Episode 101 Podcast > Full Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of The Long View, a podcast brought to you by Adopting.com.
Now whether you've been married or not, you probably have an opinion on this question. Is a wedding the ending the happily ever after ending? When I asked that in workshops I lead people laugh and say no sure they say the wedding is the end of the journey to the altar. But it's just the beginning of the journey to the marriage. And that's the focus of this broadcast. Once you fail the crib and are legally joined to your beloved child, your journey is not over. It's just beginning. We'll cover many of the things you need to know to navigate adoptive parenting over the long view. Starting with things you need to know now. perspectives you need to hear now. I'm your host, Lori Holden and the author of The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption, which is on suggested and required reading lists at agencies around the country, and a long time blogger at LavenderLuz.com. I'm a mom through domestic infant adoption to a daughter and a son who are now in their late teens. So I've been doing this for a little while now.
This is my very first episode and I am so happy to welcome my very first guest, Leah Campbell. Many of you know Leah, I bet there's thousands of you tuning in already. She's an incredible writer and after being told at age 26, that she was infertile. What a harsh diagnosis. Leah went on to adopt her daughter as a single mom by choice just four years later. Today, Leah's daughter is seven, and they maintain a very open adoption with her entire extended family. Leah works as a freelance writer and editor and has a degree in developmental psychology, is foster care certified, and is the author of the upcoming children's book The Story of My Open Adoption, which I have had the privilege of reading and I love it. I more than love it, I adore it.
Welcome, Leah.
Leah Campbell:
Hi, thank you for having me. This is exciting.
Lori Holden:
It's exciting for me to to have you here. So can you set the stage for us? Tell us briefly how you became a mom. As I recall. I was following along at that time, you were caught by surprise by the whole thing. Is that true?
Leah Campbell:
Yeah, it was a very, our adoption was unique is the only way to explain it. I, you know, after dealing with infertility, I had done a couple rounds of IVF that had failed and was pretty heartbroken. And I think like a lot of infertile women, I was a little closed off to the idea of adoption, because so many people kept saying, just adopt, just adopt, which is really the worst thing you can say don't hurt a woman. It just counts. It really just counts everything they're feeling and all their grief. And so I'm a very stubborn person. And I just became angry and said, I'll never adopt, you know, and I said this before, I've written it before, but actually it was some of your writing that started to change my heart and it was because it was not directed at me. It was not drawn at me, it was something that I was able to kind of take in on my own. And really, I would say my heart change really fast.
Shortly before my 30th birthday, a friend had sent a link to a profile of a little girl who was looking to be adopted in foster care. And I want to say she was, you know, 11 or 12 years old. And there were a lot of things about her that reminded me of me, I didn't have the greatest childhood, I wasn't in foster care, but there were hard things. And there were a lot of things about her story that just really spoke to me and my heart changed very quickly. I called the foster agency in our state. The next day, I started foster training really, pretty immediately, I would say in December of 2012, is when I said you know what, this is what I want, I want to foster and I want to foster older kids, I want to foster, you know, teenagers.
And so I started the training in December and I was due to finish my training at the end of February and early February. Right before Valentine's Day, actually, I was at a work conference, and I was sitting with a group of women And I live in Alaska. So a lot of I work for an Alaska Native Corporation. So I don't know if anyone knows much about that. But Alaska has a very diverse population. We have a huge Alaskan Native population, people who live over 200 villages in the state that don't have roads in or out very small villages. And that was what, where I worked, I worked with women and people who are working to help those in the villages.
And so most of my co-workers were native. And this woman sitting next to me said, Hey, does anyone know anyone looking to adopt a woman for my village just had an adoption fall through and I kind of looked at her and I said, Well, I'm getting foster care certified. And she was talking about a baby. And at that point, I told myself, I'm not going to have a baby. Nobody's ever going to give me a baby. I'm a single woman. Um, so I wasn't even thinking about myself. But there were couples in my foster care classes who were specifically looking to adopt events.
And so I said, if she wants to call me, there's couples, I know several couples who are looking to adopt and if then, I'm happy to connect her on 15 minutes later, she called me and we were on the phone and that was the whole purpose of my conversation was I can connect you with the people I'm working with, with foster care, I could connect you with a couple couples. And also, the story was she had canceled an adoption that had been planned for months that morning. So in my head, I'm thinking this woman doesn't really want to place her baby for adoption. You know, you don't she was doing a week. You don't counsel on adoption a week before it's due, if you really want to place your child for adoption.
So the bigger part of my conversation was, let me help you find resources. Let me help you find ways to keep this baby If that's what you want. But we got about 15 minutes into our conversation, and she said, so you're getting foster hair certified? And I said, Yes, I am. And she said, you want to adopt? Like to someday? Yeah, I'm looking to work with teenagers. And she said, You don't want a baby. And I said, well, it's not that I don't want a baby. It's that I realize everyone wants babies and there's all these teenagers in the system who age out and I think I just have a heart for that. And she said, Well, would you take my baby?
Lori Holden:
Wow
Leah Campbell:
At that point, I kind of my heart stopped and I said, it's was funny like looking back at me. Like, I can't believe I almost talked myself out of this. But I said, Oh, you don't want to give your baby to me. I'm a single woman, we can find you a couple, we can find you a couple who wants a baby? And she said, well, okay, I'm walking into the adoption agency here to go look at adopted profiles. Can I call you later? And I said, Sure. Okay.
And we hung up the phone, and I got that phone and I was shaking. I was like, Did I just say no, she looked up a healthy newborn, like what is happening? And in my head, I'm like, she was walking into an adoption agency. She was going to go look at profiles there. I'm never going to hear from this woman again. And that is what it is, like, obviously not meant to be. Well, she called me a few hours later. And she said, Look, I know you said, you're not looking for a baby. I know that you said you're looking to adopt a teenager but I, you've been on my heart since we talked on the phone. I don't know if you believe in God, but I think God wants me to give you this baby. And at that point, I'm just floored. We talked and we met for lunch the next day and we both cried at lunch. We just had an instant connection. We obviously have very, very different lives. But we had a lot of personality similarities, like the way we communicate the way we talk was just very similar. And honestly, I looked at her and I was like, had I been put on a different path in life, we could have been in the same situation, we could have been the same person. Um, and we just connected. And a week later, I was in the delivery room, catching my baby girl. And that was our story.
Lori Holden:
That is an amazing, amazing story. I remember watching a little bit as it was unfolding and thinking, wow, this is like the stuff that you would see in a movie because it just happened so it unfolded in such a short amount of time. And you didn't really have a whole lot of time to like, prepare and do all this stuff. But you had done a lot of that before you had done some pre work.
Leah Campbell:
Well, emotionally. I was ready. But we had nothing. The one thing I learned is you really don't need as much for a newborn as you think you need.
Lori Holden:
Exactly, yeah.
Leah Campbell:
You need a car seat, you need a place for them to sleep, you need some food and some diapers and clothes and really yeah it's my village I would say my group of friends came together in a huge way my three best friends had had babies within the previous year. So we really got a ton of hand me downs. I don't think I spent money on anything that first year we got everything we needed.
Lori Holden:
And so you've remained in contact with your daughter's birth mom.
Leah Campbell:
Yes.
Lori Holden:
And that's been for seven going on more than seven years. And now you're about to put forth into the world a new creation, your book, The Story of My Open Adoption. Can you tell us a little bit about the book?
Leah Campbell:
Sure. So when Josie was little when my daughter was little, I looked everywhere for books that kind of reflected what we had, which was a very open adoption and not only with my daughters and a mother but with her entire extended family. We have aunts, uncles, cousins. Even honestly, my daughter's other mama's best friend, her and her daughter are a part of our extended family. So we’ve had non blood relations brought into our fold. And I couldn't find anything that reflected that even beyond that, my daughter has five siblings, three of whom we've been able to keep in contact with and have had questions and struggles about that, like why they're together and she's not with them, and why she can't see them as often.
You know, we've got issues of distance and travel struggles between villages, and she's had a hard time with that. And I couldn't find anything that reflected that. Every children's book I bought --and I bought almost all of them at the time -- were very adoptive-parents centered. The stories were always being told by the adoptive parent in terms of I wish for you, I wanted you, you were my wish come true. Which was lovely and beautiful and true to my story, but not necessarily true to hers. They didn't answer these questions she had.
And that was something I really struggled with a lot of them. Some were religious based and while we're religious didn't necessarily love the religious bent. Like a lot of infertile women, I struggled with this idea that God picks and chooses who gets a baby. So for me, that was a hard thing to have, because I'm no more worthy than anyone else to have a baby. All of them talked about adoptive families, mostly adoptive moms like this mysterious entity. There would be, you know, one or two sentences in the book that would say, Oh, yes, I'm sure she loved you. But we don't know anything about her and that struggled with that, because that's not what most of our adoptions are today. You know, close adoptions are a very rare thing today. And so there wasn't anything that represented our adoption.
And what happened was a couple, well, early last year, mid last year, I was contacted by a publishing company, and they said, you know, we want to create something different. We'd like to create a different kind of adoption book, and would you be interested in joining us. Which, again, doesn't happen in publishing, like, publishing companies don't approach authors. So I recognize that I've had a lot of really like, lucky experiences in my life. And that kind of came down. I said, Yes, I will do this. Under these circumstances, the book has to be written from the child's perspective, the book has to represent an open adoption. The book has to express that there's not all rainbows and light and adoption. But there are some things that are really hard for kids. It has to give kids an opportunity to explore and process some of that it has to provide resources for adoptive parents, because I think a lot of adoptive parents go in blind to adoption.
And we had these discussions and they said, sure, whatever you want to do, we're on board. So I got to write the book that I wish I had when my daughter was little.
Lori Holden:
I love also in your book, you start with a dear parent letter.
Leah Campbell:
Yeah.
Lori Holden:
And I feel like that is such an important piece of the book. Because as you and I both know, when you start on this journey of adoption, whether it has contact with birth parents or not
Leah Campbell:
yeah
Lori Holden:
you want to be open to your child
Leah Campbell:
yeah
Lori Holden:
for everything that your child is wondering and feeling and all of that. And so some of that is your teaching parents who are picking up this book and, and open to learning about all the intricacies of adoption, you're teaching them some of the ways to approach it that may be different than what we see on the movies of the week, and the teen moms shows and things like that.
So you mention in your letter to parents, you mention fostering a policy of ask anything you want in your home. And I love this because of course I advocate for relationships based on openness and truth. So why do you think such openness is so important, especially for adoptive families? And how has that openness, that ask anything you want vibe? How has that played out in your home?
Leah Campbell:
So I do think in part, that's my personality, I'm a pretty open book and it was not how I was necessarily raised. So it became something that I really wanted for my daughter. I wanted us to have an open, honest relationship. In our home, you know, my daughter knows that nothing she says, nothing she expresses is going to hurt my feelings.
And in reality, you and I both know that sometimes those things do hurt our feelings, like of course they do. But I've worked very hard to make sure that she did know she is not the keeper of my feelings. She is not responsible for taking care of my heart, particularly in her questions about adoption. Um, and so she does, she'll ask questions. So she has said before, um, one of the things she started doing and I wrote about this in the letter parents, if she had started using her biological last name, and this is all on her own. She realized that her siblings had a last name that she didn't have. And she is requesting teachers and everyone else -- Sometimes she cuts off our last name. Sometimes she says her name is not Campbell, her name is just this last name that she was born with.
And I've worked really hard to foster that and to allow that to happen even to the point that we've had conversations about legally changing her name, if that's what she wants. And I think we decided on a set date as 13 she decides that's what she wants at 13. Just because I feel like so much of high school stuff follows you into adulthood, and getting her license and everything else. So she's got to change her name, I'd like to do that before things are like following her into adulthood. Um, so we've set a date, we've said, you know, if you're 13, and you want to do this, well, I'll help you.
And I think that that's helping her to process her own identity and figure out who she wants to be and who she wants to be called, you know, adoptive kids don't have a lot of choices. In most of this. Most of these decisions are made before they're ever even able to verbalize any of it. And the truth is my daughter, we have a transracial adoption, my daughter's native for first last name is part of her heritage, it's part of her background, and she has started to recognize that. So it's not my place to put my foot down and say But no, you're part of me, it's my place to say how do we help you and what do you want here and that's we have a lot of really deep, you know, for a seven year old, she's got a lot of questions. And her siblings are no longer living with her other mama they've been placed somewhere else to, um, for various reasons that I don't get into publicly, but I do talk about with her and an age appropriate level of course. And, and, and she has a deep understanding of all that now. And I just think the beautiful thing in our adoption is my kiddo knows she can love her other family and that that doesn't take away the love she has for me. And she knows that even at seven years old. And I just, I feel like that's probably the most important thing that we can have.
Lori Holden:
Yeah, one of the books that I think all parents should read over and over again, but especially adoptive parents is the Connected Child. I noticed you include that as a resource in your book. But the premise of that is to make yourself feel so safe to your kiddos that they can come to you with anything. And my experience has been that by doing my work around adoption, and making sure that I'm dealing with my triggers so that my kids don't bump up against my own triggers about adoption and about not being the only mom. By by doing that work on myself that benefit of being open and working on my own triggers has really helped me deal with other hard things that are coming up
Leah Campbell:
yeah 100 percent
Lori Holden:
yeah, your child grows up, and they, if they're confronted with, you know, drugs, or alcohol or peer pressure to do certain things, or sex, you've already kind of got this practice of feeling safe. What do I need to do? Right in this moment, so that my triggers don't come front and center and my kiddos can focus on themselves.
Leah Campbell:
And that's really what I'm talking about is I feel like that's my personality and would be my inclination as a parent anyways, but I do I think it sets up that point where I hope my daughter always knows there's nothing she can't talk to me about. And, you know, I, we grew up in a different generation. And I don't blame our parents. I don't but I didn't have that relationship. I didn't feel like I could talk to my parents about anything, and I just want a different experience for my daughter in all facets of life. Absolutely.
Lori Holden:
And let's face it, if you've been through the pain of infertility, you might have some triggers. You might have some landmines, some emotional wounds. And that idea that you don't get to be the only mother can be triggering when you choose to let into your life another mother who is a reminder of what you went through, so to be able to shift from that Either/Or -- either she's the mom or I am -- to BothAnd like you've done with your daughter, to be so expansive and so open that those things don't trigger you and your daughter can work on her stuff without having to watch out for your stuff. I just think that's beautiful to watch.
Leah Campbell:
Well, and, you know, I will say it's not always easy. There's times, you know, especially in the beginning, especially, it was interesting, my daughter's mother and I got along so well, like I we were friends very quickly. But there was a shift the second that baby was born and I just I hadn't expected it, I had in my mind that I was going to be this super open, super positive person and but the second that baby was born, even my dad said, there were ways that I held my body when I was holding the baby where I kind of positioned myself away from her. And it wasn't anything I did consciously. It wasn't anything, um.. But it becomes this. This thing and it was, I was jealous. She breastfed our baby that first day, I was jealous that I couldn't do that. I was jealous that she had this time with our baby for nine months that I couldn't have, I felt like there was a connection there that I would never be able to replace. And I'll tell you the truth, there is and remains to this day a connection I will never be able to replace. And I've had to come to terms with that. What I will say is in the beginning, I think it was harder for me. And as time has gone on, I think it's become harder for her as my daughter's and my connection has grown.
Lori Holden:
Yeah.
Leah Campbell:
And she and I had talked about this too. um and I do think that there's a give and take there you know isn't recognizing that it's not easy for her either to watch somebody raise her daughter in a way that maybe she wouldn't have. And the beautiful thing is I think we do have an openness between us. You know, it's been harder the last couple years again, various things that have not happened to her in her life have made things harder.
But we have an openness between us and I think we've always had an ability to be honest with each other, um which is good. But yeah, it's not always been easy. The one thing I will say is, it's always been right. Um, when I look back on everything, I wouldn't want it any other way. I'm glad that I've swallowed my own pride often times when it's been hard. And I'm glad that we pushed through the tough stuff, because it's not just my daughter who gets good things out of this. I get good things out of this all the time. There's so much beauty in our open adoption, and that I'm thankful for every time we're with her other family. And I'm thankful. I think that that's true of any family. Honestly, there's hard parts of every family. There's things that aren't easy, but you're glad when you push through it and figure out a way to come together.
Lori Holden:
And I think it makes such a good point about how you can't expect yourself not to have those feelings of envy.
Leah Campbell:
Exactly
Lori Holden:
But you can notice them and breathe through them.
Leah Campbell:
Yes.
Lori Holden:
And not deny them because if you deny them and push them away that resistance gives is what gives them power. But if you're aware, like okay, there I go, I'm a little bit jealous again. How can I make myself okay?
Leah Campbell:
Yes,
Lori Holden:
And that's a constant dance. I think that adoptive mothers and first mothers do as you say, as that child grows up, and the balance shifts and the relationships come and go, you know, strengthen in different ways in different times. So that was a really good point.
Leah Campbell:
I say all the time, my therapist is the person I'm supposed to talk to that.
Lori Holden:
Right, right. Not your child’s job.
Leah Campbell:
to take that on, yeah, exactly.
Lori Holden:
What are your hopes for this book?
Leah Campbell:
You know, I was just hoping to create something that other families could see each other in and some of the reviews are coming in, and they're really reflecting that, like a woman wrote that she was a foster parent. So she didn't know that she would be able to relate to it, but that there were pieces that worked for her kids, too.
One of the things I had included with other children and other, you know, biological siblings in the book, because that's something that we deal with. And a lot of people are responding to that. I think, in our adoption, honestly, that's the hardest part for my daughter out of everything is having siblings. That's particularly because she's an only child in my house, and wants siblings really badly. Um, so that was something I wanted to reflect on and finding that other people are feeling that too, I think I just wanted to create something that wasn't out there yet that didn't follow the same pattern. And that was maybe a more modern interpretation of what adoption looks like. Because I do think most of us these days are striving towards an openness that didn't exist 20 years ago,
Lori Holden:
right.
Leah Campbell:
And that's what I wanted. I wanted a book that painted that and it showed that it could be beautiful and it showed adoptive parents kind of putting the feelings of their child first and it makes it easier for other families to do the same
Lori Holden:
And I don't think I'd be delivering any spoilers if I said that your book's characters are animals, and the child is a different species than the parents so it's kind of a cross -- an adoption is very apparent that way. And I love the way that you in your in the storyline, you really give space to that BothAnd of the child, for Sammy being able to claim both sets of parents.
Leah Campbell:
Yeah.
Lori Holden:
And beyond that both and you also give space for the BothAnd of happy and sad and the complexity and range of emotions that we found that adoptees often feel, especially if they're having to hold our feelings, too, but that we try to keep that out of it. But they're likely to feel joy at being in contact and sadness about not having contact, or all sorts of things that can happen in the course of raising a child and you allow for all of that and you show all of that.
Leah Campbell:
It was important to me.I wanted my daughter to see something that looks like what we have. And, and that reflected her feelings like she's an independent little one. And she has a lot of opinions on a lot of things. And she owns where she comes from, she owns it. And that makes me really proud. Honestly, I'm proud of her for knowing she can do that.
Lori Holden:
I think there's a strength that our children can gain when they are able to collect all of their pieces. I think this happens for non adoptive families too. But the more we allow them to kind of be themselves and wonder where they need to, and gather the things that they need to to build their identity, the easier they're going to have an easier time in forming their identity.
Leah Campbell:
Exactly. And I mean, I've seen that I've seen that in I think that it could have gone the other way. Like if she felt like those pieces were shrouded or kept from her, I think it could have created a much less confident child. She's grown up really confident, I’m really proud of who she is and where she comes from and all the pieces of her and I hear her talking to friends, which is funny, you know. She's seven, she's little like her interpretation of things may be different from mine. But the way she talks to her friends about her other family and for other mama and it's really special, and it's really special and we've we've been blessed in that, you know, we are separated by by distance in that most of our other family lives in a village pretty far away with no roads in or out. Access is not easy.
But like last summer, her aunt and two of her cousins and then her second cousin, so the little ones were here, and we got to spend almost all summer playing with them. Like we picked up her little cousin who was her age, at least once a week to go on adventures with us. She went trick or treating with us and she really got to spend a lot of time with them. And it was just such a special thing. That's not necessarily something we've had throughout our adoption. It's this like constant, being able to spend time together. And she just bloomed. It was really special for her and really started to embrace her Native heritage that summer more than she has before. So that was cool, too.
Lori Holden:
Leah, what have you learned along the way and adoptive parenting that you wish you'd known earlier in the journey?
Leah Campbell:
I don't know that there is a way to know this earlier, but I wish I had known that it was going to get hard. And I went in with such rose colored glasses. You know, I had read your book, and I had read a bunch of other books and I was like, I am ready for this. I am going to tackle this and we're going to be open and amazing and it's going to be this beautiful thing.
And I was not at all prepared for the things that would get hard and the things that would be outside of my control. And I'll be honest, I wish we were able to see her other mom more. I wish we were in there. Things that she's having to deal with that I don't have any control over. So I can't give that to my daughter because it's not in my realm of control. And I'm, I'm very type A. So having to admit, I can't control this is really hard for me.
I would be lying if I said our adoption is everything I dreamed it would be in the beginning. Um life is not always that simple. You don't get to paint a pretty picture and have it come out that way. There are complications. And there are things that are hard, and there are decisions that we've had to make and talk about and work through that I didn't think we would. And I think that I just wish I had been better prepared for that. I wish because it's hit me hard every time something hasn't gone the way the beautiful, easy way that I thought it would. Um it's made me question myself. It's made me question my decisions and my choices. And I think I just wasn't Yeah, I wasn't prepared for the fact that I could have the best of intentions and there would still be things that would be hard.
Lori Holden:
I remember seeing a meme that said open adoption is easy. said no one in one, ever.
Leah Campbell:
Exactly, exactly.
Leah Campbell:
It’s constantly shifting, it's constantly, like you said that balancing is constant. It's not our open adoption has not looked the same from one year to the next ever um ever.
Lori Holden:
And sometimes you as the adoptive parent come up against competing needs.
Leah Campbell:
Yeah.
Lori Holden:
You know, in the early years when your child is a baby, you are really trying to get that relationship going with the first mom and meet her needs and feel safe to her and you know, make that make your tent big enough for everybody. But then your child grows up and has opinions too. And sometimes
Leah Campbell:
yes
Lori Holden:
I've seen a lot of people experience, what your child needs is the opposite of what your child's birth parent needs. And that's that's a conundrum. So I think it goes back to what you said earlier. It's not easy, but it's right.
Leah Campbell:
Yes.
Lori Holden:
This openness, this providing all the pieces it's it's the right thing to do for our kiddos.
Leah Campbell:
well and the easiest thing to do would be as soon as things get hard say nope, we're not doing this anymore. I'm cutting it off and closing it down. This is not happening and that would be the easy thing. But I don't think that would be good for me. I don't think it would be good for my kiddo. I don't think you know, it's...So it's constantly trying to figure out okay, what does this look like in these circumstances? How do we make this work now and I think the one thing that I will say really more than anything for my daughter's other mom and I both we both want what's best for her we both love her desperately and so um and we love each other we do um but you can let people and have it still be hard sometimes.
And so we're constantly figuring out okay, what does this look like now? What does this look like to meet your needs? Because she's had some hard times and what does this look like to meet our needs? And it's a balance. It's an ever changing balance. And I think being willing to reevaluate and rebuild again and again and again is what makes any family work but especially an adoptive family.
Lori Holden:
Yeah, that iterative process. It's not like you get there -- “I have an open adoption and we are set!.”
Leah Campbell:
Exactly, exactly.
Lori Holden:
Last question, Leah, boil things down for us to your best piece of advice about the long view.
Leah Campbell:
I think being open minded in an open adoption is important. And never ever putting anything in these kind of set “this is how it is” terms. Because it may not be how it is. And I think that's true. Again, parenting in general, I think that things change and evolve and move forward and you need to be willing to evolve and change and move forward with it.
And, and as adoptive parents, I think this is something I work really hard on because it's very easy to center yourself and everything. We think about ourselves and our needs, and it's just natural. But I try really hard to remember that I'm the person with the most power in this dynamic. Always. I'm always a bird I get to make choices. I'm the one with the legal standing, and I have more power than my daughter. In this, I have more power than her mom in this. So it is my responsibility to kind of step back sometimes and give power where I can. And I think that's a really important thing for adoptive parents to remember you are in the power position. So you are responsible for not taking advantage of that power you have and making sure that everything's taken care of.
Lori Holden:
And I'll add if you can't give power, give voice.
Leah Campbell:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Lori Holden:
Well tell people how they can reach you and how they can find your book.
Leah Campbell:
Sure. Well, my website is LiaCampbellwrites.com So that's you can find me pretty easily there. The book is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. It's releasing on June 16. So it should be in bookstores most places shortly thereafter. Hopefully, if you're in an area that has bookstores even open right now, I'm always big on supporting your local bookstore. But yes, tell the story of my open adoption. And then I'm pretty active on Facebook. If you can find me on Facebook. I got it. That's probably where you can see what I'm doing the most is on Facebook.
Lori Holden:
We'll include some links for you in the podcast notes.
Leah Campbell:
Awesome. Thank you.
Lori Holden:
Leah, thank you so much for being with us today. It's been a pleasure talking with you about something we're both so passionate about.
Leah Campbell:
Oh, it's always great talking to you, Lori, I appreciate you and everything you do.
Lori Holden:
Thank you, Leah.
Thank you for joining us for Adoption: The Long View. We hope you'll subscribe and listen to all of the coming guests interviews that we have planned for you. I'm Lori Holden, and I'll talk with you next time.