Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Love and Connection: A Brave Conversation on Adoption, Family Trauma, and Healing

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Love and Connection: A Brave Conversation on Adoption, Family Trauma, and Healing · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: One in 35 children in the United States is adopted.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: More than 50,000 children are adopted through foster care every year.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: An estimated 100,000 children are adopted through all adoption types every year.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Around 700,000 children are living with adoptive parents.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: More than 1.2 million children are living with at least one adoptive parent.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's episode, we are actually going to be speaking with Ashley, who you all are very familiar with, who has shared her TTA story with us, but today we have her biological mother with us, who is going to talk to us and give us the parents' side of things, or at least her side of things, when it comes to putting Ashley up for adoption and how they reconnected.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Hi guys, it's me Ashley again.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I'm here today with my birth mom, olivia.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Olivia, I'm so glad to have you on.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: This is a subject that I've wanted to cover, but I know that it's a sensitive subject that's not talked about a lot.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: I'm so happy to be with you and your listeners.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: I just hope that this podcast will give the courage to other listeners that are listening, that are going through or have gone through what my daughter and I have gone through, and hopefully it will give them the strength and the courage to open up and tell their story.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I think that you're 100% correct.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I think that the purpose, my purpose for having this podcast is to normalize the things that we've been taught to not talk about.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: But the things that we've been taught to not talk about are the things that can sometimes be to our demise.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Actually, i met your father through my sister.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: My sister actually dated him before I did, years before I did.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: But then years later we ran into one another and there was always an attraction.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: And then we knew each other from the past and I trusted him and I never seen a bad side of him at all And I had feelings for him and we became a couple and we were engaged.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: And then I got pregnant with you.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, when I was four months pregnant with you, he had come home and had been drinking And he had asked me to get him a glass of cherry soda, but I thought he had said cherry Kool-Aid And I served him cherry Kool-Aid and that angered him.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: And next thing I know I'm getting the shit beat out of me After he continuously beat me.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: He beat me so bad I couldn't move.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: For three days I went to the doctors and to check to make sure that you were okay And my main concern was to protect my belly.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Anyway, he didn't stop beating me until he seemed blood.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: When he seemed blood, he stopped And at that moment I said I have to get away.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: If I don't get away, what happens if he does it again?
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: And not only that, but I had had two small, two older children for my previous marriage And I had you, and after the beating I had decided I had to get away.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: I had to get away from him.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: So what I did was I thought about it and I thought about it And what really made me make the decision was, before I had left him, he had started talking about names that he wanted to name you.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: He was becoming extremely controlling And that's scary.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: When you gave him Kool-Aid and not Soda and he was physically abusive to you.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Was that the first time?
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: First and last.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: He was four months pregnant with Ashley when he did it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: You immediately started to make that escape plan And it takes people years and black eyes and blue tears to get to that point of escape plan.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: You also mentioned after that first attack is when the verbal abuse started.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So was everything just like cool, smooth water until then, and all of a sudden there was a switch.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, it was like a light switch inside of him.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Now don't get me wrong.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: After the beating He was very attentive, very kind, very caring, of course, because what he'd done and swore he would never do it again.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: And I had to play along, keep it as smooth as I could because, like I said, i had two other children besides And I was looking after them as well.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: I didn't want them.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: If he was going to beat on me, then what's to say?
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: He wouldn't do that to my kids later on.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: And what made me decide to get her up is, if I was going to get away, how was I?
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: I had to figure out how in the world was I going to take care?
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: because he worked?
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: I didn't, and that's the way he wanted it, and so I had no financial means of escape.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: So what I had to do was I had to figure out where I was going to go with my two kids, and then I had to figure out how in the world am I going to take care of three children by myself, because her father was another thing is is her father had threatened to take her from me And his family was just the absolute not all of them, but what I do remember of them and what I've known of them.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: They were alcoholics and substance abusers and all that, and I didn't want her exposed to any of that.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Lord only knows.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: If she would have been exposed to his side, what may have happened to her As a woman.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: What would a teacher growing up and what kind of woman would she have become?
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: So that worried me.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: So I finally said okay.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: I talked with my mom about it, about the adoption, and my mother told me that she thought that that would be the wisest thing to do too, because, like I said, i was already a single mom with two children.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: How is that going to support another child?
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: And I wanted Ashley to have a chance at a good life, you know, go to have two parents that really love her, have a huge family where she could have siblings, cousins.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: You know, i want her to have the best of what I thought was everything.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: So, and the only way to do that was to put her up for adoption.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: So I picked up the newspaper, because there's a lot of, you know, back then I don't know how it is now, but they had a section back there with adoption homes or adoption agencies and stuff like that.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: So I called several.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, i called just about every last one of them And the only one that would work with me.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: The way I wanted it to be done was adoptions with love.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I met with them three different occasions.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: We had a lot of phone talking and see, my case was a little bit different because I did not want Ashley's father being a part of the adoption at all, and in the state of Maryland if you give a child for adoption, you have to have the father's signature.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: What they managed to do and I'm very thankful was they flew.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: They managed, they flew down here from Massachusetts And that's where we met at the airport And I looked at books, i read letters.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: I mean I had a very variety of families to choose from And I finally chose the family that I placed her with, but the conditions were that she had to keep the name that I was going to name her, and that was Ashley Nicole.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: That was supposed to have been her name.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: They were not supposed to have changed it.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: I also sent a letter with them to that was to be given to her at.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: You know, i put on there the age of 18 or when her adoptive parents thought that it was right.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: I wrote the letter, i gave everything to them.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Then it came the day that she was ready to come And that was the hardest day of my life And I went through labor and delivery with her And I couldn't even I couldn't even hold her because I knew, if I held her that there was no way I would be able to give her to someone else.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: After feeling her in my body and feeling her kick, and that was the hardest thing I've ever done And to this day it's still the hardest thing I've ever done.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: But I felt in my heart that I placed her with a family that would love her And that would care for her And that would give her all the things that I couldn't give her.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: You know, only thing I could offer her was love.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: My way to show her that I truly loved her was to do what I did was to give her to someone I thought that could love her just as much as I could, but give her things that I could.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: This is the side of adoption that people don't hear.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: People think of adoption.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: They think that it is because of cremated sex, they think it's because of rape.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Like they don't hear this And hearing the love and the thought that you put into this, that's not what we hear.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Can you explain to us how not putting them up for adoption when this was happening was different than making the decision to put Ashley up?
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: And let me preface with saying kind of I feel like you've already kind of answered that question right.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You're like when she was born, i knew if I held her, if I got to kiss her forehead, i would not be able to give her up.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: And David.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: I mean David.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: I worried about that.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: I didn't want her to think that I loved her any less.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Then I love those two children Right At all, because I didn't, you know, i loved her just as much.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Making that escape plan right, when you were like I've got two children two and a half, you know, one on the way.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: What cast you from not finding a I don't want to say better, because I don't like that word What made you not want to find something different for the two that you already had?
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: My battle with that was my first daughter was born and she was the first.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: And almost two years later, my son come along.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: At that point, at that time, i really didn't see myself with any more children.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: And then, when I got pregnant with Ashley, it was a shock.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: I felt like my daughter would have a baby sister.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: When I first got pregnant, she'd have a baby sister and then my son would have to be a big brother And keeping them.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: It's because I had a lot.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: I was previously married with my first two.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Okay, so their father was in the picture.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: He decided, because he couldn't use my two children to get to me, he would disappear.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: So I just, basically I held on to those two because I felt like if I had those two with me, that would give me the push to keep going, keep going.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: And I found an apartment for us And I had already made it a decision to put up Ashley up for adoption.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: I'd already done everything and I was working with the adoption agency And do you know, they told me first they said I didn't get the apartment and I asked them why?
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: And they said because we can't understand.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: On your salary, how are you going to support three children.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Well, i said I didn't know that this would make a difference, but I'm giving this baby a third option.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: I got the apartment And but keeping those two with their first of all, their father would never have signed their rights over, never would ever have been able to do it.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: But those two, you know that they were like to keep me going because they were here, they were alive.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: I had to keep myself together for their sake And then I had to which was hard keep my because at this time.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Here I am.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: I got two kids, i'm pregnant.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Where am I going to go?
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: What am I going to do?
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: I ended up going into a shelter and I was in the shelter for six weeks and my kids thank God they were small enough that they don't remember that.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: But that was my biggest fear.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: If I had kept Ashley, how would I manage all three of them together?
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: But Ashley, i knew she was here.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: You know she wasn't here yet, she didn't know me, and the only good life that she would know is the life that her adopted parents would give her.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: But those two, they were already here.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: They were there.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to explain it because I don't want it to sound like I cared for her or just didn't want her and just said you know, pass her along.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: I kind of felt jealous for my the two kids that I had because I found the family for her.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: I made that decision, i chose it from what I seen and from what I read and everything.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: My kids.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: I was jealous for them because I knew that there would be so many opportunities for her that those two didn't have.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: I just wanted, i wanted her to have a good life.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: I didn't want her to have to go through the hardships.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: She didn't deserve it.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: She didn't ask to be born.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: That was a choice that her father and I made.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: I wanted her to have everything that I couldn't give her.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Like I told you earlier, the only thing I basically had to give was love And loving her as much as I did and as much as I do was giving her to someone that could love her as much as I did.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: It's such a heartbreaking realization that sometimes love isn't enough.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Ashley, i'm watching you and I'm watching Olivia, and I've seen you walk away your tears, and so I wanted to check in with you.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I know that what she is telling you is not brand new news to you, but it's a brand new setting of how you're hearing it, and it's more than just your ears.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: You're putting it out onto a public platform, and so I would like to check in with you and see how you're processing this and doing.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Well, there were a couple things about what she said that stood out to me.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: The first one is how she looked through books and stuff and chose parents for me.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I still have the book my parents made because they had to make a couple copies for the different agencies that they were working with.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Wait, explain this to me.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: So what is this book?
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: What happens is, when the adoption agency came down from Massachusetts, what they would do is they would bring these binders And there was, i mean I don't remember how many, but there was quite a few binders And in the binders there were pictures, there was a letter from the adoptive parent explaining why they couldn't have children And how.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: You know, when I read Rae Dean's letter I could just inside of her, just reading that letter, i could feel the desperation and those words that were on that paper that she really, really wanted a little, you know, a child.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: And the other ones that I read, you know, and I went through a lot of these binders And when I come across Rae Dean and her husband, just all the pictures of all the family and I found my mistake and Ashley were there also in that binder that I read, that I've seen and had a lot of pictures in there And, if I'm not mistaken, it also had letters in there from a couple of your relatives.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: My grandparents have letters in there, and I think a couple of my aunts do too.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Like the adopted grandparents and aunts.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, See.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: So you know, and through all of that, the binders and everything that I had gone through, that family stood out to me the absolute most They.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: I knew that she would get taught religion.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: I knew that she would definitely have a lot of family.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: I knew she would have a mom and a dad that really loved her and that really, really wanted her.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: And I didn't.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: In the letter itself, i just didn't get any kind of.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: You know, i don't care.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: When you're a mother, you just have that intuition and that intuition and that gut feeling that there, out of everything that I had looked at, that right there that my gut and my intuition said this is the family for her.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: And at the time I didn't even know if she were a boy or a girl.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: I didn't even know until she was born Or being a little girl.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: It made it even harder for me to give her away because of things that had happened in my past to me And I was so afraid, i was paranoid.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: You have no idea that the level of paranoia that I had to make sure, you know, to make sure that nothing would happen to her, and that aspect from those parents, and I didn't feel that at all You know, my gut said they're it.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: This is your family, this is the one that's going to raise her and pray to God that will give her a good life and give her what I couldn't give her.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: But with this, all being said, i want everyone to know that deep in my heart and in my soul, i knew that one day I would be able to give her and hold her and give her that hug and give her that kiss and be able to hold her like I couldn't when she was born.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: But I never, ever gave up on that.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: I didn't even.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: I never did I ever give up on that.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: And when I did finally see her, that's exactly what I did, you know.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: I gave her the biggest hug.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: I told her I loved her.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Ashley, pick up where you left off.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: You said there was a couple of things that hearing her, so please.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: One thing that we've talked about a lot this week Olivia and I have been has been how things happen for a reason.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, if I hadn't been put up for adoption, i likely would have had my dad in my life.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: There's a chance that I wouldn't have had my mom in my life And, knowing what I do now and what happened with him, i would have been an orphan at seven.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Because I was adopted.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: I had that family.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: I lost someone very important to me when I was about seven, but it wasn't my father.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I would have either been raised, probably by his mother, who I've not heard good things about, or I would have been put into foster care And with that being said, i fought tooth and nail to keep my other two out of foster care, and that I did.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: But I knew if I would have had three of yous, that very well could have happened to you all And I could never, ever, i could never live with myself if something like that would have happened.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Never, because you know how strong my bond is And you know that when I love, i love hard and I love deep, and it's a bad thing for me to do because I get hurt a lot.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: But let everyone know just how much I truly love them And I would do anything in the world for them that I could.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: After I was adopted.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: There's not a time in my life that I can remember not knowing that I was adopted.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: So I knew my parents made sure that I knew from.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: You know, as long as I can remember, they say they told me when I was about two because they were adopting my sister from a different family And you know I was old enough to understand the whole pregnancy thing and that my mom wasn't pregnant.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: They say that that's when they used it.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Like they use that as a way to kind of introduce me to what being adopted was, but like I don't remember that And so like I have some very, very strong, vivid, early, early memories, well then, let me ask you this I have friends that would go 18 years of their life without knowing they were adopted, and I have friends that it's never been a family secret.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: They were wanting to normalize it with it, but we never had a discussion on it.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: So what are your thoughts on?
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: are you glad you knew?
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you did, okay.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I have friends who didn't know until they were older and it's so detrimental to the relationship with the adoptive parents, potentially the relationship with the birth parents, like it's basically everything you know being ripped out from under you in a way that you understand.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: I wanted it to be open.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it always has been, so there wasn't a time that I didn't know.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: But growing up I was not a lot like my adopted family.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I'm very creative.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: I make a lot of stuff, like I do a lot of different creative kind of things.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I'm not so into math, so I never really fit in with them And so, and then my as I mentioned in my last episode my father is a narcissist And so that was kind of difficult to grow up with with his expectations and stuff.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: But I did have a good life.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: I went to private schools.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: I got a good education.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: I had we had like international vacations.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: I got to go to Paris when I was 13 or 14.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: We used to spend every spring break sailing in the Caribbean.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: I had a huge family.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: I grew up with 22 cousins And now they're all married.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: If you count just my mom's parents, my adoptive mom's parents, and down my son was the 80th member of the family, we went from 70 to 80 in a year, with 10 babies in one year.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: So like I had a big family And now my kids have a big family to grow up in or grow up around because we're living close to them now.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I grew up with all those things that she wanted me to have, aside from the narcissistic father.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: But you can't, you can't want them all.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: So you know, and and my mom was very loving and very accepting And and one thing I was telling Olivia earlier was that my mom, my adopted mom, was always very supportive of everything that I wanted to do, that I felt like I had to do with my adoption.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: When I was 12, i wrote a letter to the adoption agency asking for information and they couldn't release any to me because I was minor.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: But they wrote, they called or wrote a letter to my adoptive mom and she wrote back saying, yes, you can send whatever non identifying information you have, like I'll give her whatever I'm allowed to give her.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: And then later on she paid for the private investigator through the adoption agency to try to find them.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: They didn't have a whole lot of information to go on, and right after I was born, my mom, olivia, changed her name and moved out of state, so there wasn't really any connection to to find her.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Every so often, every year or so, i'd spend a couple months looking And until it wasn't until Facebook that it really started, like you know, i could really work on it.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: I sent hundreds of like.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: I sent a message to just about every person with my mother's last name that I could find, and on the day before my birthday I ended up finding a cousin who then connected me with his father, who is my mom's brother, and he called my mom and was like Hey, there's this girl.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: She had him ask me a couple of questions to verify that it was me.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Those questions that I asked were questions that only you and I, so I knew.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: I knew it was my family, and then he connected me with my mom.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So so let me ask you this then, miss Olivia, with your brother contacting you, saying, hey, this girl is messaging us thinking it were her family, right?
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Was your brother shocked by that?
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: or was your pregnancy with her and then the adoption was a hidden, or was it so everyone, like your family, knew that I'm having a baby?
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna remember her adoption.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: So so, when, when this random strange girl is messaging saying I could be, and it's 23 years later, they're like, oh shit.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, I, yeah, that's.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: I never, ever hidden anything I've ever done from my family.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: My family was my basically, especially my mom.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: She was my biggest supporter of doing what I was going to do And, as a matter of fact, when I was in labor with her, my mother was there, My sister was there, My best friend was there.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: I mean I had like a little party in the labor room.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: So everyone knew about it.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: No, I never hit it, Never once.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: So my brother knew that, yep, she did give it a, give a child up.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: And you know, one day we knew this call.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Hopefully this call would have come and it did.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: And one reason that I think my grandmother was so supportive of this adoption is ravaged our family.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Not only did my grandmother put up a baby for adoption herself, but she herself was adopted into our family, and just this week I was able to take my mom Olivia's DNA results that she got on ancestry and follow her matches to find my grandmother's birth family.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: And I wish my mother were alive today to know this She would just be floored because everything was sealed.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: You know And that's another thing with our adoption, i did not want anything sealed, i wanted everything transparent as it could be, so that would make it easier for you to find me when you were ready, if you wanted to find me.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: But it was.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I think my mom Rateen did everything she could to kind of break down that wall and that stigma around trying to find you Yeah.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Because, every step of the way was you know, my adoption was closed, but I had her support to take it as far as I wanted to.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: So how did it get closed?
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I guess would be the adoption agency.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: It was just easier for them to close it all because then they didn't have to do any legwork.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: later on They didn't have to, you know, make sure that letters and pictures got exchanged when they were supposed to.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: They didn't have to maintain that openness because they would have been the middleman.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: And see, that's another thing that I found out after you were adopted that when I was in Massachusetts signing the adoption papers, they led me to believe that they were down there at Maryland at the hospital with you waiting for my signature And as soon as my signature and my paperwork were done, that was to be faxed to the hospital and everything down where you were born And that woman, the adoption agency, was supposed to take you at that moment to your adoptive parents.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: But now I found out through you later years, you spent three weeks in foster homes and that was never the way it was supposed to have gone Never, because if I would have known that, it wouldn't have gone down that way.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: So after we talked on the phone, you know, we spent about five-ish months talking.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: I had my son and that July I had my son in January and then that July, for the 4th of July, we went out to meet them for the first time, my son and I and my partner at the time, my son's father, and we spent two weeks there.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: So I got to meet my half-brother, my half-sister, their families, my mom.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I ended up meeting my uncle that had connected us as well Yet my stepdad and my stepbrother, i think I met her sisters, and then I met one of my cousins, so we had quite a family reunion.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Well, i stayed there for two weeks.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: The next summer.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: I had left my son's father.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: It was just me and my son, who was about 18 months at the time, and I decided that I was going to spend the whole summer with my birth family.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: So I drove from California, from San Francisco, to DC and spent the whole summer kind of hopping around between my mom's house, my brother's house, my sister's house, kind of all over the place, so I could get to spend time with everybody.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Well, when it was time for me to go and drive back, my adoptive mom decided that she was going to fly out and fly home with my son, so that I didn't have to bring him when I drove, and so I got to spend a whole weekend with both of my moms at the same time, and that was one of the things that my adoptive mom told us at that time And that was awesome.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: That was just That weekend was the turning point in my life.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Because I had spoken to Ray Dean on the phone a few times before she came out And it's like she and I just clicked I mean right off the bat, she and I clicked.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: But I'll never, ever forget when you pulled up in the driveway And I knew it was you And just laying eyes on me for the first time after 23 years of wondering what happened to my baby girl, what she's saying, did they take care of her, was she protected, was she loved?
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: And finally she's there in my arms And I get to hold her and I get to tell her I love her And that right there was.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: just.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: I'll never, ever in my entire life, will forget that day and how relieved that I felt, the relief that I felt having my baby girl home.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Finally she came home and I wanted that for 23 years and I finally she was there, and it's a feeling I'll never forget.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this question.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Nor your answer is to take away from anything good that you had in the adopted life.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: What is the different feeling when the family that raised you holding you and loving you because you had those moments versus the biological mother?
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting feeling.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: It kind of felt like I was home for the first time.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: I used to do this thing, especially when I was younger, where when I would get upset, i'd think I want my mom, but I wasn't talking about reading Like I felt that void like every step of the way, especially when I felt like I needed support, i knew that I was missing that And what being adopted is like it's almost like throughout your whole life.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: You collect all these questions.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: You have like almost like you're doing a research project, and these are the questions that you want to answer, but these are all questions about you and yourself and where you come from.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: And then when you find that all those questions are suddenly answered, Yes, and you don't even have to ask those questions, you know it's just.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: Everything is the answer.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: That's how I felt when.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: I had you in my arms.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: I felt these things like throughout those first two weeks, especially.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Another thing that I'd always like, primally craved my whole life, was the protection of a big brother, and my brother was the first one I got to meet.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: He picked me up at the airport with his wife And it's funny because we went to Walmart and he and I picked the exact same coffee drink.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: Then we went out to dinner and he and I got the exact same toppings on our pizza, which are not normal toppings.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: They're not like something that you'd think of people would normally do, but we got the same toppings.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Like is it olives?
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Like what is that?
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Mushroom and olives.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: That was just one of those things that was like, okay, like I'm where I'm supposed to belong, brother, that I've wanted my whole life.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: We like have the same taste, right.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: And then we.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: And then we ended up at my mom and stepdad's house for the fourth of July and got super trashed on some really good moonshine.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: This was out in the woods, in the hills in West Virginia, where this stuff is from.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: I lived in the middle of a thousand acres And if you looked out the front door there I had a huge I couldn't tell you how many acres out there it was in the front yard but then you had a big mountain in front of you and you had it beside you.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: And then if you go out the back door, look out the back windows, sometime early in the morning you have your deer back there.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: When we were on that property that summer that I spent with them like I got to go four-wheeling with my brother.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Like these are things that I've always like, had this drive to want to do, and like things that I've really enjoyed that I wasn't allowed to do in my adoptive family because I was so protected and isolated.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: People who I am suddenly around you know they're not afraid of guns and I can take a four-wheeler out in the middle of nowhere and just enjoy myself Like I got to do this with my family.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, These are the things that actually make me the happiest.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, i guess my next question would be when you all sort of developing this relationship.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Obviously there was this immediate connection with each other, but was there that moment of Ashley saying why?
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: And was there ever that moment, olivia, that you would look at the Rhaedin and the life that they had provided, outside of the TTI of course, which is a whole other subject that you were like?
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: you know what?
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I'm still not good enough.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Well, not with me, because I looked at it this way.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Okay, i'm who I am, and if this person cannot accept me for me and take me for me, you know, i may not have a lot of money, i may not have the biggest, fanciest home or drive the fanciest cars, but those things don't make me as a person.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: What makes me as a person is what's on the inside.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: So I never felt like I was, rhaedin, was better than me, or I was better.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: There was never really any war between the ears, so to speak.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: Right, And I had respect you know, because I had a lot of respect for Rhaedin, because when she was there, when Ashley was there with us that summer, i mean Rhaedin was in constant contact And when she offered to fly out or fly down or, yeah, from California, fly out, i was flabbergasted because, you know, i got to meet the.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: I finally I get to meet the woman that I chose to raise my baby girl And we got along.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: It was just phenomenal And even after she'd left we stayed friends up until not long before she passed.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: One interesting thing is is after my both my moms had met each other, i kind of went through this like existential crisis of a sort, you know, because finally this whole thing that I've been wanting to do my whole life it's finally happened.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: And now I'm like, well, now what?
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: And so I was kind of resistant to building a relationship with Olivia at first, but Rhaedin was not.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: They talked on the phone a couple of times a week.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: If.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Olivia needed help with anything, Rhaedin was there to help her.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: They really built a relationship And then that kind of continued because Rhaedin got cancer and ended up dying from it.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: So then I kind of went through that whole like grief process of grieving her but also having another mom, like it was.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I was really torn, And so this relationship that I have with Olivia now has been, you know, years in the making.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: It wasn't easy, It was very slow going.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Very slow going because her you know her as a person, being so young when we met she had a lot of growing to do.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: She had a lot of living to do And I knew she was going through the fact that she lost her adoptive mom And that's not easy because those two are very, very close.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: I always checked on her on social media because, you know, i always followed her.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: I always knew what was going on, you know.
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: But I tried my best to give her the space that she needed to do her grieving process and growing as a person and making sure, deep down, that that she really did want to have this relationship with me.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: So I wanted to give her all the time and the opportunity to do that because I felt I owed her that.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: That's what mothers should do.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: They need to, especially our situation.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: She needed, i felt she needed that space.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: And that is something that I got really lucky with is I got two moms that kind of have.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Let me take the lead on everything.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Like.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Rayzine did with me finding Olivia and my birth family and the way that Olivia did in kind of building the relationship we have.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Like I did get lucky with that as I was never forced into anything And I think it's been easier knowing that I can make those decisions myself when I'm ready.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: And I've always tried to let you know that I may not be there, but if you ever needed or ever wanted anything or needed me, i'm there.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: I wanted to let you grow and to let you have that decision on what you truly wanted to do before we brought the grandchildren in and we got close.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: I didn't want to put the grandkids through any kind of trauma if we chose not to.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: Your family came first.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying As far as what you decided to do, what you wanted to do, your family was first.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: You needed to have that opportunity And I'm glad that you and I have been given, years later, another opportunity because I've grown as a person.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: You've definitely grown as a person, and now I feel like we're at our age where we know, basically, we don't want anything from one another except for your love, and I don't want and I've always said this, i never want anything from you, but your love and your friendship.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: That's all I've ever wanted.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: That still holds to this day, when you and Ashley started developing your Oz relationship.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: how did?
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: because I'm assuming you were having a conversation with Ms Olivia and was like, let me tell you about this boarding school that you think was so amazing.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Like, how did that go?
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Well, when I found out I would, i'm gonna tell you I was extremely angry when I found out because I might, with every fiber of my being, i believe, that if the adoption agency would have done what I had requested and what we had agreed upon, have given her that letter, i think that her life would have been so different.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: She may not have gone through as much of that traumatic, she may not have had to go to those schools.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: She may have known or she not may, but would have known that in fact, that she wasn't wanted child, that it wasn't because she wasn't wanted, and I think that that would have made the biggest difference in her life to know, in fact, to read the words that I put on the paper coming from me that if she would have known how much she was wanted and how much she was loved, she wouldn't have gone through that traumatic period.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: She wouldn't have had to go Again as a parent speaking with Ashley.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: She should have never, in my opinion, never, ever, ever have gone to any of that bullshit.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: She should have never been sent to to any place like that.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: It angered me because just because they had the money, i feel as though and Ashley don't take this disrespectful toward your adoptive parents, because it's not, i think, if they may have like her father, especially if they would have invested maybe a little bit more time with her as far and helping her dealing with her issues, instead of sending her away for somebody else to deal with something that they have absolutely no freaking idea of.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: What is going on and what this child is going through Still to this day.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: It angers me what she's had to go through.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: One thing that I always like to say about the TTI is that you don't get there from being a normal, good kid.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: You get there because you act out of maladaptive responses to trauma that you've already had in your life.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: So kids getting sent to the TTI are already traumatized, and for me that trauma was adoption.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Olivia, my response to what you were just saying.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: I get it and please correct me if I'm wrong.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I'm just in my head playing devil's advocate, right?
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think that families are sending these kids to these places because they have that negative thought on their child.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: We have the money to make them bigger and better than what they're trying to make themselves, and we saw this pretty brochure.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: I think that in most cases and in Ashley's story with what I knew, i think that her adopted family was just much a victim.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: I think they were looked at as these rich white people will pay whatever I tell them to pay.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: This is money.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: This is what is going to give me the lifestyle thinking of a creator of this place, right?
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: Now, if I could interrupt you for one minute.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: Please please, if that would have been me and their shoes okay, and if I had the resources that they had and if she was bad enough to go to or not bad, but if she needed to go to this place bad enough and I had the resources, i'm sorry I would have flown out there.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: I would have checked it out myself firsthand and seen for myself exactly what that child would be going through.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: What I have found so common is these facilities are trained and they have the money to paint that brochure to the families in person as well.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: I can clear a little bit of that up.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: So Radeen and her father, my grandpa, actually did fly up to the boarding school that I went to.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: They took a tour, they did everything And, like I've told you both about my grandpa, about how he was the kindest, most genuine, caring giving person I have ever met And I don't think I'll ever meet anybody like that, And even he fell for that.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: And I also believe that there are two primary types of parents when it comes to being TTI parents.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: One side is like Radeen was where she sees how much I was hurting and was so desperate to just see me feel better that she was able to fall for the deceptive marketing.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: See, i understand that now.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: I mean when you explained it to me before.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: I understood that, but I didn't know that they had that your mother and grandfather actually went out there.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: They did.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: And after I got to know the girls who were there, the ones that they had give my family the tour were the ones who were the most brainwashed and the ones who would suck up the most and not say a single bad thing, of course.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: And then the other side of it is there are parents, like my adoptive father, who he saw that there was a problem.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: He was being embarrassed by my behavior in the community And he wanted the problem gone because I was a stress to my mom and he just wanted it gone so that everybody in the family could be the family that he wanted.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: So there definitely are those parents who are just like oh, my kid's acting up, i was not there.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: I do not know, i only know what I'm told.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: I just know as a parent resources or no resources I could never have sent my kids there regardless.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: Maybe because now I've had the advantage of watching my brother go through it.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's why I feel the way I do feel is because I've witnessed it, i know and it's like how could a parent not know this is going on?
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: But then I look, i see the visiting schedule, i see how everything is done and everything is so far away and isolated And because they have all of that, they basically have the control to do what they wanna do to our children's Ashley situation.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: I do not feel she should have ever been sent to any of those schools.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, that's just.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: That's my personal opinion And I don't wanna say I don't wanna say it was a cop out because I wasn't there, i don't know.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: But and I'm sure Ray Dean probably better backwards to help her, i do, and I think her having the father that she grew up with, that was a lot of the problem too.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: It was another thing And, like you kind of mentioned a little bit, is Olivia knows about the TTI on a level that a lot of parents don't usually.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: We were talking the other day and she told me that her brother, my uncle, the first one in our family that I talked to had been sent to one of these programs when he was 13 or 14.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: And, Olivia, i'll let you tell the story about what he was asking you to do because of the out of his desperation to get out of there.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: Okay, well, when he was in there, he had phoned me and he had asked me to bring him a pair of wire cutters and another tool so that he could cut his way out of there.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: Out of desperation, he wanted me to bring him some wire cutters and something to cut, strong enough to cut through the fence so he could leave, and I was supposed to bury it somewhere outside the fence and I would leave a little marking and I would just bury it enough for him to be able to get it And I couldn't do it.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: In this family tree work that I've been doing, i've also found two other people on Olivia, your mother's biological side, who are sent to these programs too.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Two more.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: So our family has been ravaged by not only adoption but the troubled teen industry too.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: I sometimes hearing about what she went through and everything, i feel so guilty inside because I feel as though, well, if I would have kept her, you know she wouldn't have had to go through those schools and go through that trauma.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: But then again, on the other hand, i think, my God, what if I did keep her?
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: you know she, what would have, you know what kind of a life would I have been able to give her?
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: One thing that I'll tell you that I want to get into is what she's saying about when she wonders what it would be like if she kept me.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: My sister had three children by the time she was 17, starting at 14.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Again, different, not better.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: I could have very well gone in the direction that she did and had kids very young, just like everybody in my family did, and that would have changed things drastically.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: What I wanted to ask Ashley to always, always know in her adult life, even when she was a child, that no matter what she be, what type of person she had become, or who she was, or what her, whatever her status was as religion, as far as partnership, whatever, it didn't matter to me I would always, always be here for her and I would never, never turn my back on her.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: But I've got my oldest daughter and I'm sure that Ashley knows this.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: But ever since Ashley's come back in her life, she's been jealous of Ashley and she's been jealous of Ashley because she's afraid that Ashley is going to take me away from her, and I had to reassure her.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: No matter what, with all of my kids, ashley included, i'm their mother, no matter what, i will be there for them, i will love them.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: Now, her and I barely talk, but I want my daughter, ashley, to know that I'm here for her, no matter what.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: I don't care what she's done in her past or if there's ever anything I can do to help her.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: I'm always here for her.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: May I say that with the jealousy thing I feel like the person that is jealous.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I feel like we need to allow them some grace.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: In all these years you were her mama, you know And sharing your mother or your father, regardless of blood or not.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Someone called me today and said I'm your brother, you're our mother, giving it for adoption.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: My mother would feel like they have to almost over like because I know not speaking for you, but I know my mother right So my mother would feel like she had to over-comensate.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: There are eggs in a lot of years that I did not get to show you love.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: I loved you But I didn't get to show you, i didn't get to treat you Exactly.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: And now I have that time to make up for and I have time going forward And so that long-lost child becomes the top of the priority list, just naturally, and the person that was there through thick and thin could be feeling that a little left out.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: I've always tried to talk to her.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: My son doesn't remember any of the adoption part at all.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: He doesn't even remember me being pregnant.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: Sharon remembers very little of me being pregnant And I've always, always have been honest with my children that I have with me, that they have a sister out there, they have a half-sister out there and one day she might come and find us And if she does, you know, i hope you guys treat her with the love and the respect that we treat our family, you know, because she is our family.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: I know it's going to take you a while to get used to it And I kind of expected the jealousy part from Sharon.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: I never, ever expected it from Jeremy.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: But I have to admit that when I did see it from Sharon, i have to admit I was kind of surprised because I thought, as a mother, i tried to prepare the both of them.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: That's something that you can't really prepare for, like.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: that's one of the things that I just have to like feel your feelings about as they come up because of anything you've ever experienced.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: And that's another thing about adoption being different, not better.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: I got the trauma that I got, but you know, my sister had three kids before she was 18 and that cannot have been easy for her.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: And.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: I could have gone that same direction and that could have been my trauma.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: It's just different kinds of trauma And in a family that has been so just torn apart by adoption.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: And seeing.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: what scared me again about giving you up for adoption was listening and knowing the horror stories that my mother and my aunt went through with my grandmother, and that scared me even more.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: I trusted your mother and your father.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, i don't think that you could ever, ever trust a person more than giving them your child that you love so much, giving it to them to raise and love as their own, and then come to find out, like my mother.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: you know my mom's trauma that she went through.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: I've explained that to you.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: But I lived with that fear every single day until the day I got that phone call.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: It changed my life completely.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: It made it a whole lot better.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: As always, thank you to the listeners.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I try not to ask too much, but please like share, download on all the podcasts and social media platforms, even leaving reviews out.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: We'll find us, so if you would do that for me, that would be great.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: People have been asking for merch and now our merch store is open.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Of course, the link is provided on all the socials, but it's at T springcom.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Please check it out.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Help support the show.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: You are the best.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: We love you, guys and we'll see you next week.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: Thank you.