Navigating the Complexities of Adoptee Reunion with Heather Rodriguez

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 76. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun. And I'm Lanette. And today we have a really wonderful episode. We're not gonna talk too much right now because we just want to jump right into it. It's a bit of a longer interview. But today we are talking to Heather Rodriguez and she is incredible. Yeah one thing that you'll see very apparent in her story as an adoptee is that reunification doesn't always look like what you think it will.

0:32Sometimes it has a really great outcome and sometimes it's a little bit more complicated than that. Yeah and Heather was so fantastic to just really open up and share her experiences with us. She's an adoptee and she's also an adoptive mom and she's been a foster mother as well and she is an incredible person. It was such a privilege to talk to her. Yeah I think that the way she shares her story, the way that she's able to describe complex feelings is quite

1:05unique and I think you'll benefit from her from the way that she shares. Yeah we absolutely did. It was such a powerful and meaningful discussion for us. So we hope you enjoy this discussion and at the end we'll share a few thoughts and talk a little bit more about the project we're gonna be working on with Devonnie. Alright well we are now on the podcast with Heather Rodriguez. Heather thank you

1:42so much. We've been really excited to connect with you. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. Well let's go ahead and just have you start by introducing yourself and help our listeners get to know you a little bit. Okay well my name is Heather again. I currently live in Texas. I grew up as a military brat so I've lived all over the country. I've settled in Maryland for the most amount of my time. I've been married to my husband for 20 years. We have three kiddos, two biological and one adopted. My girls are 15 and 10 and then our son

2:13is two and he is our little adopted friend so we're getting used to life with the toddler again. It's a whole different ballgame especially going back you know to the toddler life. That's been a lot and I'm trying to think we I enjoy reading, crafting, you know hanging out with friends and parenting takes up most of my time. I'm a homeschool mom so that takes up a lot of my time as well. That's awesome. That is a lot. It is. Alright well do you want to tell us and

2:49our listeners about your adoption story? You have multiple connections to the adoption world. We would love to talk about that. Yes. Yeah so I was born in 1979 and my story is a little bit different in that I was actually adopted in Germany but I am an American born to an American adopted by Americans on an Air Force base in Germany but they use the Germans the German social system so technically I was a German

3:20international adoption between two Americans. Really interesting. Wow. So because of that I didn't have a lot of the struggles that American adoptees have with non-identifying information. The German system was very at the time open to whatever the bio parents wanted to give and so my quote-unquote non-identifying information included my birth mom's full name and social security number. So yeah yeah so I was able to find her fairly quickly but I

3:56lived in Germany for 18 months after I was adopted. My adoption was not final for a year so my parents had to get special permission to stay in Germany with the Air Force and then we moved from Germany and I grew up one of two children the oldest both of us adopted. My family was always very open that we were adopted. I was told when I was four and it was the same narrative that you hear especially from people my age that my parents couldn't have children that

4:28someone else had a baby they couldn't take care of and that they chose me and took me home and I was special in love but growing up I did not like talking about being adopted. I would occasionally talk about it with my parents but I learned really quickly that when you talked to adults or other children about being adopted that they asked really weird questions. I remember being asked by a teacher in the second grade if I called my parents mom and dad. I was

4:59adopted at three months old so yeah I do yes. I just stopped telling people I was adopted completely so much so that when I went away to college with a friend of mine who had known me since second grade I was talking about being adopted and she called me a liar to my face and I don't blame her because she'd known me for 20 years at that point almost and had no idea. I'm not a transracial adoptee I look just like my parents complexion wise and so no one had any

5:30reason to believe that I was adopted. My parents were okay with not talking about it. They were very open but at the same time they're from that generation where maybe you don't have to talk about it a lot you know. I was always told I could have my information they would help me look if it ever came to that but I could tell from a very young age that it was an uncomfortable conversation especially for my mom. Understandably as a mom now I get that so I didn't even start thinking about what I meant to be adopted until I was in my early 20s and

6:02what kicked it off for me was at the college I went to we actually had a lady come who was a birth mother and she talked about her experience as a birth mother and embarrassingly enough that was the very first time in my whole 19 years of life that I realized that my adoption impacted someone other than myself because as a kid I believed that whole thing of well she couldn't take care of you so she gave you up and everyone's perfectly okay with that and

6:34listening to that birth mom talk I realized wait a minute this this involves somebody that is more than me because before that moment I would have told you I was never searching because I thought I'm perfectly happy I love my parents I have fabulous parents just amazing and I thought well I don't have any need to search and in that moment I realized that I probably did if only to connect with her and tell her that she made a loving decision at that time that

7:07was my thought process and so that is what kicked kicked it off for me I know some people don't like the term coming out of the fog but for me it has very much been coming out of a fog because it's been very gradual and it has changed and that kicked me right into less fog it was like suddenly I was looking around and I could see things a lot more clearly so that was at 19 and so at 19 I decided you know what I need to I need to figure this out I need to search and so I went to my parents and I said hey can I have everything that you

7:39have about my adoption they were very gracious and kind and during that time I had met a German exchange student in high school who I kept in touch with and her family invited me out to Germany which this is one of those things where you know I know there are people of all faiths listening but sometimes you know that God is pushing you in a direction and this was one of those times where God said yep walk right through this door please and so I did I went to Germany I spent three weeks there when I got to Germany I called the number on my adoption paperwork hoping to make an appointment with someone in the office

8:11who had handled my adoption 20 years prior and my social worker answered the phone like the social worker that was involved with your situation yes Wow yes and when she answered the phone with her name I was shocked I was just stunned and I introduced myself and she spoke English and because she handled the international section and I introduced myself by my first and last name and she said oh my goodness Heather how are your parents and she named them and I said um it was her second adoption and she remembered me because of that so

8:48I went and spent three hours in her office and saw that my parents had been sending her pictures every year while I was in school and I had no idea none thanks guys again see it's that hole we're open but we're not talking about it that's kind of what I'm talking about and so I spent a lot of time talking to her she didn't have any new information for me but it was still very grounding for me to talk to someone who had had contact with me in that part of my life because that's sort of where my life started the fuzzy part started you know

9:21she told me about my foster parents I was in foster care for three months the German adoption system gives you 90 days to make or have a revocation so she told me about my foster parents a little bit and about my time with them that was the only new information she had I left there knowing that I would find my birth mother but I also knew that I was gonna wait until I graduated college and I was quote-unquote a real adult because I wanted to be completely independent when

9:54I did it so fast forward graduated college and got married and my husband has been a very big encourager of me finding my birth family and he was like you know you need to do it just do it and so one day I sat down to the computer I put in my birth mom's information her social security number and her name and five minutes later I had her addresses for the last 15 years her full name her phone number so all that stuff you hear about it being expensive and hard for me it was not and this was 2002 2004 so the internet was

10:30still kind of a baby yeah we've come a long way since then too yeah we sure have yeah so there was no ancestry there was no you know but I knew it was her because I had all of her matching information so I took some time I wrote her a six page letter I included everything I wanted to tell her in that letter because I didn't know what was on the other side of that and during this time I know no one who's adopted and no one who's ever done this so I was just

11:02kind of full lying by the seat of my pants hoping and praying that I'm doing you know the right thing so I wrote her a letter included a bunch of pictures told her about my life told her that I was grateful that she gave me a shot at life that all the things she had hoped for me were true and that I would love to know her but that it was okay if she didn't want to have a relationship with me but that all I needed from her was a relationship I didn't need any money or

11:35you know anything like that it took her five months to write me back so yeah five months what was that like you know I when I mailed my letter I drove it to the post office and I put it in one of those mailboxes because I knew that if I put it in my mailbox I would go get it 17 times out of the mailbox once I sent that letter off it was almost like I had peace because I knew I had done what I

12:07wanted to do and so for me I was actually really okay my husband God bless him ran to the mailbox for weeks every day and I felt so bad for him I was like honey you've got to calm down like I've been dealing with this my whole life you've just got to calm down she may not answer me at all and then one day I came home and my brand new puppy had gotten into my stack of mail and so there were papers all over the place and I was gathering up papers and I picked

12:39up pictures and when I there were pictures when I picked up a picture I flipped it over and I immediately knew that it was her I had never seen her in my life but it was the very first time I had looked into the face of somebody that looked like me and I was like oh I've got to find the rest of these pages so I went all over and sorted through and got them all out and she had written me a letter and I had shocked her because when my 18th I was 24 when my

13:1118th birthday passed and my 20th birthday passed and my 21st birthday passed she kind of started thinking that maybe I was never gonna find her and so I think it just took her some time and so we wrote back and forth for about three months we moved to email we moved to phone calls and about a year later I flew out to meet her by myself now wait yours this this is 2006 okay yeah so I met her for the first time in 2006 I spent about four days at her apartment

13:44there were some you know it's complicated because we look exactly like and so the first day I was there we were at the grocery store checking out and the check lady said the sweet cashier said are you guys having a fun mother-daughter day and but that poor cashier because both of us just froze and she didn't want to look at me and I looked at the cashier and I just said yeah we're having a nice day and it was like we could not it just got real quiet and I

14:16know that cashier's probably like what in the world did I just and then she had a checkup and I check up that we went to and when she was signing in the lady said you can come back we're ready for you but your daughter has to stay in the waiting room again super awkward so there were some moments like that but it was lovely lovely Rina has been since so like I said her family does not know I exist but she's not super close with her family so that's not an issue she don't

14:48live near them she has talked to my husband on the phone she has she's involved but she's never met my kids because I think she's never been in a space where the where people know who she is in that way if that makes sense yeah so you know like she's my birth mom but she's never been in a place where other people know she's a birth mom and I think that's hard for her so yeah

15:19Wow how crazy so you've been in reunion for well over a decade mm-hmm almost 20 almost yeah and what would you say your relationship looks like now we're actually we probably talk weekly we text often I'm a nurse by trade and so she's had some health difficulties recently and so I have been helping her navigate that which has been good for our relationship but we have a very good

15:52relationship but it's very compartmentalized it's me and her and she has a hard time feeling like she deserves being included in my life and I've we've been really working on that because I told her what happened 43 years ago happened 43 years ago but the door has opened back up and I have invited you in which means that you are welcome here right yeah but she has I

16:22think it's I think it boils down to feeling shame and I I cannot do anything but leave the door open for her and let her know that you don't have to feel that way so that's probably our only complication yeah that's hard yeah so you shared that your husband was really supportive yes Ernie and in fact really encouraged it yeah all your parents but what was that what was that like well

16:56um god bless them I love them um it was fine until I went to go see her in person and that was very difficult for my mom specifically my dad he's a very cerebral guy it's very intelligent he's very logical and for him it also wasn't a dad either right I'm not going to see my birth dad and so I know my mom had a hard time with it she was very good about not telling me outright but she

17:27didn't have me to have a conversation with my husband about it because he was telling her a little bit about like my trip and she was like yeah I really don't want to hear about that so when I came home I had to have a conversation with her and I told her listen I cannot manage your feelings about this I love you so much I can't manage her feelings about this I can only manage my reaction to this so I'm going to tell you that I am wide open if you want to know I need you to ask if you don't ask me I'm going to assume you don't want to

18:00tell me because I'm a grown-up and I don't want to feel like I'm sneaking around and that's what I felt like I felt like a teenager sneaking around in some illicit activity because I have such a close relationship with my parents and I talked to them about everything and so keeping that from them felt very dishonest and very weird and so that's kind of how we've operated it's kind of a if she wants to know she'll ask and otherwise we just don't talk about it

18:32it does sound like a lot of different adoptive experiences that I feel like I've heard where did you maybe feel that need to protect your adoptive parents feelings absolutely while you're going through this so hard yeah yeah I felt wildly disloyal because I felt like I was turning my back on almost everything that they had given me and done for me until I really sat with myself and I realized that my search for my biological family literally has nothing

19:04to do with them and everything to do with me I'm not looking for new parents I'm looking for myself yeah and that made me feel better and I did tell my mom that I'm not looking for a new set of parents I'm looking for myself for who I am where I came from and so that that's how I found peace in that because that was hard to do yeah so hard yes so I love how you said you know you were

19:34trying to find yourself part of your identity maybe we can riff on that for just a second how has the reunification affected your sense of identity so before I found my birth mom before I talked to her and had a relationship with her I would have told you that I was almost doing it just to check a square right that I was fine and the minute that I saw a picture of her the first time and I that biological mirroring that I did not know was a thing and I

20:06saw her it was like something clicked that I didn't know was missing and again like I talked about coming out of the fog for me has been slow that pushed me just that much further out of the fog and I looked around and realized that there were parts of me that were missing and it was almost like I was tethered to the ground more securely in that moment there were things about myself that made sense more so I am who I am regardless of who my parents are biological or adoptive but to be able to see where some of those things have root is very

20:40grounding for me and it's kind of fun to be able to be like yeah I'm like that because of this you know yeah so that has how that's helped me that's a that's amazing so we already know but our listeners know we want to hear more about also what the process was like for finding your biological father okay yeah so there was no information for my biological father on any of my original

21:11documents whereas I had all of her information she gave me non identifying information about him his race his religion his physical build his job his college education but nothing not his name nothing so when I met her thankfully she has been very kind I didn't I wasn't even gonna ask her initially and I didn't have to in our third letter she included everything she had about him including pictures she had of him she told me the story they were

21:44in a decently long relationship he was divorced and they reunited one last time before she left to go to Germany and I am a souvenir from that time so she did not tell him she was pregnant and she did not tell him that I was born and so I grew up knowing that he did not know about me so when I met her she encouraged me to find him she told me he was a really nice guy that he would love

22:17to know about me that she had in fact told him about me in the early 80s once everything was done she showed me a letter that he wrote to her after their conversation about me and so I came home I wasn't ready for that it was too much I was like no I'm good I'm gonna good and then he really encouraged me so I sent a letter to an address that I thought maybe his in 2008 and never had anything back and I let it lie completely this last year I went to

22:48visit her again and she said I really want you to find him like I really want you to look one more time and I said okay how about this can I do ancestry DNA and 23andMe knowing full well that I'm a secret on her side of the family and she said yes I don't care if it comes out I just don't want to tell anybody and I said fair enough I also I'm not gonna go like reaching out to your fourth cousin you know I would just like to know my my ancestry and maybe I

23:19can find him that way so that was November of 2022 I came home ordered ancestor actually ordered ancestry DNA and 23andMe before I left her home and came home took those bad boys and sent them off and the last day of 2022 I got now I'm sorry the last week of 2022 I got ancestry back and I matched with who she said my biofathers was brother as an uncle and so I was like okay I never

23:53doubted her but I was like all right game on it gave me my ancestry which is fascinating to me because I have always been very interested in English history and culture I love England I am like 60% English percentage yes and the rest of it is Scottish and Irish and so I'm very much biologically tied to the things that have always interested me which is a fascinating to me and so then a couple

24:23days later 23andMe came back and I matched with my biological father and two of my half sisters that I had no idea existed so that was a shock because I did not expect to match directly with him under any circumstances I knew I had one sister I did not know I had three I have three half sisters so that is how I found him I stayed open on 23andMe I messaged him you can tell how often

24:54somebody logs in on 23andMe it'll tell you like whatever you know and none of them had logged on in the last six months and so I matched and I gave it a whole month so I thought well 23andMe will let them know that they have matches they did not so I did my adoptee thing and I stopped them on Facebook and my half sister who had her full name on 23andMe that matched her name on Facebook I messaged her and I just said hey we matched on 23andMe we have a high

25:30match common as ancestor with my biological dad's name and I said I'm working on some genealogy work if you wouldn't mind messaging me I would appreciate it you can message me on 23andMe if you'd like you know I sent her a friend request so it would tip off that she had a message I said don't feel like you have to take my friend request so the next day I saw on 23andMe that she had logged on in the last day and then all of a sudden all of them had logged on in the last day and I was like oh no I don't know if I'm ready for that

26:03that morning she messaged me on Facebook and said hey would you be willing to take a Facebook call from me and I said sure and so she got on Facebook and she we got on messenger audio and she said the first question I need to ask you is do you share 50% DNA with my father and I said I do and she said the next thing I need to tell you is that up until this morning my sisters and I thought my parents had been faithfully married for 61 years yeah super fun yeah that was

26:37exciting and that was not the information that I was working off of when I reached out to them and so that is in my opinion an adoptee's worst fear it's terrible I felt horrible I knew it wasn't my doing necessarily but still that was hard fast forward a week her mom was aware that her dad had had an affair and they just had not told their children so everybody calmed down at

27:09that moment and so now we are in the process of navigating a relationship it took about three weeks my birth father called me and we had a conversation and I think that'll probably be our only conversation but it was fine it's perfectly fine but I think for his own sanity he's maintaining the party line that he had no idea existed which that's his option and that's okay I'm fine with

27:39that because again I cannot control the things that go on around me I can only control my part in what goes on around me and I can't prove that he knew about me without you know dragging everyone into a really hot mess disaster so yeah so that's that reunion it's very different than my other one so that's heavy that's so hard and yeah you see me I'm just like crying over here thinking

28:12about how challenging that must have been for you to be in the middle of yeah it was and I wasn't ready for it I'm gonna be honest with you I was not ready for that I knew I might be a surprise I didn't know I would be a shock yeah yeah well and to me it kind of highlights this idea of just obviously telling the truth and being as transparent about situations as we can and when you were when you were working off of what you thought was the truth you wouldn't have anticipated the response that right and so as as much transparency and truth

28:47that we can share obviously while was still respecting people's privacy man that is a tricky balance and I'm so I'm so sorry that that was your experience yeah it's I mean but I learned and grew and you know we're still moving forward so yeah well I love what you said about I can't control anyone else in this situation I can only control myself that's such a healthy and beautiful outlook but do you have any advice for how people can maybe get to the point

29:19where they can really feel that or when it's hard how to refocus and find that again I think going into reunion knowing what you're looking for knowing your why and being honest about your why because had I wanted a father figure from that and I wasn't being honest with myself the amount of devastation that would have come from that would have been I mean unbearable right and I think it is just telling yourself over and over again I'm acting in good faith I am being honest

29:53and truthful and I'm not asking for anything that is not something that I should have and just really believing that you are not responsible for other people's actions I cannot help what went on 44 years ago and I cannot help what has been said about it since then and I think one of the things that people from the baby scoop era and a little past that forget or didn't realize at the time is that we were adopted as babies but we grow up and here we are you know

30:29and so I just think reminding yourself having people that care about you around you to help you remember that when it's hard to remember that has been really good for me I have several supportive friends and a wonderful husband who reminded me that I didn't I didn't do this as much as sometimes it feels like I did because man it does not feel fun to be a skeleton that jumps out of a closet which is exactly what I was but I didn't I didn't do that though I didn't position myself there so yeah wow that's a great way to look at it thank you with

31:05us a lot and we have more right like you more connection to adoption yeah so let's let's transition now maybe some of the questions later will actually like everything together but how you said in your introduction you have two biological daughters that are teenagers and now you have this two-year-old that you and your husband adopted help us understand how you got to the decision

31:36to adopt and what that situation has looked like for you okay so I'll give you the condensed version I knew I wanted to adopt my whole life just because I was adopted and as I grew up I realized that if I wanted to help children who were in need the best way to do that was foster care and that was truly my heart and my husband's heart as well when I met my husband that was something we agreed on and so we didn't get licensed so we came to Texas in 2014 we had ten kids in our home off and on different times different situations and reunification

32:10has always been our goal and so we got our little guy his name is Ezekiel we got Ezekiel when he was a month old and it did not work out for him to go home two and a half years almost two and a half years of two years really of back and forth and it became clear that he needed to stay with us and so that is how we came to the adoption process was knowing that he needed to stay we always said the foster care reunification is our main goal but they can stay as long

32:40as they need to and for Ezek he needed to stay for the duration and so that's really how we got there with the two-year-olds so how do you feel like your adoption story has impacted the way you parent and the way that you see fostering the way that I parent for sure just it was really important to me that I entered into parenthood intentionally and with forethought because I didn't want to repeat the cycle that I was brought into

33:11and just sort of being thankful for my kids for adoption I have been very adamant that Ezekiel has both all of his original paperwork as well as connections to his biological family when it's safe and possible and I have been very adamant about that from the beginning as has my husband and I think that comes from being adopted I have said to my husband multiple times I never want him to have to search for anyone whether he has a relationship

33:43with him and them or not over time I can't control but I can control that he's never gonna have to search for them so tell us a little bit about what your relationship looks like with his biological parents as much as you feel comfortable sure his biological mom at this point is choosing not to be involved she was only spotily involved during the process even during foster care we keep the door open I email her updates you know she knows the doors open we have a very good relationship with his bio dad in fact this last

34:16Saturday we came home from a baby shower for his I guess cousin I have a Facebook page that is just for his family and I post videos of him and pictures and updates and think adventure that he goes on and things that he does so that they can follow that that way and we try to see them once a month right now he has three full siblings that live with dad and two half siblings that live with mom one of the half siblings spends a lot of time with dad though and so we

34:48see them frequently they range in age from nine to three and he would be at the bottom of the ones he sees he has one younger half sibling so we have a great relationship right now so that's great yeah I love that you're able to keep those connections with siblings too and I love the perspective that you shared too like I I can only do what I can right now to try to foster those connections and ultimately he'll be making some of the decisions at some point but to help him never have to search and to have as much information

35:23as he can to have those you know pieces to that puzzle I think that's really valuable to him yeah and I think it will be and I hope so but as he gets older he's gonna have more say because it's about him it's not about us or about them it's about the end of the day so so what do you think about adoption education and the fostering education like how as an adoptee who's going

35:55through this process of adopting your son how has that impacted how you see adoption education and what do you want for it like how can we fix things and make things better adoption education is a hot mess in my opinion it is lacking wildly in so many things you know we had a two-hour class that we had to sit through that was very painful for me to sit through because it was a zoom class and I just wanted to yell at the zoom screen you know you did while you were

36:27on mute because I think that we need to include adoptees and adoption education and I think it needs to be more real you don't need to scare parents but the thing is raising an adopted child is not the same as raising a biological child and that is okay and I think we need to that's okay it doesn't mean you love your child any less it just means that you're parenting to their particular needs and that's all that means and so I wish that was I wish we could center the adoptee

36:59in the education you know parents need to save people to talk to about their trauma and their issues because it's okay to have issues having an adopted child it's okay to struggle with that there's a loss there when you don't have a biological child but that safe person can't be that child that child cannot be responsible for the management of your feelings you being the adoptive parents or my feelings as an adoptive parent around that so yeah I wish it was

37:30more adoptee centered the education I wish it was a little bit longer and I wish it was a little more realistic great takeaways yeah yeah I feel like so we have participated in several foster care classes in the last couple months and I think your sentiments echo a bit of our experience as well yeah we're not as like informed as you with personal experiences but I agree absolutely agree yes yeah so with your experience both as an adoptee and a foster parent and an

38:08adoptive parent you have a lot of titles what would you suggest that prospective foster caretakers consider before getting licensed you need to talk to other foster parents not agencies not caseworkers you need to talk to other foster parents you need to know going in that you will have very little control and very little say if you're going into foster care as a way to build your

38:38family that is both unreliable and unethical because the number one goal of foster care is family reunification and those children whenever possible belong with their families even if their family does not look as pretty or as put together as yours does and again I'm not anti adoption clearly okay clearly I am NOT but you've got to go in knowing that the main goal and what everyone is

39:09working towards is family reunification if you are not working towards that is going to be heartbreaking for you because you're gonna feel like the entire system is working against you if you want to build your family through foster care there are children who are waiting but if you want a shiny new newborn this is not the way not the way so you talked about you've had a lot of foster children cared for and sent back to their first families yes how would

39:39you explain or describe that experience of loving and caring for these children and helping them go back to their first family I'm not gonna lie personally it's heartbreaking and there's I'm not gonna gloss over that or pretend like that doesn't exist because I feel like it doesn't do anyone any favors but when you know that that's the goal there's grace in that when it comes time because even though it is so heartbreaking you have the sense that you have done a good thing and that you have done what you set out to do and so

40:09even though that success feels a little bit tainted by your own heartbreak you know that you have done really what every loving parent does and that is what is best for the child that is in their care really at the end of the day that's that's the heart of parenting right we do what is best for our child or for the child that we love and in foster care when that is the best thing you can know that you have done the best thing for them you know I have I mean there are I can think of two in particular children that are out walking

40:41in the world right now that are teeny tiny little pieces of my heart that are out walking around one in particular we got from the hospital and we had her for a year and she's still if I saw her today I don't think I could be reliably cool calm and collected about it but I'm so glad she is with her her aunt and uncle so yeah so beautiful so maybe transitioning the thought then so that was some advice for foster care the people who are walking walking into that what about those that are considering adoption not going through the foster

41:14care route but maybe a domestic infant adoption or I guess in your case international but what advice would you share with them or have them consider as they're making that decision couple of things I would have them consider that adoption and biological parenting are not the same and that's okay like I said before second they need to have people in their life that are safe people whether it's a counselor or a pastor or friends that they can talk to about

41:45their feelings related to that as they grow up third just like any other parenting journey it's not about you so you really need to put yourself to the side and help your kid navigate what it means to be adopted as they go through their life and as their life changes and the last thing I would say is that you can't you can't like I said before you can't be the safe person your child cannot be the safe person for you and you cannot be the safe person for your

42:17child your child 100% needs someone in their life that is not connected to you that they can talk to about adoption because it does not matter how kind you are or how loving or how supportive you have been you are that child's sole source of food and home and love and connection and it can feel very scary to ask some of the questions that you need to ask as a child in that kind of imbalance of power as hard as that is to say even mice and I need that because in

42:50his mind I hold all the power my husband and I do right so he needs someone he can go to and say on a bad day hey I wish my my family could have gotten their crap together and got me back right hard for me to hear hard for his bio dad to hear hard for everyone in his life to hear that's a parent but he needs to be able to say that if that's what he feels like so important creating that safety yeah and I love the idea of having our kids that sorry having our

43:22kids connected to another trusted adult where they can they can share and connect actually we had an experience this past weekend we had a graduation party for Lanette and congratulations and we had several birth birth family members from several other kids over we always invite him to our big parties like that and one of our children was just struggling with this little trial and I tried to talk him through it and it was like in one ear out the other but

43:57his biological grandma was there and she shared a similar experience where she felt similar emotions mm-hmm and he was just like zoned in like laser to her and like I just said the same thing but but just to see that connection it was really beautiful and it and it helped him and yeah it was just like attested to me of what you just said so thank you for relating that and helping me think

44:27about that a little bit more deeply too what have you struggled with when it comes to adoption and what do you wish that other people understood I have struggled with I'm a people-pleasing person by nature I'm learning that that can often come from being adopted I have struggled with the impact that some of the choices I need to make for myself will have on the people around me and I don't say that that sounds like a virtue signal almost like I'm such a great

44:57person that you know I worry that's not it it's more of it as I dig down it's more of a sense of personal safety will I be rejected by the people in my life if I make the choices that I need to make in order to answer the questions that I have and understanding kind of growing up the dynamics that were there and looking back and realizing that there are things in my life that have have happened because I was adopted and I didn't realize growing up all anybody ever said was when you're adopted you have bandana issues I never did but I

45:30had people-pleasing issues and sure enough so that's part of it I've struggled with the duality of it there's kind of that for me I almost have like a survivor's guilt kind of a situation because I was pulled out of a wildly dysfunctional situation into a lovely secure fabulous place and you can look back at your bio family and sometimes wonder why did I get thrown out of the

46:03way of the train and what am I doing with that have I wasted that so there's that what I wish people knew the main thing I think I wish people knew is two things one like I said biological or adopted children looking for their biological families are not looking for parental replacements they're just looking for pieces of who they are and the other thing is that adoption is a lifelong thing and it will change as you grow up and it will change as you age

46:36and it will change as you hit different surfaces and areas of your life and I wasn't really ready for that you know but having my first child really even though I was in reunion at that point was very hard because I remember sitting in the hospital the day after she was born and looking at her and thinking good heavens you would have to kill me you would have to physically kill me to take her from me there's no way and so it was that deepened understanding of

47:10what went on that hits you very hard and now adopting a kid and hoping that I'm making the right choices so it really is lifelong and that's I think a big deal I am NOT adopted I am an adoptee it will carry me it will be with me my whole life do you have any thoughts on supporting and helping biological parents with all of your experience as a foster parent and an adoptive mom as well as having a relationship with your own biological mother now how can especially adoptive parents but how can the adoption community better support

47:44these parents um I think just understanding their role understanding that people make the best decisions they can with the information they have at the time and I also think as adoptees understanding that relinquishment and even secondary rejection often are not about us at all it has nothing to do with us it has to do with the circumstances surrounding real-life people who are having to make really hard decisions I think providing birth parent counseling allowing birth parents to talk and to really release

48:18themselves from the shame that they feel that's unnecessary and then in a foster care way if you're in an open adoption I think just seeing them as as humans as people seeing yourselves as equals not in a parenting way because when you're a parent the biological parents are not you're not co-parenting with the biological parents right that's not what I'm saying but you are equal like I am no better than my adopted son's biological family I'm just different and to see each other as humans and equals and meet each other on

48:53level ground I think is a really good place to start I think that's beautiful I love that yeah I remember once we were going to meet some expectant parents for the first time and we were really intimidated just thinking man like how do we connect to this couple right and Shaun is just so wise and had this thought and he was like you know I just keep thinking we need to just see them as equal to us right like pretty much what you're saying just yeah it was a

49:27really great thought to help alleviate that anxiety and help us start that relationship off on a better once the adoption has been finalized I think acknowledging the imbalance of power is important too sometimes you just have to get out on the table and say listen I know we hold all the cards here essentially I get that but I promise you are not here to weaponize any of that because that's that's something I've had with my son's biological family that I find them walk in on eggshells and I finally had to sit them down and say we

49:58did not commit to that when we committed to him we committed to you now we're primarily committed to him but we're not here to pull the rug out yeah you know I love how you say that because it's so important and it's it happens I think in every relationship like this where yes if you're not holding all of those cards you're not the one in power thing you do see those family members walking on eggshells just like you say and feeling like they can't really ask like I would like to see my child more but what do I do right so yeah yeah yeah oh man I'm

50:35having so many thoughts yeah so going back to I think situation I know you're right that you're talking about we've had a number of this but just seeing people as people I just I like how you articulated that but knowing that I'm not better than them in any way we're just in different situations and I can love this person even though we don't have a thing in common no and that's what I said to my son's biological father I said there is no world where you and I

51:07would have ever crossed paths yeah outside of this situation but that's okay because here we are yes and then you're united by the shared love this little boy yes beautiful so you talked a little bit about some of the challenges facing adoption education maybe on the larger scale what are some of the challenges that the adoption community faces today and if you have any ideas for what we can do to improve that thing I think division inside of the adoption

51:41community is a big issue it's such an emotionally charged problem I think if adoptees could meet each other in our shared space which is that we were relinquished at some point and raised by people outside of our biological families that would be a good place to start understanding that we have varied experiences and varied feelings about our experiences and if we could all meet each other there there'd be more open discourse but for people like me who had a lovely adoption experience I shouldn't have to feel like I'm angry upset about

52:14being adopted or that adoption is all wrong just like the person who had a terrible experience shouldn't have to feel like there's no issues in adoption and let's just hold hands and sing kumbaya about it all the time so holding space for each other I think would be would go a long way to allowing us to work together but it's such a deeply emotional place to be in that I think our hurt places come out when we talk to other adoptees because it's very hurtful

52:44it can be very defensive when you feel like another adoptee is invalidating your lived experience but that's not what they're doing they're sharing their lived experience with you and your experience is still valid and it's really okay so that's I think the biggest challenge yeah this idea of having a peaceful this discussion even when you have disagreements is needed in the community and just because I'm just I think recapping what you said but just

53:18because someone had an experience that is different than yours doesn't mean that theirs was right or wrong no it just was and we yeah yeah we had we have to embrace that not one experience is going to match another no and that there you need to personally heal I think there needs to be some personal healing that gets done before you join an adoption discourse because those places will come out real quickly if you haven't dealt with them yourself there's

53:48I think a lot of key issues three or four that adoptees can work on before they really get involved in adoption discourse that will help keep it more even so yeah oh my goodness well Heather you are so eloquent no offense anybody but I feel like everything so well you're like I'm gonna recap like why yeah well I'm so excited this has been an amazing discussion I feel like I've learned so much from you you say it all so well I'm so glad because I've

54:20never really told it all in one condensed sitting before so I think our listeners are gonna walk away what really really grateful for your willingness to share I am they won't know like right I look over and I'm like are you all right no it's true that's a beautiful discussion thank you thanks all right is there anything else that you want to talk about no just that I'm excited that I got to tell my story I'm excited you guys are doing this platform

54:54and taking their time to do that thank you so much for being with us Heather we really appreciate you Wow right that was such a good episode thank you so so much Heather for chatting with us we were so grateful to connect with Heather we connected over Facebook and I've just felt so blessed to be able to hear her thoughts and experiences yeah particularly something that's standing out to me my maybe my

55:25takeaway is just making sure that our adoptees have a safe place like someone to talk to that's not us that they can just own whatever they're feeling and you know talk through that with somebody else yeah yeah definitely and also the need to be a safe place as well I thought it was heartbreaking that she didn't feel like she could share everything when I hear that the thing I take away is am I helping my kids feel that psychological safety because I do

56:00want them to tell me everything and I need to be better at making sure to separate my own feelings from listening to their experiences and their emotions I want to be an additional safe place for them too yeah I appreciated how well she just spoke through the conversations that she had with her adoptive mother and others you know adoptees in these situations can't really control the reactions or emotions of adoptive parents or biological parents they just

56:33want to know the pieces they want to know who they are and that's important well and so many of the adoptees we've spoken to do have this tendency this desire to please their loved ones to help keep things smooth and not ruffle any feathers right and I hope that we can be better at helping validate adoptees helping them feel comfortable and confident sharing their feelings without feeling like they're stepping on eggshells around us I think that's

57:06really important yeah and maybe one last takeaway that I'll mention is that if we're in the adoption triad or adoption constellation there's lots of different stories and lots of different accounts and experiences that kind of go on in how we're all connected to one another and from the reunification story that she shared with her biological father my takeaway is make sure that we're just

57:36open and honest with the truth I think it's important that we're honest as much as we can be forthright about what happened why things happened the way they happened so that people have the right pieces of the puzzle true I agree but it's hard right when you don't have the right information or the accurate information but I think that striving for more openness open communication and

58:06having these open adoption relationships where you can reach out and talk I feel like that's creating a much safer foundation where we can just avoid those experiences there's really hard tragic and hard yes I was so emotional listening just thinking about the immense challenge it would be to have these burdens on your shoulders when it's not your fault at all and yeah just

58:38so hard yeah but well thanks again to Heather she was a wonderful to be with I really just I felt so uplifted by that conversation it was beautiful yeah me too and and it was so hard right there were so many things in it that were wrenching and hard but I still left feeling so optimistic I don't know how she did that right yeah I don't know but she's amazing so thank you to Heather and a little reminder we are working with Devonnie Roberts from a previous

59:12episode if you or someone you know is trying to find any family members if you have an adoptee in your life who's trying to find their biological family she would love to help we have an application on our website if you want to check that out it's at open adoption project org and yeah we would love to connect and she would love to help you out and so check that out and we'll be back in a couple of weeks thanks so much for listening to this episode of the open

59:43adoption project

60:13you

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