Episode 309 Podcast > Full Transcript
Lori Holden:
Well, hello, everyone. It's National Adoption Awareness Month, and I can think of no better way to honor it than to listen to an adoptee, especially one who is raising an adoptee. Our guest this month was adopted and grew up in the closed adoption era and is now an advocate of open adoption. As she tried to figure out how to parent in a way she herself was not parented due to how adoptions were done then, she was dismayed by the lack of early reader books about open adoption. When she didn't find what she needed, she decided to fill that gap. In doing so, children's book author, Allison Olsen, is set on changing the adoption narrative from the lucky child to the loved child. I'm so pleased to have with us adoptee/adoptive parent/ children's book author, Allison Olsen. Welcome, Allison.
Allison Olsen:
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Lori:
Oh, it's so great to see your face today. I wish everybody else could see. We're having a good time this morning.
So, Allison was born in 1979, and she has a unique perspective. She was part of a closed adoption, which is why she wants to celebrate open adoption and make sure there are adoption books that reflect the birth mother and adoptive parents in a positive light to help normalize this loving relationship. Allison lives in Oregon with her husband, two daughters, and their cat named Howie Meowie. I love that.
So, let's start with your entrance narrative. You have two of them; one is an adoptee and one is an adoptive parent. Start with your being adopted story and whether or not you're in reunion with your birth parents.
Allison:
Sure. So, both my adoption and my daughters’ adoptions, they're both domestic infant adoptions through an agency. So, that's where we have similarities. But as you mentioned, the big difference is that mine is closed, and I do use present tense with that, and hers is open. And so, mine I was born in 1979, and my parents adopted my brother. He is a year and a half older. And the second question we always get, no, we are not biologically related. And so, they went on a wait list where they assumed it would take years to get a call for another baby. And so, I was a surprise, likely a surprise to birth mom as well. But I was a surprise to them. They got the baby born call, which is what it's called when I was at the hospital.
And so, the story my mom would always tell was that as they were driving to the hospital to pick me up, she was frantically calling her dad, my grandfather, and said, “Go out and buy another crib”, because my brother was still in a crib. He was still quite young. And so, she's like, “Go out, buy a crib, put it together. We've got a baby girl coming home.” So, everyone was really excited and obviously the whole family pitched in and they put together the nursery while they were at the hospital.
So, yeah, so that was exciting. And growing up, having an older brother, who's adopted as well, also infant adoption, we always talked about adoption. It was very normalized in our household. So, it wasn't anything we couldn't ask questions about. It wasn't anything we didn't understand. And in fact, it was interesting – I always think of the story; I had a little playdate where a friend came over and I was telling her all about adoption. And I felt terrible because she started crying, because we had just heard all this narrative for so long, because she was like, “Well, my parents must have only loved me for nine months before I was born.” I'm like, “Oh yeah, my parents loved me for like five plus years,” because back then it took 5 to 7 years on a wait list before you would get a phone call to be placed with the child and then later go through adoption.
And so, going through, I realized that a lot of adoptees have different experiences; different experiences than I had. But even a few years ago, I read the book, The 20 Things Adoptive Kids Wish Their Parents Knew, and I read through all of it. And I felt like my parents knew all of those things and they did a really good job. It's really interesting when you think about that, because I grew up in the eighties where adoption wasn't mainstream; it wasn't necessarily normalized. Adoptions from Korea were very big back then. I know in my hometown, most of the other adoptees that we would hang out with were coming over internationally. But yeah, I mean, I would say that I think they did a really good job.
And then when I was an adult – So, you were asking if I have met my biological family – When I was in my late twenties – I don't know what necessarily propelled it, so I don't have anything I can point to. But it was interesting that it took a few years to actually go through the full process. And then when I met my birth mom, I was the same age that she was when she had me. She was in her early thirties when she had me. And so that was quite interesting.
So, one thing I think that a lot of people don't know, because first of all, they think closed adoption versus open, they think it's a coin flip and it's not So, closed is definitely one thing and then open is this huge spectrum. And so, I've heard sometimes people say, “The birth family of my child no longer is calling us (or whatever) so we're in a closed adoption.” It's not true.
So, closed adoption is legally that adoptees have almost no information, definitely not a name. So, they have no information they can actually go off of to find their birth family. And that is a major difference between someone maybe not being in a current place to have a relationship or wanting a relationship; different things like that.
So, with closed adoption – I think it's important for listeners to know – I'm 43 years old and legally, my original birth certificate is still sealed by the courts. And so, what does this mean? So, for anyone listening that's not aware. So, for adoptees, even still today, even for our daughter, our original birth certificates that list out the birth mom and birth father are amended. And what that means is those names are completely erased and replaced with the adoptive parents. Kind of weird, right? I mean, like even with our daughter, we're like, “We did not give birth to her. This is silly. Seems like they could just add a few lines personally, but…”
Lori:
To accurately reflect what actually happened.
Allison:
To accurately reflect what actually happened. Exactly. And nowadays there are, thank goodness, much more adoptions that are open than there are that are closed. So, with that, you would think that we could push legislation and maybe get some extra lines on that birth certificate. But it's important to note and every state differs with their laws. And so, I was born and adopted in the state of Illinois. So, we live in Oregon right now, but born and adopted in the state of Illinois. And so, 13-ish years ago when I was starting the search, I had to go through a lot of red tape. And in fact, even then, it's just shocking to think about how long it takes things to open up and to get to this point.
The whole system they had set up was brand new to even find birth families. So, it was brand new. There was a registry. So, first you have to like put your name on a registry. You have to wait six months. You put your name on a registry, you wait six months to see if anybody else is looking for you. If somebody's name was already on the registry, you could immediately be connected to them and it's no problem. Otherwise you sit there for six months. So, that's why this whole process takes like two years of red tape because of that.
And then they go through and do investigation on their side because they know all of your information. So, you are constantly making a phone call to someone who knows all your information and won't give it to you. And it's like that. That's what I think is important for people to know and why I'm an advocate for open adoption, any form of a scale. You know, knowing a first and last name; that's a huge deal. That is the process that adoptees go.
And each state is so very, very different. So, New York, basically, if you were adopted in New York and you were born in New York, you’d go to the library there; the big New York Public Library. And you go to this room with all of these huge books and you have to look up the exact hospital date and time that you were born. So, those things have to be accurate that you've given information on. Some information we get is not always accurate. And then you have to look through and you're going to have thousands of potential names of people and then you have to search from there.
And so, I will say that having DNA services available now, like the Ancestry, 23 and Me and others, those are important for adoptees in their searches to try to get more concrete information.
Lori:
Yeah, I think Massachusetts and New York and several other states have now joined Colorado. Colorado, seven years ago, opened up records to adult adoptees equal to non-adoptees. So, I'm really happy with my state. And the gentleman who helped propel that through, I interviewed him on episode 104, Rich Uhrlaub, and I'll put that in the show notes if anybody wants to listen.
The reason I bring that up is because what you're doing for me, Allison, right now is you're kind of crystallizing for me, the difference between the closed adoption era and the open adoption era in a different way than I've thought about before. The closed adoption era was one of shame and secrecy.
Allison:
Yes.
Lori:
And where we need to be in this open adoption era – We're not completely there yet; it's a journey. And I'm trying to accelerate it; you're trying to accelerate it. But rather than shame and secrecy, let's do this with truth and transparency.
Allison:
Yes.
Lori:
Let's let the records reflect what actually happened instead of fiction on people's vital records.
Allison:
Exactly. It's beneficial to everyone. It helps the adoptee, obviously. Everyone has a longing and interest to know where they come from; culture, nationality. Everyone wants to know medical history. I mean, every doctor's appointment I've ever gone to, they want to know my medical history.
Lori:
There's probably a longing for seeing your face in people's face.
Allison:
That’s correct.
Lori:
I'm not an adoptee, but I've heard that enough that just seeing what you look like in somebody else's face is an incredible rush. And we take it for granted, those of us who have that.
Allison:
Exactly.
Lori:
You mentioned your parents on your journey. And Cherie Eldridge's book, The 20 Things. I make the distinction here a lot between “Open Adoption” and “Openness in Adoption.” And open adoption, meaning you have contact or maybe knowledge. And even in the absence of that for your parents, they didn't or couldn't provide that for you, but they did provide a sense of openness. It sounds like you felt like you could come to them with your feelings about adoption. They understood that you would have feelings about it. You didn't have to squash them down and protect them and stuff like that. So, I really appreciate that. Even in the absence of contact; you didn't have an open adoption, but your parents were able to provide you openness in your relationship with them.
Allison:
Exactly. And they were honest with everything that they knew. So, they didn't know a lot. I got a one-sheeter with a few paragraphs. And my information differs from my brother because ours were slightly different types of adoptions. So, he got slightly more. But they've always shared that document with me. And now it was put in a safe place, like where you put passports, birth certificates, stuff like that. But I always had access to it. So, if I ever wanted to read this one-sheeter and know more about me and my, you know, it just had general stuff like general appearance, explanation: we think they're this height and this weight and this color here and this color eyes and that kind of stuff and hobbies and interests. I could read it at any point. And this was this was from early on.
And so, I think even with wherever adoptive parents end up, whether it's closed adoption or somewhere on the open adoption spectrum, honesty and openness, at an age appropriate level, is very important.
Lori:
And I think some people wonder, what exactly do you mean by openness if you don't mean contact? And I think a companion word to that would be curiosity. If your child is having curiosity about something, join them in that.
Allison:
I love that.
Lori:
It’s like they're sticking out their hand to you, wanting to take you and show you something. You take their hand and you go with them.
So, would you now, Allison, tell us about your journey to being an adoptive parent?
Allison:
Sure. So, fast forward several years. I met my husband in our early thirties. And a little bit of background with him; he also has been touched by adoption. So, his mom was single mom and she was pregnant when she met his father. So, his father later then adopted him. So, between the two of us, we only know about a fourth of our biological makeup.
We dated for three years. We got married, and then about two years later, gave birth to our oldest daughter. And then life was busy; all the things. We do a cross country move from Chicago out to Oregon. Took us a while to get settled with new jobs, with everything else. The next thing you know, I'm in my late thirties and we're like, “Okay, we're going to try again.” And it didn't go as smoothly as we had expected. And our particular case was a little bit different than others, but the important part was secondary infertility. So, we just could not have a viable pregnancy. So, we kept getting pregnant and we kept losing those babies. And so, after the third one, at like 12 weeks, I was like, “That's it.”
And so, we looked into all the other options and we just knew right away adoption was for us. So, we're like, “Okay, here are the options. We're only going towards adoption”, just because of my connection with adoption and all of my extended family. So, it's one thing that's kind of interesting, too. Oftentimes, if folks are adopted, in their extended family, because infertility is kind of a genetic thing usually, which is why it's kind of odd to have an adoptee be an adoptive parent. So, we have lots of adoption on my side of the family.
And on his, they had him. And so, they didn't have a ton, but he equally was with me like, “Let's just jump into this” and “This this is what we want to do.” And then that's when we actually learned, at the adoption agency, more about open adoption. And that is where everything has moved. And I just got really excited about it.
So, when we wrote all of our marketing material; our profile info, everything are like letters to the expectant mothers. That was the focus. We wanted to find someone that wanted to be in relationship with us and to have that closeness.
And so, it's long. Everyone knows the process of adopting is long. And thank goodness; it should be. The home study takes anywhere between six and eight months and then the marketing materials, all of that stuff. So, you're looking at a year before you even are active and could even potentially be matched. And then we were very, very lucky that our daughter's birth mom selected us early in her pregnancy. And so, you call them expectant mothers before they have the baby. So, when she was an expectant mother, we had five months to bond with her and it was wonderful. And we would have video chats with her and we would send texts and communicate. We quickly connected.
And then we got the phone call in the middle of the night that she had gone into labor. We all jump up and we had a suitcase packed, because I'm just like that, we were that excited, and we flew to her state. She is located in a different state than us. And we flew there and made it in time for the birth. And it was, I would say, one of the biggest honors for me. She had me in the room with her when we welcomed our – and when I say our, I mean our; hers, her family, our family – our daughter into the world. And it was it was really very special.
Lori:
It sounds very connective. So, let's go into your next creation that you actually did give birth to metaphorically, and that is your book, which is called Surrounded by Love. And it's brand new. It's only been out about two weeks. Is that right?
Allison:
Yeah. The launch was October 18.
Lori:
Oh, oh. For some reason I had September in my head. So, anyway, it's already earned a Moms’ Choice Award. You're a recipient of that. So, congratulations on that.
Allison:
Thank you.
Lori:
How did the book come about?
Allison:
In preparing for our daughter's birth and adoption, we did what most parents do; you buy the crib, all the things, you set up the nursery. And then especially for adoption, you always buy the highly recommended adoption books. So, I just thought, “Okay, what are the big books on the market? We’ll buy these.” I did not ever set out to be an author. And then I started looking through the books and they were all missing big components to me, as an adoptee. And so, one of the components you already mentioned earlier was the birth mom. So, oftentimes she was not illustrated. If she was mentioned, she was only mentioned about her struggle. So, as I even said with mine, we came to the table of adoption with struggle ourselves. Right. So, everybody kind of comes to adoption with that. But in these books, there were only focusing on her struggle.
And in young, young books like this, where you're trying to explain to a two year old, these are very big things. And I don't know why – When I would read them, I didn't know why that was the focus. You know, other books are about farm animals and it's the fun of the farm animals. It's not talking about how difficult it is to do farm labor and farm work, right. It's more age appropriate.
And so, seeing adoption through, now, two sides of the triad, I felt like there is so much love that surrounds this adoptee and it just felt like it was missing in the books for me. And so, what I wanted to do with this book, it follows the journey of the adoptive parents wanting and yearning for this loved baby years before this child even existed.
And then it follows the birth mom with the same thing. And the illustrations, she's the main character. She always looks beautiful and well-kept, whatever the term is there. And it always shows her lovingly touching on her pregnant belly. And it even says words like, “She loved you when you were tiny in her belly.” And these are phrases that are not often said to adoptees.
And I do want to give a caveat here. I know that that's not reflective of all adoptions. And this book is not going to be reflective of all adoptions. But if it is reflective of someone's adoption, that I want it to represent that. So, in these cases, I want it to represent that so that the adoptee can feel that love that maybe hasn't been spoken of prior. And then to show both of the family's excitement when they enter the world and just all of that.
And another key piece that I did was in the decision to enter into adoption, as you follow the adoptive parents, I tried to normalize that with the birth mom, so that it wasn't she struggled but the adoptive parents didn't struggle. It's a scene and it's a similar scene where the adoptive parents are staring up at the night sky, wishing, praying, meditating for this baby. And then later, it's the birth mom staring up into the sky, wishing, praying and meditating for the baby. So, those were some of the key elements that I wanted to bring into the book.
Lori:
I've had a chance to read the book and it's just so very dear. You really captured the ourness of it. And by that I'm using, O-U-R, that you were talking about; the both(and) that I talk about so much. Can you give listeners the inside scoop about the way that your illustrator used color in the storybook?
Allison:
Yes, there's one of my favorite parts. So, I found my illustrator online. But one of the key things is so besides the fact that I absolutely love her artwork, she really was able to capture all of the emotion when I would tell her about. So, I would tell her, “Here's the scene. But the emotion, I want it to be more of relief than happiness or sadness” or whatever. So, whatever emotion I gave her, she was able to really capture well to where you can feel the emotion when you read it. And I think that's because her brother is adopted. And so, I think that she had a special connection as well to this book because of that.
And so, she put in her own element that I love. So, each of the main characters has a color. So, the birth mom, you see, wear pink throughout the book. The adoptive mom, she wears yellow. The adoptive dad wears blue. And so, what she did, as a subtle component, is as this adoptee grows up, she wears each of those three colors in some capacity. And it just shows the impact, the lifelong impact, that each of these three individuals has on adoptee.
Lori:
I just really love that component of it. And that was brilliant on your illustrators; brilliant thinking for her. What about birth fathers?
Allison:
That is an excellent question. So, in both of my experiences, we do not have a birth father presence. So, in my situation, I'm still not certain if he was ever aware of my existence, in my case. And then for our daughter, he's pretty young, so I'm still hopeful that someday he will come around. The difference is we know who he is. And so, when he is ready, we would love to have him as part of our, our, for the situation.
And so, it's not out of possibility that I could write another book that included the birth father. I've heard that from several different adoptive parents. I would just want to collaborate with someone who does have that lived experience.
Lori:
Yeah. And that brings me to I noticed that this is called Part One of – You're in a series. So, what else do you have planned for adoptive families? Maybe a birth father, if you find somebody with that lived experience. What else?
Allison:
Sure. I think there are a few different ones. So, one, I'm going to do the same book but make it more inclusive. So, it's the exact same wording, but two adoptive moms and then one that has two adoptive dads. And then the other piece, because I know that you mentioned it in the beginning, but I'm truly on a mission to try to change the adoption narrative within children's literature, from the lucky child to the loved child. And I think the only way to do that, first it's educating the adoptee. But then there's another step where there's, you know, we call them non-adoptees; they have no idea that's even their title. But to everybody else, they need to also be educated on adoption.
And so, the book that I have that'll be coming out next year is educating non-adoptees, young non-adoptees, about adoption.
Lori:
I think that's so helpful because so often in our in our adoptive homes, we don't ever say real parent, but your child comes home because somebody there has said, “Who's your real mom?” Because it's used out there. So, I love that you're doing that.
Allison:
Yeah. And it answers some of those questions. So, again, my goal is hopefully to take some of that burden or load off of the young adoptee to have to answer some of those questions. And I do think that parents nowadays, like they really want to educate their children on different diverse situations. And so, if there was a book out there that could teach their child about adoption, you it could be helpful.
Lori:
We did an episode recently this season on entrance Narratives and covered this. But can you briefly talk about what is wrong with the lucky? What's wrong with lucky?
Allison:
Gotcha. That is a great question. And that is one of the – I always tell adoptive parents to get some canned answers. It's one that I have a canned answer for because I've had to hear about it for a while. But it's very prevalent for adoptive parents. So, the lucky tends to be – So, it's always well-meaning to people. So, we'll start with that. So, well-meaning people that just don't have the right education. They tend to tell the – Either they tell the child or they tell the parent how lucky the child is to be with that family.
And that is problematic. So, we all know it more in the terms of the saviorism for parents. And anything like that where the child feels like they owe someone something. So, to be lucky means like, “I guess I don't really deserve these parents. I guess I don't deserve the situation.” And I just want to change that because like in our situation, even when I look back at my situation. So, we'll start with our daughter, if she had stayed with her birth mom, she would have been loved. She would have been really loved. If she had gone to any of the hundreds of other hopeful adoptive parents waiting to adopt, she would have been loved. So, who's the lucky one? We adults. We, the adoptive parents are the lucky ones. And so, that's the major difference to me.
Lori:
That's a beautiful reframing, and I think it's so easy for people to understand when you say it that way. And for people to be a little more intentional with how they see it and how they speak about adoption. What would you say, Allison, to those who point out that not all open adoptions go as smoothly as the one in the storybook?
Allison:
Then they are correct is what I would say. You know, no two adoptions are alike. They all can be very different. And like I said, open adoption is a scale or a spectrum. So, from just having more information than nothing; having a first and last name automatically puts you more into the open adoption bucket. And then there's like middle of the road where they're just exchanging pictures and letters through an agency. And then there's us, which again, we're not even to the most extreme. So, because we live states away where we have this relationship and connection, but from afar. And there's others where I know these people and they live down the street and they have the birth grandparents babysit the children all the time.
So, it's a scale and in fact, it's going to change over time, as relationships always do. In those situations, I would say make sure that you find books and educations, and whatever you are talking with your children about, that are reflective of your story so that you're as honest and open with your children as possible. But again, it can be at an age appropriate level.
So, again, going back to I'm not saying that being an adoptee is sunshine and rainbows. People have listened to your podcast long enough to know that that's not the case. And so, I think that it's just important to keep in mind, though, that for children's books, the farm example that I said. So, if they're really, really young children, we're talking about farm animals in a sense of farm animals are cute and fun. We're not talking about that that's a likely a 14-hour day of very hard labor to get that farm set up. So, it's keeping those elements in mind so that they can have a strong foundation of knowing that they're loved. But again, making sure that you have the right materials for your situation.
Lori:
That farm analogy is such a good one. You're talking about early readers; people who are just figuring out what parenting, parentage, all of that is, how their pieces fit together. So, this is not to explore in depth, everything. This is to cuddle up with a trusted person hear resonate with a story.
So, zooming out a little bit, this is November. November as National Adoption Month. I choose to call it National Adoption Awareness Month. Do you have any thoughts on NAM?
Allison:
Yes. So, I know that we were kind of talking about this a little bit earlier before we started the podcast. The awareness word to me is the key. So, I know that there are different opinions. I know that you've spoken about them before on your podcast as well, that adoptees have certain opinions, adoptive parents have certain opinions. Mine's going to be a little bit of a different opinion. I would love to see us use this month truly for awareness.
So, to get back to that educational piece for non-adoptees, again, they don't even know they're called non-adoptees. But I just think the language that I hear as an adoptee and now as an adoptive parent, because I do hear some slightly different things now, all of it is very old. So, you think about how politically correct terms get kind of, you know, folks move along with the times and are kind of more generally saying things and moving in the right direction. With adoption, I feel like it's still stuck sometimes in 1950. And so, the things that I will hear would floor other people that people feel that they have the right to say to me as an adoptee, “Well, how do you know you didn't marry your sibling?” “Were you a product of rape?” “Excuse me, I just want to get my groceries.”
And then it gets kind of even more in-depth with adoptive parents, because I think they feel like, “Oh, because you're not the adoptee we're talking about, we can talk in more detail.” This is my child's story. This is none of your business. This is their situation. They'll tell their story when they're old enough to whomever they feel comfortable.
So, I think there's a lot of awareness and education we could do across the board. I even hear comments from people, “I would like to go help out the orphans.” And I say, “There are no more orphanages in the United States of America. We have the foster system.” So, basic, basic education like that, I would love to see this be part of. So, even like at my company, I'm part of the DENI Committee. I'm like, “You guys, we got to put adoption as part of this on the list.”
And so, I think that if we can start to push for this type of education. Again, like I said, I'm trying from the young adoptee standpoint with this new book. If we can try with DENI committees up at the top for adults, whatever education we need to do so that everyone is speaking the positive adoption language and then everyone knows everything around adoption; like fully understands closed adoption. I think we could get more of the states to change over laws. That's where I would like to see November go.
Lori:
Oh, my gosh, you're speaking my language. And if it wouldn't, like, pop my microphone, I'd just be clapping away. And I think you're right, Allison. The awareness really needs to come from adoptees. The lived experience of the product of the adoption process where it all culminates. We need to know more about that so we can get it righter and writer. So, I'm going to do a shameless plug during the month of November. I have invited adoptees to take over my blog, which is lavenderluz.com, and they're all addressing the question, “What I wish adoptive parents knew." So, I would encourage everybody to tune in, November and beyond, for that series and the various unique viewpoints. As you say, everybody has their own take on things and their own story about their own adoption and their take on adoption. And so, let's listen to it. Let's figure out as many tiles in the mosaic that we can take a look at, starts to fill in the picture, and we can understand it better the more we look. So, I appreciate your thoughts on that.
This is the last question, and it's one I'm asking from all Season 3 guests. From your perspective as an adoptee and an adoptive parent, what's the most important piece of the long view of adoptive parenting that people miss on the front end?
Allison:
Hmm. I would say helping to raise the child, to be confident and have self-esteem around being adopted. I would think that that is the key because then they can grow up and they can handle these tougher conversations with strangers, etc., with a bit more ease because they have that foundation set for them. So, I would say that's one of the biggest pieces. It's not easy to get there. There's honesty and the openness; all of that information. So, whatever information you have, making sure to relay it with the child, that curiosity that you mentioned, all of that goes into it. But making sure to build that foundation of confidence and self-esteem in the young adoptees, specifically around being adopted, I think is critical.
Lori:
And to be able to deliver that, it seems like the adoptive parent would need to be able to have that within themselves. So, do you have any tips on ways to cultivate the ability to deal in the truth, especially if that's not where you came to adoption from and the ability to be curious about those other parents and that other life that the child might have lived? Are there some advice you might give to parents who are not naturally inclined with those traits?
Allison:
Sure. And it gets into the little bit of the blog that I wrote for you. I think the biggest thing to know is, from my standpoint as the adoptee, you are the parent. I think that that is the biggest thing. So, as adoptive parents, and sometimes I know that some things can be misunderstood and misconstrued when reading different online forums from adoptees, because I've heard some adoptive parents say, “Well, they're telling me I'm just a babysitter.” I think there might be some misunderstanding of what they're saying.
The big thing is you are the parent. Nothing can undo those years you are sharing together. You are the one when they – you know, we were talking about my daughter's bike accident last week – you are the one they go to when they are hurt. You are the comfort, the foundation, the shoulder they are leaning on. You are the one, when something exciting happens at school, they are rushing home to tell you. So, have the confidence in yourself to know you are the parent.
And take the time to work on yourself; whatever self-care you need to have that confidence. And once you know that, then it doesn't matter. It's kind of like getting additional people in your family. So, somebody marries someone extra, you don't lose a little extra love for other people in your family. You gain love for that new sister in-law, that new brother in-law, etc.. And so that that's what it is.
So, adoptees, we want to know our heritage. We want to know what holidays we should support. Are there other languages we should learn? We want to learn about ourselves and that that's how we're doing it. Come along with us on that journey; that curiosity. But definitely know that no matter what, even if another strong relationship is formed, just the same as a teacher could be very inspirational to your child and they could have a strong relationship in that manner, nothing, none of this takes away from that you are the parent.
Lori:
That's such a wise advice to own it; own it from the inside. And if that is a challenge for you, be curious with that. Take a look. Figure out what is behind that. And then as I say, at least once every episode, do your own work, people. Take a look at that. And to the degree that you can heal that within yourself, you're going to be able to walk alongside your child with all the things that they need to address and deal with.
So, thank you so much for that, Allison, and thank you so much for taking the time today. And thank you for reminding me that yours is going to be one of those essays for the month of November, and I'm so excited to publish that and share that with people that and several others. So, please tune in for that. And so, Allison, thank you so much for being here today.
Allison:
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Lori:
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