279 Reshma McClintock
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/279
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. Oh, it is such a delight to get to share this interview with you. Reshma McClintock, the producer and subject of the film Calcutta is My Mother is back with us today. Reshma is a transracial adoptee from Calcutta, India.
And this incredible film documents her return to Calcutta for the first time since her adoption. And she would tell you it also depicts a portion of her journey out of the fog. I received permission to share the audio from her trailer and I'm going to play that for you here just before we get into the conversation about her story, some of her experiences in Calcutta [00:01:00] and some tips for transnational adoptees about preparing for a home country visit.
We also get to talk about her upcoming documentary screening in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 4th, 2024, which I get the honor of hosting the Q& A for that event as a moderator. And so consider this my personal invitation to you to come and join us to see the film and hang out with some fellow adoptees.
Before we get started, I want to also invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community which helps support you and the show 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. We're going to start with the trailer. Let's listen in.
Reshma McClintock: I'm thankful to have been adopted. [00:02:00] I'm lucky to have been adopted, but one is not better than the other. I don't think the alternative would have necessarily been terrible, and I think that's really hard for anyone who is a non adoptee to fully understand. I'm
35 years old. And I'm coming up on the 35th anniversary of the day that I left Calcutta.
I would have loved to have grown up in India. I think. I don't know that. I'm about to experience that and see how it makes me feel. My feeling now is that I'll feel very at home there.[00:03:00]
I don't really know what I'm doing,I am just trying to get an understanding for what kind of life my ancestors have lived and had Rubina and my circumstances been different and we lived here. What will we do? Tell me the other.
I kept thinking about, this is what my biological mother would've done.[00:04:00]
The general feeling I can tell when people see me is that I'm a foreigner. If I'm not connected here, if I don't feel this sense of wholeness, then it might not be coming.
I thought I was going to. I thought I was going to slip in and understand and everything was going to be familiar. That it would be the norm to me like it is to them. Yeah. It would have been easier to not come and live with the fantasy, but I don't want to do what's easier.
I knew I was taking a risk in coming.
Haley Radke: I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On. Welcome back to [00:05:00] Adoptees On, Reshma McClintock. Hi Reshma.
Reshma McClintock: Hi Haley. Thanks for having me again.
Haley Radke: I'm super profesh. I have been fumbling around my words the last couple minutes because we talk on the regular, we're good friends, and now it's business mode. So I gotta get in line.
Reshma McClintock: It's hard. We're pretty casual. So it is challenging to get down to business.
Haley Radke: Focus up. Okay. You've been a guest on the show before several times, even celebrating 100 episodes with me. So I'm going to let people go back to episode 100 if they want to hear your full story. But can you share a little bit of your story with us just to reorient us, please?
Reshma McClintock: Absolutely. I am a transracial international adoptee. I was born in Calcutta, India. In 1980, and I was adopted to the US by white American parents in June of 1980. So I was three months old at the time of my adoption and I grew up in Oregon and I really [00:06:00] had a wonderful family life. My older brother is biological to my parents.
My younger brother was adopted domestically a few years after I was adopted and I really had a very well connected childhood. Really felt bonded with my parents and siblings and extended family definitely had those wanderings of my former life. I thought of it as in two parts and there was this part one that I really didn't know anything about.
However, I really suppressed a lot of that. I grew up in a conservative Christian home, certainly not a very what's the word I'm looking for legalistic conservative Christian home. It wasn't to that extent that I know many adoptees have experienced and I've listened to them share on your show about.
However, it was a very adoption positive home, obviously, which is typically the case for people who, you know, adopt. So yeah, everything in my childhood was about how beautiful adoption was, how wonderful [00:07:00] it was that I was rescued from this former life and that God had bigger, better plans for me than a life in India.
There was never mention of my biological family other than maybe a real sadness for that poor woman, right? A little bit like, oh, you're your mother. She just couldn't take care of you or but never any talk of your mother must be longing for you or is she alive or dead? Nothing to any depth, right?
Like it just stopped right there. We're so thankful she had you. And that was really the extent of it. But most of my life, my existence, my purpose in life in my childhood felt that it revolved around the fact that I was rescued for some greater purpose. And, everybody loves to hear my story.
My parents were very open with my story, too open. And, grocery stores, every time we checked out of the grocery store in Nordstrom, anywhere we went [00:08:00] and again, you have to remember this is the 80s, right? So it wasn't so common. It wasn't as common. Families were pretty traditional. And for the most part, everyone in this family was the same race.
For the most part, there was a mom and a dad, at least, what you're generally seeing, right? In the public, so it wasn't common to see a brown child with a white family necessarily in our area, in our world. I guess I should say that more specifically or centered around my family and the world we lived in.
It wasn't very common, the communities where we lived. So yeah, so my parent, everything was, oh, she was abandoned in India and we, she was adopted. And then it was like, oh my goodness, you're so lucky. You are so fortunate. Oh my gosh, I can't believe this isn't your parents are so incredible. Look what they did.
Are you just so thankful? And I'm talking about literally the lady who's scanning our milk at Safeway, so people we didn't know. And I would just nod and agree and smile and whatever. I remember as a kid that I was always embarrassed by that, [00:09:00] but I couldn't articulate any feelings surrounding that specifically.
That sort of sums up my childhood. Now, saying that my parents overshared my story, I didn't realize that was necessarily hurting me, and they certainly didn't either. And I don't mean to do the whole come to their defense. We didn't know. They didn't know. They were not educated. There's people who talk often about there are adoptive parents
who adopted kids from my specific orphanage in India, who say all the time now, they always say, oh no, we were told we were given really good instruction. And we were told to take these babies home and embrace their heritage. And that was not true for my family. I don't know if that is just a general untruth or if that is something that they just say now to make themselves feel better. I don't know if they really believe that. I, it was not the case for my family. My parents were told, take her home, raise her like you'll raise your white son. It was just, there was no talk of grief. There was no, there was some, a little bit of things here and there in the paperwork that touched on that but for the most part, [00:10:00] these are also form letters, any of the paperwork they receive, they're not specific to each baby, just general things. So anyway, so my parents just didn't know better and they didn't do better. They just, it was a very embarrassing thing for me, but it went on throughout my whole life, frankly, until I got into my thirties.
And now we don't do that anymore. We all, they know better. I know better. We know better. And I can speak up for myself now.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Reshma McClintock: I have the language where as a child, you just don't. And you also, as a child, don't have the authority. I don't think, I don't think you feel like you do anyway. You belong to whoever you belong to, even in a situation where you're not adopted.
They're my parents, they can say what they want, and I'll just have to go with it. So anyway, it wasn't really until I got married that I started my, I know you talk a lot about unfogging on the podcast, and so most of your listeners are going to know what that means. So it wasn't really until I got into my 30s that I started to unfog.
Maybe my late 20s, after I got married and started thinking about the fact that I would someday have a child and that was a real, reality in my life and a possibility is when I really started to think about [00:11:00] where it was I came from and biology and again, these it isn't to say I never thought about those things, but I didn't have language to understand.
Just those fleeting thoughts in my mind about, oh, I wonder, I would hear someone compliment someone else say, oh, you look just like your mom or oh, or my brother. My brother is exactly my parents. He is just like my dad and just like my mom and the genes in my dad's family on my dad's side of the family are so strong.
All the men look the same. It's just very interesting thing. So I was surrounded by all that where other people could see themselves reflected. It just wasn't something I could get. I didn't necessarily even know that I was missing out on that as much. I just felt like it wasn't for me, right?
There were things that were for me and there are things that were not, and I was not fortunate enough to have that thing, right? Oh, in my mind, I put it as simply as, oh, everybody with long hair, wants curly hair, everybody with blonde hair, wants brown hair, those kinds of things. And I thought [00:12:00] for me, I don't get to have this, but I get to have this amazing story and this amazing purpose that nobody else has. So I think you make those concessions for yourself and that's a surviving, survival mode tactic. When I started coming out of the fog, I did it just like everybody else. I slowly started asking questions out loud.
I started writing when I think you and I've talked many times about going back and how painful it is for me to read my early blog posts. When I started writing, they are so syrupy with gratitude, imposed gratitude. And I was, say it was, one step forward eight steps back. Oh, I'm, I am really thankful to be adopted, but I do wonder where I came from.
But that doesn't mean I don't love my parents. And that doesn't mean that I'm not really excited about what my future is. And obviously this was what was for me and blah, blah, blah. So I think that in the beginning stages, that's how you have to come out of the fog. And as adopted people who are you and I, are adoptee advocates, right?
We're out there in this community speaking up for [00:13:00] adopted people and trying to share our stories and their stories and all of these things. And sometimes when we see a blog post from an adopted person who's still fogged, it just, oh, grinds our gears. It's just it can be so frustrating because it feels like it's setting us all back.
However, I have so much grace and empathy also for those people because that was once me. And I don't think for me, I don't believe if I had never started with those syrupy posts that make me cringe now. If I hadn't started writing from that point and that perspective and that place I was in my life then, I don't think I ever would have gotten to where I am now.
So yeah, it's a little painful. It's a little cringy. I don't love it. And I don't love it still frankly I do have minor frustration when someone, an adopted person comes out and says there's two parts to this. When an adopted person comes out and is syrupy and that imposed gratitude, and you can, as an adopted person, see right through it, that can be frustrating, but I have so much empathy for them.
I have less [00:14:00] empathy when those adopted people who're, sharing their imposed gratitude and things. And then they say, I don't know what everybody else is talking about. Adoption is beautiful. It is not trauma. So that's a different thing. So all that frustration I think is warranted. When I was sharing my story in the early days, not to pat myself on the back, and maybe I just didn't know any different, but I certainly wasn't speaking for any other adopted people.
I was saying for me, this is my story. This is my situation. And I'm still really careful to do that. I know there's often a lot of backlash when adoptive parents specifically. I'm sorry to have to just really call that out. But it is true when adoptive parents hear adopted people talk about how they have this imposed gratitude on them.
And they say we weren't you didn't have to be thank, just as thankful as anybody else. But that's not true. Those of us who grew up in homes where we had imposed gratitude know that it was essentially not, I wouldn't say forced on us, but it was, it's like a brainwashing in a way and not that's a brainwashing has such a negative context.
I don't think that there [00:15:00] was like, we will make them love us. We'll make them grateful. I don't think my parents were like, having me listen to special recordings when I was sleeping at night, right? You are thankful to be adopted. You love being adopted. You are white. You are, like your Indian part is left.
You're right. Like there. It's not like that. My parents loved me. They wanted me to feel welcome and they wanted me to feel at home and a part of our family. And that was their intention, although terribly misguided, they just did not know better. And it was really damaging. So there was a lot in my thirties to unpack from that.
I am fortunate enough to have been able to come out of the fog, of course, many steps ahead of my family, but they have all followed. They have all listened. There were moments that were hard when we had these conversations. My older brother in particular, who I just absolutely adore. We have a very close relationship and always have.
He's just wonderful. He had a really hard time. He said some things that adoptees would jump all over him for now, publicly if he typed it on a Facebook post. But he said, I do, it's hard for me because. You're ours. And it [00:16:00] feels like I don't want you to be somebody else's. I want you to be ours. And even that statement, I have so much compassion for that because he also didn't ask for this.
He's you're my sister. To me, this is all I know. He doesn't know what it's like to have a biological sibling. Actually, none of my siblings do. None of us do none. All three of us, none of us have biological siblings who we know. And so to us, this is, we are so close and it's we can't fathom anything different than what we have.
So I can understand my brother saying, and he wasn't saying, don't do this you're hurting me. But he was saying, it's hard for me to think about the fact that you have another family out there because all I can see is that you're mine, that we love you and you're ours. And I have a lot of empathy for that.
But my point being that my family did come out of the fog with me. In that regard, I am ridiculously fortunate. I honestly don't love sharing that some of the time even because I think that is not so common and I really have so much compassion for adopted people [00:17:00] whose families have not come out of the fog, who refuse to entertain their feelings and hear them out because I've been really fortunate in that regard, my even, my husband.
Same grew up with the same thing that the whole world grows up with that adoption is beautiful and it's wonderful and adoptees should be grateful and his family and even they came out of their also conservative Christian, grew up in the same conservative Christian environments. And they also have come out of the fog.
My in laws and my sister in law and brother, it's been really wonderful. And then to see that expand into our friends, there is a stopping point. Certainly we, I've gotten plenty of pushback from people to whom I'm related and to people, many, mostly church people, not all, but primarily, I'm talking like, 90 percent church people, a lot of pushback in that regard.
But for me, it's been a really hard, emotional, but rewarding experience. And that I've, I just recognize my privilege in that, that the most important people to me have come out of the fog with [00:18:00] me. That's really important. In 2015, I returned to Calcutta for the first time as the subject of a documentary called Calcutta Is My Mother.
The film premiered in 2019, and the film initially the intent I went into the film with was to connect to my Indian heritage in a way that I hadn't before. Transracial adoptees you've heard us, you've heard it a million times. We have a very hard time connecting to our race and our heritage, different aspects of our culture.
It's a real, I'm 44 years old. I really struggle with this still today, every day, but I will say that when I went to India, I was really, my, my hope was. I was just so hope filled that I would connect to my roots and this beautiful connectedness would play out in [00:19:00] the film. When I got to India what can will be seen in the film is that it was very challenging.
So I would say the final step of me coming out of the fog and coming into full contact with the grief that is a part of all adopted people and a part of all adoptions. Just hit me in the face when I got to Calcutta.
Haley Radke: When's the first time you went back to India?
Reshma McClintock: When I was 19, the summer after my freshman year of college, I went on a mission trip to India, not Calcutta, but I went on a mission trip to India with a church affiliated with my college in Southern California.
And so that was my first time returning 19 years later. And it was really interesting. It was also I just feel so embarrassed by this trip now, and I, because I went to India with this [00:20:00] attitude and message that I'd been conditioned to carry, that had become my entire identity that I was an abandoned orphan in India, and God rescued me from that place and brought me to America for a better life. Now, I don't know, are we allowed to cuss here? I don't know.
Haley Radke: I'mma beep you.
Reshma McClintock: Because it just, even the beep will give more of an impact than if I don't say the word. Okay. I can't imagine what an I must have sounded like going to India.
And sharing that story to Indian people who live in India and I and nobody stopped me. I cannot believe it. I was a 19 year old idiot. And not that I'm saying I don't I'm not culpable. I said the words I am. But again, I was conditioned to believe that this was my testimony. And then I was encouraged to go to India and share my testimony.
And my testimony was that I was abandoned in India. And could [00:21:00] not survive there and God had bigger, better plans for me than, old crappy India and took me to, Oregon, all the glamour, that's that was God's plan for me and God has a plan for you too. That was my message, essentially.
How embarrassing. It's terrible. It really, apart from just, my own, pride. It's a really terrible message. It is not how you lead people to the Lord, if that's what your goal was. It is not appropriate. It is not kind. It is not true. It's really interesting when I think back to that first trip.
Now, you're really going to hate me when I tell you about the second trip, because I did that twice.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. Okay. I don't think I knew that. Did I know that?
Reshma McClintock: I went back again 10 years later in 2009. And all that growth I really would have liked to have seen now looking back between 2019 and 2000.
Oh, sorry. I was wrong. 1999. Oh man, I got all my dates wrong. Went back in 1999. I said 2009. I can't believe what decade we're in. It's just unreal [00:22:00] to me. So I'm having a really hard time getting my head wrapped around it. In 1999 is when I went back the first time and I was 19. I then went back in 2009. For the second time.
Now, I was starting to unfog a little. I had gotten married a few years before. Like I said, I'd started thinking about having children when I went back, but still, I was still conditioned. Not still, I was absolutely in my conditioning. I did not share my story as much on that trip.
So I did not go around India, again, not to Calcutta, but other parts of India. I did not go around India that time saying, God rescued me from this place where y'all have to live. I'm sorry. I didn't say that it wasn't that as much, but it still was. Now, see, here's a part where I would love a transracial adoptee to reach out to me and tell me what the word is, because I've never, I've had a hard time settling on how to say this.
I still feel like, maybe you would say Christian saviourism, because I was going to say white saviourism, but I'm not [00:23:00] white, but again, I grapple with that too. I, it's still, the attitude on these mission trips is white saviourism. And again, I guess for me, I would call it Christian saviourism, since I'm not white.
But it was a lot of that and I just don't subscribe to that anymore. I personally, I'm not a big fan of mission trips. I think there are ways to go and help in other parts of the world that don't have to be like, we're here because we have something better than you. That attitude and that air that surrounds Christianity often.
I shouldn't say all the time, but most of the time and I stand by that. I, so yeah, so I struggled that trip again, wasn't as much about me. The first trip I felt like it was like all about me. The second trip was less about me and I was coming out of the fog and I was in that trip, I was really starting to ache for India.
I really envied every person I came in contact with. I was just like, can you be, every woman I'm like, can you be my mother? And, again, this is like way back in my mind, not, this is not in the [00:24:00] forefront of my thoughts. This is just in there swimming around loosely and I get a glimpse of it here and there.
And I would think, oh, but I had this just urge to curl up in a ball and have, some Indian woman rock me. Which is, sounds insane. Adoptees get it, but generally to the rest of the people, it sounds insane. So I found myself very envious on that trip. On the first trip, I think I was just so arrogant, just so terribly arrogant.
And it's just brutal. I just, I really do not like that person. Even though I was conditioned to be her, I'm just, I'm hard on her. I don't care for that. So the second time I just wanted to, in some ways it may have even been like the first part of a lot of what happened in Calcutta is My Mother, this desire to connect to my culture.
I didn't connect when I was there on that mission trip. But part of that was because I was just reminded constantly also that I'm not a part of that culture anymore. I was, that was removed from me. And it's just felt the people viewed me [00:25:00] as the white people who I was with. And so did I also viewed myself as the white people I was with coming into, I don't know it was like, it's almost like I have this picture in my mind that it's like, when we show up in these places, white people are not, but Christian people, it's like, we're like, wearing diamonds and pearls and it's oh, but then we put your clothes on, right? But we're going to wear your clothes and we're, we're going to dress like you and look at us, coming down to the little people, right?
That's what it feels and I just hate all that. So I, but I was a part of it, a big part of it twice.
Haley Radke: So there is this teaser for the film on Facebook. We can link to it in the show notes and it's a clip from it and it's, you're waiting at the airport for your luggage and you have tears running down your face as you're waiting.
Reshma McClintock: It's going to make me cry right now just thinking about it.
Haley Radke: I watched the trailer three times this morning before we talked and I cried and I was like, oh my gosh. [00:26:00] This is separate. This is different from the trailer. This is a teaser. And you have, you're talking about everything's waking up right as we're getting here when you're in the cab and this morning ride and you say, "it's very metaphorical to what's happening.
It's just cool that I'm coming to start this new journey. I'm excited. I'm so happy to be here." And from your descriptions of your prior trips, like you were going in with a very different attitude. Can you talk a little bit about that? And then also, I want you to bookend with, are there things that you would give advice to other transracial adoptees to have in their toolkit if they are planning a trip back to their country of origin?
Because it sounds like the first time, couple times you went, you maybe didn't have any of those things. And I don't know if you had those things in place for filming either.
Reshma McClintock: Yeah, that's a really great question. And that teaser is [00:27:00] really what's interesting Haley is I going into this trip.
I had, I was about 30 percent unfogged. I would say I had really started because, and I say in the bulk of that 30 percent was me saying, and this is how the film got its name. Calcutta is My Mother. It's a, unique name for something. And what's funny is Michael, my director of the film and I, we agreed on that title and we joke all the time. We're like, that's not what we would have picked like when we started. It's like it's not even but it came from a conversation he and I had about what I was hoping to get out of the trip and I told him I cannot get to it is so unlikely that I know that is so unlikely I can get to my Indian mother to connect with her to meet her to know who she is to any, anything.
It is super unlikely. And I said, I need to go to Calcutta because it's as if Calcutta is my mother. It's the closest I can get to [00:28:00] who I was supposed to be. Who I was born to be, which, for the previous 35 years of my life, I'd been told who I was supposed to be was not someone who grew up in India was someone who grew up in America.
And so that was a really hard. So I'd already, I'd started this metamorphosis and that sounds really dramatic. It may actually, that makes me very emotional too, to think about because breaking off from the person I was in my childhood and growing up and when I was 19 and went to India for the first time and when I was 29 and went back to India that I, there was this there's so much grief surrounding that because they had to break off this identity that I had so fully embraced because it wasn't who I was anymore. And worse than that, it wasn't who I was ever supposed to be. It wasn't just like a change oh, it wasn't that straightforward. It wasn't, [00:29:00] I, was on this path in life and then realized, oh, I need to alter course. I need to be on this path in life. It wasn't that seems, and not that there aren't challenges when that happens to people as well. I think people can relate to that. Probably most people can relate to that. I was on this path and I needed to change courses for me I was taken from my, the right path, thrown onto a totally opposite, different path, told to be grateful for that path, to embrace it, to make that path my identity, and then realized, oh crap I never was supposed to be on this path, I have to go, I have to abandon all these things that I only know, and I have to try and get on a path that I was on pre birth, and for the first three months of my life.
So I think that for me, it's really, that part of it is really hard to talk about. So this metamorphosis had started where I just started thinking and [00:30:00] talking about my Indian mother. And I had never done that before in my 35 years in life. I had not had conversations about my Indian mother or how I felt about her or what I thought about her.
Frankly, I didn't know how I felt about her. I didn't know what to think. I had always just been told to be grateful she gave me life. And that was it. That was the end of it. We never talked about and it's so insane to me now, and I know you too, Haley, you relate to this also. It is so weird that nobody talks about our mothers.
Because in our society, I'm going off on a little bit of a rabbit trail here, I'll come back around, I promise. You know I'll get there. Back to your question. But it is so weird and dumb and yeah, I'm using those very simple words because that's how simple it is that no one talks about our mothers in a culture, in a society where we are obsessed with motherhood and all, everything that goes into it, whether women can or cannot have children, how many should they have?
Should they work? [00:31:00] Should they stay home? What? It's the hardest job in the world. That's not that hard, right? Like all these different things we it is. We are inundated with talk of motherhood. And all these people, and I count myself among them before I pre fogged, we had the nerve to just bring in these kids, to take them from their mothers, no matter what the circumstances, I don't care, don't give me the whole, you were, they couldn't take care of you, they didn't want you, they were on drugs, they were dead, whatever, all these things.
We had the nerve as a society, as a world obsessed with motherhood, to take babies from their mothers and never speak of their mothers. They're the only moms who are not, deserve to be spoken about? I don't, it makes no sense, it is so dumb. And again, I am using that simple of a word because that is how simple it is.
It blows my mind that until I was 35 years old, a woman, at that point I'd had a child, until that point, I had not really thought or spoken, not thought, but had not spoken mainly about my mother. And no one asked me, not one [00:32:00] person in, of all the people I've run into in all my life, I've traveled all over the world.
I've done so many things in my short years on this earth. And not one person has ever asked me about my Indian mother. And that blows my mind. It's, Terrible. It is something we have got to rectify. I don't know. Anyway, so that's my rabbit trail on that. So the part, first part of my metamorphosis had started when I think, I remember the bedroom in my house I was standing in when I was on the phone with Michael and I said, it's the closest I can get to her.
Calcutta is my mother. And he was like, that's the name of the film. And I was like, eh, it's not that great, but he was like, no, it is because of what you just said, the, it fully encompasses the purpose of why we're going. And now I really do love the title of the film because it is spot on. Going back to your original question 37 and a half minutes ago, I am sorry, but I am when I'm standing in the airport like my feet were on the ground [00:33:00] in Calcutta and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is starting and I was flooded with the primary emotion. I didn't really even articulate it in that moment.
Specifically. I was just very emotional. The thought in my mind was like, oh, my gosh, I'm here on the ground. Where she is or was, and I just kept connecting that to my mother, like for the first time in that moment, it felt like now this is may not even be true, whether she's living or not, or whether she's in India or not right at this point.
I don't know any of that, but just the feeling that we are in the same place again for the first time. And the last time we were in the same place together was in India when she gave birth to me. So to me. It was just this like punched me in the face feeling and then when we did get in the car and in the cab and it was like 5am 6am and we've been traveling for, 30 hours and we were exhausted, but it was the city was [00:34:00] waking up and I did feel myself waking up and starting this journey and waking up and very hopefilled in those moments which is where I think, the joy came from and I kept saying in those moments. I'm so happy and I did feel really happy and I the reason for that is because I who wouldn't be happy to go and connect to something they felt they had lost and so it was very, the anticipation and the joy just in the privilege because most adopted people don't get to do this. So just recognizing that I get to do this it's going to be documented for me. I didn't even think about who was going to see the film, at that point, just for me, even that I would have this documented was so exciting. And what I think is so beautiful about that is that it's hard for me to watch.
It's hard for me to watch the film in general, but that anticipatory joy and excitement and naivete, it's hard to [00:35:00] watch because I knew what was coming, just that there was going to be some harder things around the corner some unraveling, but. I also think that is probably really common and more common for adopted people who are going, quote, home for the first time.
So I was really I really felt that joy and that happiness. But I also just didn't have a clue and no one, had prepared me for it. And I didn't know anyone who could prepare me for it. So I say that in that way because I'm sure there are adopted like now I could help prepare. I cannot bring someone give someone everything they need but even watching the film, I think will help specifically Indian adoptees to understand a little bit more about what they're going into walking into. But I at that time didn't know anyone who I could reach out to say, hey, tell me what this experience was like for you. So I was totally clueless in that regard when I get asked a lot, I get a lot of emails from adopted people and just [00:36:00] other friends and family and people asking, what would my advice be to someone preparing to go home for the first time to their country of origin?
And I, 1 thing I didn't do, I wish I had done was met with an adoptee and adoption, competent therapist, not just an adoption, competent therapist. I absolutely believe that transracial adoptees for the most part, need to see a transracial adoptee therapist. One is you will spend a lot of money just explaining to that, just to get to, we're not even, just giving the history and saying I have these feelings and this is why, to a therapist who is not also a transracial adoptee.
Now an adoptee therapy, for a transracial adoptee, the next step closer which is also wonderful, would be just an adoptee therapist, right? Who could be white, not necessarily transracially adopt, right? And that and that certainly is not to knock them. I just really, I also think that domestic adoptees should see a domestic adoptee therapist.
To understand [00:37:00] there are elements of being a domestic adoptee that I cannot understand. My younger brother, of course is adopted domestically and there are things about his experience that are so foreign to me. I just cannot wrap my head around it. I listen and agree because, however he feels and whatever, that is his experience and it's, and we're very similar in our feelings on adoption, but it is still very different.
I would recommend a lot of therapy. I would also recommend talking to someone who's gone before and another transracial adoptee who's gone back to their country. That being said, those of us who have gone, we can't share everything with every person before they go. So I truly, I know I have disappointed people who have reached out to me saying, oh my gosh, I'm an Indian adoptee I'm from her same orphanage, or our stories are so similar. I want to talk to you because I want to go back to India. What do you have to tell me? What should I do? And the truth is the, my first instinct is I want to tell them everything [00:38:00] the reality is. I don't have the time or the even emotional capacity to do that for everyone.
So it's a really tricky thing to say. Yes, I would encourage you to talk to someone who's gone before and I would encourage you to understand that it is not their job to share absolutely every detail to plan your trip to get, it just there are that's a very limited thing someone can do and should do for you. Because I also, looking back, hindsight being what it is, I would, I could have gone in more prepared. At the same time, that was my experience in every part of that unpreparedness was part of it.
Haley Radke: As a film viewer, I think we benefit from your unpreparedness.
Reshma McClintock: And you know what's interesting here? I love that you said that you always say the best things because you're absolutely right. The film, and people have heard me say this a lot, the film is incredible. That is not me tooting my own horn. It just came together incredibly. Michael Hirtzel, [00:39:00] who this is his first film, he's directed and produced, did an extraordinary job.
He is not adopted. He grew up in a conservative Christian culture the same way I did. We grew up together and he came out of the fog throughout this whole process. In fact, Haley, I think he came out of the fog, started coming out of the fog before I did. I think he, and again, he's not an adoptee, but non adopted people also need to come out of the fog.
We're all in this fog together, right? So it's different for adopted people, but everyone's in it to a certain extent. So Michael, I think started coming out before I did, which is really interesting. And some of that, some of his pointed questions and the conversations we had really helped me. And I will forever be grateful to him for so many reasons surrounding the film and what he's done.
But also even for that, for just his insight into something that, frankly, as a white male, it should be so foreign to him. But the fact that he had this sensitivity and understanding and empathy to stop that even he was [00:40:00] like, what? No one has ever asked you about your mother, just that he had that same what is happening. This is wrong. All of those, things. So you're right. The film is so good and so powerful because it is the realist thing I've ever done in real time you see me and walk through with me learning very shocking things about my history. You learn what it's like to try to connect to a culture you were taken out of and stripped from what the feelings are surrounding that.
I just really put it all out there and Michael put it together very well. So you're it's, I love that you say that the viewer benefits from me not knowing from my naivete and my, just not understanding, what I was walking into. So for adopted people, I think everyone should go home when they're ready.
I think it's a really important thing that is even for domestic adoptees. I think you go to that hometown. I think it I think those things are really important. I think you [00:41:00] getting physically literally going to your roots is a really important part for unfogging, but also just an important part of our journey as adopted people.
And so I think the number one thing I would recommend for an adopted person, a transracial adoptee or domestic is to go see an adoptee therapist. Our friend Chaitra has an incredible list on her website. I know you share that resource many times. She's an Indian adoptee and she's an incredible woman and therapist and resource.
But I I think. That it would be the number 1 thing and the 2nd thing is, yeah, just to talk if your adoptee therapist has not also experienced going home, it would be really good to just have a conversation, but just to understand going into that conversation that it will be brief. I'm happy to briefly, share with someone, hey, here's a couple of tips I have and I wish you the best, but I cannot walk you through it.
I'm still walking through my own pieces of that, right? Mine's, it, the [00:42:00] journey doesn't, it sounds so cliche and cheesy. I hate when people say things like this, but I'm going to say it anyway, but the journey doesn't end. It's a lifetime, it's a life sentence. It will go on forever.
But I, I know I've, like I say, It breaks my heart. I have definitely disappointed adoptees. I know who just didn't know that who had high hopes and talking to me that I was going to hold their hand through it. And really, at the same time, I want them to know it's a gift to you that I'm not going to walk you through it because even an adoptee who was born the same year and the same month and, same circumstances as me and India, right? Their experience is going to be different because their childhood was different and their relationship to religion are different or the relationship to their story are different and their personality is different and their mental health is different.
So I can give you so really it's. You know me sharing here are a couple quick things. Those are the these are the general things the specific parts of it are not going to be the same for everyone. There are adopted people who have gone back to their birth country and got exactly what they thought they were going to get out of it. I [00:43:00] absolutely believe that to be true. There are people who have done that and got it gotten exactly what they signed up to get what they thought they would get from it. That was not the case for me and that doesn't mean, that's not all, there's a negative connotation to that. That's not all negative.
I really believe in the grand scheme of things I absolutely got exactly what I needed. It just wasn't what I thought I was going to get. And that's why the film is so surprising. It's funny. I lived it. And then once Michael, after years of editing, he did that all himself. I watched the first rough cut, I was surprised, and it was about me.
I lived it, but just seeing it come together as this whole picture, because, you're not thinking. Today when I'm talking to you, I'm not thinking about what I said to you on Tuesday, right? So watching myself go through this process and this metamorphosis on screen is really, frankly, I think it's beneficial for everyone, but it's a really wild ride.
And again, that's none of those things are to compliment me. It's not because oh, everyone should see my movie. It's not that, but I think [00:44:00] the film in my opinion is one of the best pieces of art out there. Art, meaning writing, blogging plays different things that people have put out there.
I think it's one of the best to show that really captures the experience of a transracial adoptee and what we've lost and how that impacts our lives.
Haley Radke: The quote from the trailer, I think this is the whole crux of it. You say, "if I'm not connected here, if I don't feel this sense of wholeness, then it might not be coming."
Reshma McClintock: Yeah. Yeah, and that was like a real heartbreak moment for me because I didn't go there to get my heart broken. I went there for that peace I didn't know I didn't have as a kid, but realized I didn't have as an adult. Yeah, that was a really, those moments, and that's what I mean about the power of the film, that sitting there in that moment, it was just [00:45:00] exactly how I felt.
I just, I felt really defeated and oh, I came for this one thing. This is the only place I can get it. Exactly. If it isn't here, it isn't anywhere. And if that's true, and again, that's at a certain point in the film, at that moment I thought, if that's true, I think we're about halfway through the trip, if that's true right now, if this isn't coming here, then I might not be able to get it anywhere.
And where do we go from here? And who am I? I think that's another thing that was really, I think that was a really hard thing for a lot of my family to understand. I even had a friend, a very close friend, after one of the screenings, I won't say the whole quote from the film because it gives some things away, but at one point in the film I say, I don't know who I am.
Am I this? Or am I Reshma? with this story, or am I Reshma with this story? Because I grew up with Reshma with one story, and now it feels like I'm shifting, and this is now my story. And I, how do, I don't know who I am. And I remember a good friend, a [00:46:00] well meaning friend, who I absolutely love and adore, said to me you know who you are, after the film, literally minutes after the film ended.
She was like, Reshma, you know who you are. And I was like yeah, I didn't know what to say, so I would thought, she doesn't get it, obviously, and that's okay, that is totally okay not everyone will, and I, not everyone will and not everyone needs to, that's okay, I don't fault her for that, but I remember, she said three times in a row, but Reshma, you know who you are.
And I said, yeah, I said, I don't know that you fully understood exactly what I was saying there. And if you're not adopted, especially, I don't think you can understand how much our story means to us. Even though I also think that's dumb a little bit because people love stories. People love life stories of heritage, right?
We, again, going back to this note, we love ancestry. We love the DNA test, except when it comes to adopted people, why do they need to do the test, their DNA? It's hilarious. If it, if it weren't so terrible, it would be hilarious. [00:47:00] But, for comic relief, it's funny. That, in, in this society that we're so obsessed with being Irish and it's every, geez, every, proud American I've ever met is oh, I'm my proud Italian family or proud Irish family or whatever.
And it's just but heaven forbid, I'm the only brown one here and I'd like to know where I came from. I, it's just. So funny to me. And I do think that's important. I think if you're Italian, you should get to know your Italian and you should, be able to find that out and learn about all your story.
But it's just, it's for some reason adoptees are exempt from that. People just think except for them, because clearly there's, that wasn't the story they were supposed to have. So for me, saying, I don't know who I am without my story. Nobody understands that, and that doesn't hit harder for anyone than an adoptee.
Haley Radke: Yes. Can we just briefly talk a little bit about adoption in India and from India before we talk about our recommended resource? And I was just at a conference this weekend [00:48:00] virtually attended. There was an academic that presented and she was researching, she's a daughter of an adoptee, and she was researching this time period, I think it's say 20s to the 60s, where there is a group of Indian people who have relocated to Malaysia and a lot of them adopted children of Chinese descent. And her paper she was presenting was like, oh they've really how do I say this? They've really just like fully integrated into Indian society. And they, they dress in Indian clothing, and they're just culturally Indian. And often they will marry an Indian man, often, always, I think she said, they'll marry an Indian man.
And she, she was painting this it's a perfect adoption scenario picture, which, I'm sure some of the [00:49:00] people listening were like interesting.
Reshma McClintock: Is it?
Haley Radke: Is it? Yeah. And the other thing, this is a funny thing she said, was that there are some of the adopted children or adopted people will go on to marry into the adoptive family so that, because they're not biologically related, and so that the, it's complete, like it's like now you're really part of the family, anyway, whatever you think about that.
So I asked her, I was like, hold on a second, in the Q& A time, respectfully I asked, I was like, I thought that adoption in India was actually really frowned upon. And that's why so many of the quote unquote orphans, Indian orphans are adopted abroad. And she was like I'm talking about this little group here, but let me make a comment on actual Indian adoption and what [00:50:00] she relayed and I've been researching since then because I knew we were going to have this conversation is that traditionally Indians would not want to adopt from a different caste and so a lot of the babies that are brought to an orphanage in whatever manner. They wouldn't necessarily know which caste they were from, and so that was a barrier.
Also systemic colorism is an issue. So there is a worry about the child's skin color and how fair or not or dark they are. So do you have any comments on what do you know about that sort of general thing about it? Because I really thought I was correct in that there's more international adopted out Indians than there are adoptions domestically within India.
Reshma McClintock: Yeah, that absolutely is true. What's interesting is was the person, this person who's the daughter of an adopted, an adoptee, is, are they a domestic American [00:51:00] adoptee?
Haley Radke: No, she her name is Theresa Devasahayam, and she is a academic from Singapore.
Reshma McClintock: Okay.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Reshma McClintock: So her, the parent who is adopted not of white race, not.
Haley Radke: That's right.
Reshma McClintock: Okay, sorry, I was trying to think of an appropriate way to say that, but. Okay I was just curious about that. Interesting. This is a trick question a little bit, because there's some things I don't really want. There's some pretty,
Haley Radke: oh yeah,
Reshma McClintock: a couple of jaw dropping moments in the film.
Haley Radke: Without the spoilers.
Reshma McClintock: I can answer. Yeah, no, I know you're, now you're feeling like you shouldn't, no. No, I can answer, but there are, there's, and you know exactly what I'm talking about, but there are a couple of jaw dropping moments in the film where we find out some very surprising information about many of us who were adopted.
Yes, from what I understand, now I'm not an expert on this subject, just of what some of what my research and what I was told when I was there as well. And frankly, she probably generally, not probably, she, I'm sure she knows more about this than I do if she's been researching it. But yes, [00:52:00] the adoption from everything I've been told is very frowned upon.
And a lot of that, yes, has to do with the caste system, has to do with colorism. Those issues in India are very alive and present today, still. Even more when you look back to the 80s and 90s where so many of us were adopted out. So the caste system is a really big part of that. Also, there's just generally a lot of which again is funny that nobody else understands it or so many people don't understand but there generally is just so much pride with genetics and they care very much about having a boy and then, having, sons over a daughter difference.
There's so many scenarios enmeshed in that one thing of having children, and a woman who can't conceive in India, there's a lot of shame surrounding that, and so it's like, what's wrong with you? So in India, it just seems there's, often in those situations, very much pointed, if a woman only bears daughters, it's what's wrong with you?
Why is God not blessing you with a, with a son? That's, we need men, right? That's the whole thing gender issue is [00:53:00] huge. There's some really interesting documentaries about the female genocide in India, actually. They're devastating, but they're fascinating and, important to learn.
Yes. My understanding, though, and that is interesting about this specific group. I'm glad that she clarified that's really about that specific group. Because I have not heard another story like that where it's just open and totally accepting. And the community is totally accepting.
What I think is interesting is I do, I've heard many stories of people who, Indian people who will adopt domestically, but they don't tell their families, right? There's, it's a secret. So it's oh, we went away and we had a baby. So it's just that part is really interesting too, because, people will be like, it's the same race, so it's really not that big of a deal.
It's still, it's the same, that's domestic adoption. You're a domestic adoptee. You understand it's, you still want to know who you came from, even if you're with people who, are, have the same skin tone, and even within that skin tone, there's others, there's so many important, critical things in understanding who we are.
Yeah, I think that. Some of those stigmas come up in the film. There, there's a doctor [00:54:00] who I met who was a doctor at the orphanage that I came from, not while I was there, but a few years after. And then for many years until the orphanage closed. And he provides some really interesting insights for us Indian adoptees.
And that's actually something I really struggled with because so many of us have very similar stories. We, from the orphanage, I came from IMH International Mission of Hope. So many of us came from there. And many of us who are connected in the community online and all of that. And, I really struggled with in telling my story and in revealing some of this information.
I am also most likely not in every sort of situation, but generally sharing the story of other Indian adoptees. And, I really struggled with that element of it because the information was hard to hear. So I've gotten a lot of what's the word? I've gotten a lot of feedback from Indian adoptees, and I've not gotten any negative.
Like, how do you share this, information? I didn't want to find out like this or something, right? I haven't gotten anything negative. It's all been very positive. But it was [00:55:00] certainly something I struggled with. In the beginning, but there are some really interesting stigmas and decisions that were made based on those stigmas for all of us that come up in the film that just blew my mind.
I don't even think, I think in the movie, I think in the film, you can see the shock, but also I still, I also would say to the viewer, and again, you understand this because you've seen it, but the, the oh my goodness, I cannot believe this is a real thing. I cannot believe this is what happened.
Those moments are so fascinating and wild because, going back to your original question, Indian culture is so fascinating and it's there's so many parts of it that are tied to this history rooted in this caste system and the different, which we don't, we have it in America too, right?
It's everywhere. But in India, it is so in your face. It's obvious and evident that some people are better than other people in the view, the eyes of the community. Or some people [00:56:00] have, if you're a woman who can't have a child, no matter what caste system you're in, then there's something wrong with you.
And oh, in her past, there must be something, there's all connected to their this culture. And I'm certainly, my intention is not to knock Indian culture, just to explain it. And, Even that, it kills me a little. I don't know all the things I want to know because I didn't grow up there and I can, I will never really fully even understand no matter the research, no matter the time I put into learning these things, I'll never really know to the depth of someone who grew up there and, lived it every day in and out.
Yeah, it's really fascinating. It's a really fascinating thing to that on one hand, they sell adoption with like such pride oh, look at what we have. But at the same time in their own country, it's we don't , shame.
Haley Radke: It's interesting to think about how many late discovery or never discovery adoptees they're creating there.
Reshma McClintock: Yes.
Haley Radke: Yeah. That's really what my research has confirmed for me too. Okay, I have so many more questions for you. [00:57:00] And unfortunately, we're gonna have to postpone that till after the screening of your film in person.
Oh my gosh, okay, this is what we're recommending. Like you have to come and see Reshma's film. There was a little delay. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, that's, yeah, we initially planned the screening for 2020. Everybody's favorite year to, get out and do things. It originally was planned for May of 2020.
Of course, everything had just shut down and the theater, reached out and said, we're not open right now. And of course, we wanted everyone to stay home and stay safe and do what was best for them. So we had to postpone. We certainly didn't imagine it would postpone this far, but they're, scheduling these things are complicated with the theaters and we've got a deposit, but then are we, things have changed and ownership change and, all these different things that can happen happened so we and life, right?
Also, I'm, a wife and a mom and Michael is a, the people, everyone who works on the film has families and real [00:58:00] jobs and, lives. So it just, it took longer than we had planned, but we promised Minneapolis we were coming and we are, and I'm so excited about it. I'm thrilled. I've never been to Minneapolis, just as a side note, so I'm excited about that element of it.
But yeah, we will be in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 4th. The screening starts at 9:30, promptly at 9:30. The film is two hours long. Go to the bathroom before. You're not going to want to miss anything, but it is two hours long. Doors will open at 9 a. m. And then we'll do a Q& A after I'm so honored and thrilled that Haley has agreed to come to Minneapolis with me, and she's going to be our Q& A host and moderator.
And the Q&A's at all of the screenings have been, we've screened in six cities already, and they're, one of my favorite parts, obviously the film is the, main event, but I love people have just come up with incredible questions, and I love the opportunity to get to explain and expand on certain elements that, of course, we didn't have time to get into [00:59:00] every detail of everything in the filming process.
Geez, we did get into a lot. It's two hours long, but there's more. So I really enjoy the Q and A. I think it's Everyone knows Haley is the, I was telling my daughter, I was telling Rubina, I said Haley is a professional question asker. It's like she's a professional interviewer.
She's our Oprah. I don't know if you take that as a compliment or not, but anyway, so I, was explaining to her how incredible it is that you're going to be there. To ask the questions and to host that and I'm really excited about it. So yeah, the delay was unfortunate, it happens.
And I'm now just thankful that we're going to be there. And I think it's going to be a really, the theater is incredible. The feedback has been so wonderful and people have been so kind about, the wait. I understand people bought tickets, years ago, right? And it's is this ever happening?
But people have just been so warm and excited. And I am. Just thrilled. I just cannot wait. And to have you there with me again on a personal, of course, we're dear friends, but professionally, it's just like we got Haley. It's incredible.
Haley Radke: I can't wait. I can't wait to see it on the big screen. [01:00:00] I'm very excited and we would love to meet you all. So come to Minneapolis. We'll get to say hi to you or, as you come in and we'll be so excited to see you and do the Q and A at the end. Yeah.
Reshma McClintock: I know I was teasing earlier that I was going to put up a post that was like, come get your picture with Haley.
Haley Radke: No.
Reshma McClintock: It's true. There's going to be people there for that.
Haley Radke: We're not doing,
Reshma McClintock: but I'm like, she's not going to sign off on me putting a post out like that to promote the screening.
Haley Radke: No, we're not doing photos. Are we? Is that a thing? No.
Reshma McClintock: Oh, people are going to want their picture taken with you, Haley.
You're a big deal. I want my picture taken with you.
Haley Radke: I'm sorry. This is a movie all about you.
Reshma McClintock: Listen, there's going to be some photos.
Haley Radke: Okay, so if folks want to come, the info is at calcuttafilm.com. If you are listening to this after the fact and the screening's already over, you can follow along there for future screenings and where it will be streaming in future.
Reshma McClintock: All those things are coming.
Haley Radke: Yes. Everything's coming. You don't have to [01:01:00] ask. You can just check calcuttafilm.com. And where else can we connect with you online, Resh?
Reshma McClintock: You can find me on Instagram or Facebook. I'm there a lot. Too much. No, I'm kidding. But yeah. And you reach out to me at my email, which I'm sure you'll post. And via the film, we've got great people working on the film so that I don't have to be doing some of those things, which I really appreciate all the people running the behind the scenes parts of that. And anyway, yeah, but I love to connect. I want to see you guys in Minneapolis. I'm really looking forward to it.
Haley Radke: Please come. We want to see you. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing with us today, Reshma.
Reshma McClintock: Thank you so much. You have been so good to me. All these years, like I say, professionally and personally, I can't, we don't have time to get into personally, but anyway, I'm so thankful. And yeah, so thankful.
Haley Radke: Okay. I feel that I missed giving my big [01:02:00] plug for Calcutta is My Mother. So I was allowed to view this film and I cried. It is so beautiful and emotional and interesting and thought provoking and Reshma alluded to this, right? But she discovers some like jaw dropping information that once the world gets to see this will be very impactful.
I really hope you join us. If you are in Minneapolis or in the area, please come. We would love to see you. It's amazing to get to meet fellow adoptees in person and we probably won't have a ton of time together, but I'm really excited about seeing the movie in a room with so many adopted people and getting to have a Q& A live in front [01:03:00] of all of you will be so amazing.
I can't wait. I keep saying amazing. It's going to be amazing. It will be amazing. I'm really thankful. I'm also so thankful that Minneapolis is only one flight from Edmonton, so I don't have to transfer. I don't have to, change planes. It's going to be great. One flight, no stop. And yeah, I'm super excited to get to meet some of you in person very soon.
Okay, please let us know if you're going to be there and comment on Calcutta is My Mother socials or the Instagram post for this episode to let me know that you're going to come so that I can make sure to say hi to you and tell Reshma that you heard about her screening on Adoptees On and that would be so awesome.
Okay, thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again very [01:04:00] soon.
