277 John Gallaher, Ph.D.
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/277
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. You are in for a treat today, friend! We have award winning poet John Gallaher with us. John's newest poetry collection, My Life in Brutalist Architecture, releases this month, and it's his first collection focused in on his experience as an adopted person.
Even though he was a kinship adoptee, he still had to take a DNA test to find the family he was searching for. We talk about DNA, nature versus nurture, his search for the other John Gallaher's of the world, and what reunion really looks like right now for him. Before we get [00:01:00] started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adoptee on.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, adoptee on.com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptee On John Gallaher. Welcome John.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Nice to nice to be here Haley. Thank you for inviting me.
Haley Radke: I'm so oh my god I loved your book spoiler alert before we talk about that.
Please. Would you share some of your story with us?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I think as with most adoptee stories I've heard or I've talked to people about there's either the 30 second version or the 30 hour version So I'll try to I'll try to split the difference here with with my lifelong jokes. I think this is also a, maybe it's a coping mechanism that the adoptee becomes either [00:02:00] servant to family or clown.
I tended to go the clown route mostly. So the way I start out my story is by saying that I am my own second cousin. That kind of gives people a kind of a feeling of the within the family part of the adoption, so I actually have a little bit of a written down just so I don't forget. So I'll read just these 2 sentences here.
So I, when I was born January 6, 1965, my name was Eric Martin Enquist, my mother and father were young and they divorced a year after that. He died in a car accident in the summer of 1968, when I was three, a little over three and a half, whatever which coincided with my adoption and my name change to John Jerome Gallaher, Junior, actually.
So the first complication to the story is that my adoptive mother when I was born was my second cousin as well her father and my birth grandmother were brother and sister So that's the adoption part now that the [00:03:00] complicated thing why this was why this became a 50 year journey is that my birth father who died when I was three was the biological link between the two branches of the family and his mother fought with my birth mother's mother and my birth mother over custody and it was one of those families that was who's from which side of the tracks kind of situation in the families and so my birth father's family won that battle, not necessarily for custody, but to actually adopt me out to someone within their branch of the family. Unfortunately, though once that happened and they cut my birth mother and her side of the family out of that adoption, they also promptly died as well.
So then any way to find out any information about that side of the family was gone. So I did not even actually know any of their names. I had when I grew [00:04:00] up knowing I was adopted, of course, because I was three when I was adopted. And I did know a little bit about my birth father's name. I knew his last name.
And but I knew nothing about my birth mother's side of the family. And it was after my adoptive mother died, and I was writing, I write anyway, I'm already writing, and oh, I just, I took the test, I did the DNA thing, and then wrote about it as it unfolded, and then here we are.
Haley Radke: Here we are. Do you consider yourself a kinship adoptee or more of a closed adoption adoptee?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh, what does that answer get me? Do I get a free puppy or something?
Haley Radke: Yes, I have a puppy. He's not up for grabs, but he's napping. No I guess what I'm getting at is this was [00:05:00] arranged in the family. This wasn't just somehow you got placed with who happened to be second cousin situation,
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Right yeah. It was arranged and also very, legal and that was one of the reasons why I think that I know so little about my adoption because I think that some of the legal agreements were not followed by my adoptive parents. I think one of them was , that I found out more recently that when I was adopted out, my birth family was under the impression that I was going to be living in the region and that they were going to have contact.
And I think that was part of the reason for the within the family idea. But I was quickly moved to a different state. And all the information was scrambled that got back to my birth family, and all the information was scrambled that got to me as well.
Haley Radke: And was there like fear from your adoptive parents that somehow you would be taken back?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I think there was. [00:06:00] They said a couple times years and years later that and there's this thing about being a well I don't that's it. I'm used to talking to people who aren't adopted So I see you say things like there's this thing, you know there's this there are these kind of emotions and things one thinks about when one is adopted. So I guess in speaking to you it's gonna be a little different so I'll say for me, I had a strong feeling that conversations on this topic were not welcome but they weren't silenced.
They were just not welcome, and answers to any questions were pleasant, but wrong and then it continued. And I think some of, I don't want to say it was disingenuous, but everything was just a little bit wrong, which made it impossible for me to do internet research and things like that.
So You know, it would seem so easy. It seems so easy, but it turns out sometimes it's not easy at all.
Haley Radke: Did you know [00:07:00] you were a kinship adoptee?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yes.
Haley Radke: Okay. You just didn't know the details or the answers you were given were like misremembered or not quite exact.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Right and so it's the crazy thing is, it took DNA research on my part years later to find my birth family as if I was from the other side of the moon or something when really it wasn't that distant but families can be pretty screwy things. They can really lop off a branch of that tree and it just disappears for good.
Haley Radke: So you're a well established poet, respected in the community, have multiple publications out. You're a professor, you teach, all of these things. So imagine writing is just part of your life practice, we'll say.
Did you decide I'm going to write through this, or this is just [00:08:00] what you do anyway, and it just so happens these are the topics you're living, so that's what you're writing.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: That's such a good question. Haley. Why did I start writing in the first place?
I feel I'm not, I don't come to writing necessarily as a writer myself I don't come to writing necessarily for content. I come to it for questions, thinking about things and that turning ideas over. And I've always avoided the direct, conversation about my autobiography in this way, maybe it's fear it, a lot of it was, I think that feeling we have of not wanting to rock the boat with my adoptive parents that tends to happen and over time, I just had to convince myself that my story is my story and [00:09:00] finding it is worth something.
Haley Radke: When you DNA tested, what were your first results? I remember when I did my DNA test, I already knew the answers. I did it for the show to tell people what it was like to spit in the tube. How long did it take you to fill up your tube, right? Jeez, it felt longer than they said it was going to be. That was a lot of spit.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Did you gag?
Haley Radke: No,
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I gagged. I was like.
Haley Radke: It was so nasty. I recorded myself doing it, which was even worse. I know. At audio content that is.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: You did some ASMR.
Haley Radke: Yes. Yes.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: ASMR.
Haley Radke: That's right. I don't think I put all that spitting in the recording, but in the public for public consumption, just for whatever you're going to think of me now.
But So I already knew the answers and so when I opened up my [00:10:00] results, my father and mother were both there, did not expect my birth mother to be there because we have not been in contact for, say, almost 20 years, but I knew my father had tested. So it was like, oh, they're there. What were your closest matches?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah, so it's very interesting. No one that I knew was a match. So no, no one that I already knew. The family I've grown up in, my adoptive family, my last name, Gallaher that's my father's name. And so we did a lot of stuff all my life with his family Gallaher's and people related to Gallaher's.
I'm related to them through my mother. My adoptive mother, so she's the one who's related to me. We did close to nothing with anyone from her side of the family. She already had a difficult relationship, so she always had a difficult relationship with her own mother and with a lot of people on the Sullivan side which is her family. [00:11:00] Her father died when she was three and her mother remarried, and that was difficult. So my adoptive mother ended up running away from home and living with her uncle, who of course is also related, he's related to me. My my birth father was named after him, actually.
But we didn't, we, when we were very young, we did some stuff with that couple, her uncle and her aunt, but that's it. No one else from her family and so that's another reason why this story is it's an inside the family story but it doesn't feel like one because I did not know her family. So yes, and none of my matches were anyone I knew, and most of them were pretty, were fairly distant.
No one was closer than about a second or third cousin. And still, that's still the case. Even though I found my birth mother out of it that's still the case. Mostly I found my birth mother through what do we call them? Angels? Adoption angels? Is that
Haley Radke: Search angels?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Search angels. Yes. Someone I know as I started getting some of [00:12:00] this information, I'm not a very private person. So as I was getting some of this information, I was putting it on Facebook, hey, what do you think about this? Especially when I was like finding pictures of people and I was like, do these people look related to each other or that sort of thing.
And so she found me and she was like, my friend, it looks like you could use a little help. So I gave I turned over a lot of the stuff that I had found. And one of the things I had found was a through records not through the DNA such, but through records because once I got the DNA, I was able to get enough stuff to get names, but not matches because you get the match and then you find out from their tree who they have in it.
And and then you can find some documents and things because I ended up getting like a six month a year, I ended up paying for it for a couple of years. I've stopped now. But so I would get all the documents, birth certificates and all that sort of thing. And so I found a marriage certificate between these two people Pat Gorman and what Lynn Enquist.
And but of course, there are a lot, you would think [00:13:00] those two names wouldn't necessarily be what common but there are a lot of Pat Gorman's out there especially because Pat could be a male name or a female name. So there were a million Pat Gorman's and there weren't a whole lot of Lynn Enquist's, but of course he also died when he was 22 you know didn't wasn't any information on him hardly except for a birth certificate But then I did find a marriage record and so I handed that over to the search angel Marie Corvallo And she found children from that marriage. No, not that marriage. She found actually the birth, oh, that's not right. That's not, that's a, it's a different, I found that birth, that marriage certificate, which led me to a second birth, a marriage certificate between a Pat Gorman and a John Graff.
And I had no idea if that was connected or not. And it was just in a pile of stuff that I gave over to Marie. And she found children from that marriage and then on Facebook she found the wife of one of those two people. [00:14:00] And she gave me that person. She says you could always try this person.
So I had to send her a Facebook message saying, hey, am I related to your husband? And then I talked to him and he's my brother, he's my half brother, and turns out, and then within six more hours, I get a telephone call, out of the blue I answer it and it's my birth mother. So that was something.
Haley Radke: That was something. Can you remember that call? Do you remember it?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh, yeah.
Haley Radke: Frozen moment in time, where you were, all the things.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah I it is that way that I think a lot of people talk about that sort of a call it's ghostly, right? But it's also the feeling that the physical feeling is like jumping into a cold pool or something.
It's that kind of intake of breath and a little bit of I'm not sure, I'm not sure my breathing is continuing right now. That, that sort of thing. And then it takes a while to, it's also an awkward conversation between [00:15:00] strangers. And that's also weird because it's pretty intimate stranger when one is talking with one's birth mother, but I had no fear going through it.
Maybe I should have, but going through all of this process, I think I just in the way that being a writer, one is always one step removed from what one is writing about. And, as I was already writing, as I was going, I found the DNA stuff so interesting, and then when I started getting archival information, it all was so interesting, I wanted to write about it, that when it came time to actually talk to my birth mother, I was able to just do it, and I wasn't very worried about not being accepted or any of those, because from my point of view, what I wanted to know was I wanted to know it didn't really matter to me what I ended up finding out. I just wanted to know. Whatever response I would have gotten from them would have been [00:16:00] maybe fine.
Haley Radke: In your poem, Coded Messages, you start with, The purpose of life is to carry a sequence of code. How long were you thinking about DNA? Just like the idea of it and what it is. I can just picture you perseverating on this thought.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah. All my life, my friend, it's, we take those classes in school and they're like, what color are your eyes? What color are your parents eyes? All these things that, if you're not adopted never matter, register as something that might be difficult for some people, and I've always been curious about nature versus nurture, and twin studies and all this sort of thing they're absolutely fascinating for their convergence, but also their divergence, , that nurture does matter, but nature matters Wow, there was a story even just a really dumb story, like [00:17:00] maybe this is, and this is gonna be really dumb, I really apologize, but in some ways the best thing I found out was when I met them, when I met one of my two half brothers and my birth mother, so I went to dinner with my half brother's family, so I was there with my half brother and his two sons. And all my life, I have been number one I'm pretty small I'm what, I'm just under 5'8 and I'm not a big guy but my family is this really big German family, this, my adoptive family and so I always, even though I'm of the same race, as they are I couldn't look more different. This is like suddenly, where did this little guy come from with this huge, big, bunch of linebackers and then there's this little guy standing there with them. But I also, I fidget, I squirm, I tap my foot, I never stop moving. And it drove my, parents crazy.
And my whole life, it was like. Don't squirm, don't move, don't wiggle, cut it out. And here I am having dinner [00:18:00] with my half brother, and we're all like squirming, moving, twisting our straws up, fiddling on the knobs of our soda cans. These sorts of things. And I was just like, Oh, wow, I can relax.
I can like physically relax. And it was just that physical relaxation was just so God, it was just so wonderful and it's like such a small moment, but it meant the world to me.
Haley Radke: That you're saying, Oh, this is going to be just like a silly example. I'm like tearing up like when we have those moments, like we don't get that and people don't understand that at all. Wow. Oh, I'm so glad you got that.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: The other story I tell, and that first one I don't tell in the book, but this next one I do tell in the book turned out to be very important to me over time because of the different way people think about biological families versus adoptive families, and this is really telling I don't know, trigger warning or whatever, it's not, I don't know if it's not that triggering, but like I [00:19:00] said before, my adoptive mother's father died when she was three, and he died on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, that sort of thing, and so my adoptive father would always tell me and my brother's adopted as well, by the way, and to complicate this even more, he was my cousin when we were born, so they adopted both the boys from these two people on the other side of the family, and then cut ties, so her father died when she was three, and our adoptive father was always telling us that made Christmas very hard for her because of his death and that we were always too they were a very religious family my adoptive family. So he would, he's speaking from a religious standpoint of keep her in your prayers on Christmas time and to be aware and be sensitive and about her feelings of Christmas because that's very traumatic. That she went through and yet. I was adopted when I was three.
[00:20:00] They made no comment about that possibly being any kind of an internal trauma for a three year old to be put on an airplane all by himself, sent across the from Portland to Wichita, Kansas, get off the plane, have someone meet him and say hello, we are your new mommy, new daddy, forget your name is now this, and that might be something to also think about.
So then there is I've read what the ethical columnists and things in newspapers talking about when one is adopted, one is expected to change their identity and their what their identification to their adoptive family and their birth family is no longer part of the picture but life doesn't work that way because in the way that we would expect someone who had a father die and then as a stepfather, we would expect that stepfather to take into a [00:21:00] consideration that there was a birth father before that, and to be aware, and to be cognisant of that, and to take that into consideration when dealing with their child. But with adoptive people, so often that is not the case.
Haley Radke: Earlier you said, you were like, I'm not used to talking to adoptees, like I'm usually talking to people who don't get it. What are, I'm assuming this might be one of the examples you would give them. Are there anything, is there anything else that you have said or explained to folks who aren't adopted? That helped them with like their light bulb moments of oh, it's more complicated than I thought.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: So there are a few and I know all these as well. Number one is Walt Disney. What Walt Disney has done to the idea of adoption as trope, right? As, as how do you get a story going?
Kill the parents. And then Bambi has to go be Bambi or whatever it's this [00:22:00] literary device to get a story going and you know that's fine that is something that does happen in the world and stories to get going that way but none of these stories take into account much the fact that some people watching that movie or reading that book actually are adopted and they might be seeing this a little bit different than you just using it as a convenient way to get rid of parents so that you can have this story and then of course do that thing that Disney etc tends to do which is and promptly forget about them. And not have them, not have any lingering thoughts or traumas. And they do that about death anyway, a lot of times in movies, in the way that someone will have a death and then the next scene they're like over it. That sort of thing, but life doesn't work that way. The other thing I like to talk about is the word adoption I firmly believe there needs to be a different word for humans who are adopted versus pets or programs that are adopted because it's, if you're an adopted child and [00:23:00] you see the way people talk about adopting pets. It's pet adoption day. And the way people talk about, oh, it's a trial period, we'll take this dog for a few days and if it doesn't work out, we'll always give it back because it's only adopted. It's that sort of idea. And ,there is this feeling, that I grew up having, that the law, when looking at my birth certificate the law says that I was born to these people, but there is always this idea that legality put us together, legality could separate us, that it's, that you're always one step away from, it might or might not be true, depending on how families or whatever are, but we always say things like blood is thicker than water I guess that makes Adoptee water, because we are not blood.
So what is the attachment there? What is the sense of, the flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood? How does that work? All these things were taught, like I, went to Catholic school and was, that sort of thing all the time. [00:24:00] Who's he, what's begets, who's he, what's begets, who's he, what's kind of thing and the way that these things need to be written down and that is, what is and the, and what is the adopted person in that scenario.
Haley Radke: Yeah the falsity of permanence, like the forever family. Oh my goodness. Okay. I thank you for making those points. I think in your book, there's so many things that you touch on that we talk about often on the show like birth certificates. One of the things that you talk about and mentioned several times is names and the changing of your name and stuff.
But I want to say. Do you really friend request people on Facebook who share your name?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I am. I'm friends with several John Gallaher's on Facebook, and I find it hilarious, and I also put a Google alert on my name. And so I get a lot of Google alert updates on what John Gallaher is up to out there. It's absolutely [00:25:00] hilarious.
Haley Radke: Do you do the same with your given birth name?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: No, because that hurts. Because there is a world out there where there was an Eric Enquist. But it's not this one. It's not the real world. And to have his, to have updates from that isn't funny.
That you got me on that one. I do mention that in the book, though, that I did not put one on that name because it wasn't funny, but saying it right now reminds me of how not funny it is, there's a way I like to think about. I thought about this my own life.
So I'm only going to talk about me. I'm not going to make generalizations, but I was always thinking when, I guess when one is adopted, especially when one is adopted, I think a little older, but I'm thinking it could work for a birth adoption as well, that if one always knows that one is adopted, and I've heard this, of course, also from transnational, transracial adoptions who have a very you know, a very different kind of relationship with adoption than people like me, they're from the [00:26:00] baby scooper era, that sort of thing.
But there are some similarities, this feeling of difference this kind of thing am I an android? Am I a robot? Am I here as hired help? Am I all these different kind of things, one that or the fantasies one have. Am I really a, like the Disney fantasies am I really a prince somewhere else in some other world? And I'm just switched at birth. And now I'm in this other family, all these kinds of things.
Haley Radke: Alien in your book, right? You taught, you, yeah.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah, I think what, and I didn't realize until years later, just how powerful that, was this nightly routine I would have instead of prayers where I would go over the day's events, and in my child mind, I was fantasizing child mind. I would upload them to a spaceship that was circling. And, I didn't realize until years later, thinking back about that, was I was three years old. I lived with my birth mother, and then I didn't anymore.
And I was a three year old. I was talking to her. I forgot over [00:27:00] a while, over time what I was doing. And in the book I talk about it that way. I forgot what I was doing, but I kept doing it. And in, the way that I forgot my name, I had no idea what my name was and I had to find it.
And that's another thing that my adoptive parents were incorrect about my birth name and my birth father's name. But they were close. They had the last name right, but they didn't have his first name right. So when I started doing internet research, I couldn't find him.
Haley Radke: I don't, I'm sorry if this is painful, please tell me we can move on. I had never thought about that just now that, like you would have known your name. As an adult trying to summon up that memory, what was that like for you?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh it's the worst kind of constipation one could imagine. I kept in the book, I say, and I, there's a line in the book where I really, where I try to impart how that [00:28:00] feels and the thing I say to myself is that, that the map of Portland is talking to me and it says to me, you could have remembered all this if you'd had a better memory and my reaction to that is, yeah, don't you think I've been saying that to myself every day of my life?
If you can forget your own name, you can forget anything and that's what happens.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I know someone is gonna hear that and be like, oh my god, this is they're going through it right now, and it's something that's not talked about. Going back to reunion you had this call with your birth mother on the phone, calls, six hours after you find your half brother.
And so you've had some meetings with them. And then in the course of your poetry book, there's like a poem in between. Where honestly, it's just talking about how I read it. I've read your book three times now so some of the things you're [00:29:00] like I say this in the book. I'm like, I guess I gotta read it one more time. There's some things that you're saying about or it's a soccer game and it's like this what do you call it the banality of life while in the background there's like chaos happening, right? Like reunions, like I had a phone call with a stranger, but we're intimate strangers and it was weird and like this upheaval no one else sees and everybody else at the soccer game and you're just like, don't you know what's going on with me? Do you have thoughts about that time period of your life?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah for me, I, in a way, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I do understand that finding one's birth family is not for everyone. But again, I was in my 50s when I did this. I'm feeling like, I am who I am now this isn't, if this had happened when I was a teenager, maybe things would have been [00:30:00] different.
I was a little messed up then, I was a little, now I'm just wacky, then I was more, a little bit more, stuff was really, identity formation when you're a teenager can really this sort of thing can really retraumatize and really mess that identity formation up. But in my 50s, I was pretty solid with what's going on now and one of my biggest problems in my whole life is knowing that facts don't get nailed down very well. Facts change, right? Memory changes, so many things can change. And for me, just finding out the answers to these questions was really important. So in some ways, this was a chaotic time in my life and a lot of things were going on, but it was also, it was really what I wanted. I really wanted to go through it. The chaos part was yeah, because we're still living our daily lives. We still have to make lunch. While one is waiting for one's DNA test results to come back, where one might or might not [00:31:00] find one's birth mother, one still has to grill that cheese sandwich.
And so a lot of that stuff is in the book. Don't like movies. I love movies. We all, like to go to movies and but I hate movies that like in movies, oftentimes it seems like no one ever goes to the bathroom or no one ever eats meals and, things like action adventure movies, just someone just shot a pistol 35 times. I don't think you had that many bullets in a, that sort of thing where there's like all this facticity is missing. And one of my, things about writing and maybe why I write so much is I just have this fantasy that if I can just If I could just say everything that is going on, that I won't forget it that I'll hold it, that I'll like, I don't know, like I'll live forever or something, but not really that.
It's more like, and actually, now thinking about it, like what you said earlier, or what we were saying earlier, that could very well stem from me not being able to remember my name or my childhood. I just have this kind of mania for facts and [00:32:00] small asides and, uh, and turning a question over, not having an answer, but having three answers instead and saying maybe, or perhaps that's, I've lived all my life in the realm of perhaps and so I just really want to hold on to as much of it as I can.
Haley Radke: Even the minutiae, like collecting.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Because it's when we're old and we're sharing our lives with someone else. Yeah they want to know like when you were married or, actually doing archival research reminds me of this. You find all these things, you find the birth and the death date of someone and then in between them, you see this little line that line covers a lot of territory that we don't know anything about. Who were they really, what were they really like, what did they do for fun, what kind of stuff did they like to eat, and, that's just all the, that's all the kind of questions I had for my birth mother when I met her.
Or when we were speaking on the phone, she did, at one point she said to me on the [00:33:00] phone, she's I'm not going to be guarded, I'll tell you, I'll answer anything you want to answer, ask any questions you want to ask. And I know people are people, so I didn't need to ask, like, why was I put up for adoption?
I figured that out, but, I also, those, and those answers did come as well as we were talking, but I wanted to know more what kind of music did you like to listen to, what was my birth dad like, when you guys were good what did you guys do for fun, how do you like where you're living, that kind of stuff.
That's all the stuff that we erase because we don't think it's important. And then in the end, that's your whole life is that stuff, much more than the important stuff.
Haley Radke: What is reunion like for you now, today?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: My birth mother is a private person. Who really rose up from her private area for a little bit of time. And I'm very thankful for that. She, we [00:34:00] spoke on the telephone for a month or two, and then I traveled to Portland because I'm, as a writer, every year I go to this big writing conference called AWP, the letters A, W, and P, which actually stands for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, which is not AWP but that's what it is, and it was, it turned out it was in Portland, and I will admit, that fantasy was in the back of my mind when I took the DNA test, because I do know that a lot of people move around all the time, but a lot of people don't.
And I had this fantasy because I knew I was from Portland, that I would find some birth family if I did the DNA test, and I would maybe meet them when I went to Portland. And it turns out, I did. Fantasy and it was a very good time it was very strange in a way because we acted like tourists a little bit.
I went there. I met my half brother, Dan [00:35:00] first, and we hit it off. We had a great time. And then I met her with him. And the three of us drove around and saw stuff like we were tourists. We went to the dam the Bonneville Dam, and looked at all the fish things there.
It's I don't want to be too on the nose about it, but it was like making one of those memories we would have had as a family. By doing a little vacation stop and seeing some stuff and then after that Dan and I drove down to see a distant cousin who I had found through DNA who lived down in oh, I can't remember the name of the town, Redmond or something like that. I think it was down a little bit for a little bit to the east and south of Portland. So he and I drove down there and saw this person who, was related to us through my birth mother's father's side who was also not very much connected to them. And so he got to meet him for the first time and we heard about our birth [00:36:00] grandfather.
That was interesting because we shared him. We had different fathers, but we had the same grandfather.
Haley Radke: You have these nice moments that you can think of, but persistent, consistent relationship maybe is not. Not in the cards at the moment.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I think with my birth mother if I go back to Portland, I might see her again We did not leave it like, never call again, but she after she rose up for that day she was, I, she's, she was happy to, go back to her place.
She's retired now, and she has her, she plays cards with some friends on Thursdays, and they go out for lunch afterward and she likes that small, she likes that life. I've been in touch with my two half brothers, though, quite a bit. We're on social media, and I know that I'm sure one of them, at least one of them will listen to this. And probably John, which is [00:37:00] actually, this one's nutty. Okay my birth mother's name is Pat, my adoptive mother's name was Kathleen, but she hated her name, so she went by her middle name, which was Pat. So I was raised by Pat. After of course, and when I was born, my name was Eric.
After I was adopted, my adoptive family changed my name to John. And my biological mother then had a son that they named John. So all her life she had a son named John and all my life I had a mother named Pat. Just the weird coincidences that happen in things like this.
Haley Radke: There is a book out there, hard to come by that's called Synchronicities in Adoption I think.
It has all of these little stories like that. I love that. I have so many things we're not gonna get to, which makes me so disappointed. I'm gonna what is my last question gonna be?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh man, is it already? We can [00:38:00] have part two.
Haley Radke: I know, right? I'm thinking maybe we'll have to have you back for book club because your book is that good.
I'm curious. I've had an interview with two people already this year. One's not been published yet, but one is who as they were writing, they were entirely disconnected from adoptee community. One was like on purpose because she didn't want to be like copying anyone inadvertently and one didn't really know like we were here.
I'm curious what your relationship with existing adoptee work is in the adoptee community because in your book you've got quotes from like Marianne Novy, BJ Lifton, Jean Payton, all the people we know we've heard their names before. So I know you know stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because you haven't really written about your adoptee experience before.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Correct. And I also didn't read all that much about it. I thought it was more something to experience than to read or write about. [00:39:00] Until I started thinking that I maybe wanted to write about it, and I thought to myself any good person who wants to write about something should also read about it.
So I did. As a reader, I went looking, and of course the first place I went was the internet. And what a hellscape the internet is when you type in adoption. Holy guns. Wow. It is just like this kind of yay rah, you're going to go white savior those little babies and everything's going to be great and you're going to, I'm like, wow, what is this?
It was all this stuff pushed from either adoption providers or from, the parents point of views, the adoptive parents point of views, which I love those questions about what's it like to be an adoptee? Let's listen to some adoptive parents tell you. And I'm thinking something's missing. There's a voice missing here in all of this. And why is that?
Haley Radke: But adoptees stay babies forever. That's why.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Absolutely. No, and actually that, the crazy thing about that is adults writing in like [00:40:00] newspapers or books act like that. You're only adopted for that moment, that transaction. After that, you're not adopted anymore. It's crazy because they're always talking about that. So I, had to like, okay, let's get better search terms here. And it was really difficult to get stuff and it was pretty hard to find the some community things. So I did find your podcast and that was like crazy when you messaged me I was like, oh my gosh, I know that name. So that was like really cool. But yours was the only podcast I found or like audio stuff. And I listened to a little bit of that. I admit I did not listen all the way through all of them. But I listened to a couple to get a kind of a feeling for that as I was writing the book.
Not like before writing it though, but as I was writing in the last couple of years. And but I did find like some adoption resources and you have to really dig because so many of them are Pollyanna, religious or sentimental in some ways. And so finding people like Lifton and stuff like that was helpful.
And I know, I could tell that stuff was dated as well, though. [00:41:00] And then, of course, I found so much more stuff about transnational, transracial adoption. And I was wondering if that conversation had completely overtaken the more generalized adoption conversation. There are a lot of books of poetry out there by transnational, transracial poets that are just phenomenal.
Really good stuff. About that. And so I read that stuff as a, I don't know, want to say metaphorical background, but, as fellow poets writing, more than adoptee the more than people, sociologists or someone.
Haley Radke: Your book is just tremendous. It
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: thank you so much.
Haley Radke: My Life in Brutalist Architecture. And. God, I'm really telling myself, but like I knew brutalist architecture from people talking about Kim Kardashian. Oh Sorry to say that in our interview, I'm sorry.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh, we could talk about that for a whole [00:42:00] nother Oh, no. No, I can hand I can handle Kardashian conversation.
Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. No, that's it
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I have it. I have a wife and a daughter.
Haley Radke: That's it. I got no more to say about Kim but anyway, so that's why I knew what that meant, but I think adoptees are going to just devour this book of poetry. You were saying earlier how you document things to remember and reading it is really, I found it moving, of course, but also comforting with those details of your experiences that so many of us can relate to.
Whether or not you've searched and reunited, just sharing your experiences as an adopted child and living adopted. And as I mentioned before, you talk about birth certificates the name changes, all of these things that we so identify with. Finding our identity and all [00:43:00] of those things, John, it's just so relatable, but so thoughtful and of course, you're a poet, so your word choice is just like immaculate and I told you, I've read it three times.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: You're very kind.
Haley Radke: I read it three times and you're pointing out to me things that I should have caught, but I didn't. So there's layers. So I need to go back again.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: And I think for me the brutalist architecture kind of metaphor really feels right to the adoptive experience in the way also that this, I'm going to get academic here for a second.
Theories of postmodernism feel very natural to adoptees, you're reading a Baudrillard or Lyotard or something like that about the simulacra or the multiverse or, all these different kind of ideas and everyone's out there saying, oh, this is mind blowing. And as an adoptee, I'm saying like welcome to my daily existence of going through the simulacra, going through the shades of things, in the same way brutalist architecture, it has [00:44:00] these two different aspects. You could look at it as the imposed, top down, bureaucratic edifice that is down, set over us, like in that Soviet Russia, brutalist architecture, that big concrete blocks.
But then you look at it the other way, of from the ground up from people up of the architecture is exposing its use value. So the use of the thing is what's being exposed by it, which feels very much like the two movements of adoption as one is trying to express their identity and come up. And the other is this top down top down edifice placed over the top of it. And, but they turn out that the same building, I just love that. I love that idea.
Haley Radke: I thank you. Oh my gosh. There's so many layers. I know people are gonna love this and it's for sure made me I've read some of your other work but not all of it but I'm like running to order, just so you know what did you want to recommend to us today?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I don't have any resources to recommend. I [00:45:00] do have the, a weird recommendation that actually I wish I would have Googled again. The the adoptive resources of reading lists of fiction and poetry. Oftentimes, the poetry and the fiction is by adoptees is not read as much as some of the other resources and things that are much more how to or directly self help, but even things written by people who have been adopted.
There's a poet named Erin Belieu who wrote a blurb for the back of my book and her first name is E-R-I-N and her last name is B-E-L-I-E-U. She is a, she's an excellent poet who doesn't write necessarily directly about adoption, but it's the spirit behind it, but even more so the poet, Shane McCrae, first name, S-H-A-N-E, last name McCrae, M-C-C-R-A-E.
He has a few books out. And he, his adoption story is within the family and it's highly traumatic. It has [00:46:00] racist overtones to it. He wrote it in two different ways as poetry, but then also as prose. And I would suggest both of them. And I'm going to get the names wrong. So maybe that would be something to find the correct name and put it in the notes.
But it's he calls it a kidnapping. He was kidnapped by his grandparents, and it was a very it's a very moving and very amazing story, and he is one of our poets and writers in, the U. S. today. Actually, so is Erin Belieu. They're both highly rated writers, so there's beautiful reads, but I think the the things they write about would be very interesting for people to read, adoptees especially.
Haley Radke: Is this In the Language of My Captor?
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yes, I think that is it that is one of them but I think that's not the prose one, but I'm gonna have to
Haley Radke: Okay it says Mule, Blood, The Animal Too Big to Kill, In the Language of My Captor. Those are the four listed
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Okay
Haley Radke: on my Google from poetry foundation Awesome.
We will definitely link to those things in the show [00:47:00] notes. You know what I was thinking when you I was reading one of the poems this morning as to prepare and you use the word play on cleave and there's a poetry collection by a an adult fellow adoptee called Tiana Nobile. That's her name that's called Cleave.
And I love that. Like I was like, oh yes, it's such a good word. Thank you so much. What an honor to get to speak to you and hear some of your story, John. I really appreciate it. I hope folks read your book and hopefully you'll come back for book club this year. We'll see. I'll email you about it. You don't have to commit.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Absolutely.
Haley Radke: I know.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Absolutely. I'd love to. I already would commit to it.
Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. Wonderful.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: But actually, Haley, I got to say the honor is all mine. Speaking with you and speaking to with you and to the adoptee community. I am readily accessible on social media. Anyone wants to talk to me for any reason, I'm easily easy to find. So please do reach out. I'm very welcoming. I promise.
Haley Radke: He is. When I [00:48:00] DMed, it was great. And if your name is John Gallaher, please friend request him because he has a little collection going or so I've heard.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: There are more than you think it's crazy
Haley Radke: All right. We'll have your social links in the show notes as well but yes, you're easy to find. Thank you, John.
John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Thank you. And thank you so much Haley.
Haley Radke: We are totally gonna invite John back for a book club event and one thing I'll admit I struggle with is sharing with you all the events that are happening. And we have book clubs. We have a writing, new writing workshop that's happening this month. We have our Ask an Adoptee Therapist. If you're ever curious what events are coming up for Adoptees On supporters, you can go to adopteeson.com/calendar. And all the up to date things are [00:49:00] there and you can click through and join us. We would love to have you there is just I feel like I'm bad at promoting, but like I'm also, I'm keeping secrets from you. If you're like missing out on all these like awesome conversations with fellow adoptees, like I don't want you to miss out.
So come join us support the show keep Adoptees On going. It means so much to me. Thank you so much for listening Let's talk again very soon
