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
S5:E4 Birthmothers and Adoptees Healing Through Honest Conversations
The Wandering Tree Podcast is peeling back the layers of adoption narratives in a heartfelt roundtable featuring adoptees and birth mothers who are bravely sharing their stories. Join Jenny Becknell as she sheds light on the complexities of open adoption and Amy Seek as she reflects on her 24-year journey in the adoption world. Together with guests like Denise Palmer, Sharon Cummins, Elle Clausen, Suzanne Bachner and Dr. Liz DeBetta, we delve into the intricate tapestry of emotions—from regret to gratitude—that define the adoption experience.
We confront the powerful emotions and enduring trauma often faced by birth mothers, particularly those from the era of closed adoptions. Through personal stories, we expose the societal pressures and emotional challenges that shape the lives of both birth mothers and adoptees. We also examine the impact of terminology within the adoption system, questioning how words like "birth mom" or "given up" can inadvertently shape identity and self-worth.
By highlighting the invaluable support offered by organizations like the Celia Center, we aim to foster empathy and inspire change. Through honest conversations about trauma, memory, and relationship dynamics, we create a space for healing and hope. Our guests' stories emphasize the need for transparency and kindness in adoption practices, urging a shift towards preserving family connections and identities.
Let's embrace these stories of strength and vulnerability and acknowledge the profound impact adoption has on individuals, families, and communities.
After listening, share your thoughts on social media using #WanderingTreePodcast and tag a friend who might benefit from this conversation.
Welcome to today's episode. I am your host, lisa Anne, and this is the Wandering Tree Podcast. We are an experience-type show for this group. We have eight adoptee-birthmother combinations, for today of this episode is really to foster some understanding, continue to create empathy and connection between adult adoptees and birth mothers.
Speaker 4:For those that have been listening, in season five we had our guest, jenny Becknell, as a birth mother in a three-part series and so we wanted to extend this out. We had some interested parties and we said, yes, let's do this round table, bring a few more people together and let's just open our platform and have an open and honest dialogue. So, for our listeners, what we aim to do today is really just talk about and validate experiences so we can create connections for healing. We want to have shared understanding and acknowledge that our panelists today have a diverse range of experiences and emotions associated with adoption. We are also looking to build some community and if you know me and have listened for more than a hot minute, you know I'm all about adoptees connecting and people connecting across the various platforms. But we also want to extend and inform listeners on different perspectives. It's been very beneficial for me, as an adoptee, say that fast 10 times to connect with various entities like birth mothers and fathers and extended family, so that I know each person's perspective and it helps ground me. And then we ultimately want to inspire and hope others.
Speaker 4:When we leave today, we want everyone to know that we're a resilient group and we have hope and we're demonstrating the strength. We have lots to talk about and we have eight humans eight on this podcast today so that is a lot for us to share together and come together. I'm going to start out with Jenny Becknell. So Jenny is a birth mother who chose open adoption and has courageously shared her personal journey I mentioned before in a three-part series, season five and her story has been a testament to the strength and love that can shape an adoption experience. And she has shared her experience to help inform and provide perspective to others so they may not need to go through the same painful process. And if you have not had a chance to listen to those three episodes, I strongly encourage you to do so. Hello, jenny, welcome.
Speaker 2:Hello, it's so good to be here, so good to see everybody.
Speaker 4:All right. Next up we have Amy Seek. Amy. She's a multifaceted, creative person and she is New York City-based. She's an author, she advocates for birth parents. She has a memoir it is God and Jetfire and it is an exploration of her 24-year open adoption journey 24 years and she actively contributes to the adoption community through work. Her connection is the Concerned United Birth Parents and she also does some National Association of Adoptees and Parents work as well. Welcome Amy.
Speaker 5:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4:Next up, Denise Palmer. So for years Denise believed she was protecting her son by staying away, and when he found her approximately six years ago, she embarked on a journey of healing and reconciliation. Those are tough. The love and support of her family has helped her navigate this new chapter. And it is an absolute new chapter to be in reunion, and for a few of us that have been there a little bit longer, six years is just the infancy stage in my mind as well. And so she also joins us today, not only to share experience but to connect with other birth mothers and adoptees, because her experience of reunion has taught her the power of that human connection, and even when it gets complicated. And so welcome, Denise, Thank you. All right, and we're powering. We've only made it a couple through a couple. It's like I'm getting shivers just saying who everybody is and introducing them All right.
Speaker 4:Next up is Sharon. Sharon is a birth mother. She's lived the secret of a closed adoption for decades and when her daughter found her in 1995, it was one of those big life-changing moments. I look forward to hearing a little bit more about that, but her 30-year separation and the experience of that really highlights the profound impact it can have on both the birth parents and the adoptees, and so she just wants us to say you know, thank you for coming on the show. She's grateful for this opportunity to be here and to share her journey. 30 years, that's a long time to be in a separated state and navigating life, so welcome Sharon.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I'm happy to be here and I hope that this is helping a lot of people today. So thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 4:All right, next up, elle Clausen. So, elle, she's a returning guest from season two episodes this is funny, elle, this is actually really funny Episodes 9, 11, 14, and 16. We were on fire that season. She is a Canadian adoptee who has become a powerful voice for truth and transparency After some DNA testing, which was also life-changing. It led to some biological family reunion and she's been dedicated to challenging the myths and the misconceptions surrounding adoption. In addition to being an avid supporter of Wandering Tree, she's also part of the Pulled by the Roots podcast team with Heidi Marble, and so if you haven't checked that out, please go do so. Let's always elevate each other up. All in, elle seeks opportunities to empower adoptees and birth parents to share their stories and break the silence. So welcome back, elle.
Speaker 6:Thank you so much, lisa Ann, it's fun.
Speaker 4:Lisa Ann, it's fun, all righty. Next up, dr Liz DeBetta. Dr Liz is an enthusiastic advocate I love that enthusiastic advocate for adoptees as well and she is a survivor who empowers others to break their silence and does so through really healing storytelling. She is the author of Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal Migrating Towards Wholeness, and she's also the creator of a winning one-woman show, un-mothered, and Dr Liz uses a narrative here to perform. I've seen it personally. I had friends at one of her in-person showings that were gosh, I don't know what to say. Liz advocates other than my support system and it really moved them. So a fantastic and great show around that and we're grateful she's here to join us today. Welcome, dr Liz.
Speaker 7:I am so excited and thrilled to be here and I can't wait to have this conversation with you all.
Speaker 4:All right. And then, last but not least, is Susan Backner. Susan is a returning guest, also from Season 4, episode 9, and she is a powerful force in the world of theater. Go check her out. And social justice check out that part as well, if you haven't had a chance and her groundbreaking play, the Good Adoptee, captivated many audiences on the East Coast. I think this year she's done some stuff in Connecticut, if I remember correctly, and some stuff in Illinois, and as the Artistic Director of JMTC Theatre she combines art and advocacy to create some powerful social change and she's had some really great success around that and also around influencing people to help access their records. So I think I have all of that and welcome to the show, suzanne. Good to see you again.
Speaker 8:Thank you so much, lisa, and I'm so thrilled and honored to be here.
Speaker 4:Well, as I said, one of the reasons we have such a powerful group here today is so that we can continue a conversation that Jenny and I pulled together, and we really loved the way that it came together, but it also opened our eyes a little differently on both sides of the conversation, and we respected each other enough to have that truth and that transparency. And so, even in listening to it, in preparation for today, we both know there are some things that we're like ooh, did we say that to each other? And we did so. We know that adoption is often an emotionally charged conversation, and so I'm going to open up with a question. If somebody wants to go first, just let me know. But what are the top two emotions or feelings sitting within you over this journey, year over year, based off of your experience of adoption and your own journey? Sharon says she'll go first. Awesome.
Speaker 1:I think joy and sorrow explains it completely for me. It's like that's the best way I can think of two words, two emotions Joy and sorrow Nice, I'm going to call on you, all right.
Speaker 6:You know it took me a while to come up with this. I looked at your questions this morning and just before I signed in is when I finally came up with it and I would say frustration and sadness with the system, especially what I can speak to as baby scoop. Right, so it was closed, it was get on with it. You know, blank slate era and just frustration that that was even a thing that people thought was okay. And the other is sadness, and it's sadness for everyone, for birth mothers, for us as the adopted people separated, and also sadness, you know, when I think of my, my adopters. They they didn't get what they thought they were getting. Right Like it, it didn't actually fill the hole.
Speaker 4:I'm going to jump over to Denise, I think.
Speaker 3:I still have a lot of shame as a birth mother. It's not something that you know, I want to believe I still have, but I do. And then, along with shame, because of the weight that was put on and the choices I made, it just I often don't feel inclined, like in a group like this, to share like completely openly, maybe because it's still just a heavy weight. But on the other side of that, in being in reunion not that it's been easy because I didn't know my son for 28 years, but joy that Sharon's talking about that has been a very joyful and liberating healing experience. So that's too many words, but that's been a very good healing aspect of this, I think, for both him and me.
Speaker 4:Oh, very nice. All right, I'm going to go over to Dr Liz, yeah.
Speaker 7:Before I give you my emotions, I want to acknowledge the both end of this and how that is so important for all of us who are dealing with a very complex lifelong experience that adoption is that we always have to continue to hold space for the both ends that exist.
Speaker 7:So, for me, I think right now I'm in a space and a place of both grief and gratitude. Grief, similar to Elle, around all of the things that have been taken away for so many of us, gr. Grief at all of the loss that I continue to experience, even though I am in reunion with my first mom, and that has been largely positive. Grief at the loss of relationship in my adoptive family because of the complexity of the fact that I decided to find my first mom. And a lot of gratitude because I get to sit here today with you all and I have found this incredible community of people that are willing to show up authentically and truthfully and have these hard conversations. And gratitude for myself that I have been able to navigate my own life so successfully, despite all of the grief and all of the pain, and that I've been able to do so many positive things with it. So that's where I'm at. Oh, very well said.
Speaker 4:I'm going to bounce over now to Amy I would say ache is a primary feeling.
Speaker 5:Now. I've had an open adoption for my son's entire life. So to the extent that knowing the child relieves the pain, I don't experience that. I feel that he's been slipping away from me his entire life and it's been in front of my face, the relationship that I don't have his entire life, relationship that I don't have his entire life.
Speaker 5:And ache is, to speak to, the kind of like, the pain that I'm used to. I'm very accustomed to this. This is not in any way sharp, it's just a persistent familiar around every corner, a kind of like ache that appears through adoption. I see it in my relationship to my career, just all of the impacts that we think we start to heal after the moment of adoption, and it feels kind of the reverse, that things unfold and become deeper and more profoundly painful. There's that and, yes, the both, and because I've got plenty of joy in my life as well.
Speaker 5:But the other feeling that I would describe in relationship to adoption is a kind of simmering drive to change things. And it's hard to think about changing things because we can't just upend it in one fell swoop as we all would if we could. There's such a slow cultural process that needs to happen. With every conversation that we have out in the world, and every time I have a conversation with somebody not related to adoption, I feel like I'm remembering how important it is to find the right words and the right tone and the right pace for introducing them to the idea that this is not a good system. I just was at a party last night having a conversation with a woman. I was trading stories of adoptions pains. She was like, oh, and I know this other great adoption. And I was like how are we having the same conversation? So I have a real drive to find that magical way to turn things upside down while loving people.
Speaker 4:Oh, I like that. I like that a lot. We'll circle back on some of those themes too as we continue our conversation, so I'm going to now go over to Suzanne.
Speaker 8:I'm not sure if these are feelings, but I'm going to claim them as such because I feel them and it's a bit of a binary, but for me it's belonging and isolation and they can coexist.
Speaker 8:But that's sort of the constant flutter for me, or the lack of safety, of feeling isolated, or the safety of feeling like I belong, and that's been the struggle of navigating different families and feeling like I'm rooted and grounded and that I can explore my identity. And I seem to only be able to do that when I feel that sense of belonging and connection. And it seems hopeless and like it never, ever happens at any moment if I'm in the space of isolation. And I have very much been aware of that, those feelings and that dynamic, when I'm actually in community with other adoptees and adoptees and first birth moms. Because that is like a sense of belonging that is completely unique, that isn't from a biological or non-biological traditional family, but comes about through that connection and understanding and sort of the nodding of the head when someone is, you know, speaking about their experience. That is just sort of a priceless and grounding and feeling of belonging moment.
Speaker 4:Yeah well said All right, Jenny, you are up next.
Speaker 2:So I'm just going to go with the first two things that came to my beautiful brain, and that was regret and blessing. So the definition of regret is feeling sad, repentant or disappointed over and so something that's happened, and so I think for me that word fits perfectly. And the regret of not doing the work of finding out what it's like to be adopted first, to know what my daughter was going to experience and go through in her life and what that was gonna be like for her. Regret for not standing up and being strong in that time when I needed to be for her and for myself. And ultimately, the regret that I can't seem to get rid of of the decision that I made seem to get rid of of the decision that I made.
Speaker 2:And then blessing, because of the relationship that I have with her and being able to be there for her her whole life. I would never want to not have that, and so I also feel so very blessed that I was in a position to be able to watch her, regardless of whether or not she was running up to me and calling me mom or calling that to another woman. I would never take away the opportunities that I had over all of these years to watch her grow and to be there and to know what her hug felt like and to look into her brown eyes and to see her go from this little person to this 32-year-old woman and to me. As much of that pain that might be there because of it, I am absolutely blessed beyond measure to have her in my life. So those are my two words, and now it's your turn, lisa Ann.
Speaker 4:The first thing I want to say is I want to thank Dr Liss for acknowledging right out of the gate here that we're going to have both sides of the coin and that that's okay. I'm still in wonderment what could have been? I do struggle with the connections of my birth family. On the paternal side, all but one is non-existent and it'll remain that way, and the maternal side is still very awkward weird awkwardness. But at the same time I don't have the like.
Speaker 4:I need to be grateful, but I do now have more gratitude than I had even two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, around that if it wasn't for adoption, I may not be who I am today and I'm really starting to like me again. There's that weirdness in there, right, that says it's not all that bad. Maybe I don't know, but also for me it's not all that bad. It could have been worse and I know that. I really, truly know that. So when we're talking about our journey and you know what's happened over the years, how do you really think that this has affected your relationship with the families? I maybe want this more from the birth mothers first, your relationship with your families, because you had to go on, and I mean that with love. How about we start this time with Denise?
Speaker 3:Okay, so just a little recap real quick. I do a birth mom group with the Celia Center. I don't know if anybody's aware of the Celia Center here. I know Amy, you are, I know Jenny, you are right. Jeanette Yoff she was an adoptee who was first fostered and then became an adoptee was an adoptee who was first fostered and then became an adoptee, and in that group we talk about this. You know a lot with the reunion and what happens with your family or what happens how you go on after relinquishment or after you. You know we used to say give a baby up. Right, we used to say we gave our baby up. Those were the words we said.
Speaker 3:I believe that part of me just had to shut down when that happened. I mean absolutely A part of me, just that probably I've never quite managed to get back to again on that person that I was before I gave my first born son up, relinquished him, I mean, because my mother had cancer. The story is that I was in a very seriously Catholic family. I never told my mother or my father I left. It was a closed adoption, it was very secretive and very quiet and I just came back home, you know, after being away some months. Anyway, it was like I had to shut that down and just continue on. So I relinquished my son in 90.
Speaker 3:My mom died in 92 and I got married in 95. Then I was just like talk about powering through. I was just going to get married and I was just going to have children. It was just all going to be great somehow. And that was the story that was told Like you are doing the best thing. That was the story that was told. Like you are doing the best thing. You're doing what you should do for your baby. You are not capable of taking care of a baby by yourself.
Speaker 3:I didn't even tell my parents like I could not bring that story home to my parents. I could not. At least, I believed I couldn't. So all that to just say like I didn't really feel like I had a place to go with what was happening, except to run and then just to keep forging on. I didn't go to therapy, I didn't, and I actually just thought this is the best thing I can do for my baby. And until I read Primal Wound in 2019, I actually believed that. So it's a lot of unhealed stuff there you know, sharon, I know you have.
Speaker 4:Maybe, I think it's you right, that has kind of a uniqueness to your story as well. If I've got the right formula, maybe you go next.
Speaker 1:I was told by the social worker to go on with my life like this didn't happen, which most everybody was and I thought I had to do that. And so my immediate family knew, but we never discussed it. When I came back home after I had gone to stay with my brother and his family not a maternity home and when I came back home we never discussed it. For 25 years I did not discuss this with anybody. And I worked beside a birth mom for 20 of those 25 years. But I knew she was a birth mom, but she didn't know I was and I still could not talk to her about that. And had I been able to talk to her it would have been perfect. We could have been there for each other, but I could not talk to her. But the minute my daughter called, I got the call that my daughter wanted to meet me. I changed completely. My family even said my voice changed. I was so thrilled to get that phone call. And then I told my co-worker I had to tell her. And it's just, my life has changed completely. Tell her. And it's just, my life has changed completely.
Speaker 1:I've written a book. I've tried to get the laws changed in Missouri so that adoptees can get their original birth certificate, which took 16 years. But we succeeded and my life has been adoption totally. I never got married until I was 57, because I had difficulty trusting anybody and I never had any more children. I had low self-esteem until my daughter found me and that all changed. It's just amazing, the big change that happened.
Speaker 4:If I remember correctly, Denise, you were closed and sharing your closed adoptions where Amy and Jenny were open adoptions. And before I go to the open adoption aspect of this, do any of the adoptees want to kind of weigh in here on this? Elle would you like to, Elle and Liz would both like to, in that order.
Speaker 6:Okay, because that's the era I was born in, 1970. And I do know my first mom and we do have a nice relationship. Sometimes it's weird, right, I just found her when I was 48. So it was a long time. Something like a laptop because it's interactive and it's called Mums the Word and there are various interviews with birth moms from actually I hate that term first moms from the baby scoop era and some adoptees and some historians and things, and one of the first moms had become a therapist of some sort. She's highly educated, very accomplished. She carried on with life. As the question is right, you have no choice.
Speaker 6:My first mom was told get a puppy, so nice, helpful. But this one first mom talked about how, yeah, she went on and had a family and a career and all this sort of stuff, but she always stayed. There was a part of her that stayed the age she was when she relinquished. There's like a 19 year old in there or however old she had been, and that struck me. I don't know. I saw the documentary when I was in first reunion, so a number of years ago, and I have never been able to ask my own mom that because that feels weird and intrusive. So, mom, do you still feel like you're 19 and immature, like that feels weird? So I'm not going to do that and I hope she doesn't listen to this. Actually it was weird, so I'm not going to do that and I hope she doesn't listen to this actually.
Speaker 6:But I just wonder for you birth moms, does that resonate? I've always wondered if it would resonate with other moms who had thought they were doing the right thing, been told all the things that you guys are told. And just a quick little aside having grown up in a very strict evangelical household, I was never angry at my mother. I was never like. That was never a thing for me because I grew up in a culture where single women were not allowed to keep children. I've always been on the side of the first moms because I just knew she had no choice, even though I didn't know her story. I had no information from very young, I just knew it. She couldn't keep me anyway. I just wondered she had no choice, even though I didn't know her story. I had no information from very young, I just knew she couldn't keep me. Anyway, I just wondered if that resonated with any of you.
Speaker 4:I think Amy's going to weigh in and we're going to come back to Liz.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I just want to say there's something about having all the authorities, all your parents, everybody that you respect, deciding that you're not worthy or not. You know whatever you don't have what any other mother has to be able to take care of the baby, and they all agree and everybody stands there and watches you sign the papers and then you're supposed to feel like equipped to do the rest of your life. And when the reality is, when you actually face the reality that actually you could have done that you absolutely had all the capability that any other person does, you nevertheless have committed to a life of basically repeatedly deciding the opposite. You can't undo the adoption because you realize you can do it. And so then for his, especially in an open adoption where you are in the home of the people, you have to pretend like this is what you wanted.
Speaker 5:And so we were speaking about language, the giving up. We used to say giving up, now we say place or whatever. I continue to say give up wholeheartedly, because I believe that saying that I placed is untrue. There wasn't an empowered decision that continued with an empowered decision. Throughout my life I gave up, and only because I gave up could I let go of my child. I gave up, and only because I gave up could I let go of my child.
Speaker 5:And you age 10 years. You know, I was 23,. They were like 33-ish. That feels like a huge gap. And then I got to be 33, they're 43. That's like not a gap. And then now we're both old people. We're all old people.
Speaker 5:But in order to continue living as a birth mother, you have to continue to pretend like they should have him. And so there's a mind F that you do to yourself of like, yeah, they should still have him. To make it make sense, you have to be ill-equipped. And so then you put yourself back there to inexperienced and incapable, incapable, inexperienced and and uncapable, incapable, and that concretizes a sense of inferiority in every aspect. You can't be inferior in motherhood and then not feel inferior in every career ambition that you have or every relationship that you have.
Speaker 5:I practiced inferiority for all these years in order to make the adoption work, and so, yeah, that has impacted in every part of my life. And also, you can't, I didn't want to some people have a kid immediately after as a way of coping. I had to not have a kid immediately after because I was supposed to achieve all this stuff. I gave them up to achieve all this stuff. So I have to like stay in in this young person, ambitious career kind of state of mind, focused on all those things, so that I could make it all make sense. So a lot of it is we're put in this super unnatural situation that everybody agrees to and then we have to somehow contort ourselves to make it make sense.
Speaker 7:And we come out contorted to make it make sense and we come out contorted. Thank you Well, liz, you are up. Thank you for all of that, amy. I, just I the thing that I'm so much is going through my head as I'm sitting here, taking in all of what y'all are saying, and now I'm trying to like mash it all together and respond.
Speaker 7:A couple of things, like I, I want to acknowledge, like the deeply problematic power dynamic dynamics that that we're talking about, right, like it's, I mean, like there's this you know, as women first of all, like we have to look at the ways that our, our society and our culture has has set us all up to fail because of these, these power dynamics that tell you, especially Amy and Jenny and Sharon and Denise, that tell you that you're not good enough and you can't and you shouldn't, you know, and and then, and then how that you know maps itself onto us as adoptees, right? I mean, I feel that in so much in my bones and in my cells, like, and so, amy, as you were talking, I was thinking about the impact of that story that you're living on the other side of it, like that, the story that I had to live as an adoptee, with the disconnection and the not knowing and being told a version of a story that said that my first mother was not good enough to keep me and that she was too young and she was not married and that she was. All of these things, none of which were probably true, but that was the story that was manufactured in order to legitimize it for my parents, who needed to say something. And, like I'm with you, elan, I really hate the term birth mom too. It's so dehumanizing and I, over the years, have been really conscious about my own language and have paid attention to the evolution in my own language, which is why I choose the term first mom, because that feels true for me, even in terms of how we talk about adoption. That's another thing that I was thinking about as y'all were talking with the language around. Did I place, did I surrender, did I relinquish, give up? And, amy, I'm with you on the give up.
Speaker 7:I intentionally use the term surrender when I talk and write about adoption-related things, because it's literally to cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority, and that's what we're talking about. It's a submission to this greater authority. That is all bullshit and it makes me so angry, you know, and, sharon, I, I really resonated when you said your voice changed. I got into reunion with my first mom and I started to understand that, like, I actually came from another person and that I was real right. I wasn't just this like person that had it appeared at some point, but like actually, like I was born to somebody and she had a name and she had a face and I could finally know her and thereby, on some level, know myself. I felt my voice change too.
Speaker 4:Well, I want to hone in on a couple of things that Amy said and I'm actually going to punt it over to Suzanne, and it was around your dialogue associated with I didn't have a child. Afterwards, I was expected to go do all these things right, I needed to succeed and do all these wonderful things. And Suzanne's play is called the Good Adoptee and I know she feels very strongly about some of that, you know, dialogue that adoptees have internalized year over year, and so I was wondering, suzanne, if you'd like to kind of weigh in a little bit from an adoptee perspective on that drive to do everything perfect. We have to succeed, we have to. You know, we have to do all these things because someone relinquished us, surrendered us, gave us away so that we could have a better life. And before we jump there, I know we all think we've had a different life. Right, adoptees typically, and the ones that I speak to, we say it's not a better life, it's just been a different life. So, suzanne, take it away.
Speaker 8:I actually want to pivot on your punt a little bit. But, yes, being the good adoptee, I think there is that tyranny of perfection and it's high stakes Because I think for me, from being little, it was like, oh, I got bought at the store and I can be returned to the store, so it was, it's, you know, it's. Oh, I better not screw up, I better be really, really great, I better live up to that chosen baby blank slate situation, or, you know, that could be, you know, the finisher for me. So I definitely feel that and I think that there's, I think that there's a lot that we, for me, as an adoptee, that it's like I know there's. There's like this, this liminal space between the birth parents, birth mom or first mom I like to use that term too, now that we know this and what Amy was talking about by the worthiness, you know, from the birth mom perspective. I think that gets translated over to the adoptee where, oh, we must be not worthy because we were discarded, you know, which is how it can sometimes feel, and that's, you know against the backdrop of being, you know, the chosen perfect baby. So that's, you know. So that's the other kind of tension there.
Speaker 8:My pivot on this was actually from Elle's conversation earlier. You know, about birth parents being or birth moms being that same age and this is the knowing and not knowing what you know. But when I couldn't break my being the good adoptee and being, you know, the good girl who is not searching for their birth parents, because why would I do that when I have parents already? And you know, even at my age now, I have these moments of like oh, if I screw that up, I could, you know, get sent back. Of like, oh, if I screw that up, I could get sent back.
Speaker 8:But when I was 26, I wrote my first play about adoption and that's how I searched, because I couldn't search in real life, because it was too high stakes, I could get discarded. I searched for the first time in the theatrical landscape and in my imagination and the birth mom who appeared in this play was she was 52 in manner but she looked like her 22-year-old self. And that's what I explored, that dynamic where this birth mom looked to be this, you know, this kid basically, or young, young, young adult who relinquished or surrendered. And that's how I kind of first met my birth mom and the character told me which I was shocked about, you know, she said, she said to the sort of me character why aren't you searching for me?
Speaker 8:And I didn't think I could even do that, I didn't think she would want me to, you know, because it was all this oh, don't disrupt their lives. So you know, while your life is disrupted. So it was really this oh, don't disrupt their lives while your life is disrupted. So it was really this huge thing of meeting this fictional birth mother. But what I didn't know at the time that I found out is that she was actually the same age, same exact age that I wrote in the play.
Speaker 4:That's crazy. That is just so crazy. We have said there are some words that really rub us wrong and we started with the birth mother, first mother, and relinquish, surrendered, given up. What are a couple of your rub me wrong words, jenny?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't really have anything. I try really hard to not. Maybe I'm not the best person, maybe somebody else should go.
Speaker 4:Well, maybe let's let's tap into that, cause what you just said is I try really hard not to get right, and then you didn't want. I felt like you didn't want to finish your sentence, so if I were to finish your sentence for you, it would be I try really hard not to get offended. Is that a fair? Okay, I love that about you. Can we just peel that back for a minute? And when you do get offended, what is it? Gosh, that's hard then. So I'm going to go to you, denise.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm not going to say and I'm not going to try to be Jenny, but I'm going to say that I don't get offended by birth mother, I don't get offended by first month. That isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is, like the general narrative that's out there about how good it is, how good it all is, and it doesn't matter how many. I don't want to say it doesn't matter. But even though so many books have been written and so many podcasts have been done, if you talk to people who aren't in the world of adoption, the constellation or affected by it closely in some way, it's almost like nothing's been written. It's almost as if the story is so embedded and entrenched in the culture and people don't want to give it up because it's almost like. I feel like in a lot of ways you want like a nice clean-cut answer to complex not us, but people would like there to be an easy answer to complex, layered, difficult things, because it's hard to just sit with the fact that we've been doing this for so long. The way it's set up and institutionalized is so evil that it's easier not to even get into it. You know it's easier.
Speaker 3:I have plenty of friends who know my story and they still will. Just like Amy, you were saying you're at a party, you're talking about your feelings about it, and someone saying, oh, and this great adoption. I mean it's like it doesn't stop. That's the part that is. It's not a word. For me, it's not words that are being used, you know, like specific, like first mother, birth mother. That that's not it at all. It's that it just keeps going with this story and I find that just it's terrible really, but it makes it easy for some people to not have to dive into it deeper. I guess you know I'll stop there.
Speaker 4:I like that. Sharon, I'm going to bounce over to you what are your thoughts on either words that rub you the wrong way or portions of the narrative.
Speaker 1:Like Jenny, I can't think of words to actually describe that. I've actually like I'm knowing that I'm one of the few that liked the term birth mom because I gave birth to my child but I've never been a mom otherwise and to call me the first mom, I didn't even see my daughter at birth. So I feel more like a birth mom and I've never had a problem with the name birth mom.
Speaker 4:Very interesting. Well, I'll weigh in. I think that the one. If there's one phrase that just kind of every time I just kind of twitch a little or runs, you know, down my spine, it is the term given up and it has such a powerful negative connotation to me that it has been one of probably the distinctions of my desire to overachieve and constantly be doing better than and, and maybe you know, I need to be the next ladder, I need to be on the next rung of the ladder, career wise, or I need to be doing this, or I'm not a good step parent, or I'm not a good spouse, or I'm not a good sister, right, because I just keep needing to do more. I'm not good enough, and so that one is the one that probably just rubs me the wrong way when I'm talking along these lines, that just consistently, I'm like oh, here I go, better tamp that down, better bring that down a level, because otherwise it'll go south. Anyone else want to weigh in on some of the language or?
Speaker 7:narratives. Liz, I'm actually going to share an excerpt from my book that kind of speaks to everything that we've just been saying, and it's in the first chapter. And in my book I write as a society we still struggle with the idea that adoption is traumatic, that when we separate a baby and its mother, something devastating and irreparable occurs. I believe that the main reason many people don't want to acknowledge the trauma inherent in adoption is because to do so would disrupt how Americans and Western culture prioritize motherhood and the nuclear family at any cost. To acknowledge the devastation of maternal separation openly would mean that centuries of traditional family values rooted in patriarchal control over women's bodies would need to be scrutinized. This kind of scrutiny would mean questioning the values of the society that is built on white heteronormativity and inequality. It would mean admitting that maternal separation is an act of violence and seeing the dark side of what Kimberly McKee called the industrial complex of adoption, of violence, and seeing the dark side of what Kimberly McKee called the industrial complex of adoption.
Speaker 7:Yeah, so that's the thing that gets you know.
Speaker 7:It's like it's a lot to unpack and it means disrupting everything you know.
Speaker 7:And that's why the DSM doesn't acknowledge trauma as a diagnosis, because to do so would also disrupt the entire medical complex, because if you acknowledge trauma, then you're looking at the root cause of so many different I will say conditions or circumstances that people find themselves in mentally and physically, and we all know the effects of trauma. My first mom has fibromyalgia and I am 100% convinced that that is a direct outgrowth of her unresolved trauma. And you know, like the researcher in me is like, oh, that would be a really interesting thing to study, but the you know the other side of it is that I worry about her physical well-being and, yeah, so connected to that is the thing. Another thing that just drives me nuts is the lack of compassion and understanding from some of my own family around why I would want to have a relationship with her, why you were talking about, like isn't there enough love? Like why wouldn't we want the families you know, the adoptee to have access to all of that love and all of those connections?
Speaker 4:Well, we're going to then use that. Two of your points, I think, will segue very well into something that Jenny and I really wanted to make sure we tapped into today. One is our long-term health, and then just enough love. So I want to tap into the long-term health consequences.
Speaker 4:One of our dialogue mine and Jenny's was around Anna's growth, childhood period, where Jenny would go and visit or she would have Anna for a period of time, and the way that we talked about it was, for some of those times the adoptive parent would come in, pick Anna up and then at some point in time the adopted mother asked Jenny to start dropping her off instead, and my adoptee reaction was pretty visceral and it was like that's just horrid, because now, anna, every time you're leaving her again and again and again and again, right. And so we were wondering if you guys had picked up on any of that in listening, and if you guys my adoptee crew is going yep, yep, yeah, let's tap into that. Like what were your guys' thoughts around that? Because after we'll also share real quickly. I'm so sorry. I will start with Elle, then we'll go Liz, and I think Denise, you raised your hand too in that order, but post us recording. We talked and I think I was in massive tears, just to give you guys a heads up.
Speaker 6:So if we go there again today, that's why I am not a big crier because reasons my adopting mother cried about everything and it was a manipulation tactic and so I shut it off. But when my throat gets tight and it just starts, I need to dab very delicately at the corners of my eyes. That means I'm sobbing, actually, and that broke me because all I could think was how, as little or young adoptees, we don't even know what we're thinking or feeling half the time, right, we don't have words for it yet. And even because now I have been listening to podcasts and reading books and was here, we chatted, we were like a house on fire that one year, lisa, and recording, like you said, and then helping Heidi and I have not yet talked to one adopted person where they felt they could say out loud when they were young, let alone even now as adult, but when they were young to their even say more open adopting parents, because there's a power dynamic and you see the pain cross their face of not being the quote real parent because they're you know, I, I okay, there's, there's my trigger word is real.
Speaker 6:I don't okay, there's, there's my trigger word is real. I'm like my whole existence is made up. So I don't even know how to answer the question about who's real, because I don't feel real half the time. Right, I'm Pinocchio, like maybe today I'll be a real girl and and so the fact that it was thought to be a good idea to have her birth mom, first mom whatever people feel comfortable with dropping her off after a visit, I was like you're just being dropped off over and over again and even to say that out loud there's no way she would have felt safe to say out loud. So you know to her adopting parents I don't like this and yeah, I know I'm grumpy when I get home, but I just feel like as the adopted person always having to look after everybody else's feelings.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I'm going to jump in. And yeah, I'm going to jump in and let Jenny actually respond, because she, I know her heart and I also know when we were going through this, when she and I were going through this, her response was I really thought I was doing the best possible thing for Anna. So, jenny, I want to-.
Speaker 6:No, and Lisa, I totally get from Jenny's side that she thought she was doing the best thing this was. I listened, it was said by a counselor or a therapist or whatever and they thought it was the best. I totally get that. I'm just saying as the young adopted person. You don't know that these conversations have been had. You're only hearing what you hear filtered through your adopting parents and then your biological family that you get to spend time with is probably only allowed to say so much to you.
Speaker 4:Like again, we're left out of the actual conversation, right and that was hard, yeah, and I think that's why Jenny should have an opportunity, because she absolutely aligns with you and I. After we talked about it, she's like, oh my gosh, I never thought about it that way. And then when she explained to me equally, you know every step during that period of time, she was walking on eggshells too, and I think that's one of the things that is so important about our conversation today in terms of transparency and the empathy and making the spaces that you know. Have we thought about that? Have we thought about that in an open adoption, very specifically, but in all adoptions, that person that relinquished and no longer has this other human must be constantly on eggshells as well.
Speaker 6:So go ahead, jenny, can I just one quick little thing that when Jenny before, because you're going to respond but you're like I don't really have a word, and then Lisa was sort of like trying to push you a little bit and I thought we're a Venn diagram, because I think the people who tiptoe around the most looking after people's feelings are first moms, birth moms and the adoptee Mm-hmm, and so none of us want to use words that might, you know, make it seem like well, we anyway get. Well, you sound so angry, like well, sometimes I am. Anyway, please, jenny.
Speaker 2:Lisa Ann's reaction to that and I could, I could see it, I could feel how how much that got to her. And then I mean we even had, I think we paused for a little while, even because she just got so emotional about that. And and those are the times where I think like it breaks my heart, because all of her life, like the whole 18 years, it was just this bippity, boppity, boo along. You know, every time we were together it was always these smiles. And I look back now, knowing some of these things and like I wasn't, I wasn't thinking about how that would affect her, I believed the experts that said that that would be the best thing for us to do, and so I just believed that I didn't challenge it, just like I didn't challenge it when I was told that's what was best for her when I was pregnant with her. And but I look back. You know I have so many pictures of our times together and I, you know, remember there's a, there's a picture that I have of us at a park and it's I think I had three sons, two or three sons at the time, and my niece is six months older than Anna and my sister was 16 years old and had a baby and and parented her. That's a part of the story I've never really talked about too much. But and my niece was with me a lot and they're only six months apart and we're at a park and we're getting ready to leave and there's a sweet little picture of Anna and she's sitting on this bench and she didn't want to leave because I was taking her home and she's sitting on the bench and all the kids are smiling because we're going to take a picture before we leave and she's turned to the side and she's crying so hard and her head is down because she didn't want to go home.
Speaker 2:And I never thought about any of those times where she was upset to go home as it being like she wanted to be with me other than like she just had so much fun when she was with me because I had all these other really fun people around you know these other fun kids and like I never looked at it as an adoption thing, like I never looked at it as she didn't want to leave me because of the connection we had, because I was her birth mother, like I didn't want, I couldn't even go there because. Like I wouldn't have been able to take her home Like I had to. I had to disconnect those being anything that she might've been feeling, because how would I have taken her home? I would have gotten in a car and I would have driven to Colorado and never told anyone where I was, I mean. So I couldn't even go there to think that those things. So I always had to just think.
Speaker 2:You know, she didn't want to leave because she's having fun with these other people, not anything about that connection or bond. I mean even to even to this day, this adult is 32 years old and when we're together, every single time I leave, I'm not gone for four minutes without a text message from her saying please come back. Like still to this day, she wants, like we we've made jokes about marrying each other because we love each other so much, like we just want to be together, and it's just something that I don't. And she's still not able to talk about a lot of things for herself. And so you know, I don't want to tell her story, and I know that's another really difficult part of all of this too is how do you share these things and not share their story, and I don't know how you do that.
Speaker 2:I haven't figured it out yet. If you guys figure that one out, write a book and send it to me. But so yeah, I mean it is an and I am a real person and I do have real feelings, and I only ever care about everyone else first, so Anna's always first, and then her mom's feelings are second and so, and then somewhere along the way I haven't found them yet, but somewhere in a ditch, somewhere in northern Kentucky probably are my feelings, and so you know, I have to to remember that, like, when I look back at some of this stuff, it's not fair that I didn't always, I guess, put Anna first. I don't know, I felt like I always did, but I'm sure there are things that I've screwed up myself, you know, and I don't know. I welcome her to talk to me about those things, you know, someday and I'll sit with her in it. But I don't know, I feel like. I feel like I'm trauma talking.
Speaker 4:Actually, this is a great segue to the next, probably really deep portion, and then we're gonna have to start wrapping up, or we could be here for seven hours and and maybe we come back in a few months and do another group discussion around some of these topics and dive a little bit deeper, because there is no conversation that's going to cover it all in one to two hours. The listeners do not see us and so I'm just going to let you all know that this is a group of eight women and I don't think there's a dry eye right now. Know that this is a group of eight women and I don't think there's a dry eye right now, hardly at all. So it's a tough conversation.
Speaker 4:Another piece of this is trauma, and Liz touched on it a little bit, and I think Elle's touched on it and somewhere in here we've all probably touched on different portions of it without naming it. One of our other conversations that Jenny and I had in one of the concepts was Jenny did a great job journaling and if it wasn't for her journals, she might not remember certain things and I really have to be honest, I can't totally remember everything we were talking about. She made me know more than I do at the point in time. But there was a moment where she said I just don't remember. And my adoptee 10-year-old me came out and said what do you mean? You don't remember. And we just were curious if you guys picked up on that and how you guys felt.
Speaker 2:You said how could you forget a baby was born and you left.
Speaker 4:I said it, it resonated so strongly with you, but this is really. This is like the difference in the brains, too right, and how trauma is impacting us, because I know I said that and I can't remember it word for word like you can, but what got us there was you can't remember some of your own details, right, and so we kind of attributed this to disassociation and we'd like to see, maybe Amy or Denise or Sharon, what are you guys thinking as mothers around that concept?
Speaker 1:Well, this is Sharon and I can definitely touch on that subject Because when my daughter, I went to her wedding the year after we met and then a few years after that she got pregnant and she asked me about she was so excited about being pregnant. Did you feel this? She asked me so many things about being pregnant and she asked me about she was so excited about being pregnant. Did you feel this? You know, she asked me so many things about being pregnant and I said Lori, I'm sorry but I don't remember. And I could just see the look on her face. She said you don't remember. And I said I don't remember. And she just was really hurt because I could not remember.
Speaker 1:And then after she, she wanted to get the I hemorrage. I almost died during her pregnancy. I came very close to dying and they finally called the doctor and he hemorrhaged. You know so much that I was given transfusions and she asked for the medical records because she wanted to make sure she didn't hemorrhage in the same way. And when we looked at the medical records I found out that I was given a drug each day. I was in the hospital six days and I was given a drug each day.
Speaker 1:I was in the hospital six days and I was getting a drug and when I Googled it one of the side effects was amnesia. And whenever I talked to Betsy Norris from Cleveland, she was a nurse and she confirmed that they were told during a difficult pregnancy that they did give a drug that could cause amnesia. And I was Googling it just this week and it said the last update was March 25, 24. But it said this is the quote scopolamine injections has been discontinued. The patches are still available but they quit doing the injection, but one of them was amnesia. So anybody that has that it is possible that you were given a drug. I don't know if anybody knew that or not, but I thought all that time. I thought it was terrible for forgetting something like that and I, until Betsy told me that I thought, oh, wow, there is a reason.
Speaker 5:Amy, you're going to jump in. Yeah, I had a natural childbirth. I was very lucky to have someone kind of mentor me through childbirth because she sensed that childbirth. I was very lucky to have someone kind of mentor me through childbirth because she sensed that childbirth might be the only time I have with my son and for her, as with her particular life, she just wanted she cared about me and wanted to make sure I had a good experience. So I can only mine was pure dissociation on an emotional level. There was no drugs involved.
Speaker 5:I do somewhat remember childbirth and pregnancy. I regret that I have one picture of my pregnancy and it's a terrible one, but the more like utter black hole is the signature. And every time I went down to the agency I know the story. I know it's sort of like you remember childhood stories but you don't really remember it. But people told you and so you've internalized it and so you know it's true I must have gone down there and signed the papers and I know for a fact who was there at least some of the people, but I have no internal picture of it in the way that you do about important events and I even when I was writing my book.
Speaker 5:It was as if I was, you know, a biographer who was trying to put the pieces of a person's life together. I was looking through emails trying to find out when did I actually go, what time of day was it? Because it couldn't be true, and adoption is all about things that are not true being lived by all of us. And so there was the moment of the signature, and then there was the 10 years that followed. And the 10 years that followed. I sometimes have people tell me remember that time we went camping in Wyoming or something, and I'm just like I didn't realize we had ever met. There's so many relationships. I'm embarrassed anytime I see someone from graduate school, because I'm sure they're going to remind me of something we did together and I'm not going to remember it.
Speaker 5:I was in a manic state of accomplishing things for many, many years, and I wonder to what extent I'm still there, because I'm also not an easy crier and I think I have learned to function magnificently over incredible grief. And so there was something else. Oh, there was something else. Oh, there's something that I want to say related to the language and stuff. I feel like sometimes, when we have these conversations, it's all about our personal experiences and it's really important to me the opening it up to, like Liz, you kind of touched on it but that there's an industry behind this and there's a reason why this isn't all this kind of like crazy, confusing, why does this all happen? Thing, but that there is some people making money off of this and that kind of just twists the knife for me of the pain. So that's another reason that I don't like adoption language, because I think it's meant to protect the industry.
Speaker 4:Denise did you want to weigh in a little bit on disassociation.
Speaker 3:All I would say is similar to Amy, I had no drugs. I went to have my son, max, and I remember very little. In the one group that we have with the birth mothers, a brave adoptee came in, even though she knew it was like a birth mother group, and she brought so much to the table because she would say, like, her mother did not name her and so she was convinced that her mother could not possibly have loved her because her mother didn't give her a name. And I was like whoa, whoa, wait, a minute, you know, wait. Because, like, from the birth mother's side, I didn't name my son either, and it didn't have to do with loving him or not loving him, there was just a when I said I, a part of me, is that age or part of me shut down or the walls went up.
Speaker 3:Trauma does that. Like you have to live, the brain goes into a state of save yourself mode and for lack of a better way to say it and and you, you, in order to exist and survive, you shut down all sorts of things you know and just power on. And so, yeah, totally, it's not that I complete. I know where I was, I know what time of the day it was. I know those sorts of things, but a lot of details about the pregnancy and all no, no, because like I couldn't, I couldn't act. Like I was having a baby, like I had I was pregnant, like I had to shut down so many natural maternal instincts that I would not have survived it otherwise.
Speaker 4:I think that that is so healing for myself to hear that, though only from the perspective of if I'm approaching the conversation with conscious decision and maybe a little bit of selfishness versus selfless right around relinquishment, then also wrapping my brain around some of my own memory struggles, because I compartmentalize. You know, there are big pieces of my life that until somebody starts talking about it, I don't remember. And I think those are all very common threads for you know, both of the communities where the divide is between adoptee and the parents right, and I love when we can create that bridge. And I think we've only scratched like not even a surface, like just a little bit of a peeling on a piece of plastic that's stuck somewhere. And so I want us to start moving ourselves to two things what are your hopes and dreams for the future as it relates to, you know, just adoption, et cetera? And then, how have you felt about today's discussion? How are you going to leave this conversation? And I'm going to start with Liz, yeah.
Speaker 7:I think for me, the kind of hopes and dreams that I have, I mean and this is so connected to the work that I have been doing for many years now and have been building is that we all continue to find the healing that we need and that I am able to continue offering the healing work that I do to more people.
Speaker 7:And that directly connects to what I'm leaving this conversation with, which is that I want to be able to hold more space for first moms with the work that I do with migrating toward homeless, and I'm thinking about what does it look like to come together in first mom communities and get you all writing and processing through some of these really long, deeply held emotions. And I think the other thing that's really important that I want for all of us and for everyone who's listening, is to keep talking about the fact that this is traumatic, that we all hold so much trauma and that if we don't talk about it, it's going to find word to attach to their experiences and then go out in the world and have more conversations. The different experience being held together is just so, so crucial.
Speaker 8:And I think also, you know, for people who have been lucky enough to be in reunion in some way or another like sometimes we can talk to our friend birth moms, first moms, in a different way and hear experiences in a different way than we can with our own family members, and I just think that's just such an important piece of healing and moving the conversation forward which, yes, I think we could have for the next millennium. We can have this conversation because it's just so many. There's so many, so many layers. I'm going to be thinking about this for oodles of time after we part and I would just, you know, love in the future for adoption not to exist in this sort of pack of lies, problematic state where we have to undo layers and layers and layers. I just want transparency and truth and for people to be able to be their, their true selves in the world.
Speaker 3:Denise, this will. This will haunt me. This wonderful gathering will haunt me through the days in a good way, I suppose, but like it will. I tap it down a lot more than maybe some people who do a lot of work in this. I keep mine a little mean. Everybody that knows me knows I'm in reunion and you know I went into it big once. You know, max came into my life, but I don't do this work all the time, and so this will really like be very busy in my mind for a long time.
Speaker 3:One thing I'd like to talk about that keeps coming up in my world is and when stuff shows up I just take it as a sign from the universe that I'm supposed to do something with it, and what keeps happening with me is like so I have three other children other than Max, and that reunion or union of my whole family has been extremely difficult, and I know that people really struggle with that meshing together of these people who don't know each other. I knew Max was here. Obviously my three other children did not never had that conversation, did not expect Max to come and find me. My point is just that this is so huge and big and resonates and out. It affects everyone that we're involved with.
Speaker 3:Also, you know, it affected my relationship with my spouse. It affects my relationship with my children that I raise. It affects my siblings. Everyone I feel like is affected by anyone who's a birth mother, first mother or adoptee. Every person in their lives is affected, I believe, by the trauma that lives in us, whether we're trying to hide it, pretending that we're hiding it or not. So I hope to do some work in those in some way in those realms. All right, thank you, elle.
Speaker 6:I don't even.
Speaker 4:I'm just so entranced by listening to everybody else's what everybody else just said that I don't even remember what you asked actually Okay, I'll restate, because I was wondering if we were going to get to about half of us and forget what the question was. So the question is this what are your hopes and dreams for the future? Are kind of around the adoption topic and then you know how are you feeling about this discussion. Right, Hopes and dreams.
Speaker 6:I also want change in the industry and just in general. I know the United States has some particular dramatic issues, but you know it happens all over the world particular dramatic issues, but you know it happens all over the world. Just this week I actually saw a post about how the province of Quebec has halted or is putting in really stiff legislation on international adoption because they're seeing that there's trauma and things, and I was like, yes, I was so proud of our province, because one of the questions that often comes to my mind when I hear especially adopting parents speak is did you need to change my identity to look after me? Would you have parented me if I needed external care? Truly, because some people do, and that's yes. I get tired of that question though. Well, what about? Don't start. But what if I needed external care? Could I still have known where I came from, kept my name, known that this was my ethnic background? And like, could you have parented me without essentially owning my identity? And I think that's what needs to change in a huge way in adoption is the idea that I am my own person and I can't take on your identity, because it's literally impossible for me to do that. So that would be my hope because, yeah, there will always be a need for external care to some degree. But family preservation first.
Speaker 6:I'm hearing like Amy wasn't 15. She was in her early twenties and if she had been married, no one would have said about her keeping her child, and so that's garbage. And so that's where I would like to see change and to keep the conversation going, because this today has been just stunning. It's amazing, and my brain is just clipping along. There are so many more questions, questions that beg other questions, or somebody says something that I think yes, and then you know, because there's also no healing without talking about it, and the industry has wanted us to be quiet. That's why we're told you sound angry, be grateful, sit down.
Speaker 6:Or to the birth mother well, you went on, you're fine. Are they so fine? What does fine mean? Right? And so the more we talk, the more the truth comes out, and the both and parts of it. That was mentioned before right, I think that was Liz and that things are rarely fully black and white, and and there are both ends and we need to keep talking if there's going to be any sort of healing, and as far as I don't know, like I'm gonna, I lift weights. So after this I'm going to the basement, I'm going to be lifting some heavy weights, just to work this out a little bit. And it was just so good and thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you, I'm going to push over to Sharon now, your hope for the future, and you know what are you taking away from?
Speaker 1:today. Today, my hope for the future is I don't want other birth mom birth moms to keep a secret. I mine, I kept mine for 25 years. Some, some of them go their whole life 50, 60, 70 years and keeping that secret. And so what I do is, my hope, is we can keep that from happening, and that's why I started the local support group and I'm also a facilitator for aka with Jenny and to speak to other parents about it, and I'm a search angel. I help adoptees and birth parents try to find each other, and I've done that for 20 years and that's what I really like to do and talk to people to try to keep them from keeping that secret. That's what my hope is, and thanks so much for this, because this has helped a lot, and this is exactly what I like to do is to spread the word.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:All right, jenny Gosh, golly, jeepers, okay, everything that everyone just said for sure, and I think the thing that really sticks out for me is empathy for each other.
Speaker 2:I think that that is something that is just lacking in the world in general, something that I can honestly say, I think I do pretty well with, and I think it's really important that we have empathy for one another and that we take the time to listen and to hear each other in the entire constellation, and that the truth for all of us are spoken, that there doesn't need to be narratives to make someone believe something specific if it's not the truth.
Speaker 2:All of us coming together and continuing to have this talk my, my hope and dream would be that this is actually what we thought was going to be a one-time thing and it's not, that we come back again, the same eight people, and continue this conversation. That's a hope that I'm gonna to have for you, lisa Ann, who I adore, and I just I think Liz said it best, really and that that we just keep talking. I think we just need to keep talking and that we continue to do this, continue to have this conversation, and that more birth mothers to get rid of shame and that's coming from someone who still has lots of shame and has all regret but that more birth mothers share honestly and that you know that we can just continue to be, be strong in that way of of sharing our stories and sharing what we go through, you know, with one another, and so Amy, you're, you're up Well.
Speaker 5:My my personal goal is is integration. There's so much about this that is, you know your parallel lives that you're up Well. My personal goal is integration. There's so much about this that is, your parallel lives that you're living like just having to wake up tomorrow and be a landscape architect in New York City. It's intense, it's an intense whiplash, and I just want to feel like I'm only one person, and that goes for my relationship with my son as well. There's so much. Just his mentioning of his Christmas plans. It just reminds me that we are still living separate lives Around adoption.
Speaker 5:I am doing work I think I share the feelings of everyone here and my work. A project that I'm passionate about is the Concerned United Birth Parents Instagram and TikTok, and it's birth mothers telling a quick story about the impact of adoption on them, and it's part mothers telling a quick story about the impact of adoption on them, and it's part of this chinking away at the cultural narrative in a digestible amount, and the more faces that are different, the more stories that are slightly different. I feel like it's got to make an impact. So I'm trying to get both through writing workshops and working with birth mothers. I'm trying to get more birth mother faces out there.
Speaker 5:And another specific thing is I would like pre-birth matching to be abolished. There's no way I would have given up my son if I hadn't felt indebted to the family. So I think some of these very sneaky tactics of coercion I would like to get revealed for what they are. Until there's actual science, until trauma can be measured and we can say with certainty 99% of people who've been through adoption on either the adopted side or the birth mother side experience trauma, we need to really start listening to the impact. So that's why I think, until we have that pure cold research, we need to be elevating stories all over the place and just pray that people listen. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4:I'm going to wrap up. I heard a lot around continuing to tell our stories, helping each other out, getting the message out, changing policy. Those are four really great objectives for the community and even for the eight of us. I will share that. What I want for the future is that every conversation that I'm part of at least touches one person. That's been my goal from day one, and if it's one, I'm happy. I don't even need to know which one, and I really honestly mean that I don't need to know. I love to know, but I'm just happy that we could pull in 20 minutes. I want to circle back in that 20 minutes, 20 minutes. I want to circle back in that 20 minutes. Eight fantastic people together so that we could have this conversation and really get to the core of how we all felt and have the space to do so.
Speaker 4:So thank you to Denise Palmer, birth mother. Closed adoption. Suzanne Bachner adoptee, the good adoptee and just an advocate, for knowing your information. And Sharon Cummings for her honesty around shame and just how it's impacted her life and some of the gosh. There were a couple of gut-wrenching moments in your story that we didn't get to circle back on, but I wrote them down for later. And Amy for just your. You know pure honesty and you know the emotion that you've been bringing in.
Speaker 4:Jenny for being my partner in season five. On this I cannot thank you enough because I think deep down we are doing something really good for the community. Elle, thank you always for being that voice of reason and the solid attendee in my life and I love you and I'm thankful that we're friends and you too. Liz, I am deeply indebted to you. Your monologue, unmothered. I hope others get more opportunity to see that. It was very life-changing for a couple of my friends who are not adoptees, so adoptee adjacent, and with that for our listeners. This is deep. Take care of yourself, thank you so. So much Can I say one thing.
Speaker 2:Can I say one thing? Yeah, go for it. I just I also want to say thank you to you, lisa Ann, for doing this, for being I mean, you keep throwing me in here with you, but you really did this whole thing and I so, so much appreciate you that you were able to listen, that you were able to challenge me the way that you did. I think that was so fabulous. I loved your truth, I loved your honesty with me. I think that that's you know, really, really what made all of this and, and that our hearts are both going after the same thing of empathy and connection and understanding. Ultimately, it comes always back to that, but you really truly are amazing and I'm so happy that I just heard you tell someone that you love them.
Speaker 4:Oh, because you know the truth on that. Thank you, she does know the truth in that. So, the fact that I said that is a big deal for me, that is a big deal, yep, thank you. All right, I love you all, ben. How about that? Lots of love, but, more importantly, thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, thank you, bye, everybody, thank you, bye everybody. Thank you so much, thank you.