From Madagascar to France with Christelle Pellecuer

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project, we're the Nelsons. I am Lanette. And I'm Shaun. In recognition of National Adoption Month, we have decided as a podcast family to create a little more content. Lanette and I and Alisha Gallagher, who is our Director of Communications, are doing some extra interviews and conversations with friends to help us in the adoption community learn more. So during the month of November, you can expect that we'll be in your newsfeed a little bit more. We hope that this is valuable to you and that it enriches your National Adoption Month.

0:37Hi, everyone. I'm Alicia Gallagher, Director of Communications at the Open Adoption Project. Today, we welcome Christelle Pellecuer to the podcast. Christelle joins us to share her experience as a transracial adoptee. She was adopted at the age of 10 from Madagascar to France and for much of her young life lived in a white dominant environment. Through her own work to reconnect with her racial and cultural identity, she's now an adoptee coach helping Black adoptees address the hardships they've experienced and begin to embrace their full identities.

1:07Christelle, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation. Yes, yes, I am too. Just to start things off, can you tell us about yourself? What is your story? There's so much already that, you know, just in the intro that we just want to dive into. So we'll just turn it over to you. You can tell us about yourself. OK, so, wow, we'll just start. Let's start from the beginning. I was born in Madagascar, which is a lot of people don't actually know where Madagascar is, but it's one of the highlands of the cross of Africa.

1:47And I was adopted in South of France when I was 10. So I have quite a lot of memory from Madagascar by the time I was adopted. And as you mentioned in my intro, it was quite a wide dominant area in South of France. So it was kind of a culture shock when I arrived in France, because I didn't see many people who looked like me. And the culture was very different in terms of why you eat, the weather,

2:19how you dress, everything, the language. So that was kind of a culture shock in itself to adapt. So, yeah, so it's been a bit of struggle. My teenage years was around even to try to understand where I was and how I fit in with my adoption, but also struggling with a lot of emotion that I didn't know at the time it was linked to my adoption. It's only later on in my adulthood that I understood that some of the things that I was struggling with was linked to adoption,

2:57because I haven't really fully griffed things and emotions along the way. So it's been a journey of rediscovering myself and understanding what my journey has been. But at the same time, I also left France when I was 18 to go to university in the UK, and then I kind of get involved in the black community in the UK. And I did a lot of work recently, especially I've been doing a lot of work around African history.

3:33So I was working with African and Caribbean community. So that really helped me to understand my heritage and my history and learning about African history, African culture. So that's I think that for that process, I really learned to know about my own identity and where I fit in and how to. True, I suppose embrace both the African side of me, but also my upbringing in France and living in the UK at the same time.

4:06So bringing everything into one, because as a transracial adoptee, very often you get stuck in this two worlds and you don't know where we belong. But for me to be able to move forward, I had to reconcile those two worlds to be able to to be who I am today. Yeah, I really like how you said it on your website, too. I'll just read a sentence that stood out to me from that. You said, for a long time, I didn't realize that my adoption caused so much trauma in me.

4:40How old do you think you were when you started to realize that your adoption had caused trauma? It's in my 20s. I mean, I 20, I had a daughter, which in itself was a challenge because I was still trying to figure out who I was. And here I am having to care for a child myself. And I think no seeing a human being that look like you, because for a long time I was in a white environment and I didn't have anyone to connect who just looked like me.

5:18And I think at that moment, all the emotions comes back because the fear that am I good enough to take care of this child? How do I move on? Who am I even to bring this child to the world? How am I going to teach her about our heritage? I don't know anything about that. So it's a lot of questions coming back when she was born. It's I think then I wanted to learn a lot more about my my heritage.

5:51I went back to Madagascar in 2010 and originally it wasn't really to meet up with my family, but it was more about me wanting to reconnect with Africa. But one thing led to another. I did end up going to see my family and I wasn't prepared at all at the time either. And I think that's also pushed all the emotion upwards at the time. And I think as my daughter was growing up, I could see that she was struggling.

6:24It's always like just generational trauma. I could see some of the things I was struggling. She was carrying forward. And so that's where I really needed to question myself. And I cannot allow her to be in that same position, even if she's not adopted. I think she's carrying for myself because I have not healed from my own trauma. So having to to take that journey and question how can I provide the better journey for ourselves?

6:56I think that's really pushed me to question it and to see that actually I've never really grieved. Because the reason I was adopted is my birth mother passed away. So I was put I was left with the Catholic missionary base in the village where I was at the time. And then I went to orphanage before being adopted in France. So I think when I had my daughter and all that emotion came through, then I realised. Wow, I've never really grieved about my mother's death.

7:28I was 10, but yet I didn't have the process of coming to term with that. I've just suppressed all those emotions inside me. And I think my adoptive parents are not prepared either because they didn't really have that much information about what happened. So they didn't really know that I needed to grieve about my mother's loss. But I would say, you know, now, knowing the things that I know, adoption is a separation. So any separation will create some trauma.

8:02So I think even in that itself, even if my mother didn't pass away, there is still separation and there is trauma attached to that. And also, as I grew up, I think then realised, you know, I was 10 years old. So there is already a lot of things that I remember, but some of it I've suppressed again. So I forgot a lot of my childhood in Madagascar, but there's things that I think the only thing that I remember is the traumatic period of my life.

8:33So when there is like natural disaster, we had a cyclone in Madagascar, I vividly remember those things. At five year old, I nearly drowned in a river and I vividly remember those things as well. So those are the things that actually I have not even processed. So it's normal that now all this fear and all these emotions and I don't really know who I am. And on top of that, with the adoption, I suppose, I was in.

9:04My parents, you know, the first year I arrived in France, my mum had me home schooled me. So she was very present. But I think there was no preparation on how. I think because they are not used to having a black community around them, so they were not prepared to receive the black child and care for her. So there was no preparation on how to support her into a white community and a white culture.

9:36So for me, I felt that I had to suppress everything that I was and suppress all my my own culture, because I didn't speak my own language anymore. I didn't dress the same way as I used to dress in Madagascar. I didn't eat the same food, but none of those were explained to me. And I think I took those quite hard and suppressed who I was for 10 years. So then they had it to be assimilated to this new culture and become this new person and follow these new rules.

10:08It's the same. My in Madagascar was raised quite liberal. You know, I was up to the age of 10, I would run around in the street. I live in France. It's a very structured upbringing. I was in a Catholic family and going to church with something I was not used to to be doing. So I think a lot of those then had it to almost to comply to this new life and behave a very different way, not to to create trouble,

10:39as it was for the family and to be the model child in a way. But I know it's also conflicting inside me. And I think those are the emotions that I didn't know at the time that was created by the adoption itself. The process just make all those emotions clash. Yeah. Well, as you're describing all of that, it sounds like it would be hard to find room to actually be able to grieve the loss of your mother

11:09and your culture because you have so many things that are present that you're having to cope with the different food and the different dress and the people looking different. Those are all in your face 100 percent of the time. And there's just not this this room unless it's really intentional to grieve these unseen losses as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you said that you reconnected with your birth family. What was what was that experience like?

11:42A roller coaster. I mean, there is the emotion of like the happiness of reconnecting with different just going back to where me and my mother lived. So going, you know, standing in that compound where we lived was just so amazing because I still remember things. And just like all the emotion floating of memories of being in that space when I was a child and seeing my mother in my mind and the house,

12:16that was all very overwhelming. And also because, you know, everybody was so welcoming in a way, you know, when I when I find my uncle, it was just the big party. You know, they had dancing and cooking as soon as they realized I was back. Were you in your 20s when when you went back there or were you? I was in my 20s, late 20s. Yeah. And but the aftermath of that has been the difficult part because.

12:54People have not seen it for many years and suddenly they know you're in the West and, you know, there is this image that, you know, in the West, you've got money. And so when I was back in the UK after the trip, it was, you know, all the communication was about trying to support them. They wanted my niece to come and stay with me. And I was a single mother at the time, overwhelmed with my own responsibility as a mother and in the everyday life.

13:29And I. I couldn't see myself having to welcome my niece and have her to stay with us. And I think they couldn't understand it. So the relationship can deteriorate over time. And I had to distance myself because it was just too much for me. But also, again, it creates a lot of emotion because then there is the guilt and you should be able to support your family.

14:01You have a better life than them. Yeah. And you have this desire to be able to support them. But knowing what your own limits are, that would be very difficult. Exactly. So it's it's been like a bittersweet moment just reconnecting. And I am I'm still quite distant. I mean, my my brother passed away in Madagascar last year. And again, that was a very difficult moment because I decided to keep my distance.

14:36But at the same time, I was like, oh, you would have been the last person I could really reconnect and really understand my story. Because we lived together and you knew my mother better than anyone else. So for me to to get the the the question I had, I think was the best, the closest of the person that I could have asked. And now he's gone. So that was difficult. Pardon? Was he an older brother? Yes.

15:07Yes. He stayed in Madagascar. So we we kind of when I was adopted, we lost contact. But when I went back, we kind of reconnected, although we didn't see each other because we were in a different part of the islands. But we kind of kept contact. But still me keeping distance. We didn't really become that close at the same time. But there was that regret of not reconnecting at the same time. It seems like I don't know if that's something that people outside the adoption community consider a lot when they see when they know someone who's adopted.

15:45I think people are very encouraging and supportive of them finding their birth family. But they might not always know what's going on in the mind of an adoptee, of you're opening a new box of opportunity. It could be wonderful. And there can be these great connections. But then, like in your experience, new trauma could happen that inspires new feelings of current situations with the family that makes it hard to cope with now.

16:15When before you've sort of dealt with the past, but then you're opening it all up again if you reconnect with birth family. So that is I appreciate you sharing that because that's not often talked about. Yeah. And I think I mean, as an adoptee as well, we, you know, we create all sorts of narrative in our head before that reunion, because, you know, we've got this wonderful idea that is going to be so beautiful, reconnecting with our birth family. And like you say, some people have had really beautiful story of reunion, but it's not always that straightforward in many cases.

16:54And that's why I say I wasn't prepared, because in my head, if I was going to be reconnected to my family, it was going to I saw it very differently to the way it happened. I mean, looking back, I don't regret meeting them all because. I probably would not have gone to have this reconnection if I didn't if it didn't happen the way it happened. So I am glad I still managed to go and meet my uncles in very different surrounding that what I've been raised in the West and

17:32being able to see that, you know, that moment was so welcoming and I keep that memory very dear. So I don't regret it. There's a lot of emotion that came after that for sure that needed to be processed. I think even if I had to do it again, I will do it again because I still feel like I had a connection with my family instead of being kept in the dark forever.

18:02And also because part of it is when I went back and met my uncle, my uncle didn't even realize I was adopted. And that has been a big thing in my whole life that my whole family, my mother passed away and my whole family abandoned me. Nobody came for me. Whereas and that is a question we still not resolve in my adoption story today is what's happened between my mother left me at the Catholic missionary and me being adopted.

18:33So why was I put into an orphanage when my family was still living in the village? So there's a lot of that. I don't have any answer at the moment. And people were at the Catholic missionary at the time of all passed away now. So I would get a straight answer to that. But so that's kind of some of the problem I had around abandonment. So I am glad if I didn't go there, I would still feel today that my whole family abandoned me.

19:06But that wasn't the case. So it's yeah, it's you have to take I think for me the way I saw it is I take the good side of that journey and keep that. And, you know, everything is life is not always straightforward. So just take the good side of it and move with that. Yeah. Was your adoptive family supportive of you reconnecting with your birth family? Yes or no. So I received a letter from my aunt's sister from Madagascar when I was 15.

19:43And again, I don't know how she managed to find my address because they're not supposed to have known where I've gone. So this again, there is that not very clear line what's happened, how she managed to discover that. And at the time when I told my parents, it's my sister was writing, they were very cautious and probably for the good reason that they wanted to protect me, that I don't get into a scam or something.

20:16So I suppose at the time I didn't really push it. I just like, OK, maybe it's better that I don't follow this up, because at the time I didn't even realize I had a half sister. So in my mind, it could have been anybody else. And when my parents saying to be cautious, I was like, OK, I'm just leaving it. But I don't know. I think, like I said, when my daughter was born and I was asking a lot of questions that when then I decided to respond to that letter.

20:46And by the time I was, you know, it was in my 20s and I was old enough to do the steps by myself, so I didn't really ask, I suppose, for permission from my parents to just take the steps. Yeah, so I think it just naturally just went in. But they didn't. I suppose they didn't like from their own initiative to say, oh, let's go and find your birth family. So that's not that process. So growing up, when you had questions about your birth family or your your culture or your your story from the first 10 years of your life, what were what were those conversations like?

21:28Did you feel like your parents did the best they could to answer those questions? Or did you feel like things were, you know, your feelings were put aside because it was uncomfortable conversations? What was what was that part of it like for you and your parents? We didn't really have this conversation that the interesting thing about it is that's why I say it's like it's almost like I had to assimilate myself to everything. So it's almost like that part of my life is completely forgotten.

22:02I think, you know, some of this conversation might have happened when it's time to do my hair, because I remember my mother was good enough to find a black hairdresser and drive two hours away in the bigger town and go to an African hairdresser. But even that wasn't we didn't really have any deep conversation. She would drive me there and pick me up after my hair was done.

22:33And that's that was not right at the beginning. I think she was taking me to a white dresser for a long time until realizing that my hair was not taking it. Eventually, I had to find an alternative. But also once a year, we used to have like a reunion with all the children that has been adopted from the same agency in France. So for most of my teenage route, they suppose we had that kind of connection.

23:06So I will meet all of those children in that process. So I guess my my parents still have a little bit of advice, I suppose, where to go from the agency in terms of what to do care. And and at this time, the agency would bring like a present back from Madagascar to a lot of the children or there would be like a store where my parents would buy T-shirts and bags from Madagascar, which are some of them still have many enough. But those were the I think the only time you would have kind of mentioned about the culture side.

23:43We were not that embedded in learning about the culture. Yeah, there there is a book that I just finished reading. Maybe you've read it, too. It's called Black is the Body by Emily Bernard. It is excellent. It is a book of essays by an English professor at what university is she in? Let's see at the University of Vermont. And she's black. She's married to a white man and they adopted two girls from from Africa.

24:20I believe it was Ethiopia. And she writes about the story that she tried to tell her daughters about, but just about their adoption story, because not a lot was known. And so I want to read part of it to you because this is coming from her perspective as an adoptive parent. And I want to know for you as an adoptee, would this kind of narrative be helpful for transracial adoptees?

24:50Let me find it here. It says this is what she would tell her daughters. You are adored on two continents. You have two worlds, two countries, two languages and two stories about how you came to be. And she said, so far, the strategy seems to be working. My daughters belong to a history preserved in the recesses of their minds and hearts, in their bodies, too, perhaps down to the level of the cell where the girls identities reside in the worlds between past and present here and there.

25:21That is a story that they will make up on their own. Do you have any thoughts or reactions to that narrative that a parent could tell to an adoptee? Yeah, I think I believe that's a very positive message and narrative to because they're still trying to empower their daughters that, you know, this is where you're coming from and this is where you are now, so the past and the present. And that's what I was saying at the beginning, you know, how to reconcile both my African side and my Western upbringing, because it cannot be one or the other, even if you want to, because those things happen in your life.

26:07And I think if you get that imprinted in you from early on, I think you will help your identity that, you know, you are this African child and you've been raised here and you're not just a Western entity, you know, it's more of you from your past that make up who you are. So I feel that is important and I really respect all the parents of transracial children who make the effort to talk to their children about their cultural background and also to surround themselves of people who might look like their children and go to events that are run by a Black community in the case of a Black children.

26:59So really embedding the children in both lives, so, you know, if they're Black into the Black community, but also involve them in their White community. So having both sides, so the children can go up to see that, you know, it's okay to be both in those both worlds and they can from early on navigate those two worlds, because in my case, having been in for so long in the White space,

27:29when I become when I went to the UK and realize, oh my goodness, I'm not in the village anymore, everything is so different, as Black people, people are going to tell you things that I've never heard before about race. So and some of it is not nice that being thrown at you and you don't understand those things. It's again, that's hard to the trauma in itself, because you're not again not prepared to the White world that, you know, you've been so protected and in this little bubble of a White community, for my case, in this little bubble of South of France where you don't really see much diversity.

28:07And when I get to places like London, it's very different and you have to navigate very differently. That was, again, another new thing of to navigate in itself. So I think if you from the beginning, if you encourage your children to navigate those two worlds, you will make the life a lot easier when they grow up. When you say when you go to the UK, you go to London and you realize you have to navigate everything differently, can you give examples of what that means for you?

28:44Well, in South of France, it's, you know, it's a village. I mean, you don't you see the same faces all the time. In London, it has so many different nationalities and culture around and it's even things like, you know, some part of London, like you go to South London, where it's a predominantly Black community. I didn't feel comfortable, even though I was Black, I didn't feel comfortable to be in that space because it was so foreign for me at the time.

29:21I'm so for me, I was just comfortable in the white space. And this is where the contradiction is for us as a transracial adoptee, because we are in a Black body, but we navigate in a white space. So when you put us in a Black space, we don't know how to behave or to to walk because we never had that learning. People, those two spaces function very differently. And, you know, I remember even when after moving to the UK for several years and moved to South London,

29:58I still feel like I didn't know enough, like going to the market, there is food and vegetables I didn't even know that I should be knowing. And those things you feel like, you know, it's that sense of like, I'm not white enough to be white and I'm not Black enough to be Black. And, you know, I'm too Black to be white and I'm not Black enough to be Black. So that sense of like, where do I fit?

30:28I can't really fit in any space. So it's very difficult to navigate. How about now? It sounds like you've had some time to live in these two different spaces and to confront some of the trauma and the difficulty of having those separate identities and trying to merge them together. So how are you, how do you feel about it now? Do you feel comfortable in both spaces? Have you found this settledness or do you think you're still learning and searching a little bit?

31:04No, I think I'm comfortable now, but it's been a long journey, I would say, and I think I couldn't do it. For me, it was important I go through that journey if I was going to support other adoptees. And it's that reconciliation, being able to feel comfortable with the two sides of me. And it's also about being comfortable in your own skin. I think that self-worth is so important and having a lot of compassion for yourself, for your journey and accepting acceptance is important.

31:42So this is my past. It hasn't been beautiful. There's been beautiful moments, but it hasn't always been beautiful and accepting that so you can move forward. And really taking what is good from both sides that really fit with me to be who I am today and just let go of the things that doesn't really serve me or doesn't resonate with me. And that is OK, even if it's those things that, for example, the Catholic religion, I was really raised in the Catholic religion and that for a long time was almost trapping me.

32:22I didn't feel like I didn't want to upset my parents not to be Catholic anymore. So for a long time, I didn't know how to go about it. But now I feel comfortable to say that, you know, I believe in God, but I am not a practicing Catholic. And that has been freeing to be able to say that to myself. So it's finding this place where what is comfortable for you and letting go of the things that are not comfortable from both sides, from your past also, from where you've been brought up and really just keep the thing that is comfortable.

33:02And that is what is going to make you and build your own identity around what makes you happy and make you feel comfortable. Have you been able to have conversations like this with your parents? We we tried, which I mean, it's it's been a long journey because we had to about the religion, for example, because it's such a big element of their life.

33:33So I had to explain why I was stepping away from that religion because it didn't. And it's not to disrespect them. I had to explain it's not the lack of disrespect or because I was not grateful the way they raised me. It just it didn't fit with me. And if I continue to live in that space, I will make myself sick because I wasn't happy in that space. And I think it was difficult for them to accept. But at the end of the day, if you know, if you love your child, you allow them to be where they are.

34:12And I think they come to town. They know if I go to France and stay with them, I'm not going to go to church with them. So I think they come to town with that and a lot of different things around that. But it's and I completely understand it from their point of view. They've also been raised into that space and that's all they know. So it's normal that that's what they gave to their children as well. So it's I know they're coming from a good space, but it's yeah, it's reminding people that, you know, the children are their own person as well.

34:52So they might not grow exactly how you want them to be. I realize I didn't ask. You said children. Did you have brothers and sisters? So, well, it's my friend, my parents, first parents. So there was about five or six foster children in the house. Then they had two of their own biologic children. And then there was two of us adopted. So it's just a big house. Oh, wow. So how many kids all together?

35:24Well, because the foster children would come and go. So it was never always the same. But, you know, it's it's it's going between five and ten at a time. So it was a yes, there's always a lot of people around. And were were there other black children in the home ever? Yes. So my there was another girl was adopted from Madagascar. So we she came after me. We're not blood related, but we are from the same country.

35:54And what was that like? How old were you when she was adopted as well? I think I was about 12. So a couple of years after I've arrived. Yeah, that's interesting, because our journey is very different from mine. And that's again, I would say to parents who have children, you know, the children might not live that experience the same way, even though for us, we are both black, both from the same country.

36:26But we lived the adoption very differently. And part of it, I think, is because my sister stayed in South of France and, you know, in that small, small space. And as I went to the UK and go to the big city, lived a very different experience. So she it's what we call the complaints adoptee. She was she was happy with her adoption. Well, as for me, I had all the trauma.

36:57But again, I would say, you know, she was a baby, she was two when she was adopted. I was 10. Again, we have a completely different experience. So, again, I suppose it's normal if we act in a very different way. But yeah, so it's not always the same experience for two siblings that have been raised in the same family. So you said she was your parents adopted her when she was two? Yes. OK, so then you were adopted. She was already gotcha. OK. Yeah.

37:32Yeah. OK. What moments or experiences have you had that you could share that have helped you heal? Are there specific times that you remember having a realization that things are better now than they were? Or I found somebody who understands me. I feel like I'm healing. Can you share any of those moments with us? Yeah, I mean, it's been quite true.

38:02I think the birth of my daughter has definitely made me realize there was issues that I needed to address. And I think from then on, it was just trying to find tools to help me heal. And what can I do to make myself feel better? So I have tried so many different modalities and, you know, therapy. I've done some wakey and kinesiology, all sorts of modalities.

38:32But I think I think going to Madagascar has been definitely it was hard, but I know healing is not easy. It has been a defining moment because, like I say, I had this awareness that I was abandoned by my family, so I could then accept that. So that was a very big moment for me. What else? I think I did a whole course around self-compassion, and that has been really like a game changer because.

39:15I didn't realize how much I did my it's almost like your self-hatred, you know, until I put some self-compassion in myself. The way I talk to myself, I didn't realize that I was so negative with myself. And also, during that process, I had to reconnect with my inner child and really learning to love that little, that 10 year old me who arrived in France because she was lost.

39:49She had nobody really to be there for her. So having to reconnect with that child and really be compassionate and feeling love, I think that's really helped me because then I could then accept myself as an adult. And it's that acceptance of saying it's OK, you are where you're supposed to be. Things will be OK. So I think, yeah, I've always had mentors and coaches along the way as well.

40:19So I think that also helps. I've not always been in the space of adoption, but I would say people were very aware of trauma informed practices. And that's really helped me along the way. So it's different modality. Yeah. And with you reconnecting with your 10 year old self, it's like you're giving her the language that you didn't have at the time. You know, your parents didn't have that language necessarily.

40:52I think adoption in general has changed a lot over the decades. I like to think there's a little bit more awareness generally around mental health and supporting adoptees. It still has a long, long way to go. But for your parents to not have language to give you, you're giving her that language so that you can heal. So I think that language is really important because, like I said, when you grow up, you don't have the language. You don't understand what's going on. And even it's just putting a language.

41:26What I'm feeling is shame and guilt, just understanding, putting something against it then. OK, so I know what this is now. How can I walk around that and heal that part of me? And I think it's again, that is it. We've been so fragmented for the adoption and all the trauma. It's like we separate, we disconnecting with our body. And that is another thing that really helped me, I suppose, is reconnecting to my body because I was for a long time, I was disconnecting.

42:00So doing a lot of movements, movement work has been really, really useful for me to come back to my own body and reconnect to all this different part that I've let go because of the trauma. I think it was kind of a survival mode and hiding, just a hiding place. So I wasn't really fully me. So having to then reconnect and reappropriate those different parts has been really important.

42:32Yeah. I want to ask a little bit about your experience as an adoptee coach. But before I do that, I want to ask a little bit about advice that you have for parents of transracial adoptee. Do you think that it would you say it should be a requirement or at least like strongly encourage that they should live in a diverse city? Or do you think that there are parents who can succeed with their with their transracial adoptee in a predominantly white community?

43:08What are your thoughts on supporting an adoptee who has been disconnected from so much more than just their birth family? I personally, I feel parents should be surrounded by diversity and people who look like the child because they didn't the children didn't ask about being moved around. And very often it's the child who's being made uncomfortable.

43:39But if you are willing to adopt a child, I feel that you should also put yourself in that discomfort of learning that child's background and diversity. So I know a lot of family would say it's not they're not familiar with that community and it's it's not comfortable to move into that space. But you are asking your child to move into that space, to your own space. So why can't you do the same thing for yourself?

44:09And, you know, I always use this analogy to a lot of people and I think it might be controversial, but I always say to people, imagine yourself being taken away to Africa, disconnected from everything that is white and being taken into a black country and don't have any connection with the white community. How would you feel? Wow. And just sit with that and see what's how you feel.

44:43And I think that is an important thing, because if you are able to see how you'd feel in that community, if it was you was taken in the other reverse situation, then I think you will be able to understand a little bit more what your child is feeling, being taken away from everything that they know. It's being stripped out of their own identity and culture. We see it from the other way so often that, like in your situation, from Madagascar to France,

45:18it's like from Africa to Europe or to the US. But you're right. If you think about it for just a few seconds, you would understand it instead of just thinking like putting all the support and praise on the adoptive parents, which it is a great thing, but to recognize the difficulty in the trauma that comes with it. So any other things that you would say to parents of a transracial adopted child?

45:52I think it's about education as well. I think, you know, sometimes parents go into the adoption for many different reasons and maybe thinking that, oh, it's going to be the same as raising my own child that I've given birth to, but it's not going to be the same. And even if it's a baby, you know, from the work I did and from all the podcasts I've interviewed, quite a lot of adoptees, even as a baby, that child is still being separated from his mother.

46:25There is still going to be trauma, no matter at what age that separation is. So having that understanding and educating yourself around trauma and anything else to do with the child, I think it's really important for that relationship that you're going to build with your child. So if you can prepare yourself enough in advance, I know some agencies do prepare, but not always the case. But I would say for the parents to do their own work.

46:57And also, that's the other thing I think is important. Doing your own work in terms of growth, I think you need to be if you've had some trauma in the past, because that also can bring up your own trauma later on by bringing a child into your own work. So that's part of the preparation that, you know, make sure that you've also done your own work, that you're not going to be triggered later on, and that can also impact on the child, your relationship with the child.

47:32So, yeah, preparation, I think, is important in terms of cultural, in terms of practicality, material things that you can bring to the child. I mean, for example, in my parents' house, there was nothing that decoration, for example, little things like that. We didn't have nothing that looked like cultural that was related to my own country. So there's nothing that I could relate even in the house, so even little things like that that you could bring in your house will be helpful.

48:08Yeah, that's good advice, because the physical environment reflects the people that are in the house, and you want to bring in elements of the culture so that everybody feels at home. So it feels like a new family because you're bringing in someone who is not from your same background. So as an adoptee coach, what are some common themes that you encounter with your work with these adoptees?

48:42I think that definitely around self-worth is a big one, because, like I said earlier, a lot of the adoptees try to assimilate themselves to the family, and very often they don't want to be making too much noise, not to make feel too big or too different. So they minimize themselves, and I think that really impacts the self-worth as they grow on. So I've also got a lot of issues around boundaries, and that again is linked to the self-worth,

49:17because we tend to be people-pleaser by trying to not disturb people too much, then we become people-pleaser, and then we don't know how to set boundaries. So that's a big one, I think. The guilt and shame as well. Would you say that one more time? I interrupted you, I'm sorry. No, no, I was going to say the guilt and the shame, that comes back very often,

49:47because in the environment where you're being adopted, very often people don't understand why you're feeling the way you're feeling, and they're like, oh, we should be feeling grateful to have been adopted, your life would not be the same. So then you feel guilty because, oh, I'm not feeling grateful. And that brings shame as well, because, oh, I'm so different to everybody else.

50:18Yeah, it's an heavy emotion that a lot of adopters carry with them, and I think that's a spot. I mean, as a coach, I don't go into all those deep traumatic issues, because that is part of what they do in therapy. As a coach, I would only take them from where they are today to where they need to be in their life, whereas a therapist would take them from where they are and look back, trying to heal all the trauma from the past.

50:49So it's a very different part of the journey, I would say, between a therapy and a coach. What else would come back? I think the relationship has been coming back a lot. We are having difficulty building a healthy relationship because of the abandonment and rejection that we've experienced in our journey. We don't know how to feel safe in a relationship.

51:22And very often also we self-sabotage ourselves because we are so afraid of being abandoned that we will reject people, even if it's in our relationship, because we've got that fear running through our veins that someone is going to abandon ourself again. I've heard some of what you've described before, that the people-pleasing is very common, sabotaging relationships. It's almost like there's this safety mechanism that if I can force the worst scenario outcome, then I'm sort of in control in a way.

52:01And it's these patterns that have developed in order to feel safe. And it's just, you don't even realize that you're doing it until you talk to someone like you or talk to a therapist. Yeah. So one other question about your coaching experience. Have you coached adoptees in the UK and the US or pretty much exclusively in the UK?

52:31At the moment, I've only been in the UK and Europe. But with my podcast, I've been speaking with a lot of people from the US, interestingly. Yeah, I just wonder if the themes that come up are different, if the Black experience in the US as an adoptee is different than in the UK or in Europe. I think the team are very similar, at least from what I understand from the podcast.

53:01I think it's the team that I've just mentioned, everybody tend to say they've been struggling with those. But I would say I think the Black experience in America is very different to the Black experience in Europe. So, again, that would tell us a nuance about how people would live their adoption, because it's a different history again. And also a lot of the Black adoptee I've spoken to in America, it's domestic adoption, it's not transracial, transnational adoption.

53:33So there is a little bit of nuance in their experience that they have not been flown from a completely different culture. They were still in America being adopted in America. So they don't necessarily have to deal with the cultural side of things, but I would say they still face the racial inequality and that kind of racism. So those still come up.

54:03Yeah, OK. Yeah, at the beginning when you were describing you lost your family and your food and your culture, even the way people dress is different. The whole environment is different. And if it's a domestic adoption, the difference wouldn't be as drastic as as drastic as what you experienced, definitely. So is there anything else that we haven't covered that you would want to share with us?

54:33Good question. I don't know. No, I think the only thing I would say is to parents who are thinking or either in the journey of already having adopted or thinking about adopting is really think about the child first. I know you are there, but remember that the child have not asked for any of this.

55:04They're just being put in the process and. It might be small and then not realize it at the time, but when they grow up, the issue will catch them up. So I've the understanding now that there's going to be issue that's coming up with the child is it's you know, I don't think there's any perfect adoption, like there's any perfect parenting or perfect upbringing.

55:36So I think that's in the back of your mind is I think it's important because that will help the relationship of the child. And having the open communication for the adoption journey is also very important. And yeah, I think that's what I would say. Awesome. Well, Crystal, thank you so much for sharing your advice, your insight and your story with us. It's been awesome to talk to you today. Thank you so much. I really enjoy meeting you and talking to you.

56:08So thank you for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. We hope you found this content helpful and enjoyable. If so, we'd love for you to share it with a friend or an acquaintance that it might help. We'd also love to connect with you on social media or on Instagram at Open Adoption Project, or you can look us up on our website, openadoptionproject.org. Thanks so much for being here with us and learning with us.

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