286 Grace Newton, MSW

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/286

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

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is Grace Newton, a Chinese adoptee, author of the prolific blog, Red Thread Broken, and one of the co authors of the Adoptee Consciousness Model. We discuss the reasons for the rise and fall of international adoption from China and how the critical adoption scholarship of Chinese adoptees is on the rise, including Grace's own contributions.

Grace also gets more personal sharing about her relationship with her Chinese American fiance and how their love story and family have helped her on her racial reclamation journey. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you [00:01:00] to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources for you, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Grace Newton. Welcome, Grace.

Grace Newton, MSW: Hi, thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad that we finally get a chance to chat. I'd love it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.

Grace Newton, MSW: Sure. My name is Grace Newton and I am a Chinese transracial transnational adoptee.

I was adopted from Nanjing in Jiangsu province, China in 1997 when I was three years old. And I was adopted to Madison, Wisconsin. My parents are both white, and I have no siblings, [00:02:00] so I grew up as an only child, and I guess I actually grew up a little bit outside of Madison, in a suburb that's predominantly middle upper class, white, I oftentimes talk about, I think my while I always was really proud to be Chinese American, my early childhood understanding of my ethnic racial identity, I think, was honestly more of a pan Asian one.

As I saw what Asian friends of mine did at home, I would pick up little things, like leaving the shoes outside the door, eating whatever spicy foods, or just little things I would notice and I'd be like, oh, this must be an Asian thing. And I would tuck it away. And so I really was able to explore my identities, both as a Chinese American person and as an adoptee when I was in college, which I think is a pretty common experience for a lot of adoptees because we're finally [00:03:00] on our own for the first time.

And I think that for me, I really realized, that people were seeing me as this Asian woman independent of my family because they didn't know my parents or my upbringing. And so I really had to grapple with, I think, this internal way that I saw myself and the external ways I noticed the world was seeing me.

And I also, when I was in college, I took a class on transracial and transnational adoption that was taught by a Korean adoptee professor. And this class really opened my eyes to a lot of the complex history and, lesser told stories within adoption. And so that was really the catalyst for me to create my blog, which is called Red Thread Broken, where I really used that as a tool to continue processing things that I had learned from that class, [00:04:00] and I've continued writing and thinking about adoption and I'm currently in a PhD program in social work. And my area of research is adoption.

Haley Radke: What led you to pursue your master's and then go into studying adoption?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, I think for me, a lot of it really comes back to the class that I took in undergrad. And my blog during college, I took a class that was called like the psychology of, or maybe it was Asian American psychology and then this adoption class.

And I think those experiences were the first time that I really saw my identities as an Asian American woman and as an adoptee reflected in the research. And I think that. That was a really empowering experience for me. And so in undergrad, I had toyed with the idea of going into academia, but I think I wasn't really [00:05:00] sure if I really liked the idea of academia or if it was just somewhat comfortable because all I'd ever known was being a student.

And so after college, I worked at an insurance company for a little bit. I did an AmeriCorps position with United Way as I was thinking about what I wanted to do. And during this whole time, I had continued writing on my blog. And I think in the back of my mind, I'd always thought still about this idea of academia, but I think simultaneously I had avoided social work for a while because my mom was a social worker and I didn't want to be mini her.

But I realized that I think with my interests and passions and the ways that I wanted to be involved at social work really fit. A lot of those well, and I really like that the field of social work is a values based profession that's [00:06:00] rooted in social justice. And so I decided to pursue my MSW and I knew I wanted to work near in adoption in some capacity. And I'd also been told. Just pragmatically for the academic path, it's recommended to have at least two years of social work, field experience, post masters before starting a Ph. D. And so I went to Washington University in St. Louis for my MSW, and after that, I worked in public adoptions in the state of Wisconsin for a couple of years.

So I worked primarily with foster youth who were being adopted by their current foster parents, as well as some hopeful adoptive parents who were interested in adopting specifically from the public foster care system. And so a lot of [00:07:00] my just like personal engagements have been with international adoptees and a lot of the my own experience as a Chinese adoptee, of course, is an international one.

And so I think that my experience working in Wisconsin in public adoptions was in a part to also complement my other knowledge and just see where are all of these similarities and the differences and in all of these adoption stories. And so after, yeah, about two years working in public adoptions, I started my PhD program to continue looking at these questions from like the research lens.

Haley Radke: If you're comfortable sharing. How was that personally for you to work in adoption for two years. Did that take a toll because we'll get into this within a little bit you were a part of working on the adoptee consciousness [00:08:00] model and it sounds like that to me that you had already come into some consciousness about adoption and saw some of the difficult things in it. And of course, now you've gone on to study it even further. So personally, as an adoptee, with some of those formed opinions and I'll let you say what they are. How was that? I'm like, Oh my gosh, how did you do that?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, it was definitely challenging at times, and I think while I had worked informally in adoption spaces as, like a facilitator for small groups or teen support groups, in those circumstances, the adoptee themselves were, like, who I was primarily working with. But in my role, public adoption social worker. My clients were both the adoptive parents or prospective adoptive parents and the soon to be adoptee. And I think that it was really [00:09:00] challenging holding this kind of dual identity as both an adoptee and adoption professional. And there were certainly some situations that, that I felt less certain about than others.

I think I always tried to just really reflect a lot of care for the children that I was working with and answer their soon to be adoptive parents questions. With all of my background information, I did not disclose to I don't think any of the adoptive families actually that I was an adoptee based on my Anglo name. Some people may have been able to guess. And there were definitely comments made by some of the adoptive parents regarding birth family that were really difficult to deal with. And I would try to interject or again, intervene in ways that were really beneficial to the child because at the [00:10:00] end of the day even the adoptive parents who I would say, maybe didn't have a complete understanding of all of these complexities of the system they were entering.

I could genuinely see that they wanted the best for the child and their care. And I think trying to work together to create that as the outcome is the goal. And I think that, in terms of, my own knowledge too, I think at times it's been really easy to see all of the corruption and cases, particularly in international adoption, where I feel like international adoption as an intervention was completely unnecessary.

And I think, working with some of the kids that I did really learning their stories too. And I think. It did become quite apparent to me that some of these situations the children would never and should never go back to the circumstances that they were in originally. [00:11:00] And so I think it did also force me to think in a more, more holistic and more complex way to of adoptions will always exist in some capacity.

It may not be international forever, but kinship care, informal adoptions, even formal adoptions. And yeah how do we make this experience the least harmful as possible. Because I think it is unrealistic to say end adoptions altogether.

Haley Radke: I think from someone like me who comes from a family preservation standpoint, and it sounds like that's your perspective as well, it is so helpful to see there are the asterisk cases where, and I think the public sees all of them as these asterisk cases these ones really are necessary.

But truly, there may be some that are necessary. And we are looking to the whole and [00:12:00] seeing the problems in the system and trying to fix the upstream things and I know it's like it probably is always going to be around maybe not how do I say this? I think there's a lot of people that talk about the things you mentioned like kinship care informal adoptions, legal guardianship, and making sure we're not changing the child's identity and having access to their medical history and all those kinds of pieces as well.

So there's there's a huge thing to look at. And it's not just like family preservation is the only way and that that just is excluding such a grand part of the problem. I mentioned that you helped work on the Adoptee Consciousness Model. And so I love when I see adoptees working in the research, because we've talked about this before so many times on the show what's talking about us? Who's researching us? And we need to make sure we have [00:13:00] evidence for the things that we're talking about anecdotally. So can you talk a little bit about how that was to work on that? And also thank you for your work on that. And my second part of that is how have you seen it now in use in adoptees vernacular? Have you heard people say that to you?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, it's been a really exciting project for me to work on. And so I guess I've been working primarily with Dr. Susan Branco and JaeRan Kim, who approached me after I published my first peer reviewed article called The Trauma and Healing of Consciousness, which was an autoethnography that looked at, or I guess it used my experiences as an adoptee in academic settings to propose this trauma and healing of consciousness framework.

Where I and so [00:14:00] that paper came about because I had been looking at a lot of literature about trauma in my MSW program. And there's a lot on historical trauma and collective trauma, intergenerational trauma, but I was thinking about the ways in which just coming into this knowledge about the history, complexity, different child removal projects was traumatic.

And I didn't need to be intergenerationally, like connected to these other groups of adoptees by a shared lineage to all of that trauma that's embedded in this community and in these adoption practices and so yeah, Drs. Branco and Dr. JaeRan Kim reached out to me after reading that because they had already been working on the first paper or like the Adoptee Consciousness Model.

And so I was able to join in that [00:15:00] project. And I think that I really have seen an uptick in the use of just consciousness language around the adoptee community. And I feel so fortunate that this work is really resonating with people. We draw upon some other models of adoptee awareness. And then of course, the kind of ubiquitous language of coming out of the fog and our, the adoptee consciousness model, instead of just, like a pre and post state proposes these five different touch points that adoptees work through in different stages of coming into consciousness around this identity.

We view this as a kind of a in a spiral, but not necessarily a linear way that you have to go through all these steps in order, just that you can bounce around the spiral and different events, like overturning Roe v. Wade or having a child [00:16:00] or any other like large major events might send you through that spiral once again.

And that it's just, it's not really this pre and post thing, it's the never ending process. And so I'm really excited that this has been received so well by adoptees and we did a study with a number of focus groups and I felt really privileged to hear all of those stories of our participants and just to see how these different touchstones are reflected in each of their experiences of coming into consciousness around their adoptee identity.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for your work on that. I had a whole episode on the adoptee consciousness model. So we'll link to that in the show notes if people want to hear a little bit more about it. And we'll link to the paper as well, because it's very accessible for folks to read. And I love how earlier you were like, I went to [00:17:00] this university class and that probably brought you right to one of those touch points, right?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, definitely.

Haley Radke: So I think it's neat that your autoethnography led into working with Susan and JaeRan. That's awesome. I'm curious about some of the things I saw you present about at a recent conference as well. So I got up very early one Saturday morning when you and a group of your peers were presenting.

And I don't know, maybe I was the only one on Mountain Time. You guys were on Eastern at least, but it was called Carving Out Space Chinese Adoption Studies. And one of the very first things that your group was talking about was how, because there's so many Korean adoptees, and that program started earlier, that those folks have been doing research and working in the field for longer [00:18:00] and have, dominated some of the space in terms of adoptee research and of course, as they should because they've been doing this long and there's a lot of work on it.

And so in talking about Chinese adoptees, starting in the early nineties, that's when the Chinese adoption program internationally started up as 91. Is that right?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, the Chinese adoption law was, it was signed like December 29th of 91. So functionally it started around 1992.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. So 92. And so one of you mentioned that it's we're all now coming of age and to having our masters and PhDs and coming into the adoptee research space. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I never thought of that. So can you share a little bit more about that? And what was it like to present with your peers at the [00:19:00] ASAC conference? Cause I was like, I wish I could be in that room. Cause it felt like really something special.

Grace Newton, MSW: Thank you for getting up early and joining us virtually since you couldn't be there. I think, yeah, it was, it's, it was really wonderful being at ASAC. It was my first time there. And I think that in several years, I just have seen a lot more leadership and involvement from Chinese adoptees, which is really exciting to me as a Chinese adoptee. I have been on the advisory council of the KAAN Conference, the Korean American Adoptee and Family Network.

So I've been on the advisory council there for about six years as a Chinese adoptee. And I remember my first time attending. I was like, oh, I don't know if this is like a space for me because like it's so Korean and I have felt so welcomed there. And I think in the last couple of years, [00:20:00] the Chinese adoptee attendance has really increased at KAAN specifically, as well as Chinese adoptees leading workshops and presenting there.

And I think that part of this, is because there aren't really big established conferences for Chinese adoptees yet. And so I, I think that this is a way for us to get involved in what is already existing, but I have seen changes too, in terms of the families with children from China, New York.

Group is the first FCC group, I think, to turn over leadership to Chinese adoptees, and it's rebranded in the last couple of years as the Chinese Adoptee Alliance, and they're hosting events. And so I think that we are going to see a big increase in Chinese adoptees in these spaces. And I know of at least a couple of, I know there's LiLi Johnson, [00:21:00] who's a Chinese adoptee professor.

She was at UW Madison for a while, and I think she's somewhere in Canada now. So there are a few Chinese adoptees who are on the older side of the, Chinese adoptee cohort who are in these academic spaces. And I think part of the rationale for the conference round table that we shared at ASAC was just, yeah, I think that because the Korean adoptees are so large in number and have been so active, that in some way, they've served as this blueprint of who Chinese adoptees might be, because we are also a huge cohort, East Asian, who've been primarily adopted to the U. S., but I think, there are really specific and unique factors involved with Chinese adoptions that will make us and our group inevitably different from the Korean adoptees.

Haley Radke: One of the things you spoke about, [00:22:00] sorry, I'm using the collective you. My notes, I don't have indicated who said what every time.

I have a couple points where I know it was you, but one of the points someone made was that as Korea was winding down, then Chinese adoptions picked up. It was like the right quote unquote right timing and so there's several hundred thousand Korean adoptees and then the Chinese adoption program.

Could you speak to this a little bit like how it has it's not fully closed but how it has wound down over the last few years because of some policy decisions and then what would your estimate be of how many chinese adoptees there are.

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, I think the current estimates are about 160, 000 Chinese adoptees globally and about 83, 000 of [00:23:00] those Chinese adoptees have been adopted to the United States.

China allowed foreigners of Chinese ethnicity to adopt and some foreigners to adopt on kind of an ad hoc basis before 1991. But really, the Chinese adoption law in 1991 was what formally opened China to international adoption. And yeah, I think that when we talk about all of these international adoption systems, we have to remember how interconnected they are and, the 1988 Olympics was really what kind of started the end or major decline of Korean adoption and the just like shame around the article that came out during that time about how Korea was like exporting undesirable children. And 90, 1991 when China really opens to international adoption is not very far away from 1988 when Korea starts winding down. [00:24:00] And I think, yeah, there's a lot of factors. So Korea, which had been a major, source of adoptable children no longer is a source.

I think we'd already seen a number of adoption and trafficking scandals in Latin America, but China at this time was considered a clean country for adoption because all of these, predominantly at the time, infant girls who had been abandoned on the streets were viewed as genuinely orphaned, and I think that the fact that so many of the girls from China were abandoned anonymously due to China's policies were also attractive to adoptive parents who, a lot of parents had some concerns or hesitations about potential birth parent involvement from that would be involved with domestic adoption, but because these girls in China [00:25:00] were abandoned anonymously on the street, there's really no possibility of birth parent involvement there. So there are a lot of factors that kind of created this really desirable group in China. And so throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Chinese adoptions were on the rise. I think the peak of Chinese adoptions is about 2004 or 2005. Around that time is also when the Hunan scandal is made public to the world where there were, it was discovered there were a number of children, girls from Hunan province all trafficked among and circulated among several orphanages in that province when one orphanage's supply ran low.

So I think that particular scandal was really what turned this view that China was this entirely like legitimate [00:26:00] adoption program from all these voluntarily relinquished girls and of course under the one child policy where families, were punished through loss of income jobs, second children, unregistered children not having access to citizenship or schooling.

It's really hard to legitimately claim that any of these relinquishments of children were voluntary. And I think another turning point for Chinese adoption is around 2009, at which point China becomes basically entirely a special needs program. And so in the 1990s, when China opened adoption, the population of adoptees was 98 percent girls.

And then, yeah, by 2009 it's pretty much entirely special needs, I think in 2010, the US [00:27:00] State Department stopped keeping track of which children adopted from China had disabilities, because it was pretty much understood that they all did. And yeah, so China, yeah, post 2005, adoption from China overall has been on the decline, but the percentage of children who are being adopted, the special needs has increased, and then I think another particularly important demographic shift in this is also the number of boys who are being adopted.

As the number of special needs adoptions from China increased, the gender skew of who was being adopted really evened out too. And so around 2016, that was the first year that actually more boys from China were adopted than girls at 51 percent of the children were adopted. And so I think because a lot of the early research on Chinese adoption really involved the girls of 1990s, there's a just In some ways, a kind of flattening of [00:28:00] Chinese adoptees of that's who Chinese adoptees are.

But after the 2000s, there really is this kind of like second wave of special needs kids. And then also that about maybe like 13, 000 boys adopted from China who I think are just erased from Chinese adoption research because there's been, probably first huge group of Chinese adoptees was nearly all girls.

Haley Radke: I don't know if this is in your wheelhouse or not so I'm gonna ask you like I don't know if this is your area of expertise I know, you know a ton about this, obviously. I'm curious about the attitude in China about adopting children and so one thing that was mentioned in the presentation is that if you were to seek for your biological family, a lot of parents [00:29:00] would not want to be found because of the shame of abandoning a child, and that would be not a good situation to come into.

But, in my estimation, it's like this, the one child policy and then the two child policy and three and now that's been abolished, but that was the impetus right for abandoning children. And so I don't know how many children are available for adoption in China now, and culturally, is that something that's accepted?

I, was just at this screening of a film about Indian adoption and there's, some talk about culturally, if Indian people want to adopt and those kinds of things. So can you speak to that at all?

Grace Newton, MSW: I think Kay Ann Johnson's book, China's Hidden Children does a really wonderful job complicating the one child policy and notions [00:30:00] of like cultural preference for sons in China.

And I think what her book really shows is that there has been a longstanding pattern of domestic adoptions within China, some of them formal and some of them informal, but the 1991 Adoption Law of the People's Republic of China. The goal of that really was, in part, to crack down on domestic adoptions and promote international adoptions. And so part of the requirements of that original law was that adoptive parents had to be over the age of 35 and also had to comply essentially with one child policy by not having any children in their home. And so culturally it would be pretty uncommon for Chinese families to be 35 years of age and not have started a family and so I think that the adoption policy [00:31:00] essentially did what it was meant to do.

And in shaping who was able to adopt and a lot of western adoptive parents who participate in international adoption, a lot of them do happen to be older and do happen to have had infertility issues, which may be delayed their, family creation strategies. And so I think. That and then we see again, and I think around a 2007 reform, which is around, I think, the time that China's beginning to realize there's going to be some population issues from the one child policy, there's like a relaxing of domestic adoption laws. And so I think that one of the common issues that we hear about in terms of Chinese adoptions is around not telling the adoptee that they are adopted, which is something that, is much more possible when it's like a same race [00:32:00] adoption versus in my case, which was like a transracial international adoption, and I think that personally, in my experiences when I've gone back to China, I've come across a lot of people who, perhaps weren't necessarily aware of the extent of international adoption.

And then also, I think an interesting response is just in line with like dominant narratives of adoption. Just oh these are my family now and my parents here in the US and that's my family. And to be grateful to them that they've raised me which I am. And that, but also, there's this family in China that exists, and so I find that kind of interesting given Chinese cultural beliefs around filial piety and importance of ancestors and paying homage to that.

But I think the kind of sense that this is my family now. And yeah, I guess I wonder, one of the things that I wonder though is, we talked about [00:33:00] how all these Chinese adoptees are coming into age now. What that also means is that the siblings, of adoptees who were kept are coming into age.

And I wonder if things that were too hard or too shameful for parents to talk about are going to be exposed in terms of the siblings who want to know who and where their siblings are. And I have seen in some Chinese adoptee, or searching groups that, yeah, there are some siblings of adoptees who are searching for this missing sister..

Haley Radke: Wow, that's so interesting. I'd never thought of that, in zooming out to like the 30, 000 foot view. And one of the comments made in the presentation was that the Chinese government was using international adoption of their children to build [00:34:00] relationships with other countries. And all the powers that be in Korea or China or any of the other countries that have been exporting their children, there's no thought of the impact it has on the child in their personal well being and, all of those things. Before we do recommended resources am I right that you're getting married very soon?

Grace Newton, MSW: I am August 31st of this year less than three months away.

Haley Radke: So when we're recording, you have just a few months to go. Congratulations. So excited for you.

Grace Newton, MSW: Thank you.

Haley Radke: You wrote about your fiance on your blog. Would you just mind sharing a little bit about your relationship and how that's maybe helped you reclaim a little bit more of your ethnicity?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, sure. The starting point of that is that I experienced a breakup [00:35:00] before I started dating him. And I think in my early twenties, I was fairly open to just, meeting new people. And I think I didn't really think about what I wanted in a family life or home life. I was just like focused on my schoolwork and, Figuring out like that process and enjoying friends and, and yeah, just exploring meeting, meeting new people.

And then I think when I had a breakup and it was a relationship that, I had talked about future oriented things with and the possibility of a marriage and family and those things what would that really look like? I think I was in my late 20s, 27, I just finished my master's program, and I had started to think about those things differently.

And I think what became apparent to me was [00:36:00] that it was important for me to have this identity, like collective identity as Asian Americans. I think I was prioritizing like Chinese American. But Asian American identity, and I think that in my relationships with white men, I had also, when envisioning a family, I realized, that the burden of passing down Chinese culture, or holidays, or language, all of that would be on me, and related to, this culture that sometimes I feel like very inadequate in and the idea of having a partner who could share that responsibility, but also the joys that come with that became more important.

And so I really did prioritize at that point, dating Asian men, which was harder in Wisconsin and I was like, oh, I'm going to have to move to New [00:37:00] York or California or somewhere if I really want to prioritize this, but I met my now fiance right in, in Wisconsin. And of course, we connected about it, like a lot of.

Just like silly things and food and interests, but I think a lot of the ways that we connected initially were cultural too, in terms of being able to talk about trips back to China and for me, how I'd say, like, when I was in China, I was like the most American and simultaneously the most Chinese I ever felt, and to have someone like look back at me and totally understand that feeling was really chill and I think for me in I yeah, you mentioned I had written about this and I think being with a Chinese American person, I think there was a lot of internalized racism that I had to undo within myself in order to really think about the why I would want to [00:38:00] prioritize that in a relationship.

And I think that also there was a lot of internalized racism that came undone just being in this relationship. I think about my eyes or moles on my face and things that were like different and that made me different. And loving my fiance who has, similar features, like loving that on him I think it's made it easier to really like wash away some of those things like about myself. No, I love this on him. Why wouldn't I love this on me too? And so that's been a really remarkable part of this. And I think also being embraced by his parents here has been really special. And so I think you know, so much of adoption, we talk about this like loss of family, loss of culture, loss, so many losses.

And I think more than just my fiance himself, gaining like a family, a Chinese [00:39:00] family that, that has been really a profound thing for me too. And I think that. I recognize given the structure of the Chinese street abandonments and the complexities of and language barriers and the time that has elapsed since I left China that it may not be possible for me to find birth family.

But having this like intimate relationship with a Chinese family that has embraced me has been a huge gain for me. And I think, yeah, it's allowed me, I think also to just see so many different ways of being Chinese and Chinese American and I think watching my fiance's interactions with them and thinking about okay maybe there are some things that I wouldn't have known about Chinese culture or whatever even if I had stayed in a Chinese family, I'm like, oh, okay. I don't need to burden myself with that worry so I think yeah [00:40:00] it's all been a healing process.

Haley Radke: That's so lovely. I'm so happy for you. Congratulations. I would love for folks to check out your blog, Red Thread Broken. Congratulations on 11 years of keeping a blog going. That is impressive, Grace. Oh my goodness.

I love seeing the progression. You write about all kinds of things, like personal things, academic things, media critiques, or things that are happening right now and social critiques, I guess I could say. And there's even a post from your mother who we didn't talk about this, but you alluded to that they're supportive and.

Grace Newton, MSW: Why I as an adoptive parent.

Haley Radke: Why I an adoptive parent yes, I'm not pro adoption. I'm from 2014, and that got picked up in several places and had a huge audience. That's really a neat one to read for folks. And in 2014, you were talking about China's one [00:41:00] child policy and writing academically as a university student. So it's really neat. You have this whole history of things there.

I was like, I'm going to read your whole blog. I couldn't cause there's so many things. So I'd love for folks to check it out if they haven't already. And is there a good spot? What do you send people to when you're like, I have this really impressive blog that thousands and thousands of people read. Do you like, where do you send them?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, I don't have a specific spot and I probably should make a, here's a good starting point. Read these 10 pieces. So maybe I'll do that this summer.

Haley Radke: Okay, perfect. I have to do that too for Adoptees On. Once you have a couple hundred posts, it's it can be overwhelming for new people.

So I know they'll come in and check that out. And we'll link to a couple of the highlight pieces in the show notes for folks. What did you want to recommend to us, Grace?

Grace Newton, MSW: A book that's just been really sitting with me this year is China's Hidden [00:42:00] Children, which I talked about a little bit earlier. And I think that It's a little bit older, I think it came out in 2016, and unfortunately, Kay Ann Johnson, the author of this book, has since passed away, but I think this book is really a remarkable piece of her legacy that she's left to the Chinese adoptee community specifically. It's a difficult, I, okay, I would say it's an easy read in terms of the book, and then the content, I would say, is very difficult, and for Chinese Adoptees, especially, who do decide to read it, I would say, take care have good people around you, but it's, I think, a remarkable book that really complicates the notion of Chinese adoptions and the one child policies role in that and this overarching, I think, myth that surrounded early adoptions from China that, there's this kind of disdain towards girls within Chinese culture or [00:43:00] and what Kay Ann Johnson really shows in this book is how wanted girls from China really were within China, and how many people sacrificed and went to great lengths to hide girls who they had given birth to, and even girls who they had adopted within China who were quote unquote, over quota children.

And I think that while it can be difficult, really the resounding message to adoptees from the book is that whatever people say on this side of things we really were wanted by people in China.

Haley Radke: Thank you, that sounds wonderful to read and illuminating. I was trying to think of the name that someone else recommended this documentary about the one child policy and we also gave trigger warnings for that because it is there's just so much hurt and trauma and [00:44:00] I think it's just good to be well informed frankly, it's easier to put our head in the sand, but we shouldn't be doing that. So.

Grace Newton, MSW: Was the documentary One Child Nation?

Haley Radke: Thank you. Yes, it was. And that is yeah, so hard to watch. Thank you so much for sharing some of your expertise with us today and your personal story and for your work on Red Thread Broken and The Adoptee Consciousness model and other things I know you have coming out soon.

I'm so excited to follow your academic career as we go on through these years. I'm sure I'll be reading lots of things you've put out. Where can folks connect with you online?

Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, so as you mentioned, I have a blog called Red Thread Broken, so you can find that at redthreadbroken.com and then on Facebook and Instagram, you can also find me, my Handles Red Thread Broken.

And I guess on Twitter, I'm @GracePingHua. So G R A C E P [00:45:00] I N G H U A. That's where I am.

Haley Radke: Perfect. Thanks so much, Grace.

Grace Newton, MSW: Thank you.

Haley Radke: We send you our congratulations, Grace, as you get married this summer. So excited for you. And Grace is continuing on in her PhD program and I'm just cheering everyone on who is working on critical adoption scholarship. It is so important. It is so important based on some of the recent trash research that I've seen coming out from supposed organizations that purport to support adoptees, and it's no, you're actively fundraising to support more families to be separated.

So let's be listening to adoptees who are doing this work. Some of the [00:46:00] questions that people come up with who do not have lived adoption experience personally are just outrageous. Honestly, I don't even know how they pass through some of the legal hoops and things that, that academic scholarship needs for them to go through, right?

Questions are supposed to be unbiased, impartial, not leading in some way when you're doing academic surveys. So when you see things come out that are very skewed or slanted one way, make sure you put your reading glasses on and you dive in personally to make sure you understand what's happening.

So anyway. As I was saying, I'm cheering on the adoptees who are looking at these issues and are able to give a perspective that is often unheard. And speaking of unheard, thank you for those of you who are supporting the [00:47:00] show, either by just sharing the episode with one fellow adoptee, maybe, a Chinese adoptee and they want to get hooked into adoptee community.

This episode is a great way to start and following Grace's blog and the ways she's sharing to connect with fellow adoptees. Another way to support the show is to share it on social media, to comment on our Instagram or share our posts when they go out or folks that are sending donations through PayPal or supporting on Patreon.

You're keeping the show alive. So it just, thank you so much for that. Thank you for listening to adoptee voices and let's talk again very soon.

285 [Healing Series] The Seven Insights into Adoptee Attachment with Pam Cordano, MFT

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/285

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

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

We are joined by Pam Cordano talking about the seven challenges of adoptee attachment, which include profound ongoing chronic misattunement, disconnection from our instincts and commodification. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to our [00:01:00] Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We'll link to everything we'll be talking about today on the website, adopteeson. com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Pam Cordano. Welcome, Pam.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Thank you. It's so fun to be here with you again after a while.

Haley Radke

I know we get to talk regularly and you come to a lot of Patreon events, but you're not always on the main feed. We got to have you back on the main feed more. Yes. I know that your insights for adoptees have been so tremendously helpful and one of the things that we've relied on for years as adoptees looking at adoption with a critical lens and how it's impacted us has been the Primal Wound, which is a little bit [00:02:00] controversial sometimes, because it was written by an adoptive parent.

And so when I heard you. Do this talk on seven challenges in adoptee attachment. I was like, oh, finally, like an adoptee is breaking these things down for us. And you put into words a bunch of things for me personally, and I know others who've heard you share this. So do you want to share a little bit more about this and I don't know, do you think it relates to primal wound at all?

Pam Cordano, MFT

I do. Actually, that book was really important to me when I read it and the Primal Wound, it gave a structure and started to outline something that really resonated with ways I had been feeling inside that I didn't have language or concepts for.

And [00:03:00] so I was really grateful for that book actually when it came out. That was such a long time ago, but as I've lived more into my own healing as an adoptee and having been a therapist for a long time I've been really, grappling with our leading ideas about attachment theory and specific ways that I think that leading attachment theory is inadequate for us adoptees.

I just started to think about trying to name some specific things that are actually, that have substance to them that are in the way of us feeling comfortable attaching. Not just to other people, but to the world at large and to our own selves. Just attachment as a whole thing. Maybe how this relates to the primal wound is maybe some of what I'm trying to figure out has to do with looking under the hood of us.

And it's not just more external and conceptual, but it's looking under the hood.

Haley Radke

Every [00:04:00] time I get one of those new books, like What Happened to You or, all the the leading Gabor Mate book or Bessel van der Kolk or something like that. I literally always flip to the index first and see if they have adoption in it or adoptee and I keep looking for them to talk about us we're good case study. And they don't.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. I think that I think it's very hard for somebody not adopted to understand what it's like being us under the hood, they're just describing cars, but we're like in the engine of, we live in the engine of us and it's complicated in here.

Haley Radke

Okay. So even Nancy Verrier with a Primal Wound, right? She's looking from the outside. It's not her personal experience. Yeah. Okay. You're under the hood.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Under the hood. And I'll just say psychedelics have been huge in helping me get under the hood and [00:05:00] helping other people get under the hood who are trying to understand these huge defense structures that have been keeping us alive from the beginning. It's very complicated in here.

Haley Radke

Before we get into the seven, can you just set up why attachment is so important? And I know you talk about the limbic system and the brain and that, can you set that up for us?

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. Trauma attachment 101. This is what I guess, what I would think is important to say right now is that we have our amygdalas.

The amygdala is the fear center of the brain and the amygdala is telling us that something dangerous is going to happen or something dangerous is happening. So it's looking for danger and the amygdala is part of the larger system called the limbic system. The limbic system is a larger system.

The amygdala is part of the limbic system and the limbic system stores highly charged memories and manages all of our sleep and appetite cycles and our moods [00:06:00] and our ability to bond. So the limbic system is where we bond from and the limbic system is where we need to connect with other people. With them and their limbic systems connecting with us. So that's where the party is of attachment, the limbic system. Okay.

Haley Radke

Okay. We're in the attachment party. Got it.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And that's one reason that when adoptees get together, we don't even have to make a decision. We, people can just feel the difference that the safety being with another adoptee, even if our stories are very different because there's a certain kind of mutual understanding that helps our systems relax and then bonding can happen more comfortably and easily among adoptees. That's why adoptees are so important to each other.

Haley Radke

That's cool.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. So there's this therapist up in Seattle who is not adopted. He's an attachment [00:07:00] specialist. And I just said to him straight up like I'm an alien. I was like okay, explain attachment to me from your point of view. And he said, so I wrote down what he said.

He said this, he said, the baby needs the mom's limbic brain to attune to the baby's limbic brain. When attunement happens, we feel safe. The baby learns she can be found by the mother. She is findable and worthy of being found. If someone finds her, she's not alone. If she is found, someone worked to find her.

If this happens consistently, she does not need to doubt her value. She can be found in the deep, young places. As she is found, she also learns to find more of herself. This paragraph has become very important to me because it just names the magnitude of what didn't happen for [00:08:00] me and I think what doesn't happen for most or any adoptee, because how can pause, pause right there.

Haley Radke

How can a stranger fill in for that?

Pam Cordano, MFT

How can a stranger with a, with an entirely different agenda, the agenda maybe is becoming a mother, becoming a father, starting a family, adding to a family, conquering infertility. I don't know what the agenda is, but it often isn't the agenda of simply opening one's system to a horror of pain in a baby.

Like when I think, I'm not trying to be dramatic here, but when I think about the day I arrived, to my adoptive parents, I probably needed the Red Cross to show up, like with the helicopter and that silver wrap stuff that they wrap people in to keep them warm. I was a wreck looking back and hearing stories from my grandparents, like I'd stopped crying, I was, I'd been through six months of [00:09:00] hell and had shut down natural systems like crying just to stay alive.

That was the day that was so exciting to my parents. They, they had the neighbors come over and it was like a celebration, like a brand new, gotcha day kind of situation. So it was just It's not just like the limbic resonance wasn't there, but there was this massive misattunement, actually, and I don't know how that couldn't be the normal story. Do you?

Haley Radke

I'm just, I'm trying to put this together for myself, because we have all kinds of different adoptee experiences, and I was like born in a hospital left in the hospital for, say, 10 days before I went to my home with my adoptive parents. And you have this interruption, right? You're with your birth mother, but she was neglectful and you were [00:10:00] removed. That's your personal story that you've shared here a little bit before. And there's other adoptees who are, with. Their families for longer, and then they get removed, right? So at any point, there's always this gap in care.

And we're with new people who are supposed to help us regulate in some fashion. But whether it's kinship or a full stranger. It's not the same.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And first of all, it's hard enough for us. I'm almost 60 years old and I'm just starting to understand and feel into the magnitude of the trauma from my infancy. And in a really bodily way, as hard as I've been working on this I've just started to make more progress in the last couple of years. What adoptive parent younger than me, A, can understand something about losing one's whole lineage and the primal [00:11:00] wound, and then Secondly, do enough work on themselves to be at a place where they can resonate with a baby in a limbic kind of way, open up to that kind of trauma. It just doesn't really make sense that would be something available.

Haley Radke

Is that even possible? That's maybe just like a hypothetical we can't even, say, but say an adoptive parent is so prepared and they know what they're getting into and they've done all the work and things. In my mind then they don't adopt, because then they know. So I don't know if those things can even coexist. Having a human so ready for a baby that suffered this catastrophic loss.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And I've talked about Cambodia before when I went to Cambodia and I met some orphans there that, that were teenagers, but had been orphaned when they were babies and in [00:12:00] Cambodia following the genocide.

The baby's names and stories were kept intact and were known by the families that took them in. Nothing was put on the babies to like, to now I'm your mom and this is your dad. It was like, we're here, we're a family taking care of you and you can call us what you want. You can call us, auntie or first name or mother, father, if you want to, but that's up to you like it's your life. This is yours. It's it was very baby child centered and I think that and then the families had known what the and had felt with the children what they've gone through because I guess they had all gone through the genocide.

So they all knew, but I think that was better for them than what happens here with such a it's a one two punch. It's like a loss and now this fiction.

Haley Radke

We've had this talk before, right? There's this, yeah, there's the relinquishment and trauma. And then there's also a trauma of, okay, now you have to fit where you've been put. [00:13:00] Right. And I think, should we go through the seven? Cause I think some of that is like absolutely addresses that.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Seven areas of challenge specific to adoptees and attaching. So the first challenge is the adoptee body. The adoptee body is where the story lives. A theme in our community is all these ways that adoptees bodies are not well, like digestive problems, sleep problems, autoimmune disorders, headaches.

I've had cancer. It's just the body is my body has been fraught with stress and it seems like almost all of the adoptees I meet have a lot of this kind of stuff. For an adopted child, there are two stories going on. There's how well they're masking the trauma and trying to fit in and doing whatever, however they're doing that.

And then there's what the body is doing. The adoptee body is really where the story lives. And the adoptee body is talking to us and to our families the entire time. [00:14:00] So I know for me, I didn't sleep well at all as a kid. I still don't. And I also didn't eat that well either. I was just eating was tough. Everything was tough. Eating was tough and sleeping was tough. My parents wanted to be good parents and they saw these problems as reflect reflections that they were not doing something right. So it became centered on them. And so they weren't curious why? Why is Pam having such a hard time sleeping and eating? What's going on? Let's try to get underneath this. I'm sure there are some adoptive parents that would, that care about the body and are paying attention to the body. But for my parents, it was really about a reflection of them that they were doing something wrong or they weren't, they wanted me to show them that they were doing a good job, basically.

The body is where the story lives. What story is the body telling and who wants to listen to it? And that really matters. Even for us now that those of us who are adults, adoptees who are adults, like we, we want to really start to care about what the story our body [00:15:00] is telling. And we want partners and friends and family to care about our bodies and the stories that are, because the body tells symbolic stories.

If I can't be conscious of something that's going on and express it in words, that's one way that it shows up as a symbolic body thing. You know what I mean?

Haley Radke

Because we've talked before about pre verbal trauma, so we might not have words for it, but it's like living somewhere.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And it does show up. It does, there's the body doesn't, the body doesn't lie or the body keeps the score. It's. The body tells the truth. I think that a lot of adoptees are under so much stress to deal with the trauma that they may not even be aware of, but it's there. And then be fitting in and masking and functioning as best they can as children and as adults.

I don't think listening to the body is necessarily a high priority when we're trying to survive. So it goes, it gets deprioritized. But I think that [00:16:00] when we're really talking about attachment, we have to include the body. The body is a really wonderful truth teller. And it can be a nightmare to enter, but it's the place that we need to attach from.

So we have to start to value the stories our own bodies are telling and then be close to people who also value the stories our bodies are telling so that we can at least be in reality. There's the quote by John Bowlby, British psychologists and psychiatrists that I think was like the father of attachment who said, "what cannot be said to the mother cannot be said to the self."

And so if we adoptees have nobody, we can tell the truth to about this implicit trauma and it's running rampant in our systems. We can't tell ourselves either. And that's where it has to go into symbolism has to go into body problems, addictions. Things like that, more indirect, but real signs of what we wish and needed to be able to tell to maybe both mothers, but can't, so that [00:17:00] we can't tell it to ourselves.

Haley Radke

That sounds to me like so much of this is subconscious. Mhm. And even for those adoptees that don't acknowledge that adoption is problematic or has had challenges or comes from a challenging system in place, like all of those things, like there's still something happening underneath the surface that just isn't safe to surface.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And it comes out eventually because it gets very hard over decades and decades to, to hold these defenses in place to keep us alive and things start to break down. As we get older and often that's a nightmare, but it's a gift because then we have a different, a new chance to have some access to it and to work some things through that could never be worked through before.

Haley Radke

Okay, what's number two?

Pam Cordano, MFT

Okay, the second one is the enormity [00:18:00] and value of belonging to lineage. When we lose our lineages, it's a massive loss. And I used to think of lineage as being a line, like there's me, there's my birth mother, there's her mother, there's her mother, like it went down a line. But now I think of lineage as a giant spider web with many points of connection and orientation for us.

So to be removed from that entire spider web is a massive loss. And our culture doesn't treat that as a massive loss. There's a devaluing of remaining in one's lineage, the value of that. And so the loss of that, which happens in one minute or one hour or one day is huge. We used to, I used to call it separation trauma or attachment destruction.

I thought attachment destruction was a really bold way of saying something about this primal wound. But even that is it's a moment attachment destruction. But when we think about the loss of a spiderweb lineage, [00:19:00] we're like with, we're like in a free fall out in the world without that net that holds everybody into place.

Haley Radke

So even you and I have talked about this before and picturing the web, it's if we're gone, the impact of our absence also impacts the family of origin, right? Their web is changed. Yeah, and then I was thinking about say transnational adoptees. And so our web is in a certain place and so if you're from a different country and your web is in a different country and that's You know, that's also a place of comfort and safety and those kinds of things right?

We remember where we were and where our family has been. And so there's also that loss that's just compounding on

Pam Cordano, MFT

It's huge.

Haley Radke

Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT

It's huge. The smells. It's yeah, [00:20:00] if it's a place, it's not just all of the people, the points of, and the stories and the qualities of the lineage. But it's, yeah it's the place.

That's a whole big part of the web too, is the place. Or, trans, transracial adoption. Same thing.

Haley Radke

Yeah. I was just going to say, yeah, race, ethnicity, culture, all of those things are pieced together as a part of the web, maybe.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yep.

Haley Radke

Okay. Okay.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Totally. Number three. When we are plucked from the, or kicked out of, whichever, however we leave that massive lineage web, we're in a freefall, in a sense.

There's, we're not being held by all of the points that hold us. More and more, it's gotten out this new phrase called the nothing place. And the nothing place is a phrase we're using to mean no orientation points, free fall, [00:21:00] terror. And a friend of mine shared this nothing place thing with me.

He'd done psychedelics and he'd found himself in the nothing place. And when he described it, I totally recognized it. And so at the time it was in 2021 Anne Heffron and I were doing a year of Flourish 50 people, two days a week, weekly meetings with adoptees. And I brought this nothing place concept. Concept ha. It's it's not a concept, it's real. To all of them and ask them to try it on and I was shocked because everybody resonated with it. And knew in some way that they were avoiding something about this terrifying free fall into nothingness without the web, but we haven't had language for this that's been adequate. And so it's just like this monster that we're avoiding something. I think that's the monster is a free fall.

Haley Radke

I [00:22:00] was thinking that I've been watching this like travel show lately. And I was thinking like, if you were as an adult transported to a fully a different country and you had nothing with you, so you had the clothes on your back and you had no money, no passport, and you didn't speak the language and you didn't even know where you were and like how disorienting that would be.

But yet, you still have your brains and experience with you, and you can figure out okay, I need to, I need to get help from somebody I need to figure out where I am. You can figure out how to communicate and whatever. So you have some of those skills. And I was thinking about how a baby or a young child is just like just alone.

And when you describe it as the nothing place, like I think of myself, like alone as a baby and it's too scary to go there, right? It's just too scary to like, even think about that.

Pam Cordano, MFT

[00:23:00] Totally. And what you just said about the show I may not have this totally accurate, but I think with the highest level military people, Navy SEALs , they do an exercise where they drop somebody off in a foreign town and they have to survive for four days.

And there are some enemies. I think there are quote enemies that are looking for them. So it's like this four day trial of survival. And I don't know, I think about us as babies and well, there's a primal wound, right? We're already like reeling from this loss of lineage and then we don't recognize anything. And we, yeah, we can't talk, nothing.

Haley Radke

Because babies are, and really small children, right? We're fully at the mercy of anyone, anything around us. There's no competence whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah. I was just trying to think of other ways to [00:24:00] explain this to someone who's not adopted. Huh. And I just, there's nothing like it, right? There's nothing like

Pam Cordano, MFT

What's the movie where somebody gets lost out in space just spinning around out in the middle of nowhere, like an astronaut?

Haley Radke

Interstellar is that the right one? I don't know, there was a couple space movies?

Pam Cordano, MFT

It's funny because just, I think that for non adopted people, they might say you have loving people that want you, that want to make a home for you, that have paid a lot of money for you that, that, have decorated a room for you, like you're not out in space, there's people here, but that's from adult humans that don't understand loss of lineage.

I think the value of talking about the nothing place is getting back inside the adoptee and being adoptee centric and not non adoptee centric.

Haley Radke

It's interesting. I have a whiteboard full of ideas and everything for shows and things next to me that you can't see, but it's here. It's always there. And I've had The Nothing Place written on the board for several years, actually. [00:25:00] And I could never bring myself to ask you to do a full episode about it because it is so depressing to just think about that and I was like, God, I don't think I can talk about that for half an hour. That just is it's too much.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And you know what, trauma, the definition of trauma is too much, too muchness. It is too much. And it was too much. And that's what we're trying to say to the world. It was too much. It is too much. And it was too much for us.

Haley Radke

Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT

You might have been fine. We weren't. And aren't. Yeah.

Haley Radke

Yes. I was just thinking, we're talking about, different adoptee experiences and even open adoption has been seen as this like panacea like but you still know who your birth parents are like you still get meetings with [00:26:00] them sometimes or whatever. However open adoption agreements have been structured if they remain open by the way but it's interesting because I was thinking like nothing place that still exists for open adoption.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Oh totally Because the death in place happens when we get separated from lineage, and then if, when the birth family comes back in, whether it's a six months, one year, every five years, not till the child's 13, whatever they just, whatever the decision is, all of this trauma has already happened.

And so then, what part of the child is meeting their birth family? I don't think it's an open limbic system. It's, I imagine it, from the adoptee's point of view, I imagine it being pretty scary to meet the people that let you go.

[00:27:00] Haley Radke

Even if it's regular? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All the way along. Yeah. Okay, we got to move on from that.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Okay. The next one falls right into place, which is adaptation becomes the primary survival mechanism. So we're in the nothing place. We got to survive. Every living organism wants to survive. The replacement for orientation is adaptation. And we are doing everything we can to adapt to what's in front of us to survive. And we're really good at it. Adoptees are super adapters. That's why Paul Sunderland, in his video about addiction, said that adoptees really surprised him when they would seem so put together and intact, and then the littlest thing would happen and they would, lose it. Because we can adapt, but that doesn't mean that we [00:28:00] feel okay and filled in inside.

Haley Radke

I'm stuck on this sentence. The replacement for orientation is adaptation. This just feels so profound to me just because it's going back to the lack of orientation we have. It's frankly

Pam Cordano, MFT

And it could be very confusing then what's the real me versus what's just adaptation? It gets so Confusing. It takes so long to figure that out.

Haley Radke

Can you just say some examples of things that are adaptations? Literally just being the child of these new parents just having that identity is an adaptation, right?

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. Being very perceptive. What do they want? What makes them smile? What makes them what makes them love me more? Which would make me safe? I, okay I'm less worried about saying something really offensive compared to how I used to be when I first met you. I was really worried about [00:29:00] upsetting people, but I'm less worried about that now. Several years ago, I saw an article in the Huffington Post, and I forget which adoptee, I wish I knew which adoptee wrote it.

She said something like, I feel like I've said this on your show before, that when a baby is kidnapped, they are expected to remember their parents and reject the kidnappers. And then when a child's adopted, they're expected to forget their birth family and bond with the adopters. And so if I were kidnapped, I would be paying.

I would be using all my energy to survive. I would be trying to figure out the kidnappers. What makes them mad? What makes them happy? What makes them calm down? What keeps them from harming me, I'd be looking for everything I could do to maximize my survival. I think we do that from the get go. We just start getting very perceptive to survive because we've already had this huge threat to our life by this relinquishment. [00:30:00] We're under, it's quote attachment, which is an attachment under duress.

Haley Radke

You already said it. That's the literal survival mechanism.

Pam Cordano, MFT

I guess it goes without saying everything we're naming is a challenge in our ability to attach. So trying to unwind these crisscrossed patterns and confusions to figure out like, let's say, I don't know, since we're such good adapters, because we had to be, how do we attach when we get into a romantic relationship where we have to watch where am I adapting or what's real and can the person I'm with tolerate the real me and how about now and how about now like it's a process to start, to become real with people so we can attach.

Haley Radke

What's coming to mind and I don't know if this is the right place to comment on it, but I still see people sharing about reactive attachment disorder, which from the therapist that I know and respect, that's [00:31:00] not a real thing.

I think about so for people who don't know, it's sort of like if there's a child in your care and they're so to speak acting out and you're, they're troublesome in some way to you as the adoptive parent, they'll often get diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder. And now I'm, as you're talking, I'm thinking like. These kids are the ones saying the truth out loud. I don't belong here. What am I doing here? Get me out of here. How do I get out of here? Do you have comments on reactive attachment disorder? Do you think that's a real thing?

Pam Cordano, MFT

Look at this. I'm just looking up symptoms, right? Avoidance of physical touch or comfort when distressed.

What I have heard a lot of adoptees say is it was the wrong hands. It was the wrong bodies. I didn't want those hands. I didn't want those bodies. I wanted someone who felt right. I remember my mom would always say to me, oh, I can't do anything right. I can't do anything right. It was [00:32:00] like, Yeah, I didn't want you. I wanted her, I didn't even know who her was at that point, but I knew I wanted her.

Unaffected when left alone. I found it a relief to be left alone because then I had less adapting to do. I could call, I could just relax.

Emotional detachment. Yeah. Why emotionally attach when our deepest truth is absolutely unknown. It's very hard to attach when we have to keep most of us and ourselves in the closet.

Rocking or self comforting excessively, inability to show guilt, remorse, or regret. Some kids are mad for good reasons. So they don't feel guilty for being mad. Tantrums, anger, sadness.

Haley Radke

Yeah, so the cure, quote unquote, for reactive attachment disorder, or like your, what you want to have happen, is that they adapt better, and fit in better, and behave.

Pam Cordano, MFT

[00:33:00] Yeah.

Haley Radke

That's the fix.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Victor Frankl said, an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal. I think that sums it up. We can put a DSM diagnosis on it or we can just say normal.

Haley Radke

Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And then the child has to carry, The adopted child has to carry the abnormal instead of the situation, the institution carrying the abnormal.

Haley Radke

Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT

That's what's abnormal.

Haley Radke

So medicating the child, sending them off to whatever home

Pam Cordano, MFT

Bootcamp.

Haley Radke

Yeah. Yeah. All of those things. It's never the fix on the situation. And not that every situation can be fixed, but adoptive parents anyway, that's a full aside, but I thought that kind of went, okay, what's our next one? Number five.

Pam Cordano, MFT

This bridge is right to the next one, which is [00:34:00] profound chronic misattunement. So adoptees are swimming in a fish tank of water that is profoundly chronically misattuned. And this is from inside the family and outside the family and inside their own selves with themselves. There's just this misattunement.

It is everywhere because we can't be understood in the steepest place and we can't understand ourselves in the deepest place easily. It takes, I think it takes decades. And then adoptive families don't know how to, we're barely learning how to understand our own selves, how our adoptive parents and families gonna understand what we're trying to understand about under the hood.

And then the culture at large is, has got, sparkles and rainbows on top of this. So I think I shared with you, Haley, that there's this public figure that I like, and she and her partner adopted a baby. And before they even got the baby, [00:35:00] they were calling the baby, their soulmate. And I felt so turned off and upset just that a baby is getting burdened with that story, that label without participating in an agreement of soulmates, or in an agreement of the narrative about soulmates. It sounds nice on the surface. But it isn't nice for the adoptee. What? Say it.

Haley Radke

I can't even.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Say it.

Haley Radke

You've said that to me before. It just makes me want to barf. And I'm just going back to adoption is this problematic thing that once you see it, once we pull up and show you under the hood, like how could you unsee that?

Ugh. Yeah. Yeah, I have all of these like things going on the back of my [00:36:00] head always. How can I show non adoptees, you like to call them muggles, the truth behind what our experiences is, what works most effectively to tell people to show people so that we can stop the madness. And I'm always looking for those things.

One of the things that just boggles my mind is, The like videos on Instagram or TikTok where it's like, oh, here's your new baby and everybody's oh my gosh, I can't believe you're adopting. This is wonderful. So amazing. And then the same people are like, oh my gosh, you're reuniting with your birth parents. Oh, it's wonderful. It's so amazing. Like, How can, how do you not see the disconnect? So you're talking about swimming in the chronic misattunement of society. Like it's like, who's pushing the rock up the hill? Who's that? That's what we're doing. The boulder up the, or whatever, it's [00:37:00] never gonna get there.

Pam Cordano, MFT

It's gonna run over us.

Haley Radke

Yeah, exactly.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Smash us.

Haley Radke

It has. It has run me over. For sure. I am smushed at the bottom of the mountain.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke

Yeah. Even these Gatcha Day celebrations I had recently Cam Lee Small on the show and in his new book, he talks about the gotcha day misses "lost-ya" day it's very, it's incredible to me that people can see that and not see where did this baby or child come from they came from somewhere. How are you celebrating what could be the worst day of their life?

Pam Cordano, MFT

And you think the baby doesn't know this it hasn't isn't the one experience. We're bodies We're in a body like you think that we don't experience the entire things and it's [00:38:00] registered and it's the core of our nervous systems developing like we're not even there like we're a cartoon or something it's like cartoon life

Haley Radke

I'm picturing someone sort of new ish to this listening to us. We've become, so radicalized. We have our eyes wide open. It's just like this whole conversation might just come across as like wild. But it's like facts are facts, yo. I don't know what to tell you.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. Like I'm, it is, I don't have the energy to twist myself inside out anymore and pretend it's something else.

Haley Radke

Yeah, exactly.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Okay. So the sixth thing, then the result of swimming in this profound chronic water of misattunement is we get profoundly disconnected from our own instincts and we start to say yes, where when we have a no or [00:39:00] no, when we have a yes, and we think things that are not dangerous are dangerous.

And we think things that are dangerous are not dangerous. We get really screwed up in our own instincts, maybe not entirely like the quote, angry adoptees that grow up. Like I was more of, I had both. I had compliance and I had anger. The anger was at least a remnant of connection still to some of my instincts.

Like I remember, being 14 or something and yelling at my mom in the kitchen where my dad could hear and saying, You're not my real parents. You're just my guardians and you bought me and and that was true, but it was blasphemy. I knew that I was going to get grounded and I was breaking their hearts and just saying the truth. But I got pushed to a point where I could connect back in to something I knew that was true.

Haley Radke

I'm going back to thinking about adoptees who have done their all to fit [00:40:00] in and to absorb the adoption is beautiful narrative. And even in fact, maybe like I did, I felt like I owed it and to adopt myself to pay it forward, those kinds of things.

And what a profound disconnection that was, to not see.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah.

Haley Radke

There's like mega shame there. For me, I know I've said that out loud before. I know that's not the first time people might hear me say that, but it's it feels so shameful now to think oh my gosh, I almost was complicit in this system. And that sucks. And then for folks who have gone ahead and done that, you can't admit it because it's not safe.

Pam Cordano, MFT

And there, that's where there's a lot, so much shame too.

Haley Radke

[00:41:00] Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT

To be in your case, what you said about shame, about almost being complicit, I think that's evidence of how hard you had to survive, how hard you had to adapt.

Like we, we can just think it's a, it's an us thing, but it's the whole system that, that leads to that kind of a decision of or should I adopt? Or whatever. I know I've, I think I said this before somewhere, but when I was like seven years old, my mom's friend wrote me this really pretty card and mailed it to me with little bunnies on it and said, as I was going to sleep tonight, I was thinking about how lucky you are as such a young person that you've been blessed twice so early in life.

First, by a mother that loved you enough to give you away, and then by a mother that loved you enough to take you in. I just remember the, huh? Feeling what? And I knew I [00:42:00] was supposed to really cherish this card, but it didn't, my body was like, it had nowhere to go. Cause it just didn't fit.

Love is not giving people away. That is not love. Love does not give people away. And also my parents didn't love me enough to take me in. I was the next baby to come up on the five year wait list. That was a healthy white female, so that's why I ended up with them. It was all sequential, had nothing to do with me.

Haley Radke

This is back to misattunement soup.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. Disconnection from instincts comes from that. Yeah. Okay, and the last thing, this number seven is, okay, commodification. We babies and children who get adopted are turned into a commodity. We're reduced to a commodity. A price tag is put on us based on what the context is for the adoption and money is paid and we're purchased.

[00:43:00] And without that purchasing, the parents wouldn't have the babies. That's a requirement. So even though a lot of adoptive parents might say, oh, I don't believe in commodifying humans. I don't believe in buying and selling humans. I don't believe in human trafficking. That's just how the system is. So that's just how it works.

That is commodification. That is purchasing humans. And the thing that's important about this for us under the hood is that commodification is a lived experience for us. It's not just a fact of a system. It's a lived experience and our body's experience being reduced to a commodity. And to pile on to this problem with disconnecting from our instincts is we don't even know who does this body belong to.

Is it me or is it them? Or is it society? Or who does this country belong to? Who does this planet belong to? Who does this cosmos belong to? If people are religious, who does God belong to? [00:44:00] Because there's such a disconnection from owning one's own body and self and life. Our life gets usurped.

And then we have to wake up, come out of the fog, and get the right help and enough of it to start. returning to a state of belonging to our own selves again. And other people don't have to think about this the same way. Might have had a strict religious or abusive family, but it's not nearly to the magnitude that we're talking about here.

Haley Radke

This continues into adulthood where adoptees who are looking for original birth certificates or adoption records, those kinds of things, they're like filed in, in the same place in the court. From what I understand, it's like items in the legal system we're commodified there too. [00:45:00] I'm not saying that very well, but I just even in adoptions that are public like mine was, there's costs being paid, even if it's by the government or any of those things. There's still financial transactions happening, whether or not adoptive parents actually are the ones to write the check. Just to, I'm just going to say that in case people are like nobody paid any money for me. Somebody did.

Pam Cordano, MFT

I was a county, I was a county adoption in California and my parents paid $5,000 for me. And then when I was 25 years old and I went to the court, to get access to my birth certificate. Um, I was told my dad, my adoptive dad came with me and I, we were told I had to leave the room [00:46:00] for him to be able to see the file of the case where he was the plaintiff. By adopting me. So I had to leave the room for him to see that my birth certificate and you probably know that in California, we still don't have access to our birth certificates. It's bizarre. And I think that, I could get hung up on that. But I think that for me the deeper place about all of that is in my own body and alienation from my right to my own life and my own self and living in a world where this has all been allowed and still is still allowed.

Haley Radke

So if you were to go on to a website today from most adoption agencies that are looking for mothers in a crisis situation and you were to chat or fill out a form for seeking help, they will ask your ethnicity to [00:47:00] determine the potential value of your baby. There's still a price put on or a value put on what your skin color is or if you're biracial or that's still actively happening.

So there's an added weight as well for our fellow adoptees who are people of color and are seen from the world's perspective as valued less than. I'm just saying it out loud because that's what's happening. And so, yeah. It's really

Pam Cordano, MFT

additional burden

Haley Radke

Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Layers of burdens.

Haley Radke

I don't know what to say. Cause this is it's I love having the words and language to describe all of the different issues that wrap up [00:48:00] into this ball of oh, this is why I might have some issues. It's hard though. It's really hard to think about it.

It's hard to look at it because it feels that's too big. That's too big. I don't want to address that. I want to hide from that. That's scary. It's easier to put that to the side. I want to blend it in society. I want to I can't be looking at this right now.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah.

Haley Radke

Do you want to just talk to adoptees that might feel that way? Or give us I don't know, one next step because this is like overwhelming.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah. It's interesting, like, When Haley, when you and I hang out, we usually have a lot of fun. We, this isn't like what we talk about. We have fun.

Haley Radke

Yeah, we do. I know. I was like, this is depressing.

Pam Cordano, MFT

We have online parties. Yeah, this is depressing. But I think that I don't think we necessarily have to dwell in all of these things. I think it's just good for us to start of, some of this could be helpful in just clicking [00:49:00] our awareness. Maybe clicking some confusions in ourselves back into the right spot so that we just feel more lined up in a way that makes sense and maybe more ground underneath our feet.

But first of all, we adoptees need limbic resonance. And that's it's hard to even I didn't even 7 years before I was in a go 7 years ago before I was in adoptee land. I did not understand the value of hanging out with adoptees. I did not want to be part of this club and I didn't want to talk about adoption and be with, I just wanted that to go away.

But actually adoptees need each other so much. And that's why this show and adoptee events are so powerful because our nervous systems can relax and we can feel much more limbic resonance that we're used to feeling with each other in places that are very important and also maybe heavy and difficult.

But once we can connect on the difficult stuff. Or even knowing that the difficult stuff is a place of connection, we can relax and [00:50:00] having fun it's also a whole part of the picture. When Anne Heffron and I did adoptee retreats, we started a little heavy, but then quickly it lightened up and we laughed harder than I usually laugh anywhere because there's a lot to laugh about, too, and enjoy. It's fun to enjoy just feeling connected, in a new way without the stress of that barrier between people who get it and people who don't. So limbic resonance is huge. Also if you're seeing a therapist, make sure your therapist can feel you and you're feeling felt because without that, it's, there's no point really in therapy.

Haley Radke

Interesting. I think our intuition is very good on that. And so I hope people can have permission to like, like trust that.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah, I agree with you. And then the next thing is [00:51:00] just that, uh, I just said two things at once limbic resonance and adoptee community. Those two things are, I think, essential for us for our healing.

I just, I don't know a better, faster way to heal and feel more comfortable in our skin than that, than those two things. And then psychedelic assisted therapy is huge. I think that the walls that keep us outside of the hard places are so thick and they're built to keep us out and going to see a therapist once a week and talking about it. We can talk about things, but it's hard to get underneath through the wall into the hard places. And especially where the body is where the body has taken over the pain and the trauma, and we're not even aware of it anymore. And so I encourage people to research psychedelic assisted therapy. MDMA, psilocybin, and others too, ketamine for some help to get under the hood.

Haley Radke

Okay. Thank you.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Yeah.

Haley Radke

Pam, you [00:52:00] have you and I have been friends for, seven years since the first time you came on the show and you've said so many amazing things to us that have opened up opportunities for connection and healing. So thank you. I feel like this is like a culmination of all of these conversations we've had and all the work you've done in the adoptee community. I'm so appreciative. Thank you.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Thank you Haley. Thank you.

Haley Radke

Where can people connect with you online?

Pam Cordano, MFT

The best way, I'm off social media five years now. My kids taught me some things and I got off social media. So I'm

Haley Radke

lucky.

Pam Cordano, MFT

It's nice. So my email is the best way, pcordano@comcast.net.

Haley Radke

Okay, perfect.

And we'll have that in the show notes for you. Also, if you don't have a pen handy right now, you can click back through later. Thank you [00:53:00] so much, Pam.

Pam Cordano, MFT

Thank you. It's a pleasure being here and hello to everybody out there. I'm happy to be here talking about this with you.

Haley Radke

It is always such an honor to have Pam on the show. If you want to hear the other episodes she's been featured on, we will link to those in the show notes for you along with her email address and she regularly is a guest on our Ask an Adoptee Therapist events and our Off Script Parties, which is an opportunity for you to meet fellow adoptees who want to talk about these things and build that community that she was talking about today. That is so important. And I'm so truly, deeply grateful for her wisdom and the way she shows up for us in those spaces. So my big [00:54:00] thanks to Pam, and I hope that you'll consider joining us, adopteeson.com/community. And if you want to see any of the upcoming live events we have on for these things, we'll have more things going on in the fall, but you can go to adopteeson.com/calendar and see a link of all the past things we've done and then all the upcoming Off Script Parties, Ask an Adoptee Therapist events, book club, documentary club, all those good things great opportunities to meet fellow adoptees. Okay, friends, thanks so much for listening and let's talk again soon.

284 Dr. Alice Diver

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/284

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

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is the remarkable Dr. Alice Diver, law professor and outspoken adoptee advocate. Alice has written multiple journal articles and books on the topic of adoptee rights, including her latest, Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature, Orphanhood, Adoption, and the Right to Reunion.

Alice shared some of her personal story with us, and then we dive into her work, including Language in Adoption, where you'll hear such gems as surplus people and substitute families. We also get to talk about how adoptees are viewed by the law in comparison with adoptive parents. We wrap up with some recommended [00:01:00] resources, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Before we get started, I have a little update for you. If you're a regular listener, you'll know I've taken the last few summers off. But since dropping to two episodes a month, we're going to be going through the summer. So please keep subscribed or following wherever you listen to podcasts, as you'll have several opportunities to hear from fellow adoptees this summer.

Of course, we have lots of content going for Patreon supporters as well. And info for that is always available on the website, adopteeson.com. Okay, let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to the podcast, Dr. Alice Diver. Welcome, Alice.

Dr. Alice Diver: Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.

Haley Radke: You don't know this, but I've admired your work for years and years. So this is like a career highlight for me truly. So I'm very excited to get to talk to you. And I'd [00:02:00] love it if you would share a little of your story with us.

Dr. Alice Diver: Wow, thank you so much for the, for that. That's amazing to me. Thank you. I guess my, I'm an adoptee. Obviously, I think anyone that knows me knows that because I tend to tell them quite early on.

So I was one of the 1960s vintage babies and I was adopted in Montreal. I was seven months, so I went through the, I would say, mother baby home institutions rather than homes. So in through a mother baby orphanage, the Catholic Welfare Bureau. And my folks, their story was quite sad. They'd been married for 20 years. And had a baby but he passed away after only a few days, so they got me very shortly after that and they said they wanted a girl, so as not to be reminded that they'd had a wee boy, and they were mid 40s, so they were, lucky to have a child at that age because we were coming into the era of, older persons, maybe not being ideal adopters.

They were [00:03:00] very good and they did their best. They took us to, we moved to, it was just me only child as well. Or as I'd say, rescue dog. From time to time, I would describe myself, hard. I don't think they knew what hit them. They'd had cats before, but they'd never had, this deranged creature who yelled a lot that came into their lives.

And because my mom had, because she was Irish. She was always very homesick. So in 1979 when I was 12, we went from Montreal to a small town in Northern Ireland where there was no McDonald's, no Pop Tarts. I thought I'd died and gone to hell. Very upsetting experience to me. And had lots of lots of fair haired, very Irish looking cousins.

And then I was I stood out as being different, but adoption was never really discussed. I think they hadn't told some people, that because it was, they'd been having a baby and then they got me. So some of the family didn't know, but yeah, it soon became apparent. It was in the days of matching characteristics.

So they were very fair. And they were given this blue eyed blonde baby, [00:04:00] then at the age of about, I think about 18 months, the blue eyes, blonde hair disappeared, unfortunately, and yeah, and they ended up with this very brown eyed, swarthy, round baby that bore no resemblance, but I guess what has shaped me in terms of the search, the way Quebec works, it's closed records, as I think is the same for a lot of U. S. states. So when I was 18, I applied for the non identifying information. So they send you very helpful non identifying things like you had big eyes and a nice shaped head and you like to sit outside in the sun. And I thought all of those things still apply. Thank you. Didn't narrow it down. I did discover, though, the thing that really that made it was.

I discovered Indigenous heritage. So I didn't know where I heard Newfoundland, and then I was able to do some research of my own, but that was amazing. So no one had any clue about that. I guess it ties in with not exactly baby scoop, but with maybe stigma [00:05:00] or the need to deny people's ancestry. No medical records.

So I didn't know that most of my family were birth family were deaf or going deaf with otosclerosis. That would have been useful to know. Hearing aids are great. Switch them off at night. It's all good. I'll tell you a little bit just about the reunion, because that's that a lot of people like, they seem to like this bit of the story.

So I, the way it works in Quebec, you write through social services, intermediary person. It's all confidential. I wrote a very lovely letter saying that I was a great person and at that stage I was married had my daughter and sent a photograph of her and I thought this will just be the hallmark reunion, and I'll be welcomed with open arms because what's not to love but after about a year birth mother came I don't know the terms not great, but she's okay with it I'll say mother came back and all confidential anonymous and she said, no, sorry, I'm not telling anyone about you.

I have teenagers at this point. She said, [00:06:00] So no, there will be no contact. Fine. I thought there's not much I can do about that. I just have to accept it. Yeah. And then she wrote a second letter after that, which was more of the same. And I thought she's clearly struggling.

And I guess it was a burden to carry. Yeah, so you try to put that aside for as long as you can, and you get all my things. Then I had four children of my own and I worked. Then DNA came into the public realm. So at 2012, I thought I might just get the DNA done and see who pops up.

And it found some sort of fourth cousins. They were very nice, very welcoming, but I couldn't connect any dots until about six years ago, I found an aunt who was younger than me, and with, and had been doing her DNA to see about tracing more of the Indigenous ancestry. So within half an hour, the way it works, we both got an email.

Within half an hour, armed with a surname, I found an [00:07:00] obituary, I went on Facebook, and I was able to see pictures of my half siblings, who all, her husband, this was about 3 a. m., elbowed him and said, you gotta wake up. And I said, look at these people. Do they look like me?

And he was just, I can't really say the expletives that he said, but he was instantly correct response. Wide awake going, and I was 50 at that stage. He said, yeah, he says, I think we found your people. He said, because your people look like our kids. He said, it's just, look at them. He said, yeah.

He says that, that. That has to be your mother, but just, you're the same person. So my poor aunt, she then tried to make contact. Cause I said, listen this lady's does not want contact. So don't frighten her, please. Cause I don't want to be responsible for someone having a heart attack. I said, tread softly.

I said, I've made my peace. If you can convince her, that's fine. And of course it was Christmas. It was my birthday. I hate my birthday. The first week of January, worst week of the year. So it just yeah, I sat and it was about, probably [00:08:00] took about six weeks of my aunt and some of her sisters convincing her that I was not, an axe murderer and that it was okay and that I didn't want anything apart from maybe to say hello and maybe the odd email.

And ironically, the thing that convinced her that I meant no harm was she was so scared of being discovered because she hadn't said to her kids. I said, if it's the DNA thing that's scaring you in case, people start to see matches. I said, I'll just, I'll take it down. I'll set it to private so you don't have to be panicking. And that seemed to flip the switch. And she said that's a nice thing to do. And then I will never forget it. I was for work. I was down in Cardiff and Wales. And as you do, there's this sort of abandoned castle. It's hard to beat a good castle. So I thought I will walk a rare sunny day.

I thought, I'm just going to go for a walk. And the tour guide was busy telling us about, and I won't even try a Welsh accent, but was busy telling us about, who was hung and who died and what ghosts there were. [00:09:00] When a message pops up on Facebook going, Hey, it's your mother. It's been whatever it is, 50 years.

I think it's time I said hello. And we can chat. I have to now hold it together and walk around a castle. I have to have it. How do I manage this? And I can remember texted after texted my two youngest daughters were out for dinner in a restaurant, having pizza, they live the high life.

I don't, I texted them the message and one daughter burst into tears, loud tears in the middle of the restaurant while the other girl was like, could you stop that? It looks like we're breaking up, pull yourself together. And then she said a week later, she was telling her friends and they all started to cry and she says, I can't handle this. Could people stop crying? What is wrong with everyone? But no, she, it was nice. And after that, and in her defense now, she's never, my mom has not missed a day since then, both morning and night, I get a little Facebook message. Saying, what the weather is, what the, what the menu for the day is.

Lovely, [00:10:00] normal, everyday things.

Haley Radke: For six years?

Dr. Alice Diver: Uh-huh. She's not missed, she's not missed a day and night she hasn't missed. If I miss a day, I'll get a message saying, where are you living? And I'm like, yes! Which is nice to get that bit of maternal, concern or whatever. And initially she said she was going to take a few months to very slowly tell her children about me, because it is quite a bombshell.

But within a week she had told them. And a couple of days later then my eldest brother was messaging me and we talked for about two hours about Doctor Who. So I let, it's little funny things that, yeah, and I've been sent recipes. I've been over to visit, I've gone to Montreal, they came to Ireland.

Went to Newfoundland and saw moose and all the, I have to say it's just been, it's been very good. It's been very good. It can't be easy for people to have this random stranger turns up, I didn't turn up on a doorstep as such, but yeah, so it was, never thought that would have happened and yeah, it's been going pretty good.

Haley Radke: Amazing. [00:11:00]

Dr. Alice Diver: That's my story. Longer than I meant it to be.

Haley Radke: No, I love it. I love it. You're a law professor. From what I understand, you mostly teach family law. And what drew you to become an attorney? And you've been researching adoption for many years prior to your reunion.

Dr. Alice Diver: Yeah, I think I suppose even about as an undergraduate student, we had the chance to do a research paper in final year.

I used mine as a rant against the system, really, to just look at adoption orders, how they close records, freeing orders. Even now, I would look sometimes at cases where contact is denied between older siblings and sometimes for very good reasons, it might, may have to be.

But it's just interesting that the language is still of the 1970s. Sometimes I just, I find it. It's interesting some of the reasons that they cite. Yeah, it's just always been a, it's always been an [00:12:00] interest. When I was a lawyer, I was only practicing for about five years before I went into academia.

So I probably did more property law, some child protection cases, trying to defend a care order or trying to have contact between parents and children, but sometimes that can cut a bit close. There's times you think this is one that's going to follow me home. Academia is much better.

You get paid for having coffee and talking to people and annoying, annoying my poor students. It's much more satisfactory in terms of a career choice. No disrespect to my, former fellow, lawyers. But yeah, and family laws, I say it's a nice one to teach, although we do, a segment on domestic abuse, which is harrowing.

I always say to people now, there's a trigger warning. I find increasingly more over the last 30 years, more care experienced people coming through. What would have been known as care leavers here, but now care experienced. And I know when I'm addressing a room, I'll say, I know there's adopted people out there.

I won't make you put your hands up. [00:13:00] If you wish to talk, because you can kill a conversation stone dead by going, anybody adopted? That's not yet acceptable to do that, maybe someday. But generally somebody, one or two people will come up maybe after a week or so and say, I was adopted or the thing about the UK records are open so you can get your birth certificate at 18.

Don't necessarily get maybe all the supports to go with that. It's getting better. But there's still some issues. There's still the belief, that, I'm thinking of Ireland, where records were recently opened and maybe not going that well, and their redress scheme. But there's a sort of a thought that you get that piece of paper, now you've got a name, or, now you can identify your people.

Away you go. And they assume it'll be the hallmark happy ending. And it isn't always. They forget that people can be rejected, that there's stigma, that regions can break down. But they can just wither quietly sometimes where people go, yay, and then it's okay, novelty wears off. So I would love to see more research being done into that, [00:14:00] if possible.

I don't know. It's a funny one.

Haley Radke: Do you think if you hadn't had your original rejection from your birth mother, that you would have dove so deeply into critical adoption scholarship?

Dr. Alice Diver: Wow, that's a really good question, which I've never really thought about. Possibly yes, because I'm quite bad tempered and grumpy.

So I possibly would have, I'm very good at seeing the negative in any situation. Would I have, I probably might not have been just as angry about the system and about everything. But yeah, I definitely, I would have seen, because I would have seen others struggling with the brick wall and the closed records.

So I think it probably would have, because suppose the thing about reunion is if you manage to get one and even if it goes well, you can be happy, but there's still the voice at the back saying I really get along with these people. They're lovely. And I can see I'm going to be fond of them. [00:15:00] But I lost 50 years.

So for example, like my sister, we unbeknownst to ourselves we have a daughter only a week apart back in the 90s. So if we had been, in touch, then that would how amazing would that have been that we would have been pregnant at the same time and just all the little things that you missed.

And I've often I think I've said to my brothers, it would have been just so not about an only child. I know you're maybe going to be a bit odd. But I've frequently told them, I says, if I'd had you guys growing up, even, they're younger than me, but they're a lot bigger and it just would have been nice.

You wanted someone to fight your corner. I just would love to going back to have been able to say, I'll get my brothers. Feel like Daenerys Targaryen. Here's my dragons. That's what it would have been like, cause they're quite, you know, they're big fellas. And I think they would, I like to think they would have protected their short, grumpy sister, maybe.

Haley Radke: Have quite a bit in common. I'm also Canadian. I don't know if you knew that. And my, I had a rejection from my birth mother, but we've never been in contact [00:16:00] since our brief reunion. And I started the show a couple years into reunion with my father. And I don't know, had all the things gone if this is where I would be, I'm not sure.

I'm thinking about that too. And I also was raised an only and have siblings now. So it's a real shift, isn't it? From being an only, solo focused to being a sister?

Dr. Alice Diver: It's nice. I like it. I do like it. Although I have to, cause I'm they would be the oldest. I have to rein in the urge, to dispense advice or to try and, maybe be bossy and stuff. I have to, it's unusual to have, it's lovely, but unusual to have siblings. I never know if it's said to be marked.

Haley Radke: How do you rein in that urge? Maybe that's a conversation for another time, but I could use some advice on that.

Dr. Alice Diver: Oh, badly. I've managed to do it very badly, as my kids could probably could probably advise as well. They could say, yep. [00:17:00] Mother has started again. She's off again with the advice that we don't want.

Haley Radke: I'm curious if you let's shift to more sort of work focus. Have you done much looking into adoption annulment, or rescission or any of those kinds of things? I saw your presentation at ASAC. And another lawyer was presenting, Greg Luce, and I don't know if you saw his presentation.

Yes, you did. And when you were initially sharing your story, and I've heard you share it a few other places, you said your coloring changed, so you went from fair to a little darker. And you also found out later that you're deaf. And I thought, oh, your adoptive parents actually had recourse to return you if they had cared to do, I don't know if folks know much about that, but I'm [00:18:00] wondering your thoughts on that and flipping it over to the adoptee rights side of things. We have no such recourse really.

Dr. Alice Diver: Exactly. But I do I found out after my mother had passed away, my dad let slip one day that apparently when I was about two, he said, yeah, I think she wanted to send you back at that stage.

But I said, no. And it's okay, that's an interesting thing to, yes, but then I thought maybe that just came out of somewhere or, I think he meant well to say it. And, again, I was handful and she was grieving and. Yeah, so that's, I know it's a threat too that sometimes, adoptive parents will say in jest to their children.

I know so many people that was said to, and even if they weren't serious, that's not the thing. Do not say that.

Haley Radke: Never.

Dr. Alice Diver: To an adoptee, because we're always yourself, I think we're always looking for any potential signs of rejection, so someone, maybe stops speaking or is angry at you, you immediately assume that [00:19:00] I'm gone, I've, they've written me out of their life, so it's a funny one.

Oh yeah, I think this was, whenever the deafness was discovered, funny enough, I was about 27, and I remember telling them, oh, I'm going to get, adoptive mom. I said, I'm going to get hearing aids. This is great. And she said, we were told there was nothing wrong with you. And she was quite cross.

And I was all there's loads wrong. Behold, there's, there are many flaws. Again, I think she meant it well, but it didn't come out that way, and yet it just reminds you that you're a bit of a commodity sometimes you're filling a role, which is a dark way to see things. I know.

But that's how we see it sometimes, because that's.

Haley Radke: Facts are facts, frankly,

Dr. Alice Diver: 100%. Yeah, they absolutely are. Yeah, it's funny. The thing about rescinding one's adoption, the UK doesn't allow you to do that. And I had funny enough, a symposium last year, and I think it was I had Scottish and English adoptees coming in by Zoom.

And we had a really great heated discussion, a [00:20:00] Northern Ireland judge was in for that one. So they, I went out and got coffee and left them to it. It was very lively. I should try and find the recording. They were saying, why do we not have the right to appeal our adoption, to take back our original name.

If an adoptive place, but especially if it's abusive, why is the, why are, why can't we reclaim our identities like this? And I remember that the judge, this lovely man, and he said, no, I agree. He said, the law is flawed. That's something that really needs to be looked at. And even with, I suppose the notion of redress, and recompense is really what's all about at the moment.

We're hoping that the UK will apologize to adoptees. They haven't yet. We're still waiting. How they, how it wasn't their fault, the ill treatment, I'll never know. But yeah.

Haley Radke: Nor has Canada. There was a the Senate hearings and those things, but there, nothing really came of that to this point.

Dr. Alice Diver: But even when you do get the apology, is it a piece of paper? Is it a word? Does it open the door to you maybe getting compensation? I know Northern Ireland at the minute is the ongoing [00:21:00] investigations. How do you compensate someone for a life that wasn't lived, or the relationships that you didn't have, or a placement that wasn't ideal?

There's just some things that are that little bit too horrific or beyond the pale that they're a tough one. And yeah, law is, I guess I'm back on my soapbox, but law is quite inadequate at trying to, unless I had a time machine, maybe that's why I'm thinking, maybe that's why we talked to the Doctor Who, me and the brother, maybe because, a TARDIS would have been good, because I think we would have, we've had, we had some discussions about, in childhood, would we have gotten along and, things that we could have, they were appalled to hear that as an only child, if you're playing a game of, let's say chess. I wasn't great at chess, but checkers, battleship, Clue, Ludo, games that you normally would have one other person, you would nearly, you'd have to go away and come back to forget your last move to work out a way to play a board game by yourself.

You'd see what my parents wanted to return me. Actually, I was a creepy kid. [00:22:00] Creepy kid with many personalities. But yeah, no, it's a strange with the law, I think is gradually waking up as adoptees get older and as countries start to ban international adoption and surrogacy has come into the mix as well with people saying, we're complex.

Lenny's issues are tricky and difficult and there isn't a fix for them. Yeah, so at least there's a bit of growing awareness not as much as there should be I would like society to take better notice of us not use this as punchlines that's the bit that really you know, it gets my goat.

I don't, I, you don't have to go more than a few days before you'll, something on social media, someone will be making a joke where the punchline is, and you're adopted. And it just makes me rather cross.

Haley Radke: I, I've heard you say this before, that the law is flawed and is not in any place to fix these wrongs right now for us.

And [00:23:00] in your new book, you talk so much about adoption and literature in, in various forms. And I've also heard you express this idea that fiction helps move culture forward. So can you talk a little bit about that, because I don't want to speak for you, so can you expand on that? And then what kinds of books and representation we're seeing more and more adoptee authored work in the world, which is wonderful, that's getting accolades and hitting bestseller lists and stuff, which is amazing, and we're celebrating those adoptees.

What more things do you want to see in the world that you think could shift the law?

Dr. Alice Diver: That's it. The memoirs are doing great work. I think it's so important that people are, that they're like testimony, they're like evidence, a long form of it where people are saying, okay, I know the narrative is that adoption is a thing of wonder and it's very beautiful and it can be a [00:24:00] good thing.

However, there needs to be a light shone, talk to the adult adoptee and get them to talk about their childhood. Because people, unless you, you've been there or walked in the shoes, you don't really get it, I don't want to say the kept because it sounds mean, but it's not a bad term either. It does. It does sum up.

Haley Radke: That's what I say.

Dr. Alice Diver: I'm sorry. There is kept privilege. There is. They just don't all get it.

Haley Radke: Another adoptee therapist of ours, Pam Cordano, calls them muggles.

Dr. Alice Diver: Yeah. Perfect. That is civilians. Yeah. Muggles is good. Because they, their world was very different to ours, from, you could say from birth, from pre birth, they didn't have to track people down.

Things that they take for granted, knowing who you look like, having someone that you look like and not having that. I think we do the eggshell walk quite a lot. I think we're often so scared about saying things to not drive people away, or maybe sometimes we drive them away first. I don't know.

There's just a lot of little differences there. It's just, [00:25:00] it's funny when you know when you're in a, if you're in a support group, if you're in a room of adoptees, even if you're not the same age. You could tell a story and the heads will start nodding and people will be like, yeah, I get that. Let me tell you this sort of one of mine.

And it's just, it's been in a warm bath. You wouldn't be in a warm bath with people. You know what I mean? Emotionally, it's not literally, but yeah, it's just you're among kindred spirits. I like that the muggles, I do like that. Yeah. They don't have our magic powers to read people in an instant or to cope with things that other people would find.

Sometimes you'll say something about your childhood. And you watch people's jaws drop and you think, oh, so I forgot you were in a little different universe and that wouldn't have been a thing for you. It's quite nice to appal them though. I do the, cause then we lose our filter and it's, I just think it's an appropriate response for them to say that was wrong.

Yeah, do you think? Yes it was. And then the conversation can move on, I think we just need to keep them educated. But fight the good fight. That's what I think we're doing. You were saying about, yeah, law just [00:26:00] doesn't quite do it. Even in other areas, it doesn't always promote justice as well, as we know.

Literature, I think the memoirs, definitely they're fantastic. Sometimes pop culture can do a thing, can reach the parts, that law doesn't. I probably said it at the ASAC talk. The movie Philomena, not without its problems, but it brought quite the message. It definitely brought it home to people, here's a thing that happened, a thing that was very wrong.

It's a pity the adoptee had passed away because it would have been good to have had his story and a bit more about that. The book, I suppose as well, I've gone through various eras to see how adoptees are treated. They're not always adoptees, sometimes they're foundlings, sometimes they've been rejected.

So there's a lot of folklore in there, and I was amazed to see how some of the odd little things in folklore that have survived. So burial, where were the unbaptised babies buried in Ireland? Was it [00:27:00] on consecrated ground? Was it a septic tank? What traditions went with that? Did you even get a burial?

A proper, dignified, humanising ceremony to happen. Why is there this fear of us? Because there is the fear of the unknown stranger turns up and goes, I'm your sister. Brace yourself. Some people are okay with that. Others are like, what do you want? Do you want money? That, please don't hurt me.

And quite often if there's a, a psychopath in a I don't know a Netflix tale. I just know I think that they're either adopted or they've got some missing thing. They're not identifying a parent. It's a little bit, it's a little bit tired. I'll still watch it. I'll still watch it.

And then I'll complain loudly to whoever's in the room with me, even if it's only myself. Because we're we got so used to that. What else does the book have? The books, I was told recently that it was quirky and a bit of a mashup. And I said maybe that's what I was aiming for. It has a bit of everything.

Where else would you get? You've got, we've got Heathcliff, we've got the Dickens orphans, getting along together. [00:28:00] Jane Eyre, because she had her witchcraft. That's the hill I will die on. And then I suppose going into The happy 20th century where you've got your Anne of Green Gables, which so many people love.

And I feel so bad for raining on their parade by saying, yeah, okay, she was an orphan, but she was the poster girl for a very bad system of transportation and the farm children. But even in the book, they're like, yeah, we're fresh out of boys, you'll have to take a girl, just lots of little little things that are there.

But it's good for us to read about it because on the second reading you start to see the little bits that don't add up and the gratitude, her main thing is gratitude. So that's in there.

Haley Radke: Can we talk about The Giver?

Dr. Alice Diver: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Because. So that's by Lois Lowry. I looked it up today. It was published in 93 and it won the Newbery in 94 and that's when I read it and I was 11 and I recently gave it to my son to read and he's 11 when we're recording this [00:29:00] and he's oh, it was depressing.

And I was like, huh. Anyway, I loved that book. I loved Anne of Green Gables. I had many books that deeply permeated my childhood. And you said you were playing games by yourself and turning the chessboard. I was reading by myself in my room the same books over and over, including The Giver.

And when you talked about The Giver in your presentation, I was like, oh, my son had just read that, so I got a, my literal childhood copy. And I was like, I gotta reread that, because some of the points you made, I was like, what? I don't remember that. So reading it with my adult eyes, I was like, oh my word.

The whole all of society is adoptees. Birth mother is a job you get assigned. And it's this low level no glory, servitude sort of situation. And I was like, oh my [00:30:00] goodness, all the bombshells I had from that. Thank you for reawakening that for me.

Dr. Alice Diver: That's, that's, it's a great book. I suppose we home in, if there's an adoption, not even a subplot, but just the elements of it.

So they had to, so yeah, everyone was adopted because obviously they took tablets that they wouldn't have the stirrings and the feelings and there was no romance. There was no yeah, no music, no color, none of these things. And yeah, and the term birth mother, it was built up to be, this is an honorable profession, but then you very quickly see that they're just discarded three births, that's it. We see an older lady later on who, had been one, but she never got a family of her own. And it's just very, they're very derided and so on. I don't know if you've read the sequel. There's three sequels. Son is the final book. That's the one maybe to go to for a little bit of closure. I don't want to give spoilers.

But it is takes you back and gives you more of an insight into what was happening to the [00:31:00] girls that were producing the product is what, how they refer to the babies. I think if I could, in some senses, it's perfect. It's bleak, but it shows you the dark side. What would happen if family life was totally changed and there were no laws protecting it?

And I think that's exactly what does happen for some adoptees. Goodbye family life and we'll just get on with it. I would warn mothers reading it if they'd gone through a system like that. It made me think of a lot of the Irish testimony, the English testimony. the brutality the ill treatment as the product was taken away and given to another family.

Again, lots of drugs, either to dry up the milk or to suppress the emotions and so on. And then you remember, this is a book for kids. It's for teenagers. But then I think you know what? Maybe it's, it's good that they read of such things and then they'll think this is fiction.

And then we can do a Margaret Atwood and say, oh no, it is not. It's happening somewhere sometime. Yeah. [00:32:00] And it's sometimes you need to shine a light on things that aren't right. Cause how else are you going to change them? Even if it upsets people, if no one ever got upset, nothing would ever change.

And we'd be like the little happy people in The Giver that don't know that apples are red and that never have music. They don't even have grandparents, don't have Christmas lights, don't have, any of these things. So it's yeah, I think it's a good, it's a good work.

Haley Radke: One of the terms you use in your book repeatedly is surplus child.

Dr. Alice Diver: Yes.

Haley Radke: Can you talk about that? Because that lit something in me. I was like, Oh my God, I'm a surplus.

Dr. Alice Diver: I'm sorry. I apologize. I never like people on fire. I apologize for that. No, it was a term used in I'm fairly certain it was used in one of the novels might have been Handmaid's Tale. Somebody used the phrase, of course, I jumped on it and thought, oh, that's bleak.

I'll use that. Why not? It's a bit of darkness. [00:33:00] I will appropriate it and use it. I suppose that, yes, they were, that was, they kept population levels in the giver. They kept them low to prevent future famines. So a twin was automatically going to be sent elsewhere, euthanized, whatever, to how they chose.

The child that didn't fit in, so Gabriel that sparks the first book and we later find out why he didn't fit in. But yeah, he's not, he's going against the system because he's, you're not sleeping, you're not eating, you're crying, you're want, you're not being sedated the way the others are. So he's a little, but he's not, again, surplus to requirements.

Handmaid's Tale, you saw the children, I think horrifically they referred to them as, shredders. So they were somehow flawed and were not kept. And again, she slips that in very quickly near the end, that one of the babies that we thought was being very embraced and celebrated and appropriated didn't quite conform, so there's a rumor that maybe it was chosen to be rejected. I think the first chapter with [00:34:00] the illegitimacy, the cheerful first chapter that talked about illegitimacy and children being exposed and abandoned. Or seen as changelings left out, they're fairies. Again, in a way, I suppose surplus to requirements or not fitting with, if the product was not acceptable, we didn't quite fit with what was wanted of us.

So you could have been imperfect because you were born out of wedlock. Or maybe through some disability or something. So yeah, it does put it up a bit to the adoptees will get it. I think I was like, who am I writing for? As I'm writing this couple of people said, who's your audience? I said, I would imagine it'll be angry adoptees.

That's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping it'll be. That, or people that have to live with us that want to try and understand us. But I'm thinking you nearly need to be blunt for the muggles or the kept person to go, okay, I get it now that you are facing that stigma and it has roots that go back a long way.

And it can sometimes be just a little bit subtle where you're maybe left out of something either by your [00:35:00] birth family, your adopted family, or maybe by friends. If you don't get you, maybe you don't get the invite to go to the pub that evening. Most people won't mind. An adoptee might go, what have I done? What's wrong with me? Abandonment again, and it just could be that you got left off the email. You'll maybe get a call later, but you do the little things that sort of are always there, always haunting us.

Haley Radke: Yeah,

Dr. Alice Diver: To be surplus , yeah, it's a loaded, it's a loaded word, isn't it?

We're bonus people, that's a better way of putting it. It's

Haley Radke: extra.

Dr. Alice Diver: I'm a bonus person.

Haley Radke: It is, but I was thinking and this is something you addressed too, right? We've got orphans, adoptee, foundling, and, sometimes we're labeled with an incorrect word, right? I'm not an orphan. I had living parents. I'm not a foundling, like I was born at a hospital and relinquished, I have friends who are literal foundlings found in a field, by a mentally ill mother who didn't have supports she needed. Yikes, [00:36:00] the terminology is so, problematic and you do point that out throughout the book.

I love having this extra word, surplus. And substitute family.

Dr. Alice Diver: Yes.

Haley Radke: Because I, I love it when people say,. I love I do, I truly love this when people say I was adopted by strangers.

Dr. Alice Diver: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Cause that's, that's not everybody's circumstances. Sometimes we have kinship adoption, but like that is what happened to me and to you, strangers, stranger adoption. So can you talk about substitute family?

Dr. Alice Diver: I think we're probably, yeah, when we're always scared of being seen as ungrateful because we're meant to be grateful because we, probably get reminded quite often. Oh, but you had good, I've had that said to me a few times, but you had good parents and I'm thinking I wasn't complaining.

I maybe just made some comment like I've been to Canada to see, why did you go there? You had good parents here. I think they're no longer living. It's hard to visit them. So I will maybe go and visit the living [00:37:00] in Canada instead, but yeah, that's the terminology substitute. It does sometimes sound very blunt and a little bit shocking.

Stranger adoption. It sounds like you're rejecting strangers that brought you in and you might not be doing that, but you're stating a fact in that, and I will always say we're mammals. We have other ways of sensing if we're in the right place, and that might not be, it may be a bit unfair, because I'm sure quite often the substitute family, the stranger, can be very welcoming.

Stranger's just a friend you haven't met yet, but when it comes to, baby and family, yes, it's a dark term. And if it upsets someone, I'm not gonna, I can't apologize to the kept person who says, oh you're critiquing the whole system. Yeah, I'm afraid I am because there needs to be something.

What does it say about a society if mothers can't keep their babies? That lack of support. It is an indictment of society and backin, up, up the church that thought this [00:38:00] was a good idea to create this industry. I know we're living in changed times and different times, but I think it's one of, that's one of the worst and darkest things that can happen to a human being, that can happen to a baby, that can happen to a relinquishing mother.

So yeah, I'm sorry that I can't have, the flowers and rainbows. My daughter told me, the youngest girl told me, the one that, keeps marching me off to hairdressers and telling me I'm awful. Because she means well, tough love from her. She had there was an office party a few months back and she said that she saw a cake and she thought, oh I wonder what they're celebrating.

And one of the ladies in the office had been cleared to be an adoptive parent, didn't know what kind of baby she was getting, didn't know the age, was told it would be an older child, was told there would be problems, but wasn't told which types of problems and so on. But anyway, so they had, Prosecco and champagne and there was balloons.

Everybody was really festive and cheerful. And my daughter says she says, I just, I couldn't do it. She says, because I thought this is lovely. This is nice. But also there's a child out there somewhere being abused. [00:39:00] There's a mother about to lose her child. There's something horrendous happening, especially for a two year old.

And there's issues, but we're not, we can't tell you the issues because it might prejudice you. But I feel quite sorry for the lady. I thought you might want to you know the issues, if you went to get a rescue dog, they'd warn you. He bites, or he's gassy, or he's smelly, or any of the things that you might want that information on.

But they thought, I thought, that's mad that's still happening. And I thought, yeah, that I wondered, were there any adoptees in the room that were maybe going to go and share in the cake? Maybe. But she's, I didn't eat, I didn't eat any cake. I said okay, but you're always on a diet anyway, cause you're terribly thin.

So I knew you wouldn't have eaten cake. But she says, no, she's just, I did just I did you say to anyone? Oh God, no, she said, I didn't want to be the bad fairy. I didn't want to ruin the vibe. She says, but I had to come home and tell you that I felt a bit so that maybe as a sums up society.

There's still that thing of, you can't speak out and you have to be like, yay, this is great. Somebody somewhere [00:40:00] eating the cake must in the back of their mind have thought, is there not a bit of darkness under here and are celebrations appropriate? And she was celebrating the idea that she was getting a child.

And I do feel for the lady that was, just infertile and I can see why she was overjoyed. But equally, I'm thinking she might have needed to have a bit of warning that, especially an older child, that's not a baby, you're getting an older child that's been through a lot of abuse.

Yeah, it's very complex. And how does law fix that? It can't. How does society fix it? I don't know. Grumpy people like me yelling at them might be the thing.

Haley Radke: Me too. I'm in, I'm yelling to Alice. I am. I'm doing my best. I'm, I still have this. I cannot reconcile how people celebrate the initial adoption, and we also get full coverage for every adoption reunion that people want to make [00:41:00] public.

And it's this happy, amazing story that people cry tears over. Do not know how the public reconciles that in their brain. Like why are you celebrating? You were celebrating when they were separated. Why are you celebrating that they're back together? I don't understand.

Dr. Alice Diver: That is a brilliant, there's an article in that somewhere, that's a brilliant point.

Yeah, it's make up your mind. Why do they have to be, yeah it's all so beautiful. Let's just go live with, let's do what the giver does. So everybody gets to be adopted, everyone gets to have all that joy and then we're all, yeah there's an answer, it's a strange one.

I think most human beings, we try to make the best of things, but I think sometimes ignoring underpinning realities, they're going to bubble out later on.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Alice Diver: We're very good at masking and saying everything is awesome, everything's wonderful. But yeah, sometimes then they said, oh, I wonder why was she angry today? Don't know. Something has maybe, the [00:42:00] little triggers are everywhere. If they could stop with the triggers, if they could stop with, stop triggering us, does it, do you have to have it as a, oh, if I got one more subplot or one more twist, the big reveal is, guess what?

I'm not your father, or I am your father, or it might be, or whatever the, whatever that reveal is yeah, they need to find something else to, yeah to entertain people with that's very cynical, but yeah, it just, it's becoming a, it's a little bit tired. It's doing us a disservice because it ties in with the whole thing of but you're fine now and you should be grateful and why are you not great? Like Twitter is a scary place to go to. Some people will get really violently angry at any adoptee who dares to not even criticize, but to just say, yeah, your system could be better. Whoa, you will open, the portal to hell and people will start abusing you. I wonder why. I don't know. I don't know what their, what the issue is, but yeah.

Haley Radke: They have a secret child somewhere that they're afraid is going to show up on their doorstep [00:43:00]

Dr. Alice Diver: Something like that, yeah.

Haley Radke: There's something. I don't know. I have one more last topic I want to talk about before we do recommended resources. And when you presented at the ASAC conference, your topic was forced adoption as a war crime.

Dr. Alice Diver: A cheerful one. I do like a cheerful, a happy little topic.

Haley Radke: I loved it.

Dr. Alice Diver: Totally. I spread joy.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. I did. I totally loved it. I feel like there's some tie ins from the book, some examples that are similar, but can you talk a little bit about that? Because I really do think it, it's on theme with the rest of our conversation.

Dr. Alice Diver: Yeah, I could, I can do that. So casting my mind back to the paper, I think I was looking at Ukraine and what is happening there the occupied regions where the Russian Federation has come in. Now they have, they decided that this is a war crime, [00:44:00] the forcible displacement.

So children are being, and older children as well, are being fast tracked and sent off to being adopted by Russian families, in some cases going up into far away places. It was the fast tracking of the passport that got me. So they're changing their nationality very quickly. They're saying that these children are in some cases they say they're abandoned, so they were in care. Again, we see the falsifying and that a lot of them weren't abandoned. Their families tried to get them back. So that they're orphanizing them. They're saying, oh yeah, no parents that we could find. We know that's not true. They're using international law as a bit of a double edged thing.

So they're saying we're not war criminals. We had to do this to stop them being stateless. Because to be stateless is in breach of international law. It's a terrible thing. They're using child protection principles with saying it's in their best interests. You don't want 'em to stay in an institution, so we're gonna send them off to this loving family.[00:45:00]

But how do you square all of that? And I know it's a very different situation to ourselves because we were peace time adoptees. We weren't fighting a war. But you can connect the dots. How many similar issues were there? There's, Reuters did, and Amnesty, I think, did reports of these adoptees.

They weren't allowed to wear the colors of Ukraine, so they weren't allowed to wear the blue and yellow. And they were taught certain songs, so there was propaganda. And some of them, as they got a little bit older, were saying, oh yeah, that was our former country was bad. Do we see a similar thing like that happening with us, as in, how many of us didn't talk about birth family in front of adoptive family?

How many of us, I never said that I got my non identifying information. I never would have said that I was going to search. I waited till, really till the folks were I didn't wait till they were dead. I did it and didn't tell them. But in some ways I was glad reunion happened after they passed away because they would have lost their minds, Oh my God, it was the taboo subject of don't mention it.

My mom once, she said, I think I was a [00:46:00] teenager, and she said one time, I want you to know you're free to search anytime you want, but wait till I'm dead. She had a very pragmatic way of looking at things. So I just, yeah, I just think there's, maybe, I don't know if the war crime will ever be prosecuted, we'll wait and see if that's ever a, if that's ever a thing, but it will be interesting to draw maybe some lessons from wartime adoption across to the peacetime adoptees, because we're fighting our own little battle, it's just a small personal wars. Against society and against, anyone that annoyed. I'm ready to overturn cars now. I will start the revolution.

Haley Radke: Some of the notes I took were you say, you said, are there some war crimes that are acceptable? And it feels like this is one of them.

Dr. Alice Diver: Yes.

Haley Radke: Yeah. See, look at you. You're like, yeah, past Alice. Good job.

Dr. Alice Diver: We're really listening to this talk. That's a bit

Haley Radke: Come on.

Dr. Alice Diver: Oh, I'm not used to people listening. My students tend to doze off. They [00:47:00] get very bored by me, so that's great. That's lovely that you took it.

Haley Radke: I took plenty of notes.

Dr. Alice Diver: That's a note.

Haley Radke: I, it was really evocative for me. And so was your book. And I really hope that folks follow more of your work. I know you've published many articles around this topic and your new book, The Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature, Orphanhood, Adoption, and the Right to Reunion. It, I think a lot of adoptees who, like me, have read so many adoptee stories will really find it engaging and I love how you bring the law into it, even for someone like me that is not really trained in it or anything like that.

I found so many things, I was like, oh. I want to learn more about this. I want to talk more about this. And so I know folks will really connect to a lot of those points that you're bringing forward. I think it's wonderful. I [00:48:00] know you've written so many things on the topic. And so for folks that are new to you, I think they'll be excited to deep dive more of your work.

For podcast listeners though, I do want to say you have three episodes on The Law Pod podcast, which is that part of your university?

Dr. Alice Diver: It is. Yeah. The law school do that. They put out weekly on just on various different topics, very good explainers, law, politics. This one was slightly different to suppose that because it was I had Korean adoptees over, I had Canadians. So it just got us in a round table to to talk about everything.

Haley Radke: I love this. Avoiding origin deprivation. So we'll link to those and your conversation with Emily Hipchen as well. Who also oversees ASAC.

Dr. Alice Diver: She's very good. She's very patient with me. She puts up with my bad writing. She's a great editor and she's very good.

Haley Radke: Anyway, we'll link to those things. I hope that folks check out [00:49:00] all of those things and other work that you've written. Is Forced Adoptions as War Crimes, is that going to come out in ASAC?

Dr. Alice Diver: Oh, yes. I think so. It's being, it's gone.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Dr. Alice Diver: I think at the peer review stage.

So I think it's probably come back to be revised a little bit, but I'm hoping it might be winter or maybe spring. So yeah, I think it, it ties in, you've reminded me, I think it ties in with The Giver and the Handmaid's Tale with the lack of reunion at all. So again, it's those novels, they shy away from really exploring too much of adoption.

So maybe that's where the, are some things like even for the dystopian novel, yeah, reunion, they don't go there. It's yay, happy ending reunion. End of book . I'm like, that was they, God. How did they get on? You've given us this A one.

Haley Radke: Did they get a message every day with a recipe and the weather? I don't think so.

Dr. Alice Diver: Absolutely. , that's absolutely that's the reunion handbook. You know, I not very bad.

Haley Radke: I keep saying ASAC , I should say it's the [00:50:00] Alliance for the Study of Adoption Culture. And it's a journal that comes out twice a year and there's a conference that's biennial. So maybe you'll present in a future conference, people could see.

What do you want to recommend to us today?

Dr. Alice Diver: I'll give my favorite novel, which I only really touched, I touched on it briefly in the book. Again, I think a book I read when I was about 10, An Episode of Sparrows. Now it's not, strictly to do with adoption. But I like it because it follows the experience. To me, it's, it marks a sea change. So it's set in the 1950s, just after the war. And it follows the experiences of a little girl who is very slowly and gradually abandoned by her mother. And she's focused on wanting to, to dig out, to plant a little garden among bomb ruins, like these ruined streets in London, but it actually has moments of humor.

She builds up her own substitute family. She builds up kinships with people and it's not a very long story. [00:51:00] And it's got, I will tell you nothing of the ending. Cause it would just be a, it would be a spoiler. The gardeners will like it because she's she gathers. She's quite a cheeky wee girl.

Like she'll, so she'll occasionally, she'll occasionally shoplift to get things that she needs. And she'll, it's, I just, I can't recommend it enough. And there's just a tiny bit of law near the end. But again, I couldn't tell you too much about it because it would spoil the ending, but it's just great.

And I see, I've read it a few times over the years because you know yourself, you read something as a child, you read it as an adult. And we get a glimpse, very briefly, inside of, a convent, a home of mercy, or whatever. She's so defiant the whole way through, her defiance. It's very funny and it's for once it's actually, I know it really sounds really bleak, by the end of it, you're edified, you'll be doing messy crying, you'll be doing hot mess crying, but the tears won't all be sad tears.

It'll be okay. But it'll ring you out on the way. So yeah, it's just if you're bored of life or if you want to upset yourself, for the week, you can [00:52:00] probably read it in a day.

Haley Radke: And there's no plot twist that there's an adoptee that's a murderer. We're good.

Dr. Alice Diver: Thankfully, no. That's what it means. Thankfully, there's none of that carry on because, yes, I'm one Elf away from losing it. It's.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. You and Emily talk about Elf in your episode, so people can hear your Christmas movie thoughts there. This has been just a privilege. Thank you so much.

Where can folks connect with you online and find more of your work?

Dr. Alice Diver: Thank you so much for starters. And I'll have to say thank you for having me. This has been brilliant. I was very scared, but you were nice to me. So okay, let me think. I'm on. Yeah, I think I'm on Twitter. I don't post much on Instagram.

I just, I will have a look on it. Obviously, through the university's website, I have a page. Facebook from time to time I will go on as well. I probably just mainly post pictures of the cat because he's a bit of a lunatic and he [00:53:00] merits currently fighting with a magpie. He's having war with magpies at the minute in England.

So yeah, like I'm on Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm open to all, open to anybody, or anybody wants to email, you can give out, the email as well. I'm happy for conversations. If anybody wants a chat or to complain at me I'm good for that too. Or to ask about the book, granted, anything, it's all really nice. Everyone, all welcome.

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

Dr. Alice Diver: Thank you as well. And it was really good to have to meet you properly and to have a chat. It was lovely.

Haley Radke: Isn't she remarkable? Just so impressive. And to add to that, if the high cost of an academically published book is a barrier for you, please note that Dr. Diver has offered to make a PDF of her book accessible if you like to email her. And all that info will be in the show notes [00:54:00] for this episode, which will be on adopteeson.com. Or if you're listening in a podcast app, you should be able to just click on the picture and click through the show notes should appear and there'll be links there for you. Thank you so much for your ongoing support of the show. I would love it if you would share this episode with just one friend, perhaps there's a fellow adoptee that you know that would really benefit from hearing from Alice's work.

I am so thankful for my monthly supporters. And another way you can support the show is from, with just like a one time donation through PayPal. And there's a link on the front page of adopteeson.com if you'd like to support Adoptees On or our new project. We would love to have you, um, back the work we're doing and help us keep the lights on and paying all of our fellow adoptees for their work here.

Thank you [00:55:00] so much for listening. And as promised, we are going to talk again very soon. This summer. Oh, you can hear my dog. Spencer cannot be chill today while I'm trying to record this for you. Sorry. He's digging on my carpet. We are going to have shows throughout the summer and there'll be two episodes in July and two in August.

And our first July episode will be coming up for you on July 12th, 2024. Thanks for listening. Let's talk again very [00:56:00] soon.

283 Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/283

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

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. We have a returning guest, adoptee therapist, Cam Lee Small, back with us today. Cam has a brand new book out, The Adoptee's Journey from Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment, published by A Faith Based Press.

I recently got to meet Cam in real life, and he is just as warm and genuine as he appears on the internet. In our conversation today, Cam and I talk about how most churches have majorly missed the mark in serving adoptees. We address how gotcha day [00:01:00] misses the lost-ya day and the grief of adoption. One of my favorite things Cam shares in his book, and we do address it, is that just being an adopted person takes an extraordinary amount of cognitive and emotional bandwidth.

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

Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On. Welcome back to Adoptees On Cam Lee Small. Hi Cam.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: I'm so glad to be here, Haley. Thanks for having me.

Haley Radke: I am so excited because you have a brand new book out and it's part [00:02:00] memoir, like you have a chunk of your story in there and I loved hearing more about that directly from you, but I know you've been on the show before, but would you start and just share a little bit of your story with us for folks who may not know you?

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: Absolutely. I am coming into this space as a Korean American adoptee, and right now, professionally, I serve as a mental health provider here in the Twin Cities, and a lot of my work is pointed to serve adult adoptees, teen adoptees, and their families. And just normalizing this conversation on mental health.

So that's a snapshot and I'm sure we'll get further into that as we go along.

Haley Radke: Let's start with the obvious. Your Instagram handle is Therapy Redeemed. You are publishing this book with IVP, which is a faith based organization. And so we are coming at this today from more of a [00:03:00] Christian faith based lens.

That's the questions I'm going to come to you with. So can you tell me a little bit about your background with Christianity and where you personally stand today?

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: Yes. And as an early reader, Haley, I'm very thankful for just your partnership and support in this in the beginning of the book, and I'm referencing that because in the beginning there is part of the dedication and it basically is an invitation to say that for folks who grew up in the church, in the local church environment, we may not have always had the language or permission to think about our adoption stories, or our personal stories in general, beyond that lens of thanksgiving and gratitude.

And, it's possible there even just, me personally growing up in the 80s, there just wasn't an organized [00:04:00] system or set of words and testimonies. This particular book is written as a sort of love letter to all adoptees and adoptees who grew up in the church wondering, what do I do now? I've got some emotions coming up for me. I've got some questions and wonders, and I don't know if I can bring that to the fellowship or who in my church community would be willing to sit with me in this without me feeling ashamed or guilty or betraying my faith in any way. And so really this book is it contributes to the work that our adoptee elders have done.

And I hope to provide another entry point for folks who want to talk about this while preserving their sense of their valued faith, what they believe about scripture, [00:05:00] about God, about Christ, about all of those layers that might be very important to them, but they do have a hunger to know more and perhaps be engaged and participate more in this global movement of adoptee consciousness.

That model we're even just co creating still, not me personally, but co creating as a community. As these publications continue to come out.

Haley Radke: So I know you and I both know this, but I'm gonna say it out loud that so many of us were adopted into Christian families. Then as we were raised in the church had this sense of we are supposed to be this model for how God adopted us as well.

And we're like literally the poster child for, whatever you want to say, the symbolic adoption of God into his family. [00:06:00] And so unpacking that as teens or adults, or whenever we're coming into adoptee consciousness has meant for so many of us, this break in faith and this break with the church because it's like the two things cannot live simultaneously within us. I know you have thoughts on that. What do you want to say about that? And have you observed that in your own clients? I know so many of us, people who've been on the show have fully walked away from the church and so many people in my community will say so as well.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: There's an interesting perspective that came to my mind as I was hearing you walk me through that Haley, there's maybe someone who feels like they, they've, have too much of one kind of background [00:07:00] to completely subscribe to or embrace this new conversation or a different conversation, a third space, so to speak, and I'm putting to get this together on like in real time with you right now.

That's why I'm so grateful for these types of dialogues that, oh, maybe I'm too Christian. To say that adoption isn't just love, or adoption isn't just beautiful, maybe I'm too Christian to even wonder, is it more than that? And then, there might be someone who feels like, I feel so strongly about challenging some of these dominant themes that have hurt so many people in communities. I have that within me. Am I still able to explore faith and what that could mean? Am I even still welcome in this small group at church? Will you still pray for [00:08:00] me? Do I still pray? These are the types of complexities that are coming up for folks and that I've navigated myself as we think about unpacking and expanding, widening the scope of this conversation about adoption, faith, and mental health.

That's a, in a nutshell, what I'm seeing personally going through that walk. And it's an ongoing, always in process kind of journey, especially as my children have different questions and different wonderings as they get older. And also as I work with adoptees, adult adoptees on a daily basis, really wanting to honor their story and where they're coming from and sit with them, not in a sugar coated manner.

And definitely not in like I'm an expert on you. Let me, as a clinician tell you what to think, feel, and do. But really as a co struggler, a soldier nerd, just a fellow human trying to make sense [00:09:00] of this 80, 90 years, however much time we've got on this spinning rock, I'm right there alongside you.

Let's sit with this together.

Haley Radke: Have you had conversations personally with leaders in churches you've been involved with regards to adoption?

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: Yes. Two layers there. I guess there's the church communities that I've personally been a part of. And yes, we've had conversations about this before.

And having space to share my testimony and work through that with folks and for myself, the ones that I've worked with, just the fellowships that I've been a part of in the local community I personally have been thankful for the invitation, the permission, the encouragement to ask away, to not just accept what we tell you blindly, but this is a conversation.

This isn't [00:10:00] a fully top down I am the pastor, or I am the small group leader, or I am the whatever, and you do what I say because I heard from God this week. It's really tell me more. This is a layer of the human experience that matters. It's significant, so we can talk about that here. So I've been grateful to have that open space.

So that's one layer. Another layer, the second layer, is church communities and leaders that approach me and invite me in to speak or to work with their congregation or their community. They're already invested and interested in this conversation, and they're already aware and have a desire to learn more and connect the people under their care to this conversation.

Now, it's possible that, it is the case that I've been in, spaces that [00:11:00] are associated with or adjacent to a faith background where not everyone in the audience agrees with what I'm saying, or they have some reservation about even, oh, racial identity is something that demands our attention. Oh what about X, Y, Z?

What about reverse? Sure. Let's talk about that. And I think for me, that's been the part of my work is the work to meet folks. And like I said, for me, I'm not saying anyone else has to do this or should do this, or this makes you good or bad. But for me, part of my journey is meeting folks there. At that conference or in that audience, let's sit together and talk about that.

Now, it's not going to be my job to say, okay, by the end of our talk today or by the end of my session, you're going to leave here believing everything that I believe or agreeing with everything that I say, but at least you have a category in your mind. And so do I. Of a time when you sat with someone who didn't fully agree with [00:12:00] you and you were able to have a constructive conversation about it and we exchanged ideas.

That's a dialogue. Like my goal is not to convert you, even though maybe your goal is to convert me, but my goal is to sit with you and learn from you, but also share some of what's in my mind and heart and body and soul with you. Because now all of the neurons in your mind or some of them have rallied together and organized and now a thought.

And maybe just part of the thought that was in my mind is now inside your mind, and that's what you can take home with you when you consider your 17 year old teen adoptee who is wondering about race, but you're telling them you don't see color. Now you have something to take to them.

Haley Radke: Do you feel like there's been a shift in the last few years. I know I've recounted this story on the show before. Forgive me for repeating myself, but a number of years ago, I'm going to say six, maybe ish years ago, I asked at my former church, if I could [00:13:00] host my adult adoptee support group there and through a series of meetings was declined. And I really got the sense it was because we don't want to hurt any of the adoptive parents feelings in our church by suggesting that there's anything wrong with adoption, like why would adult adoptees need a support group? And so that was spiritually excruciating for me, eventually leading me to not attend that church anymore. And now we're attending a new church and say the last six months or so. And I recently had a meeting with our pastor and his wife, we had them over for a dinner meeting, sounds so official. And I explained the circumstances of that. And we were talking about adoption and it was interesting to me, their response about seeing adoptees as having had a loss and the pastor's wife in particular, she was saying like, oh, like I can see there's like this [00:14:00] grief, this unacknowledged grief.

And I was like, Okay, now this is a 180, so have you seen any shifts in conversations over time? Do you think it is having the church wake up to some of the, I'm a white adoptee adopted by white parents. But there's been so many more conversations about race lately that some churches are waking up to as well.

And I know there's so many intercountry adoptees that were raised by Christians as well. So thoughts.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: The welcoming of conversation associated with mental health support. We're destigmatizing that. We're normalizing that conversation and we're widening the doorway to who can benefit from mental health.

We're also rebuilding what mental health means or is or implications of it. So rather [00:15:00] than mental health support is a punishment or a consequence for deviant behavior, it's actually this very essential life giving practice, including preventative care as well, that increases and fosters and nurtures our connection with other people.

We're relational beings. And once we started to see in over the past decade, I think, yeah, the spirit of the times has shifted once we have begun to see mental health in that realm of an actual like healthy thing that we don't just make people go to I think that is that's one of the significant factors in the conversation being more accessible in the church and leaders in the church being more willing to explore so what does that mean for everyone, and especially for [00:16:00] adoptees. So what your dinner guests would say, wow, there's some, I can acknowledge there's some grief related to the experience of family separation and adoption and the way that we would normally have a survivor's group for a natural disaster or domestic abuse or any kind of experience where it left an imprint on a person or an individual, and now there's a support group for it. Yeah, the notion of where is the adoption survivor support group? Adoption isn't something that we survive. And then we get into the semantics of like adoption. But we're saying that if you're in a family and for whatever reason now you're not, that can potentially leave an imprint on you, whether you're an infant, or a toddler, or at any age.

That [00:17:00] doesn't just go unnoticed by our mind, body, soul. Okay? If that is true, then it's also true that anyone who has experienced that might benefit from being able to talk about it. Because that's how healing works. Part of the process of healing is being able to explore, identify, and organize my thoughts around something that happened and be invited and even practice this sort of increased capacity to make new meanings out of it and ultimately make decisions about it in my life for what does that mean now for my relationships, for my roles in my family, my role professionally, my role as an advocate, a community member. So that's where I see some of that shifting happen is that first of all, we're widening the doorway to say anybody can benefit from mental health.

And then we're clarifying what is mental health. It's not a punishment. It's something essential [00:18:00] for humanity for if you have a brain and a nervous system and a body, you can benefit from mental health support. Now there's formal support. There's informal support. There's so many different ways to do it.

And then there are different like cultural, there's a tenor of what that means depending on where on earth you live. But in general, being able to talk to someone and receive help from outside of yourself to organize your thoughts about something that happened to you, Or an event that you endured or navigated through, we're here for it and people are coming out of the woodwork to say, let me help, that's what I've been seeing and yes, we're always going to have the folks that are saying no thank you and pushing back and even, if you think about What's it called?

The the second touchstone in the adoptive consciousness model is rupture and it's almost this digging my heels in to see, say, yeah, maybe there's some new information that I heard about adoption, but I'm sticking, I'm going to double down. [00:19:00] I'm sticking to my guns here. Adoption is beautiful.

It, there's so many great stories about how it works. That's my final answer. And I'm not, we're not shaming anyone. We're just, we're describing that idea that when you hear new information about something, our body is immediately going to put up a little bit of a guard because whoa, maybe something in my limbic system says beep, threat.

That's unfamiliar to me. Something bad could happen, and that's normal, but that's part of the process, and then we move on to sitting with these conflicting feelings, dissonance, and then expansiveness, and all of that. That was, Yeah, that's what comes to my mind as I think about that shift.

Haley Radke: Thank you for saying that. And I appreciate the call about mental health, too, because that is something the church struggled with for so many years. We'll just, say a prayer and it'll go away. Okay. I have church critiques. I do. I do. Anyway, I love this line from your book, you say, [00:20:00] The amount of cognitive and emotional bandwidth it all takes from us is extraordinary. You're just talking about living as an adopted person. Thank you for that acknowledgement.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: Yeah. That's where I think this notion of you don't have to be at a certain location in these five touchpoints of adoption because it can be protective to say, actually, I don't time, I don't have time this week, this month, this year kind of thing to devote to the deep dive Into all that adoption means for me, because when I do that, I know what it's going to require from me emotionally, physically, like the energy it takes to even allow grief to come in.

And yes, if we don't devote this sort of like attunement to that, it might come out semantically in other ways, [00:21:00] stomach aches, back pains, muscles, I get sick, my immune system. What we're saying though, is that I understand there's a protective layer to saying, I don't have what it takes to talk about that right now, or to think about what it means for me.

I know status quo term it can feel loaded, but what I, the way that I interpret or the way that I, one of the ways that I mobilize that in the way that I work with folks is to allow them that space to say yeah, I can understand why you wouldn't want to engage in that conversation so deeply right now.

This might not be the time for you and that's okay. But yes, it is extraordinary, just the amount of ourselves that is required when we move around the world conscious about these adoption related layers. [00:22:00]

Haley Radke: I've heard you say that the book is really focused on adult adoptees as the main audience and that you hope that an adoptive parent may, so to speak, read over their shoulder in order to gain some understanding about us by reading the book. And I know we're not in the comparison trauma Olympics. But I'm going to just say your story is a little different from a lot of adoptees. So I was an infant adoptee. So many of us were, and then we have adoptees that were, relinquished at an older age or removed from their family for some reason.

And you share a bit of your story in the book I mentioned earlier, and you were just past three years old when you were made available for adoption. And I wonder, in talking about adoption as a trauma, [00:23:00] and still trying to tell people this is a trauma, being separated from our family is a trauma. I wonder if your story can highlight that a little bit more for folks that really don't get it.

You were a baby. You don't know any different. You went from one family right to the next. Some of us in the delivery room, however sketchy that is. Do you have thoughts on that? Do you think that your story just being just that slightly bit older and having some, early memories, does that change anything for an adoptive parent hearing that and being like, Oh my goodness. You really did have parents and I'm so sorry that, your father died when you were three, and that was seemingly the impetus for your separation from them. And, I don't know, it's oh, you were part orphan, like it's [00:24:00] very evident versus an infant adoptee who's relinquished at birth, etc.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: I wanted to give adoptee readers a chance and an invitation to pause and consider there may be a history that belongs to you that gets left out of our intake documents or the gotcha book or, the coming home party. So we're really hoping readers would get that. And as I considered adoptive parents reading this, the hope is to honor the fact that the reader's story, anyone who reads this is going to have a different one than mine.

And I make that very clear that your story is individualized in there and what are some of the comments that we face. And I think at whatever age one is at relinquishment, it's true that we [00:25:00] can say there is a significant history that belongs to you, relational experiences, interpersonal realities, at whatever age, even in the womb, in utero, prenatal, that would matter.

So if you've been taught that your life began at the gotcha day party. I wanted to give you permission to, you can still hold that card if you want, but I want to put another card in your hand to say, maybe my life didn't begin with my adopted parents. That's why I say I was a son before I was adopted.

Now whether you're an infant or a toddler or whatever, I think like children don't need us to tell them that maybe they can feel it already in their bodies, but they do need some guidance perhaps, or some mentorship or role modeling. Some kind of help allows them to articulate. What does [00:26:00] that mean for me though?

When I'm walking through the hallways at school, or even just when I'm looking at my family pictures or when I'm sitting alone in my bedroom, when I'm laying in bed at night, wondering why am I here? What's going on? What happened to me? That's the hope that something did happen. Not just what we're looking at in the Hallmark celebration party card.

But maybe there are some other important events that happen and important people that are potentially still happening. They might still be alive and depending on, regardless of the background of what that means, if it's a quote unquote hard story or kind of a difficult circumstance, there's this idea that, like for example, an incarcerated mother is still a mother.

Okay, that's a complicated feeling for some folks and I want to honor that. Just, the overall zooming up 30, 000 foot helicopter view is to say, that's a thing. This shared history in this individual history is a thing. [00:27:00] And if you've never been given space to talk about that or think about it, here you go.

And don't fully count on me to unpack that fully, it is normal to reach out to a professional or someone you trust or an adoptee group that fits for you and find a space where you feel comfortable to utter your first word about that. I think there's more to my life than what I experienced in my adoptive family.

I don't know what that means fully right now, but I, it's, something's coming up for me and to have someone or a group of people say, me too, that's welcomed here. Let's talk about that. So there's an adoptee whose parent disagrees with this, or they've never been exposed or haven't had access to the conversation you and I'm having today.

Haley. My hope is that if they get their hands on a book like [00:28:00] this, it can be the RSVP, it can be the invitation to say why don't you think about this too, because it could benefit you and your family.

Haley Radke: I just heard Pam Cordano, fellow adoptee therapist, describe this as us being pulled out of the spiderweb of legacy of our family, right? Because it's not just we had a mother and father and they had parents and they had parents and then there's possible siblings and cousins and, all think of the centuries back and back and back, right? So that's building out like the spider web. And then we're like, pulled out of this whole system.

So I love that this call to remember we had a history. That's so beautiful, Cam. Okay. You say in the book, this is so good. Gotcha day misses lost-ya day. This affirms that situational [00:29:00] gains are enough to minimize or silence the impact of relational losses or events that happen to and within the person. Can you talk about that?

Because I still see some adoptees, again, no shame, celebrating their gotcha day. And I'm like wow, this is, I thought we were past that, but I guess not.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: It misses the lost-ya day. And one of the disclaimers in the book is I am not hoping to project or prescribe that a reader should feel a certain way.

What I mean by sometimes a gotcha day misses the lost-ya day is really asking a question. What have we missed or who have we missed out on by saying gotcha, period. That's it. done, end of story. [00:30:00] My hope is to say, part of the story can be your gotcha day. I want to honor that because that's your life. You get to co create, and live out that meaning.

That's part of the story. What if, or who would you be, or what in your life would change, or what would you potentially gain by saying or asking, what else belongs in this story? Who else belongs in my story too? Who else is in my story, but they've been erased or not mentioned, or maybe white out over there, over the ink on the intake form.

And when we can acknowledge that, I'm thinking about this YouTube clip, and it was a story maybe I actually don't know how many years ago, maybe five years ago, six, seven, eight, nine, ten about an adoptee who reconnected with a sibling. And the music, it's interesting, [00:31:00] the music over this story is like a Today Show kind of idea, like it's happy music.

And I don't want to take away the happiness that the two adoptees in this story were feeling, or layers of it that they might have been feeling. I don't want to take away from that. But it struck me that, the music, the soundtrack to that three minute story of two adoptees uniting, the music doesn't match the loss.

The music doesn't match the misery would have been potentially part of the first part of the story. And again, that's just a three minute clip. So I don't know what they did personally on their end before, during, and after that meeting, we just saw what the news team copying pasted and chunked up together in, in their videos, editing software.

That's all we saw. But if our culture [00:32:00] is saturated with videos and stories like that one only or predominantly, then what about the adoptee sitting there watching YouTube saying that's not my story, and I don't even see my story. That's a great mirror for folks who want the happy thing, or that's all they have, but I don't have a three minute happy thing.

Where's my story? The hope of, about, gotcha day misses lost-ya day is for you, dear adoptee, there is a story for you. There is a place for you to see yourself represented too. If you don't, if you're thinking, I don't have all the answers. I don't have all of the major happy music feelings in my life.

I've got questions. I've got unfinished layers of who I am and what I've experienced. It's dear you're welcome here. And we're trying to create more of what you need to feel like you're not the only one sitting there. That's what we're, that's what I [00:33:00] mean when I say it misses the lost-ya day.

That we need more of those pieces represented so that the adoptees sitting alone in their room feeling like they're the only one, they don't have to sit there much longer. We're coming for you, buddy. Just wait. There's stuff already out here. Let me show you where that is.

Haley Radke: I love that throughout the book, you are referencing all these other scholars, and I think this idea is from Gabor Maté. This is a quote from you. Adoptees especially are vulnerable beneath the push to sacrifice their authenticity for the sake of attachment. And I think that's, it's reminding me of that when you were talking about the gotcha lost-ya day, because there's this like big celebration and in order to be a part of the family and to show that we're a part of this family I feel like there's this pressure for us to, you want to participate in that because that's what a member of this family [00:34:00] does is celebrates you joining our family. And so I hope that, with your book and these conversations, especially for any adoptive parents listening, like we also need to have room for acknowledging the loss. And, I know lots of people are like, yeah, we get it. We get, but there's so many families that are still not doing that. And so disappointing. And I'm so hopeful that your Invitation to them to think about that will welcome that in.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: What do I have to sacrifice or erase in order to feel secure and safe and loved by you guys in this family? And Amanda Baden has that research from, I think, 2012 about reculturation but in, in that paper, there's this idea that, and I'm talking about international transracial adoptees, of assimilation is a survival issue.[00:35:00]

And so the reason that touches me personally is because I was three and a half years old. I was speaking Korean language, eating Korean food, knowing Korean culture. And now I'm here in the Midwest, Wisconsin. And so for other adoptees who've experienced something like that, the idea of assimilation is a survival issue because in order to get my needs met in terms of attachment and caregiving and feeling protected, the question is, what do I have to do?

Now, if I don't know the language I better drop whatever it is I know. And I better start picking up on things pretty quickly to say, I'm hungry. I have to go to the bathroom. I'm tired. I need a change of clothes. I'm cold. I'm too hot. I had a nightmare. I, and of course, like all children have to learn the language, but for folks who've already, who are already had that language, there's that part of assimilation that says, if I don't learn, how you're talking right now, something bad is going to happen to me [00:36:00] or my survival, my safety, my identity, my sense of self is dependent on how much I can communicate to you, dear caregiver, that I feel sad right now or lonely or I need a hug. Now, I'm not saying that is verbatim what happened to me and my family. It's a wider scope. It's on a global scale. It's saying what parts of ourselves as adoptees would come alive if our attachment wasn't dependent.

On that sense of assimilation, or that sense of you're with us now, you belong to us, the past is the past, they made their decision, people like us do things like this is a family tradition, you're a you're a Johnson now, or whatever, you're part of our family, what parts of ourselves and our lives and our stories, our capacities and potentials would come alive if there was that acknowledgement that you were a part of a family already [00:37:00] before we even thought about adopting, you were already part of a culture, a legacy, tradition, a history. What parts of us will come alive? If we allow that into the mixture as well. And so Amanda Baden has the reculturation term, and it doesn't mean that is the end all be all goal that we ought to pursue as if that's the badge of honor and the mountaintop, but there are different outcomes of this idea of how much of my origin story, my heritage culture is important to me.

How do I incorporate that? What does it mean to allow some of that to be lived out in practice? How much of it? None of it? Some of it? Both? That's all up for an adoptee, each individual, to decide. But if they don't know that there's language for this, and if they haven't been given access to this encouragement or affirmation that it's okay to explore that, then, What parts of them will they miss out on, what parts of them will [00:38:00] we, as the world, miss out on, because it wasn't given space to come alive.

There's a gift. There's a strength. There's light in all of that, somehow, and part of this is the invitation permission to say let's see it. It's part of you. It belongs here.

Haley Radke: I have this vision of adoptees who I'm going to use the term are still in the fog and haven't really thought about adoption critically before diving into your book and And just really becoming aware, and I hope that they would do it slowly because, wow, that's a big process but I think you're, I'm going into recommended resources because I'm going to recommend your book, and I don't endorse every book that gets sent my way, by the way. I take it seriously, and I read it, and I told you that in my email to you. It's called The Adoptee's Journey from Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment, and I [00:39:00] really feel like it is that invitation to really examine it and so thoughtfully, and I love that you present the research and you talk about all of these things. So I'm going to mention a couple things. So you talk about ACEs and PTSD diagnoses and how it's not really recognizes that yet, but maybe it should be. And like the research that's happening right now you share about this framework that you use that most chapters you have, questions for us to go through and like really look at our personal experiences and within the context of support, which you've mentioned, I noticed that you do this, you're always like, is there other adoptees? Is there a mental health provider you can talk through with this? Because it is these like deep woundedness and loss. That if we're [00:40:00] opening that up, and we haven't done that before, it can be a threat to our survival. It can very much feel that way. And I love that gentle process that you talk through, just like your presence, right?

People will hear it in your voice. Your book is so thoughtful in that way, and like leading us through these things. I also love that you mentioned talking about Korean adoption and like the whole family and this you talk a lot about racial awareness and colonialism and a lot of things that people may not necessarily immediately think of when you talk about adoption, but those things exist for a reason, and adoption is a part of this colonialist practice.

And talking about how Christians have behaved badly in, in this space, and including the whole family, I was like, good for you, Cam. I really appreciate that. [00:41:00] And when you share your story of reunion and the challenges personally, like I know what it probably costs you to write about that. I thought this would be so helpful for so many people.

And I also just want to say that there's been other guides written and things, but this one is very you really go there, there's no surface level anything. Who do you hope reads your book and what do you want to say to folks? Especially keeping in mind, I know a lot of my listeners are like, I was in that Christian thing and it was harmful. So I don't know about this. It feels a little scary.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: I am blanking on the author's name about this. F. O. G. as an acronym, Fear, Obligation, Guilt, and I'll send the [00:42:00] author and the paper to you after this. But when I think about the readers here, like if you have ever felt afraid for whatever reason, my hope is that I am inviting you into this to provide some comfort and validation that I can sit with that fear and let's take as long as you need.

I don't want you to take this book in one sitting. I think somewhere in there, I say if you don't feel ready for this right now, feel free to pause, put a bookmark in it and come back to it when you're ready. Maybe five years, whenever. And the obligation and guilt is potentially tied up in I'm obligated to really uphold these traditions, these doctrines that I've grown up with.

And if I don't do that, then I'm a bad person, or even bad Christian, maybe. And I want to say I don't have all of the answers for you. What I can say, though, I wonder if our [00:43:00] faith can be sharpened, because how do we sharpen one another by this as a dialogue. I don't want to put this in your mailbox or in your hands and say, look, here's the Bible, you better believe this or you're going somewhere that you don't want to go. I'm saying this is my story and this is many of our stories in the adoptee community a handful of them. What do you think about that? Let's talk about it. And for regardless of your faith background, I was really hoping that I can meet you in this book and say, look, I acknowledge there are crystal clear reasons and there are reasons unique to you why you don't want anything to do with the church.

I want to meet you there and say, I hear you. I see you. I love you. I'm interested in hearing more about that story. Here's a [00:44:00] potential entry point in that. I have my background, my training, my own testimony. Can we still talk? And it's not that I just, I want you to come to church. I just want to give you more tools and resources to work it out.

Whatever you believe about anything in life, this is a sort of generalized somewhat universal kind of tool that you can just put in your toolbox among the many amazing, brilliant tools that you already have, and that will continue to come into creation. This is just one of those. You don't have to use it today.

Maybe it takes a while, or maybe you don't find the thing ever. But at least it's in your toolbox and that's the offering. Okay. That's really who I hope reads it. And as I mentioned before, it's just a slice. It's a, my personal contribution to this overarching JaeRan Kim calls it the adopt an adoptee renaissance happening right now, this is just my two cents [00:45:00] and I'm here with you for you. You can take what is helpful. You can pass on the rest. I'll be cheering for you and us either way.

Haley Radke: Thank you. And I can absolutely see this something that people would come back to, to, if they're ready for a reflection or oh my gosh, I have an appointment with my therapist.

What am I going to talk about? You can go ahead and look for some questions and be like oh, I got something to go. Thank you. I loved it. Truly, and I just heard you are reading the audio book yourself. So for folks that like love your voice and your vibe, like that will be amazing. I can't wait. Okay. What do you want to recommend to us today?

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: I mentioned Dr. JaeRan Kim and that comes to my mind. I continue to be impressed and I look up to JaeRan as a mentor from a distance and just learning from her. So you can go to harlows-monkey. com and get access. And what I love about JaeRan's website is you can click on any one of her tabs and it like can take you on your own [00:46:00] deep dive journey, like back like decades.

And it's clear that her connection to the conversation, it's deep, there's roots there, and it's wide. You can find so many different topics. I know I wasn't planning to say that, we talked about this earlier, but please take a moment and check that out. And then that's where you'll also find the Adoptee Consciousness Model, either through there or Grace Newton's website, Red Thread Broken, and browse around, but definitely resources there.

Haley Radke: JaeRan was on the show and explained the Adoptee Consciousness Model to us. So if you want to like have a little taste of it before you read the paper, it was episode 235. Yeah. Amazing.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: Episode 235.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: Right on. And so the book behind me, When We Become Ours, the adult adoptee anthology, I just love the imagery that evokes.

And it's almost like if you're a comic book fan and you're waiting for a [00:47:00] superhero that represented you. It's like folks who started reading Miss Marvel, Kamala Khan of there's this person just on the street level. Anyway, that's a far reached metaphor. But what I'm saying is that if you've been looking for adoptee sensitive, adoptee centered kind of stories that go beyond some of the positive narratives that we've heard, I think it's just a, it's such a refreshing robust, rich, diverse pool of experiences and I hear it. It asks us questions. It doesn't always give us answers. At the same time, it like invites us to make our own imagery. What would I do in a situation like this? It's just I can't say enough about it. And the swimming analogy slash metaphor. If you feel like, when you learn how to swim, I talked about this in the book, my son is in swimming lessons, three years old, like it's a process you begin in this [00:48:00] part of the pool, but that other part of the pool, the deep end that still exists, but we're beginning over here.

And when he's ready for it, he moves on to level two lane where he can do a full submersion. And the people in the deep end are not looking at my son going oh, what a loser you're, no way. We're all learning how to swim together. Okay, and I'm there with him. That's why, part of this process it gives you time to say you don't have to go to colonization right away. Just know that's part of the pool over there. Okay, go in through an entry point that feels comfortable to you. You can go in alone if you want, go in with someone or a group of people, and start exercising some of that questioning, the wonderings the, just looking at it through a critical lens and allow yourself the time and space to go in, flop around for a while, take a break if you need to, get out, dry off, get a drink, [00:49:00] whatever.

That's part of how I've experienced this journey myself. And that's just one like example picture for folks as they get into that and including the resources that I just mentioned today.

Haley Radke: I love that. Thank you so much. Such a good I love talking with you. Where can we follow you online and where can we find your blog?

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: My website is still therapyredeemed.com.wordpress. You can find my book wherever you get your books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And I will be hosting some discussions online. So check out my website for updates on that and my newsletter. And we'll go from there. And maybe you'll see me at some of the upcoming conferences or adoptee community events. Be great to see ya. Stop by, say hi. But yeah, that's where you can find me. Wonderful.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much, Cam.

Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC: Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: I know I mentioned at the top of the show that I [00:50:00] got to meet Cam in person and he came to the screening of Calcutta is My Mother that was held in Minneapolis in May 2024 and we had a brief time together and spent encouraging each other, which was so amazing. And I got a hug and we had a photo together and everything.

So special. It's one of those things where you, I don't know you feel like you get to know people right online. You, I've had conversations with him and. And you interact with people on Instagram and all those kind of things, but it's still between a computer screen, right?

So when you get to meet someone in real life, it's oh my gosh, you're you. You look the same as on Zoom. And you like. And you're just as he was just so kind to me and encouraged me before I went on to host the Q and A. So it was really yeah, special moment for me. So anyway, [00:51:00] congratulations, Cam, on your book. So excited for you and I hope it serves adoptees well. I know it will. And yeah, I'm just thankful for that connection.

Friends I'm working on another show behind the scenes. I have a lot of content for you on Adoptees Off Script, which is the Patreon show that we released weekly for Patreon supporters.

And recently I dropped the podcast to two episodes a month. And with that in mind, I'm going to keep putting shows up for you all through the summer. So no summer break this year. Lucky all of us, we get to keep hearing from amazing adoptees and hearing their stories and the work they're doing in the world.

And I'm really grateful that I can do that for you. So please support the show if you're able to, it helps the work [00:52:00] continue. And I'm excited to share all the cool things that are happening and coming up. And I wish I could tell you, but I can't yet. And, all those things. So thank you for listening to the show.

One of the great ways you can support the show is just by sharing it, this episode with one person. Maybe, a fellow adoptee who has been hurt by the church and would like to hear a little encouragement from Cam today. It'd be wonderful if you'd share this episode with them. Thank you for listening.

Let's talk again soon.

282 Alison Larkin

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/282

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

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Alison Larkin is here today and we are so honored to have her with us. It's likely a lot of you already know Alison, but for those of you who are new to her, she is a standup comedian, voice artist, audio book narrator, actress, producer, screenwriter, and bestselling author of The English American.

Today we get to hear her story which includes reunions with both birth parents, seeking out a therapist after meeting Nancy Verrier and how she finally came to truly fall in love in her fifties, only to have her fiance die suddenly during the [00:01:00] pandemic. Alison recounts this in her brand new one woman show called Grief, A Comedy, which is embarking on a world tour this summer.

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

Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to adoptees on Alison Larkin. Hello Alison.

Alison Larkin: Hello.

Haley Radke: What an honor to speak with you. I know you've been serving adoptees for many years, but to folks who might be new to you, do you mind sharing a little bit of your story with us?

Alison Larkin: I'd be delighted. I came to [00:02:00] America when I was in my mid twenties in 1991 to find my birth mother about whom I knew absolutely nothing. I was adopted by the tidiest family in England and I had a very English upbringing. And the reason that I went to find my birth mother was because every time I was on a date with a guy, I'd find myself on constant alert waiting for the object of my affections to leave me. I'd be sitting in a restaurant and I'd go, he's going to go off with the waitress if I go to the loo. And I never let on, of course, because I was embarrassed about having such feelings. And I was, my love life was run along this philosophy. The key to dealing with a fear of abandonment is to date people you don't like. So if they do leave you, it doesn't matter.[00:03:00]

I began to wonder if maybe if I found my birth mother and I found out that it wasn't so much that she didn't want to keep me, but that she simply couldn't, maybe that would free me up to live and love like other people. I would watch my non adopted friends fall in love and be at peace. When I was in love or, really attracted to someone, along with it came this absolute terror that I didn't understand.

I was completely unconscious that it had anything, to do with early childhood abandonment at that time. I didn't know. And I, but I had a hunch it might have something to do with having been adopted. So I idealized my birth mother. She, as far as I was concerned, could float. She wore a white dress. She was angelic. And I had found when I was 15 [00:04:00] some non identifying information about my birth parents. And I remember it said about, her 5 foot 2, 110 pounds, American. And then I remember it, about him, it said something like, I don't know, 5'11", varsity football team, and then of the birth mother, it said relinquished baby because didn't want to ruin father's political career.

So of course, I knew immediately that I was a Kennedy. So with those kinds of expectations, and to be honest, a pretty naive, I had led a we'd lived in East Africa and West Africa. My dad worked for the World Bank and we lived in third world countries and we traveled a lot and I had traveled a lot.

I'd lived I'd traveled to Hong Kong and India and China on my own as a young woman. So I was [00:05:00] thinking, okay, I'm just going to go and meet my birth mother and it'll be like a regular trip. So I remember finding her with great difficulty. At the time, the only book that had any information about how to find a birth parent, I kept the adoption agency in Washington would not allow me to have contact with my birth mother, even though she had come into that agency and said she wanted to have contact with me.

It was very cruel. And I had this moment where I'm in London, and I go into a bookshop and my hand reaches up and I swear to God, I pulled down the only book at that time that had the name of the person who could help me in it, and it was Lost and Found by Betty Jean Lifton and I opened it. And there was a man called Tony Vilarity from the [00:06:00] International Soundex Reunion

who legally was able to put my birth mother and me in touch if our dates matched and the info matched. And I managed to persuade the adoption agency to ask my birth mother to contact him. And long story short, finally managed to find contact. And she invited me to come and visit her at her home in Bald Mountain, Tennessee, where she was living at the time.

And I met her and it was as any adopted person who has been through reunion will know, it was overwhelming. It was a complete shock and frightening. And I had expected that the two of us would walk towards each other in slow motion, like they did in the movies. And that our souls and our hearts would join, [00:07:00] instead

I was suddenly inundated with an enormous amount of information about her, which of course I wanted to know, but it was also about me because I had this very English identity. And then suddenly there was this woman who was telling me all about my creative genes and the writing and the artists.

And I was going, Oh my God, this is why I'm so creative. And some of the stuff she was telling me was really scary. About problems in the family. There was one relation who was suicidal, so he threw himself off a cliff, but failed. So he now has no arms and legs and sits in a wheelchair. And so there were things like this that was given to me as passing information.

But of course, I was absolutely riveted by her and what she was saying. [00:08:00] So I met her for three weeks, which I think was a mistake. I think it was, had there been any adoption counselors at the time, anyone I could have talked to, they would have said, hey, maybe don't go stay in her house for three weeks on the other side of the Atlantic.

Maybe just meet for coffee.

Haley Radke: Slow down.

Alison Larkin: Although whether I would have listened, I don't know, because I was in this, I felt like I jumped off a cliff and I had to do this thing and I didn't know why. And then I met my birth father with whom I had a real connection. I, my birth mother, and I found, I don't know why, but I was overwhelmed and I went numb.

When I met my birth father, he listened. My birth mother talked a great deal and I think found it difficult to listen at that [00:09:00] time in her life and I think when I met my birth father, it was a great relief because we were very much alike. We had the same favorite foods. We had the, you know the story.

Any adoptee who's been in reunion knows the story, same, all that stuff. And the connection was actually with him. And then he said, why don't you come to America? Because I was an actress and a playwright at that time. And he said, I think you do really well in America and being an adventuring type, which I am.

I decided to give it a try. So I started by thinking, I'd always thought I might want to do a one person show and I saw an ad for standup comedy in New York. And I thought, oh, I'll try that. So I stood up. I didn't know anybody in New York. I had no support whatsoever. I didn't tell my parents in England or my friends how [00:10:00] completely traumatized I was by the reunion because I didn't want to upset anybody because that's what we do is adopted people.

In my experience, we protect everybody else's feelings and we really ignore our own. So I was standing up in the club saying, hello. My name is Alison Larkin and I come from Bald Mountain, Tennessee. And of course people were cracking up and then people would say, oh my God, that's stuff you're doing about being adopted and finding your birth mother.

That is so funny. And then they found out it was true. And then I thought, if I'm going to express, they'd say, what was it like meeting your real parents? And the way the casualness with which they referred to my real parents, as my birth parents irritated me. And I thought, how can I express why someone from a very happy adoptive family might need to find the truth about the people she came from without sounding like a lunatic?

[00:11:00] So I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll write a one woman show and I'll combine stand up comedy and theater. And I will play a comedic version of myself, my English mother, who I had sound exactly like the Queen of England to differentiate her accent from my own, and my American birth mother who was her diametrical opposite in every single way.

And I started to talk about what was really happening through jokes. So I would say things like, I think everyone should be adopted because that way you can meet your birth parents when you're old enough to cope with them. And I'd say things like, of course, the adoption agency, things the lottery, you never know who you're going to get as parents.

I got lucky. Then again, if I'd been adopted by Mia Farrow today, I could be married to Woody Allen. So I was talking about it through humor [00:12:00] and the show, no one had done that at that time. We're talking like the mid 90s and no one had done a one woman show before. And I did. And I then realized, that I married a man that, who was very quiet.

My birth mother wasn't quiet and I needed somewhere quiet. And I met this man and he was quiet and he was very good at cleaning the kitchen. So I married him. I was not in love with him. I didn't love him in the way that I now know one can love, but I thought he was safe. And as an adopted person, and again, I think it was to do with my adoption, I think I chose him because I could trust him.

I knew he wouldn't go off with a younger woman because I was a younger woman. And I didn't have those passionate [00:13:00] feelings for him. So the anxiety wasn't there. So the fear of loss wasn't there. So I did marry him. And then we went to LA and suddenly I was going to have my own sitcom on television with Jim Henson Productions and ABC and then CBS studios.

And I worked with Gail Parent who created Mary Hartman, and who was also the head writer on the Tracey Ullman show. And we had, I had two, I was developed in Los Angeles to star in my own show and was doing stand up comedy on the side and then I had these two children and that changed everything because for the first time in my life, I was connected to another human being and when I was pregnant, I mean as an adoptee

I, my mother never was pregnant, the one who raised me, so I didn't know anything about it. [00:14:00] So I would go to complete strangers in LA, where I lived at the time, and ask them, what was it like when you were pregnant? And they would tell me because I had this nice English accent. And that was when I had not had any counseling or any support.

And at that time Nancy Verrier was giving a talk in Santa Monica, and I thought, oh, that sounds interesting. I'll go and listen. And she said something to me that changed my life. She equated, the primal wound theory, the part that I heard was that we adopted people are separated from the mother who gave us birth.

We're cozy and safe in the womb and then suddenly we're taken away and we're supposedly happy to be adopted by completely other people. But it was the first time any concept [00:15:00] of there being a loss at the heart of me ever came into my conscious mind. It was there unconsciously, but not consciously. And I asked her if she could help me

as a therapist, and she said she lived in San Francisco, but there was a woman called Dr. Marlou Russell, who lived in Santa Monica, and that she was an adopted person who had also had children. And so for the first eight years since my reunion, for the first time in my life, I had a trained adoptee counselor who was able to understand me.

And I almost, at that time, wasn't going to do the one woman show in a big way. I'd already done it in a little way, but there was a lot of interest in it. And I thought, oh no. I can't hurt everybody's feelings. I can't say things I can't speak up. And she said, why not? You have the right to your own story.

[00:16:00] And I thought, you know what I do, and maybe I can help other adopted people if I do this. So I, so the show then really took off and then I left Los Angeles. I was going to have my own TV show, actually a talk show. But I had these kids and I thought, I don't want to raise them in LA. The celebrity culture seemed to me very artificial and if we're, we adopted people who've gone through a reunion, it's all about finding out who we really are.

It's all about the truth, right? So I can't, how can you possibly live in, live any other way other than authentically once you've been through reunion. You're not going to, are you? You've been through hell to find out who you are and who you came from. So I said, oh to hell with Hollywood and moved with my then husband and two children to New Jersey, where he had some family.[00:17:00]

Then, yeah, I didn't want to be in the clubs. I didn't want to perform at night. I wanted to be with my kids while they still wanted to spend time with me. And I was fascinated by the fact that here were two genetic relatives of mine, who I actually wanted to be with. My, my birth mother scared me. My birth father, was my birth father with all sorts of complications.

But these two came from my body. And I then felt I knew how to parent them. Having been adopted by the English, I was never hugged. I was kept at the end of the corridor in a crib obviously, because that's what the English do. But I held these children. They slept with me. I nursed them.

And as I did, I think a part of me healed. And so to any adopted person listening, who is afraid of having [00:18:00] children, I would say, have children. Don't be afraid. I was scared. But when I did I learned what love was. So I quit performing. And I went to in New Jersey, I thought I was getting a little pissed off by the fact that in every commercial novel, adopted people are portrayed as eternally damaged victims at best, or serial killers.

And I thought, there's no commercial fiction here with an adopted heroine as opposed to an adopted victim at the center. So I thought, oh, wait a second. I could write a book while my children are sleeping. And then I get to hang out with them when they wake up and I won't have to go to the clubs. So I wrote this book.

It took me a year called The English American. And at first I was telling the [00:19:00] story from three points of view, as I had in the show, from the point of view of the birth mother, the adoptive mother, and myself. But my very clever agent at that time said, why? This is your story, Alison. This is the adoptee's story.

Tell it in the I voice. So I thought I better make it fiction because that way I'm free. So I wrote this novel and it was about my alter ego Pippa Dunn who finds her birth mother in the United States in the book. I decided to give her a non adopted sister, which I didn't have in real life, because I thought it would be really interesting to compare another child of the same parents who are actually genetically related to them.

And it was a fascinating exercise. And I wrote this novel because I wanted to have short chapters. I wanted it to have a what the hell's going to happen next quality. I wanted to put in great love [00:20:00] stories. So there were two men, the guy who is the soulmate. And then the guy who's like the, the nice guy, there was, there were two men, there were two sets of parents, there were two countries.

And within, so I was writing, I think to bring myself together the nature and the nurture. And this miracle happened, and there was a bidding war for it, and Simon & Schuster published it, and I got a massive advance, which at the time, I'd never get again. Wish I could, because nobody, publishing's just gone to hell since then, but that was great.

And it was very exciting and I did a lot of benefits for adoption organizations at the time and I was always very interested in helping adopted people specifically. I was very interested in kids in foster care and I remember actually doing a benefit in California [00:21:00] and I was invited out there by a very nice foster family.

And there was another family there and they were going, oh, there's, those are our foster kids. And of course, everybody's medicated. They're all medicated. I said, Why is that? And they said adopted people all have ADHD. And I looked at them and I go, oh, my God. And they had no understanding of what these children had been through.

The and I find myself getting really cross. I'm just like, and I was doing a show that night. And I had this song at the end. And then I, it just came out of my mouth and I just said, there was like a line of, I don't know, maybe 20 foster care kids and adopted people in the back of the room. And then it was all the sort of parents at the front.

And I said, look, I said, I've been thinking about what it's like, to be moved from home to home. And it really does occur to me that it should be the parents who should be taking the medication. And these kids stood up [00:22:00] and we're all like going, yes, because, and I think this is, this gives purpose to my life.

I can, if I can give voice to what it's like. I'm just giving voice to my experience, but if I can continue to be honest, then I can help. Then there's some then I can, there's some use to all of this because it was very painful, a lot of it. And as a comedian, I see every, I do see humor in just about everything.

So flip forward. I then got a, I just became, I'm in New Jersey, and my husband, now my "wasbund", I found out that he had lost all my money. And he, I had trusted him not to go off with another woman, but, never make the mistake of thinking that just because a man knows how to do laundry and clean a kitchen, it also means he knows how to handle the family finances.

Now, he was not a bad man, but he was really bad at math. [00:23:00] And he had lied to me. He had not told me what was going on. And I realized that all the money I'd made from the book, from Hollywood, had gone. And there I am with a seven year old and a nine year old. And I, actually, funnily enough, I reached out to the adoption community.

Nobody, maybe they'll remember. So I was on Facebook. I wrote to the Facebook people, does anybody have any ideas about somewhere that I might like to live that has creative people and that is around nature? And I got all these suggestions because I'd been doing adoption conferences as a keynote speaker.

So I knew a lot of adoptees and people kept suggesting two places, Charlottesville in Virginia, and then the Berkshires in Massachusetts kept coming up. So I went to Charlottesville and, I always, I don't know how you are, but as adopted people, we have a really strongly developed [00:24:00] intuition.

Pippa, in my novel, The English American, talks about her knower, as in K N O W E R. And I've always said to people who've said, do you think I should do this? I said, trust yourself, trust your instincts. You may not be able to trust your mother or your father or your husband, but you can trust yourself.

So my instinct said not here, maybe the Berkshires. So everybody kept saying, oh, you don't want to go up to the Berkshires in New England in February. So I went up in February in a storm and I got out of my car and I knew this was where I was going to raise the kids. I left my husband, I had to, and we had, now I'm going to tell you this because we'd been sleeping separately for ten years because he wasn't that interested in that side of life.

It was a very lonely marriage. And so here I am in the Berkshires, I move up here, and I'm going, what the [00:25:00] hell am I going to do? Especially about money. And then Tantor Audio called me up and they said, is this Alison Lurkin, the writer comedian? And I said it used to be. And she said, Oh this is Tantor Audio.

And if you can promise us 15 audio books a year, we will set you up with your own home recording studio so you can earn a living in the middle of the countryside where there is no other work except writing, which you don't seem to be doing much of. Can you do an Australian accent? No problem, mate. How about Scottish?

Oh, absolutely. I could narrate sweet pink Scottish romances with titles like Mad, Bad, and Dangerous in Plaid. Can you do a Brooklyn Male? Why certainly, and I would swear at this point, but I'm assuming that might offend some people in a Brooklyn accent. And so they set me up with a home studio and suddenly I was able to earn a [00:26:00] living and be with my children.

Because the good thing about when I'm writing a book, I can't think about anything else. But when you're reading other people's books, you can shut the door on the studio at three o'clock and then listen to your children's tales of woe or joy, depending on what it is that day. So I did that and then I decided.

People, I still had a name and some of the big publishers, I was working for Macmillan and HarperCollins and Audible. And somebody said, look, they're using your name to sell audiobooks. Why don't you use your name to sell audiobooks? I said what do you mean? They said why don't you set up your own audiobook company and call it Alison Larkin Presents.

So I thought that's rather American, but why not? So I started with the one book that I knew I could do really well, which was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. And I produced it. I figured out how to do it. And to my utter astonishment, it [00:27:00] sold. It sold really well. And I said, oh, I'll do another Jane Austen.

Then I did all the Jane Austen's. Then I did Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Peter Pan. Then I did Alice in Wonderland. Then I started, I just kept going. And people seem to love these books. And then I thought I'm going to make them different. And what I would do is at the end of an audio book, I'd have a conversation about, a lot of the themes that like, we're all still talking about love and Jane Austen was talking about love and we're all still falling in love with the bad guy.

And why as women are we falling in love with Wickham? And anyway, those that interested me. So then flip forward 10 years, my kids are in college. And I begin to realize that I'm really lonely in my recording studio, because it's just me, the microphone, and basically a padded cell, as you will verify.

Haley Radke: Yeah, we're in the same cell. [00:28:00]

Alison Larkin: So I started to, I hung out at the coffee shop, and I went down to the coffee shop, and there was this couple there, and they were really happily married. And I heard that one day that he had died. And I managed to pluck up the courage to say to the woman, I've avoided love my entire life because I didn't want to suffer the way you are now.

Was it really worth it? And she looked at me and she said, Oh yes. Was your choice to avoid love really worth it? And I said, I don't know. And then I realized I'm 52. If I don't do something about it myself, I will never know what it's like to know true love. So a friend of mine got me online dating, which [00:29:00] of course was hilarious, and I put, I write about that in my show, the new show, and then I'm getting a newspaper at the Red Lion Inn, which is down the road from where I live, because I like to do the Sunday Times crossword, and the last paper's taken, and the woman points over my shoulder and there's this man, and he is smiling at me sheepishly, and he's holding up the Sunday Times magazine, which has the crossword in it.

And he's offering it to me because he's heard that I wanted that the last, he's taken the last paper. And I say no, I just I only do it for the crossword because on Sundays it's so much easier than Saturdays and he says, yes, it is. That's true. And I noticed he has the most incredible brown eyes and we start talking and he was from India, from South India, Vizag, near Hyderabad.

And like me, he had come to [00:30:00] America 30 years before. And he came when he was 22 to do a PhD in chemical engineering from India, and I came from England to find my birth mother. And we both got stuck here, and we were away from our own, where we'd grown up, the people we knew when we grew up.

We connected on many levels and we fell in love. And I fell in love for the first time in my entire life. For me, what that means is there was peace. There was connection. There was trust. There was somebody who really got me and who I really understood. And I remember one day saying to him, we can't be in love.

And he said, why not? And I said, because there's no friction. We don't have to negotiate. And he said, I know, isn't it great? So [00:31:00] we just loved being together. So all that stuff that I'd experienced in my, when I was much younger, was gone. The lack of connection that I had with my husband wasn't relevant.

And I was so happy. And he was too. And we were together for a year and a half and we had just decided to get married. And a week later, very strangely, I was on a call, my very first call to a group of adopted people. It was, Marcie Keithley's group and it was a group of adoptees and birth parents and they'd asked me on and I thought, sure, I'm going to talk about being in love.

And I think Bhima even called during that. It was a sort of live Zoom thing. And I stayed at home one night longer to do that talk and [00:32:00] to encourage my fellow adopted people not to be afraid of love because guess what? I'd finally found it in my fifties. I'd found it and it existed and what a waste of life, but anyway, there I was.

And then the next day I went to Bhima's house. And we had a perfect day. We went, spent that night looking at the stars, actually. And the next day he said he wasn't feeling very well. Now this was in July 2020. He had a heart issue when he was 49, he was now 54. And the doctor said, if you get COVID, you cannot get COVID.

So he wasn't feeling very well the next morning. And so we thought we better go down and have a COVID test. So we go down to the hospital where they were doing the COVID tests, but it was a side room at the hospital. And I'm waiting outside and I'm calling my "wasbund" and the kids [00:33:00] and saying, look, I'm going to have to quarantine because there's a chance that Bhima has COVID and making arrangements.

And they wouldn't let me in because of course, because it was COVID. But I said, just, he's had a triple bypass, just stay with him. And then about 20 minutes later, this security guard comes over and says that they left him alone in a room and that he fell on the floor in cardiac arrest.

And that they were putting him in an induced coma and flying him to Albany Hospital. And five days later, this beautiful, brilliant, 54 year old man was pronounced dead. And there was a funeral on Zoom and somehow I managed to drive home. [00:34:00] Now, I have this theory that if you've experienced loss very early on in life, it has, there's a perk to it.

Because when you experience sudden loss, again, it's almost there's a muscle that's familiar. It's oh yes, I remember this. And I survived it last time and I know I can survive it again. So I, of course, nobody came to the house because it was the pandemic. I was numb, which is exactly what happened when I met my birth mother.

It was as if, I don't know, it's a physical thing, it the body protects you from the pain somehow. And on the surface of things, I was functioning very, but I was like numb. And I would, I would. Of course I would scream in the car [00:35:00] when the numbness thawed, which is a very good stress reliever.

I highly recommend it to everybody who is listening. If you are really having a tough time, scream in the car. However, if the cop pulls you over and says, what's going on, ma'am, then just point to the radio and say, I was just listening to Lady Gaga. That's my recommendation, but that's a joke.

Anyway, so I got after a few weeks after he died. I started, I just got this sense that he was saying to me, Alison, get in the best physical shape of your life. So I started to go out into the mountains around where I live, and I started to work out with a group of people who were doing that during the pandemic.

And I ate very carefully. I knew that if I had sugar, I'd crash. I knew that if I put really good things into my body, it would help. And as I worked out my body grew [00:36:00] stronger and I one day realized that the numbness had gone but instead of the pain that I had been expecting which of course I had felt in snippets there was this extra energy and a kind of deep peace and a sense that he was right there

and that's when I got this other theory about again I don't know if it's an adoptee thing and I'd really love to know from your listeners what they think. If they've experienced this, and God, I hope they haven't, that perhaps because as adopted people, we are separate from our birth families, right?

But we're not, we're connected because those of us who have been through reunion know that actually we're connected to our birth families. We've always been connected to them. Even though they've been physically away, there has [00:37:00] always been a connection. And when we actually meet in person, that connection becomes visible and tangible.

And I'd sometimes wonder whether the fact that I have a great sense of Bhima still, almost four years since he died now, is something to do with the fact that I was trained from a very tiny baby that to connect with what you can't actually necessarily see it doesn't mean it's not there. I don't know.

And I don't know. It's a sense. It's not like literally, but there's a sense. And I have this. It's song at the end of my show. Oh yeah, just to finish the story. Yeah, I had known Archbishop Desmond Tutu because Archbishop Desmond Tutu had seen The English American, my first one woman show, and had read my novel and he loved them and he I was in touch with him at that time and I said, look, I don't understand Why am I not completely destroyed?

Why am I not toast here? Why am I able to function? And not only [00:38:00] why am I able to function, why do I want to live more fully and love more fully than ever before? And he didn't answer my question, but he did say, Alison, you have to tell this story because the world needs hope and it will bring hope to people who have suffered loss.

And then I thought, I don't really want to write another book. It's so hard to write a book. And he said, so tell jokes, sing songs, whatever, but tell it. And you can't say no to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. So I'm in my house on my own. I'd given up writing. I'd given up performing. But I remembered that when I was processing my very painful reunion with my birth parents, I wrote a show in a book.

So I started writing another show. And then a producer said, we're going to put it on. And then I wrote a book which starts six weeks after Bhima died, when he shows up at my kitchen [00:39:00] table determined to help me find love again. And then suddenly the book that I do the show and then suddenly the Soho theatre in London, they want it, and then I'm on the BBC, on BBC Radio 4 doing The Woman's Hour interview, talking as I have been with you, honestly, because I don't care what people think.

I really don't and suddenly, there's all these people and these people who've lost people are coming to the show. And then, suddenly, it's being produced and the show is going to the Edinburgh Festival starting June 30th. And then, it's going there all month to the assembly rooms. Then, it's going back to London.

Then, it's going on a theatre, a 30 theatre UK tour. Then, Australia, New Zealand, Mumbai, and then the United States. And the book that I have just finished, we are making available only for people who have just seen the show, because I want them to read it first. And I don't care. I'm breaking the rules. I love to break the rules, don't you?

And so [00:40:00] that's people can get it at the shows. And so that in a nutshell. Is the answer to your question. And that's not a nutshell.

Haley Radke: Oh my god. I've researched you, I've read both your books, I've watched multiple interviews.

Alison Larkin: Oh, you have?

Haley Radke: Yes, I have. Absolutely. I get prepared.

Alison Larkin: Oh.

Haley Radke: So I was ready, but you took us on a journey, so I'm thankful. You're such a great storyteller, of course, because of your expertise in that area. I watched that, ironically, it's called The Happy Hour interview that you did right before Bhima died.

Alison Larkin: Oh, you did?

Haley Radke: I did. I watched it before I read your second book and you were like glowing with joy when you were talking about your relationship with him. And so to know just a few [00:41:00] short days later, you would lose him is just.

Alison Larkin: Two days later, literally, under 48 hours later.

Haley Radke: That's just unreal.

Alison Larkin: But here's the thing, here's the thing. If I, with my background, can go through that, and not only be okay, but be fully alive, and I know I will love again, then we all can. I believe in the end, my daughter said, and again, I wonder if this relates to adoptees as well, but my daughter said I think I know what happened. And I said, why should I be doing a course on the neuroscience of love? And she said, I think when Bhima died, the love didn't. All that joy that you saw in that interview, all the joy that I felt [00:42:00] was still there.

And what it's, the love has gone into this new show in this book. And it is time for me, I have basically for the last four years seen very few people apart from my dachshund, Charlie. And it is time for me now to go out into the world and reconnect with people again. So that what I want to do is to go back to that adoptee group and say, it's okay.

The most, the thing that I was most afraid of, the reason I avoided love all those years was because if this sort of thing happened, I would never survive it. Not only have I survived it, I've been transformed by it. And that love, whether you're alive or not, it's there. That's what I believe. And so does that make sense to you?

Haley Radke: I think so. I think, so one of the things I really appreciate about The [00:43:00] English American is it brought to light, was it was published in 08, is that right?

Alison Larkin: Yeah.

Haley Radke: First, for the first time. It was, it brought to light the challenges of reunion where, we can get really romanticize reunion and you stay very connected with your adoptive parents.

It re reunion challenges help you have conversations with your adoptive parents, and I think one of the things you've been able to really articulate well to us in all of your work is that it's not, it's normal to want to know where you came from and you can do that and keep connected with your adoptive parents when you're talking about things with them.

Honestly, they're open about it. They didn't seem to feel threatened by it, right? So you have this very good balance there, and you are still supported there. And I think a lot of [00:44:00] adoptees can be critical of that.

Alison Larkin: I have to be honest with you. That was a novel.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Alison Larkin: So in The English American, I wrote what I would have liked to have happened.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Alison Larkin: Because when you're writing a novel, you can create whatever you want. The reality is that I didn't really talk about it with my adoptive parents.

Haley Radke: Oh, do you wish you had?

Alison Larkin: I talked about it enough, but then when I wrote the book, I had told them. So I told them through the art what happened and how I felt about them, but they wouldn't, they were English. So the English don't really communicate. I, so in real life, I relate to people who felt they couldn't talk to their adoptive parents. And yeah, I just created a story I would have loved to have happened, but it wasn't all factually true, just to to be.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that, because I do, yeah, yes, fictionalized the experience.

Alison Larkin: Yeah, it's just, I wouldn't want to think. That [00:45:00] was, yeah, that's why I'm right. That's why I wrote the second book. I wanted to create something.

Haley Radke: OK, so so putting that together, I think a lot of us have struggled with relationships. I personally, I got married very young, and I met my husband in our first year of university together, and this year will be our 20th wedding anniversary.

And I lucked out big time. He is amazing. And yeah. study and stable and all those things that I am not necessarily always. And so when I, and I watch my friends struggle with that and talk about these, like how hard it is to connect or, find the person. I love that you were sharing all of those learnings you've had through the decades like, because we don't talk about that enough.

And I think it's, you're opening a conversation with [00:46:00] adoptees who maybe haven't figured out, oh, it's from that. Oh because we can feel broken. We can feel like, as you said earlier, like the normal story, fictional story of adoptees, it's serial killer, or it's like we're these broken, traumatized people.

Alison Larkin: Which actually I find quite irritating as well. And I've actually taken Nancy Verrier on a little bit on some of her writing. I've challenged her in person, and I'm sure she would respect my mentioning it here. I do not believe that anybody is doomed. I believe that we all have the capacity to choose how we spend each day.

And the thing about adopted people is that we didn't have a choice right at the very beginning. But you know what? We do now. [00:47:00] And as adults, retraining that part of us that thinks, oh, I don't have a right not having confidence or to say, actually you do, each day you get to choose how you will spend it.

Don't waste a minute, cause tonight might end it. Don't waste your time. Those are the last lines of my show, Grief A Comedy. Don't waste your time. Because however we came into the world, we can't control what happened to us when we were very young. But you know what? We can control not what happens to us, but how we respond to it.

And that was what Desmond Tutu said to me when I first met him many years ago. And it was the phrase that kept coming into my head when Bhima died. I can't control what happens to me. [00:48:00] But I can control how I respond to it and the adopted people, I know every single one of them is a hero because I know what they're dealing with, whether it's conscious or subconscious.

If you have been abandoned for whatever reason, it causes it's tough. It makes, it can make things hard and we can choose to live fully anyway. And I defy anybody, anybody to say you cannot, you are going to be eternally damaged because I just do not believe that is true.

Haley Radke: When you went to therapy with an adopted person, was it because you were afraid you wouldn't be able to connect with your children or be the best mom to them or what was the thing that was like, I got a [00:49:00] deal because some people are just too afraid to go there.

Alison Larkin: Such an interesting question because, I'm trying to remember why I think I knew that I wasn't even thinking consciously of having children at that point actually. It was before I had kids.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Alison Larkin: I knew I was in a relationship that was disconnected. I knew that, I'm not an unattractive human being, but I was always afraid people would leave me.

And I knew that there was, it was such a sort of light bulb moment when I connected the dots in Nancy, thanks to Nancy Verrier, when I connected the dots and realized, wait a second that's a physical reaction. So the closest you can be to another human being is either being in their womb and growing in there, which we all do, [00:50:00] or having sex with a person later on in life.

That is two bodies together. Intimate. And I, for me anyway, put it together and go, oh, now I know why if I am physically very intimate with somebody, it triggers a fear that has no place here. It's to do with something that happened a very long time ago. And I wanted to go into therapy because I needed some help navigating a way to live without that fear.

Constantly in my life. And do you know what? Now, I am free now. I'm free of it. With Bhima, it was thanks to him partly too. But by the end of our relationship I wasn't afraid anymore. Because whenever, he somehow knew if he was talking to a really good looking woman, for example, at a, [00:51:00] jazz club or something.

I'd be going I'm about to leave. That's it. I'm going to dump him. It's gone. I'm just heading for the door. And he'd come up to me and he'd whisper, Alison, I want only you. And it all went. And now, because I know how quickly life can go. I will not waste a minute of whatever time I've got left on old insecurities that have got absolutely nothing to do with my life now. I am not going to let what happened to me then affect me now because my life is too precious. I want love in it. I want connection in it. And a friend of mine, this may be helpful for your listeners. It certainly was helpful for me.

I had a friend who, as he was dying, I was asking him I think it's in the book you just read. I said, if you could give three pieces of advice to the people you leave behind [00:52:00] you, what would they be? And he said, that's easy. One, love is the only thing that matters. Two, remember, most people are doing the best they can with who they are, which doesn't excuse abuse or bad behavior, but it helps you understand it.

And three, connect, because it is only in connection that love can find expression, which brings me to your podcast and the work that you are choosing to do, because this is a lot of work. I know how much work it is to put together a podcast. And you are choosing to connect with all the adopted people who are listening.

And that is really important work. And bravo to you.

Haley Radke: Thank you. How about we'll wrap with one question and then we'll do our recommended resources. I love how you have balanced being an advocate for [00:53:00] adopted people, but being in out there in the mainstream and I know that your show Grief A Comedy will be touching many people who've lost loved ones and maybe not have a connection to adoption at all.

So I appreciate that you bring adoption into that conversation. How have you done that, bridged that cause some of us are like only in adoptee land.

Alison Larkin: I know. Actually I got a bit overwhelmed after The English American came out and I would get lots of letters from people telling me their stories and I wanted to help them all and I couldn't.

I couldn't, I wasn't, I wasn't a therapist for a start. So I ended up on my website, which is alisonlarkin.com with one L in Alison, putting a list of resources so that if people needed help, they could go there. I was in the end, I needed to raise my [00:54:00] children. So I focused on my children and I let the work do it for me.

So the book was out there, The English American was out there and this new book is absolutely talking about the challenges of being adopted and the fact, and just to throw this in at the end that I, the first thing my birth mother said to me was, did you know you had a twin? You did, only he died in the womb. And, uh, so there was twin loss as well.

But I put that in honestly, because I felt it was important. It's part of my story and I'm hoping so for me the way I do it is through the work. So you hear you are you're doing it through your work, you're doing the podcast and you're in and I've I'm just telling the story and letting it unfold as it will and that's I just that's how I'm doing it and, yeah, I'm not really very involved in adoptee or adoption groups anymore. Although I'd really like to be, I just don't really know how. So maybe they'll find me again, I don't know. But yeah, so I hope that sort of answers your [00:55:00] question.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I really love loved, truly, reading Grief, A Comedy, and the book!

Alison Larkin: Did you really like it? Because you might be the second reader, or third.

Haley Radke: No way!

Alison Larkin: Yeah, seriously, it hasn't even come out yet. It's coming out in two weeks, and the only place people can get it is after a show. Yeah, I'm just so thrilled.

Haley Radke: I know. We're going to talk about, I'm going to, I'm going to briefly talk about it, no spoilers, and tell people they can't get it. No, you're going to go see Alison when she is performing. I've seen clips of you perform. I've never had the honor of being in person, but I'll tell you, I did stand up comedy one time. I took a class and I did a set. I know. The bravery it takes to get out there and to do, I don't know what it takes to do a whole hour show or however long your show is.

Yikes. [00:56:00] Overwhelming. Anyway,

Alison Larkin: that's fun. .

Haley Radke: I'll at the very end, I'll tell you the joke I opened with, and you can tell me if you think it's funny or not.

Alison Larkin: Yes.

Haley Radke: Stay tuned. No I loved it. I loved it because it was memoir from you. And so I knew this is your real story. And I knew English American was fictionalized. But it felt also biographical, as I'm reading it, right?

Alison Larkin: Yeah The English American was extremely autobiographical.

Haley Radke: Yes, which is why I felt.

Alison Larkin: With the new book, it's did Bhima literally show up at my kitchen table? Therein lies a big question.

Haley Radke: But as a comedian, Alison, as a comedian, and having read English American first, which I know is fictionalized.

Alison Larkin: Yeah.

Haley Radke: I started reading Grief A Comedy and you lead with the story about connecting with Desmond Tutu. And I'm like

Alison Larkin: [00:57:00] Desmond Tutu? Yeah. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Is this pretend? Is this made up? Like that.

Alison Larkin: That was true. Word for word true. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Which I know now. And I knew after reading it, but I was like, no, I truly loved it.

I think a lot of readers will really connect with you. And I love how you show Bhima leading you. I don't want to say anything for spoilers. So it's beautiful.

Alison Larkin: He does go on dates with me. He's determined that I'm going to date again. And I'm just saying, absolutely not. I'm going to sit in the house and think of you and that's going to be what I do.

And he makes me go online and he accompanies me on a few extremely funny dates, which is all we'll say at the moment.

Haley Radke: Yes, I know. I think folks are going to love it. And I'm a little annoyed that you're only going to sell it to people after the show, but you're like to be the rule breaker.

Alison Larkin: I know, it is going to be released much more widely. And of course, there'll be an audio book [00:58:00] at some point. But at the moment, literally, literally, I just finished writing it a week ago. It's literally got the very first. But people can I tell people can go to alisonlarkin.com and then all the details of how to get the book where the shows are, where the tour is, you can reach me all that stuff is on the website. Now I think they put it up.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Okay, wonderful. We will link to that. What do you want to recommend to us?

Alison Larkin: I want to recommend two things. I want to recommend that if you're not sure, and you're in hell. Reach out. Reach out to another adopted person. Find an adoptee support group. Reach out.

And trust yourself. Because here's a couple of lines from the final song of my show, Grief A Comedy. I'll give you the lines. I can walk. I can breathe. I can [00:59:00] speak and see and hear and I can bend my knees. I've got two legs. I find things funny and if I keep my living simple, I've got enough money.

I can read any book. I can eat feta cheese. There are people I love who are living. I can spend time with these. It's not the life I thought I'd live, but I'm good at changing plans. I've got a lot to be thankful for and a likely long lifespan. And when I'm missing my true love, if I get very still and close my eyes and take a breath, I can bring him near at will.

I can walk, I can breathe. I can shut out all distractions and take the time to grieve. And if grieving is the price we pay for the deep love that we feel, [01:00:00] then grief is just part of the deal. So I would say to adoptees listening who may be grieving, and to anybody listening who isn't adopted too, is that I just think grief is part of the deal, it's the other side of love.

And yes, it hurts, but the pain will pass. And it's accepting the fact that yes, it's going to be painful, but it will pass. That is the secret that then you go, oh, wait a second. You mean pain is just part of everyday life? So is joy. And so I would say, focus on the joy, turn your head towards the light and accept the fact there's going to be pain, but in order to be fully alive, that's part of the deal. And that's what I would say.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. If folks are [01:01:00] listening right when this is released, you have a couple shows in June they can go to if they're in Massachusetts area. And yeah.

Alison Larkin: Yeah, that June 6th through 9th, the Barrington Stage. Yeah, if you go to my website, it's all in there. June 6th through 9th. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Alison. Just an honor to get to speak with you. I'm going to tell you my joke. It's okay. If you don't laugh.

Alison Larkin: Please. Yes.

Haley Radke: I said, I was like, I'm Haley Radke. I'm adopted. The best part about being adopted is never having to think about your parents having sex. She's clapping.

There we go.

Alison Larkin: I love it. Funny. Big love..

Haley Radke: Okay, friends, I loved hearing Alison tell her story. [01:02:00] I was captivated. I teared up in multiple places. I don't know. She just has this incredible energy and I think it probably came across to you. And this is how she is in all the conversations I've seen her participate in, this incredible willingness to be vulnerable, which that's my vibe, I love people who are willing to really go there and share their authentic self with us. And so I think that if you're able to go see Grief, A Comedy, and when it's released to the general public Grief, A Comedy, the book, I think you'll really feel connected with her. And I love this levity she brings to the serious topics. It's just really. It takes a very skilled person to do that.

I try to do that and I know [01:03:00] I fail often when I'm trying to do that. So I really look up to the way Alison talks about that. I didn't talk too much about The English American. We mentioned it was published in 2008 and she reads the audio book. And so to refresh my memory of it, I listened to the audio book to prepare for today.

And it's so good. She does all the voices in which she, showed us today as well. Her accent game is. 10 out of 10. And so it's, I'm going to say it leans towards like beach read vibes, which is so different than most of the adoptee authored work that we feature on the show. Like often we're reading memoir or like these serious academic texts together.

And so I'm, in hindsight, like I didn't read this in 2008. It's I don't, I'm not sure [01:04:00] when I first came across it. I know a listener recommended it to me even last year. And I was like, oh yeah, I remember that book. So this book is, it's very different. And knowing that it was a bestseller, sorry, I lost my train of thought there for a second, knowing it was a bestseller and that, thousands and thousands of people read it.

I was listening with those sort of eyes, ears. Because she really shares in The English American, a lot of the insecurities we have as adopted people, like she's oh fear of rejection and, this and that, like all these like quirky little things that most adoptees I would say have as character traits.

And so that was really amazing. And then the other piece I liked, and I don't know that I expressed this fully to her in our recording, but was she really shows like reunion, like this [01:05:00] excitement, the honeymoon phase. And then it's oh, what if the people you're reuniting with aren't quite well and haven't quite dealt with their stuff.

And I, I don't know if you can hear my dog snoring in the background, but anyway, Spencer's having a nap, sorry for the snoring. She's it really normalizes that view of what reunion really looks like, but also. It's like a beach read. And don't want to call it chiclet exactly, but it's more that lighthearted paced book.

And she's said before she likes to write short chapters because that's what she likes to read. And that kind of thing. I've heard her say that in other interviews. So anyway, if you haven't read it, I think it's a great one to check out and just see what kind of work adoptees have been doing through the years, she mentioned Betty Jean Lifton's book hitting it, touching it at a bookstore just like randomly. And 2008 is a long time ago already. So to know what [01:06:00] folks have been doing before us now I think is important. So I hope you'll check it out. I hope you'll go support her. And when she said world tour, like she's not kidding.

Grief, A Comedy has got so many dates. If you're listening, when this episode drops, it's 2024. She's got a couple spots in June in Massachusetts, and then it's whoa, the list is long. So if you're an international listener, make sure you go check because I think you will be inspired and laugh and cry if you go and see this, I am envious of those of you who get to go in person. Okay, blah, blah, blah. That was enough. I just, I really, I'm so thankful, I feel so thankful for people who have paved a way, and I believe Alison is one of those people for me, people who have paved a way to talk about adoptee rights in the broader community and [01:07:00] I, in researching her like I, I listened to all kinds of interviews and she mentioned she had a happy adoptive family and good childhood and all those things.

She always brings it back to but adoptees are misunderstood and birth certificate rights and she is an advocate for us, believe me I feel really thankful for the work she's done. And I'm really excited to see what comes of her new work. Now that she is back and touring the world and God, don't you want to hear her comedy?

I want to see a standup set too, by the way. Okay. I'm so glad. Sorry. I just, I had a great time with her. I'm sure you can tell. Okay. Blah, blah, blah. Let's end it. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.