Wandering Tree ®, LLC Podcast
Wandering Tree ®, LLC Podcast is the ultimate audio companion for curious and adventurous minds, offering a journey through thought-provoking discussions and unique perspectives on life, culture, and the journey of an adoptee. This show has been established with the simple goal of reaching other adoptees who may benefit from just hearing other adoptees share on the lived experience. Host, Adoptee Lisa Ann, will share the tangled roots of the life long journey as an adoptee, the search for biological connections, the good and bad of reunions and how saying "I am adopted" has connected to so many others. The candid discussions between Adoptee Lisa Ann and her guests will tackle the term "adoption" and how it is covers so many aspects of our society.
Wandering Tree ®, LLC Podcast
S4:E8 Unlocking Secrets of the Adoption Narrative with Lori Knisely
When Lori Knisely offers a window into her soul, revealing the intertwined paths of being an adoptee and storyteller, we're reminded that life is rich with complex patterns. Our hearts travel with Lori to the remnants of St. Anthony's Home for Infants, feeling the gravity of each stone and the stories they carry as we follow her quest for information. Imagine holding a piece of your origin in your hands, a doorknob from a place that once held you but left no memory—such is the profound longing shared by many adoptees. Lori's pilgrimage through physical spaces and metaphorical gaps in life's timeline paints a vivid picture of the adoption narrative, echoing the universal human search for identity and belonging.
Lori’s advocacy story is a testimonial to the strength found in community, the transformative power of shared experiences and exemplifies resilience and compassion required to navigate the intricate relationship between adoption, identity, and faith. At the close of this beautiful conversation we are left with a sense of gratitude for the courage and openness that Lori, and those like her, bring to the table. Join us as we continue to unearth and share these powerful narratives, fostering a space for understanding and connection within the vast community of adoption.
Find your people, cherish your people and love your people.
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And I wish I could just go up to her and say you have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be afraid of. I don't care if we become friends or not, but you do not need to be filled with shame. What you did, there's no shame in it. That's where I struggle. So my voice always is at church is let's stop shaming those women. That's where I struggle. So my voice always is that church is let's stop shaming those women. Let's stop shaming.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, lisa Ann. We are an experienced based show focused on sharing the journey of adoption, identity, life search and reunion. Let's begin today's conversation with our guest of honor, lori Knisley. Welcome to the show. How are you today?
Speaker 1:Oh, doing great. Thank you, lisa Ann. Thank you, I'm excited to share my story and to have a conversation tonight. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it as well.
Speaker 1:Adoptee. I was adopted at birth in a closed domestic adoption. I'm married. I have two grown children and three grandchildren. I've been married for 39 years. Ironically, I was also a teen mom myself At 16, found myself pregnant, married the father, and that my oldest child is the result of that. So I was as an adoptee. I also was faced with some of the same decisions that my birth mom had to face and I made a different decision that my birth mom had to face and I made a different decision. But I was born here in Kansas City, missouri. Raised here in Kansas City.
Speaker 1:I have found both of my biological sides of the family, but I'm not really in reunion with either one of my parents. I started my search Again. I was a closed adoption, adopted through Catholic charities, and we know how those Catholics like to keep those secrets. Do they ever Gosh? They're really good at that and I have always known that I was adopted. I was. My parents did not keep that from me, which is a good thing. Oh, important fact, I was raised in a family with two biological children of my adoptive parents. I have an older brother and a younger sister. They're nine years apart and I'm smack dab in the middle of them. They're four and a half years older, four and a half years younger. So that always makes it very interesting to be raised with siblings that are genetically related to your adoptive parents, which also made it challenging because my differences were pointed out more and were more visible to even myself.
Speaker 1:But I started my search for my birth mother in the early 1990s. New Missouri law allowed me to request my non-identifying information, which meant all last names and first names were redacted, were removed, but I still had birth dates and ages in there. But when I received that, I can still remember receiving that information. I can still remember receiving that information. It came in the mail and it's two and one fourth pages long and it's essentially the intake interview that they had with my birth mother. So it gives information. It gives identity information such as you know, religion. Let me see here. It has description of the religion, health, education, employment and general history, health history of both my maternal and paternal side.
Speaker 1:Reading that I do remember sitting down at my kitchen table and just crying and crying reading this very generic information describing what my birth mother looked like, that she was in nursing school, describing my birth father what he looked like and he was in the Coast Guard. But it is the first time in my life and I was 23 years old yeah, 23 years old at the time and it's the first time that I felt like I could be a whole person, that I was coming into focus of who I was, who I could be. It gave a little bit of a personality description of my birth mother, because she had grew up with her dad being in the Air Force, so she had traveled the world, so she was more, she felt she was more superior to the other girls in the home, and so she, she kept herself separate. She did not make friends easily, which I read that and I was like, oh my gosh, you know, I not that I related to her, but I felt like it was a piece of a puzzle that was being put into my picture of my life, of who I was, and same with my birth father, him being in the Coast Guard.
Speaker 1:He was an only child. Because both of my children were strong swimmers, I thought, well, you've got to be a strong swimmer to be in the Coast Guard. Is that where they got that from? I did have more information about my birth mother. You know she is the oldest of four children. Her dad was in the Air Force. It gave the ages of her parents, the ages of her siblings. Had very little information on my birth father. He was in the Coast Guard. His parents divorced when he was 12. Knew nothing about his mother and his father was the CPA approximate age which ended up being wrong. So very little information there.
Speaker 2:We're going to pause right there for a minute. That's a lot to unpack in a very short time period, and so I want to go back just a little bit for the listeners, and one of the things I picked up on that we will also spend a little bit of time, I think, talking about further into the conversation. You were a teen mother. You were also an adoptee. You did decide to keep your daughter I believe it's your daughter and at the ripe age of 20 something which, for myself, I can't even think about those years in that context. Right, you are also getting information about you and so, as you're looking at this material, how is that connecting also for you as a person who has now had children that are biologically yours, and you're looking at this information? What are your memories around how that was connecting for you at the time?
Speaker 1:There was one key information in there that my birth father and her had known each other for a while. They were engaged to be married. Then she found out he was unstable, broke off the engagement, then found out she was pregnant. She was sent to the home here in Kansas City, not by her choice. Her parents brought her here to Kansas City and they said that she was very against giving the child for adoption. But after being at the home for a while she changed her mind.
Speaker 1:So what that did to me was knowing, when I found out I was pregnant, how scared I was, how unsure everything was. But I had the support of my the father of my child and his family to help me make this choice. It gave me a connection with her to help me make this choice. It gave me a connection with her. She had to be scared that the whole comment also about her staying separate from the girls that you know because she was 21. She was 21 when she got pregnant with me. But it gave me hope that she wanted me, that she might be looking for me, that she loved me, and so it gave me confidence that I made the right choice to keep my daughter, that it wasn't wrong of me to keep that, to make that choice. So it gave me some confidence to continue on. And my kids at that time my daughter would have been seven, my son would have been three.
Speaker 2:Definitely shapes your perspective a little bit differently in the conversation of adoption and whether or not to relinquish or to have support, and it's almost affirming whether or not there should be adoption, which I'm not going to get there yet. Really, honing in on it isn't easy. And here you are many years later also talking about that slice of life and such a critical decision. And I just picked up off the table of conversation here with you that the tipping point of that decision was the support you had. Yes, yeah, very, and I wonder if we sometimes forget that part of the conversation that it is so hard to make that type of a decision and whether or not you have a support system is paramount to what you do. Oh, yeah, it's pivotal to that. Yeah, I agree, I also picked up on that. She went to a home. You know in the era that we're talking about that wasn't uncommon, and so you're in the Kansas City Missouri area. But was she actually in the Kansas City Missouri area? She was.
Speaker 1:Not initially, she wasn't. It even says at the beginning that she was brought here from and it doesn't say I have since found out she was actually in California and she was brought here to Kansas City specifically because her dad was stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base here in Missouri. There were two major homes here in Missouri that are well known the Willows and then St Anthony's Home for Infants or Wayward Women, and so she was brought into. St Anthony's Home is where she was kept. It was ran by Catholic Charities. That home just recently was demolished.
Speaker 1:I drove past that home twice a day for over 25 years when I worked at a company downtown and the way that I went into work I passed the home and on the way in and on the way home from work major intersection I'd sit there at the stoplight and I'd look at that building and I was like wonder what that building used to be. It looks like, you know, like a home and it looks like you know a hospital is next to it and stuff. And one day, through a mutual friend at work that was had a lot of history, knew a lot of the history of Kansas City and had a sister who gave a baby up for adoption and we were talking about my adoption and I said I knew it was St Anthony's home. They said, well, you know, that's homes on 27th of the sale. I'm like what? That's what that building is. It just shocked me and, like I said, it was just recently this year demolished and several adoptees were able to go into the building.
Speaker 1:I took pictures, walked through it, got a doorknob. It was weird and I was there with several adoptees to walk in and we just stood there trying to figure out, because it went from St Anthony's Home to Welcome Home, which is a recovering home for addicts and alcoholics, and they built a new facility next to it. So we were standing there trying to, you know, find out where all the rooms were where was the nursery, where was the chapel, where were the women kept, where was the common room? And we would stand there with our hands on the wall and we were like you know well, if you could speak to us, what would you say, you know, but the doors and the door handles were doorknobs, were original. So I got a partial doorknob. Somebody else got a whole doorknob. People took pictures, framed pictures off the wall and stuff.
Speaker 2:I would have classified that as surreal. I don't know how I would have handled that type of opportunity. I don't even know if I would have taken that type of an opportunity as we're talking. Yeah, got to tell you, lori, I don't think I would have done it. I don't know if I could have done it and I don't know right now if I would have done it. So, kudos to you for taking that step and, you know, making some type of a physical connection between who you are and your birth and a building.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, it's and it's. I drove by not too long ago and they were taking bricks down and stuff. It's taken them a long time to demolish and when it is fully demolished, I feel like that part of my chapter of my life is then like done is gone, and when us adoptees have very little of our history to look back on, I think driving by there with that building gone is going to affect me more than driving by when it was standing there. It was a reminder, but it was part of my, it was a tangible part of my past, and now it's gone.
Speaker 2:That part I can relate to in the context of you could see physically where you were born, and I do think there are adoptees, myself included, who would have liked a little bit of that opportunity. I've mentioned it before in several episodes. I really thought I was going to do more research around this and I just have not. I've not had the motivation yet, but I do call it life gap and there's that period of time from whatever the birth certificate says was my birth date and birth time and weight, what I believe to be actually adopted.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, lack of pictures is a clear indicator that I didn't live with the people that adopted me right out of the gate. I believe I've expressed before, but I want to repeat it, it's about a six-month period, clearly of six to maybe even a little bit more. The first picture I have of myself with my adopted parents I'm kind of looking like a big, chunky baby, so, and I was able to stand pretty freely. So if you know child, yeah, if you know child development, I might've been a little bit older even so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that would have been closer to yeah, between six and nine months, yep, oh, my, yeah. Now I was fortunate enough that I was in my adoptive home 14 days after my birth. Sadly, I was born three days before Christmas, so it wasn't until after the new year. And as I'm looking back through pictures, I had to clear out my parents' home and you find all these pictures. I realize, my first Christmas.
Speaker 1:I don't know where I spent my first Christmas, and there is a picture of my parents and my older brother on December 25th 1967. And I'm not in that picture, you know, because I'm not with them yet. I was just like, wow, well, who was I with? I didn't get any gifts, or did I get gifts? So you know, that is still a big piece of the puzzle that is missing. Still a big piece of the puzzle that is missing. You know, as you, as we adoptees, draw in these pieces of the puzzle, sometimes you think you only have one piece missing, but that one piece is multiple pieces of different sizes. You get a little piece of it. Oh, wow, okay, wait, no, that's. There's more to that, I thought, finding my birth mother. Oh, I have answers. No, where's my first Christmas. Where's my first Christmas picture?
Speaker 2:I I may never know yeah, I've always expressed that too, lori, and it's a little unsettling and it's very difficult, even in my family today and with my husband, for that conversation to be held where I am expressing you know, it's just odd, it just feels odd all the time. I do think about it more than I maybe should. That's the bottom line, right, and it's hard to explain to him repetitively, which I probably should just give that up, that it just makes me, even at this age, feel a little bit off.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it is hard to express to people that I call birthright privileged. I even say that to my own kids. I said you guys are birthright privileged because you know everything from your birth. I can tell you. You know, kirsten, when I was carrying you sick all nine months, and Derek, when I carried you, you separated my left hip. I could barely walk. I can talk about when I went into labor, what it was like, and the first thing that I said about them when I saw them. You know, my daughter has this big bottom lip she inherited from her father and that's the first thing we noticed. Son come out looking like a fighter, he just looked mean from the beginning. And us adoptees, we are missing that part of our birth story, of our beginning that helps us when people know that. That helps them in their identity development, in their development to be a human human because you have a story there. Yeah, you know, I was this way from birth.
Speaker 2:Well, you had some findings speaking of stories, and you learned something about your maternal side that once you learned it, you're like oh, that makes total sense, I can connect with that. Tell us a little bit about that, if you would not mind.
Speaker 1:Ironically, I found out who my birth father was before I found my birth mother and did that through DNA, 23andme and Ancestry kind of a combination of the two but it was through a second cousin and we're a true second cousin. Our grandparents are siblings and she reached out to me because she did DNA and she's more related through my grandma and I looked at her family tree, thought, oh, this is on my birth mother's side and I gave her all the information on my birth mother's side and she came back. She goes no, no, no, that's you know. I thought her grandma's younger sister was my grandmother or my maternal grandmother, but it wasn't. She goes we, you know, it's got to be something else. So I gave her all my birth father's information, which was very little. She came back a couple days later and says I know who your birth father is and his mother was her grandma's sister, older sister. What is so great about that is that her grandma Gertrude and then her great aunt Lillian, which is the younger sister, were professional storytellers in Philadelphia, which I found just exciting. Number one, the second cousin, said that she grew up grandma telling stories so she then started having coffees. When she became an adult would go down and have coffee with her grandma and she recorded all these stories of the family and then she recorded them, transcribed them, put them in a book, a self-published book. That fact that her grandma and great aunt were professional storytellers really resonated with me.
Speaker 1:I have been saying since I was in middle school that everyone, your life, is nothing but a collection of stories, and it's how you tell that story and whether or not it is interesting. There are people who are good at telling stories and there are people who are good at telling stories and there are people who are horrible at telling stories. I have always loved telling stories. I do not have a fear of speaking in public and I feel like every experience I have I can turn it into a story and then I want to tell it. I love giving speeches, and so when I heard that that was another piece that connected me, that made me, helped me with my identity. I'm a storyteller. I'm not just like to talk, I'm a storyteller. I come from a family of storytellers. You know I'm starting to fill a hole again. That little hole is filling up with puzzle pieces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and that's very cool to have that information and to say I feel like I represent that you know so very, very, very nice for you. Well, we've mentioned a little bit about identity through this conversation and I have spent a calendar year researching, studying, trying to navigate through that topic. It's not an easy one to navigate. There are many pieces. I'll use your puzzle analogy to how we think about ourselves. There is personality. There is a component of how we feel about ourselves. There's a component about how we feel people perceive us. Really broad brushing, there is also the component of the labels that we use for ourselves and others use on us as well.
Speaker 2:So, we started out, obviously, with this conversation, and why you're here is you're an adoptee, so that is a component of your identity. Yeah, yeah, we've talked about you are married, so that wife label is a part of your identity as well. Yeah, we spoke about siblings, and you are a sibling and a daughter to multiple families. You are a sibling and a daughter to multiple families. You are also a former teen mother. That's, I think, a good way to kind of try to couch that a little bit, desensitize it in my way. Yes, how many more labels do you think you, lori, are going to feel comfortable with? Is there a limit? Do you care, or do you just collect these pieces because they are part of the puzzle?
Speaker 1:Excellent question because I did a Sunday school lesson with my teen high school Sunday school class about identity and personality and I put together this little graph. I wanted them to understand what are their identities. Identity encompasses everything that helps us fit into society, into our family. It helps us understand our purpose, what we believe and stand for, and tonight I was just looking at it and I have 27 different identities. Actually, I started out with 25 and looked at it. Oh, I need to add this and I need to add that, and I do believe our identity got my degree in psychology and you know we discuss identity, personality and such Identity can continue to change and grow as we mature, because we do take on more identities as we get married, as we have children. I'm a grandmother, which is probably the best label that I love being a grandma.
Speaker 1:I worked for a company and Hallmark cards for years and you were a Hallmarker. That was part of your identity a Hallmarker. Well, I no longer work for hallmark. That's a former title, being a teen mom. It's funny. I don't put a teen mom as a former, I'm like I am a teen mom, I embrace it. This is what I look like.
Speaker 1:Identities can stick with us and they can change and grow as we do. My son was a Marine for eight years and if you have anyone in the military, you're, you know, used to be a sailor, used to be a soldier, but a Marine is always a Marine. Once a Marine, always Marine. Yeah, you know that's. And so I am always a Marine mom. That's another identity and I have a little analogy here. I hope I can explain it well enough.
Speaker 1:It has to do with the butterfly. We are all born a caterpillar, adopting, non-adopting. We're all a caterpillar, their genetics. They transform into a butterfly sooner and easier than us adoptees or those of us who were raised in a genetically influenced environment that did not match our genetics. So when they transform as they mature and they become the people that they were created to be, they become that butterfly. It is celebrated.
Speaker 1:It is not hidden, it is expected, they're not scared. But us adoptees we don't know how to transform like that because we have no genetic mirroring and it's a little scary, so we're a little bit slower to let our wings come out and become butterflies. Our identity labels are influenced by our environment and when the genetic environment matches us it feels more comfortable and we're allowed to do that. Adoptees, we don't feel comfortable, so becoming a butterfly is kind of scary to us. History in finding our biological parents such as me, finding that my father's grandmother's side or his mom's side are professional storytellers, my wings popped out and I become the beautiful butterfly that I've always been, was made to be. When we find our birth families, adoptees are a lot of times told you've changed, you're a different person, and it's because we've been hiding. The people who've known us for years are kind of like you're a different person. No, I'm the same person. I'm just finally being able to express who I was meant to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great. That's a great depiction and a very well painted picture of how we move through that entire conversation of identity. I like that. Move through that entire conversation of identity. I like that, and I also liked just the acknowledgement of 27 different labels. I'm using the term label because I definitely don't want to, you know, superimpose my thoughts of what that means, but wow, and I wonder if we took time and we're reflecting. That's one angle. I do talk about self-assessment, and, in my own rights, I do reflect. I am a huge reflector, always looking at what I did or could have done differently, because I'm also an overthinker, and I know that, and that's an identity as well. Overthinker is part of my identity, and people pleaser and all of those along with that. Where I'm going with that, though, is it's nice to hear you affirm for me in our conversation. It is a very large bucket that can continue to change, and there might be some that have the past tense and the present tense, and that implies future tense.
Speaker 1:Very much so.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the topics that you and I agreed we wanted to touch on is spirituality and your faith, and we purposely decided to go here. Yes, because there is a lot around that topic aside from adoption Then you put in adoption and because we are technically from the same basic era generation there is a boatload around that term religion and faith and adoptees.
Speaker 2:You have said you know, moments ago, Catholic Charities. What I find very interesting in getting to know you, Lori, is that you do have a very strong faith and you know Catholic Charities had something to do with you and you know Catholic Charities had something to do with you. And so how have you, as you and all those identities we just talked about, how are you kind of utilizing your faith and your belief system to ground you and why do you find that's important?
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, oh, it is. That's important. Oh, it is. Yes, one of my identities is Christian and identity is talked a lot in the Christian faith and because of Catholic charities and my adoption and this shame that so many religions adoption is a paradox. We all know that Religion shames the birth mother for having sexual relationships out of marriage. Therefore, you are not smart enough, rich enough, old enough to be a mom, not clean enough to be a mom. Therefore, you cannot keep this child. Cannot keep this child, but at the same time, adopting that child is nothing but God ordained and perfect and 100% and holy and happiness. It's such a paradox right there, because you've got to convince one mother, one woman, that she cannot be a mother in order for another one, for someone else, to be a mother, and that is so hard.
Speaker 1:I've sat through so many sermons because the narrative in Christianity is that an earthly adoption is the same as a spiritual adoption, because we are all adopted into God's family. It's in Romans and Ephesians God is our father. When we give our life over to Christ, we are adopted into his family, and so they're like earthly adoption is the same way, but it's not. It's different, and the key differences between spiritual adoption and earthly adoption is that spiritual adoption is a choice. Earthly adoption is not a choice. It is not a choice at all for the adoptee and for most birth mothers that is not their choice either, even though they were convinced it was their choice, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:Spiritual adoption is about saving us from our past life, but earthly adoption what is it saving us from Now? In some cases, yes, you are saving a child from a horrific family life, but still it's not saving us from anything. Spiritual adoption detaches our past life, our sinful life, from our new life, and our new life is a blessing. However and this is the key our past life is never wiped from our memory. We do not lose our past life, it's just detached from us. But in earthly adoption, our past life, our history, our heritage is wiped clean, it is sealed, it is treated with shame. It's not just detached from us, it is thrown away.
Speaker 2:I love the way that you have explained that and, honestly, for a bit, when we were prepping and we agreed to talk about this post, that preparatory discussion, I had some second thoughts. I really did and I'm going to be really direct with my listeners. I had second thoughts because I know it's such a touchy subject. But what I really liked about it in retrospect and I came to I'm still going to do it we said we wanted to talk about it, we're going to do it. Here's what I myself came to in retrospect and I came to I'm still going to do it. We said we wanted to talk about it, we're going to do it.
Speaker 2:Here's what I myself came to in retrospect. In that entire dialogue, you not one time actually set aside the pain as if it was acceptable due to a religion, a belief system, a faith or a connection of spirituality. You didn't do that and I really would just wish for others in general that they could have an opportunity to hear adoptees who are in your space of that thought process and go oh, non-adoptees and adoptees alike, just go oh. I mean it's just such a really well said point of view. So thank you.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. You're welcome and you know with them, with the Christian faith. Anytime I would talk about being. You know like I struggle with identity, because I have no generic mirroring when the comment is said to me, but your identity is in Christ, where I always say, even though I struggle with identity, because no matter how good or how bad a daughter, a wife, a coworker, a friend, a cousin, you know I can list all of those identities that I am, whether I'm successful or a failure at those, my self-worth and my value is based on. I'm a child of God and because I'm a child of God I will always have self-worth and value. But it still doesn't always answer the identity question. Being able to know that I come from a family of possible strong swimmers and storytellers, I then have even more confidence and I feel more like who God meant for me to be.
Speaker 2:I'm going to touch on that a little bit because I get where you're coming from. I think I shared this with you when we were prepping. There are so many times in my life where I have said, god, seriously, like, what lesson have I not learned? If I believe my destiny is paved for me, it's all part of a plan I got to tell you as a sinful human walking the earth, I have. I've got questions and I don't lie about it. Right, I don't really joke about it, but sometimes it sounds like I'm joking, but I intend to stand there and go. I didn't get something. And really, seriously, what was I there for? Because I'd like to see the. Can we play the tape back a little bit? That day, yeah, that sucked, let's go, keep going. I know I'm not supposed to question you. I didn't walk the earth for X number of decades. I still have questions. Remember that day? It was beyond sucky. Oh, let's go back to that very first day. It sucked so bad I didn't even know how bad it sucked, you know?
Speaker 1:Oh oh, I believe. Oh no, I I'm with you, right there At least, and because I'm even now, I question, even today what is the purpose? Why are you sending me? What am I supposed to learn and why am I being so hardheaded about it? I mean, I can, I can look back, because I've spent so much time, just like you, being reflective on my adoption story that there's other things in my life. When, when Hallmark cut me after 26 years, that was devastating and I was like why this was supposed to be my time. You know, I graduated college. 10 weeks after I graduated college, lost my job, finally going to have the money and have the time. And now I'm like, what was the purpose? I have a lot of questions too. Yeah, Because I do still have the question of and this is where even the Christian faith I battle with Because my mother I've reached.
Speaker 1:I found her through getting my birth certificate reached out to her, and she has made it very clear through another family member that she does not want any communication with me. Why is that member that she does not want any communication with me? Why is that? Why she carries though so much shame and embarrassment that even 50, some odd years later she can't face it. She's buried it so deep and I wish I could just go up to her and say you have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be afraid of. I don't care if we become friends or not, but you do not need to be filled with shame. What you did, there's no shame in. That's where I struggle. So my voice always is that church is let's stop shaming those women. Let's stop shaming them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that fits into your advocacy as well and just speaking out and telling your story. Thank you for sharing a little bit about that. I do again want to acknowledge that type of a topic is hard in the adoptee community to really explore and I am thankful we were willing to jump in.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you for giving me that opportunity. Thank you, willing to jump in.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you for giving me that opportunity. Thank you, yeah, no problem Anytime. Let's take a turn here a little bit. Talk about advocacy, talk about the adoptee community and your connection in that, and I just want to acknowledge you and I met at a conference last year.
Speaker 1:It was my second conference and how I got involved in the advocacy. Part of it was the Missouri law that opened up original birth certificates to adoptees. I joined Facebook and other things to help find my birth mother and found out about this group, and most of those people were part of what they called the Adoption Army, which went down to Jefferson City to advocate to open the birth certificates original birth certificate support group. It is a peer-led support group. I'm just there to facilitate, to have a place for people to meet. I share information that I receive. I was scheduled to go to the NAAP it was actually known as Indiana Adoption Network at that time in 2020, in March 2020, to go to their conference. And then COVID hit and they went online with happy hour, which to me, was like the best thing that ever happened, because through these weekly Friday night happy hours, I learned that I was not the only adoptee that felt the way that I did Heard so many stories of adoptees, of NPEs, birth mothers, adoptive mothers, birth fathers, adoptive fathers, mothers, adoptive mothers, birth fathers, adoptive fathers, and so their conference, you know, kept getting postponed until 2021.
Speaker 1:So that was the first conference I went to met so many people and then they joined with right to know, had untangling your roots and and I was I was like this is what I want to do. I want to get up and I want to share my story, talk to people and encourage people, like so many have me, and went to this conference, which was awesome. I think the combination of the two groups was just wonderful. Met you, met a lot of people. My support group, my support network, is just expanding and so through that, I'm able to get more information that helps my support group. Here I share my story. I was on another podcast back in 2019, I believe it's called Cut Off Jeans.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yes, I don't talk about that one as often, but I do listen to that one and I have no problem with people talking about other podcasts. On this podcast, I 100% support every person out there who's willing to do something like this and talk, and there are more adoptees than even the current volume of podcasters can cover.
Speaker 1:See, hers is part storytelling and information on how to search and it helped me during my search. Some things to do, some things. My initial story is three episodes and then I have an update about a year later and everything and how would you like to?
Speaker 2:close out our conversation today, what's really important for you to get across to our community of adoptees and non-adoptees, as we say thank you and goodbye yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, telling our stories as we know as adoptees and really in any community group, telling your story is very, very important. That's one step, but we all know that communication is a two-way street and very important, and right now I have a quote up in my office that says the problem with communication is that we listen to respond instead of listening to understand. So I would ask anyone who is listening to anyone's stories adoptees, birth mothers, adoptive parents that you listen, not to respond, but listen to learn and understand.
Speaker 2:Very well said. Well, I want to thank you again for spending time with us. It has been a pleasure to get to know you through multiple engagements. Now, you are always welcome to return here. Thank you again, just for being part of our community.
Speaker 1:Well, I cannot thank you enough for doing what you do and for inviting me. Thank you so much, and it has been a complete pleasure. I've had so much fun talking with you.
Speaker 2:Likewise, Likewise, thank you for listening to today's episode of Wandering Tree Podcast. Please rate, review and share this out so we can experience the lived adopted journey together. Want to be a guest on our show? Check us out at.