Latest / The Resilience Project / Born Adopted: Paige Strickland on Searching Before the Internet, a Birth Father's Secret, and Telling Her Story in Verse

Transcript

Born Adopted: Paige Strickland on Searching Before the Internet, a Birth Father's Secret, and Telling Her Story in Verse · The Resilience Project

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hi y'all, I'm Julie.
0:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm a trauma-informed adoptee coach and somatic healing guide.
0:06
SPEAKER_02: After overcoming deep abandonment wounds, I now help adult adoptees move from feeling lost and disconnected to experiencing profound self-belonging.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: 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_02: To have tried every healing modality available and come up empty.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: My own healing has taught me this.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: The answers aren't out there.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: They're buried within me.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: And I'm here to guide you home to yourself.
0:45
SPEAKER_02: 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_02: 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_02: This podcast goes beyond storytelling into soul telling.
1:15
SPEAKER_02: It offers embodied insight, compassionate education, and a path towards awareness, hope, and strength.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: Each episode invites listeners to understand adoption more deeply, not just with the mind, but with the nervous system.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: And to reconnect with the truth, identity, and belonging that were always yours to come home to.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: Paige loved her adoptive family, and she still grew up feeling like being adopted was a scarlet letter A.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: What she wanted was what regular born people had.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: I just put those in their quotes if you are curious.
2:31
SPEAKER_02: Real roots, real health history, real family stories.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: Then in 1987, a local TV talk show changed everything for her.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: If you were born in Ohio before 1964, some of your records were open.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: No internet, no DNA kits, just landline phones, microfiche, and a woman who knew how to use them.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: What she found wasn't simple.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: Her birth mother had died at 36 before Paige ever had the chance to meet her.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: And sadly, that happens to a lot of adopted people.
3:04
SPEAKER_02: Her birth father met her once, then backed away, and then years later, he came back.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: Paige wrote about all of it in Akin to the Truth.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: And then she wrote after the truth about what it's like to be an adult in reunion, balancing two families, and still waiting on answers.
3:22
SPEAKER_02: And this week, her third book comes out, Born Adopted and Finding the Truth.
3:27
SPEAKER_02: It's the same story, just in a brand new form.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: A memoir in verse, written for middle schoolers and up.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, anybody can read it, for busy people who don't have time for 400 pages, and for anyone who wants to understand adoption from the inside.
3:43
SPEAKER_02: I first heard Paige on other Adoptee podcasts, and one of them was Damon Davis's, who was a guest two weeks ago.
3:50
SPEAKER_02: Paige works in schools in the Cincinnati area.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: She's a wife, she's a mom of two daughters, and an adoptee who keeps finding new ways to hand the truth to the next generation.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: So, Paige, let's get into it.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: Welcome.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: It's so great to have you.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Julie.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to be here.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: It's so cool.
4:10
SPEAKER_02: So for anyone meeting you for the first time here on the podcast, who are you?
4:14
SPEAKER_02: Even though I just described who you are, but I'd love to know from your own words.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: And what does life look like for you these days?
4:19
SPEAKER_01: I am a special education aide in a high school.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: And so I work mostly one-on-one, sometimes two-on-one, with special need students that of all varying degrees of special need from super, super profound, not verbal on up to just I've got problems reading and slow processing and things like that.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: And my original education degrees in Spanish, and I did that for 20 years, but I was like, there's more to it.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: There's more to this.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: I need to do something different.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: So I started to explore the special education world because that was the other thing I was drawn to.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Interesting enough, when I did find my sisters, two of them also work with special needs population.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: So it's cool, a little synchronicity there.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: We joke, I get them first, you get them next, because they work with special needs adults.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: But my sister in town, she and I have actually known a couple of the same people because literally I got them first, then they go to adult daycare places, she gets them next.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
5:25
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: So you've been in adoptee spaces for quite some time.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: You told me that there was a wave of adoptees emerging between about 2010 through 2015, right when you started writing.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: And what was that moment like for you from the inside observing?
5:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was really interesting.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wow, there's a whole bunch of us.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Cool.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're all saying the same things.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: And and so I really liked that.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: And I guess when I first started call it getting busy on the internet, actually doing things other than just job related or looking at the news, I started looking for adopted things, adopted people, even the MySpace days and then the early Facebook days, and found people that I never expected that existed.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: And I think we were all at that point looking and trying to find something and happened upon each other.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: And I had started writing my first book in 2002, had it completed as a not finished, but completed as a manuscript in 2008.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: And that's when I started looking around because I was in a writer's group and the leader of the group said you need to do something a little more serious with this than just entertaining us at meetings.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I start looking around, where could I share this?
6:52
SPEAKER_01: What who would want this or that kind of thing?
6:54
SPEAKER_01: Just one by one by one, we started finding one another, I think.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you know Lynn Grubb.
7:01
unknown: Mm-hmm.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: Um I've heard of her, yes.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, up in she's in Dayton, so she's about 50 miles from me.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: Um we've met a whole bunch of times.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: She reviewed my book, and we had a lot in common because we grew up in the same area and we um, you know, similar in age and just saw a lot of the same things, been in a lot of the same places around between here and Dayton.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: So um she was she could super relate and everything.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: She got excited and she wanted to do an anthology.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: So she rounded up a whole bunch of adopted people that she'd been finding and put together with all of us submitted.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: There probably were 20 of us or so.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: Um she created the Adoptee Survival Guide.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if you've ever seen that book online or not, but she did that, and so I was included in that book.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: And then the um in 2015, when the records more fully opened, I I hesitate to call it fully because some people will go, yeah, but you can get a letter of rescission there, but it's so rare, but it's could happen.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: When the records in Ohio more opened in that way in 2015, a bunch of us got together at Solidarity thing.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: It was in Columbus, so it wasn't too far for me to get to, and we got rooms and we had a good time, and we did the march the next morning and walked all these brand new um searching adoptees up to the Vital Statistics building there downtown, and watched watched them line up outside the door and one by one go in as the line waiting in line for anything, and you have to wait in line to get in to get your tickets or whatever.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, it was pretty cool.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: We were Lynn and Becky and I were standing out on the curb because we already had our information, but watching all these other people, you know, and they're coming out torn down rain, but you know, we didn't even notice the rain.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: It was so so amazing.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: So and then they've just noticed an increase steadily in people that you know, then all these people now they've been finding all these time all these years now, 11 years or whatever that is, 2015 to 2026.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 11-ish years.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, one by one by one, and then as younger people then who maybe were 15 and now they're say 25, 26, you know, so there's up-and-coming people now that are able to access the records and they're getting them.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:44
SPEAKER_02: And so there's a growing population in that sense, and it's an exciting time for sure for those states that are allowing that, because my state still does not, but I think it's still pretty cool.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: And I love that you were able to be a part of that.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: You had described, you even talked about this in the intro, that being adopted felt like having a scarlet letter A.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: And if anyone found out that was a scary thing.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: And what did it look like for you day to day as a kid and as a teenager feeling that dealing with that?
10:20
SPEAKER_01: It was it was embarrassing.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: It was confusing.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: It's not like I had any answers if anybody even asked me any questions.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: And I guess the few questions that I had had been posed to me, I was just, this is dumb.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: This is so dumb.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: I can't even talk about it because I know nothing.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't know anything more than what my parents who raised me told me.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, looking back, what I know now that I didn't know then, I don't believe my adoptive parents lied.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: I believe they got lied to.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: But I don't believe they lied on purpose.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: They just reported false information because they didn't know any different.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: And but so there were there was just nothing I couldn't do anything.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: I was trapped.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: In the newest book, I equate it to also maybe being born, maybe missing one finger.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: It was a missing part.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: You got missing part, you still run.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: How many times have we found a bolt or a screw on the floor and we don't know what it goes to, but nothing's broken down, you know?
11:23
SPEAKER_01: And and that's what it can also feel like a little bit.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: And I know some people feel it more intensely than others.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: Some people don't feel it at all and are still, well, everything's wonderful, I'm just so blessed.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying I wasn't blessed, but there was still that nagging feeling of I can't do anything about this, but I wish I could.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious, but there's nothing I can there's no way to deal with it.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And there's I don't want to talk to anybody about it.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: It's an embarrassing secret to me.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Um I think it's one of those things too, people don't know what to say.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: So they say the stock scripted right.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: You're so lucky, you're so you you're blessed, oh it was God's way, all those things because they don't know really what to say.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: Oh, could they?
12:17
SPEAKER_02: They don't understand.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: They don't understand it either.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: They really don't.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, it's not not like some people actually hate other people that say things like that.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's like I'm just going they're they're talking out of lack of knowledge.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's a lot like we're learning now, you know, parts of history that never got taught in schools, maybe when we were growing up, and it's getting taught more now, or we see movies and things where we can self-educate ourselves about things that nobody discussed then, or the research hadn't been done yet to verify it enough, to deem it teachable.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: But now people speak up about things.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: People talk about stuff, people talk about taboo things that they used to never talk about.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: And adoption is one of those things.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: It's uh your cat warning.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: You can see there's yeah, there's cat warning, y'all.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: Her cats love to come into the screen.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: So you might see them if you're watching.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: It's quite funny.
13:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:18
SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks for sharing that, uh, Paige.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: I know that you always loved your adoptive family.
13:26
SPEAKER_02: That that was never a question, but you still wanted more.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: You wanted roots, you wanted health history, family lore.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we even spent a good chunk of our time talking yesterday at the beginning when we were prepping for this, talking about your husband's family lore and how fascinating that was to you.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: Existable stuff, yeah.
13:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: So she's showing us a picture on the wall that is from the War of 1812.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: Between 1812 and the Civil War.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: Some ancestor created this, wove this.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: I I don't know.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: I I don't do much needlework, so I don't, I'm not versed in whatever she did, it was beautiful and it was done at that in that era, in that time.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: And it was beautiful.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: Old family home.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: We got rescued out of the home when the house was sold.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: My in-laws had it.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, my husband's aunt had it, then my in-laws had it, and now we have it.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think the thing that's so interesting about that, and the reason why I even brought it up is we don't ever have access to our family lore.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: And so, how did you hold both of those at once, separate of even before your marriage?
14:36
SPEAKER_02: This I love my adopted family, but I still want more situation.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: It's that whole both end.
14:41
SPEAKER_02: I want to know my roots, I want to know my health history, I want to know the family lore, like what's behind you.
14:47
SPEAKER_02: What is that like for you?
14:49
SPEAKER_01: I shut a lot of it out because I didn't know any other way to deal with life.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: Just shut it out, fake it till you make it, like it never actually happened.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna lie through my teeth and be like everybody else, and no one's gonna know the difference if I don't tell them.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: So, especially once you're older and you're out in the world and you're not seeing the same people every day, let you see when you're a kid, you know, you can kind of escape some of that and start to be your own person.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: I just never told anybody anywhere.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: I didn't tell any of my college friends, and I didn't tell any of my work friends for years.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Now it doesn't mat bother me.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: I d Right.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: If I'm gonna promote my book, I kind of have to tell people, let's put it that way.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: But at the time it was my would never write about it, I would never talk about it, I would never, ever, ever in fact, I wrote a a s a school assignment about something that it was a research paper I got to do on adoption in a psychology class in high school, and I did well on the paper, but I didn't get an A.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: I got a B.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: And I think it was because I couldn't put my complete heart and soul into the paper.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: I could follow all the basic, you did this, you did this, you turned it in on time.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: This was is the correct length, blah, blah, blah.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: But I couldn't add anything more.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, let's think back to that.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: That kid, that girl wanted what regular born people had or non-adopted people had.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: So where do you notice that wanting in your body even now?
16:28
SPEAKER_02: Are you able to notice it where it lives?
16:31
SPEAKER_02: Is it in your heart?
16:32
SPEAKER_02: Is it in your gut?
16:33
SPEAKER_02: Do you notice your gut clenched or your throat closed?
16:36
SPEAKER_02: What do you notice when you talk about that?
16:38
SPEAKER_01: It just in my brain, just in my head.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: That's that's just and I'm I still want to get it satisfied though.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: That's what I wanted to do was get it satisfied.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't know how.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: So the only the next best thing, if I can't get it satisfied, I'm not gonna 100% give up because I'm not a giver-up or much.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: So just you you stay busy as you can be, do everything else, act like it didn't happen, right, and just keep keep moving forward like that.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: And then that day that well, we were watching a TV show one night, and the ad for this TV show, this talk show came on that evening advertising the show for the next day.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: And my husband and I looked at each other because he was the only person I told.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: Because it was kind of like, yeah, I'm marrying this guy.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: I have to tell him, but because if he's gonna then be my family, but I really didn't even want to have to tell him, but I did.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: We're sitting there looking at each other, like, do we want he he was like, Don't you want to watch this?
17:45
SPEAKER_01: Aren't you the least bit curious?
17:47
SPEAKER_01: I would.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I hate addressing this topic because I hate this topic, uh, you know, I'm just like that goes against shutting it out, you know.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: But then but nobody else is around, it's just us, you know, can't be that bad, you know.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: But okay, yeah, I can't get in trouble for doing this.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: So, all right, back in the day, right?
18:09
SPEAKER_01: Pop the VHS thing into the clarify, this is 1987 when this happened.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: So there was no internet.
18:19
SPEAKER_02: There, there, yeah.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: So keep going, normal regular station T well, we did have cable, but it was wimpy cable compared to now.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: But stuck the V VHS thing in there because it was a morning TV talk show.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: So we were gonna be at work, we couldn't sit and watch it in the moment, but it was nice to have the recording of it in retrospect anyway, and because then I could replay some stuff and let it sink in a little bit.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: And did I really hear that right?
18:50
SPEAKER_01: Is that I want to see, I want to see what those people look like again, kind of thing.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And it had actual adopted people in reunion.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: One one young woman was on there with her sister, she'd found, and they looked like twins.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just holy cow, whoa, wow.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Talk about getting to look like somebody finally.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: Then there was a social worker on there because you have to have somebody from the three major points of adoption.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: And it was interesting, it was really interesting, and it was done in a very civil way.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't one of these shows where you gang up on somebody and shame them for their opinion, or it was not Jerry Springer, let's put it that way.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: Right.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
19:32
SPEAKER_02: So you began after that, that heightened your curiosity at this point, and you began searching with landlines, with microfiche, and with skills that you had from working in a school.
19:45
SPEAKER_02: So what did searching?
19:47
SPEAKER_02: This is an interesting question, Paige.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: So what did searching actually take from you, practically and emotionally, if you could articulate that for me?
19:58
SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, first took a lot of time, but it was my choice.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: It was my choice.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: I waited till the school year ended because there was no way during the school year I knew and I was it was April at the time that all this was happening, that by the time I write to Columbus, see that that's what I found out was oh, because I was born before 1964, I actually can get my records.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: My parents never realized that.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Or if they were told, they conveniently forgot.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: But they believed that that wasn't a thing, and uh the records opened up.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: So at least somewhat, and I was on the lucky side.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: So I wrote to Columbus, got my paperwork, that took a few weeks for them to process it.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, you send in two forms of ID and 20 bucks, blah, blah, blah, and they send you the big fat envelope in the mail.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And so I just waited till the school year ended before I could really act on it.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: But I at least had the papers.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, that last quarter or so of school from April to say June 1st, I needed that time to just stare at the papers and take it all in and memorize everything I was seeing and just sit with that for a little while.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a speedy, quicky person, impulsive.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: So there was no way I was gonna go looking in the phone book and call somebody right away or any of that stuff.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Um it's not me.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: Plus, I was too shy and too too afraid of rejection.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what the person on the other end's gonna do or how they're gonna respond to you.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and again, I had to get through the school year.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: I had papers, I had exams, I had all these teachery things I had to do.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: And then, man, when June hit and I was free, I got in the car, went downtown to the courthouse and to the public library that had a ton of stuff.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: And between those two buildings, talk about I didn't I wasn't tracking steps then, but I can only imagine.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: I was back and forth and back and forth going, okay, I found this here.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Now I gotta go to the courthouse and look at the records here.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Now I gotta go back here.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: And at Cincinnati, geographically, we're right over the river from northern Kentucky.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: And there was also the possibility, I thought in my head, because my my mom and dad, when they got married, they actually got married in northern Kentucky, not in Cincinnati, although we lived in Cincinnati.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: But when they first got married, their parents were in northern Kentucky.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: So the church was in northern Kentucky.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: So they got married in northern Kentucky, and their marriage record was in northern Kentucky.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there are records in northern Kentucky.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that that happens a lot in this area.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: So when I hit a dead end at one point, I did find my birth father's marriage record to his wife that he was actually married to all the years over in northern Kentucky.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: So it's okay.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: This tracks, but I couldn't find my birth mother.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: I was searching through, I don't think they have these anymore, but then we've got Ancestry and other resources.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: But they had these big old crisscross directories that were the size of ginormous dictionaries and cross a dictionary with an atlas.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: That was the size of books.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: A really, really large dictionary and an atlas.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: It was about that size.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: You just go through years, they're cataloged by years, and then you go by names and you just track these people and find people.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: And when you're done with this book, you put it back and you go get the next like five-year catalog and look at it.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: Takes a long time, yeah.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, time.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: If it took anything from me, it took a lot of time.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: But again, that was my choice, and I wouldn't turn it back for anything.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and get that to a point to physical exhaustion.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: And then there was the I was 26, so and no kids.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: I had a lot of energy.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: Kind of it made me more hyper than not.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have days where I come home and cry and want to sleep on the couch after what I was finding.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: I was coming home more like a I did it.
24:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: You were more energetic.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you were energized.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: That's what it sounds like to me.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm beating the system one record at a time, kind of sticking it to them.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: And that that was it, it was more of a high than a low.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like that.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: That's really good.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: And then I think what's interesting about what you told me was that your adoptive father was even on his own search for belonging at the same time, right?
24:41
SPEAKER_01: He well, he it he was complicated.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: My adoptive mom was totally on board with what I was doing.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: She said if I if it were me, I would have done the exact same thing.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: I'd wanted all those things too.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: And my dad, my my parents ended up divorced.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: There's a complicated part to that story that I don't want to totally give away because the plot line of the book, but he was dealing with his own demons and his own problems.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: And he wasn't searching for anybody missing.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: He knew who he was, where he came from, all his family.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: We had the family lore on all the adoptive relatives, no problem at all.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: But he just was having other personal problems.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: Um substance abuse was part of that.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: That's not a big spoiler.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: But um, but that was that big time played into a lot of it.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: He was dealing with that and the dishonesty that went with it, um, and the cheating stuff, you know, that went with it and why my parents got divorced.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: And that's the really simplified version of that part of the story.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: So he he blamed himself, thought he was a bad parent, thought I was doing this to find other parents and blah, blah, blah.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: No.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: And the thing was, because of his state, there was no talking to him much because he was gonna think what he was gonna think.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: The only time I could actually get a hold of him because of my working hours, and he was he was also working still.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: He sold real estate at the time, but it would be five o'clock is time of course.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Five o'clock somewhere.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it would it was really hard to get a hold of him during sober times, let's put it that way.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, yeah.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: And that's challenging.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, thankfully you did have the support of your husband during this time, but in a lot of ways, you were doing this much of your searching on your own.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Happened to have a job where I got to be off all summer long.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: You ooh.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I w worked in a clothing store in the mall, and I came to find out my boss in the mall, the manager guy, it was his little mom and pop store.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: So he wasn't an owner, but he was this close to being an owner.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: He was an adoptive parent.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: He had a son and a daughter that he had adopted that maybe were slightly younger than I was, but they were call they were still in college.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And then one of my co-workers was adopted.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't find out directly from her because we never talked adoption, neither one.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: It was right there in plain sight.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: We didn't talk adoption, but a co-worker told me about it.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: Another co-worker who's on the gossipy side, nice guy, but a little too chatty, careful what you tell him.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: He was telling me about people one day when certain other people were off work.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: I was just like, oh, really?
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Hmm, okay, thank you.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, and I just didn't divulge anything about me, but he was just gossiping away.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I knew it worked, keep my mouth shut because of adoptive parent boss.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know where he stands on things, and he's my boss anyway, and I like my job here.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: It's a little side gig extra money for clothing, and I just don't want to make waves.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: So a lottery just keep my mouth shut there and just be a good sales lady and do my thing.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: So so I I did have to intermittently go to my mall job, but for the most part I had all summer off to screw around and I spent that summer going downtown a lot.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: So well, I thank you for sharing that with us.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of us have had experience where we're with an adoptive parent or even maybe an aunt who adopted kids or whatever.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: And I think some of us still can really feel like we're trying to navigate this alone because of the secrecy that's involved.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: And I want to take a bit of a breath here to tell the viewers and the listeners about something that I'm sure a lot of you have read books, have done therapy.
28:57
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you've been in the free groups that are out there, similar to what Paige was talking about with her writing group, or you still feel in this process that you may be trying to heal alone.
29:07
SPEAKER_02: And I just want to let you know about something that I've created called The Refuge.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: It's a monthly community for adult adoptees where you don't have to explain yourself in order to be understood.
29:17
SPEAKER_02: And what we get to do inside together is we have a gathering, we have a seat in my revolution program where you get to come in once a month to listen.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: And there's a thread for every one of these episodes.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: You guys get to hear them two days in advance and we get to talk about it together.
29:32
SPEAKER_02: And I just want to let you know what one member said about this specific space.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: She said, There is no need to perform here.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: For the first time, I feel like I can be still.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: It's$47 a month, and you can come exactly as you are, and I will definitely include the link in the show notes.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: But for now, let's get back to the episode because this is very fascinating as we move into the whole birth mother era.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: Because your birth mom died, Paige, at 36 years old before you could even meet her.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's it was rheumatic fever, you said, as a child in rural Virginia.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Complications, right?
30:09
SPEAKER_01: Complications as an adult.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: And she'd gone through childbirth with my sister who's 18 months older than I am.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: And that, as we all know, if you've had a baby, it's tough on your organs, even when you're super healthy.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: And but most people recover from everything.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: She and I I also suspect she didn't have much of care and was working as a waitress on her feet doing physical labor jobs.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: In like yeah, in you know, not not a not an elegant restaurant, but more like coffee shops and um I don't know what little quickie restaurants are out your way that I could equate it to something ab above a McDonald's but below an Applebee's.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: Denny's Yeah, Denny's is good.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that that's a perfect example of something like that.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: So you know you have to hustle and you're carrying that tray and you're I've never done that kind of work myself, but good ones work.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: They work their butt off.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: They really do.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: And she probably didn't get much time off work after having a any baby and had to go right back at it or not be paid or lose her job.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: And she had to have heart valve surgery after me, because that she was still young, but with the fallout from the rheumatic fever kicking up, and I think they did heart valve surgery where they replace your valves with pig valves.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's perfected today, but it was not perfected then, but it brought her it bought her time so that she could recover and then be employed and go on to a certain extent with her life.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: But I think it's important to understand she again, rural Virginia, she had the doctor was days away if something were to happen.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: As a kid, yeah, yeah.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: And then she had a family that was already stretched thin.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned that her great-grandmother cared for everyone's kids.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: And so what did learning her story tell you, offer you, and what is it like to grieve someone you never got to meet?
32:25
SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting question.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: In that I remember a day when I was a college student, it was in an evening, and we're sitting around in the hall just bullshitting and hanging out and not doing anything, sitting outside our dorm rooms, and we're all just snacking and hanging out, right?
32:42
SPEAKER_01: And I'd had this feeling come over me that I can't explain, but and I was thinking about my grandma who had died recently, and then I started somewhere my brain went to my birth mother and I was convinced she was dead.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: That was another thing that helped help me deal with things.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: She's dead.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: Why why look?
33:04
SPEAKER_01: She's dead.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: She can't be around.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: I didn't consider other members of the family.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: It was she's gotta be dead.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: She's gotta be dead.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: But but it's not gonna do me any good.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: So that was I just I shut it out.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: And I had no way of knowing that until I finally met her ex-husband and he was the one that informed me what what had happened to her.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: And they had all moved from Virginia.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: It's the true the true Appalachian story, uh, the migration up this way after World War II.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: They get if you don't want to live in the coal mines and work in the coal mines, your only other option is you come north and get a factory job.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: As a female, she was it she actually went to high school up here, um, but her dad moved moved her up and her sister, and then my dad my grandfather's sister and her the rest of their siblings from that generation, they all migrated up this way to get jobs.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, the GM factory was opening, United Dairy Farmers was opening, all these places were and they were growing and booming, and this was the place to come.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: And that's what they all did, including my birth father too.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: When he moved up here, he'd gotten out of the service in the late 50s and came up here to get work because this was where you could come to get a job.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's fascinating.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: Can I ask you a question about this?
34:34
SPEAKER_02: Whatever you feel comfortable sharing, you just mentioned your birth father.
34:37
SPEAKER_02: And I know when we talked yesterday, you had said you met once and then he backed away, and then years later he came back because he didn't want to go to his grave with a secret that his kids didn't know.
34:51
SPEAKER_02: And what was it like to let him back in after it felt like being shut out, if that's the right way to put it?
34:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I was totally open to it.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: I understood because I I tried to put myself in that position.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: If if it was the other way around and I wasn't the adopted person and knew nothing really about adopted people, but somebody approached me, how would I handle it?
35:18
SPEAKER_01: What would I do?
35:19
SPEAKER_01: And then I couldn't be mad at him because he at least had given me three hours in a restaurant.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: It was a Denny's, by the way.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: When they were still in Yeah, yeah.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: I just I couldn't fault him.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: I knew what it was like to hide a secret, so I couldn't in my dad that raised me was hiding a secret.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: Right.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: I knew what that was all about.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: So I thought, well, I know he he's not a criminal behind bars or something like that.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: I can't hate the guy.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: I can't be mad at him.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess I get it honestly about hiding a secret here.
35:57
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's interesting because even a couple of weeks ago when Damon and I were talking, he was talking about if if a parent that was a part of us coming into this world could just acknowledge us, it would be great.
36:11
SPEAKER_02: And some people don't even get that.
36:13
SPEAKER_02: And thankfully you did have that initially.
36:15
SPEAKER_02: Right.
36:15
SPEAKER_02: And then he you did get to reconnect, which is so great.
36:19
SPEAKER_02: And then you talk about this is a really interesting piece of this story, and you can say whatever you feel comfortable sharing.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: But after he passed in 2015, his wife told you that he likely could not read well.
36:32
SPEAKER_02: How did that change the way you understood his potentially pulling away?
36:37
SPEAKER_02: Did that impact it at all?
36:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was like that explains a whole lot.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: Because even though he was a smart guy, but he didn't have the opportunities, right?
36:49
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of smart people out there that don't get past sixth grade.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: That was I guess to be to have qualified to get in the military, he probably had to have a high school diploma, but that doesn't mean he did well.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: He all he had to do was pass.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh and um that's he was in a culture of that that wasn't highly valued to be that high of a that high of a education standard.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: You get enough so that you can go out and earn a living.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: You know enough to read the directions, you know enough to get along with people, you know enough to you can pick up the skill by watching what people do, you don't have to read the manual.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: Um and she was very supportive of him because she said he knew things conceptually, he just didn't know how to do certain things.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: She was taking care of the books, and if important papers came to the house, she was transcribing everything for him so that if she didn't understand the content in the paper, he could, but he couldn't read it.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's actually together.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, they were a pair in that way they could do those things, and um that they made it work, you know.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: But that that's how he managed, and he was on his job till the GM factory closed down.
38:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, wow, that's that's pretty amazing.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: And I I love how you said it it said a lot about him to you, and you could you could understand.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the things that I found really interesting about our conversation yesterday as we were prepping was you said missing him since his death was a little bit like missing a celebrity.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: It was not somebody that you knew deeply, but someone who was there.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: I I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about what that grief showed up as for you.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was that empty feeling like they're not there.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: Do I take him out of my no, I'm not taking him out of my contacts just yet.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: I can't do that.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: What I did with on my contacts, I have his photo, but I have the and I have it's a landline phone number that they still have that his wife still has, but his photos on it.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: So that way it says her name, so it doesn't look too spooky, you know, if my phone but his pictures there.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: So you still have him in your memory and you still get to to see him.
39:10
SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
39:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's interesting.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: And we have photos, we have a few videos from when you take a video at Christmas time of kids opening stuff and he's in the in there, you know.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's cool.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna say with my birth mother, I don't have I mean, I've got some photos that was that were given to me.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: And that and that so I've got that, but my youngest half-sister on that side, um, because the one sister, she's eighteen months older than me, and one that's thirteen years younger than me with her second marriage, and then she had another baby, um, and she died three years later.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: But my youngest sister doesn't remember her in a real way.
39:56
SPEAKER_01: She's doesn't have any more memory really than I have ever.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: She just knows she existed, and she's got our older sisters things that the sister has told her and what her dad who raised her told her, but she doesn't have a concrete memory herself.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: So we kind of have that in common in that way.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and talking about your sisters, you have one on your father's side also that was born just months apart from you, and you called her your Irish twin who you actually lost about a year and a half ago.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: And then you have your sister in Portland that you say, we never say half sisters, we're sisters.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: And I guess my question with with these are what have these relationships given you that maybe nothing else could?
40:47
SPEAKER_02: Sisters.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: I I feel that.
40:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: The girl power thing.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: I was raised with a brother who was my parents' biological kid.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, and he and I were six years apart, so we really didn't have a whole lot in common until he got much older, and then we could go like the same songs.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: But other than that, we didn't really have a whole lot in common, and we're still that way.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: But with sisters, you you can talk about all the girl things and you can talk about your husbands.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: You can, you know, just hang out and and you can talk about nail polish or whatever, you know, you can just be girls together, and it's fun, you know, when we get together.
41:33
SPEAKER_01: When we had our 30th year of being reunited, we went to Disneyland.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so fun! Yeah, we did a reuniversary and went to Disneyland, and it occurred over the week that was the week 30 years prior when I met them.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: And amazing is that was what a cool memory to make.
41:57
SPEAKER_02: It was fun.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, my friend, let's dive right on into Born Adopted.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: Why why tell the same story a third time, third time-ish, and why in verse?
42:11
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about that language arts class and what led you to make this decision.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: I was working four years ago in a junior high instead of the high school in my district here, and it's part of the curriculum of the seventh and eighth grade language arts program uh that they study what's called a book in verse.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't have to rhyme like Dr.
42:36
SPEAKER_01: Seuss.
42:37
SPEAKER_01: Most of them don't rhyme at all, but it's this free poetry.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: And most of the books that are coming out, well, so many of the books that are coming out for like young adults, which really is spans from older fifth graders through adulthood, college age at least, but into adult.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: I've seen books adverse even targeted at just grown-ups.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: Most of them have to do with growing up or young adult issues, might have to do with um you know, boyfriends and girlfriends, might have to do with somebody in your family or your world that has a illness or a disability or a some social issue problem.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: Very little is out there about adoption.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: Very little.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: Or it's not the plot of the story.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: If it might be a side character or somebody like that, but not the core of the story.
43:31
SPEAKER_01: And they were the kids that I was working with were reading uh the the theme of every book that they were reading that was a book in verse was about overcoming obstacles, overcoming some kind of an adversity.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: And not all of it had to do with war or cancer or the really horrible, horrible things.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: It's just life stuff.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: Life stuff.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: And I thought I could do this, I could I could do this, I could take what I've done.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: And refurbish it and turn it into something much more reader-friendly for a kid or a young person instead of trying to write the great American novel.
44:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:14
SPEAKER_02: I think, okay, so I'm gonna s I'm gonna ask this question because I'm curious about it.
44:18
SPEAKER_02: Picture a 12-year-old reading Born Adopted, and the kid next to them who isn't adopted, a 12-year-old adoptee reading it, and then the kid next to him who isn't adopted reading it.
44:30
SPEAKER_02: What do you hope each of them walks away with from this story?
44:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would imagine that the adopted kid of course in today's world, but there are some changes.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more open adoption, there's a lot more kinship adoption, things that were not choices back then.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: But they could maybe do a little comparison between then and now, but also be able to, especially if they don't know or they don't know much about any biological family they can relate.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: I've been thinking about that too.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm not so crazy.
45:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: That kind of thing.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: The kid that's not adopted at all, that never grew up with that.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: I hope they learn something.
45:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:16
SPEAKER_02: It'll be sounds like it could be a connector between the two of them.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: It could be a connector.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: And then because there's other family dynamics going on in my story, that again I don't want to throw spoilers out too much.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: But maybe one of the other situations that gets mentioned is something that that kid could relate to.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
45:37
SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: And I make my statement about bullying, which is a very trendy topic, and I'm not saying that's trendy in a bad way, but it's it's a thing that all the schools are addressing everywhere.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: Um and that that that's one of the other reasons why I didn't want to tell people was I didn't want to be made fun of.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to be bullied for.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: I knew that that was a thing that a kid'll bully another kid over.
46:07
SPEAKER_02: It absolutely is.
46:08
SPEAKER_02: Damon and I, again, I keep bringing this up, but we actually talked about that two weeks ago.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: I I worked in the business, I know it.
46:15
SPEAKER_02: Yes, you do know, but I just remembered a time in my middle school years where I had a really good friend, and I had talked about this on the podcast, and how we were playing out on my swing at my house, and somehow it came up that I was adopted, and she was like, Oh, I can't be your friend, left, went and told everybody I was adopted, and it c yeah, and it caused all these problems for me.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: And I had forgotten all about it until we were talking about it.
46:38
SPEAKER_02: And he was like, Yeah, it's crazy, right?
46:40
SPEAKER_02: People don't get it that when these things mm-mm, when these things happen to us, it it really leaves an imprint.
46:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, I don't forget that.
46:49
SPEAKER_02: I remember that that happened, but it had to be jogged.
46:53
SPEAKER_02: It was something that I I had pushed away and didn't want to think about.
46:56
SPEAKER_02: I just find it really interesting.
46:58
SPEAKER_02: And middle school is a hard time.
46:59
SPEAKER_02: So that's the reason why you even asked about that.
47:02
SPEAKER_02: And I think the other thing that I'm curious about is what changed when you rewrote it in verse versus how it was before?
47:11
SPEAKER_02: What got cut and what came through louder, maybe because it was in verse.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: I had to really condense down a lot of wording and a lot of side information and backstories about other people that were in the book that weren't gonna be necessary for this book or that I didn't think a kid needed.
47:33
SPEAKER_01: If my target audience was younger kids, or I I tried to write it with in mind with if my a kid from my own district who knows me picked up my book and started reading it, I want to be able to face them the next day, you know what I mean?
47:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: So not that there's anything that awful in the other books I this this is one that I want to make it kid friendly and understandable for a kid.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes for adults, if you make it more understandable, the adults are more receptive too, you know.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they don't turn their brains on and have to work it.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: They they want to just be told, you know, and um, I've still tried to add a little bit of humor here or there and pop culture references and things like that because that's the fun of stuff.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
48:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:31
SPEAKER_02: So where can people find Born Adopted in your first two books right now?
48:36
SPEAKER_01: Amazon.
48:37
SPEAKER_01: Or you can contact me direct.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:40
SPEAKER_01: At this point, the ebook went live last night.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: We hit that button thinking it was going to take up to 48 hours for Amazon to process it.
48:51
SPEAKER_01: So okay, that means October 1st, which was goal time.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: And it was four hours later, I get an email saying from Amazon people saying, Your book is now ready for distribution or whatever.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's there.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's ready for purchase.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: I think that was the wording they used.
49:07
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, okay.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: All right, it's bored a little early.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: And then the other book will come out on October 5th, which was my plan B.
49:19
SPEAKER_02: The paperback book for people to be able to purchase.
49:21
SPEAKER_02: Got it.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: The print one, the physical book, yeah.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: So that takes a little longer anyway, because it's a print book.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: And I guess it goes through a different kind of evaluation once it's well, we're gonna accept this book, but we still have to put it through the ringer.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the best way I can explain that.
49:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what to do October 1st because new month, new book, kind of thing.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: But then October 5th, and I mentioned this on Substack.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: October 5th was the date that I first met my birth father for the very first time.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love that.
49:57
SPEAKER_02: I love the synchronicity of that.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: These things happen.
50:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:02
SPEAKER_02: It's cool.
50:03
SPEAKER_02: I think what I love about that is three days later, this podcast episode will be released.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: So that's really, really cool.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'm I'm grateful to be able to be a part of that.
50:13
SPEAKER_02: And as we close today, something you said, Paige, that is sitting with me is being adopted doesn't have to be awful for everyone.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: There are good days, but it's not what people think.
50:26
SPEAKER_02: That's the gap that I feel like this podcast is living in.
50:30
SPEAKER_02: It's not the fairy tale, it's not the horror story, it's really the truth in between.
50:35
SPEAKER_02: And you have been telling that truth since before most of us really had language for it back in the 80s when these things were still fairly new: steeled records, microfish, birth father who had a hard time initially and then came back.
50:49
SPEAKER_02: And now you're three books in.
50:52
SPEAKER_02: You found a way to hand that truth to kids who are just starting to ask the questions that you once asked alone.
50:59
SPEAKER_02: So that in and of itself, I feel is belonging work, which is Elaine.
51:03
SPEAKER_02: And not just finding your people, but making sure that the next generation doesn't have to search as long to be able to find the words.
51:12
SPEAKER_02: Right.
51:12
SPEAKER_02: So if one thing stirred something in you, listeners, viewers, don't rush past it.
51:19
SPEAKER_02: If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it, breathe there for a moment, or come talk about it with us in the refuge, like I mentioned earlier.
51:28
SPEAKER_02: This week's podcast thread is already open in there.
51:32
SPEAKER_02: And the link is in the show notes for anything that you need that Paige has talked about.
51:37
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to carry any of this alone.
51:39
SPEAKER_02: Whatever surfaces is not something you have to be alone with.
51:43
SPEAKER_02: We're we're here and we can help.
51:45
SPEAKER_02: If you're ready to do some of this work in a room in person with other adopted people, Dr.
51:50
SPEAKER_02: Liz DeVetta and I are hosting on Mother to Revolution and Adoptee Healing December 4th through the 6th in Highland, Michigan.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: Just 14 adoptees, the film, writing, sematic work, and one-on-one sessions for everyone.
52:01
SPEAKER_02: All the meals are included.
52:03
SPEAKER_02: We have 10 spots left, and the link is in the show notes.
52:06
SPEAKER_02: Born Adopted and Finding My Truth is out now at the time of this published episode.
52:11
SPEAKER_02: Paige, thank you so much for trusting me with your story today.
52:15
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: It's really so fun.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:19
SPEAKER_02: And remember, listeners and viewers, belonging was never something that you were supposed to go out and find in someone else's approval, someone else's family, someone else's definition of you.
52:29
SPEAKER_02: Stop outsourcing belonging and insource it.
52:32
SPEAKER_02: And I will see you guys next Thursday.