More People to Love: Season 3 Recap

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 86. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun. And I'm Lanette. And today we are wrapping up our most recent season on the podcast. So we don't really delineate between seasons, but we are taking a little break for just a couple of weeks and getting ready for a different kind of podcast experience coming for November for National Adoption Month. And then we're going to take December off and come back in January with a new season.

0:31So today we're going to be diving in and looking at some of the themes from the last batch of episodes. We've been going since July of last year, so it's been a 15 month season of nonstop podcast episodes. We've been keeping pretty busy, huh? Yeah. So we'll be jumping in and just talking about some of our biggest takeaways from these last episodes. So the major theme of this episode that we'll address is open adoption. And we've met with so many people and met and talked from so many different angles about the importance

1:08and the benefits of open adoption. And so we're going to reflect back and listen to a couple different people and parts of conversations that we had within that highlight really the importance of openness. Yeah, we've been really fortunate these last 15 months to have some incredible guests on our podcast who have really shared some amazing insights. And I feel like I've learned a lot. We've talked to a lot of adoptees. It's been our big focus to really make our platform a place for adoptees

1:45to share their various different experiences. And then we've also talked to a few birth parents and adoptive parents and researchers and professionals. But really, this season has been all about adoptee experiences. Yeah. And so as we reflect back on our episodes today, we're going to look through that lens, focus on the adoptee and really, really dive into why openness is important from that perspective.

2:16Yeah. And so wrapping up this batch, we are looking forward to November. We'll be sharing more than we usually do. We usually have been doing an episode every two weeks or so, and we'll be moving to a more frequent release schedule for November. And so we're excited about that. We're keeping busy. Yeah, we're so excited to share more during National Adoption Month. Yeah. So keep an eye out for that. We'll be back here in just a couple of weeks. But for today, let's dive right in and talk about some of these big themes from these last few months.

2:52So we're going to jump in first and listen back to part of our conversation with Sarah Vanderhagen. And she is just going to jump in and talk a little bit about the relationship that she had with her adoptive parents and her biological mom and the relationship that they had and how that really just shaped so much of her experience. Yeah. And just a reminder. So Sarah was one of the guests that we had. She's an adoptee who grew up with an open adoption.

3:22And that was a while ago, right, when it wasn't very common to have open adoptions. Yeah, she was one of the first in her state and perhaps even in the country. Yeah. In fact, she even shared how she felt kind of like a guinea pig, right, where everyone was just kind of watching her to see, is she OK? Like, how is this going? It sounded like a very uncomfortable experience. But it was incredible to hear how different and of course, these are all anecdotal, different experiences. It's hard to make generalizations for the whole population because every experience is so different.

3:55But it's been fascinating to hear from Sarah and then others who had these open adoptions, who are now adults and hear through their lens and their experience how that was different from these other adoptives who we've also talked to, who grew up with closed adoptions. Yeah. So we're going to jump to that clip real quick and we'll come right back and kind of process and share a couple of thoughts.

4:25So as as I think is clear, openness and adoption is like absolutely central to my experience and my story. And so so in my case, one of the reasons that I understand my parents were were brought together was because they wanted an open adoption. Like 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.

5:00And 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. I said, I will never do this to my child. Like I will never raise a child in this kind of closed system. Right. And so they were ready to, you know, to do something different. And they had been working on this at that agency and so they were connected with my birth mom.

5:36That'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 was one of the first earliest states have open adoption. Again, like in context, mod, 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.

6:06And so it's a modern like change, not necessarily like there used to be open adoptions in a different sense like a kinship adoptions and so on. So it was really like an early kind of thing. Right. Well, there's a couple things for sure that send out to me from that conversation. But the one thing that I think is just sticking with me is that her mom, she was preparing to adopt was reading books about adoptees experiences.

6:37And she became pretty frustrated at some of the negative or the separation type of experiences, not knowing biological family and that being kind of a turning point for her mom to to say this is not what I want for my child. And that was kind of the impetus of this relationship. Yeah, that's it out to me too. So, I really appreciated that because Sarah as an adopted person. She recognized that her adopted parents put in that work before adopting.

7:12And from the research that I've read, it really is important for prospective adoptive parents to be educated and researching adoption, before they get into it to have that background to help them to be more empathetic toward the experiences of adopted people and the experiences of adoptive parents. So another person that we have talked to that had maybe a similar experience, but I think just highlighted well the connections between biological family and how important that was for her was Devonnie.

7:48So Devonnie was also adopted, and she also grew up with a very open adoption. One of the cool things from her experience was that she, as she got older spent summers in a different state with her biological family and there was this great level of trust between her adopted parents and her biological parents. So let's jump to Devonnie right now. So when I was about 10 months old, our family moved from Irvine to San Luis Obispo, California. And so just like a few hours up the coast, and somehow, I don't know, I'll have to ask but somehow someone at Como News in Seattle, Washington, like it's like one of their big news

8:33companies up there, someone found out about us, and I don't know, I'll have to ask how it all happened. But they were doing a special on Como News about open adoption and like I have the video of the special that they did. They flew my birth mom down to San Luis Obispo to see me for the first time after I was born. And so, you know, she's, yeah, she's, she's just come down from Seattle and like this woman comes on like the screen and says, it was the news anchor or whatever

9:10she says, what I'm about to tell you may be shocking. It's just really interesting. But like, I'm sure I forget the wording quite quite correct but it might be shocking but there's a new, a new form of adoption that is called open adoption. And here's how four families are coping with this, with this new adoption thing. I don't know like exactly how to say that. And so, we were one of like the four people that they like interviewed and stuff.

9:41I just think it's funny that this is maybe shocking because like, by the time I watched that clip I was like, I don't know probably five or something I saw that I'm like shocking what do you mean doesn't everyone have a birth mom I'm really confused like I just. And then there's Carla came down and they did this cute story of just like, you know, explaining like, oh, Carla's in contact and, you know, and the family is letting her come visit and, and she gets to hold her baby and she gets updates, you know, for birthdays and so my parents. They kept it just like friendly and cordial with her and just, and my mom I think she naturally is kind of a private person. And so, I feel like she didn't want an excess of communication she didn't want to insert herself she just wanted to make sure

10:27that she was happy and she won't I think she probably just wanted to know that she made a good choice. And I think it yeah it felt good for her to get the updates and to like have open communication. So we, from what I remember like I still have these like little like we would exchange photographs, and there would be phone calls I remember like on my birthday growing up I'd always get a phone call from Carla on my birthday. I always get like a Christmas present and you know just, and then my, my grandma Fran Carla's mom. And she was very close to her throughout my whole my life and her whole life. So, that was like a very treasure relationship from having an open adoption, and just I always felt so comfortable and normal around Carla and talking to her and it just

11:12always made me feel so secure like oh yeah like, yeah my birth mom she really one of the best for me so I get this family and I have these sisters and like, doesn't everyone like, it just didn't cross my mind that people. I just thought that's how families were, you know, I just felt very natural. Yeah, and like when I was, when I like one of my first memories I might have been like four, I don't know. And because you know that doctor, after the adoption was final that doctor became my uncle, because the doctor's wife is my mom,

11:44and my uncle Adrian's sister, so like that doctor, you know, and like, we would go visit my mom's sister and, you know, my uncle Adrian, we'd go visit them every once in a while in Seattle. And whenever we'd go visit them we'd also make a detour and go see Carla and Fran. And so, I think I have this memory of visiting them when I was like three or four and meeting Carla's husband. Yeah, I don't, I think she was, I don't remember if Kelsey was there, so she had, my birth mom had three kids after me.

12:19So, yeah anyway, but I just I have like some fun footage also on family video cameras and stuff of just visiting them and just I've always known my grandma, I've always known my aunt and my uncle, you know, from my birth family and it's just, it was just always kind of like, I thought I was special. I'm like, this is, this is great, I get to visit my birth family and the word birth family was a very normal word in my life. I think I remember like the first time learning about birth mom was like, I don't even remember it was like I've always known that word.

12:54So I loved hearing how natural the open adoption relationships in her life felt to Devanie as she shared what that looked like and how that felt how it just felt very organic for her. So I'm thinking of like our experience as adoptive parents having four adopted children. If we hadn't made that kind of the normal and natural aspect or part of our family culture from day one, I can imagine being a little awkward or weird if we all of a sudden started that like in, in later on in their development.

13:31And so, like Devanie our children have known the phrase birth mom, they know who their birth parents are they have relationships with them and grandparents too and I just thought it was so just great for Devanie situation for that just to be her normal from the time she was born. She had all of these people in her life that loved her and supported her and they gave her extra connection. Yeah, it reminds me of back one of our very earliest episodes we talked to Sherrilyn. She's an adoptee. She talked about how she asked her mother.

14:04When she first told her that she was adopted, we get this question often from people saying, when should I tell my child that they were adopted or, yeah, like when's the right time to do that. And what Sherrilyn said was that her mother said, oh, you don't remember when I told you, I'm paraphrasing here. I wish I had her direct quote, but it was really great. You don't remember I told you and I cried when I told you it was really this emotional conversation. And it turns out it was the day that she brought her home. Right. And so Sherrilyn was like, oh yeah, I was like six weeks old or something.

14:35So of course I don't remember this conversation, but it was a normal conversation to have. It started from day one that these conversations were starting because then if you do feel a little awkward having these discussions with your child, you've got a lot of time before they're really comprehending it. Yeah. Figure out how to get over any awkwardness. And one thing that Devanie pointed out that we've seen true in our family too, and we'll talk about this from a different angle in a moment was that her grandma Fran loved her and doted on her and she I think she said the phrase she helped me feel secure and who I was.

15:14And so that was her biological grandma. Yeah. Right. And she had this really open adoption where she saw her birth mom. She saw her grandma and these other family members from her birth family and they were part of her family, which I loved something I really loved as I was listening to this. I remembered later in that episode, Devanie talked about how her grandma Fran was so sweet in showing love and acceptance for her other siblings to and would send them Christmas gifts to and would just be there for them as another person who loved them.

15:48And I remember also Sarah, the person who we heard talking just a little bit ago right, she shared that her birth mom kind of took her sister who was, I think it was sister who was also adopted under her wing and loved her and helped her to because her adoption wasn't as open. Right. And so I love hearing these stories of birth family members who are loving their child right or their grandchild, but they're also loving that adopted family and helping the other children in that family get love to which yeah it just is so beautiful to me and makes me so grateful for the many times that we've seen that in our family too.

16:31So all of this talk about grandparents reminds me a lot of part of our conversation with Dr. Michael Grand that we had not too long ago, and about how the adoptee in a lot of studies. It was shown that they're more well adjusted when adoptive grandparents fully embrace and accept the child into the family. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. So when the adoptive parents parents right when they are when they are really loving and embracing that child and treating them just like they would any other grandchild.

17:08So there's not like a difference right between the adopted child and the biological child in that family unit. In fact, why don't we jump to part of that conversation with Michael and he can say much better than we just said. Nice. So we looked at the differences between those who said my adoption was horrible, didn't work. And those who said it was a listen, I understand the circumstances in which I came into this family but it was a good experience and I'm grateful that I grew up here, because it was it was it worked for me.

17:43And one of the things we found was that the role of adoptive grandparents, grandparents, grandparents, and I must say by the way that in developmental psychology. The literature has almost nothing to say about the role of grandparents in development. This is it. You're only dealing with with the, the caretakers mom and dad, mom and mom dad and dad, whatever the single parent, whatever it happens to be.

18:13They never talk about grandparents, grandparents, provide legitimacy of who's in the family and who isn't. Grandparents provide most of the time unconditional love. And then they send the home, the kid home to be disciplined by the parent. So there's a moment of just that a place where you can relax and breathe. Yeah, like I said he could say it much better than I did but I just thought it was so interesting that the role of the adoptive grandparents, like the role that they actually play, where I mean I wouldn't have really thought about that in our circumstance

18:58or in others that I've heard of. Yeah, I think you can hear me in the background like, like, surprise. Yeah. But I think it's interesting and important for us as adoptive parents and maybe if you're a prospective adoptive parent to take that into consideration as you intentionally parent to your children. Yeah, I think that's really wise. I also was obviously very surprised when he said that but I think it's really important that we do think about how are we educating our family members, are we making sure they're going to be using respectful language around our kids, are they going to be respectful toward our children's birth families, like do they understand the importance of these new aspects of our family culture that might be unfamiliar.

19:43Yeah, and they probably are unfamiliar. Yeah, so we need to have intentional conversations and moments of education. Yeah, and I think we've had many adoptive parents share and some on the podcast, especially when they're adopting trans racially, that they have to sit down and have some difficult conversations with family members because there may be some level of racism that exists in the family or in an individual family member, and they basically say, we're going to have to distance ourselves from you if you can't change some of the perspectives for our child's sake.

20:21Well, and that is our role as parents, it's our job to protect our children. And so as adoptive parents, there's some extra difficult things that you might need to help your child and like protect them from. And so I think that's a really important thing to recognize before you adopt and to make sure you're wholly committed to because every child deserves to be advocated for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One other thing that I would add, and this is kind of a typical situation that I see happening at our house at birthday parties where we have multiple birth parents here, biological grandparents or family members. And one of the things that I love to see is your mom, particularly, and the way that she interacts with the kids birth moms, and just the love that she extends to them and the connection that they create.

21:11And while I think the adoptive grandparents play a big role in the child feeling accepted into the family, I think it also plays a big role when it's not just us that are accepting a birth parent into our family, but when our parents or our brothers or sisters or something. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And it goes both ways, right? Because honestly, our children have incredible birth families, and they're amazing to all of us too. And so we've just been really blessed, but it does take deliberate intentional effort, I think, to get to that point.

21:46Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So at this point, we've talked a lot about relationships and openness, and as much as that is the ideal and what we're hoping can happen for an adoptee, that's not always possible. But even when it is, there's a really important aspect of openness that happens in the walls of the home that the adoptee is raised in. And I think Dr. Abbie Goldberg showed some findings that helped me better understand and maybe be able to in the future better articulate

22:19what openness means. In addition to just having connections with birth family, it also means having an open conversation within our own home. So we usually think about different components of openness. So we think about in person, when we think about written communication, we think about, you know, sort of video, audio, these are all different kinds of adoption, kinds of openness.

22:49And then we think about not just what's happening between adoptive families and birth families, but what's happening within the family. So that is what's called communicative openness. So does the adoptive family talk openly with the child? So we have a little bit of a framework for understanding the things I was just talking about, visits and emails and phone calls. That's what's called structural openness, right? The amount of openness going on between the two families. And then communicative is really about what's happening within the adoptive family.

23:21And we know that both of those things are related to sort of outcomes, but communicative openness is even more clearly related to outcomes. So really across the board, when parents are openly talking to their kids, they're not shying away from questions about their adoption. They're speaking hopefully respectfully about birth family members, but that positively influences the child. The child learns that they can ask questions, they can seek out information, their parents will support them in searching if they need to.

23:52Their parents are fine with them expressing complicated feelings or ambivalence about their adoption and the loss. Everyone's acknowledging that there's loss in adoption. So that openness really benefits folks. And so when we study adoption in these different ways and over time, we can get a better sense of how it's affecting families. I really loved hearing about this concept of these two different kinds of openness. I had never heard this before. We talked with Dr. Goldberg.

24:25Even though there were parts of like what we do, like I've never heard it. It's intuitive, but yeah. I've never heard it described this way. Me too. And so the idea that there are these two different facets to the openness that we're looking for, we might not always have control over what structural openness looks like. We might not be able to have the level of open adoption that we want in terms of how often our children are seeing their birth family. We can't make them come or we can't make visits happen, right?

25:02But we can make sure that we are having dialogues, that it's always part of a safe conversation, right? That our children feel like it's something they can bring up. And so I thought that was so empowering because we do talk to many families who are struggling because they want that open adoption, but they can't force it. They can't force someone else to do that other side of the relationship, right? But it reminds me of something that Devanie said.

25:35I'm pretty sure it was Devanie where she said if you can't have an open adoption, you should at least have an open dialogue going. And it just rings true. So keeping those conversations open, keeping those conversations safe, making sure that you are open to hearing whatever your child is wanting to share with you, even if it might not be your favorite thing to hear, make it a safe space because obviously, ultimately, everything and adoption should be adoptee centric. And that 100% starts with the adoptive parents in the home, making that conversation really safe. Yeah.

26:12Something I feel like we've been talking a lot about in these last few months is the importance of making sure that it's not a competition, right? Adoptive family and birth family are both super important. They're both very valuable and it's not a race. That's something that Amy and Stephanie talked about a lot. Yeah. And I loved that because when we take that insecurity out and make it not threatening, but empowering for adoptees to have these extra people more love in their life, it changes the entire conversation.

26:52Yeah. And I think we have one brief clip from Devonnie that I think sums that really well. I think we'll just jump to that real quick. But I always felt, I was like I belonged in both places. So yeah, I was like a really good feeling of like belonging, you know, and feeling like I had more people to love that loved me. Well, I have had fun thinking back on this last season. Just because I like doing this kind of stuff. I'm kind of nerdy.

27:30In these last 32 episodes, we've talked to five birth moms. We've talked to 18 adoptees. We've talked to 10 foster or adoptive parents, six adoptee adoption professionals. And we've talked to three other adoption professionals, as well as an author, Erica Hayasaki. She's the one who wrote Somewhere Sisters. So this wide spectrum, but overall, much more adoptee centric of who we've talked to in these last few months. And it's really been enriching for me, especially being able to focus so much more on elevating adoptee voices.

28:05Yeah, I've really appreciated the adoptee perspective. I feel like we've had conversations with adoptees in the past, but so many experiences with just, you know, a lot of variety in those experiences. I was able to learn and pull from each of their stories and things that they learned or things that they would recommend for potential adoptive parents or adoptive parents. And I feel like I feel like my focus on raising our children is a lot more about their unique experiences and not trying to help all four of them have the same experience, but really tailoring it to each of them individually.

28:44Yeah. So you think that's a shift that's happened just in these last few months? Yeah. Yeah. I'm grateful to so many people that have shared their thoughts and experiences. Yeah, it's really a vulnerable place to put yourself and I agree. We've really been fortunate to hear from all of our guests this season and yeah, just so lucky, especially to hear from these adoptees who have such a wide variety of experiences. And even some of them have shared that they have siblings who were also adopted and they were raised in the same adoptive home, but have such different perspectives, such different experiences.

29:24It's just impossible to put every person under the same umbrella because every experience is going to be so unique and it really is so enriching to hear different perspectives. Yeah. Well, we hope this content over the last many months has been valuable to you. As Lanette mentioned, the month of November during National Adoption Month will be in your newsfeed, maybe a little bit more frequently, maybe in a little bit shorter episodes, but super excited for that.

29:55And for more of the things we'll be able to share with you in the future. Yes, and we're so so grateful for you. Thank you for being here for listening and for learning with us.

30:29Thank you.

Transcripts are generated automatically and may contain errors.