hurt or abuse or neglect or abandonment, we may never fully make peace with that. And doesn't that make so much sense?

Haley Radke: Yes, right. It does make sense just in the nature of how our society is structured. Of course, we're going to have constant reminders of maternal or paternal figures and we're and of course, if you were a parent yourself, seeing your kids do things and that will remind you of when you did something and it just there's just no way to sever our brain from those triggers.

God, what was that movie? That Jim Carrey movie? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Can you like erase this whole relationship out of your brain? Yeah. How about that being tempting?

Marta Isabella Sierra: And even in the fantasy sci fi world of that film, right? The answer was no, you can't. You cannot pull someone out of your experience by the roots.

What happened to us left imprints.

Haley Radke: All right, so let's go to some practical kind of tool things. I think I shared this with you privately, but I had this dinner recently catching up with some old friends who I haven't seen for 20 years. And naturally, when you're my age a couple of them had lost parents already.

And so then they were asking about mine, because they all knew them from childhood.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Right.

Haley Radke: And I shared, I was like, oh I'm not in touch with them right now, and relayed whatever info I knew about them. And one of them was like, "oh that's really disappointing. I'm sorry to hear that." If you knew the context, like I'm not just like adding that in, it was very much, I felt it very much as like a shaming sort of, Oh my gosh, I'm so disappointed in you.

When they had no idea of the context or all the work and decision making that led me to that choice for my own emotional safety. Okay, so can't prevent the person from saying the thing to us necessarily. What do I say back in the moment? Or is there something I could have said to prevent maybe, her saying something shaming like that to me?

Marta Isabella Sierra: I do think this is so much about how we frame things. And I, you know, again, you're not going to get in front of every single comment that someone has for you. And yeah, I would frame it at, you know, and when this comes up for me, I often say, you know, after a lot of pain and a lot of therapy and a lot of soul searching, I finally was able to do the best thing for me, for my health and for my mental health. And I do not have those people in my life anymore, and it's been so incredible that the people that love me have supported me in that.

Then they don't really need to get it. You're very clear in that language, right? This was something that was A) very hard and painful for me, but also is for my best interest. And it invites them to get on board.

Haley Radke: Or at least don't share your opinion with me.

I like that. I chose to just let it go. I, for me, it was someone who I'm likely not going to be seeing them again, maybe forever, or maybe 20 years from now. So.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Which you're always weighing that who do I do the emotional label labor for? Right? Yeah. You know, another thing you could say is what's been painful in disclosing is like, sometimes people are more worried about their feelings about this than mine.

Haley Radke: Which again, I guess, I'm more worried about their feelings than mine. Okay. Okay. I'm starting to get it. Should I get this already?

It takes so much time.

Marta Isabella Sierra: It reminds me almost of, it takes me back to reunion also, like I would have to give those disclaimers immediately if someone asks like, Oh, I heard you found your mom or you know, whatever. The first thing out of my mouth was usually yes- and what's been upsetting as this has been happening is that people's first question is about how is this for my adoptive parents, and I will not be fielding questions on that topic.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Don't come here. With that don't bring it to me. I'm not having it.

Haley Radke: Oh Okay. I don't know if- it's feel like it's all the tools that you teach us, we literally have to practice it, have something that you've already decided you can say and repeat.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes.

Haley Radke: And like I'm not comfortable talking about that right now. I don't know. We got to pull that out too, I think.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes, exactly. Of just, you know, exactly. I, just a no boundary is great. And again, if you feel super uncomfortable with that, getting support around that, around how to say no. How to embrace no as a complete sentence. And workshopping some of these conversations. I think, again, like they're not always going to go perfect.

And sometimes we walk away wondering what we could have said differently. And that can be great stuff to workshop with a therapist or a coach or a trusted friend who's maybe more fierce about their boundaries than you are. And get some of that language. Because again, when our first language was self abandonment, wrapping our mouths around some of these sentences, even, feels so foreign.

Haley Radke: Yes. Okay, so we are choosing ourselves first, learning self compassion. This is just going to be an ongoing practice. Thanks for the good news.

Marta Isabella Sierra: I always bring you great news, Haley.

Haley Radke: Always! I bring you good tidings of great joy. Sorry, that's a little, that's a little Christmas reference for anybody. Anyone religious?

Okay, I'm, how do I put this? So, I know we are talking about, we're both estranged from our adoptive parents. People are making choices around this, whether they want to continue reunion, if it's been challenging. All kinds of our relationships can be going sort of this way. I hope that people are able to get support from a therapist and make these choices in a healthy way.

Also, if it's healthy, pivot and hopefully maintain relationships that they want to maintain. This is not a, like, how to estrange convo. But I do have a question for you.

One of the things I wish I would have done before I went ahead with the decision to estrange was setting up some boundaries and safety in my life with other people who were also connected to me and my adoptive parents. Because there have been some things that have kind of happened over the last couple years that maybe I could have prevented with some conversations.

So do you have ideas about that? Things that we can think about? And how to do that in a safe way?

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yeah, I think again, communication and boundaries, anyone that you're going to keep, try to keep in your life that has a connection to whoever you've estranged from, including, I love that you included biofamilies. I have some estrangement in my bio family as well. That you're being really clear about your expectations and giving the person that. An opportunity to opt in or opt out of that dynamic with you, depending on whether or not they can hold that. Right.

So whether that's, you know, I'm really wanting to stay in relationship with you. And these are my needs around privacy, around social media boundaries, around, yeah, sharing where I live or whatever pieces are really important to you. Making sure those are clearly communicated. And then of course, like responding to boundary violations if they happen. Then you have another decision to make. There is going to inherently be risk of staying in relationship with anyone that's in relationship with them.

Again, bringing the good news. I'm so sorry. I think there's. An emotional risk beyond these boundary concerns. Right? We carry so much around feeling unseen. And I think when we make these hard choices, it's after years of feeling unseen in our hurt. And so another question, is it safe for you to stay in relationship with someone who just by nature of their relationship with these people are essentially co- signing and by standing the behavior?

Haley Radke: Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot to kind of consider when you are doing that boundary setting. If we're going to stay in relationship, please do not be in touch with them. Whatever that might look like, and then sometimes it's, it is more close in. It's more close in, and they are not able to sever, nor, or maybe don't want to sever communications.

Marta Isabella Sierra: It's again, this self worth piece of I am deserving of safety. And If you can't create that for me, if you can't co create that for me, if you're not going to protect me, then I don't know if I can have a relationship with you.

Haley Radke: You know what's so interesting to me about that comment is that one of the pieces that sort of held me back from doing it sooner was my children. And my psychologist was like, Okay, so not safe to be in relationship with you, but safe to be in relationship with your children? Right? Like major side eye. What are you thinking?

And it's like all these, again, societal expectations of- this is what you do. You let your kids have a relationship with their grandparents or whatever it may be.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes.

Haley Radke: So. Yeah, and then there's these extraneous things where it's like, Oh, is it okay for them to send Christmas cards? Is it okay for them? You know. I made this really painful, critically well thought out, with support from experts in my life, decision, but somehow that isn't giving you enough information?

I do have to spell it out. I have to spell it out and say what my expectations are. Okay. Well, I guess we just have to keep having hard conversations. That is the good news that you're giving us.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Or again, if those conversations are costing to you much, then you have the option, you have the option to pull away.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. But if we don't have those conversations, if I'm not setting up the boundary, that's a me problem. How are they supposed to know? There is something where I haven't told them, please don't give this information to- because I was assuming that they wouldn't, you know? But I can't do that.

I can't make that assumption. They're not in my head.

Marta Isabella Sierra: You can't make that assumption. And there are people, it does exist, for people to understand and protect you without needing to be asked. So thats something that's coming up is almost the way we're talking about it, Like everyone needs this explained to them. And I have to challenge that because some people don't. It's almost like some people who have never even considered adoption trauma quote unquote as a topic, as like a whole. You know this whole world that we live in, still inherently are like, yeah, why are white people buying black and brown babies?

Like they also think it's strange, without having turned it over, without having that explained to them. So again, we're back to worth, right? Like you, there are people in this world that will protect you without needing to understand or have explained to them what happened to you.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Marta Isabella Sierra: And you're worthy of that.

Haley Radke: Okay. And I love I'm glad you did call that out. Because I do have people in my life that are like that. So, yeah. Okay, lots of things to think about.

The last kind of topic I want to cover is I think probably common for a lot of us who haven't quite gotten all the way there to accepting that we can put ourselves first.

So there is this nagging feeling over time: should I continue to be estranged? Has enough time passed? Maybe they've already dealt with the issues. Maybe I'm healed up more, so I won't be as sensitive. Or those tender spots won't be so tender.

When you're talking to an adopted person who has chosen estrangement and then is: huh, should I open the door again?

What are some things we should be looking at in ourselves to make these decisions?

Marta Isabella Sierra: I mean, A) I would wanna go to the fears. What are you afraid happens, you know, if you don't do these things, if you don't go back? What are the fears and really sitting with those and then seeing what's the data around that?

Is there any evidence that it will be different, right? Again, honoring that our younger parts are never going to stop wishing that it was different. And is that where this is coming from? Or is it coming from a totally different place inside of you? Is it, you know, why now? I would also ask myself, my parts what, why now? What's going on? What?

And then practically like outside of yourself, I would say, without concrete data that there has been change, I would not reengage. And that might not be a popular opinion. But that is my opinion. That without serious data that there has been a change, I don't know why it would be safe to go back in for more.

Haley Radke: Even if we've worked on ourselves and grown.... I think we've talked about that, this in a lot of our healing series conversations with you and other therapists, but like when you have grown and worked on yourself and, I'm making hand movements where people can't see, but if other people aren't working on themselves and growing, you're growing further and further away over time.

So even if we have strengthened ourselves, that's no comment on where they are and what work they've done or not done.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Right. And it may ultimately mean that you're less compatible than ever to be in relationship with them. Even if your younger parts don't get triggered in the way they used to. Still, is this someone that you want to be in relationship with?

Just person to person.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Marta Isabella Sierra: And then we're back to grieving like the fantasy of what we wanted it to be, what we hoped it could be, and hopefully seeking community in that grief.

Haley Radke: I'm friends with someone who's been estranged for like so long, and they just, how do I put this? They just feel to me like they never think about going back.

Do you think that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, that we will? feel differently, that we will not have those like nagging sort of reminders? Or for me, like the little guilt niggling kind of feeling. I think it'll go away in time.

Marta Isabella Sierra: I do think it's so individual and so dependent on, you know, what else you've built in your life, what else you have going on.

And again, different phases, there might always be waves of wondering, waves of guilt. I do think the more healing we do the less we question ourselves

Haley Radke: And the more like skills we have to talk to our younger parts and self soothe and all of those kinds of things I guess.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yeah

Haley Radke: Any other thoughts or things you think we need to hear around this? Like how to maintain a separation while still, I don't know, having the feelings?

Marta Isabella Sierra: Again, you know, I can't get through an episode without saying, community is the medicine. Just don't go through this alone. Don't go through it alone.

There are other people navigating estrangement, hurting, grieving, fighting for boundaries, struggling around language. You don't have to go through it alone.

And so whether that's a Facebook group or however you want to seek your community around estrangement. You know, and it's not just our community, that piece too, there are connections around this.

I think I might have shared in our first estrangement episode. The first time I helped a client navigate estrangement was not an adoptee. The first time I was, you know, support and witness to someone severing ties with an abusive caregiver, it was not an adoptee. So we are also not the only ones hurting in this way.

And not the only ones navigating this. So the more we feel like the only person, it just intensifies the emotions. So just don't be alone in it.

Haley Radke: Yes, thank you. Appreciate that. Okay, where can we connect with you online Marta?

Marta Isabella Sierra: You can email me at MartaSierraLmhc@gmail.com

Haley Radke: Perfect. And on Adoptees on Patreon, you are a regular guest on our Ask an Adoptee Therapist event, which is so fun. And we talk about hard things there too. And you've coached us through some tricky situations there. And we have one next week if people are listening to this when it drops in real time.

And then there'll be more with you this fall and into next year. And we're really just so thankful for the wisdom that you share with us. Thanks, Marta.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Also, if you're listening in real time, Adoption Mosaic has a speaker series panel this month on October 14th around estrangement, and I will be on the panel.

Haley Radke: Okay, that is like tomorrow, if you're listening on real time. We will link to that. And I know Adoption Mosaic also has recordings of their events. So if you have missed it, then you can check their website for a recording of that. I think a couple of our podcast friends are on that panel. So great. Great.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Cool.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Thank you so much, Marta.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Thanks, haley.

I don't want you to miss out on our Ask an Adoptee Therapist events. They're really special because we have a whole hour together. A part of it is recorded, and I will ask questions to Marta, kind of like in our conversation today, except for they are listener submitted. And so folks get to ask kind of whatever they want privately, anonymously, and our therapist gives their thoughts.

And then when we are done recording, it's usually between 30 and 45 minutes, the last bit of our hour is kind of a live discussion with our guest therapist. So you can ask for clarification on the questions. You can ask your question with details and not recorded. So it's just for whoever is there live to hear.

And I have learned so much. We only started doing them earlier this year and they have been so, so valuable for me and my listeners already. They've been thanking me for having the event and people are really excited about it. So I just want to make sure you know about it so you don't miss out.

And all of the audio that we record in the first part is released the following Monday on Adoptees Off Script, which is our Patreon weekly podcast. So even if you can't be there live, then you can hear the audio recording later and still get all the good advice and wisdom.

Okay, so please check that out, adopteeson.com/community. And we have links to our live events in our calendar on the website. There is a scholarship tab. So if you are just not able to join Patreon right now, but you want to come to one of our live events and you are an adopted person, you can click on the scholarship to apply and yeah, please come.

We would love to have you. There are scholarships because of our Patreon supporters and this show survives, because of Patreon supporters. So we're really thankful for your support. Okay. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.