Latest / The Resilience Project / Open Adoption Didn't Fix Everything: Adopted Connor on "Proof of Life" Visits, Belonging Beyond DNA, and the Business of Adoption

Transcript

Open Adoption Didn't Fix Everything: Adopted Connor on "Proof of Life" Visits, Belonging Beyond DNA, and the Business of Adoption · The Resilience Project

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hi y'all, I'm Julie.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm a trauma-informed adoptee coach and somatic healing guide.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: After overcoming deep abandonment wounds, I now help adult adoptees move from feeling lost and disconnected to experiencing profound self-belonging.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: I know what it is like to carry the weight of abandonment, to feel stuck in patterns of longing, adapting, and searching for belonging.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: To have tried every healing modality available and come up empty.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: My own healing has taught me this.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: The answers aren't out there.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: They're buried within me.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to guide you home to yourself.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: The Resilience Project podcast brings voice, visibility, and validation to the parts of adoption society rarely names, but all of us feel.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Through an trauma-informed somatic lens, I explore the lived experiences of the entire adoption constellation with a tender emphasis on the adoptee experience.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: This podcast goes beyond storytelling into soul telling.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: It offers embodied insight, compassionate education, and a path towards awareness, hope, and strength.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: Each episode invites listeners to understand adoption more deeply, not just with the mind, but with the nervous system and to reconnect with the truth, identity, and belonging that were always yours to come home to.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the podcast, everybody.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: It is so good to be with you.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: I say it every week, but this is probably my favorite time of my week.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: So if you've spent some time, any time in Adopte Spaces Online, you've probably come across today's guest.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: He goes by Adopted Connor, and his bio doesn't really soften anything about even what he does online.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: He says adoption is what happens when governments choose not to take care of their people.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Open adoption is a marketing tactic.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to talk about it, is what he says.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: So he means that, y'all.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Connor Howe was born and adopted in San Diego in the mid-1990s.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: He was one of the very first kids to grow up in what we call an open adoption.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: For him, open, and I'm air quoting that, meant seeing his mom once every year or two.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: His father lived in Ireland, and for most of Connor's life, the only thing he knew about him was his first name.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Open adoption was supposed to fix everything.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: That's what the book said.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: So why was Connor sitting in the same support groups as everyone else, carrying the same grief?
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Today he's an adoptee, an activist, a marketer, and a writer working on a memoir about open adoption.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And he's a dad, y'all.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: I think something that's really interesting that I want to be honest about, and I asked Connor about this at the beginning, is when I first found him and looked at his content, it was actually very difficult for me.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: It felt angry.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And then I met him in person at the adoption making of me event in Minneapolis, and I sat in the audience while he spoke on the adoptee panel.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And what I found was a warm, generous, stay-at-home dad from San Diego, the same city I was born in.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So there was this connection that I felt.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's who I want you to meet today.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: So he's not here to call you a horrible person if you think that adoption is good.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: He's here to show you what the brochure, I'm putting that in quotes, leaves out.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it, Connor.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: It is so good to have you here.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: And for anyone meeting you for the first time, how would you describe who you are and why adopted Connor?
3:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks for the intro.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a real loaded question.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I have this like online persona and then I have like my real life version of myself.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's funny when I make a video and people are like, all this guy does is complain about adoption.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: That's true online, but it's, I don't know, an hour of my day, and then the other 23 hours are spent doing other things.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: I am like first and foremost, I'm a parent and just doing that.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: But uh in this world of adoption, I guess, I am someone who just feels like things can be different, things can be better.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And I use my knowledge of marketing, having this past career as a marketer to try to, I guess, play the adoption agency's own game and try to um just get information out there that really gets people thinking about adoption in a more critical way.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Have my own ends that I would like to achieve.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: I think everyone who has this idea of adoption should be different or should be better in some kind of way, might have this image of the end goal in their mind.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: But to me, it's really not even about that.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just I see adoption agencies saying one thing and then another thing happening in practice.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: And I think the least I can do is to try to get people, whether they're hoping to adopt, whether they're considering adoption, whether they're an adopted person growing up and whatever, how whatever, whatever anyone's relationship is to adoption, just getting people to think about there was a value proposition made.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: And did adoption achieve that prediction or or in in many cases promise of what our lives would look like?
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Because for me growing up in my circumstances, I can share my story if I if you need me to.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: I had a decent family.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: I had a pretty normal life.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: But there were things that were said before I was adopted that did not happen after I was adopted.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: And uh, that doesn't mean I don't love my family.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean I don't have good relationships with people.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: But I feel like if you're gonna make these promises, you're gonna make these advertising strategy, whatever, however these agencies want to advertise it, they should either keep those promises or not make them at all because I don't think it's fair to consumers, whether it's a mother considering adoption for her child or a family or whatever, or people that are hoping to adopt.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's fair for people to enter the process and then have a kid like me who has all these problems that everyone in my life knows are connected to adoption, but none of us really know how to figure it out, even when we go to a therapist and then that therapist doesn't work and we go to a different one, a different one, a different one, and all of a sudden I'm in my 20s and those problems have not been resolved and I'm living on my own.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we know why those problems have not been resolved because those therapists were more than likely not adoption competent and had absolutely no idea how to deal with it and probably told you it's not that.
6:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: You know?
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think we all dealt with that.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: I did too.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: I think it was really cool in Minneapolis, actually, to first of all meet you, but then to be a part of an experience for you that was the first time.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: You had never been in a room full of adopted people.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: So what was that like for you?
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was weird.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I did organize, I guess, a meetup of adopted people in San Diego.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: And so I did connect with some people here.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's not really the same.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: It was this informal gathering of people just talking over coffee or whatever.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: And so to go to this room of, I don't know, 70, 80 people, it felt like of uh of adopted people who all have this thread in common and a lot of these people knowing who I am is really nice because I would not have probably been able to talk to anyone if they didn't know who I was.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm very antisocial, but uh it it was it felt good, it felt weird.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: After all of this happened, right, we all went to a few of us went to this like Airbnb.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: You were there, and uh and I think after you guys left, we were going down, I was going back to my hotel, just me and a couple other people, and we're sitting there and waiting for the Uber, and this is Airbnb that's split in half, and on the other side is this group of people that are all partying, they're all pretty young kids.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: And they saw this, some of them were on the porch, and we we were still waiting, and they're like, Oh, what are you guys doing here?
7:39
SPEAKER_01: We're like, we're all adopted, and they're like, What do you mean?
7:41
SPEAKER_01: It was weird to be like in this group of adopted people because where else in the world would you ever run into this group of adopted people?
7:49
SPEAKER_01: It felt really surreal.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it felt, I don't know, it felt good.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: It felt good to be around other people that have that experience.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: And it feels like it's really easy to connect with people that are adopted, relative for me at least, to people who are not adopted, just because I don't have to go through this whole spiel about my people know.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously some people know who I am already, but even if the people don't know who I am, I don't have to give my whole life story for people to kind of get a gist of okay, this is who this person is.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think it's so important, even on the panel, you talked about the whole open adoption thing and how it was supposed to fix everything.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting for me, and I I'll finish this question in a minute, was when I was in high school, so I was adopted in the 70s, so a long lot earlier than you, but I wrote a paper on adoption and how amazing it was.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: And open adoption was one of the things that I wrote about, how cool it was and how and I look back now and I'm like, how unbelievably clueless.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I did too, for what it's worth.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we all did.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: That's my point.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: We had absolutely no idea.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: We thought that adoption was a fix, that we were rescued because that's what society told us.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: And yet, again, like I said, you were in the same therapy, you were in the same trying to find support, all of that, that all of us were who were enclosed adoption.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: So that whole why am I here, take us there.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: What was that like for you when you realized that?
9:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really, really big question.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: I've always had these thoughts and attitudes about adoption.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: I think the for me, a really big breakthrough for me was recognizing that the comparison that I that I had always just implicitly made was that I'm comparing open adoption to closed adoption.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: But there's a world out there where I'm not adopted, where my mom raises me, where both of my parents raise me, where I'm adopted by a different family in similar dynamic or whatever.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: You can compare what I had to anything because at the end of the day, my adoption is this external intervention on behalf of whatever, the government, on behalf of some agency, to decide that this person is better suited here for whatever reason.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: Even if that was 100% my mom's choice, my adopted family's choice, it still required some sort of government or, I don't know, private executive or judge to sign a piece of paper and say, this is in this child's best interest.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: And I felt like for me growing up, I had a lot of gratitude.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: And I still do have a lot of gratitude over the fact that I do know my mom.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: I do have this connection to half of, I guess, where I come from.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: And I have good relationships with a lot of people in my family.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: Relationships are relationships that are not always perfect, but it's pretty much like a second family for me.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't like even using the caveats of my birth mom or like half siblings.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: It's, I just treat family like family.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think being able to recognize for me that that I didn't have to compare my experience to experiences of other adopted people, that I can compare myself to everyone else on earth that's not adopted.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: For me, I was like, yeah, well, then what do I have to be grateful for?
10:49
SPEAKER_01: Because I, yes, food was put on the table for me.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: Yes, my parents paid for this or that or this or that.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not even here to say that adoption didn't materially improve my life circumstances.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Very likely it did.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Who really knows?
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Maybe my mom marries Rich the day after she gives birth to me or whatever.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: But I think that I would I trade the the car that I got for my 16th birthday for some level of happiness that I wasn't able to achieve for so many years of my life as a child.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would 100%.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: I would trade a lot of things for just a some semblance of heath or identity that I was constantly and desperately searching for for 18 plus years of my life.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as a lot of us were.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, what's so interesting about that is even in an open adoption, you were searching from from the the get-go.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even realize how much I'd been searching until my 40s.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: I that's just that's a long time to have to hold it.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the if there's a difference, that's the difference with us closed adoptees, is so much was closed to us that it it didn't really open up anything until we were older and able to actually go, I'm being impacted by this.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: And so, but you were able to see how much it impacted you.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: And now I can look back and go, I can see it looking back.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: I can see it when I didn't see it then.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Definitely for me, it's weird being earlier, I guess, on the discovery.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: It's weird going to a support group or always feeling like I'm the youngest person in the room, although I wasn't in Minneapolis.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Shout out to the people that were younger than me that were there.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: But uh it's it's it's easy to feel this disjointedness or whatever when you have this reflective, okay, yes, my mom is here and then she's not here.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: And it's opponents of open adoption in the 70s, whether they were arguing this in sincerity or because they were just threatened by the idea of sharing.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: But they all the the the critics would all say that open adoption is too confusing for kids.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: How are they going to be able to figure out who's their real mom and who's the real dad?
12:51
SPEAKER_01: For me, that was never the confusing part.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: The confusing part was why is my mom safe enough to be in my life, but someone that I'm not allowed to spend more time with than the time that has been allotted to me.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: If I want to spend more time with my mom, why is that such a threat?
13:07
SPEAKER_01: And I don't really think that my mom or my adoptive family or really any institution or entity in my life really got asked that question or needed to have an answer for it.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, I just buried those feelings as best I could because I knew whether it was from my family or society or both, that you're just supposed to shut up and be grateful.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: And this is who you got, and this is your real family.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: And we use the language birth mom has a very specific kind of connotation, right?
13:33
SPEAKER_01: Your relationship with her ended.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: That why are you thinking about this person that gave birth to you?
13:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh, your birth family, it ended.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Or I have these siblings, but they're labeled as my half siblings because we're only genetically half siblings.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Although my brother I grew up with is my brother, no caveats.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, why do I only caveat one side of all of these people who I consider family?
13:56
SPEAKER_01: It never really made sense.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: And it's I I've mentioned this before on podcasts.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: I will, I will always use the opportunity that the person who created this open adoption or respectful adoption language was vehemently opposed to open adoption.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: So that the the I I've I yeah, I I know this on because I've spoken to people who have inside knowledge of this.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh so this idea that we're using a dictionary, the language that we're using is is being defined by people who were literally opposed to the practices that are being put in place for like 95% of adoptions today, just doesn't really make a lot of sense.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: Why are we using this this terminology?
14:29
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, when you grow up and it's all these caveats about, well, this is your real family, it it's not that different, closed versus open.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: I I and I guess I experienced both too.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: I had this mom that was in my life.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: I have my I have siblings that I got to know progressively as I got older, but I also have this dad and these these family members in Ireland who I've still to this day never met and never connected with.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, I so I experienced both.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: And open is better than closed for the people who care to compare, but uh it doesn't, it's not just it didn't solve all my problems.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: No, I I think that's the whole point.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Even when you talked about the limits that were put on your ability to spend with your mom, you talked about it being summer camp.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: You you got to spend summer camp with your mom.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: What did seeing her actually give you?
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And what do you feel like it couldn't give you?
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've listened to a lot of adopted people talk on podcasts and stuff.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: And I've heard people share that seeing my family member for the first time, there was this overwhelming, well, I see someone who looks like me.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: I was so young, I guess I never really felt like I had that moment.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: But and I but I grew up and I had a picture of my mom at my bedside table.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: So it's not like I didn't know what she looked like.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: It's not like I didn't know that someone out here on this planet looks like me.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: But it just wasn't for me, when I saw my mom, it felt much more rather than sitting there and and and embracing this common thread we have, it felt like I need to catch up on the time we've missed with each other and what has your life been like, what has happened, because I didn't have her phone number, I didn't know where she lived, I didn't have any way of even sending her a letter.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, so for me, and I've said this before as well on videos, maybe I don't mean for it to sound like a huge negative thing, but I felt like summer camp might even be putting it nicely.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: I felt like it was more of this hostage situation where every time I see my mom, it's proof of life.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: Here she is and she's alive.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: Let me make sure I I can talk to her while I still have her, because in an hour or five hours, however long it is, she's gonna be gone.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know the next time I'm gonna see her if I even see her at all.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: It's scary.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: And and you know, even if it's not my mom is gonna die in a car crash tomorrow, it could be my adoptive family decides or some therapist decides that it's best for me not to see her.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't even have to, my family could have been as supportive as possible, but they could have still had some person.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm pretty sure that they actually had some professional that told them not to let me see her at some point.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sure they do.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: So I for me, I was trying to safeguard that relationship.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: That's what mattered to me.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: That's still kind of what matters to me in my brain.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: I have to remind myself we're we we have control of our relationship now.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: But it it it's one of those things where I I wish that going back in time I could sit there and really embrace the fact that okay, here's this person I have this connection to.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: There were moments, don't get me wrong, you know, like hugging my mom and just not having to explain that to people felt great.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: And certain things like that.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: But um But I don't know, as a kid, honestly looking back, I don't remember much other than the really awkward, uncomfortable conversations where my mom takes me down to to this restaurant and we we talk about here's your story and here's what happened, and this is why you were given up for adoption, X, Y, Z.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: As long as older, we had more conversations and stuff, but as a kid, it's hard, it's just hard to remember a lot of things in general.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: You just talked about the hug with your mom, and you said something that I think is really interesting that love feels like a language everyone else speaks and you don't, and that a hug with your adoptive parents felt different than a hug from your mom or your siblings.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: What do you notice in your body?
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Because here we are with a somatic practitioner.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: What do you notice in your body in those two hugs?
18:09
SPEAKER_00: What's the difference?
18:11
SPEAKER_01: I think for me there's just always been more comfort.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't really know what it is.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: I had, like I said, a pretty typical childhood.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: Didn't have the best relationship with my adoptive family, but we're still on good terms.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: We still talk.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: I still see them all the time.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: I for me, it's just like if I always I feel like growing up, I felt different.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: I see these three people that all have this connection to each other, and it's effortless.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: And I don't they don't I'm the only one with brown hair, I'm the only one who's like skinny, I'm the only one who gets sunburnt, I'm the only one who fill in the blank, everything, right?
18:42
SPEAKER_01: I have these gifts that they don't have, they have these talents that I don't have.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Everything about me is different.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: And people used to say, Well, you look like your brother, and I would go, you're just lying to my face.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: We don't look the same.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: And you're saying that because you think I'm gonna be happy that you're saying it.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And I never, ever once in my entire life ever took pride or was like, wow, that's so nice of you to say.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: To me, it felt more like an insult.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: You really think that I don't know that I'm different.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: So, all that to say with this physical connection, I don't know.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: It just, I guess it's just something that I was more comfortable in being vulnerable.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: I really, I'm not as much of a lean into my body type of person.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm not anti-that.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: I just I've tried it and it's haven't hasn't connected with me in the way that I would really like it to.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: But I just feel like it wasn't there when I was young.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: And because it wasn't there, it got latched onto, I think, by my family that, oh, that he's different and he doesn't hug us as hard as his brother does, or my brother might think he doesn't hug me as hard as our parents hug hug me.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Or there was something different about me, and everyone sensed it.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: And because we all sensed it, even though we didn't really always talk about it out loud, it made me really want to pull back because I didn't want to allow them to.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: There was a part of me that wanted to protect myself of I I'm different.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to belong in this way because to belong in this way is to feed into that attitude that people have.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: You're just like any other kid.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm not, I'm not like any other kid.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to belong, I don't want to belong in that way.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: I want to be different because I am different.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to feel ostracized or less than, but to, I think, play along in that game.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: For me, if I'm if I'm being honest, as a kid, I felt like I did everything in my power to make sure that no one in my family or no one in my life saw me happy.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want people to think I was happy because I wasn't happy.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to smile in pictures.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: I hated what I hated when people asked me to smile in pictures because I was like, I don't want to create this evidence of me pretending to be something that I'm not.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I didn't have, like I said, I didn't have the worst life ever.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: I had friends, I had family, and people loved me and whatever.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: I had a good life.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: I played a bunch of sports and had a decent upbringing.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: But uh, but this idea of I just I I refuse to assimilate.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: I did not want to do it because I didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of being allowed to treat me like I wasn't different when I clearly was.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Anytime people ask me anything about myself, hey, nice to meet you.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: My name's Connor.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh oh, do you have any siblings?
21:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have a brother.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: He's four months younger than me.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: What?
21:05
SPEAKER_01: What is yeah, I'm adopted.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm adopted.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't Asian, I wasn't black, but I couldn't hide it.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: So I I don't want I didn't want people to see me as the same because I wasn't, and I couldn't hide that.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we talked about that, Damon and I last week about that, about that specific thing.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: He was adopted into a black family, he's black, his I can't remember which was which.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: One parent was m lighter skin, the other one was darker skinned.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: So we looked j he was I look just like where I'm supposed to be.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: But yet at the same time, he was very much like what you just described.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel that need to fit in or belong here because first of all, I want it to be acknowledged that I am different.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: I am.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: And I felt the same way.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: I was with white parents, and yet there were so many times where people would say the exact same thing.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: You look just like your mom.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, I don't.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: What?
21:54
SPEAKER_00: What are you even talking about?
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And yet I didn't want to hurt her feelings by saying it it just Puts you in this awkward position.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, and you get all these people who aren't adopted and even adoption agencies and people who adopt, I think for so many people in society think if we just give them perfectly equal treatment, that will be perfect.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: That will show them that you're no different than a biological child.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: I got equal treatment down to the penny, down to the penny.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: My mom was the same way.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I look, don't get me wrong.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: I love that my family is so financially supportive of me and my brother and whatever.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: They're very generous.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: They don't need to be.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't have I wouldn't be living in this house without help from family.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: But this idea that that equal is what I needed, we needed equity.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: I needed to, when I was when I was in trouble or when I when there was conflict in my family growing up, it would always be well, we treat you guys exactly the same.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: And the whole point was we yeah, you shouldn't.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: There are things that I need that he doesn't need.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: And there's things that he needed that I didn't need, you know?
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: So this idea of perfectly equal treatment, it's it's really, I feel like, such a point of fixation in adoption.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: But even just as a parent, even if this was an adoption podcast, I'm not going to treat my kids exactly the same in every single circumstance.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: I have no external need to prove to anyone that I love my kids the exact same.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: I I have uh my mother-in-law would joke like that my my wife's her favorite kid.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I can't ever imagine someone in my family saying that about me or my brother.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, everyone has preferences in life, you know?
23:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not to say that that person's your permanent favorite.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: It's not to say that you having a favorite makes you not love your other kids.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't necessarily think I'm gonna tell my kid I love you more than my other kid.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: But I I I don't think that acknowledging that there's differences in people and relationships uh is is ultimately damning to the point where people are gonna have all these psychological issues.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And when we aren't honest, then that's when the issues show up.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: When you became a compulsive liar as a kid, and I think a lot of that has to do with this idea of no one can actually be real with me.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, then why what is my incentive to tell the truth in any circumstance?
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you even talked about that you felt out of control and that in a lot of the choices that you made, that's what drove that.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: So, where is that in you today?
24:22
SPEAKER_00: What do you feel the same?
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Or is is that something that you've been able to settle?
24:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: For me, I would say that I'm the most put together, out of control person you could imagine.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: There's the people, there's I know that there's like not to make it political.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: I know like Donald Trump's one of them, there's people that have never drank.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: I've never drank in my life.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't know every single person's reason for not drinking, for not touching any bad thing, any vice or whatever.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I know myself.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: I was always terrified that the second I touched anything, I was going to be a wreck.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: I believe to my core that the second I touch anything, I will be a wreck.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: And I have everyone has vices.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: I know that when I was a kid, I played video games all the time because I didn't want to be living in this universe.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be in some other world.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: I as an I've talked with other adopted people about, oh yeah, we're always listening to podcasts or videos or whatever.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: Because I just I can't just be here sitting in a room with my own thoughts.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: I can't do it.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna drive me insane.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: I I was very much an escapist as a kid.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, also a compulsive rule follower.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: So it's like I don't really know how really out of control I was, but I think I compulsively followed the rules and had this very strict regulations of how I needed to live for a lot of reasons for religion and for being on the spectrum and for X, Y, and Z.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: But I think also because I knew that the second, to me, it was very much a polarization.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Either I am on this extreme or I am on that extreme.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: And it is safer for me to be the guy who has never done this, who has never experienced this, who is just in my room instead of teepeeing at a birthday party with everyone else.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Because if I once the second I get a taste of that, I feel like I'm gonna be a really bad person.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: You feel like you would be even more out of control.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just I the second I start breaking the rules, my life is gonna go crazy, basically.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: And I have no control.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: I I don't like the idea of drinking or smoking or anything because I it's terrified of like, who am I gonna be once once I've ingested something.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: So one of the other things that I found fascinating is that you described that you had somewhat of a midlife crisis in your 20s.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: Definitely more than something.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Which is well, which is really interesting because it's not midlife as we know it, but that's what you experienced.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And it was when your first child was born.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: So what happened to you inside that hospital room?
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: It might have even happened when my wife was pregnant.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't really know exactly when it started.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: But basically, for one to three years around the time my kid was born, I was in full-blown.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of it out to people calling out, come calling coming out of the fog and and whatever.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: But for me, when my kid was born and I see my kid being born, I'm looking at that child, I'm just thinking about myself as that baby.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: And what was my what did this look like for me?
27:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't have pictures, I don't have videos.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: I was born in the 90s.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people born in the 90s have that.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh a lot of people born before me have that.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's not like I wasn't surrounded by it pretty much everyone I consider family at that point.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: So, what was it about that type of moment that I just don't have access to that?
27:28
SPEAKER_01: And so it started making me think a lot about things that I've I've definitely thought about before, but really on a deeper level of what would my life look like if things were different in this way, in that way.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and to me, that was really, I think, the first time it occurred to me that my my mom had a choice.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: I think for so many years of my life, it was very easy for the adults that I considered family to say, well, just be mad at your dad, and the therapist too, to say, just be mad at your dad, this guy in Ironland, because he's an easy target.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: He can't defend himself.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: And because I knew who my mom was, because I had access to her, he was the one I was searching for.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Most adopted people are searching for their moms.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: He was my dad's the guy I didn't know.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: So people, I think, were were very inclined to direct whatever feelings I had at that guy.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: And not to say that it just, yeah, I think for me, seeing my kid really made me realize that life could have been different in different ways.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't necessarily mean it would have been better or worse or whatever, but it just got the gears moving, you know?
28:27
SPEAKER_01: And it really made me think about this adoption stuff a lot.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: And I found my adoption papers, I found my adoptive family gave me pretty much everything they have, their profile book, they gave me the adoption files that had the price right next to my name.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: I was really paranoid that my adoptive family was going to get upset with me when I started posting, but I I started pretty around that time, I would say, within a year or two, that's when I really started posting.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: And and I just really to me it was really just this idea of even just in this profile book that my adoptive family gave to my mom, here's what we're gonna do, here's what we want.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: And there were things that were said that I was gonna have that I didn't get.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: And I asked my I asked people in my family about that.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: People get cagey, like everyone.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: And I realized that I wasn't gonna get gonna get get answers for people.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: It was really difficult because adoption is a super touchy subject.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: I can talk about it with people on occasion in certain contexts, and honestly, my adoptive family is pretty, pretty open.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: They'll they'll they'll listen to a lot of what I have to say.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I just think even just seeing interactions too between my kid and between other people and and thinking, you're treating my kid in ways I never felt like I was treated.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: I I love my family.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: I I'm super happy to have them in my life, like everyone.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: But every every person grows up and becomes an adult and they realize that their parents, their families are flawed, imperfect.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know?
30:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: And I'd always had conflict with my family, but to I had really big conflict with them.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: I went no contact with, I'm pretty sure every single adult in my life, at my adoptive family and my mom, I think all three of them I've been in no contact with for at least some period of time.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: I think it probably says more about me than it says about anyone else because I've been no contact with my brother.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: I've been, I mean, it's just it was very difficult for me to rec reconcile a lot of these feelings I had growing up and and being told, even if it wasn't by family, by friends, by therapists, by whoever, by pastors, that this was all God's plan for your life.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: And seeing my kid be born and thinking to myself, what kind of a God would orchestrate this transaction where my mom gives birth to me and then someone else takes me away from her the second I'm born?
30:54
SPEAKER_01: I don't view it as this theft, but I I didn't understand, I still don't understand why it was necessary to do that right away.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Why was it necessary to separate me from my mother so early and so definitively in a way that I didn't get to choose whether I had access to her really until I was an adult.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: We saw each other, but it wasn't really, it was it it doesn't make sense that a system says it's in the child's best interest, but I was never really consulted on what that best interest looked like.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: None of us were.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the crazy thing.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: You talked about a bunch there that was so, so important for people to hear.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things that stood out to me was the relationship with your parents and how there were times where you felt like it needed to be cut off.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: And I know for me, when my first son was born, I remember the exact same feeling.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's not extremely common for adopted people to feel what you just described.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: It's usually this massive protection of don't take my baby.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if maybe you felt that.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: What I felt like was I looked at him and I was like, how how do I take care of him?
32:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't I I wasn't taken care of it at this age.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: It scared me.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: And I I thought I'm gonna, yeah, I'm I'm gonna ruin this kid because I don't know how to do this.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Really, really scared me.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: And that first seven weeks of my life personally, I was in foster care, and of course, I have no clue about that.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: There's no record.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: They won't give me anything in San Diego.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's just odd.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: All the stuff that we deal with is odd that we have to hold.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think the other thing that stood out to me when I was reading through and watching some of your videos was this reading the primal wound.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: That that was a turning point for you in your relationship with your adoptive parents.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: I find that really interesting because it was a turning point for me too, because it was the first time that language was put to something in print that I had never fully understood, but lived in my body and I knew it.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: I I felt it.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: I felt for the first time understood.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: And I asked my mom to read it and she got to page 30 and was like, I can't do this.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: If I do this, it'll prove that I'm a bad parent.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, that's not at all what it will prove.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: But it's just interesting.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: And I love that your parents read it.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: And how did you guys come through that?
33:14
SPEAKER_01: And I know that's my chat GPT that told you that because I think that was on a I don't I probably said on another podcast.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: So this is the crazy part, right?
33:21
SPEAKER_01: I I order the primal wound on on Amazon or whatever, because my therapist tells me to.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: My adoptive That's exactly what happened for me.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: She said, get it, you need to read it.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: But I use my adoptive mom's Amazon, and so they see that I bought it and they're like, What's this book?
33:36
SPEAKER_01: And they bought it and read it.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Whoa.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it was really weird because it it makes me really angry, honestly, to think about the fact that that book was written before I was born, and they had never even heard of it until I was in my late 20s.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: And I had never heard of it either.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: That book was written by someone who adopted who spoke with so many adopted people.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: I know it's divisive in these communities.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: I know it's divisive and whatever.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: But no one had ever there was never the first book I ever read that was about adoption.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: My my biological mom gave me the guy from Run DMC wrote a memoir.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: And it was, I think it was fine, but it wasn't really that adoption related.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: And or it was adoption related, but just I don't know.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: I think he's I think he's a big adoption fundraiser guy, so I don't remember it being something that I was in love with.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: It was okay.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but I I read The Primal Wound, I read a few other books, I read Anne Hephron's, You Don't Adopt it, that's like my favorite adoption book by a mile.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: I love all the I love a lot, a lot of these books, but that's I and it was I'm not crazy.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm not crazy.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: I've always felt these things.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: Other people felt these things too.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: That is crazy because I've always felt this way.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: And here's this book that was written before I was born telling me that here's how adoptive people feel about this stuff.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: And and then my adoptive family or whoever, everyone that's involved in adoption, they put you all in a room and they're like, here's this panel of adoptive people of quote unquote birth moms, and they're gonna tell you everything about everything you need to know about adoption.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: But that book was never mentioned.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: What are we talking about here?
35:06
SPEAKER_01: Why is that threatening to people?
35:08
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, for me, I think it's interesting.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Definitely one of those periods of no contact with my adoptive family, is right around the time they read that book.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: They read it, I think they understood they they understood it to an extent, probably more than a lot of people who read that book understand this stuff.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: But it was really difficult for me because I was I read that book and I was, you guys made this choice.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: That's really the first time I felt like I was allowed to say it.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: I always felt that.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: But here I am now, and I'm allowed to be this is I grew up this way.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: I have these feelings, I still have these feelings as a grown man.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: And and a big part of that is because all of these adults in my life, this is what you signed me up for, all of you.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: And then I got older, I thought more about this stuff, and I'm like, you know what?
35:49
SPEAKER_01: They all just were doing what they thought was best.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: But when you really are in the heat of that moment, it's what why did you people do this to me?
35:58
SPEAKER_01: And and so yeah, a big part of what I do is I I post this stuff because I I don't want to burst the bubble for every adopted person that this stuff is not as simple as a paper assignment or a baby and everything's over.
36:11
SPEAKER_02: Right.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: But but for me, it it was painful going into support groups or or interacting with people, like you just said, you were in your 40s when this stuff like for me, I'm glad it happened earlier.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: If it had to happen, I'm glad that I figured it out somewhat.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm not perfect, I don't have everything figured out with my life, but I went through that stuff early, and I have years more of my life to be able to live and and whatever.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be difficult to to deal with a lot of the emotions and feelings that I have, but I don't feel like a crazy person just existing, you know?
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, I don't know.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm just probably rambling at this point, but it was really that season of my life was so difficult, and I really haven't shared it a lot.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: I I'm happy to share it here because it's more of a healing podcast.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: It it for me it was really painful.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: And I remember being in I got in a very public fight with my adoptive mom out of Starbucks.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: I got in a very public fight with my adoptive dad out of Delhi.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: And and then after both of those fights, we didn't talk for however long it was.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't, it wasn't like years, but it was months for sure.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh I was really afraid I'm gonna start posting this stuff and I'm gonna write my family out of the will.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not those relationships with me aren't purely financial, but the idea that I could write myself, my my wife and my future kids or my kids out of whatever inheritance I'm gonna get because I just want to run my mouth, that to me was terrifying.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: And so to go through all that and then to come out on the other side and have these positive relationships with my family went out.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: I was really, really expecting that those that relationship could severely fracture.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm very happy.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: We don't have this perfect relationship, we're not all best friends.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: There's things that I don't share with them.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's things they don't share with me, but uh we see each other pretty frequently.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: We have relationships.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: So I'll see them tomorrow.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's one of those things where I I'm very fortunate.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: I know that there's a lot of people out there who go through what I've gone through, what we've gone through, and those relationships fracture irreconcilably.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, for me, for whatever reason it worked out.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I a couple of things.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: The primal wound, what's really interesting about that book, I don't know if you know this, but you might.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: She self-published it.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons why, and she did it deliberately because she was afraid that the societal norms would pull the stuff out that she wanted to keep in there.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's part of the reason why it wasn't very well known.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: But that was one of the first things that was shared with me by my therapist too was I think you really need to read this.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad I did, to be honest.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: And it started the conversation.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: But I felt very similar to you with my adoptive mom.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: My my adoptive dad died when I was 15, actually, which is really sad.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: But I think, well, thank you.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: But I I think she is so very much invested in my life.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: She's enmeshed in it.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: She wants so much, she didn't have anything else.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: She had two adopted kids.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: They made a decision that they weren't going to do infertility deliberately because they didn't even want to go there, which I I'm grateful for.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: So I had a great adoption, just like you.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: But I think when I started doing this back in 2023, she did not like it at all.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: And there were periods of time where she asked me to stop.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: She said, please quit this.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: I can't, I don't know how to manage this when I have your your aunt and your cousins telling me that I'm that you're crazy, that what you're sharing is crazy.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, mom, here's the thing.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't expect you to understand what I have experienced because you haven't.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't expect that.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: But what I do expect is for you to be able to accept that this is my lived experience.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: And if you can't, then we aren't gonna have a relationship.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think that pushed her over the edge and she changed.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: She learned, she listened, she watched, and she came on my podcast and shared what she had learned.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you, I I felt the same way.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: It it I was so freaking scared.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm gonna lose everybody, you know?
40:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah it's it was scary.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: So I hear you.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for me, I'm very my my adoptive mom probably said the most meaningful thing to me ever, which was after the dust had settled in this whole my midlife crisis, she said, I understand you didn't want to be adopted, and I wish that you didn't have to be adopted.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And to me, I was like, Finally, you just admit that I grew up and it was always God planned this for you, God planned this for your mom, God planned this for us, God planned this for whoever.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: It was always written in the stars that I'm supposed to be adopted.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm supposed to feel all of the emotions that are connected to adoption, and it never it just always felt like way too much to put on a kid.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: Why do I have to feel all of these things while every other kid at school is just going about their day?
40:52
SPEAKER_01: And I get it, everyone has trauma, everyone has their own problems, but I also had my own problems beyond adoption.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: It's not like that was all of my I had normal kid problems too.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: I got bullied, I had fill in the blanks.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: I I I didn't have an easy life.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: And so to to to have all of this basically thrown on me for a transaction, and and then to have someone finally admit after so many years of my life, I to see me as a person and to say, I wish that you didn't have to to feel what you feel basically, it it really meant so much to me.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: And I'm right there with you on the little whispers from from people in in circles and communities of, oh, this guy's crazy.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: People, I think people have said it to a lot of people in my life.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this guy is insane.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: This guy's just yelling about adoption all the time.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: It's very easy, I think, for people who don't understand what we've been through to just think that I'm a crazy person ranting about adoption online.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: But I'm someone who wants people that are growing up the way that you and I grew up to live better lives.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: Whether we're adopted or not, I think what is really the threat of questioning our own child welfare systems when virtually every other country on earth does things differently.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: It's sorry, it just makes me so angry because I know there are so many countries on earth that are not perfect, their child welfare systems aren't perfect.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: And I get a lot of people that comment are like, Connor's saying that European adoption is awesome.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: And it's I I'm not saying that everything is perfect.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: What I'm saying is that people that are not in the United States have no concept of the fact that you could just irrevocably sign away rights to your child, basically the minute your child is born, and you never see each other again.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't exist anywhere else on earth, pretty much, besides here.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: And and I don't know what the what the laws were in California at the time I was born and adopted.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there are people, the people that are whispering that are saying, Oh, Connor just wishes his life was different.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: It's not about me.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm living whatever life I'm living.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: I can I can manage being the person that I am, living the life that I'm living.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not the best life on earth, but definitely not the worst life on earth either.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: I just want people to grow up and to be able to feel those emotions and not feel like insane, crazy people.
43:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: For for feeling the exact normal emotions that pretty much every adopted person feels.
43:07
SPEAKER_01: So we fight ourselves so much against feeling those emotions that we will convince ourselves that we're happy when we're not, at least people like me.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: So true.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: That's self-abandonment.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: And we do it all the time.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: Today, uh, in my Revelation Live group, I do a seven-day self-discovery group with adoptees, and we were talking about emotions and how to feel them, and that it's actually really important because a lot of my li fi was sent to my room if I had them, or I was told that they were ridiculous, you know?
43:37
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, wait, I I need to learn how to actually regulate these.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're here for.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Can can you help out?
43:43
SPEAKER_00: So it's so important.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad you brought that up.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: And one other thing that I really want to touch on because I think this is big because yes, you were in an open adoption, but you haven't met your dad.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: And you spent years searching for him, years.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: And there's you've talked about it as Brutal.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: You've talked about a lot of different things around this.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: And so what do you want people to understand about what searching costs them?
44:09
SPEAKER_01: Searching is not necessarily for the faint of heart.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: I think most adopted people in their heart of hearts want to search.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: They want to find a piece of themselves, this person they don't have a connection with, or whatever that they have a connection with, that they don't they're not able to see that connection or feel that connection.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: For me, it was really painful to search and to realize my dad doesn't want anything to do with me and that no one in his family wants anything to do with me.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: And actually the family's conspiring to make sure that no one responds to me.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: That to me makes me feel like there's something wrong with me, which isn't new.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: I grew up feeling that exact way because I'm adopted.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: And how can you be adopted and something isn't wrong with you?
44:51
SPEAKER_01: But people who search really need to understand that number one, reunion I would argue the majority of circumstances does not go positively.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: It never goes the way that you expect it to go, for better or for worse.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: But from listening and reading a lot, there are a lot of people who search, there are a lot of people who find, and there are a lot of people who have negative experiences, whether it's people who don't want to be found, whether it's people who have died, whether it's people who reject them, uh, or whether it's people that you find and you have success, and then things change.
45:26
SPEAKER_01: Searching is really difficult.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: And then beyond that, it it's it just takes an emotional toll on you.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: It you have to, you're living kind of two different lives at once.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: You're living the life where you're clocked into your nine to five or raising kids or whatever you're doing.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: And then it's probably usually at nighttime that okay, now I'm gonna get on the computer, now I'm gonna think about the it takes a lot of mental capacity to be able to be thinking about this stuff and what is really at the end of the rainbow.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: For some people, it might end up really positive, but uh statistically speaking, it's usually non-positive.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying people shouldn't search, I think every adopted person should search.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think that you have to recognize that you can't really know that you're not ready to search.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Or let me say that again.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't start a search until you're ready to accept that the worst case scenario in your mind is not the worst case scenario.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: And you can't you just it's it's probably gonna go worse than you think.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: If you can accept that it will probably go worse than you think, then then search search away.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: But it's it's I always wanted to find my dad.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: I still want to find my dad.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: I want to find the family that I have, even if it's not my dad.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't like having this lingering question mark that's hovering over my head constantly.
46:45
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I don't want to say just, well, you have all these people that love you and you have this normal life, that's what everyone else says.
46:52
SPEAKER_01: But it's it's not life defining, at least for me.
46:56
SPEAKER_01: I think it's different.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm in this position of privilege where I do have half of where I come from and who who I come from.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Um but it's just I don't know.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: The the lows of being rejected by family are not for everyone.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people ask me, well, I could never I could never post online and get all this vitriol.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: And I would take a thousand hate comments or hate videos from people over the feeling that you have, knowing that people don't want you to find them and are conspiring to make sure that you don't find them.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: I had some positive moments in that search.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: People responded to me, and then word got around that people aren't supposed to talk to me, and all of a sudden those people that were nice to me didn't respond to messages.
47:38
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's just painful.
47:41
SPEAKER_01: It's really painful.
47:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I have really good a good answer to that question.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I think you answered it just fine.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: And the pain is real, it's it's beyond secondary rejection.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: It's it's you're not even acknowledged.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that does something to a person.
47:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, see an obituary where everyone in your family is written there except for you.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: And I get it, I didn't grow up there.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: These people don't know who I am.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: But two generations from now, I'm gonna show up on that family tree right next to everyone else's name.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: So why is it so threatening to just not pretend I don't exist?
48:18
SPEAKER_01: I that's a question I will never have a good answer for.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't like it.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: You said a part of this why you play soccer, football.
48:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Irish football, Gaelic football.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is because your dad did.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: And right?
48:32
SPEAKER_00: And you you'll have this common denominator that goes beyond DNA.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: You had this quote of because maybe DNA isn't good enough.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: And clearly that's what you've experienced.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: So can you say more about that?
48:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: So for me, I never really felt like I was allowed to be someone who was different besides the fact that I was adopted.
48:51
SPEAKER_01: This Irish part of me was, oh well, whatever, every white person is the same.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: And in some ways that's true.
48:56
SPEAKER_01: But my dad's an Irish national.
48:59
SPEAKER_01: If my mom didn't fly to the United States when she was pregnant, I would have been born in Ireland.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: I'd have a different accent, I'd have a different life, even if she put me up for adoption, even if whatever.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: There are so many parallel universes that I could have lived in.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: But the idea of like, my mom could have not even flown to the US and still put me up for adoption, and I that would have been a totally different life.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: It's it's so weird to think about.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: And for me, yeah.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: So searching for my dad and and and realizing that wasn't gonna happen.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: And and I, yeah, it's weird.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: My it wasn't really a secret that my dad played, just no one in my life ever told me.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: And then when I was older, I uh two birds of one stone situation where I was a very competitive athlete growing up and stopped playing sports through most of my 20s just to sit on the computer and work or play video games.
49:42
SPEAKER_02: Right.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: And then I found out that my dad played Gaelic football, and I was like, oh, what's this about?
49:47
SPEAKER_01: Looked it up and realized there's a team in San Diego.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: There's a bunch of Irish guys that have immigrated here and and play.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: And there's a whole Gaelic football association in the United States that people play with.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I joined the team and uh connected with a bunch of Irish people, and it was pretty great.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I feel like a a trans or what is it, uh, inner country adopted person, not inner country.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: But and there's also this huge uh attitude in Ireland of there's every American makes their Irish, every and every American has a grandpa that's Irish, so it's basically just still invalor to sound like you're Irish.
50:20
SPEAKER_01: And so for me it was cool to connect with a bunch of Irish people, Irish, Irish people and uh end up and play this sport that my dad played and know, okay, if I ever do connect with any of my family, I have that that language I can say, okay.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, I know all the positions on the field.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: I've played this sport.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: Here's I played against this team and and scored this many points or whatever.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: Um and so to have that was really cool, but also just to connect with people.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I said, I I feel like I'm like an Asian adopted person that doesn't show up as Asian in front of people's face.
50:48
SPEAKER_01: I so for these adoption conferences where all the Korean adopted people get together and it's like here's a bunch of Korean adopted people.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: Like to be able to connect with Irish people and realize, okay, I I am one of these people.
50:57
SPEAKER_01: You put me in a room with Irish people and and people don't know that I'm not the same.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: I I was in customs in Ireland and and the customs guy was like, You're one of us, aren't you?
51:06
SPEAKER_01: I had in my American passport right hand.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, uh yeah, I I am, but how do you know that, you know?
51:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: And and people would come up to me and and think I was one of the Irish guys, be surprised I have an American accent.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: So it felt good.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: It feels good to be able to belong in that sense, to have this connection because yeah, I always felt different.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not I'm not the same.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: I grew up, I grew up here and I'm an American.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not an American, but I'm not an Irish person.
51:33
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's kind of a yeah, it's it's almost like being adopted.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: It's it's being adopted is one experience, and then being Irish slash American is they're both the same thing.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: It's like I belong in neither place, but I have shared commonalities with both sides in both of those experiences, right?
51:50
SPEAKER_01: It's like two places that kind of belong but don't fully belong.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: Um but it's great because it's it fills more of that picture for me of okay, here's these people that I can connect with that are all Irish people in general, just awesome too, which helps.
52:02
SPEAKER_01: But then yeah, I mean, to be able to play this sport.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: I I grew up playing soccer and uh I was pretty good.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: I scored a lot of goals, but I never really had a good, I couldn't kick very hard.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh my I was just a finesse guy, I'd dribble around the guys and then just basically tap it in past the goalie.
52:17
SPEAKER_01: And I used to think, I wish I I wish there was a sport where you could punt it, because I love punting the ball.
52:22
SPEAKER_01: And in Gaelic football, it's basically soccer, but you punt the ball to score.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: So I was like, You already knew that, you know, like it was it was it was in me the whole time.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
52:31
SPEAKER_00: It it usually is.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm Italian American and because my my birth father is a hundred percent, so I'm 52%.
52:39
SPEAKER_00: When I first went to Italy, I went with my kids and they all of us cried.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: Every we were like that the feeling of being there and being accepted and being able to actually speak a little bit of the language because I had been learning it ever since I found out was huge.
52:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people don't understand how huge it is because they were raised with knowing what their culture was.
53:00
SPEAKER_00: So the fact that you going through customs, somebody saying you're one of us, is it's this, it's an overwhelming feeling of, wow, yeah, actually, I am.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: It's yeah, especially in a country that they're like America, uh Americans are all fake Irish.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: I I get it.
53:17
SPEAKER_01: I might have been wearing a shirt that is a Gaelic football shirt, and the guy's okay, you might, but yeah, my I was talking to my wife and she's like, no, he just knows.
53:25
SPEAKER_01: He just knows.
53:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:26
SPEAKER_01: Because I was no, that there's it's not that.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: It must have been the shirt I was wearing, it must have been this, it must have been that.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: My wife is like, he just knew.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: All right, fair enough.
53:33
SPEAKER_01: I got a lot of those comments in Ireland.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: It feels so good.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: It feels so good when people having people say that my kids look like me is the greatest feeling on earth, but also people saying I look Irish is the greatest feeling because I grew up, like I said, and if people are telling me I look like these people that I have no biological connection to.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't.
53:50
SPEAKER_01: I we I don't have to look like them.
53:52
SPEAKER_01: I can just be me.
53:54
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
53:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
53:57
SPEAKER_01: But I could do that all day.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: Dude, I hear you.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: So marketing, let's let's shift gears a little.
54:03
SPEAKER_00: We need to probably close soon.
54:05
SPEAKER_00: So I want to make sure that we touch this because I think it's important.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: You put in the first line of your bio that adoption is what happens when governments choose not to take care of their people.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: And for the listener or viewer who feels defensive hearing that, what do you want them to know?
54:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the thing.
54:21
SPEAKER_01: I've I've been in so many different angles in my head of what do I believe?
54:25
SPEAKER_01: What is my motive?
54:26
SPEAKER_01: What is my end goal?
54:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a lot of adoptive people that are let's abolish adoption, let's reform adoption, let's change adopt.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: Everyone has their end goal.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: And for me, I'm a marketer.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: I spent like, I don't know, 10 or whatever years in marketing, spending tens of millions of dollars of other people's money on advertising.
54:44
SPEAKER_01: And so to spend that and then to look at the adoption agency ads, it was very interesting to me.
54:50
SPEAKER_01: And and when I looked at, I eventually kind of came to this point where I have to ask myself the question if I'm trying to get people on my, on, on, on board or whatever with what I'm doing, I have to ask myself, how how do you get someone on your side?
55:02
SPEAKER_01: And for me, it wasn't about it can't be about adoption.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: People don't care about adoption, by and large.
55:07
SPEAKER_01: People just want children to be safe and happy and taken care of.
55:12
SPEAKER_01: And for me, I really came to this realization of adoption, and it's not me.
55:16
SPEAKER_01: It's I'm not the first one to propose any of this.
55:18
SPEAKER_01: I've listened to so many adopted people and allies like Gretchen Sisson or whoever.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: I just you look at the way adoption functions in this country, and it's supposed to be a child welfare system.
55:28
SPEAKER_01: And what does it say about adoption that we group it with IVF and surrogacy and whatever else, egg freezing, as opposed to grouping it with food stamps or WIC or I don't know, government house housing vouchers.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: Adoption shouldn't be seen as this family-building service.
55:43
SPEAKER_01: Even if you love adoption, even if you think adoption is great, it shouldn't be that.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: And we spend so much money advertising literal children.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, go on, go on uh what is it, the US foster.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: I used to see commercials during football games for adopt US kids.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: It's a national photo listing database of foster kids.
56:04
SPEAKER_01: And I understand the intentions, right?
56:06
SPEAKER_01: You want to find homes for these kids or whatever, but why do you have photo listings of children?
56:11
SPEAKER_01: Another, I've seen Facebook posts of people who adopt kids that are like, is there a way to get this photo listing off of the internet?
56:17
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't want my child to be advertised that we already adopted them.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: And it just begs the question of, well, if if any parent wouldn't want their child to be advertised, why are we advertising children?
56:30
SPEAKER_01: How does that make sense?
56:31
SPEAKER_01: And and really the unfortunate fact is that the majority of advertising adoption is not advertising kids, it's advertising trying to recruit mothers who are pregnant, whether they're women or girls, uh, to come to this adoption agency and we're gonna make all these promises to you and do our best to keep them.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: And for me, it's you look at child welfare here and then you look at other countries, and it's it's not the goal for me is not let's just do this one thing with adoption.
56:54
SPEAKER_01: It's what do we have in common with people who aren't adopted who could be potential allies?
56:58
SPEAKER_01: It's the fact that you look at countries that have social welfare programs, that have social safety nets, the countries that take care of people, and adoption numbers are nothing compared to what they are here.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: You look at Australia, I want to say Australia has 200 adoptions per year.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: And I want to say 60 to 70 percent of those adoptions are like stepparents or grandparents, or the child is not being taken away and given to strangers.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: It's like you're just keeping the child within the community.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: You have the entire Middle East.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: I made a video that went really viral on Instagram, it really blew my mind that this is the one that went viral.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: But that Muslims don't adopt, they have their version of adoption where they take care of kids, but they don't change your name, they don't change your birth certificate, they don't change the way that inheritance works in that system because they honor that person as an individual.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: And why would we take this away from you?
57:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: When open adoption was first proposed in the 1970s, I went on this huge binge when I was when I was going through all this crisis.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: I was reading about open adoption and how it came to be.
57:51
SPEAKER_01: And the people that proposed open adoption were basically saying, and it was this is a response to all these adopted people in the 70s uh making a bunch of waves and trying to get original birth records accessed.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and these adoption people that are saying we're gonna fix everything, we're saying we can't take away a child's birthright like this.
58:07
SPEAKER_01: We can't, it is a child's birthright to have information about who they are, where they come from, all of this different, all these different things.
58:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, and yet open adoption really didn't change much of that.
58:17
SPEAKER_01: But all that to say, for me, I think that everyone in the United States, well, I might maybe be honored, a lot of people in the United States could agree that we deserve more support.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm a I'm a stay-at-home parent.
58:29
SPEAKER_01: I will take any money I can get to raise my kids.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: I I yeah, I don't think that's an unpopular opinion, even among the people that are like our government spends too much money.
58:39
SPEAKER_01: I think people in their heart of hearts can agree that we should fund families.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: And the way that our funding structure, our funding incentives work are just perverse.
58:47
SPEAKER_01: There's a really good book called Poverty by America that has nothing to do with adoption by this guy, Matthew Desmond.
58:52
SPEAKER_01: I think he's a sociologist.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: And it just describes the fact that in the United States, we have so much welfare spending, quote unquote, to the poor, but then we have more spending for the rich.
59:01
SPEAKER_01: We have tax breaks for corporations, for billionaires, we have mortgage reductions for homeowners like myself.
59:07
SPEAKER_01: Why am I getting special treatment when there's families that are poorer than me that need the money way more?
59:11
SPEAKER_01: You know?
59:12
SPEAKER_00: Right.
59:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: And it's, I'm not saying that I don't mean to make everything super political, but it's just one of those things where adoption is really what happens when you decide that we're not going to do this for people, we're not going to take care of people.
59:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, then what are we going to do as an alternative?
59:25
SPEAKER_01: When we ban, when we force people to carry out pregnancies to term, when we don't want to provide for people who need support, well, then what's the solution for that person who is forced to have a child that maybe they're not interested in raising, or maybe a child they just weren't expecting to raise and they and they don't have support?
59:41
SPEAKER_01: There's no, whether it's government resources, whether it's supportive parents or the boyfriend or whoever, when they feel alone and they feel resourceless, we have a lot of people that are spending a lot of money to find these mothers in that crisis and to get their babies out of them.
59:57
SPEAKER_01: Why don't we spend an equivalent amount of money trying to just see does this person want to be a mother?
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: And if she does, how can we support her?
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: Right, give her the resources.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_01: And again, not to, I guess it's kind of to make it a little political.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: Anyone who's super con anyone who's really politically invested or inclined can look at Project uh, what is it, Heritage Foundation.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_01: They were writing about adoption before I was born.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: They're talking about how we need to privatize all these systems and because they want religious control over the institutions.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: And so you look at adoption agencies around the United States, it's not a coincidence that so many adopted people grow up religious.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: And I'm religion, feel about it how you want to feel about it.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_01: But the reason why adoption is such a religious institution is because that's been the conservative thing is deregulation and then religious control over these institutions.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I'm not saying that that in itself is a bad thing.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_01: I have my own personal opinions about it, but we we could do things differently.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_01: Adoption doesn't have to cost$100,000 if you're trying to adopt a kid.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_01: But if you adopt a kid from foster care, it's basically free.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: But this private side of adoption, I don't think a lot of people, if they really understood how it functioned, I don't think a lot of people would agree with the way it functions.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: And I I have my problems with foster, I have a lot of problems with a lot of things.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm just trying to be as diplomatic as possible.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_01: But I I just think what it how does it make sense to try to invest all of these resources in the extraction of children?
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh it just feels so inhumane when you really think about it, at least to me.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for sharing all of that.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_00: You definitely thoroughly answered that question.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to say it, I don't want to say that anyone who would I really blame so many people watch my videos and think, well, he just must have been adopted by the wrong people.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_01: He must just have he must just have bad relations.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_01: To me, it is not a relational thing, right?
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm a I'm a marketer.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: I've spent this advertising money.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: I know how the business functions.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_01: And when you look at adoption agencies and you see that their number one expense is on marketing, well, you have to realize that the people that are signing up to adopt, this is what they're spending.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_01: They're spending their money on advertising to to mothers in crisis.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: And do you think that these people would really I think a lot of people who are interested in adoption would be turned off by the idea that, well, actually, this is how my money is being spent.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: I did not know that.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason why adoption agencies bundle all of their fees together so you don't really see what you're spending your money on.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make people who adopt whatever.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't I I don't think anyone is a bad person for participating in the system.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: I have my my opinions about whatever, but uh I just wish that um the people, irrespective of adoption, could understand that the reason why adoption functions the way it functions is because there are financial interests at play here.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: We have exactly businesses that want to make money, even if they're a nonprofit.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_01: There's CEOs that want to continue making$170,000 a year.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_00: People don't realize how much it costs.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: Nobody knows.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: And it needs to be it needs to be talked about.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad you said that.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: So you have said before that the more I belong here, the less I belong here.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_01: Is I say that?
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: You said that.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_00: I have you quoted, sir.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_00: So is there a is there a place or a moment where you feel like you get to belong to yourself?
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: Where do you feel that?
1:03:03
SPEAKER_01: Man, I am not the person to ask, I feel like.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_01: We're in Minnesota.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: Someone asked the question of when we are when I was on the panel.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: I remember someone asked the question I really wanted to answer, but I didn't.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: And they were like, when can you how do you sit back on yourself and rest or something?
1:03:16
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I don't have time for that.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, I am very mission-driven right now.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to work myself out of a job.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_01: I want to, I wanna make the system better.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_01: And and not to say that I don't deserve that for myself.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_01: I I I'm just not in a season of life, I think, that I really have the the luxury of of of taking care of myself as well as I probably should.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's me just kind of being self-damaging or what self-abandonment.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_01: Probably is a little bit.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: But I did a lot of work for for two or three years, I want to say.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_01: I went to therapy, I was in support groups, I read a lot of books, I've listened to a lot of podcasts, and I do still get a lot out of listening to adopted people speak and and all the podcasts and the books and whatnot.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: But I just, there's not a lot of time in my day.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: And for me, I really feel like I spend almost every waking moment that I have that isn't time with family.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, pretty much doing what I'm doing, trying to make videos, thinking about the videos I'm gonna make, taking notes, making videos that I never published because I'm not happy with the way they turn out.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_01: I I just I'm really very focused on trying to make the world a better place for people like us, and not to say that to make myself out to be this great guy, but I just I I got to this point in therapy where I was like, I I I'm either gonna to I either have to put two feet in right now or I have to take two feet out.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not ruling out that in 10, 15 years or maybe five years, that I get to that point where I'm okay.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_01: I have the the kids are in school, whatever, I can do this now.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm just not there right now.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm in my I'm 31.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm the if you athlete trajectory, I'm in the prime still, right before the the the prime starts to to taper off.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm just trying to grind right now, basically.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I know that's probably not a great answer, but that's your answer, and that's what matters.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_00: It's your answer.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_00: So you're this is the last question I have, and then we'll go ahead and end it.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_00: But you're writing a memoir.
1:05:09
SPEAKER_01: I am, it's on the deep freeze right now, to be honest.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_01: It's on the deep freeze.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_01: I it was in my bio a while ago.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_01: I really want to write it.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_01: I am writing it in the sense that I keep a lot of notes.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_01: I I do gather my thoughts and write things.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_01: It's really difficult.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_01: I have I post what I post, and it does affect relationships I have with people.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_01: And I'm trying to be as sensitive as I can to anyone in my life who can be offended or hurt by what I have to say.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_01: I think my story is a story worth telling, but I'm just in a season of my life right now where I feel like telling that story could damage relationships.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: And and there's I would want to be fair to people to the point where I could have a conversation with everyone.
1:05:49
unknown: Yeah.
1:05:49
SPEAKER_01: Hey, let's talk and tell me your your side of this.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_01: And I just don't want to open those wounds for for certain people in my life.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: That could change if some publisher came up to me and was, let's do this.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: I want to do that.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: But um and and and just the time thing too, it's hard.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I can even just say when I when I was really I would say last year I was I was a lot more inclined and to I really wanted to write a lot more.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_01: And and for me it's uh I I'll spoil the the the the the concept of my book would just be that adoption split me in half and it's there's a part of me that is is here and there's a part of me that's here and the part of me that I would even use two different um voices italics for one voice and and not italics for the other voice of like here's this voice that says things are great and I'm happy and things are fine and and God made all this happen for me because he loves me.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_01: And then the other voice would would be like Alright, but come on, you don't actually feel that way.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_01: And and I think that would be an interesting concept, and maybe I'm wrong about that, but I really do want to write a book like that.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of people in my life that are there's a lot of people in my life that are very supportive of what I do.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_01: But I I'm just very sensitive to people and relationships I have.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_01: I try not to even identify that I have a kid or I have whatever try not to identify my name, my age, and those things come out because of course they do eventually there's a big enough number next to your name you kind of become a public figure.
1:07:12
SPEAKER_01: But I'm really sensitive to to people in my life, especially the people that that are hurt for whatever for for whatever the real the reasons of feeling hurt are.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_01: I I just yeah, I I I wish people understood that what I'm doing isn't this revenge tour over my horrible childhood.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_01: I I I come across as angry online because I want people to engage with my content, and unfortunately, you know, the the way to get someone to keep watching a video is to give them a reason to keep watching.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_01: And outrage is just I feel like the angle I have to take for adoption.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't think you're gonna get someone the the all the alternative is to say, look at this really super cute video of this baby.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm a very intense person, and so yeah, I don't know.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_01: I really do want to write my book, but uh maybe a little self-abandonment there that I just not for now.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_00: You're you're parenting, you're you're trying to live your life and be present for your family, so it's pretty clear where people can find you.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_00: You're on Facebook, you're on Insta, uh you're on Facebook.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and the one thing you're also on Patreon, and so that's a place where people can find and support you in the people want to give me money, give me money.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_01: But I I I don't know.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of people that that do this stuff for the money, or I'm a person, it's funny.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_01: I I've always said that I'm a marketer because I can't be a salesman.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_01: I used to have this social media page, I was a huge fan of It's Always Sunny Philadelphia.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: I have a page where I posted memes about the show.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_01: I have 20,000 followers on this page, started selling t-shirts, and then the pandemic hit, and I I couldn't promote the shirts that I had just paid money to make because I was I don't want people to spend their garden money during this really difficult time on stuff they don't need.
1:08:59
SPEAKER_01: Um and I so just took took a big loss on that because I was just I just can't do this.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_01: So I I have this whatever.
1:09:05
SPEAKER_01: If people want to give me money, they can give me money, but it's really difficult for me to like keep up with on pay.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to promise anything in exchange for money from people just because it's I just don't have the time right now, and I hope that can change.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_01: But um, but yeah, I'm not in it to sell things to people.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm not in this to there's I do get money for it or whatever, and I I'm really hoping to invest all of that when I do have more time into making YouTube videos and having an editor because really the long game for me is just trying to put as much stuff as I can out there that that paints adoption in a more complete picture.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_01: People might say I'm painting an unfair picture, but I just think here's all this positive stuff that we already know.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna put out a bunch of negative stuff, even if it's more negative than how I feel, more negative than my experience, it's just gonna balance things out.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_01: And uh I think a more complete picture will will make the world a better place in time.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how easily it will happen, I don't know how much time it will take, but I think there's a lot of adopted people and even a lot of people who aren't adopted, who who like what I'm doing, who support what I'm doing.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_01: And if you really want to support, I appreciate it, but definitely not necessary.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_01: Don't give me money, you can't afford to give me.
1:10:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I appreciate that, Connor.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for being who you are.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_00: And as we close today, I just want to remind you, Connor doesn't soften the story for a reason.
1:10:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's exactly why it matters.
1:10:18
SPEAKER_00: He's the best case adoption on paper.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_00: Open, loving family, a mom he got to see, and still the grief showed up in a hug that couldn't quite land in a hospital room holding his own child.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_00: And then there's a guy who walks onto a Gaelic football field in San Diego, not because anyone asked him to, but because something in him was looking for a way home.
1:10:43
SPEAKER_00: A common language beyond DNA.
1:10:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's what belonging work looks like.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_00: Not waiting for someone to hand it to you, building it one practice at a time.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_00: And the anger isn't the whole story, that's what I learned.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: It never is.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_00: That fire and tenderness can live in the exact same body.
1:11:00
SPEAKER_00: And that is what I want for every adopte listening or watching.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_00: Not to pick one, to make room for both.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_00: If this one stirred something in you, don't rush past it.
1:11:10
SPEAKER_00: If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_00: Breathe for a moment.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_00: You can find Connor as adopted Connor on all the socials, which I just told you about.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to support him, take his advice.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_00: Let the video play and listen.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_01: And DM me if you want to talk.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_01: DM me if you want to talk.
1:11:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't respond to comments, I respond at DMs of this.
1:11:29
SPEAKER_01: If you want to talk, DM me.
1:11:30
SPEAKER_00: That's actually very, very true.
1:11:32
SPEAKER_00: So, Connor, thank you so much for trusting me with this conversation.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_00: And if anything in this conversation triggered something in you, listener or viewer, I want to invite you to do one of two things.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_00: Sit with it for a bit.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_00: Or even schedule a call with me.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to carry whatever just surfaced by yourself because you're not alone.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_00: And if this podcast has meant something to you, please leave a five-star review or even just a few written words.
1:11:56
SPEAKER_00: It genuinely helps more adopted people and the people who love them find their way to hearing these things that I think are so important.
1:12:03
SPEAKER_00: And remember, belonging was never something you were supposed to go out and find in someone else's approval, someone else's family, or someone else's definition of you.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_00: So stop outsourcing belonging and insource it.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next Thursday.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Connor.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, Julie, and thanks for all the work that you do as well.
1:12:19
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.