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
S6:E1 Swimming Back to Shore: Melissa Brunetti's Journey Healing in Adoption
What if reclaiming your true identity felt like swimming back to shore after being adrift in the ocean? Join us for a heartfelt conversation with Melissa Brunetti, host of Mind Your Own Karma, the Adoption Chronicles, as she shares her own transformative journey as a domestic adoptee from the baby scoop era. Melissa opens up about the emotional complexities her birth mother faced and the unwavering support of her adoptive parents when they discovered her hip dysplasia. Through her engaging narrative, we explore life’s unexpected connections and the profound impact of humor and resilience in shaping identity and family dynamics.
Melissa takes us on a voyage of self-discovery, revealing how the struggle for authenticity as adoptees can deeply affect personal relationships. As we discuss swimming back to the 'beach' of our true selves, the conversation delves into the journey of reconnecting with long-buried emotions and preferences, and the ripple effects on significant relationships. We offer encouragement to those on similar paths, highlighting the challenges and triumphs faced while navigating the complexities of identity and authenticity, particularly in relationships where understanding may be limited.
so, in that journey and then in that healing, where does the fog fit in.
Speaker 2:I was in the fog my whole life. I really feel like the fog is just a term for disguising your authenticity, that it's hidden, and so my whole life I was. I would say say I was an Oscar award-winning actress in my own life and I put the mask on.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, lisa Ann. We are an experience-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. I'm so excited to have her on the show. This is a dual appreciation event today with Melissa Brunetti, who is the host of Mind your Own Karma podcast. It is also labeled the Adoption Chronicles, so I should put all of that together Mind your Own Karma, the Adoption Chronicles. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm excited welcome to the show, thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. I am too. It is a pleasure to have you with us. We have had a few opportunities to speak and really get to know each other, and so I'm looking forward to our conversation, for a lot of different reasons, but what I'd really like to do is have you start out, if you would not mind, and share with the listeners a little bit about your adoption journey.
Speaker 2:So I am a domestic adoptee baby scoop era. I was born in 1968 in San Francisco. My birth mother was 19 and she was a college student. My father was getting ready to go to Vietnam and so she became pregnant and during the pregnancy he started to pull back and kind of started denying you know, was this my, really my child? And questioning her, and he went off to boot camp. And in the meantime, when my mother was six months pregnant, her mother passed away and her father was not a supportive person at all. In fact, I think before I was even born it hadn't even been three months he remarried somebody else and so he's like you are on your own. And so she didn't have a job because she was a college student. And so when I was born, it took her a while to actually sign adoption papers because she was trying to figure out a way to keep me without any support. So finally, the adoption agency it was about two months I was probably about two months old. They finally said you need to decide. She's getting older, you know we have to place her. So she signed the papers because she couldn't figure out a way to keep me and, funny enough, I ended up in Fremont, which is very close to San Francisco. You don't know, my birth father was from Hayward, so we were all kind of like in the same area and didn't know it. Well, actually I got to take that back. I just found out that my birth mother worked as a social services person. I think she had finally got her master's and she said she did that so that she could spy on me and find out where I was at. So my birth mother did know where I was at but never interfered that I ever heard of or knew of. But she did kind of keep tabs on me through her job.
Speaker 2:Another kind of funny thing is the day after my adoptive parents got me, they took me to a doctor's appointment and found out that I had bilateral hip dysplasia, which was not revealed to them beforehand. And you know, they were told that I was a healthy baby. And my mom, my adoptive mom, called the agency and she said I just want to let you know that you know she's got hip dysplasia and she's going to need surgeries and casts and you know all this stuff for like a year. They told her basically well, if you still have your receipt you can bring back to a new one and my mom was like, no, we're keeping her. You know, I just want to let you know that that's what was going on.
Speaker 2:And my adoptive mom's spin on that was that the doctor obviously knew, because, I mean, anyone that's had a baby knows doctors check the hips, that's just one of the things they do, right? So she thinks that he knew but didn't want to say, because then I would have been on the discount shelf, you know, at the back of the store because I was damaged, and so she thinks he kept it a secret on purpose, so that I would get placed. And my mom's you know, my parents were great. My dad had a great job, had good insurance, thank goodness, and so you know that all worked out.
Speaker 1:I'm going to hit pause for just a minute and I want to just align something. I know, I know you were kind of joking about it and I find it really heartwarming that you can giggle and but I also know it has a serious note for someone who's telling those types of things about their story. How does it make you feel when you're talking about those things about yourself in the context of humor? Is my like? Is it coming out as like kind of my protection mechanism? It's coming out as kind of.
Speaker 2:I kind of feel like it's kind of an unbelievable situation. Yeah, you know, I always kind of say I feel like the cabbage patch doll on the shelf you know, and that you know the adopters come in and kind of go shopping and if you don't have blue eyes and blonde hair, you know I don't want that Cabbage Patch doll because that one doesn't look like us or it's not. You know what I want. I think the laughing is more of just an unbelievable feeling like this really happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know this really happens. Yeah, no, this really happens.
Speaker 1:I think that's important sometimes for us to acknowledge and talk about, because that is exactly what it is. It's. It's not like we're making fun of ourselves or anyone else. It is truly the context of I really probably can't make this up Like this is there are things about our journey and as you continue with yours, there are things about our journey and as you continue with yours. We can't make these things up and we are living proof. They happen to people and so I just always am very sensitive to just the context of our body language and our emotional expressions, because they can come off very differently to different people. And yeah, we can't make it up, and sometimes you just have to laugh because you know what else would you do? Cry Every time you tell this story.
Speaker 2:That's probably not what we really want either yeah it's just, it's so unbelievable that I just chuckle like it's like this really happens, you know. And to really think that I really would have been on the you know markdown discount, you know, in the back of the store aisle, you know the chip dish or whatever you want to call it, like that would have been me and who knows if I would have even been adopted. You know, we taught, we laugh about winning. You know adoptees laugh about I won the lottery, I got great parents and I did, I got great parents. We all know that that's not always the case, but those are other things that we laugh about. And I like on TikTok right now, everyone's like making those videos where it says I'm adopted, you know, I don't, I don't worry that I'm dating my brother, I'm adopted, I don't. And those videos that I kind of laugh when I see those cause I think my gosh, we could totally make one of those videos about all the things people don't think about being adopted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I 100 percent agree. Well, let's pick back up. You had great parents. You had a father who had a fantastic job that allowed for them to not return you. That just sounds so awful. I mean, it really does Pick up from. They were you know, they were able to give you everything that you needed around your care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I really did. I didn't really want for anything. My family they never bring up that I'm adopted. I never feel like I'm adopted in my family. I never have. If I bring it up, they're kind of looking at me like why is that? Why are you even saying anything about that? Like you know, they don't. I feel Italian, they're a hundred percent Italian and I feel more Italian than Danish, german, scottish, than what I really am. I don't really relate that's another funny thing. I don't relate to those biological ties at all. I really just feel like I'm Italian. I just feel so comfortable, you know, in that environment and with my family. But at the same time I was like the good kid. I had one brother growing up. He was not adopted, he was biological. They had him first. He was almost five years older than me and they adopted because my mom was told medically not to have any more kids. So that's why. And they wanted a girl. So the only way to ensure that was to adopt. So that's how I got to be in their family. But you know, growing up I was the good kid.
Speaker 2:I remember always being scared and I didn't know why. You know, going out in public. The neighbor would come over and knock on the door and he was, you know. He thought he was being funny and he would say I'm going to take you home and I was petrified that he was going to take me away from my family. You know, didn't know why I was reacting that way. I was probably like three and I remember that being terrified but always kind of scared growing up.
Speaker 2:And then I got into my teenage years. I didn't date very much. I was scared to date people. I just kind of didn't want to get close to anybody. You know, that's kind of what it felt like, didn't want to reveal myself to anyone. So I didn't date till I was probably around 19. And I met my soon to be husband at that time and I was kind of call him a casualty of adoption because I didn't even know who I was. So how could I show him who I was? So I gave him a false sense of who I was, got married at like 21, had kids, you know, went to church, had the you know white picket fence and the whole deal.
Speaker 2:About 10 years in I was so, so, so unhappy, so unhappy, and that kind of continued. We stayed married till 22 years. And so I carried on for the next 12 years trying to make it work, trying to make it work and just got increasingly more miserable. The house when nobody was home, because I had this uncontrollable, uncontrollable urge to go to the kitchen drawer and pull out a knife and just stab myself. So I kept walking the house and just like, talking to myself and just waiting for somebody to come home, going to the doctor. Thousands of tests, nothing's coming up, everything's fine. I'll just put you on anxiety medication and depression medication. So they did that.
Speaker 2:But I was like that's not it, that is not what's going on here, there's something else going on. And I remember telling my ex I said I literally feel like I'm dying. I feel like I'm dying from the inside out and they're not going to know what's wrong with me until they do my autopsy. I said that I'm dying and it was such a helpless feeling, like so. Such a helpless feeling Cause that was not my personality, having anxiety and things like that. It was just so foreign. But you know, my body was screaming like you have trauma, you're not dealing with it, you know.
Speaker 2:But I didn't, I didn't want to give up the facade of like what we had going on, that everybody else from the outside looking in. So I ended up just withdrawing, a lot Like I didn't talk to my parents. They thought I was mad at them. I withdrew from everything, everybody, because I could feel like my exterior was going to crack and people were going to start to see something was wrong. And if I didn't even know what was wrong, was I supposed to tell them? From the outside, everything was perfect. You know, I had everything. I then became like 40 at this time and I just couldn't do it anymore. I could not do it another day and I remember having this vision of me like floating on a floaty out in the ocean and I remember like just laying there, you know sun's on you, you're feeling great, floating along, and then all of a sudden I like look, and I'm so far away from the beach. If I don't start swimming back right this moment, I'm not going to make it back there.
Speaker 1:I am going to go out.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be drawn out into the ocean, and what I call the beach that was me, that was my authentic self was the beach. So I said I have to start swimming back to myself, whatever that means, I have to start swimming back. And so I did, little by little, and the way I did that was kind of just feeling into my body, which I never, ever did. I mean, adoptees don't want to feel into your bodies, but I had to. And so I started little by little with the little things. You know, how did I feel when I read a book? How did I feel when I went for a cup of coffee or when, you know, spent time with friends? Did that feel good? You know? Because I didn't know. I didn't know even what I liked. I didn't even know what my favorite food was, I didn't even know what my favorite color was. I had no clue. I just did what everybody else thought I should be doing, never consulted myself growing up, never, ever.
Speaker 2:So I started doing that and just kind of feeling my way back, little by little. And I've been doing that now for almost you know what 15 years, 16 years now, and still doing that, because I feel like we still evolve and change and, as adoptees, more things come up, feel like we dealt with something, and then another something comes up or something triggers something and we're like, okay, now I need to look at that and I just see each trigger as a treasure really. And I started looking at it like that because they really are, they really are treasures, they're, they're our feelings, are trying to tell us something and a lot of times, even if it doesn't feel good, it's just kind of like that warning light in your car Look at me, there's something that we need to deal with so that you can become even more authentic and have even more of a creative and fulfilling life. Once you kind of start that process, more things kind of fall into place and fall into your lap for you to kind of look at and be curious about. So that's kind of how I started on my healing journey from adoption.
Speaker 1:Well, you had a lot in that dialogue and I want to back up just a little bit. Well, you had a lot in that dialogue and I want to back up just a little bit. So you mentioned kind of at the beginning that your now ex-husband was a casualty of adoption. Is that because you didn't know your authentic self and so, by not knowing your authentic self, you didn't know how to be in the relationship?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to make the connection there just for a couple minutes because it was, I think, an important piece. And so I really showed him a false sense of who I was for our whole entire marriage, pretty much until the end. The other casualties were my kids, because I did the same with them, especially my son. We were in the church quite a bit and he was very much into you don't get divorced. And so when that happened it really crushed him. He was like 18 at the time.
Speaker 2:I remember thinking I had to take responsibility for that part because I showed him a false mom and so I had to kind of slowly just be authentic and hope that he kind of came around and saw that I was happier and a better mom because of being more authentic. And I have to say, what is he now? He's 31, I think, yeah, he's 31. And it's still strained. It's still strained. We see each other, you know, on holidays and stuff. I don't think it'll ever go back to the way it was and that's just part of the consequences of me not living authentically. You know, from the beginning I have to take responsibility for that. I wish he had a little compassion, but he doesn't understand the adoption. You know the whole part of how that plays into anything, so yeah, so I wish he had a little more compassion for that. I have to meet him where he's at and take responsibility for my part in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know that's admirable in the context of you didn't even know, and it's really hard, I think, for non-adoptees or anyone adjacent to us to really understand. I didn't know that wasn't my authentic self. I probably had hints about it. Yeah Right, things were popping up throughout the entire journey, but I really didn't know until this point in time. And so yours is the metaphor of being out in the ocean and being too far away to get back to you and you're the beach, and I think that was a beautiful metaphor of really kind of being out there yet not connected and needing to get back to the person that you are. It takes a long time. Not all adoptees are going to get to that spot at all, and it almost breaks my heart I don't know how you feel to know that there are people that aren't going to be in that spot.
Speaker 1:Look at what you said about you and what we know about myself as well. It didn't happen at my teenage years. It didn't happen at the 20th, 30th, somewhere in that 40, 50 range for me. And yeah, it's just so powerful to hear other adoptees say I didn't find my authentic self for quite some time. I feel that's encouraging for other adoptees that are still trying to figure out who they are and how this does affect identity. I want to tap a little bit into identity, because you talked about being the good daughter. Good wife is what I picked up on that the perfect picture, family, all of the things that people project regardless of adoption. But tell me what your thoughts are on the impact of adoption to those social norms as well.
Speaker 2:It's a tough one, I mean as far as being the good child.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah know it's tough because we don't.
Speaker 2:We can only do hindsight but like, um, I had to, like, I said I had to do what was expected and whatever was next. You know especially like what I was saying when I got married. It was like you date for a couple years and then you get married and then you wait a couple years and then you have a kid. And then you wait a couple years and you have another kid. And I did it all right you wait a couple of years and then you have a kid.
Speaker 2:And then you wait a couple of years and you have another kid. And I did it all right. You know I was doing everything right. And you go to church and you join the choir and you're, you know your kids go to private school and everything's fine and dandy and it's and it's not fine and dandy, you know it's not. And so I feel like those social norms are huge. There's a huge pressure because when I finally did decide to choose myself, which meant I had to leave my husband at the time behind I you know I I'm not taking all the blame for that there were some things, you know, that he had part in as far as, like the church goes, which was a huge part of our lives. I had to be cut out from that and going.
Speaker 2:My kids were still going to school at the time and I remember driving up to the school and there was always a teacher out front watching the kids get out of the cars and stuff and the teachers, when they saw my car, they would turn their back to the car so they wouldn't have to even like say hi to me and that feeling of not belonging, you know, without again, knowing the story of really what's going on. It just kind of replayed that whole, you know, kind of reinforced, that abandonment, not belonging, feeling like you're not, you don't fit in, kind of just reinforced all that for me. Reinforced all that for me. But because I was working on myself at the time, it almost propelled me forward to finding myself even more Like. I use that as a catalyst to, you know, get, still, get back to myself. So I, I used my, like I said, my, my trauma and my triggers as a treasure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really like that concept of treasure as well. It allows you to find the good in the buried. I think it's interesting as you were telling the story of the teachers that turned their back. What a horrific thing to do to anyone period, but then to do that to someone that you don't know the journey just really my empathy for you climbed right. I was just feeling it coming across.
Speaker 2:We've had the conversation about having compassion for, you know, not the birth mothers and hearing their stories, and I think I was listening to you with Julie and you were talking about a book that you read. That was just on time and it was a birth mother story. Cahill was the last name or something. Yep, candace.
Speaker 1:Cahill, goodbye again.
Speaker 2:So I had kind of a similar experience with Catherine Vogley with her book I Need to Tell you and, oh my God, knowing those story, hearing those stories is just so emotional and I had so much compassion and it gained. I gained so much compassion for my birth mother and what she must've gone through, the trauma that she went through, all those things, amazed at how their stories changed me and I think every adoptee should read those books, I would agree.
Speaker 1:I have not read the one that you mentioned and I don't know if you've read the one I mentioned yet. Either way, I will plug them both as equals, because any birth mother who's willing to write pen to paper gets my vote. And I would say we were talking about the treasures and the triggers, and the triggers are treasures. That moment in time I've said it several times, I'll say it every time again was one of the biggest gifts I could have been given. And the moment that I read that book, it really was another one of many steps to me making a turn for what could have been very dire situation.
Speaker 1:Had it gone on much longer, relative to my mindset, if it had not been for that perspective, I finally felt like oh, I get it, that's what was important to me, right, I could just so understand. It created a bond. It just really created another bond of understanding. So I'm with you. I don't know Got to give, we've got to, I don't know how to say it. I hope that, as the community continues to grow, we can find the right venues, the right methodologies and the right humanity to take what we hear and grow from it. We don't all have to grow at the same rate, but just grow or just leave room.
Speaker 2:I mean, everyone's journey is different, so what can we do now to help make it better for those that are coming up? And I think for me and you, it's getting the word out about the truth about adoption and the things that really can happen and do happen. I think there's room for everybody and their stories and even if I don't agree with you, it doesn't mean I can't hold space for you and still say I'm so sorry that that was your experience and I'm sure I get as having a positive, you know adoption experience. A lot of times I get the backlash of well, you don't get a voice because you don't have a clue what we all went through over here, and it's like I still have relinquishment trauma. It might not be like yours in your face, but I still had it and in a way, because I had such a good upbringing I didn't realize it till a lot later and I had to almost feel like I was dying to figure it out. But I think we need to have more compassion for each other.
Speaker 2:We've all been told the narrative. Every one of us has been told the story. We've been told we're lucky. The birth mother's been told she was doing the right thing. The adoptive parents are told you're saving a child, you're giving them a home. So we've all been. We all bought into the stories that we've been told. You know the Disneyland story, and so it's time to educate the world. It's really just time to tell our stories and educate people.
Speaker 1:Sharing our stories, putting ourselves in a public spotlight along with others. There are a large number of podcasters. It seems to be growing exponentially. I love it. I don't know about you, but I love it, and the reason I love it is today, before you, and I decided to get on, get on mic here. I did a little bit more digging. I thought, you know, I should look to see how much crossover we have between the two of us.
Speaker 1:The crossover of guests is so minimal. It isn't even scratching the surface, like if someone were to say, oh, I heard them on Wandering Tree and I heard them over on Haley Radge's Adoptees On. Or Damon Davis's who Am I Really? Or yours Mind, your Own, karma, the Adoption Chronicles or, you know, the Making of Me podcast with Sarah and Louise. The crossover is so minimal that that just reinforces for myself. There is absolutely enough space for everybody. We cannot cover every person. No handful of anyone can do that. I also would like to tap into another comment that you made, which is I had a good childhood and adoption. I think it's okay to say that and I hope we allow people to say that more often. What also makes it okay to say that is for the first 30 minutes of our conversation here or thereabouts. You've been pretty honest about your trauma too right, it didn't isolate you from still being affected by adoption, and I wonder if that's where we get hung up sometimes in community about the bad guys versus the good guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of people. When we're triggered, that's just a part of you that's wanting your attention and we react from those triggered spots, those triggered places. That that's where the trauma is at, and you can choose how you're going to react. Um, in that moment and I really had to learn and this was super hard to do but instead of getting angry and triggered when I felt that I would get curious, I would look inwards instead of outwards. You know, instead of pointing fingers, I would look at myself and say why am I feeling this way? What is it about this situation or what this person said to me that is making me feel this way? It's not them, it's me. So if you can just be a little bit curious when you feel that anger or anything that's that's coming up and making you feel uncomfortable, if you could just stop and choose how you react and choose to be a little curious, you'll be surprised at what you can discover about yourself and heal parts of yourself by doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've mentioned healing a few different times, and so I'd like to hear what is your definition of healed or healing? Is it an end point or a?
Speaker 2:journey on to itself. Yeah, it's definitely a journey. It's always a journey. I wish it was a destination, but I don't see that happening. At the same time, I've learned to love the journey, even though there's bumps in the road, and you know things that come up and things. Every opportunity is something that's going to get me back to my authenticity, my essence, my central self. Nothing's going to come up in my journey that I'm not going to learn from. I'm going to learn from all of it, especially if it's hard. I'm not going through this shit and get nothing out of it, and if I can help someone else along the way, that's the better for it. You know, that's how I've learned to look at it. Instead of being afraid of change, people are so afraid of change in the unknown they just want to stay. So you want to stay and wallow in whatever you're wallowing in. I just have learned that I'd rather have a little bit of discomfort in the learning than have long-term suffering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's nice. So in that journey and then in that healing, where does the fog fit in?
Speaker 2:I was in the fog my whole life. I really feel like the fog is just a term for disguising your authenticity, that it's hidden, and so my whole life I would say. I was an Oscar award winning actress in my own life and I put the mask on and played the part, did everything right, what I thought was right. So coming out of the fog was just finally, it was a lot of things. It wasn't just adoption trauma and I think I didn't know even when I was coming out of the fog that that's what I was doing. I just needed to get back to myself and in that process I learned that adoption was part of that, and that wasn't until probably in the last five years or so that I was able to recognize it and claim that, because you're not supposed to talk about that stuff. We don't talk about that stuff. So I was able to feel the freedom to do that and that was huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, having interviewed several adoptees both of us a good number and those are the ones that hit the air. We're not even talking about conversations that don't hit the air. But, with that said, what I'm finding interesting? Fog has a lot of different meanings for a lot of different adoptees as well, and I like that. It's okay for that. You just described it as part of the journey and how you've been journeying through coming out, and I look at it very differently. I had an instant moment like this is enough, and so I speak openly about that moment and I don't ever want to not speak openly about it. I don't intend to speak about it to hurt the person that actually, you know, created the instantaneous moment, but by not speaking about it, I'm never going to be able to get beyond it or help someone else acknowledge oh, I could have any definition of fog and my discovery moment can happen for any reason. There's no set formula and I think that's really important as well to share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, yep, and there's room for all of us. You know, and and who knows what, like you said, who knows what triggers each one of us? I almost had to feel like I was dying to before I mean, I was, I was holding on, I was holding on to the facade. I didn't want to disappoint anybody. I did not want to disappoint anybody and I knew that it would look like I was coming out of left field and I didn't even really understand why. I just knew I had to.
Speaker 2:And, like I said so, it wasn't in that moment that I like made that correlation that it was adoption. You know it was, it was rolled in there, it was rolled up in there, but I had to unravel some of it to finally realize that the role that it did play, because you know, having a good adoption, you feel like you don't really have any grounds to say that I had trauma. You know, I feel like I didn't have permission to say that and the community sometimes kind of reinforces that for me. But I know that I do. I get that they're just reacting from from their traumas. So I don't take it personal. We're all on different journeys and there's, like you said, there's room for all of us and there's compassion for all of us. We need to have compassion for each other. Even if we don't agree, it doesn't matter. You can still have compassion for the other person and what they're going through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I like to the aspects of learning and continuing to heal. So there are some things you're doing that help along with just talking. That's just one aspect. Help along with just talking, that's just one aspect. Podcasting is one aspect. What are some other things that you are doing or placing into your toolbox to continue to grow into your authentic self and heal.
Speaker 2:Most recently I got certified in Sematic Mindful Guided Imagery, so it's a somatic therapy similar to internal family systems, so kind of similar to that.
Speaker 2:But it's an upcoming somatic therapy that uses kind of a light, hypnosis, meditation and guided imagery to tap into your subconscious mind and really create whatever it is that you want to create.
Speaker 2:And I've been practicing this for almost a year now and I've seen so much healing in the adoptee community from adoption trauma because I know a lot of people don't feel like they can heal from adoption trauma and I mean I've seen it and I've experienced it myself.
Speaker 2:So it's a pretty easy and gentle and quick therapy and I feel like you know when you do, when you do cognitive therapy and talk therapy, that's great. But I have so many clients come and say there's still something left, there's a little root of something and I can't get to it with cognitive talk therapy and so going inward and kind of following the body and what your body's trying to tell you seems to kind of do the trick that's like kind of the missing piece to the puzzle is another combination, another. You know number to the trick. That's like kind of the missing piece to the puzzle is another combination, another you know number to the combination. I think everybody's healing combinations different. It's another thing in the toolbox that you can try if you still feel stuck after trying some of the other therapies.
Speaker 1:That analogy of a combination and no two people are the same. I do like putting new things into the toolbox. One of the great things about our relationship is I was a guest on your podcast. I loved every minute of it. I shared very openly my story about the abyss. It is something that I'm feeling very passionate about here in 2024. I feel it because I needed more things in my toolbox. Not every person can afford therapy first of all, so I appreciate that there are those options, such as the one that you just spoke of for adoptees, because, again, you're right, the combination for us it's not all the same.
Speaker 2:Not at all. Yeah, yeah, keep searching, keep being curious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I love that curiosity thing. It kind of is reminding me of Curious George the book, the movies, the right, and now we've just if well, we've already divulged. We're old ladies in some people's context, so I love the fact that I'm my age and I think it's interesting how that plays a part in the combination as well. So, melissa, as we're getting ready to transition into closing out, we've spent quite a bit of time in today's conversation talking about the adoptee community, all of the variations of conversation that are going on in that platform, in that area, in that space. We've referenced space quite a bit. We've talked about all of the different players adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, therapists, therapist what do you think is?
Speaker 2:the best mindset as it relates to connecting to the adoptee community. Number one we've talked about a lot compassion for each other, trying to understand where each of us have come from and what stories we've been told. I think for the most part, people operate from a space where we're not trying to hurt each other. That inevitably happens. I mean, you try to be the best parent and you still, your kid's still going to have trauma. I don't care if you're adopted or not. Knowing that and not taking things so personal, that's huge. I really think the key is understanding each other, letting each other have our own stories and our own opinions about those stories, and not feeling like if you don't believe the way I believe, then we can't be friends.
Speaker 2:You know, we're not going to get anywhere if we have that kind of attitude. We're not going to be able to educate the world if we have that attitude. So what change do you want to see in the community and what are you doing to make that happen? Is your attitude right now helping that or is it hindering that? Be the change you want to see in the world, I agree.
Speaker 1:So let's end today with a little plug for your podcast.
Speaker 2:So it is mind your own karma. I have a website mind your own karmacom. If you want to get in touch with me. My email is mindyourownkarma at gmailcom. If you are looking for somatic therapy, my website is somatichealingjourneyscom if you want to know more about that. And then I'm on Facebook and Instagram as well, under mindyourownkarma.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, it has been a blessing to have you on the show. I appreciate your friendship and the connection that we have created. I appreciate your friendship and the connection that we have created. It is always a joy to have those in your back pocket, people that you can call up and go. I just need to talk this through and you're definitely one of those. You are always welcome here and thank you for being with us today. Thanks so much, lisa Ann. 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 adoptee journey together. Want to be a guest on our show? Check us out at wanderingtreeadopteecom.