Open From the Start with Sara VanderHaagen

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 71. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun. And I'm Lanette. Today we are so excited to have an interview with an adoptee who grew up with an open adoption. So today's episode is with Sara VanderHagen, who grew up, like Lanette said, in an open adoption situation. And this is something a little bit more rare for us to have on the podcast. Something we talk about all the time is open adoption. And usually we are talking about people that are 20 years old or in their 20s and younger

0:37as this has become more established in the United States. But Sara mentioning herself that being in her younger 40s, this was something very, very groundbreaking in her time. And I just loved having this conversation with her and hearing her perspectives. So honestly, when we ended our conversation, I just wanted more. I wanted to hear more of her thoughts and wanted to find as many other adoptees who are older, who grew up with openness that I could talk to.

1:11And also, I don't think that 40 is old, just for the record. You better not. I keep saying older and I'm like, that's not the right word. But in the context. Yes, in context. So this is a great conversation. And I loved listening to this conversation with Lanette and Sara, and we'll hear from her own perspective, but also as an adoptive mother, we'll recap a little bit here at the end of the episode and share a couple more of our thoughts that we've gained from this great conversation with Sara.

1:48So we are here on the podcast with Sara Vanderhagen. Sara, thank you so much for being here with us. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk with you. We're really excited to hear from you. So Sara is an adopted person and she grew up with an open adoption. And we're really looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences with that. To start off, can you share a bit about yourself? Sure. So I grew up in northern Michigan and after living in a lot of different places, have

2:19made my way back to the Midwest. And I live in Milwaukee now with my family, my husband and my two children. And I am a professor of rhetoric, which is basically the study of public discourse. I'm in a communication department. So I've been doing that for a while. I am 42. So that, you know, I say that because, well, A, like when you get to your forties, it's fine. Like you can say how old you are, you're not worried about.

2:51And then also because it's helpful for people to place that, I think, in terms of the sort of life cycle of stranger adoptions, I guess you might call them in the 20th century of people who know the history of adoption. So that's that's another reason why my age is important. I like gardening. I enjoy music and yoga. So those are some things about me. It's awesome.

3:21Yoga and gardening and music. Those are great things. All right. Well, can you share your adoption stories with us? We would love to hear about your connection to the adoption world. Sure. So I was placed as an infant for adoption in 1980. My adoptive parents first met my, you know, who become my birth mother. And just a note to say, I do use the terms birth mother, birth mom, birth family to describe

3:55my biological family. Some people call it first family. You know, I mean, some people use all different kinds of names. Those are the terminologies that I have preferred. And those are the terms. That's the terminology that we use for our daughter also, although she may choose something different when she gets a little bit older. So, you know, I work with language all the time. So it's important for me to define my terms. So my adoptive parents first met my birth mother about a month before I was born. And you know, today we talk about this as like a match, you know, which a lot of your

4:28listeners will probably be familiar with, although that was not the language that was used at the time because it was like almost nobody had done that before in modern adoption. So I was born on a Friday in June, and I just went over this timeline with my parents recently. And I they brought me home on a Monday. So I was in the hospital for a couple of days. My birth mother was not there for the entire week.

4:58She left before I left, I believe. So my birth mother and my adoptive parents corresponded with letters for the first few years of my life. And then when I was three, I met my birth mother for the first time. We have photos of that and all that kind of thing. So and the story is that I have like I knew who she was. I knew my connection to her and I answered the door. We know when she knocked and I said, Hi, I'm Sara. You must be, you know, I'm not going to use my birth mother's name or my children's names,

5:31but you must be so and so. Did you know I grew in your tummy? And like, obviously, she knows, you know, and but that gives you an example of like the kind of child that I was. And also the way that my parents had provided me with information that was age appropriate about my adoption. And so I knew this was always a part of my story. I think that is that's a really important, important part of my experience, at least.

6:04So since I met her when I was three, I've had regular and ongoing contact with her. Obviously that's like almost 40 years of time. So it's hard to cover everything. But you know, it's been up and down, like any kind of evolving family or personal relationship. So just a few like things to illustrate, like when I was growing up, she would visit a few times a year. Typically, we live about an hour and a half away from each other. And she would come birthdays and Christmas and things like that.

6:38And we would correspond in other ways. And then usually when we were in elementary school, she would take my sister and I a lot of times. My sister was adopted also, but from a different birth family and had different levels of contact with her birth family. So my birth mother kind of, you know, was like birth mom to both of us in a sense. And she would take us like special little outings. And we would often go without my parents, which is something maybe your listeners are

7:10interested in. And yeah, so sometimes we were at my parents' house. Sometimes we were not. Sometimes we visited her. You know, there was all these different kinds of ways that we interacted. I mentioned that I grew up skiing and doing a lot of like outside winter sports. And she and my half brother on that side, and I'll refer to him as my brother later because that's just kind of like, I get tired of using all the different like distinguishing

7:41qualifiers, I guess sometimes. So when I was in high school, I was a competitive downhill ski racer. And she and my brother worked at some of those resorts. And so they would come and like watch me compete. And you know, so that was really neat. And there's so many different things. It's like hard to go through all of them.

8:11But she was at my wedding. She and her husband, not my birth father, and my brother and his family were at the wedding at our wedding. She and my parents and my husband's parents all did the like parents blessing together. You know, I mean, she sat with our parents. I mean, it was just like really important to us to incorporate her on equal footing with the other parents.

8:43So we still talk frequently and see each other at least once or twice a year. She is somewhat travel averse and does not fly in planes. And so that kind of limits sometimes seeing each other face to face. And my older daughter especially like is always hankering for more time with her.

9:13So we try to do as much as possible. Okay, so I focus primarily on my birth mother because that's been my primary connection to my birth family. But I do also have somewhat of a relationship with my birth father's side of the family. I always knew of him, like where he lived. I knew his basic story. I had some basic information. His name and all that stuff. And I have six half brothers on that side. So I have seven total half brothers.

9:45And I have met most of them. All but I think two. And I did meet my birth father once as an adult when I was about 25. So I first met some of my birth father's family when I was about eight. And didn't really have like a strong relationship with them, I would say. But my birth mother lived in the same town as most of them. And so she would be like, oh, hey, I saw so and so at the grocery store.

10:18And they were wondering about how you're doing and that. So I would like get information that way. So it was also like a little bit wary my relationship with my birth father because like the agency had some negative interactions with him. But I think that's partially because like his personality, he struggled with alcoholism, which was reported to me as the primary reason why I was placed for adoption.

10:49And that was sort of a lifelong struggle. And some of the interactions that the agency had with him, he was somewhat volatile. But it was also my understanding that the way that birth fathers were incorporated into the process was very different than right. Like their rights were not really considered. And so I have theories about how that might have played out for him. He passed away not long after I first met him. So a number of years ago, like almost 15 years ago, I think now.

11:20But I did meet him once. It was awkward. And it was challenging, but he played. He had found out that I had my dad, my adopted dad, had given me an accordion because my birth family is Polish. And there's a whole long story there, but I'll make the short version here. But I knew that my birth father had played the accordion. So he did like somebody in the family had a squeeze box and he played a song for me. And later I told my birth mom, like what song he played.

11:51And she was like, oh, that was my favorite song that he ever like he would sing it to her. You know, and so that was a really like special moment. I had a little bit more correspondence with him, but really it's primarily through his kids. And the thing that really led to that was in my early 20s, one of the wives of my brothers on that side sent me a photo album after I had graduated college and was living in Boston.

12:21And it was like this beautiful album of everybody in the family and like what they like to do and what they like to do together. And it was just an amazing sort of invitation to, you know, I had known about them and everything, but it was like an overture of like, we really want to know you, you know, and we want you to know us and here we are, you know. And so I was like, you know, I think maybe I'm ready for a little bit more of this.

12:51And so we started to reconnect a little bit more. And I just, I think about that and I think it really exemplifies. So Jim Gritter, who's a name that people might recognize from reading about open adoption. He was one of the pioneering social workers. He also happens to be, he and his wife are my parents' best friends. So that is a big part of my story also that is probably relevant to people who know the history of open adoption.

13:22But he has this idea about his last book is about hospicious adoption is the phrase that he used, like different people in the constellation being hospitable towards one another. And I just like this, that photo book was just like, she doesn't have any biological connection to me. Like she married into the family, like she might have a vague awareness of like what was going on when I was placed and everything. But it just to me was so welcoming. And I think that's a really important thing.

13:53So beautiful. I love all of these connections that you were able to have. Yeah, I yeah, and they're so different. They're all like, they're all really different. And my relationship with my brothers on that side, you know, it kind of started and was going for a while and, you know, then I moved to Las Vegas and I had been living in Chicago and moved to Las Vegas. And that's obviously very far away. And then, you know, we moved here and the pandemic happened. So it's been hard to kind of get back to those.

14:23But I have maintained connections with them. But it's just not as close as like with my birth mom and my brother on that side. So, as I think is clear, openness and adoption is like absolutely central to my experience and my story. And so in my case, one of the reasons that I understand my parents were brought together was because they wanted an open adoption.

14:53Like my birth mom wanted that. My adoptive parents wanted that. Like my mom has this story about she's told me this story several times about how she had this stack of books about like the experiences of adopted children that like their social worker had given them. And she was reading through them. And she was reading Betty Jean Lifton's book, Lost and Found, which some people might be familiar with. And she's like, I just couldn't take it anymore. She said, I took the book and I threw it across the room.

15:25I will never do this to my child. Like I will never raise a child in this kind of closed system. And so they were ready to do something different. And they had been working on this at that agency. And so they were connected with my birth mom. That's kind of how it happened. So it's always been kind of important part of my story. And it's my understanding that my adoption was the first open adoption in Michigan, which

16:00was one of the first earliest states to have open adoption. Again, like in context, I should say modern adoption, right? Because like adoption records really only began to be sealed in the like early 20th century, like 1940s and so on. And so it's a modern like change, not necessarily like there used to be open adoptions in a different sense, like kinship adoptions and so on. But so it was really like an early kind of thing, right?

16:32They were doing this a little bit in Green Bay, Wisconsin and in Texas, at some agencies in Texas. So that's an important piece of the whole thing as well. Because of kind of my position and all of this, and because like I said, I was kind of like precocious to feel like, hey, did you know I grew in your tummy, you know, kind of thing as a kid, and I like to talk and I like to write. I was and because Jim Gritter knew my parents so well and knew me, I was often asked to

17:08like participate in conferences and stuff like that as a teenager and in my early 20s. So I did talk publicly about it quite a bit. And I have kind of a record of things that I've said, which is interesting to see how my perspectives have changed over time. So at these conferences, I met a lot of different people who are really great, including adoptive folks and practitioners and so on. But like even so, I often had to answer really like invasive questions.

17:41And I felt obligated a lot of times to answer those questions because like there wasn't anybody else to ask. Like I and like maybe a few other people were about it, right? They're looking for experiences of open adopted people like as you've encountered, you know, and I think I felt a lot of times that these conferences people were like, is she okay? Like we just want to know if she's okay, you know? And like people sort of expected me to like something to be fundamentally wrong with me.

18:12Even though they didn't say that, like I felt it. And so I often like fielded very invasive questions, which I had been doing my entire life. So like, right, I was good at it. Not that I liked it. But I remember somebody who was really important to me at that point in my life and in the adoption community, Joyce McGuire-Pavo, who's also an adopted person, and she's done a lot of work with adopted and fostered youth.

18:42She once told me, she's like, Sara, you know, you don't owe everybody your story. And I was like, yes, I see that, you know, and she's a lot older than me. And so I was like, she is a person who's been around. She knows, like she's experienced a lot of interactions with other adopted folks. She herself has been through reunion and all this kind of thing. And at that point, I just was like, you know what, I think I need to move on to other things. I went to graduate school, you know, I got my PhD, and I started going that direction.

19:17And so I really didn't speak publicly about it for a long time. I just I did other things. And so an important part of my adoption story is that I am now an adoptive parent to a 20 month old daughter in an open transracial or, you know, some people use the term interracial adoption. So preparing for and now like playing this new role has really sort of accelerated some

19:50new processing for me as an adoptive person. And I will note again, in terms of usage, like I tend I do use the term adoptee, but like as I was growing up, I didn't like it because it is a term that prioritizes what has been done to someone like that. They don't have any agency. And I know that that's how not not how many people who use the term understand it.

20:20That was just my understanding of it growing up. And so I kind of came to use the terms adopted person or adoptive person sometimes. So you'll hear me kind of switching between those. But sometimes those get a little like unwieldy. So I say adoptee, because also it's more legible to a lot of different people. So anyway, so I think as an adoptive person, like this whole like thinking of myself now as an adoptive parent is is like just new territory. And in doing so, I've tried to like, especially understand the limits of my experience as

20:54the same race adoptee. And I have tried hard to really learn a lot more about trans racially adopted folks experiences and like what that looks like. So I can think about sort of both my privilege as a same race adoptee and my privilege as somebody who has access to my family of origin through open adoption. So that's really something that I've I've been coming to terms with is my privilege

21:25within the adoption community. And so that's that's been like a process as well. And as I've kind of encountered all these different as it can kind of come back to adopt the land, as some people call it, I've encountered a lot of different perspectives and really learned a lot. This helped me contextualize my own experience and identify the limits of my experience as as my own and to really be the best parent I can be for my daughter.

21:57So now I can say a little bit about like my role as an adoptive parent. So I am sure that you know, you as an experienced adoptive parent and some of your listeners who are adoptive parents can appreciate that, you know, my my daughter's story belongs to her. And so I'm going to say some general things about it. But you know, the details will remain fuzzy as they should until until such time as she

22:31wishes to share those. So we adopted through a sort of, for lack of a better term, traditional agency domestic infant program. However, a very specific aspect of our experience is that we actually had a pre existing relationship with the family that became our daughter's birth family, which as you can imagine, has

23:04helped to facilitate the openness that we and they started out the relationship wanting. We have ongoing relationships with multiple members of her birth family. And we communicate with them frequently and regularly. And my older daughter is also incorporated into those relationships. Our ultimate intention is to really facilitate the relationship of our younger daughter with

23:42her birth family by cultivating, you know, familial relationships with them through, you know, our family as a whole so that she can be secure in her attachment, not only to us, but to them and in her identity. That's our ultimate goal. Such a rich and wide experience. Really, really appreciate you sharing. Thank you. Sure. All right. So with your experience where your adoption has been open, your birth mother has been part of your life for such a long, do you feel like you have a unique experience contrasted

24:16with other adopted people your age? Yes, absolutely. And I kind of assumed that there would be more of us as I, you know, kind of went on in my life. And there are, but not as many as I had hoped or, you know, really predicted, I guess. And by far, so adoption in general was familiar to me and actually is a pretty significant part of my extended family.

24:48I actually have two older adopted cousins and two younger adopted cousins in my adopted mom's side of the family. Wow. It's like part of our family story. And some of those are closed or were closed, but, you know, people have been in reunion and others are open. So the younger ones, the younger than me are open. So it's something I was aware of, but I also knew there were different kinds of experiences.

25:20But I think maybe your listeners will be familiar with the fact that like in the 70s and 80s, open adoption was not just uncommon, like it was totally unheard of. At least as far as modern adoption went. And the openness was really the result of kind of some activism on the part of adopted folks who had been part of the closed system and also birth parents who, you know, were like, this isn't good.

25:50And so I think my experience as I've discovered, I mean, when I was growing up, it was pretty unusual and even coming back now and trying to reconnect with other adopted folks, I, you know, it's just very, it's a very different experience. And I've really discovered it's been sort of shocking, honestly, to find out how unusual my experience is even among people who are 10 or 15 years younger than me. So that's been sort of an education, I guess.

26:23And I sort of assumed when I stopped going to these conferences and such in like the early 2000s that we were like, you know, we're on this like, kind of march that would just be inevitable to towards greater openness and like better outcomes for, you know, adopted folks and birth families and open records and all this kind of stuff. And that has not happened. And so I think reconnecting and doing a bit more research on my own has been a little bit sobering to see how little has actually happened on that front.

26:56I mean, I'm glad to see increased openness, but not even to the level that I had thought. So again, as I mentioned earlier, like part of this process of realizing how different my own experiences is like really coming to terms with this privilege that I have as a person who has access to all of that and how fortunate I am to be in that position, you know, to have had the parents, birth parents support system that I have had. But that is not something that I take for granted.

27:26Yeah. So how do you feel like this experience with adoption has led you to where you are today, particularly you becoming an adoptive parent? I had generally positive experiences of my own adoption. I want to very clearly say again that these are my experiences and they do not represent all adoptees. You know, I think it's really important to recognize that adopted people like any kind of minority group are not a monolith and have all varied, extremely different experiences.

27:59You know, and in large parts for no like adopted people don't necessarily have a lot of control over that until they get to a certain age, right? So because of my really generally positive experiences as an adopted person, I have long considered becoming an adoptive parent and so I was open to it. I would say my feelings about that have changed over time. I thought that if there was a case where there was a need for adoption in that instance,

28:31that the child's interests would be better served to be raised by a fellow adopted person than by somebody who didn't have that experience, which is not to say that like people who aren't like non-adopted people can't raise healthy adopted people, right? I think my parents did a pretty good job and I know other people who are doing their best and really trying to do right by their kids.

29:04But you know, I felt like this is something that I could really I could do. And my husband and I talked about this when we first got married like as a possibility, but it was just generally abstractly. And then we started trying to have kids. We encountered challenges as many of us do. I listened to some of your earlier episodes from the podcast. So that was really challenging and it became a real possibility that we would, you know,

29:36think about adoption when we were diagnosed with unexplained infertility, went through a whole bunch of fertility treatments and eventually my older daughter was conceived through IVF. And I'm very glad we had the opportunity to do that. But that was like in part economic reality, like in the state that we were living in, fertility treatments were covered by health insurance when we were living there and then we moved and it was no longer the case. So you know, sometimes I don't like to think about that, you know, because like I am so,

30:11so glad that my daughter exists, right? And sometimes like it is with adoption, it's strange to think about alternate realities, but you do, right? So we decided to pursue adoption when I didn't conceive spontaneously for a few years after, you know, because I had heard that sometimes that happens. I knew people who had that experience, but it became pretty clear that that was not going to happen and we didn't want to do IVF again. We couldn't really. And so we decided to pursue adoption and we started the process and we lived in Nevada

30:44and we're waiting parents there and then we had to restart the process when we moved to Wisconsin. I really thought I knew a lot about adoption going into the process several years ago when we started and I did, but I knew certain things, right? I didn't know how much bias there still was against openness and adoption and how little had really changed since I was adopted, you know, which at that point was like almost 30 years, you know, my adoption education as a process was really, I think of it as

31:17like an education in the adoption industry, right? Like, and it's shortcomings. Like I knew there were problems because otherwise my adoption wouldn't have been open. Like that was open adoption was a solution to or perceived as a solution or a partial solution or move towards something better for a problem, right? Obviously. And so I knew there were problems, but it was the extent and the persistence of the problems that I did not fully understand until I actually went through adoption education. And so I wasn't really prepared for that in either case.

31:51There was something I wanted to mention here in terms of the relationship between infertility and adoption in general that I don't think it talked about very much. So this is a little bit of a tangent, but I I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few years. And the first there aren't often discussed. The first is that I don't think a lot of people often consider like the distinctive and unique

32:22pain of an adoptive person struggling with infertility, which is not to reduce anybody else's struggles with infertility. Like it sucks. It's it's it's very challenging and. Yeah, and not often talked about, right? But this is particularly something as an adoptive person who's become an adoptive parent who let's say their adoptees who feel a certain way about that, right?

32:52Who were deeply harmed by the system and perceive it as even a betrayal for an adoptive person to become an adoptive parent. I totally respect that opinion and perspective, but that's not my own perspective. But I think one thing that people don't consider is this like, you know. For a lot of adoptive people, having biological children is the only possibility that they ever have in their entire life to live in the same household with somebody who shares

33:22their genes. But to be deprived of that opportunity by facing infertility is extremely painful. And so for me, the idea that I would have an opportunity to have a different kind of connection and to really be. A parent that an adoptive person. Needed right with my experience was an important opportunity for connection with me or for

33:55me, I think. You know, and not that adoption is about the parents like it should be about the kid, but you know, I think we have to be realistic about the fact that there are also adults involved in this and we want we put the needs of the child first. And in doing so, we also have to think about like, how am I processing and dealing with my own needs in order to place the child's needs first? So I just wanted to mention that thing about infertility and my experience as an adoptive

34:27person. And then second thing, there's a lot of really important talk about funding and like economics in the adoption industry and really important critiques happening about this. And so this is happening around adoption fundraising, like by a prospective adoptive parents. And there are a lot of activists like talking about this, how like, what if we actually push this toward first families, right? And there are a lot of people doing good work on that and so on. The other piece that I would like to see that I haven't heard people talk about is like,

34:57how would really like to see fertility treatment fundraising become a thing, right? Why is it acceptable for people to do adoption fundraising and not like fertility treatment fundraising or, you know, like. Those who are seeking to parent their children who can't afford to do so to fundraise just to raise their children, right? To preserve their families. So I'd like to see kind of things shift towards those two things. I know that's a bit of a tangent, so thanks for letting me talk about that a little bit. But I think those things are not discussed very often in the adoption community, and

35:30I think we could talk about this a little bit more. So I wanted to mention them. Yeah, thank you. All right. So looking at specifically open adoption, is there anything in particular that you would want potential birth and adoptive parents to know about open adoption? Or they consider it and make plans regarding an adoption for that? Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, I think it's important to say that. And I was I was reviewing some of the research on this this morning, actually. This is one of the advantages of being, you know, employed as a professor if you have

36:04access to like all this research and the research does, in my understanding, show that a. Open adoption is. Better right than closed adoption. And both for birth families and for particularly the processing of grief associated with relinquishing a child. And then also for the adaptive person, like I think that's really important to understand that it is.

36:36Like it has been shown by evidence and experience to be healthier than closed adoption. It's the other thing to know about it. I think that's important is that it's a lifelong commitment. Like an adaptive person does not like I'm an adopted person like my entire life. I don't get to unbecome adopted. Now I heard recently that Australia started to annul adoptions. Like there was a woman who had her adoption annulled.

37:08And that's interesting to me. And I don't know that that much about it from a legal perspective or anything else. But what that suggests to me is that like many adults in that situation, I don't know anything about that situation, but it makes me very, very curious about. How much the adults have failed in that particular situation. So I think it's important to know that for the first number of years, the birth family and the adoptive parents as the adults, like they have to be committed.

37:40Like it's a lifelong thing. And there's no, there's really no formula for it. And I think a lot of people talk about the uniqueness of every adoption situation, but it's like the uniqueness of every child, right? Like you don't give birth to a child and then like, oh, you know, like this is my child template, you know, like, no, they're like an individual real child who may or may not be what you thought. And the same is true of a child who comes to your family through birth or adoption.

38:15You don't parent like the template of your child. You parent your child or like this particular child. Yeah, it's important. I think finally, I think it's really important for adoptive and birth parents to do as much like of their work as possible before bringing the child into that kind of complicated situation. Right? We can't ever be totally ready for parenthood or adoptive, you know, birth through birth or adoption, I don't think, but we can be readier, you know, and I think it's important

38:47to do what we can to be as ready as possible. This is particularly important, I think, for those of us who are parenting children from different racial or ethnic backgrounds. And you know, to be like adoption should not be, I don't think the beginning of one's, you know, sort of anti-racist journey and work. It should, you know, I did not, I became the parent of this particular child because of

39:19particular circumstances and the connection that we had with her family, not because I was seeking, you know, my husband and I were not seeking to become parents to a child of a different race. Necessarily, we were not seeking that, but that is what happened. And so I think it's important for people to be prepared in that sense and prepared to continue learning and to make mistakes. Yeah. It's fantastic advice.

39:51So looking back throughout your life, what are some of the things, some things that you've struggled with regarding adoption? One of my biggest struggles, I think, particularly since becoming an adult and kind of taking a lifelong view of this is how much I've realized that time is a finite resource and I can never, the real struggles that I have now are like, I think this is also part of the reality of being a parent to like younger children, you know, and I also work full time and, you know,

40:24all of these different kinds of things, but it's very difficult to find the time that I want for all the relationships that I have that are important in my life. And that is even more true, I think, in open adoption because you have more relationships, which is amazing and can be a huge blessing. And, you know, I wouldn't, I think it's totally worth it, but that is a difficult reality, you know, that as much as I would like to spend more time with my birth family, it's

40:58not always possible. So that's challenging. One thing I think I've always thought a lot about is like in my role in the adoption community and so on is not in terms of my parents or like the adults that were really close to me, but other adults, like I always felt that they assumed that I didn't know what I was

41:29talking about. Like a lot of adults don't believe kids or think that they can process hard things or understand confusing things. And so that was a struggle that I had sometimes was like being a child who in many cases, I felt like I knew more than adults, you know, and I mean, just because of the kind of person that I am, the kind of child that I was sometimes I was just like, I don't have any time for you.

41:59So believe me, like go away. But it is a reality. Like I was I was protected by adults who did care about my views and like valued my thoughts. But you know, I know a lot of kids don't grow up in that kind of environment. And so I think that's a struggle for kids in general, but like particularly adopted kids who sometimes struggle to be heard by the adults in their lives because they're attempting to take care of the feelings of the adults in their lives.

42:34You know, so I think I think that's a struggle, too, is to know that you're taking care of yourself and not just the adults in your life. So yeah, I think those are two things that I think about a lot in terms of my own challenges that I've encountered. Thank you. So you talked about how your parents gave you this accordion as a way to connect to your heritage. And were there other things that they did to help you connect with your heritage?

43:09They made it possible for me to ask questions, I guess. And you know, they didn't know that much, but they were able to say, like, oh, ask your birth mom about that, you know, or whatever, like, see what she says. And you know, but I think there's also a piece of this, like, heritage question that has a racial component to it, which is very different from, like, somebody like me, a white person

43:39raised in a white family, where, like, we're all dealing with this kind of like northern European kind of thing, right, where white people come to the United States and they're, like, not this thing anymore. They're white, right. And a lot of times they, like, for that reason, think that, like, we think we don't have some kind of ethnic heritage or something like that when we do, but we just traded it for, like, this thing that gave us more status. And sorry, that's the professor part of me coming out.

44:12But I think that's something that is a little bit more, is a little bit different for a same race white adoptee than it is for in transracial, interracial, and especially intercountry adoptions. But, you know, so my parents did, like, my dad got me this accordion, and, you know, my birth father's family is Polish, and my family of experience, that is April Dinh-Woody,

44:42who's an adopted person. She uses that phrase, and I really like it, of my adopted family's background is Dutch. It's my name, my last name, my husband's family is Dutch, so it's a very strong ethnic identity. And so I think making it possible for me to ask questions about, you know, my Polish background and my birth mom's Irish and German, to ask about that, and also consider, like, just

45:13the differences in family culture, I think, is really important, because in economic status and all of those kinds of things, which my parents didn't pretend, like, those differences didn't exist. I think that was important as well, and enabled me to ask some questions about that, even if they didn't have all the answers. Yeah. Kind of general, but. That's really good. And then anything else you would add with the lens as an adoptive parent? Any thoughts on helping adopted individuals like your daughter connect with their heritage?

45:45Yeah, so I think the most important thing here is to seek out and form relationships, if you can, with transracially or interracially adopted folks. Like, I have some of those folks in my extended family, or as friends prior to adopting our daughter, but I've since, as I mentioned earlier, been trying to identify other individuals

46:17who, you know, I can learn from and listen to, who have experiences that are closer to my daughter, right? A Black person being raised by a White family. There are not as many of those folks who have open adoptions, but there are some of those individuals. So I think that's really important to talk to people who have lived experience or to understand where they're coming from. And second, I think this is kind of going on what I was saying before, this is particularly for White parents.

46:48I think to recognize that we as White people also have heritage. I think sometimes, like I said, we're like, oh, that's something other people do, right? Like quote unquote ethnic people or whatever. Well, we're ethnic people too, right? We have ethnic backgrounds and national backgrounds. It's just that we don't always talk about that. And so I think kind of delving into your own background is important too, because it, you

47:18know, you should be able to educate your children on this is part of your background also, right? And then in doing so, you can move toward thinking about educating yourself about the history about your child's heritage and background. And I think it's really important to learn about the good and the bad, right? So like in my family, you know, we have to learn about the legacy of slavery and White supremacy and all of those ugly things that have affected our world today and like even

47:54affected the fact that the way that our adoption happened, right? And at the same time, really to celebrate Black excellence and beauty and joy and all of those things, I think that's really important for our daughter and for our family, right? And then finally, I think heritage is part of identity development. I've heard a lot of folks talk about like, oh, you know, learning the culture and like learning how to do different hair types or whatever.

48:26Like that's the fun part, right? There's a lot of stuff that's really difficult work and like reflecting on yourself and so on. But there's also like ongoing identity development that, you know, people do throughout their lives and that you need to come alongside your child to do that. And, you know, I have a lot of learning to do on that yet and a lot of my daughter's life to come alongside her. So I'm looking forward to that. Thank you. All right, any thoughts on how your adoptive parents helped you manage relationships with

49:00your birth family? Yeah, that's a good question. I think, as I mentioned, they did most of the communicating with my birth mom when I was younger. And then we had meetings starting when I was three. I do specifically remember them helping me manage feelings when things went in an unexpected way. So I have two examples of this.

49:31First of all, when I was about eight, so I used to sing in concerts and stuff, solos and things like that when I was a kid. And I was doing a Christmas concert and my birth mom would like regularly come to these things. And one time she brought some members of my birth father's family. And I don't recall being consulted about that by either my adoptive parents or my birth mom. Maybe I was, I, you know, people remember things differently, right?

50:04But meeting them was fine. But I was like really upset about it because I hadn't known that it was going to happen. You know, and I was doing this like, like I was singing in front of hundreds of people, right? And I was like, you know, I didn't know that these folks were going to like be here. And so that was difficult for me, I think, because I hadn't felt prepared for it. My parents really got an earful about it. Like, you know, and so, but they, I remember them listening to me, right? I don't have any recollection of all of what they said in response.

50:36But I think the important thing here is that I felt comfortable telling them that I was upset about it and like expressing my feelings and understanding that they would listen to me. So that was important because even just hearing me, I think is the, is the part of managing my, my feelings, helping me manage my feelings and know that I can express them. I moved through that, you know, and like reconnected with some of those folks later. But that was a hard moment, I think, for me as a child, I was like, I don't feel in control

51:10of this situation, right? And second, like, during parts of my adolescence, my birth mom was going through some tough things and kind of fell off the radar for a little while. And that was really stressful and difficult for me. Because like I was, I was worried that like, is she okay? Like I don't know. I worried I would lose touch with her, you know, all those kinds of things. So I remember my parents also really listening to my concerns here and my mom particularly

51:41encouraging me to get in touch with her, like try to get in touch with her yourself. And that's really the point at which I kind of started taking over, I guess, more ownership of that kind of the communication between us. And those are two things that my parents helped me to navigate. But probably the most important thing was like the language that they used around adoption and just the way in which it was normalized for me as this is like a way to be.

52:17This is a way to be in the family. Not weird or anything like that. So that was important for me as well. Thank you. All right, well, we're gonna have to start wrapping up, which I'm super sad about. But talking about challenges in the adoption community as a whole, what are some of your thoughts on things we could do to make the adoption community better, more ethical, more safe? Yeah. This is really hard because everybody has different kind of priorities and so on.

52:54One of your questions that I did think a lot about was adoption education, because I have been through so much of it, and I've been on kind of both sides of it in a sense. I think the education for prospective adoptive families is not very good, right? It's not what it could be, at least in my experience. And we work with two separate agencies in two separate states.

53:25So that's an area that I think we could see a lot of improvement on, particularly with, and I know a lot of adopted folks are out here saying this, like we need more adopted people doing those trainings, and agencies compensating them for that. I'm not saying I'm the person they should ask. There are other people who have MSWs and PhDs and social work and so on who are also adopted folks who have both experience, the expertise of experience and the expertise of scholarship,

53:57that I think is an amazing combination. But so I would definitely, I think adoption education is an area that could use a lot of improvement. I also think, and again, there are a number of advocates and activists working on this, like structural change is extremely important. You know, open, I think original birth certificates are a right that every person should have, for instance. You know, and I think there's a number of different types of structural changes that

54:27don't get a lot of attention because the adoption community is relatively small in comparison to the larger population. I think the Adopt East Citizenship Act, which people were very hopeful was going to pass at the end of last year and did not, and kind of got cut out at the last minute, which affects, you know, tens of thousands of people, was not successful. And so I think those kinds of things are really difficult because you just have such a small group and it's hard to make structural change when the vast majority of people in, you know,

55:03in the country and around the world have a particular view about adoption that's not really based in reality. And whether it's like this, it's always this sort of extreme view, like everything is perfect and adoption is like the perfect solution to these quote unquote problems, right? The problems being like me, a person, right? Like a baby or any other adopted person. You know, that and it's like this beautiful solution and so on.

55:36And it's without any problems. Or you have like people in, I mean, I've lost count of how many times you see a movie. I mean, I don't watch a lot of horror movies, but I know that like the adopted person is like often the like demented character, right? Or adoption becomes a plot point in even like a lot of novels and like surprise, like you have a child or surprise, you know, it's like this sort of plot conceit, right?

56:10And people have a very negative view of it. So it's really the reality is it's in between, I think. And so I think that's one of the big challenges that people face is because it's really hard to educate people on the realities of adoption when people come into it with such strong views about what it is. And like, even though those views are not based in any firsthand experience or knowledge. So that's that's really challenging, I think. Well, Sara, thank you so very much for talking with us today. I really appreciate it.

56:41Thanks for having me. I enjoyed talking with you on that. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. And Sara, thank you so much for sharing with us your experiences over time. We've had the opportunity to interview many adoptees, a few from open adoption situations and others from closed adoption situations. And I just love how specifically for Sara and her situation that she's always had this

57:18larger support group, larger connection, more family and what wasn't afraid to ask questions was in a situation where she was able to have open dialogue with her parents about aspects of her adoption. Yes, I agree. I think that psychological safety where an adopted person feels like they are safe, right? And like able to openly share questions and concerns and just talk about their heart openly

57:51without any fear of hurting anyone's feelings or having to think about any of that. I think that's so important. And I love that she was able to have that. And also when someone says they grew up in an open adoption, it can mean a wide array of different things. Yes. I loved hearing her talk about her experiences, how it really did seem like an extra, like a familial relationship with her biological family where it really was open, right?

58:23And like the kind of open that we're striving for in our family. Yeah. One part that I really appreciated, I'm glad that she shared this was she had an event that her family was coming to and extra family came or was invited extra birth family, but she wasn't aware of that. And that kind of just threw her off a little bit, especially people that she hadn't met before. And for me, the takeaway was letting our kids, obviously when they can make more decisions

58:58for themselves, but really letting them own how they want to interact with biological family, letting them call the shots a little bit more in the driver's seat. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I really, I'm grateful that she shared that with us. And I, I felt like I personally walking away with some more knowledge there. Yeah, just incredible hearing the difference. I know every situation is going to be different. It's not like you can say every individual who grows up with an open adoption is going

59:28to have a good experience that there's nothing to guarantee that. But I thought it was so interesting hearing her and then some of these younger individuals who grew up with open adoptions and their sense of identity and their confidence. There seems to be an overarching difference with open adoption when we're talking to these adopted individuals. And I think that's worth noting.

59:59And it's promising. I don't know. I mean, she did mention that, you know, there's been a lot of research done that openness is more beneficial for children ultimately. And so, you know, that's our aim to help shed light on both sides of experiences, to help help potential adoptive parents or adoptive parents understand more, to help adoptees share their voice and help us learn from both any side of their experience and for, you

60:34know, first parents or birth parents also to share so that we all come together and are learning what we can best do to make adoption the best that it can be. The best experience for these individuals who were adopted. Yeah, absolutely. And we've mentioned in a lot of episodes that there are a lot of things that need to have tweaks or adjustments and hopefully our voices mixed with all those that come on the podcast can help that happen. Absolutely.

61:04Okay, so another thing that I really liked about this conversation was how Sara talked with we touched on this a minute ago, but how Sara talked about how she had this truly open adoption from the start, even though it was this brand new concept that hadn't really been done right for that time and that era of adoption. But looking at that, I thought that was really interesting. When we started our adoption journey.

61:35I think this is how it has been for years. I think it still is this way. Yeah, the definition of an open adoption was so conservative that it was just like, oh yeah, we can call this adoption open if we're like sending pictures once a year or something like that. It's just contact, right? But that's very minimal openness in reality. It's not really giving those relationships. And so I thought that was really interesting that the early stages of open adoption, there,

62:09at least in her experience, it was very open. And I'm curious why the more open relationships like that aren't encouraged more. Yeah, and I thought it was interesting as well that she stepped away from speaking adoption things. And when she came back, her assumption would be that openness was kind of the standard. Yeah, like the standard, the things would be different. Yeah. And it really didn't change much. And so I thought that was really interesting. Yes. But also really disappointing.

62:39Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it just left me feeling so anxious to find ways to help make these changes. Yeah. And more substantial. Yes. She mentioned that she actually, this was probably off mic actually, but I think she mentioned that she had thought a lot more about adoption education that we weren't able to talk with her about. And I think bringing her back to talk about that would be helpful. And just in general adoption education, the way that hopeful adoptive couples are introduced

63:11to open adoption. My fear is that sometimes it's like a 45 minute class where they're required to attend and that's it. Yeah. Well, and you hear, we, at least we do, we hear so many of these terrible stories where someone like these are stories coming from biological parents who say, Hey, I was told this was going to be an open adoption. And this is what I pictured when I thought open adoption.

63:43And obviously that hasn't happened and it's terrible. It's super unethical. But also I really wish that the definition of an open adoption was so broad. Yeah. I wish it was more focused on actual relationship building instead of just any level of contact, right? Because I don't know. Like if you have a friend who you write a Christmas card to every year, I don't think

64:13you can really say that you have a great friendship. I mean, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. That's not fostering a friendship. You're not building that friendship. You're not building that relationship. You could still be great friends. I know I get that. I'm just not being in touch very much right now. But when you're trying to build this relationship for your child, it involves, it should involve in my opinion, work and consistent effort. Anyway, yes. Welcome to our passion and the reason we started this podcast.

64:46We could probably talk about this for hours and hours, but we're just probably why this was one of my very favorite episodes. Yes. So so important. We're so grateful for Sara again. We hope we hope to bring her back on a future episode and maybe pinpoint a couple of topics that we can talk through together. We're so grateful for each of you and being listeners to the podcast and we are so glad that we can all be in this together in this process of improving the adopt the experience and making openness more normal and natural in the adoption world.

65:16We will be back with an episode similar to this one, a discussion with another adopted individual in two weeks. We are so excited for that one, too.

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