Latest / Babes, how did you get here / I Thought I Knew My Fiancée… Then I Found Out the Truth

Transcript

I Thought I Knew My Fiancée… Then I Found Out the Truth · Babes, how did you get here

• 0:00
  Lily is a singer, songwriter, and addiction advocate who spent her early years in foster care before being adopted and taken from Thailand to America.
• 0:09
  Although she grew up in LA, she has recently made the incredible decision to return to Thailand, reclaim her Thai citizenship, and begin the deeply personal search for her birth mother.
• 0:21
  I'm so excited for today's conversation, but before we get into all of the details, I have to ask, babes, how did you get here?
• 0:29
  Wow, that's a loaded question.
• 0:32
  It's a long time coming because I left when I was four.
• 0:38
  It just kind of happened very quickly, the move to Thailand.
• 0:43
  And it was really the fact that I'm seeing myself getting older and realizing as an adoptee, if I want to find my birth parents, I may not be able to have the luxury of waiting longer.
• 0:56
  Sure.
• 0:56
  Yeah, and that was something that I had on my mind more because of it's something I know is really important for the healing process.
• 1:06
  Even though I'd never had a burning desire to need to know, it just, something kind of changed when I started getting older.
• 1:15
  And that led me to think, wow, I wonder if I could get my citizenship as a Thai adoptee.
• 1:21
  It was nothing I'd ever thought about.
• 1:23
  And the more I uncovered, which interestingly enough was through Facebook group, they had one for Thai citizenship, and I learned...
• 1:32
  that I am considered a Thai citizen.
• 1:35
  I just need to reclaim it and prove with the paperwork and now with the help of the adoption agency.
• 1:41
  And so I said, I wanna move here.
• 1:44
  Let's just move here.
• 1:45
  I've been living, so I was living in LA for 13 years, but actually did grow up on the East Coast originally.
• 1:51
  And,
• 1:53
  I just knew it was time for a change.
• 1:55
  And something I think kind of switched in my journey and my spiritual journey too.
• 2:02
  And especially as I began the undertaking of really embracing being an artist.
• 2:08
  There is a whole side I think to being an artist, which to, my art was used to heal me as an outlet before I was healed.
• 2:18
  And then as I healed, it was a part of the journey too.
• 2:23
  We're dropping new episodes every single week.
• 2:25
  So make sure you subscribe.
• 2:27
  You don't want to miss this, babes.
• 2:28
  And leave a comment and tell me, what do you want to hear out of my next conversation?
• 2:33
  Your support really helps this community grow.
• 2:35
  And if you know someone who's quietly been thinking, should they take that next big leap?
• 2:39
  Babes, send them the podcast.
• 2:42
  I was in a relationship for seven years.
• 2:43
  Okay.
• 2:45
  And this is, it's really crazy because it took me a long time to be able to talk about this openly because there was shame and guilt around it.
• 2:53
  But I found out my ex-fiance was a pedophile.
• 2:56
  Yeah.
• 2:57
  How did you find this out?
• 2:58
  It was...
• 3:01
  It was three weeks before our wedding.
• 3:03
  It was right after the wedding shower.
• 3:05
  And there was someone in my family.
• 3:09
  Okay.
• 3:10
  And so I was told by the parent.
• 3:13
  And I had a really hard time wrapping my head around it because...
• 3:17
  People make the assumption that pedophiles are, you know, these repulsive people that you can identify.
• 3:23
  Sure.
• 3:24
  Completely not the case.
• 3:25
  We're talking like Pierce Brosnan wrapped in Ben F. Like with charming humor and just salt of the earth would shovel our neighbor's yard because she had cancer.
• 3:35
  Came from a big warm Irish Catholic family.
• 3:38
  Would never have known.
• 3:39
  And I already was almost 11 years younger than him.
• 3:43
  Okay.
• 3:43
  And I...
• 3:44
  I try to dive into this understanding that dynamic.
• 3:48
  Now looking back, I'm like, why didn't anyone say anything?
• 3:51
  Isn't that weird?
• 3:52
  And I realized, well, your father remarried a woman who is 15 years younger than him.
• 3:56
  So the end of society.
• 3:58
  I mean, when I was in college, my boyfriend was 22 years older than me.
• 4:01
  And now that we're having this conversation out loud, I'm like, I mean, if my daughter came and said that she was dating someone 20.
• 4:06
  But again.
• 4:08
  it's so circumstantial in the moment.
• 4:11
  So this experience, at the time I was actually in school as an English major in a pre-law student.
• 4:18
  I had a letter of recommendation go to Harvard Law School.
• 4:21
  My professor was my advisor and also taught there.
• 4:24
  So
• 4:25
  I was, I had, there was a whole bunch of my life there.
• 4:28
  At 19, I like withdrew from college.
• 4:30
  I'd gone to Smith, which is an all-women's college outside of Boston, and told my adoptive family, I don't want anything to do with you, and I went my separate way.
• 4:38
  So I had definitely this collision with the adoption issues and just unresolved resentments, and that was the first time I experienced any issues with relationships
• 4:50
  feeling a grief from being abandoned.
• 4:53
  She came out of nowhere triggered by a picture of an Asian woman on a Vogue magazine.
• 4:57
  And I looked in the mirror and I thought, why would someone wanna give me up?
• 5:00
  And I just started crying.
• 5:02
  And I never, my mind had never gone there before.
• 5:05
  And that's when you pushed your family.
• 5:06
  I pushed my family away, so I had decided to go off on my own, and it really was this crash course in life.
• 5:14
  And I was so stubborn that I believed that I was more capable than I was to withstand just life things.
• 5:21
  And so this man was not a good man.
• 5:25
  He turned out to be an abusive person.
• 5:29
  And so when that began, I'd never experienced anything like it in my life.
• 5:34
  And I got out.
• 5:36
  So he tried to, first he would threaten me, tell me he knew the police and he had a gun under his head.
• 5:42
  And then he one time choked me, which I didn't understand.
• 5:46
  I always thought, oh, that's not a big deal.
• 5:48
  Like, he didn't hit me.
• 5:49
  And then I learned later from people who were in domestic abuse situations.
• 5:53
  But I was like, oh.
• 5:53
  They're like, no, that's very serious because he's trying to kill you.
• 5:57
  It's actually considered more than, yeah, more violent than if someone just hit you.
• 6:03
  So, I mean, I just had no context because I didn't grow up in a home with any of these things, you know?
• 6:08
  And that was the part of me that foolishly gravitated rebelliously to things that were just completely different than what I experienced.
• 6:16
  So take me back to when you meet your ex-fiance.
• 6:19
  All right, so I met my ex-fiancee when I was still in a relationship with the Asian guy.
• 6:26
  Right.
• 6:26
  The one who was abusive and so
• 6:30
  When we say abusive, what are we speaking about?
• 6:33
  So he was controlling and then he physically tried to choke me out and then he would threaten that if I told anybody that he knew the police.
• 6:45
  And like a very, as I learned, very like stereotypical abuser behavior.
• 6:51
  Right.
• 6:52
  How long into this relationship is this happening?
• 6:54
  So initially I was introduced to him through someone I knew too.
• 6:58
  Yeah.
• 6:59
  But now I look back and I realize she was not exactly a great character either.
• 7:03
  Someone that I worked with.
• 7:04
  Okay.
• 7:07
  And he didn't exhibit these things right away.
• 7:10
  It was slow.
• 7:11
  First, I was blonde at the time.
• 7:12
  I was 22, working in the club like a bartender, like a really hot and all the club magazines.
• 7:19
  And the attention that I got, I didn't realize.
• 7:22
  He actually suggested I change my hair color and had his colorist come to the house to color my hair dark.
• 7:30
  Yeah.
• 7:31
  And I was young, so I didn't understand that.
• 7:35
  What do you think that that was kind?
• 7:36
  Because I could imagine someone offering to send someone to my house.
• 7:40
  Yeah, I didn't.
• 7:41
  I didn't think that he was trying to control sure.
• 7:43
  And that he was having an issue with the tension I got at all.
• 7:46
  OK, now I just thought, oh, you know, he just likes me having dark hair.
• 7:50
  Right.
• 7:50
  Which now older me was like, first of all, no man's going to tell me what color my hair is going
• 7:55
  But I think too at that time I was, you know, I wasn't financially secure, you know.
• 8:02
  And so there is that aspect where it seems like, okay, this isn't a bad situation.
• 8:08
  I'm not, I'm just going to be completely honest.
• 8:10
  You know, I'm a young girl who loved her family taking care of herself on her own.
• 8:15
  And so this seems really appealing.
• 8:16
  He would pick me up in different BMWs and I had never had that.
• 8:20
  you know um i mean you ever's young you know what i mean my my dating experience is very limited but but also i can see where these acts of kindness can easily be interpreted as positive yeah so it's good to know the context of where i was coming from when i met my ex-fiance because after a relationship like that anyone's gonna seem better yes
• 8:44
  Right.
• 8:45
  And I think we forget to like talk about that in our, you know, going through the, you know, our dating history.
• 8:52
  But so my ex-fiancee happened to be friends with the manager of the bar that I was working at.
• 8:59
  So I was working at this bar in Boston near the wharf and everything.
• 9:03
  And it was known as a bar that a lot of like pro athletes would go to and stuff like that.
• 9:09
  And I remember he came in and he was so cocky, very handsome, funny.
• 9:16
  But I was, you know, I was like, you're just crazy.
• 9:18
  Like, what is wrong with you?
• 9:19
  I'd never met any man who was so forthright with showing his interests.
• 9:23
  I thought, oh, my God, this guy's crazy.
• 9:26
  But he was funny.
• 9:27
  So it wasn't like threatening, you know, and playful.
• 9:31
  And so.
• 9:32
  as like you know i have a boyfriend you know and uh actually i kind of skipped the first time we met that was he came to visit me at the bar after we met when me and my girlfriend went out and they we had met up with him okay and things are not going well with the current relationship constant fighting abusive relationship this asian boyfriend introduced me to a life with cocaine
• 9:58
  Okay.
• 9:59
  Yeah.
• 10:00
  That was a chapter in my life and really the only one where I was just, I was surrounded in that.
• 10:06
  Really?
• 10:07
  Yeah.
• 10:07
  He ended up getting caught with two kilos of cocaine.
• 10:10
  Was he dealing cocaine?
• 10:12
  Yes.
• 10:12
  Okay.
• 10:13
  And I didn't know that at first.
• 10:14
  Right.
• 10:15
  You know, I was very much a lot more naive than I wanted to believe.
• 10:19
  Right.
• 10:20
  Yeah.
• 10:20
  So you are in this world.
• 10:22
  Are you using coke at the time?
• 10:24
  I was using he's using coke.
• 10:25
  He was trying to really push it on me.
• 10:28
  And I knew enough to know that he this man is really trying to control you.
• 10:32
  He wants you to become addicted and need this.
• 10:34
  So you need him.
• 10:36
  And I found out that he had very he had his connections with the Italian mafia in Boston.
• 10:42
  Yeah.
• 10:42
  It was deep.
• 10:43
  It was deep.
• 10:44
  He used to be a bill collector, you know.
• 10:47
  Yeah.
• 10:47
  So there was a lot of intimidation.
• 10:49
  And did that make it harder to leave that relationship?
• 10:52
  It did.
• 10:52
  But what was interesting, and I've always had this my entire life.
• 10:56
  So I was working in the nightlight industry.
• 10:59
  And I've always secured really strong relationships and friendships.
• 11:04
  And so
• 11:06
  Interestingly enough, Boston is gangster.
• 11:11
  So the bar that I worked at and that my friends worked at was owned by one of the biggest mafia families.
• 11:17
  There's two of them in Boston.
• 11:19
  And they also owned the major strip club in town.
• 11:23
  And so they were able to get me the bouncer from there and a private driver to come packing a gun to take me.
• 11:30
  Amazing.
• 11:32
  Here's how messed up the psychology of being in an abusive relation was, I went back.
• 11:38
  I ended up going back.
• 11:39
  After they helped move you.
• 11:40
  Yeah.
• 11:41
  And that's when they were like, you know, we want to help you, but we can't help you if you're not willing to help yourself.
• 11:47
  Why did you want to go back?
• 11:51
  I think there was a guilt thing.
• 11:52
  I think I'm one of those people who's an empath.
• 11:55
  Okay.
• 11:56
  I'm an empath, and I think with the background of trauma and stuff, there's an aspect of chaos that almost became normalized.
• 12:05
  Right, was it comforting in a sense?
• 12:07
  Yeah, and it was like,
• 12:10
  I didn't realize how deep this trauma stuff runs from abandonment and things.
• 12:15
  And that lack of worthiness and stuff.
• 12:18
  But it's like you had people helping you.
• 12:20
  You have people that will find, they have the means to be able to help you get out of this situation that you go back.
• 12:26
  Um, but honestly, it wasn't too long after that, that I finally left him.
• 12:30
  And then I think because the ex fiance came along, it made that out easier.
• 12:35
  Yeah.
• 12:36
  Before we continue, make sure that you join our community by clicking the link below.
• 12:40
  You will get to choose thumbnails before the episodes go live, pick our next destinations, even recommend guests.
• 12:47
  I really cannot wait for you to help me shape where this podcast goes.
• 12:52
  Have you visualized what this could play out, you know, in the sense that you go through the process?
• 12:59
  Yeah, I think I've probably gone over so many times in my head before I was even ready to take the first steps to do this.
• 13:06
  And that's largely to do with the fact that I've gotten really active and connected in the adoption community.
• 13:13
  Yeah, so that's allowed me to really hear other people's stories of reunification.
• 13:17
  Sure.
• 13:18
  But for many years, I didn't think it was possible as an international adoptee.
• 13:22
  That's another reason that it kind of fed that fear of not looking because why set up yourself?
• 13:30
  Why set up myself for failure.
• 13:33
  Um, but the more I kept, I kept hearing these reunion stories and they're hard, they're complex, they're, they're not happy ever, ever, you know, happy everly after kind of things.
• 13:46
  And so I wanted to make sure my sobriety was in a good place.
• 13:49
  Yep.
• 13:50
  and I was struggling in my recovery to really understand like why is it that I don't feel like I can connect emotionally when I want to.
• 14:01
  It's that's where music kind of came into play for me because I don't have to make any effort to express myself emotionally through music.
• 14:10
  It's just like I said to someone I think I'm autistic like I can know he's like no you're artistic you're you're a musician but so um
• 14:20
  Yeah, and that always frustrated me.
• 14:21
  And I was like, I know this has to do with all my adoption stuff, you know?
• 14:25
  And I think not having that like,
• 14:30
  like gut response to things that I wish I would.
• 14:33
  Right.
• 14:34
  When it came to more personal things like this also kept me, you know, delayed in doing the search.
• 14:41
  Right.
• 14:42
  But I think doing it is gonna help open things up, you know, but yeah, so it could play out a few ways where sometimes they don't wanna see you, it's too hard for them.
• 14:54
  Right.
• 14:55
  Or, you know,
• 14:57
  At the time, my father had left her, and during that time in Thailand, it was very looked down upon, so her family disowned her.
• 15:06
  She was 21, never went to college, and did not have a job.
• 15:12
  And she had actually had an abortion with me, and it didn't take...
• 15:17
  So the adoption agency, I saw that in the records.
• 15:20
  I didn't learn about it until I was an adult, you know, really older in my 30s when I first looked at my records.
• 15:26
  But then speaking with a social worker who knows because they spent time working with my bio mom, we call them bio moms.
• 15:35
  She explained to me that after she gave birth, she changed her mind.
• 15:40
  And she tried to care for me because I saw in the records there are these first five months that weren't really accounted for until I show up at the orphanage.
• 15:47
  Right.
• 15:48
  So I made the assumption myself.
• 15:50
  I'm like, she must have tried to take care of me.
• 15:53
  And she did.
• 15:53
  She tried.
• 15:54
  But then when I looked at the records, when I got back, it was like malnourished baby, you know, this, that and the other.
• 16:01
  So she just couldn't afford to take care of me on her own.
• 16:06
  Twenty ones young, you know, to be all by yourself doing that.
• 16:10
  And it and I can tell you, I think one of the reasons why I'm able to
• 16:17
  to really have compassion too for her is that when I was 22 and I had, was just getting out of the relationship with the abusive Asian guy and going into the relationship with my ex-fiance, I ended up pregnant.
• 16:32
  I ended up pregnant and, you know, I didn't have a relationship with my family.
• 16:37
  I didn't tell my mother until years afterwards.
• 16:41
  And because our relationship was so close, I left one and went right into another.
• 16:46
  There was no telling for sure whose it was.
• 16:49
  And so I had an abortion.
• 16:50
  Yeah.
• 16:51
  You know, and today as someone who understands a lot more of the repercussions of the decision like that, I wouldn't do it now.
• 17:03
  You wouldn't?
• 17:04
  No, I wouldn't do it now.
• 17:06
  Why?
• 17:06
  I think...
• 17:07
  So, and I've dealt so deeply in my faith, I've realized that, first of all, I had to mention that I believe all these experiences in our lives happen for a reason, even especially the really painful ones.
• 17:22
  Yep.
• 17:27
  If I, today, I really believe that life is a gift, and I'm proof of that, that I came, I'm still here even after an attempted abortion, and if I hadn't lived, how could I share that you, we as human beings are so resilient and capable of becoming so much more than we realize and beyond our circumstances?
• 17:53
  I wouldn't be living proof to show that.
• 17:56
  Right.
• 17:56
  You know?
• 17:56
  And so I'm also, who am I to choose who lives and dies?
• 18:02
  You know?
• 18:03
  And I think...
• 18:05
  I think the thing that people get tripped on these days and psychologically, people know what they're doing with linguistics.
• 18:12
  I was an English major, so I'm very careful about my choice of words because they have incredible meaning.
• 18:20
  And in the spiritual world, what we speak, we speak into existence.
• 18:25
  Right.
• 18:26
  When you came to Thailand on this particular trip, knowing that you were going to make Thailand your home for right now, did you have this sense of homecoming?
• 18:37
  I did.
• 18:37
  I think it's a mixed bag because a part of me has had to navigate my own internalization of where I belong in this in in this particular part of my journey, because
• 18:53
  It's like I've always wanted to be around...
• 18:56
  There's a comfortability to be around people that are like you.
• 18:59
  And I think that's why the culture coexists with me so easily.
• 19:03
  Because it's probably in my DNA.
• 19:05
  100%.
• 19:05
  You know?
• 19:07
  But then...
• 19:09
  Because I can't speak the language, it reminds me that I'm a foreigner.
• 19:13
  Right.
• 19:14
  You know, and it's how I choose to interpret this.
• 19:17
  Do I choose to allow myself to continue to be self-conscious about this?
• 19:22
  Or do I accept that, hey, you have a unique circumstance.
• 19:26
  And when you tell people about it, that art high, they have been overwhelmingly warm and welcoming.
• 19:33
  You know, so that's where it's really important and how we perceive the experiences that we're having right now in this moment.
• 19:42
  Or are we perceiving it through the fear and insecurities that we're holding on inside internally?
• 19:48
  Yeah.
• 19:48
  You know, and so it's a daily reprieve to remind myself that your experience is.
• 19:55
  is mixed, it's been well received with Thai people, it's expats who have had a trouble with knowing where to place me.
• 20:03
  Really?
• 20:03
  And I think psychologically as human beings, we're just so used to being able to place people in these little.
• 20:08
  Neatly.
• 20:08
  Yeah, neatly, and I don't fit there.
• 20:10
  Why don't you speak Thai?
• 20:12
  you know and then it'll be well how are you gonna learn thai like don't they expect you to speak it and i'm like you're you know you're like so insensitive or you're deliberately trying to like really tear me down here because i think anyone with like half an iota of emotional intelligence would realize like this could be a triggering thing to mention you know people are ridiculous yeah and so that's
• 20:37
  I've gotten so attuned to people with non-verbals and verbal things and tone and all that where it's like
• 20:46
  And I think this is why it's, you know, it strengthens my ability to be an artist, but it makes my day-to-day life as a human being walking around difficult, where I do choose to spend a lot of time by myself to protect my energy.
• 21:02
  Because there's so many people that are walking around hurt, and they're taking it out on other people around them.
• 21:12
  And I just don't want to be in the crossfires.