Latest / The Resilience Project / "You Don't Owe Them Your Loyalty": Brielle Wilson on Foster Care, Religious Trauma, and Reclaiming Her Story

Transcript

"You Don't Owe Them Your Loyalty": Brielle Wilson on Foster Care, Religious Trauma, and Reclaiming Her Story · The Resilience Project

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi y'all, I'm Julie.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a trauma-informed adoptee coach and somatic healing guide.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: After overcoming deep abandonment wounds, I now help adult adoptees move from feeling lost and disconnected to experiencing profound self-belonging.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: 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_01: To have tried every healing modality available and come up empty.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: My own healing has taught me this.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: The answers aren't out there, they're buried within me.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm here to guide you home to yourself.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: 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_01: 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_01: This podcast goes beyond storytelling into soul telling.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: It offers embodied insight, compassionate education, and a path towards awareness, hope, and strength.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: 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_01: Welcome.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the podcast, everybody.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It is so good to be together again.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I have a conversation today that I have been looking forward to for a while.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to tell you a little bit about why before I bring my guest in.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: So much of what we talk about on this show is the inside work, the noticing, the nervous system, the slow return to ourselves.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that work matters.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: But every once in a while, I get to sit with someone whose story reminds me why this work matters in the first place.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Someone who has lived the entire arc, the system, the family, the silence, and then the slow, hard-won process of coming back to their own truth.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: That is what today's conversation is.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: My guest today is Brielle Wilson.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: She is an adoptee, a teen mother, a wife, a mother of eight.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you heard me, and someone who has recently finished her master's program.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say more about that in a minute.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: But Brielle's story touches almost every part of the adoption constellation: foster care, kinship placement, religious trauma, gaslighting, and what it looks like to be a teenager navigating systems that were supposed to protect her.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what I love about Brielle is that she's not just living this story, she's writing about it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: She's already published two books with more resources on the way, and she's currently pursuing her MFT license.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: After you get your degree, y'all, there's a whole other thing you gotta do to get licensure.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So she can bring her lived experience into the therapy room with the kind of authenticity so many of us have been looking for and couldn't find.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say much more because I want you to hear this from her.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Brielle, thank you so much for being here.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so awesome.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: You are a light, my friend.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I am really excited to spend this time with you.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just curious, I I remember that we connected because you found me somehow.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: What led you to follow when you first found me?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I only very recently started utilizing social media to network and provide educational resources.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that naturally moved into the adoption and adoptee space online because that is such a big part of my story.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think just connecting with more adoptees and people who were advocating for awareness around Adoptee voices and the adoption system in and of itself.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: I came across your, I think it was Instagram and saw all of the work that you were doing and saw how you were trying to use not only your story, but your education to kind of provide language and experiences for adoptees who really don't have a lot of that available to them.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so that's really what drew me to follow you and connect with you.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad we did.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea what to expect when we first chatted.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when I finished that conversation, I was like, holy heck, this girl needs to be on my podcast.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just knew from the get-go after listening the first things out of your mouth.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was so great.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, so what made you say yes to coming on the podcast?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, I was very nervous to say yes because I am not somebody who likes to be the public-facing persona.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: I just, I'm not somebody who loves being in the spotlight.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I also realized that nobody else can tell my story the way that I can.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I have knowledge and information that has really helped a lot of people.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so I felt like this would be a really safe place to be able to do that and a place where enough of the people who need to hear the things that I have to say will be able to access it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I just really love the way that you interact with your previous guests and being able to just really maintain that raw authenticity that isn't super polished, that doesn't push a narrative.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's literally just raw lived experience.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is so unbelievably important.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so honored that you said there was a safety.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: That is so unbelievably important to me, especially as a somatic practitioner, that that is something that people feel in my presence.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so encouraged by that.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I really do believe deeply that our stories mean something.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's more than just story that we do in the healing space.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's definitely a part of it, but every one of us has our own piece to contribute.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So before we go anywhere else, I just want to say thank you so much for trusting this space and for trusting me with yours, your story.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay, we're gonna dive right on in, girl.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm going for it.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, can you can you tell my audience a bit about your early childhood, being raised by your maternal grandparents because your biological parents were addicted?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, um, both of my biological parents, when I was born, they were both around 18 and absolutely not prepared to really parent.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Both of them have been addicted to substances my entire life.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: They still struggle with addiction, unfortunately.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so I pretty quickly started living with my maternal grandparents.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: I know the legal guardianship process happened closer to the time I was two.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: However, I was already living primarily with them by that time.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I only know a lot of that backstory because my grandparents had documented a lot of it through pictures and videos.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: So there was a lot of times when I would stay with one side of my family and then go stay with another and a lot of shuffling in those first couple years of my life.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: But I eventually landed with my maternal grandparents in, like I said, the permanent legal guardianship.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: And with both of my parents struggling with addiction, both of those family systems really centered around a lot of enabling, unfortunately.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was a byproduct of this bigger issue that was happening that the family was dealing with.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was more about protecting the image versus protecting the people.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: And both of my grandparents on both sides really come from well-established places and families and very resourced.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of times when I do tell my story, it doesn't make sense to people that I had access to things like wealth and resources and even vacations, things that some typical families don't ever have access to and still end up in the positions that I was in.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that's one of the through lines of my story is that I've experienced so much opposing experiences that I could still live through access to resources and financial stability, but also still witness the life that my biological parents were living with poverty and addiction and living very under-resourced lives.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So um, so that's kind of how my uh original guardianship came to be.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, makes sense.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's sadly typical of some of the stories that we hear in the adoptee spaces.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, what did home?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna put that in quotes for those that are watching and those that are listening, just so you know, feel like for you growing up.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And did you even know what that was?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so growing up, home obviously was a word that I knew represented a place, but I never it was hard for me to understand what that was supposed to feel like because we all know you walk through the doors of your house, you're home.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're walking through those doors and every time you're going in, you're waiting for the shoe to drop, you're waiting for something to come up that starts an argument, or you're waiting to be in trouble for something, or you're waiting to hear that something bad happened.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Feeling like walking into your home feels like stress, it feels like anticipation and not in the good kind of way.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: It feels like tensing up because you're waiting for something to happen because peace isn't the norm.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think home for me, real true home for me, was finding pockets of peace, finding pockets of feeling understood, finding pockets of feeling safe, finding pockets of time when things were okay, even if I knew that it was just for a little bit.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned uh as you were sharing part of the story that you tensed walking in the door to home.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So was there anywhere specifically in your body where that tension showed up or that your body actually still holds and remembers?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's always mostly been my chest and my jaw, and sometimes even my feet.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: It would be so hard to walk to push myself to go through the doors because it's I know that something's coming.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't always bad living in my family home growing up, but there was enough bad that it never truly felt fully safe.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: It was never a place where I could walk in and just hope that it would be a good day because there was always something that was coming.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and a lot of that, like I said, circled around enabling, it circled around a lot of abuse that I had experienced growing up.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: It it circled around just protecting the wrong things and the wrong people.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what's interesting about the areas that you described, you feeling it in your body.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Feet means lack of safety.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Feet has to do with the root energy center.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Heart has to do with love or grief.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So clearly there was some grief in there, not feeling loved, probably.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you said your jaw, that's connected to communication.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of adopted people feel silenced.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: So all of those things make so much sense to me.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I love our body for how unbelievably wise it is.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for sharing that.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very cool.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you became pregnant.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're just gonna dive right in here.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: At 13 years old.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Can you walk us through what that season of your life looked like?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: So because of everything that was happening in my grandparents' home, there was really not a lot of supervision.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: I was left to my own devices.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: I ran my own show.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of dysfunction in my household growing up.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I responded to that in the way that made sense to me, who had been exposed to all of these things.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: I sought attention, I sought love, I was seeking connection with somebody that didn't feel painful and not having the flip side of that and being able to see what healthy love looks like and being able to see what truly being seen and loved and accepted looked like.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: I found the internet to be somewhere where, hey, this feels like connection.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so prior to becoming pregnant, I had been participating in a lot of relationships that were not safe and not healthy, especially at the age I was at that time.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: But again, because I had such minimal supervision, it just was, this is what feels right.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I also was having examples of that through my biological mom, who I was exposed to quite a bit growing up.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: Not so much my biological dad, because he spent a lot more time in prison or just not really wanting to participate in my life.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I did have access to his parents, but it was also very much filtered through the fact that my maternal grandparents were really the ones in control of that situation.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And my biological dad's dad was actually the regional manager of DHS when I was growing up.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so, because of that conflict of interest, DHS was never really a part of my life and maybe should have been, or maybe should have had some type of oversight in my life happening, which that was that's a whole whole other rabbit hole.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, so without having all of the positive examples, I was used to anything that feels better than what I experience must be good.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so eventually I had met somebody online who ended up being a predator.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: He was 20 and I was 12 when I met him online.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I was very transparent about my age, I was very open about my experiences, and I was very vulnerable about that because something that I've always really wanted was to just be seen and loved and accepted for who I really am.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: The ugly parts, the happy parts, the messy parts, all of it.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I was very open about that.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was also to my detriment in this situation because predators prey on those vulnerabilities and really use that as a point of connection when it should have been, hey, you need to go get help, not be on the internet talking to predators.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: When we had talked originally, you had mentioned, along with this, what you just described, that after getting pregnant by this situation, that you were pressured by Bethany Christian services and your guardians, which at the time were your grandparents, correct?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: So when I dealt with Bethany Christian services, I was actually in a different home.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um Okay, I wasn't sure.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I wanted to make clarification there because I want to move to that part.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because you let's talk about that shift, that transition.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: What exactly happened before we get into the Bethany Christian services?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: So once it was known that I was pregnant, that kicked off a whole other situation where my grandparents had found this man in my bedroom at their house.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I had been on a visit with, so by this point, I think there had already been a co-guardianship established.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have not been made aware of when exactly that happened, but I think I was actually 11 when my grandparents had reached out to churches and said, Hey, does anybody know of a family who wants to take in a set of siblings?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because we can't do it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so And they never told you this.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't know all of the details of this until much later.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I still am not quite sure of all of the details, which that's a whole other thing, but Yep.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: So my biological mom has had several other children with different men.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: I have no full siblings.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: So she had several other children, and because her situation never really improved, my grandparents were like, We can't take care of all of your children for you because they were raising me, and that was already a lot for them, which I have a lot of grace for them not really knowing what they were getting into, but also have had to process a lot of anger and resentment towards them for not wanting to do better or find resources.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: But they were reaching out to churches, just asking for any resources to families who might be interested in taking my um siblings and apparently had been connected with a family and they ultimately did co-guardianship.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: So my grandparents and this family shared co-guardianship of me and my siblings.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: However, I stayed with my grandparents and my siblings went to live with this family.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: So they were still doing visitations with my siblings, but they were living with another family, which this family were complete strangers to us at this time.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: We did not know them.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I had been doing visits with them and I had been on a visit at this time with this family seeing my siblings.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that is when really all hell broke loose and I was gone.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: And my grandma had walked into my room, found this man in there.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: He goes running out of the house, she calls the police.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Then the woman who was my co-guardian at the time gets a phone call about everything that was happening, and she pulls me aside and was like, We need to have a talk.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we sit down and have a conversation about what was happening.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think everybody put pieces together that, okay, you're pregnant, we found this person in your room, we can piece together what's probably happening here.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: I, of course, denied it and just was, I don't want anything to do with this.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was convinced that this person was going to be my soulmate.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: I was convinced that everything was gonna work out.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Despite the fact that even dealing with this person, because it had been two years really that I was dealing with this person, and through that whole time, I was institutionalized several times.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: I had ran away.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of things happening, but I had still maintained this I don't want to call it a relationship, but this connection to this predator.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so eventually, when he was found in my room, that's what kick-started the end of that.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: So he eventually was arrested.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: And my grandparents that day, when they found him, were like, You can't come back here.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna let you come back home.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I ended up just staying with this family.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I thought I was going for a visit, and I ended up just staying there, and that's what started the whole pressure for adoption, pressure to relinquish, pressure to make another choice.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: And my grandma was actually somebody who was wanting me to get an abortion at first, and I was very against that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then she had started taking me to pregnancy crisis centers, which they're very heavily for adoption, which again I was not interested.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: I had made it very clear that my intention was to parent.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And for right or wrong, I just really wanted to parent because this is my only family that I feel like I can always have a connection with that I can keep safe, that I can love, that can love me.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: This would be my child.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't feel like I could ever make the decision to not parent.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So are you willing to share what that pressure felt like and actually sounded like in real moments?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: What did you hear and receive during that time when you were determined to parent?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of it was at first it would start out as making comments of how how do you think that you can do this?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have anything, you don't have access.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: You're 13.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: I you don't have a model for a healthy family, you don't have a model for healthy parenting.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: What how do you think you're gonna do this?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I never really had an answer for that other than I'll figure it out.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: But it was really crushing because the people around me, the adults around me, were supposed to be the people helping me find those resources and find those models and find those blueprints to help guide me to do it the right way.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: And even if I wasn't pregnant in that situation and was still just living the life that I had lived outside of that, it would have still been their job to guide me to have those healthy models and have those resources.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so the fact that they weren't doing that and were shaming me a little bit and pressuring me to make a different decision was really discouraging.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I really felt just totally alone through all of that.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it was already really stressful because, like I said, we were dealing with a whole legal situation because of this.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I was dealing with the fact that I was no longer with my family.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: I had not been allowed to go back to my family home because of all of this.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: I was terrified because I was 13 and pregnant and being shuffled through all kinds of things happening at one time.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: I was in this new home with this family that I really didn't know that well.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: And they had a completely different home life.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they had structure, they had other kids in the home, they had rules, they had things that I had never really had in my life.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it was, it was a huge shock to my system, truly.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, it was.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, so where do you think that determination to keep your child came from, especially because you didn't have the indicators, the functioning family?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you think that came from?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, I think I've just always been a very stubborn person.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: And usually that does not work in my favor.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: But for this situation, I think it was probably the one saving grace for me that allowed me to keep pushing against all the systems and all the people who were telling me that there was no way that I could parent my child.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's A trait that I've kept and carried with me to overcome a lot of other obstacles in my life and using it for good.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I think just my stubbornness and the fact that I felt like I knew what was right.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, teenagers always think they know everything and think they know what's right.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I had this sense of injustice, and it wasn't my fault that all these things had happened to me or that I had been given this blueprint and this is what I did with it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was really just determined to do it differently with my own child.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think I would have been okay not trying.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And during this time you were placed in an emergency shelter while you were pregnant and commuted to high school with your things in a garbage bag.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to talk about that time and what you most remember?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so what ultimately led to me going to the emergency shelter was that I was placed with this family.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, things just were not going well.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: I did not adapt to their lifestyle very easily.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I just it it we just did not mesh well.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think they had the tools to handle all the things I was bringing into the home.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I was not at a place where I felt like I wanted to adapt to that life.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was so used to being my own boss, running my own show, and now almost an overcorrection of parenting.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was, it was just so much.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: So eventually I went back to my grandma's for a little bit, and she had told me, Hey, you know what?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna help you do this.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna let's prepare the nursery, let's do all the things.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And we did that.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I was really thinking that was gonna be the plan.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one day I'm there and she's like, Hey, there's a worker coming.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: They're just gonna make sure that the nursery is safe to bring the baby home to.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, If you're going to send me away somewhere, can you just tell me now so I know before they come?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm not gonna go willingly.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: I I just I need you to tell me right now.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want you to lie to me.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, No, no, no, no, no.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's not anything like that.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: They're just coming to make sure it's a safe place because of your situation.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, but I knew.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And as soon as the worker walks in, she's like, Hey, I need you to go grab a garbage bag.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna come with me.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Just throw whatever you think you're gonna need in the bag.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I, of course, refused and they ended up calling the police.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was a whole thing.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Eventually, I end up going in the car with the um social worker, and she drives me to a town that's about 45 minutes away from where I had lived.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I immediately recognized where we're going because I had been there before, and it was the mental health institution, which is a very, very, very old hospital.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's very well known and notorious in my state.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: And we pull up and I was like, You can't be serious.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot be serious.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: At this point, I was eight months pregnant, seven or eight months pregnant, and we walk in, we go up a couple flights of stairs, and we're at this emergency shelter wing.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: And as soon as we walk in, it's just utter chaos.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: We walk into there's no staff to be seen anywhere.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's kids running everywhere screaming at each other, and I'll never forget, there's a kid that's running with a pencil in his hand, and he's chasing after somebody saying, I'm gonna stab you in your eyeball.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I look at the worker and I say, You truly think that this is the safest option for me right now?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: This is this is what you believe to be in my best interest.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And she didn't really answer.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we somebody tells us to go off into the office.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we're sitting there waiting, and we're waiting so long that the worker ends up having to leave, and my grandma comes and sits with me waiting to do the intake for this emergency shelter.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sitting there just bawling and begging her, saying, Please take me home.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: I will do everything you ask of me.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: I will go to school every day, I will do whatever you want.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: Just please do not make me stay here.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Please take me home.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: And at this point, she was just telling me, Well, it's out of my hands now, it's up to the state, it's not my choice, which I found out later wasn't actually true.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: But that's a whole other thing.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we finally do the intake and I get placed there.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: And by this point, I was in ninth grade and I had started at an alternative high school in my area, which I absolutely loved.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so they allowed me to continue going there, but I had to be transported every single day.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I was taking a garbage bag because I was told that I had to be able to go with a foster family if somebody was willing to take me and they might just pick me up from school one day, and I needed to be able to just immediately go with them instead of having to go back to the shelter and get things and all of that fun stuff.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: So here I am in ninth grade, eight months pregnant, taking a garbage bag with all of my things every single day to school, fielding everybody's questions that I really didn't even have answers to myself, and trying to focus on my schoolwork, also wondering if that day is gonna be when a stranger comes to pick me up, wondering if I'm gonna have to go back to the shelter, just all of these things.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I was only there for about two weeks before a foster family agreed to take me.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And they were supposed to pick me up from school.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was a whole ordeal, they couldn't.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: So my grandparents ended up transporting me to this foster home.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, I was just sobbing and begging them again, please do not drop me off here.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to go home.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you doing this to me?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I still went to the foster home, and that's what started me entering into the foster system.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: So this foster family started out supportive, I remember, but became very restrictive.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: What shifted?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so when I originally got there, they were really supportive of me.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, looking back, I think a little bit of trying to be my friend, which on some level was helpful, but there was also a lot of things that happened that ended up biting me in the butt later.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: My foster mom was really set on involving my abuser's family in this process.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: And none of them liked me for obvious reasons.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: I he had been sentenced, he was in prison at this time.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, that's their family member, regardless of the situation.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: So they weren't really nice to me, but she was really encouraging this, and so she they had visited me a few times while I was pregnant and in foster care.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was interesting.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: But they were also not restrictive at first with allowing me to have autonomy, allowing me to make choices.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: They seemed to really respect the fact that I had a voice and had opinions, and they would hear me out and they would be more receptive to listening and advocating for me at first.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: However, once I delivered, I had to deliver with my foster parents in the area because I was technically under their care.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um I ended up going back there and it was just like a whole 180 flip.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I really wanted to breastfeed, and that was really important to me.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: However, they were not supportive of that at all.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: All of the challenges I was having, they would just say, just give a bottle, just give a bottle.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to be doing all that, just give a bottle.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: You're making this harder for yourself.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Just very, very unhelpful.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and my oldest, when I had her, she actually had jaundice, so she was hospitalized.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I was going through a whole lot of court stuff at the time while she was hospitalized.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I, it was the worst thing because I did not want to leave my child in the hospital.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: But I was also told if I don't show up to the court date, then I don't get to share my side of things that were happening.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: But if I left her, then I also could be called back to court for abandonment.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then her custody could be, it was a mess.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I was 14 by this time.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: I had turned 14 right before I delivered her.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: So there was just so many things going on, and I felt like there was really nobody advocating for me except for my guardian Adlida, who I will forever stay in contact with her because she's truly the only person through that whole process that I know had my back.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: And she would not sugarcoat things to me.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she got information that something I was told was not true, she would say, Hey, that person lied to you.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that you really want to go back with your grandparents, but I'm telling you right now, they're not gonna have you back.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: And as much as they keep telling you that it's not their choice, they've actively told the courts that they're not willing to take you back.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: So now we need to have a conversation about what's your next best option.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I just will forever appreciate the fact that she was willing to see me as a human being, she was willing to see me as a parent, she was willing to tell me things transparently and not hope that I would fall in line with what everybody else was expecting me to do.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, girlfriend.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: During this time, you were still in the care of the foster family, correct?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: And didn't they begin to exaggerate your issues because they wanted additional stipend money?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I found that out later from one of the workers, and I don't even know how I came to know that because none of the workers were super transparent with me.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I after I had delivered, I went back to the foster home and they started taking in other teen girls into their home doing foster care for them.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I was the only one that had been pregnant or been a parent, but they started to flip rules on me.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it was really important for me to do online schooling so I could be my child's caretaker and I was still really wanting to breastfeed.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: We had agreed to this.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: This was a plan, we had it all figured out, and they one day were like, Yeah, no, actually, you're gonna go to the local high school.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna do the child care for you, and you can come home over the lunch break for two hours, but you have to also do online classes while you're here.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you're actually not gonna be taking care of your child when you're here, anyways.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: So my worker painted it as they want you to socialize, they want you to have a normal experience being a teenager.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I was, that's not what I want though.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, I'm not a normal teenager, and I have other ways that I can socialize outside of being pushed away from my child.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, of course, it was because they would get paid from the state for being the daycare, the provider, etc.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I didn't know that at that time, but I knew that something was was up there.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: And during that time, there was another teenage girl in the home who had severe mental health issues.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I had no problems with her personally.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: However, I had explicitly stated, do not let this person be in charge of my child, do not let her have care over my child at all, because she's explicitly stated that babies are a trigger for her.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: It makes her have visceral reactions to babies and babies crying, and I just would not I'm not comfortable with you leaving my child with this person.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, of course, that was not respected.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember walking in the house one day, and she's providing the care for my child, and I flew off the handle, and I was like, this is unacceptable.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: You're not respecting my wishes, you've gone back on a lot of things that you've said, and it just kick-started a whole lot of negativity.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: My foster parents became super, super petty, and they would just make lots of claims, say a lot of things to try to almost shame me for wanting what I felt was best for my child at the time.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it was around that time, too, when my worker would start asking me more questions about how things were going.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, hey, we're hearing that this is happening, what's going on?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I would just be so confused because if that is actually not what happened, or that's not how that happened.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it just started to make sense that they were reporting insane behaviors that were not happening.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: It shouldn't be noted as a higher level behavior because I'm pushing back against something that we've already talked about and now you're changing it without talking to me.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's it just got really rocky.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: And around that time was when my permanency plan switched to be adopted by the family who had previously had co-guardianship of me, the family that had my siblings.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: So once that became the plan, things shifted even more to where this foster family I I was very clearly not wanted there anymore because I was moving out of their home.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a lot of, well, you didn't want to stay with us, so I don't I don't really know if I want to do that for you, or I don't really know if I want to have this conversation with you right now because why don't you go ask your family about that?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Just just comments like that that were not great.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so that all of those pieces together, it was very clear that that was not a safe place to continue being long-term.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, obviously.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: And your adoption that you just mentioned with the previous guardians, okay, changed your relationship with your siblings without needing to get into specifics about them.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Can you speak to how adoption, because now you're being adopted, it's not just kinship or foster.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now you've been adopted.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: How did that reshape those family bonds in general?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a couple layers to this actually, because my adoptive home is 10 houses up from my biological dad's home.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: So and my biological dad had another child, and he had somehow gotten custody of my sibling.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I would see my biological dad and my sibling walk past my adoptive home every single day to the school, back home from school, to the school, back home from school.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: And he, he and I were not on good terms.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I wasn't really allowed to interact with my sibling, but it was just so weird because I wasn't legally related to that sibling, even though I know that's my dad, I know that's my sibling, but because I was adopted, we don't actually have those titles anymore.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: Those aren't legally established connections anymore.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a weird byproduct of being adopted.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: That I've grown up knowing that that's my dad and that's my sibling, but now that I'm adopted, even though I live 10 houses away, I have all this proximity to the family and the life that I came from.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: But now it's legally established that that's not my my life or my family anymore.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a weird experience to grow up in for a couple of years.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because when I was adopted, I was 15.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I had three other siblings who were already living in that home.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so one of them was adopted through a separate adoption process, and then two were adopted with me as a a whole sibling set adoption, essentially.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so that whole process was very interesting because it was very much like I had a choice, but I didn't have options, if that makes sense.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you talked about uh in our conversation originally, and this is where this question is coming from, your adoptive mother possibly carrying her own adoption trauma into how she parented you.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can you say more about that?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this actually has recently come up because I am no contact with her currently.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I am somebody who will really try to give everybody grace.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: I will try to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, just because I know how heavy life can be, especially when it's things that are out of your control.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: But when it came to my experience being parented by my adoptive parents, I felt like, at least for me, my adoptive mom had her own things that maybe weren't fully healed yet.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so she was almost trying to relive through me or trying to create me into the ideal version of what an adoptee could look like or have the happily ever after that maybe she didn't feel like she got.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: But what that did was place all these expectations on me and try to force me to be somebody I didn't want to be and was never meant to be, and to fill the shoes of somebody that we don't really know who it is, because is it who you wanted to be?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: Is it who you want me to be?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is it who you are?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Is it who you wish you were?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was so confusing.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: And she was very open, sharing a lot of her experience with her own personal story, which I was appreciative of.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: But as I grew up, I was like, you have all of this wounding, all of this trauma from your experience.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you not able to apply that information to how you're approaching me?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because I also come from a completely different family and home life than what you even came from.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need somebody to force me to be a kid who never grew up with all the trauma I come from.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's never going to be my story.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always going to be the person with that as my history.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's just how it is.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't erase it.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: Being a good parent doesn't erase what I come from.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I had a lot of new trauma happen after being adopted because of how almost ignored my past trauma was.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: And just because this looked maybe worse than the trauma I experienced in my adoptive home, they are both still very impacting to the healing journey that I've had to go on.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I mentioned in the intro, you had described being gaslit and treated as a primary caregiver in the home, despite the conditions.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what did that do to your sense of reality at the time?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, it just made me feel like my worth was equated with productivity.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was as long as I show up and check all the boxes of my tasks, I was worthy of attention.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was worthy of being spoken to, I was worthy of being a part of the family.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: But if I didn't complete something, or I didn't want to do something, or I wanted to do something different, that that didn't equate to being deserving of attention or being deserving of being a part of the family.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a very stark difference for me in my experience, seeing the way that my adoptive family's biological children were treated versus me.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I was older than my siblings who were also adopted.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like because I had so much lived experience before this that they were even harder on me to try to change or untrauma me almost, which sounds wild because we know that that's completely impossible.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: But I just lived with so much anxiety.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: I lived with so much stress.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of times that I just felt so hopeless because nothing I'm doing is ever right.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm tired.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't ever get to have a bad day.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't get to have a day off.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: I have to show up as the person that tells the world that my adoption was my saving grace.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: It saved my life.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so grateful.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: There was never any room for me to have other emotions.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or if there was room for me to have other emotions, it needed to be directed at the people that they felt deserved it versus them.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: And what really should have happened was that I should have had the space to have those feelings towards everybody who deserved it, not just who they deemed okay.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was that was really hard.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that was something that still sometimes shows up where it's hard for me if I don't feel like I'm physically productive.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to still understand that I'm still worthy of all the things I was yesterday when I got the house clean and made it to all of our appointments and scheduled new appointments and did all those things.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just as worthy of love today, even though maybe I sat on the couch longer than I normally would have.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, such good correlations to all that you just described.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm honestly so sorry that that happened.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: It can be so difficult.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you have mentioned that there were therapists appointed by your adoptive family that were feeding information back to them.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, how did that affect your ability to trust anyone meant to help you at this time?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: So honestly, most of my experience with therapists and mental health professionals, even before my adoption, were really negative.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like that was a shared experience between all of them where information I shared was then passed along to my family.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that also added to a lot of the distrust I had in authority and into people that are supposed to be able to be trusted, which was really hard because I that was the one thing that I was universally lacking in every family system I was a part of was one person that I could trust to just hold the weight of all the things I was carrying and trust that they'll help me hold it and not go and share it with other people.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was really hard after I was adopted because if I would say something in therapy that didn't align with what my adoptive family believed or wanted to be true, or if I had talked about something I had done that they didn't necessarily know about, they would find out about it.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I would know because as soon as I would walk in the doors of the house afterwards, nobody would speak to me.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was very cold.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's that feeling of walking into a room and you can feel that something's off, but you don't know what it is because nobody's telling you, but you just know that's that feeling.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I would just know, okay, great, something happened.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: They they must have heard something from my therapist or whatever.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: And now I get to pay the consequences for sharing something.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, what that really taught me is that when you go to therapy, you share just enough and continue to perform that okayness.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: You show up everywhere performing okayness, performing gratefulness, and giving just a sliver of authenticity so that they don't think that you're just gaslighting them.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: But you can never fully share your feelings or your thoughts because it doesn't align with what they want everybody to believe about you.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that was further complicated by the fact that the first therapist I worked with was actually a therapist who was working with other family members of mine.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I already know that's a conflict of interest, so I'm not sure how that happened.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the second one was affiliated with the church that my adoptive family had worked with.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: On the um pastoral team.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: So they knew them personally, which fun fact, except not fun fact, that pastoral counselor ended up getting charged later on with sexually um exploiting a minor client of his, which I can't say that I'm surprised, but I clearly there was not a lot of ethics being upheld in that office.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's so interesting, and then you brought in the church that they attended, and this is where I'm assuming the religious trauma that you've talked about occurred as a part of the story.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, how did faith and family intersect in ways that caused harm here?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you just mentioned one, but what else?
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: There's actually a lot of pieces where religion has kind of caused a lot of that trauma for me or compounded the trauma because going back a little bit to when I was pregnant and staying with this family, we had had a run-in with Bethany, right?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: They, my adoptive, well, my now adoptive, but at the time my guardians had brought them in.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: They sold me their whole line of you can do an open adoption, you'll be in the driver's seat, you get to control all of this, you get to pick who it is, but they'll give your baby the life that you could never give them.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: They have money, they have resources, and you get to watch your child have the best life, the whole thing that they sell everybody on.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually, obviously, I didn't go along with that.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: So once Bethany was stepping out of my life, I started having families from church approaching me about adopting my baby.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it's such an I can't even explain the experience it is to be going through my own crisis, my own trauma, and having adults coming and crying to me about their story with infertility and how they believe that my baby is meant to be in their family.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: And assuming that me, a child who was pregnant and going through my own experience, could carry the weight of their adult emotions, their adult trauma.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just so inappropriate.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: But because the religious world really pushes being selfless and they sell adoption as being an act of love and how it would be selfish of you to not consider how these great families could be a better option than you would be.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: So there was that piece too.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then after I was adopted, like I said, my adoptive family was very involved in the church.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: The few places I was able to go outside of school and things was like youth group, because there were people that could watch me and keep eyes on me there.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: And everywhere I went, there was somebody reporting back to my adoptive parents about what I was doing.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't go to a store without somebody saying, Hey, I saw her at the store and she stopped for this long in this aisle.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: I literally felt like I was under surveillance.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so, really, what that did for me was make me feel like I need to be more secretive and be more sneaky.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: And really, a lot of the things that I was doing that I was under surveillance for were normal things, just very normal things.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: But because they were seeing me through the lens of all of my trauma, all of my past experiences, they couldn't just see me as a teenager wanting to be a teenager.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: It was through the lens of I'm either doing something wrong, I'm doing something that is inappropriate, I'm doing something based out of trauma.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was really, really hard for me.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I came to the conclusion that becoming very involved in the church and in the religious community that they had been a part of was really my only way to feel like I will get some kind of freedom.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, I guess this is my identity.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds great.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: I can go and have friends, I can have these social lives if it's within the confines of this.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: However, a lot of the ideology that I struggle with in organized religion is everything is a sin.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that is something that's hard for me because people are not black and white.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: Experiences are not simple to say that's a sin, that's not a sin.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was something that's really hard for me because why am I being told that I have to repent for things that were not my fault?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the whole saving yourself from marriage, that was really hard for me because I had this really traumatic experience that was out of my control.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: But in the eyes of the church, that didn't matter.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: That was still something that was a stain on purity.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I just I had trouble with a lot of those things, but I would just stifle a lot of my identity down because you have to show up a certain way to church.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: You have to show up a certain way to be godly.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing that was the hardest for me was the way that my family showed up in church was not the same way that they showed up at home.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that was really, really hard for me because you're holding me to a standard that you don't even live up to at home.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: How do I make sense of that when you go and preach about all of these things?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: But at home, we're not living that way.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: We're not talking to each other that way, we're not treating each other that way.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: You have a whole lot of your own relational drama happening.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: Why are we pretending like you have the grace to behave one way in one situation and one way in another, but I have to be performing constantly.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: I have to constantly have the mask on that I'm grateful, that I'm happy, that everything's okay.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that was that was probably the icing on the cake for me, where I was like, this is this is just too much.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that I'm meant to be a part of this kind of community.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting to to sort of switch gears, this is where I think the separation began to happen because you married your husband and left your adoptive home after turning 18.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't remember which mother did this because you've had plenty.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: So which mother actually tried to sabotage your wedding?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: What happened?
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it was, I know that's one of the things that I always laugh about.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's not funny, but I have had so many mothers and I still to this day just crave a mother.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's one of those difficult things.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: But um, it was actually my adoptive mom.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: But what's interesting is my my biological grandma was invited to our wedding and she did come.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a really nice experience to have her there.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: So when I met my husband, my adoptive family was not happy.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: They were not fond of him, and it was very difficult.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: And because of this church that I had been raised in with them, marriage felt like the way out for me.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: It felt like the only way where I could have some sense of independence, but also have a little bit of acceptance from them versus me just running off with a boyfriend or whatever.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because one of the things that they had told me a lot was, you're just gonna be a baby mama.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: You just want to be a baby mama, then you just want to have a bunch of kids and have them with guys all over the place, and you just want to be a baby mama, and I so I was determined to prove them wrong.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I met my husband.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was in December of 2013, and by April of 2014, we had started dating, and then by June of 2014, we were engaged, and then we got married six days after I turned 18 in September of 2014.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: So that was what I thought made sense.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: So at our wedding, originally we were just gonna go get married at the courthouse.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my adoptive mom offered her house to us, her yard, and she was like, We you can have the wedding here.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's fine.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm going with that plan, and then as we get closer, she just is like, I actually can't support this.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna regret this.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is a terrible idea.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: You barely know him, you haven't healed a lot of your own things.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Are you sure you're getting married for the right reasons?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: All of the all the things.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, that's fine.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have to have it here, but I'm still gonna get married.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna do it at the courthouse, like we talked about.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we went back and forth, and eventually she's like, Okay, you can have it here, we'll support you, whatever.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we my mother-in-law brings this beautiful, huge cake, and she sets it on the dessert table.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: And at some point, I think I was upstairs getting ready actually, and I find out that my adoptive mom, I guess, had put her hand through this cake, and I don't remember how I found out about it that day.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't a huge deal, so it's not actually something that would have stuck out to me at the time, but my adoptive mom actually brings it up a lot as a joke, which is why I think it stands out so much to me now because she'll almost every year the memory pops up of her taking a picture of the cake after she had put her hand through it, and she's like, Oh my gosh, ha ha ha, I think this is from the time when I put my hand through your cake on accident.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, wasn't that crazy?
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not really sure how it happened.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not really sure what if there was motivation behind it.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: I just assume that it was an innocent accident because I don't know.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: But the fact that it gets brought up every single year, it's like, okay, now that's standing out to me now as something because you were very much against my wedding to begin with.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: And now there's this thing that my husband's family contributed to our celebration, and now there's this memory that is all about you.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that that was one of the several things where I'm like, okay, I get to remember that every year on my anniversary.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, thanks.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, what did it feel like to finally step outside of that system into a life that you were choosing?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I thought that I had gained a lot of independence, but reflecting back, I was still very much entrenched in my adoptive family system.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Way more than I wish I would have been.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because our the first couple years of our marriage really, really suffered because my loyalty was still so bound to my adoptive family.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't realize how much it was.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: And my husband was the one kind of pointing it out hey, you promised you would be back home, but you're still over at your mom's house.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: Is there somebody else that can come take care of the kids for them?
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: Can I spend time with you?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: All of our all of our schedules basically revolved around my adoptive family.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: And part of that was because my role in my adoptive family was always the caretaker.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: I come through and fill the gaps when nobody else wants to or nobody else is able to do something.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so that still was happening when I had gotten married and moved out.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: And there was a lot of guilt around not being able to do that as much, which was really hard because I still felt a sense of I have to be loyal and grateful to this family.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so yeah, it was really, really hard.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, eventually I think it was we had been married for maybe six months at the time, and I got so tired of it and I didn't know how to have the hard conversations.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, you know what?
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just pick a state.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna move there.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care where it is, we're moving away.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it was within six weeks we picked a state, packed up, and moved three states away, um, where we were physically distanced from them.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it was not a great decision, it was not a well-planned decision, and we ended up moving back pretty quickly after that.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that was the first time that I realized how much I needed to create distance and set boundaries.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, they were not happy with that, but I was like, I don't know how to have these hard conversations, but I also can't be uprooting my family to move states away with a really unplanned situation just to escape this family system.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it also reflects how powerful that family system felt over me and my life, because unfortunately, I feel like personally my adoptive family revolves around my adoptive mom.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody has fallen in line around her as the center of it.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's been really hard for me as I've gotten more removed from that family system because everybody else who's willing to keep giving into that reality, giving into that narrative, I am not able to have relationships with them because my relationships are filtered through somebody else and my relationship with somebody else.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I just that's too hard for me to deal with.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: So switching gears, you have completed your degree as of um, it was actually early.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: I remember you telling me this.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and are now pursuing licensure, like I said.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: What made you want to go into this field, especially marriage and family therapy with everything?
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's because of everything that you experienced, knowing what you already have lived through.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, like you said, that really is the reason because I saw all of the ways that I would never want to do it myself, and I had to go through such a process to deconstruct and undo and figure out what I want and who I want to be and what I want my family to look like and how I want to show up in my family.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and it was really hard.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: It was really, really hard.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm still doing that, and I will still be doing that for the rest of my life.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think people who don't have a lot of that experience who show up as clinicians can truly understand the weight of somebody who has such a heavy story, who has so much trauma, who has so many complex pieces that contribute to how they show up to you in therapy.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so I really wanted to be the person that I wished that I had when I was going through all of those things.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: That is so good, Brie.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is what's informing the therapist that you're going to become.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that is so, so cool.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: You are also the mother of eight.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pausing for emphasis here.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: You have talked about transparency in your own household with me before we got on this recording.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: And your kids, you do this so they don't inherit the same silence.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like for you day to day?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it really started with my oldest because I had her when I was a teenager, and I I know that I screwed up so many times in my parenting journey.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: But one thing that I really prioritize is transparency.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_02: So she knows the story of how she came to be.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_02: We talk a lot about that, and I give her a lot of age-appropriate information, but I think that she deserves to know the truth.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want her to grow up, and even though she's not adopted, there is that element of I don't want her to grow up someday and realize that the father who raised her isn't actually her biological father because that doesn't feel fair.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now it is that extra layer of, although her biological parent is a predator and is not a safe person, she she understands that.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so that experience also has shaped the way that we talk about online safety.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's the way that we've shaped not doing sleepovers, the way that we talk about including people who maybe other kids make fun of because they have they show up differently at school.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know what's happening at home.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: So let's be kind to them.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: Ask them questions.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you can help give them information, or I try to give my kids tools that I learn or that I even teach clients so that they can be not little therapists, but I want them to be people that other people can trust and that other people aren't thinking or judging them or making assumptions about people because they come from something different.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I talk a lot with my husband about things that inform the way that I show up in the world.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so we get on the same page about hey, let's talk to the kids about this conversation or this is a really important topic.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: We need to sit down and talk to them about this.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of it is around body safety.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: Again, like I said, the internet, how we treat other people and not judging people, asking questions if you want to know something, but not being mean about it, not being rude about it.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, all of my kids know a lot of my story, obviously, age-appropriate information.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: But even for them, it's very hard because we've had a relationship with my adoptive family and now we don't.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm answering questions a lot in an age-appropriate way of well, right now we're not really talking with this person as much.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot going on.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's some adult conversations that we have to have before I think it would be good to be able to have fun with them again.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: Having those conversations to where they're not getting whiplash from one relationship to the next, but also not making them feel like it's their fault or that they're contributing to why the adults are having adult issues.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so, so important.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: Good, good job.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that I think is really important to highlight is uh you're still married to the guy that you just saying.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: So much of what you're describing is what I'd call moving from what's wrong with me to what has happened to me, and then further into now what do I want to build from this?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you've been able to do that.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you've walked through that whole arc.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: And now with pursuing your MFT and pursuing licensure, what does healing look like for you day to day?
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not the highlight reel, the real version.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think the biggest part of knowing that I'm on the right path with healing is accepting the really messy days as just a part of that process because I used to get really discouraged when I would have really hard days or doubt myself and say, am I really actually where I think I am in my journey?
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: Am I really as healed as I think because I'm having a rough day.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: But healing is not linear, and that's something that I've had to learn is that there's gonna be lots of ups and downs.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's gonna be days when it feels extra hard that I don't have relationships with some of my family that I wish that I do.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: And there's gonna be some days that I'm really glad that I have those boundaries in place and still feel really angry that I have to have them.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think just showing up every single day and being willing to sit with the reality that I set boundaries to keep myself safe and to keep my family safe, and that's the best that I can do.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_02: I can't change the people in my life and their behavior.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_02: I can't make them show up differently.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: I can't make my perspective make sense to somebody who just can't understand where I'm coming from and being okay with that.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm also in my own therapy and I work with clients through my internship, and I just try to make sure that I am checking my own biases, making sure that I am not pouring my own pain onto somebody else or inflicting more harm on somebody, really, and constantly having conversations around what that looks like, where I'm at, and being okay with the fact that it doesn't always look pretty.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it doesn't.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one thing you specifically wanted to touch on was how adoption trauma shows up in every adoption scenario, even the good ones.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yours was very difficult, but can you unpack that briefly for listeners who might assume trauma only exists in difficult stories?
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's the hardest part for people is that two things can exist at once.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: You can have a really great adoption and still have grief and still have those what ifs and still wish that things were different.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_02: And my adoption wasn't a hundred percent bad.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_02: I would say it was probably, I don't know, maybe a 60-40 split.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I can still appreciate the good times that I had.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: I can still appreciate the opportunities that I was given because of my adoption and my adoptive family, but I also can still be mad and angry and frustrated about the things that they really dropped the ball on.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I can still be frustrated about the fact that my biological family couldn't get it together for me in time to be able to remain with them.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that people don't realize the impact that adoption has on more than just the adoptee or the adoptive family or the biological family.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: My kids are feeling the effects of me being adopted.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: My husband feels the effects of me being adopted.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: My friends feel the effects of me being adopted.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: My clients even have some of that effects of me being adopted because I show up differently to all these spaces because that's a part of my story.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_02: And adoption really impacts identity, it impacts attachment, it impacts how we have relationships with other people, how we see ourselves in those relationships.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so, even in the best case adoptions, even when it totally makes sense that you were not able to be with your biological family and you had a great family and amazing opportunities, and you're so happy to have that, that doesn't negate the fact that there was a loss, there was separation that started with losing something, and the trauma of that isn't determined on how you experience that.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_02: It might not feel like a heavy thing for you to not have ever known your biological mother and be adopted into a great family.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: But your body knows that, your brain knows that before you had the words for it, that loss still happened, and that is a through line of your story, regardless of if it's something that shows up in a big way or maybe just in a small moment when you feel like a twinge of wow, I really wonder what my biological family is like.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's okay.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's okay.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a betrayal to have those feelings, it's not wrong to have those feelings.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_02: You can still have the same amount of love and appreciation and gratefulness for your adoption experience while acknowledging that there's still some not so great parts of that, and both of those things are okay.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's very true.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's the both and and the paradox that we adoptees live in.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you've written two books now, and I'd love for you to briefly tell us about them because we are a little over an hour here, and I want to try and be sensitive to that, but I also want this to be known.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: What made you want to write each one of them and who did you write them for?
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I've always loved writing, and it actually makes sense that the modality that I use with clients is often narrative therapy, um, because I think it's so important to be able to tell your own story and reauthor who you want to be in that story.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so the first book that I wrote is called Writing Over the Lines, and the title is really an homage to the fact that adoptees have a lot of the things that are already.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Written for them at birth, written over and changed, and we don't really get a say in the trail.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that one is more of a lived experience slash things that I wish clinicians knew.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's really a mixture of things that I've learned being adopted.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I have sections that speak to adoptees, I have sections that speak to adoptive families, and I have sections that speak to clinicians who work with adoptees.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really just to, I guess, validate and give language to the complex experiences that adoptees have.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, mix in with a couple of lived experiences for myself and then relating it back to the bigger topics of what the adoptee experiences is like and how clinicians can support them better and how adoptive families can show up for them better.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then the second one is called consumed, and that one is a lot more research and info heavy because I have seen such a huge market of exploitation of specifically adoptee stories.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I experienced a tiny version of that with my own adoption story because our story was put in the news.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's you can find it online.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_02: Anybody who searches my name finds our story, which is not necessarily something that I think should be allowed because adoptees grow up.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not always something that needs to be the precursor to what people know about a person who's adopted.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it really dives into the reality of family vlogging, specifically with children being the main performer, I guess, on those channels.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and how kids aren't content, their trauma is not meant to be a monetized story.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I share a lot of research that supports the fact that adoption is inherently trauma.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_02: And when we're making this identity for kids online that's going to follow them forever, that's an even more detrimental trauma that they have to carry for the rest of their lives.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_02: Kids can't provide informed consent.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we can't ethically continue saying that this makes sense to continue to have this child's story shared online for audiences that the child will never understand the impact of it until it's already done.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: Out there.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love that you're doing that work.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's so, so important.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for that.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: Listeners and viewers, those links will be in the show notes for sure.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if someone is listening right now or watching and they're in the middle of their own version of this kind of story, still in the system, still being gaslit, still being told their reality isn't real, what would you want them to know?
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think the most important thing that I would say is to first just hold on.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_02: It does not last forever.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_02: There will be a time in your life when you get to have full control over everything that's happening and you get to decide who and what you allow in your life.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, right now you can't make all of those decisions if you are stuck in the middle of the system.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes just making the survival decisions is enough until you do find that point in your life when you can access your own resources and find somebody who truly can support you to process all the things that have happened.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I think someone like you, Brie.
• 1:09:17
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think too, for adoptees, it's so important to try to find adoptee competent therapists.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I know there's a huge lack.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_02: There's been some recent research that has come out that only one in five adoptees felt like their therapist was competent, which is, I think, so wrong.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think it should be a part of regular curriculum, which is a whole other conversation.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_02: But just really advocating for yourself and be stubborn about who you know you are.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: And just because somebody has done something for you does not mean you owe them your life.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_02: You do not owe them your loyalty.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: You do not owe them gratefulness.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_02: You don't, you don't get to allow access to yourself from people who don't have your best interests at heart, regardless of who they are to you.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, absolutely.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, with all of this in mind, I know that you are wanting to create even more resources going forward.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where can people find you, your books, and whatever future work you do?
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: What's next for you?
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so right now I've been pretty active on things like TikTok.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_02: I reshare a lot of my stuff to Instagram, YouTube, I have a Facebook page where I tend to add resources, which I'm slacking on right now, is my pay hip, which is in my TikTok bio, and then self-publishing website, which is Lulu, which I have all of those things on my pay hip page.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_02: So hopefully I can streamline some of that a little bit better.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: But right now, social media is kind of where I've been posting more psychoeducational stuff, advocacy stuff, and then obviously working with clients in my professional life here.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I would really love to continue doing more public speaking, public-facing things, advocacy, and hopefully developing some resources that can help adopte these and clinicians and trauma survivors.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would love that and grateful that we can stay connected too.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Just make sure I get all of those links so that I can put them in the show notes for sure.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, Brielle, I just want to say after listening to you the couple of times that I've had, the thing that keeps coming back to me is every part of you that adapted to survive all that you experienced, it completely makes sense that you had to do what you had to do to survive.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And every part of you that's now building something different on purpose with your own kids and your own clients, that's the whole arc that this show is trying to illuminate.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so grateful to have had you on.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And truly for your honesty, your story, for the work that you're even stepping into now as getting licensed and all of that, I know what that's like.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_01: If something in this conversation landed for all y'all listeners and viewers, a question, a memory, a feeling that surprised you, I want you to know you don't have to carry this alone.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's the whole point of why Brie and I do what we do.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can DM me on any of my socials, you can schedule a conversation with me directly.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to connect with you and talk about where you are and how I can support you.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that Brielle's story more than likely moved you today.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Go find her.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_01: She is so willing to interact with you.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: I made sure before we got on for this recording.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And she has two books out already with more resources on the way.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll drop everything like I said in the show notes so you can go and support her work directly.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, if this podcast meant something to you, a five-star review or even just a few written words goes such a long way in helping this reach people, more adoptees, and those who love them.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just important to remember that you aren't alone in this, like I've already said, because here's what I want you to sit with this week.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Don't outsource your belonging.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Insource it.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll see you next week.