Episode 302 Podcast > Full Transcript
Adoption! The Long View with Suzanne Bachner and Maggie Gallant
Lori Holden, Greeting:
This is Adoption: The Long View, a podcast brought to you by adopting.com. I'm your host, Lori Holden, author of The Open Hearted Way to Open Adoption. Join me as we take a closer look at what happens after you adopt your child and begin parenting them. Your adoption journey isn't over then; it's just beginning.
In this podcast, you'll hear from a variety of thought provoking and influential guests as we help you make the most of your adoption journey. Like any trip worth taking, there will be ups and downs and challenges. Here's what you're going to wish you'd known from the start. Ready? Let's go.
Lori Holden, Intro:
We talk a lot on the show about attunement in adoptive parenting, which is the process of intuiting in the moment what your child needs from you. The first step for doing so is to understand as best you can the perspective of an adoptee. You won't get this from listening to one adoptee’s story or two or 10, but to many, many. As you do listen to adoptees and their experiences of being adopted, you will begin to spot patterns, commonalities and have Ahas that can help you hone your ability to feel with your child, setting you up to respond more appropriately and with connection in those crucial moments where connection is called for, but may not come easily.
To that end, I've invited two guests today who have made it their life's work to express their experiences as adoptees through plays and other creative endeavors, as well as to elevate the voices of other adoptees.
This is a gift to US adoptive parents for absorbing experiences through theatre as one way to feel alongside a character, in this case, adoptees in starring roles.
This is why I'm so pleased to have Maggie Gallant and Susanne Buechner with us today. Both of our guests were placed for adoption during what is called the Baby Scoop era, which could be a whole other episode. It was a time in which things were secret and shameful and closed, which may seem far removed from today's adoption landscape. But I would caution you not to discount their experiences as being irrelevant to your child's in the present day.
Even though we've been moving away from shame and secrecy and toward truth and transparency, there are many facets of the adoptee experience that are common, no matter the era.
So, let me first tell you about Maggie. British born playwright and performer, Maggie Gallant, writes for for stage on issues of identity, belonging, and family dynamics. She created the critically acclaimed solo play Hot Dogs at the Eiffel Tower, which chronicles her lifelong search for her French papa. Gallant's most recently, Betwixt and Between, explores the complexities of the Adoption Ghost Kingdom, an imaginary place where adopted people can live out the “what ifs” of who and what they might have been.
Lori:
Welcome, Maggie.
Maggie Gallant:
Thank you. Very happy to be here.
Lori:
So, great to have you.
Susanne Bachner is an award winning playwright and director and an adoptee and adoptee rights advocate. Her acclaimed play, The Good Adoptee, has toured the London International Fringe Festival and all over the U.S., including a seven-week, nine-city Connecticut tour to support the vital and now successful legislative efforts of Access Connecticut and to the 400-seat SJCC in Seattle.
Recent global virtual presentations include the launch of the National Association of Adoptees and Parents and the Our Kids Benefit at the Shubert. Other adoption-themed plays include Alexandra Triptych, Alice through the Looking Glass, Twin Studies, We Call Her Benny, and Brilliant Mistake.
Suzanne is the artistic director of JMTC Theatre, which partners with nonprofits to combine art and advocacy to raise both funds and awareness. I'm so excited to have you here today, Suzanne.
Suzanne Bachner:
I'm so excited to be with you both.
Lori:
Thanks so much, you guys. So, let's start with some brief introductions about becoming and being an adoptee, and where you are in regard to all of your parents. Maggie, would you start?
Maggie:
Yes, this is always hard to summarize for anybody, perhaps especially for us. I was born in England at the end of 1965. My mother, Sandy, was 21. So, she was not particularly young. Her parents did not support her being unmarried. So, she was in a mother and baby home. She gave birth to me. We stayed together for six weeks and then I was adopted by the Church of England Children's Society.
I never knew that I was adopted. I was never told because the advice that the organizations at that time gave was, “Give your child a good home and a good Christian upbringing, and she'll be fine and never need to know anything else.” So, that's how I spent my earliest years.
And it was only because of my sort of natural curiosity, in the sense that I didn't really fit in, that I went around the house and looked for the secrets. And I did. I found all of my adoption papers in a drawer of my mom's desk. Never talked to her about it. Never till the day she died did we ever discuss it, but she knew that I knew and I knew.
And so, I did manage to find my birth mother, Sandy, but it was a means to an end because what I really wanted to do was find my French papa. And as you say, that's the story of my play, Hot Dogs at the Eiffel Tower. And it was simply because the way the Children's Society had written that information about my parents was that the baby's father wanted to marry Sandy, and she decided against it, and that's why we never stay together. So, as an 11-year old child, that's what I internalized. That's what I believed. I was full of resentment for my birth mother and went on this quest to find my father.
And it was a quest that took me into my late forties, when I did find him. And he was not French. And sadly, he had passed away, Sandy, my birth mother also passed away the same year, that was 2014. And my father, my adoptive father, died in ’97, and my adoptive mother died just a year ago; last December.
So, it has been a very long and strange journey. And I get to this point now of great, great understanding, but great regret for the things that were never said.
Lori:
So, on one hand, it sounds like you've had access to all four of your puzzle pieces, but you hadn't had a chance to make them fit together?
Maggie:
Exactly.
Lori:
You had to cover that span.
Maggie:
Yeah, they're all just separate pieces. So, I think even though I had access to that, and it is different to this country, I was able to get my original birth certificate. But there were so many lies told in that original information that it sent me on entirely the wrong track. And I have a lot of anger about that because very little of it was actually true.
Lori:
And am I reading it correctly that your adoptive mom didn't tell you the truth about your adoption, of course, and that your birth home didn't tell you the truth about your birth father?
Maggie:
She wouldn't tell me. She said she didn't know. Yeah.
And then, of course, so much. You know, when I eventually discovered the truth and that none of this was true, that she had wanted to keep me and he wasn't the one who begged her to stay. I mean, all of these things that as an adult, you know couldn't be true. But when you're 11 years old, you don't question and you just carry that through and you keep that narrative going. And it creates a lot of loss.
Lori:
Yeah, the loss and the shame. And I'm also feeling the lack of trust; like the people who you would want to trust the most, they hadn't been giving you the truth.
Maggie:
It's a sad story for the Mr. and Mrs. Gallant as well, because they did exactly what they were told to do. They were all followers and they ended up with none of us really able to bond the way we would have wanted to.
Lori:
And if they'd been better advised, it might have gone very differently.
Maggie:
Exactly. What terrible advice to give people.
Lori:
Thank you for sharing all that with us, Maggie.
Maggie:
Thank you.
Suzanne, how about you?
Suzanne:
I am a domestic adoptee. I was born, raised and adopted in New York City through the Louise Wise Services, the famous agency of – or infamous agency of twin separation in Three Identical Strangers. And I actually have two sets of interfaith parents; couples who made me or adopted me.
And I was actually in Louise Wise because I was given the wrong information as well. I knew that my mom is – My mom, and I'm saying my adoptive mom, is Catholic and my dad is Jewish. And so, when they went to Louise Wise to adopt me, they got a kid who has also interfaith parents. My birth parents, I knew were interfaith, but it was the other way around. So, my birth dad is Jewish, my birth mom Presbyterian, and she converted to Judaism, which is actually really why it's usually by the mother. And that's actually why I was in Louise Wise, but I didn't know that until years and years and years later.
So, my parents also got a sort of faulty instruction that was just very typical at that time of being very open about the adoption – I always knew that I was adopted. I knew from just the beginning of time that I was adopted. It was never like an event that I – it was never a discovery or something. I learned. That was my world.
So, adoption was like something that was, I would say, celebrated and held in a certain way in my household that was sort of positive and very open. But the paradigm that sort of dogged the family, I feel, was just this sort of replacement parentage. That there was two sets of parents; the adoptive parents. And I never call my parents, by the way, adoptive parents. I just call them mom and dad. Parents like they, you know, because they were my central world. And still are. And still are, thankfully.
So, they raised me in the sense of like, “Oh, adoptions very open. But it was as if you were born to me.” And that was mirrored by the laws in New York, which were only until two years ago, we just celebrated the opening of New York babies, now adult people, getting access to or obtaining or being able to obtain original birth certificates. But as I was growing up, that was totally closed.
And the way the law is really mirrors the way that Louise Wise told my parents to raise me, which was like, “Okay, you're the parent. It's as if she was born to you.”
I was in foster care for 10 weeks. My birth mom was actually told that I was going directly to my parents and sort of she was holding out. She was trying to make a family with my birth dad. This is all newer-in-adulthood information that I acquired. So, she was sort of pushed a little bit, “Please sign the paper so that your kid can go to her parents.”
And so, she thought I was going directly there, but I actually was in foster care for about 10 weeks. So, I don't know where I am in my life thread of history now.
But basically, my parents really did things the right way, in terms of very diligently as earnest adoptive parents. But as I found out later on, and I was a late searcher. I did search and I was a much later searcher because my parents had a lot of medical issues as I was growing up and I didn't feel like there was space for me to look into that and really look at that.
But as I searched, I actually did find my birth father's family, and sadly he had passed. And I also found my birth mom and her family. And I have been in reunion with them for over a decade or just a decade. Sadly, my birth mom and my grandmother, her mom, both passed away in about the last year.
Lori:
I just appreciate the both of you brought up the – I think it's true that most adoptive parents do the best that they can with what they have. And you love your adoptive parents and you know you can love them in spite of some of the bad direction that they had.
Or it maybe wasn't bad; I don't think anybody was intentionally trying to make this harder than it needed to be. We just didn't know. We didn't know about brain science. We didn't know that the way we had set it up was going to lead to some dysfunction for people, for not being able to live with that as if you were born to them. That's a tall order. Sometimes that's a tall order in biological families, too.
Suzanne:
Yeah.
Lori:
Let's talk about your work.
Maggie. I recently attended an online reading of your play, Betwixt and Between. And I loved it, by the way.
Maggie:
Thank you.
Lori:
Can you tell us about that play and how it came about?
Maggie:
Yes. So, I had written Hot Dogs at the Eiffel Tower, which was my solo show and my personal experience. And I'd written that very first draft in 2006. And 10 years later, I was still telling that story.
But I wanted to write a fictional story rather than my own because I wanted to explore this idea of the Ghost Kingdom. And especially because around that time, this is us. The television show had included The Ghost Kingdom into Randall's storyline. So, people were sort of a little more interested in it and had heard the terminology. And I had never heard a name given for it until I read the piece by Betty Jean Lifton, which is just a wonderful essay that explains it.
But I knew that I had grown up within the Ghost Kingdom because I had spent my whole childhood and way beyond, fantasizing about my life with French Papa. You know, I wrote an essay when I was 11 years old about meeting him at the Eiffel Tower. This man who owns the Eiffel Tower.
So, it carried through. And I've always done that. I've just thought that was part of my sort of imagination. And then when I read about the Ghost Kingdom and I realized what that was and tying in with the television show, I wrote a play. I mean, I'm a playwright. It's what I do.
But I really wanted to explore this notion of who you might have been and this idea of, especially for those of us who were given different names on our birth certificate. I was Donna Shackleton. So, I always imagined there was this Donna Shackleton walking through the world who was fabulous, who had stayed with Sandy, and everything worked out so well for her. So, this idea that there's somebody out there living your life or a better version of your life.
And so, that's where Betwixt and Between really came from. This idea of the central character Lucy, who is in the records office, getting her original birth certificate set on January the 20th, on the day that adopted people were able to gain legal access in New York.
And there she goes into this sort of fantasy-seeming world, and she meets a Louise, who is the her who would have been if she had stayed with her birth mother. And the story unfolds and secrets are revealed. But at its center, it's really an exploration of what it's like to live with this sense of ‘what if’; just always a ‘what if’. For better and for worse.
And so, I wrote that and I was very fortunate to be able to perform it at the Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, the A.K.A. conference, which is where I'd first performed Hot Dogs at the Eiffel Tower. And of course, Suzanne wonderfully directed it for us. Even though it was a Zoom production, it was wonderful.
So, that was really the origins of that. And it was this story that I was happy to tell and that I hope sort of explored that concept in more tangible terms than just reading in essay. And of course, the television show touched on it, but it didn't – It sort of left some questions, you know, “What is this ghost kingdom? It sounds like a horror show.” And to turn it to maybe it was.
Lori:
It was really powerful for me to watch that reading. You had amazing actors doing that, by the way. Because it helped me to see that even though, with my own children in an open adoption and having access to all of their birth parents and being able to see that and see their other lives, it doesn't alleviate the Ghost Kingdom. It just means that they know it's less unknown. It's more known.
But still the idea that they might be wondering what another life might look like, that is present for them. And I can either resist that and get upset like that takes away from me or I'm not being good enough about that. Or I can just say, “Oh, this is part of being an adoptive family and parenting by adoption as this may happen with our children.”
Maggie:
Right.
Well, I mean, I think in child psychology says that this happens with most children. I mean, when you're growing up and you have an argument or you get upset at your parents and you – You know, it's not unnatural to imagine this other life with other people.
But the difference for us is that we don't tend to grow out of it. It is ever present with us. So, it's not such an unusual phenomenon that only applies to people who are adopted. It's just something that I think is far more central to our character.
Lori:
Right.
Suzanne, your play, The Good Adoptee, is about your search for your origins in your first parents and then reclaiming and integrating your original identity. A blurb about this reads;
“Once she opens Pandora's box, can she find a way to integrate her dual identities and still remain the good adoptee?”
Tell us a little bit about your play.
Suzanne:
Well, I actually did things flip flop from Maggie, because I just want to go back to the first play I ever wrote about adoption was about fantasy. And it was imagining this character on the main character's birthday, who was mother and she was the birth mother. And it turns out that this character was the same exact age, in my play as it turned out. And I didn't know this that my birth mom was when she relinquished me, which was 22.
So, that, it was really – and this is like the kind of gift and maybe hard edge of being a playwright that you're sort of compelled to write about it. And maybe it helps you along the way as well in processing stuff.
But before I was able to do a search in real life, I really sort of made space and brought in my birth mom in this stage play and was able to do it there, but not in real life.
So, when I finally was searching, I knew I also had to write about it. And it was the first time I wrote about something that was totally true story. So, the good adoptee is my totally true story. And not being an actor and gifted in that way, as Maggie is, and Maggie, PS–because no one has mentioned this–stars also as a main character in Betwixt and Between. And she is phenomenal in it, just as the writing is. It's just amazing.
So, with The Good Adoptee, I had to cast another actor in. And it was actually this nice way of I worked with non-adoptees in this role. And it was always this great way of being able to tell the story to the person who is going to tell the story as me and figuring out the balance of that.
But when I was writing about sort of my story, I really kind of ended up writing about childhood, writing about reunion. But what I focused on at the end of the day was the search. And I think that's the curiosity piece. And that's like it's a very dramatic drive for a story. But that was also really what I think I wanted to talk about. Not actually the discovery part so much as what was winding me as an adult to then go and look for all of those missing pieces and even acknowledge having a blessed full life.
What were these missing pieces that were really undermining me? And sort of feeling like unless I confront these things and look at these things, I'm just going to let myself be undermined by sort of the dark side of adoption.
And so, in writing this, it really was – and in staging it, too – is sort of a healing element of it has been just this great gift of sort of looking at the mechanism of the search and how those internal obstacles of, “I'm not worthy. I don't deserve to know this information.” All of these things that can kind of pile down on you, but also sort of the external obstacles of, “Well, the law says I shouldn't have this information.”
And that gets internalized. I mean, I feel like I had a lot of internalization of this of, “I don't have this access to this information because that's the law. That's the way it's supposed to be. I'm not supposed to turn the applecart over” or whatever it is.
So, being able to look at it on stage and share it on stage has been a really strengthening, empowering, wonderful gift.
Lori:
Tell me about the title. Why did you call that The Good Adoptee?
Suzanne:
Well, there's this great connection back to Maggie's piece as well, because that is a term coined by Betty Jean Lipton, the amazing activist and therapist and amazing author who is so dear to so many of us in terms of what she did. That term was coined by her in her writing.
And it is the two sides of that same coin of wanting to be the good adoptee who is kept by their parents. And I say that because to this day, if I get into a squabble with one of my parents, there's a little thing in the back of my head and I have the sweetest, most understanding and loving, incredible parents. They’re permissive parents of a certain age as well.
But I have this little thing that's just like, “I'm going to be returned. If this outcome of this fight doesn't work, I could be returned to the baby store.” And that's astounding, but that is real.
And The Bad Adoptee, of course, is the other side of the coin, which is the rebellious misbehaving adoptee who wants to kind of run away and cause trouble in this kind of thing. And I think pretty much all adoptees are both the good and the bad adoptee rolled into one.
Lori:
And while on one hand that fear that you have makes no sense; no rational sense. You've been with your parents for all these years. They've always loved you. They will always love you. But we're not talking about rational thought. We're talking about what's in your body, what's in your baby mind, where there are no words, there are no thoughts, there is no reason. It's just something that can be there.
Suzanne:
Yeah.
And the other thing I discovered when I was going through my search, and all of these things come up, is that my parents really had that same vulnerability in this way where they felt like they were going to be returned to the parent’s store. They felt like, “Oh, you're going to replace me, and that's what this is about.”
And knowing that that's irrational, as they say it; you know, as we as we talk about these things. Absolutely knowing it's irrational, but it's there because there's that vulnerability of how the family came together.
Lori:
And there can be so much not good enough under the surface for all of us. Maggie, did you have something you wanted to add at all?
Maggie:
No, I was just agreeing wholeheartedly and giving Suzanne the major thumbs up.
Lori:
Yes. Yes. That's really good.
Yeah. You know, this isn't the first time on our podcast. We've talked about The Good Adoptee. We had Sarah Easterly on an episode 106, and she's actually written an article called Trauma Looks Good on You. It’s exactly what you were saying, Suzanne, about not feeling good enough and overcompensating and becoming the good, maybe even the perfect adoptee, to avoid that doom of like that impending doom of a loss that could hang over your head if you're not good enough.
Suzanne, let me ask you this one first and then Maggie will go to you. What has been the reaction of adoptive parents specifically to your work?
Suzanne:
It's been like all over the map, really. But in general, very positive. And I think that parents were really very drawn to the play. And I was worried being The Good Adoptee. I was worried to alienate one group or another.
My own parents, it took a little bit for them. And really, the play ended up being this great tool of us understanding and even having a deeper connection around the pieces. Because I did kind of step out on my own during my search and I didn't let them know everything that was going on. I let them know things; I updated them as needed. And usually, they'd know all the gory details.
So, it really was like coming back to when I actually put out the play that they were kind of catching up with things and sort of having these ‘Aha’ moments.
The first time they saw the play, they were in total shock. The second time they saw the play, they were like, “Oh.” And they saw it with other adoptive parents who are cousins. And so, it was it's been very wonderful as something between us.
The one time I had a difficult – Well, I mean, the most dramatic, difficult thing I had with an adoptive parent is when we were touring in Connecticut, and this adoptive parent had come to the show. And I think that he was just in a place where he was a little threatened by even the idea of the kid searching or his kid searching. And sort of designating that as a betrayal of the family.
So, when we did talk talkbacks, after all the shows. And so, in the talkback, he sort of stood up and really expressed this to me. And it was all I could do to not like, burst out crying over this. I mean, I was just like, “Oh my God, this is the last thing that I want to you to have as a thing.”
And I also felt later on, I really felt, “Oh, if he wasn't so defensive and he was more open, he may have really, I think, all the reasons why an adoptee might want to search and how it has zero to do with the adoptive parent is all in the play and expressed in the play.” So, I felt like he was sort of had his armor up.
Later in the tour, an adoptive parent came up to me after the show, after the talk back, after the show. And he said, “Thank you because now I understand why my kid was doing this and what she was going through. And I didn't understand it through my own kid, but I understand it through seeing your story.” So, it's been across the gamut.
Lori:
Yeah. Maggie, how about you? What kind of response have you had from adoptive parents seeing your work?
Maggie:
I've had less opportunity than Suzanne, or fewer times when I've actually shown the play to their audience. I will say the one time that sticks in my mind, and I always wonder whether other adoptive parents feel the same way, in my way of always worrying about what other people think, is that they saw my show and said that it was a good show, but it wasn't really valid because it was set in the sixties. You know, I was adopted in the sixties during that period. And that it was England, but it was a very different situation there to this country.
And I found that so interesting. As if that experience of loss and grief varies between countries. You know, if you had it in England in the sixties, it was different to what might be happening now. But those feelings, what we talked about earlier, that central knot of loss and grief is always there every time.
And I understand that it was a sort of deflection. It was a well, “It's just not relevant anymore”, but that that did sting. And so, I always have that in my head, wondering if other people feel the same way and then trying to find that justification as to why my story is still relevant, even though I know it is. I speak to enough people, enough adopted people and birth parents to know that that's still relevant. But that's the one that that really did stick with.
And that's what I would say to anybody listening to anybody's stories, not just Suzanne's or mine, but any other. Playwrights, filmmaker, that there is this thread that connects us all, regardless of what country we were originally born to or made our way to, or who our parents were, or what kind of upbringing we had. There is still this thread.
Lori:
Yeah, I think this kind of pulls a few pieces together because listening is an adoptive parent, I'm feeling that inner fear I had sometimes about not being good enough. And the ‘as if’, born as if, all those things lead to a fragility and maybe sometimes an inability to want to look at what you're saying; look at a child wanting to know more about their origins, because it means I'm not enough. That it can become difficult to hear some of those innermost adoptee thoughts because it's a reflection on me as an adoptive parent.
And I think the way we had set it up in the sixties, fifties, seventies was that either/or mindset; you can have one set of parents. And if they're good enough, then you only need one. But if they're not good enough, then you might look for the other set.
And so, that's something that adoptive parents, that's a fragility, maybe we need to work through and come to terms with, so that our children can do what they need to do to pull all their pieces together and do this integrating work for their identities.
Maggie, besides dealing with closed birth records, did you deal with close birth records in England or were you able to get those?
Maggie:
I was fortunate, I suppose. And the I had access. I found all of those records. So, it had all of the letters from the adoption agency to my parents and the descriptions, even though so much of that was fabricated. And then when I was 18, I was able to get my original birth certificate. So, yes, it did make the tracking a lot easier.
Lori:
So, for both of you, besides just having to jump through hoops to get your documentation, which you both have been able to do at different times, what are some other ways that things seem to close to you besides just records?
Maggie:
I mean, for me, it's not a topic that I ever felt that people wanted to talk about, or at least not to know my perspective. So, those, I mean, certainly in my house growing up those, it was obviously not a conversation that we would ever have. And the fact that my parents hid that from me made me feel like it was a shameful thing. So, I was never able to talk to friends about it.
I didn't really ever even mention being adopted until I came here and first wrote my show. And that's when I was in my thirties. It just wasn't something I could talk about. So, I never felt there was an openness or an interest in that.
I even went to a therapist once when I was just, the year before I left England, and I expressed how I felt. And it was a fairly strong emotion about my birthmother. And the therapist cut me off and said I was being very unfair to her.
So, there was so much where I just felt like I was shut down; where I didn't have a voice, and that's what led to the creation of work. Because so much of it is just wanting to be heard; wanting our voices to be heard. Wanting a platform to be able to do that and to say things. So, it's closed in terms of a lack of any openness or invitation.
Lori:
I think that needing to be heard and needing people who are willing to hear you is really important.
Suzanne, how about you? Were there ways that besides records where things seemed closed?
Suzanne:
Well, I wasn't even really aware about how closed the records were until I wanted to search. Because I thought there was this magic file sitting, waiting for me to get it when I wanted to. And it was like this game of like, “Oh, I don't want to search because I didn't want to.” Because my parents had these life threatening illnesses when I was a teenager and I'm an only child. And I felt the fragility of our family unit. So, I really felt like I couldn't search.
Being adopted was very open. That was like a very open thing. And I told people, I mean, because I'm the same race as my parents, we’re all white, then I could pass as their biological child. So, it was a choice for us to share that with people. And people are always saying, “Oh, you look exactly like your mother or father because people just say that because it's comforting to them, when really, I don't really look like them. But I don't have like different colored eyes or something where it would be like I couldn't be their biological child.
But I think I was very closed, myself, about searching. I didn't feel like I could. Like I was not empowering or giving myself permission to go and do that or even really think about it. It was so threatening to me. Like when I heard other people doing it, I immediately got freaked out like, “Why are you doing that?” And so, it would it would be upsetting to me.
But when I first was interested in looking into it and found that the records were sealed, then I got into this whole, sort of civil rights, adoptee rights place of just being outraged that I didn't have access. I couldn't obtain my original birth certificate like every other non-adopted person. That I pay taxes and yet I can't do this. I mean, it seems so antiquated, so draconian.
So, actually getting that piece of paper which had my original birth certificate, and even though I had the information at that point, was, you know, this happened only this past year that I got it, because of COVID and stuff.
So, getting that was this huge thing of, “Oh, I'm a full person.” You know, there's so many things that can make me as an adoptee feel like not a whole person, you know, unworthy, all of these things. Around searching and obtaining these basic, basic, basic things that everyone who grows up with bio connections and mirroring and all these things just totally take for granted.
Lori:
And I'm going to put in the show notes in case listeners are wondering if their children will one day be able to go to their vital records department and get their own copy of their own original birth certificate. You can go to, I believe, it's adopteerightscoalition.org, which has a state-by-state listing.
Last I heard, are we at 12 states now that that treat all citizens equally, adoptees and non-adoptees?
Suzanne:
10.
Lori:
10. We're still at 10. Oh, I thought they we're {crosstalk 36:37}.
Suzanne:
We lost one
Lori:
Oh.
Suzanne:
We lost one in the last year.
Lori:
Oh, okay.
Suzanne:
It got declassified. Sort of like the way Pluto got declassified as a planet.
Lori:
Okay, I'm going to have to read up on that. But I will put that in the show notes, if you want to know what kind of rights your child has in your state.
So, ladies, we're at the last question that I'm going to be asking of all Season 3 guests. From your perspective as an adoptee, what is the most important piece of the long view of adoption that people miss on the front end? Maggie, would you like to start?
Maggie:
Oh, gosh. This is a tough one. I was thinking about this and what I wish that my mum and dad had known or had been told is our story doesn't begin the day we're brought home. Our story begins the day that we're born, not our got-you day or whatever else you want to call it. And that when we cross – Sorry, I'm getting emotional – when we cross the threshold into a home, our birth parent crosses with us. And they're with us the whole time, whether they are physically with us or not. And that you have to honor that. You can't shut the door. You have to leave that space and allow them to exist there.
And if you can do that from the start and you can do that with openness and honesty and invite conversation and don't create secrets, then I think you set yourself up for this potentially wonderful and healthy and fulfilling relationship. So, it's just that sense of going back to those ghosts who walks in the door with you and allowing them to do that.
Lori:
I just find that so profoundly helpful, Maggie, thank you. Suzanne, how about you?
Suzanne:
Maggie made me totally emotional with that, too.
Lori:
Me too.
Suzanne:
I sort of have the sister of that or the cousin or something, I think, because what I'm thinking of is my mom when I told her, “Oh, we found these people. You know, we found my two sets of birth families.” And in her best, most generous, loving reaction, she said, “Well, we have extended family now.” And that just acknowledge that space for these people. And what I had to do so.
So, diligently during my search – And this was just all, just a mental thing, which is what I had to do in terms of just carving the space for the other set of parents, from that original set of parents. I had to make space because I didn't think that they existed and they didn't have space in my world. And I had to make that space for them to be able to find them.
So, the long view to me is like if an adoptive parent can start carving that space from Day 1 or Day 0, before the kid comes into their home, even. It needs to be a co-creation with the parents to keep space for those other people who are part of the kid. And the kid is going to be not a kid; the kid is going to be an adult. This is like a lifelong relationship with your parents.
But those other people, whether they're in your life physically or in your heart or in your family tree, or however they show up, the space has to be kept for them and the space has to be created for them to occupy. Because an adoptee shouldn't have the burden of having to carve that out and claw for that because those people are just there, as Maggie much more eloquently said.
So, that has to be supported by all of the family, because it's a much richer and more powerful family when it's inclusive.
So, it's just to the adoptive parents, and this is mine right now, even. It's like, are you going to be part of this or are you going to fight it because you're fighting yourself and your kid, ultimately, your adult kid in my case, if you're not part of this. Be a part of it.
Lori:
You both make me think of what I call adoption math. And where the old way was subtraction and substitution of families, the way that your family did it, Suzanne, was an addition and a multiplication. And having that space carved out for them ahead of time just helps the adoptee gather all the pieces and do the multiplication and addition, rather than substitution and subtraction.
So, I really appreciate both of your views on that and for being here with me today. I guess it's time for the curtain to go down on this episode. So, thank you so much, Maggie and Suzanne, for being here with me today.
Maggie:
Thank you so much for having us.
Suzanne:
Thank you so much, Lori.
Lori:
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