Join me as I learn more about the Adoptee Consciousness Model developed by Dr. Susan Branco (not shown), Dr. Jaeran Kim, 55, and Grace Newton, 29, MSW. We also talk about the beginnings of their notable blogs where Kim and Newton both began writing about the impact of adoption, ‘righteous anger’ and adoptee identity.
Audio available Friday, March 1, 2024.
Dr. JaeRan Kim:
Harlow’s Monkey
LinkedIn jaerankimphd
Grace Newton:
Facebook: Red Thread Broken
Website: www.redthreadbroken.com
(0:00:09) speaker_0: Welcome to Adapted Podcast, Season 7, Episode 13 starts now. (instrumental music) This is a podcast that centers the voices of Korean inter-country adoptees.
(0:00:23) speaker_0: Adopted people are the true experts of the lived experience of adoption. I’m Kaomi Lee, and I was adopted from Korea.
(0:00:32) speaker_0: Our voices have often been silenced by adoption agencies, governments, sometimes even our adoptive parents, and society that wants only a feel-good story.
(0:00:43) speaker_0: Our lives are more complicated than that. These are our stories.
(0:00:48) speaker_1: I think we all just recognize there was, uh, room for more nuance, um, and deeper discussions around, uh, how we think about being adoptees.
(0:00:57) speaker_0: In this episode, I talk with Dr. Jaeran Kim and PhD student, Grace Newton.
(0:01:04) speaker_0: They’re researchers and both transracially adopted and respected bloggers in the adoptee space. Along with Dr.
(0:01:12) speaker_0: Susan Bronco, they’ve developed an adoptee consciousness model to map adoptee awareness of the impact of adoption.
(0:01:21) speaker_0: But before we start, I want to say a little about becoming a Patreon supporter.
(0:01:27) speaker_0: Patreon supporters can join for as little as a few dollars a month in, uh, helping to sustain the work of this podcast.
(0:01:35) speaker_0: All funds, 100%, go directly to cause such as production help, podcasting software, music licenses and more.
(0:01:42) speaker_0: Dozens of folks just like you have felt part of a community larger than themselves through these stories. I know because you write me all the time.
(0:01:52) speaker_0: They’ve decided the podcast is worth their support. At some point, I hope you will consider joining us at our Patreon also at patreon.com/adaptedpodcast.
(0:02:05) speaker_0: Thank you. Now here’s the episode. (instrumental music) So, um, Jaeron and Grace, thank you so much for being here today.
(0:02:21) speaker_0: Um, uh, why don’t- why don’t we just start off with a little bit of an introduction from both of you?
(0:02:31) speaker_1: Okay. Um, I’ll start. I’m Jaeron Kim. Uh, I’m a Korean adoptee. I was adopted to Minnesota in the early 1970s.
(0:02:45) speaker_1: And, um, I’m now 55 and I am a researcher and I’m on the faculty of the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at University of Washington Tacoma in Washington State.
(0:02:59) speaker_1: And I do most of my research on adopt- on adoption, um, mostly on adoptee experiences, but I’ve done some research also looking at adoption processes, on adoptive and foster parents, um, and just kind of looking at it from a social work perspective and because social workers tend to be, uh, one of the primary facilitators of adoptions.
(0:03:28) speaker_1: And so I can talk a little bit more about why I chose to become a researcher, but, um, that’s kind of who I am and- and what I do.
(0:03:37) speaker_2: Okay. I can go. My name is Grace Newton and I’m a Chinese adoptee.
(0:03:44) speaker_2: I am currently 29 years old, and I was adopted in 1997 from Nanjing, China when I was three years old.
(0:03:54) speaker_2: I first came into my consciousness around my adoptee identity, um, and all of the political elements of that when I was in my first year of undergrad in Minnesota, which prompted me to start my critical adoption blog, Red Thread Broken.
(0:04:15) speaker_2: I’ve been authoring that blog for the past- over a decade now, um, which really helped develop my thinking and writing around adoption.
(0:04:27) speaker_2: And I’ve continued that professionally, um, with my master’s of social work and, um, currently I’m in my first year of my PhD program also in social work at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago.
(0:04:48) speaker_2:
(0:04:48) speaker_0: And I wanna thank both of you so profusely because, um, Jaeron being the author of Harlow’s Monkey and Grace with Red Thread Broken.
(0:05:00) speaker_0: I mean, both of those blogs, before podcasts there were blogs, and those blogs helped raise so many of us and even in, when I say raised, even just in our own adoptee consciousness, you know, going from an adoptee who’s, you know, really just trying to figure things out and wanting to connect with others but not knowing how or where and finding the blog is something that I think a lot of us really, uh, you know, you help name things and, um, really help a lot of us process.
(0:05:38) speaker_0: So I wanna thank you both so much. Um, how did you, you know, uh, start the blogs and, you know, want to sort of, um, dive in, uh, so publicly?
(0:05:55) speaker_1: Well, that’s a really great question, K. Lee. Um, I started Harlow’s Monkey, well-I should say, first I started writing a blog…
(0:06:06) speaker_1: I started a blog in 2004, so 20 years ago. But I wasn’t really writing a lot about adoption. It was more, you know…
(0:06:13) speaker_1: Blogs were kind of the thing then and I was just kind of starting to write, I don’t know, my rambles.
(0:06:21) speaker_1: And as I was writing that first blog, and I was totally anonymous, um, I started reading other blogs and the first blog I came across that was explicitly…
(0:06:33) speaker_1: Uh, had some adoption content was a blog called Twice the Rice. Uh, that author actually lives in Washington State now and, uh…
(0:06:42) speaker_1: But I got to know her through that blog and she, she was writing about her personal life just in general and her thoughts but every now and then, she would write about being a Korean adoptee.
(0:06:52) speaker_1: And I was really…
(0:06:54) speaker_1: I had started my own, uh, journey in the adopt- adoption consciousness in 1999 when I reconnected with an adoptee that I knew and then in 2000 I went back to Korea.
(0:07:07) speaker_1: And I was really kind of struggling to process all the things that had happened and all the things I was learning.
(0:07:15) speaker_1: And so I, I started the blog, um, the Harlow’s Monkey blog, in 2006 as a way for me to just start really processing, uh, how I felt about adoption and what my thoughts were and in conversation with other bloggers.
(0:07:30) speaker_1: Now, that’s kind of what happens on Instagram and Facebook and these other forums but back then, um, I didn’t know about all…
(0:07:39) speaker_1: You know, all those social medias hadn’t really taken off yet so it w- it was mostly conversations with other adoptees through the blog.
(0:07:47) speaker_1: And I remember reading Grace’s blog (laughs) and being so impressed and, uh, really, I thought what she was writing about was so great.
(0:07:57) speaker_1: Um, especially since, um, she was one of the first Chinese adoptee bloggers that I had come across and I thought it was just so smart.
(0:08:06) speaker_2: Aw. Thanks, Jaeryun.
(0:08:08) speaker_1: (laughs)
(0:08:10) speaker_2: I think for me, I similarly started my blog as a way to process what I had learned so far about adoption.
(0:08:17) speaker_2: I had taken a class in my first year of undergrad on adoption that was quite intense and that summer when I was going home, um, I no longer was gonna have a space, like a physical space, with other adoptees to continue thinking through what we had learned.
(0:08:38) speaker_2: And so for me, creating the blog was my way of processing and developing my thoughts further on the subject of adoption.
(0:08:52) speaker_2: I remember reading Jaeryun’s blog and some of the other blogs that were out at the time during this class, and that was really my first exposure to, um, a lot of the adoptee content that was being created.
(0:09:09) speaker_2: And so I think what I saw was so many adoptees sharing s- stories and their perspectives that I hadn’t seen before, and it really was this communicative network with, um, uh, lots of comments and exchanges and I wanted to be a part of that community and I wanted to put my voice and opinions out there as well.
(0:09:37) speaker_2: Um, I remember when I started my blog I was 19 years old and so I stayed very anonymous partially because my mother was very worried about the internet but also, um, you know…
(0:09:52) speaker_2: Ageism is real and I wanted people to take me seriously. I didn’t want people to know that I was still a teenager (laughs). And, um…
(0:10:03) speaker_2: And I think the fact that I was 19 at the time is also an important part of why I joined this cr- um, blogging community which is heavily Korean adoptees and…
(0:10:15) speaker_2: Because when I started, I…
(0:10:17) speaker_2: The blog, I was a part of some Facebook groups for Chinese adoptees like China’s Children International, but at that time, the biggest group of Chinese adoptees were still in high school so the conversations were very different from the ones that I wanted to start having.
(0:10:35) speaker_2:
(0:10:37) speaker_0: You know, um, Jaeryun, you said that you also were anonymous, at least in the beginning of Harlow’s Monkey.
(0:10:44) speaker_0: Do you think there was some kind of power for both of you in being anonymous? Um, you know, Grace mentioned, you know, um, the ageism sometimes gets applied.
(0:10:55) speaker_0: Um, do you think there was somewhat like the… That having been anonymous you can say things that you might not ordinarily not want to be, um…
(0:11:11) speaker_0: You know, I think… Let’s just talk about the, the anonymity part and, you know, if there was, there was power in that.
(0:11:17) speaker_1: Yeah. Th- there definitely was for me.
(0:11:20) speaker_1: Um, my husband actually came up with the name Harlow’s Monkey, um, because when I first started a blog I didn’t know what to name myself and I knew I didn’t want to have my full name out there.
(0:11:34) speaker_1: Uh, I, I think I had a premonition or some kind of a, uh, concern already that, um, what I was reading on the internet people were using…
(0:11:48) speaker_1: You know, people were using these, uh, avatar names and creating different personas and especially when you’re talking about something so contentious like adoption which has such a strong narrative in the popular society and media and pop culture-…
(0:12:08) speaker_1: and I was mostly writing critical aspects about adoption.
(0:12:14) speaker_1: Um, and when, uh, th- the comments that I would get, um, could be quite mean and critical, and people pathologizing me and, you know, I would regularly get comments like, “You seem so angry, you should go to therapy.
(0:12:31) speaker_1: You should work on, you know, you know, I…” “What would your parents say if they read this?” And, um, any kind of, um…
(0:12:39) speaker_1: anything you would write that would kind of, goes against the dominant narrative of adoption could get really heavily criticized by people reading it.
(0:12:48) speaker_1: So, I was pretty conscious that I didn’t want to have my full name out there at first, and I was also in the process of, um, finishing my social work degree and working in, uh, social services in adoptions, and I also was a little concerned that, um, people that might know me professionally would read the blog and then, you know, have concerns about my work.
(0:13:15) speaker_1: I tried really hard to separate the two, um, but in the end it was really helpful for me, um, when I did finally kind of own it, but it took some years before I felt like I was at a place where I could, um, because people, I think, in those early days of blogging especially, were super critical and, uh, you know, it’s like what you see, the trolls of the…
(0:13:40) speaker_1: And other adoptees as well as adoptive parents or I had some adoption professionals who I didn’t know comment and, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of the reason why I, I did it.
(0:13:53) speaker_1: Um, as an adoptee I was already sensitive to the fact that people weren’t gonna think…
(0:13:59) speaker_1: Th- there’s a tendency to always think of us as children, and so I totally understand Grace’s concern about if you start writing, um, thoughtfully and critically about adoption, people always have a tendency to think that you’re either younger than you are, um, and that you’ll just mature in…
(0:14:19) speaker_1: At some point you’ll just kind of mature up and then won’t have these thoughts, you know? And that’s not true in my experience.
(0:14:26) speaker_1: I haven’t seen that in our community. I think actually the older you get, the more critical you become, but, uh, that’s not what other people think.
(0:14:35) speaker_1: So that’s kind of the reason why I stayed anonymous for the first several years.
(0:14:39) speaker_2: Yeah, I think… You know, I’ve also gotten a smattering of, uh, choice comments like, “Why do you care so much about China?
(0:14:47) speaker_2: You were just a number to that country,” or, um, “Your mother should have buyer’s remorse over you.” That’s a good one.
(0:14:55) speaker_2: And I think that when you’re anonymous (laughs), um, there’s something a little bit easier about these comments. Like they’re not at…
(0:15:09) speaker_2: directed towards you personally, they’re directed towards this blog persona, um, and I think that being anonymous also did allow me to write a little bit more boldly, um, in the beginning, and I think after a few years…
(0:15:28) speaker_2: Well, I guess the thing that, that prompted me to take ownership of my blog in a public way with my real name was that some people had started attributing my blog to another prominent Chinese adoptee, and at that point I had been writing the blog for years, I had been traveling around the conference circuit speaking, um, at different, uh, conferences and community events as the author of Red Thread Broken.
(0:16:00) speaker_2: I felt like very linked already to the blog and re- not really anonymous anymore, so I decided to make that fully formal (laughs) in introducing myself on my blog.
(0:16:10) speaker_2:
(0:16:11) speaker_0: Yeah, in a way it’s like, uh, kind of a coming out, right? Of (laughs), um…
(0:16:16) speaker_0: Uh, what was that like for you to, you know, own your blog and have it really be, you know, part of your professional name and work?
(0:16:26) speaker_1: Um, oh (laughs). I- I just don’t want to always have to be… I don’t wanna talk over Grace, um… Um, so I think…
(0:16:34) speaker_1: I’m trying to, I’m trying to ac- (laughs) I- I can’t even remember when I started publicly talking about being connected to Harlow’s Monkey, but it must have been maybe in the…
(0:16:50) speaker_1: Like around 2008 or 2010. So it had been a couple of years.
(0:16:55) speaker_1: I think it was when I decided to go back to school and do my PhD work, um, is when I became more public about it, because I was also doing more writing in other spaces at that time.
(0:17:11) speaker_1: So for me, the blog was really my outlet for writing before I started publishing, um, in, in book chapters and anthologies and, and academic papers.
(0:17:23) speaker_1: So, um, that was kind of like my practice writing in some ways, I guess, for public audiences.
(0:17:31) speaker_0: Uh, one of the things about the blog I think is… That resonated with me, is, um… I mean both of yours, is there was an…
(0:17:42) speaker_0: There was a anger there that I related to, and I was just, um…
(0:17:49) speaker_0: And I, I like the fact that, you know, uh, you know, if you’re an adoptee and you talk about being angry, um, about certain aspects of the adoption system or your own experience, um, you know, that always…
(0:18:08) speaker_0: You know, we get infantilized, that anger is a, a child reaction or, you know, um, you’re just an angry adoptee kind of thing.
(0:18:17) speaker_0: Um-And I like the fact that these were v-blogs that felt very adult and, (laughs) and that you could be angry and, and an adult and smart and, uh, confident.
(0:18:30) speaker_0: And I really felt like i-the things that I read were things I wished I could say, or I had the courage to say, but didn’t. And, you know, I…
(0:18:41) speaker_0: The blog just, um, you know, maybe helped in my own sort of, uh, coming to terms with being a storyteller and-and, uh, and- and talking about adoption, and being able to name things that I earlier had been afraid to.
(0:18:59) speaker_0: So, um, I don’t know. Is… Would you say that, um, that is an aspect of your own, you know, why you wanted to do the blogs?
(0:19:12) speaker_2: I can address the anger, I think, in relation to your last question about this kind of, like, coming out process.
(0:19:19) speaker_2: For me, I think by the time that I came out publicly on my blog, it had already become so infused with my identity that that didn’t feel, I think, as scary and as vulnerable as when I first started writing and sharing with my personal networks, um, that were, like, high school and college friends, or my mom would share with family friends.
(0:19:48) speaker_2: And I think that initially, a lot of people were surprised.
(0:19:52) speaker_2: I think especially family friends who had seen me as, like, a very happy child, um, were surprised by all these feelings and what I was saying.
(0:20:01) speaker_2: And I think that, you know, eventually, I’m so, so lucky to have so much support from my parents and all of the family friends and, and loved ones, um, uh, who continually read my blog and encourage my thinking as well.
(0:20:20) speaker_2: But it, it was a transition, and it was, um… That was a shock to them, I think, initially.
(0:20:27) speaker_2: And I think regarding your question around anger, I think that anger is an emotion that I have a hard time with.
(0:20:36) speaker_2: Um, I oftentimes say that my two emotions are, like, happy or stressed, but I think that, um, anger is definitely there sometimes.
(0:20:47) speaker_2: And I think that, I think that anger is something that I need to learn to not be so, um, avoidant of, because I think that ultimately anger can be a productive emotion when it’s channeled in things like the production of my blog.
(0:21:04) speaker_2: I think that when I go back at and read some of the older posts, they represent these kind of timestamps of where I was in my consciousness process.
(0:21:16) speaker_2: I think certain posts and certain sequences of months definitely represent more anger, and some, you know, the dominant feeling is, is more a sadness and wistfulness.
(0:21:28) speaker_2: But I think that the, the primary emotion that kind of motivated me to really get out there was this feeling of anger at so many things in the adoption system.
(0:21:44) speaker_2: Anger at the suppression of adoptee voices, anger at, um, all of these things that I wanted to expose through my blog.
(0:21:56) speaker_0: Jaeyun, do you… Would you agree that, or would, would you say that, that anger was, was a-an emotion that you were expressing as well through your blog?
(0:22:05) speaker_0:
(0:22:05) speaker_1: Yeah, I think probably anger, uh, I, I think I… Anger was a, was a larger motivation, um, or inspiration for my blog posts and, than, than Grace’s.
(0:22:22) speaker_1: Um, I, I think I was conscious of it being a driver. I remember a couple of things.
(0:22:28) speaker_1: First, I had come across a blog by two Korean adoptees called Transracial Abductees, and they were really, really angry on their blog post. And they had…
(0:22:40) speaker_1: They were the first people I remember specifically connecting adoption with the act of, like, kidnapping and trafficking.
(0:22:49) speaker_1: And it was so shocking, but it helped me realize that I could be critical and I could express that critical aspect o-of my own feelings around adoption.
(0:22:58) speaker_1: And people often will say things like, eh, especially in the early days, because I do tend to come off as maybe a little angrier or kind of harsh or strident, people always assumed that I had, like, a really terrible, um, adoptive family or that I had experienced, you know, a lot, and, and are always kind of surprised when I say, “No, I had kind of, like, the idyllic childhood in a lot of ways.
(0:23:25) speaker_1: ” So, um…
(0:23:25) speaker_1: And they always assume that I’m estranged from my adoptive parents, I don’t have a relationship with them, and that’s not to say that there haven’t been some very tense times.
(0:23:35) speaker_1: But, you know, I know a lot of adoptees who really had, uh, difficult challenges with their adoptive families, and that wasn’t my experience.
(0:23:44) speaker_1: And I think people, again, automatically assume that if you’re critical or if you have this kind of, um, kind of righteous anger, that there’s something wrong with you.
(0:23:55) speaker_1: Um, and I think anger is one of those emotions that, uh, can really be a catalyst for changing injustice. And I…
(0:24:05) speaker_1: But I think it’s about whether or not that anger ends up…
(0:24:11) speaker_1: It can be destructive or it can be used to, uh, you know, spark movements that help people who have been impressed, uh, oppressed.
(0:24:23) speaker_1: And so I think, uh-Raven Sinclair, who’s this Indigenous adoptee scholar in Canada, um, at a conference said that there’s a difference between the way we use like toxic anger and righteous rage.
(0:24:35) speaker_1: And so I like to think about it as righteous rage now.
(0:24:39) speaker_1: Um, but the rage is not about destroying other people, it’s about destroying systems or dominant ways of thinking, um, e- that, that have oppressed people.
(0:24:49) speaker_1: And, you know, we had this conversation a little earlier, Keomi, uh, that I’m gonna talk about, but this idea about lateral violence within our adoptee communities.
(0:24:59) speaker_1: I think one way that people sometimes process their trauma is through taking down other people.
(0:25:07) speaker_1: Um, and so that’s not a constructive use of anger in my opinion. Um, but again, that’s just my opinion.
(0:25:14) speaker_1: I, I, I hope it comes across that I’m trying to use my anger towards systems of oppression and systems that harm us, not other adoptees.
(0:25:26) speaker_0: Myself included, you know, if we might not be able to have these kinds of conversations over Thanksgiving with our family or, you know, the holidays, um, uh, but it’s something where…
(0:25:40) speaker_0: or even directly with, with parents, but it’s something where we can share one of your blog posts (laughs) and say, “Just read this.
(0:25:47) speaker_0: ” And I think it’s, you know, in a way, it’s kind of a proxy for being able to communicate with, um, loved ones that, um, you know, it’s very, uh, these…
(0:25:59) speaker_0: Because of all the positions in the, in the adoption triad that it’s sometimes difficult for an adopted person to talk freely within their families about their feelings about adoption, but, you know, um, having these blogs and being able to give, um, people we care about, uh, you know, uh, resources to read, um, it, you know, I think that that does serve as a, I mean, it’s a great service and a, a resource for all of us to be able to, you know…
(0:26:38) speaker_0: You’ve put to words things that we have feelings and that we may not have the courage to, to say directly.
(0:26:48) speaker_0: So, um, well, let’s, uh, move into, uh, (laughs) um, the, the reason we’re, we, um, for this podcast episode, um, Dr.
(0:26:58) speaker_0: Susan Bronco couldn’t be with us today, but, um, I’m so glad that JRon and Grace, that you’re both here to talk about this exciting model that you’ve come up with.
(0:27:09) speaker_0: Can you, uh, talk about it?
(0:27:12) speaker_1: Uh, Grace, maybe I’ll start by talking about how Susan and I, um, started talking about doing this model and then, um, and introduce y- you into the model and then, uh, you can talk about your aspect, if that’s okay?
(0:27:30) speaker_1:
(0:27:31) speaker_3: Yeah.
(0:27:31) speaker_1: Okay.
(0:27:32) speaker_1: So Susan and I met in 2011 when we were both volunteering at a family camp for adoptive families, and we met two other adoptees there, Paula O’Loughlin and Dr.
(0:27:46) speaker_1: Stephanie Cooper-Luder, uh, Crippa-Cooper-Luder, who, um, also, uh, is- has a social work PhD, um, but she doesn’t work in social work right now.
(0:27:57) speaker_1: And we all just really bonded and over the years as since…
(0:28:01) speaker_1: that we’ve known each other and we get together frequently as much as we can, we’ve been talking about in our own experiences, all of us, um, being part of these adoptee communities and seeing this movement when people first start to think about themselves and their identity development as adoptees and then when it kind of can shift or turn into more political awareness or activism.
(0:28:29) speaker_1: And, um, we had heard the term out of the fog a lot and we all felt like, “Okay, that explains kind of the first aspect of, you know, our awareness, our initial awareness about being an adoptee in these systems and how we were affected by these adoption systems.
(0:28:51) speaker_1: ” And, but it didn’t really say what happened afterwards.
(0:28:54) speaker_1: So we were, over the years, we’ve been talking about, like, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with a way to talk more about, um, what happens after you come out of the fog?
(0:29:05) speaker_1: ” Because in, in all of our experiences, it wasn’t just this linear, and now we’re this, and now we’re that.
(0:29:13) speaker_1: Um, I remember first starting to understand when I was taking some social work classes, again, like with Carlos Monkey, like, oh, researchers do all these experiments to try and figure out how children can attach to parents and what happens when you lose your first, um, primary attachments, or, oh, now that I’ve, uh, kind of started to understand, uh, that I experienced adoption as a trauma and I’m married, my partner doesn’t understand, and how do I, you know, work on this with my partner who just wants me to be back to pre-consciousness?
(0:29:51) speaker_1: Or I’m a parent now and I have children, and how do I parent my children when I don’t have any language to talk about my own experience as an adoptee?
(0:30:00) speaker_1: So I think we all just recognized there was, uh, room for kind of more nuanced, um, and deeper discussions around, uh, how we think about being adoptees.
(0:30:12) speaker_1: And then we started to put together kind of some ideas, like what we wanted to see, like, “Oh, we wanted it to be a spiral and we don’t see it as linear.
(0:30:22) speaker_1: ” And then, um, Susan and I wa- we read this article that Grace had written in the special issue of Child Abuse & Neglect.
(0:30:32) speaker_4: … and she kind of, in this article, talked about all the things that we were trying to put this language around.
(0:30:39) speaker_4: And so, we reached out to Grace and asked her if she wanted to be involved in working on this paper and this model, and now the research that we’re doing around it, which we can talk about a little bit later too.
(0:30:50) speaker_4:
(0:30:50) speaker_2: Yeah. So like JaeRan mentioned, um, I had written this autoethnography that was published in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect. And I think, um…
(0:31:04) speaker_2: So the topic of the special issue is the connection between adoption and trauma, and during the time that I was writing this paper, I was in my master’s program, and I was taking a lot of classes on trauma, and I think…
(0:31:23) speaker_2: I was thinking about, um, that time period of mine in undergrad when I was first coming into consciousness around all of these aspects of being an adoptee, being a part of this huge and, like, long history of so many adoption movements, and, um, what I felt like was coming into really traumatic knowledge.
(0:31:51) speaker_2: And so…
(0:31:52) speaker_2: but there weren’t words to really describe that, um, you know, because historical trauma relies on this intergenerational transmission, but adoptees don’t.
(0:32:06) speaker_2: Um, like we have, you know, our… We don’t have this, like, intergenerational, uh, biological lineage. We… It’s this…
(0:32:17) speaker_2: I feel like all of the adoptees who have been a part of these experiences before me are ancestors in a non-biological way, and collective trauma is this experience, you know, that’s shared at the same time, but adoptees are dispersed around the world, and experience their adoption and their consciousness, um, at different rates and different times.
(0:32:44) speaker_2: And so, I was really trying to find a concept or create a concept that, um, acknowledged that it didn’t have to be this collective thing at the same time.
(0:32:56) speaker_2: It didn’t have to be intergenerational.
(0:32:59) speaker_2: Just coming into consciousness around all of this history and knowledge, and, and learning the ways that, like, the history is still present, like, just knowing that is traumatic.
(0:33:13) speaker_2: And so I, um…
(0:33:14) speaker_2: That’s basically the, the idea around my paper, The Trauma and Healing of Consciousness, this framework that, uh, consciousness can be traumatic, and it can also be healing.
(0:33:26) speaker_2: And so when I received, uh, the message from JaeRan about, um, the paper that they were working on, I was really excited to join, uh, since this was a topic that I had already been thinking about a lot, um, and I also, you know, I had been reading Harlow’s Monkey from afar, and I wanted to, um, have the chance to, to work with JaeRan and get to know her more, both in a personal and scholarly way.
(0:34:01) speaker_2: So, I think, um, there are a lot of, a lot of good motivators to joining the project.
(0:34:09) speaker_4: Mm. And I mean, to be honest, you’re all rock stars, so (laughs) um, uh, yeah, so I can understand, um, wanting to work together. Um, a-…
(0:34:23) speaker_4: What do you guys make of that term, uh, coming out of the fog? Do you like it?
(0:34:29) speaker_2: Uh, personally, I don’t love it, um, I… But, but I understand it. I mean, I think that as a metaphor, it, it… I think it’s… It can be useful.
(0:34:41) speaker_2: Um, but I think for me, I feel like, and maybe this is just my interpretation of it, I feel like it’s, it’s limiting, and I feel like you don’t just come out of the fog once.
(0:34:54) speaker_2: You know what I mean? Like, as an adoptee, I feel like there’s so many different layers and levels when you kind of learn more things.
(0:35:03) speaker_2: I think that there are, um…
(0:35:05) speaker_2: I think sometimes also coming out of the fog, and this is what I’m trying to do, and I admit, I’m not always successful at this, but I’m trying so hard to situate our own individual stories within these larger contexts.
(0:35:20) speaker_2: So, coming out of the fog to me seems like my own personal awakening for something, but part of the awakening to me is realizing you’re part of this larger, as Grace kind of said, this larger history of child placing movements, of adoption movements, and so individually, I, I remember the first time I learned about, um, home study processes, or I learned about my files not being accurate in, in Korea, or learning about…
(0:35:55) speaker_2: You know, like, all the different things that happened and it’s also like you kind of come to awareness every single time any of these things happen, and so I might still have certain areas of my kind of larger knowledge around adoption or being an adoptee that would…
(0:36:13) speaker_2: We, we would call being in status quo, kind of, “Oh, yeah, that just seems like it is what it is. It fits the dominant narrative.
(0:36:19) speaker_2: I’m not critical about it.” But then there’s other areas that I might be much more critically aware about.
(0:36:26) speaker_2: So for me, it’s not that I hate the term so much as I just feel like it, it doesn’t express a- all that I want it to express, ’cause-
(0:36:35) speaker_1: … it, it, it, it’s a term that, uh, can be useful in some ways, but I don’t… But I think then it, it, it leaves room for more to me.
(0:36:44) speaker_2: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that it works as a metaphor.
(0:36:50) speaker_2: We can all picture, like, being in this cloudy haze and then, um, being able to see things clearly, but I think that…
(0:37:00) speaker_2: And I think that Coming Out of the Fog is a term that I really didn’t question for a long time-
(0:37:06) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.
(0:37:06) speaker_2: …
(0:37:07) speaker_2: because it’s so ubiquitously used in the adoptee community, um, but I think that it really relies on this kind of pre and post state, and it doesn’t explain at all how one, like, moves through that fog.
(0:37:25) speaker_2: Which I think… and which I think we show in our model, like, can be quite difficult and, um, and, like, emotionally taxing.
(0:37:38) speaker_2: And I think, um, I think, you know, when I read through our model though, the, the different, um, touchstones really speak more to, um, yeah, the ways in which, um, adoptees are moving through these, uh, this consciousness process and, and I, um…
(0:38:02) speaker_2: The paper was already generated in a way that had that spiral motion w- when I joined the project, but that’s something that, um, I really like about the model as well, because, um, like J Ron said, I think that, you know, there are so many different, um, um, events or, um, things that can kind of spark this, this reawakening or, or movement again.
(0:38:34) speaker_2:
(0:38:34) speaker_1: Mm.
(0:38:34) speaker_2: And I think about, um…
(0:38:36) speaker_2: I think personally, right, you know, I, I came out of the fog or I moved through this consciousness process in a, in a very rapid way when I was in college, and then I think that the nice thing, like, you know, that, that kind of becomes your new status quo.
(0:38:54) speaker_2: But then an event like overturning of Roe v.
(0:38:57) speaker_2: Wade happens and that ignites a new, um, a new level of consciousness of, you know, how rights can be taken away.
(0:39:06) speaker_2: Women still don’t have autonomy over the ways they wanna make or not make their families. Like…
(0:39:12) speaker_2: And then it kind of can send you in all of those different touchstones again, whereas I think, yeah, that coming out of the fog, um, typically is just kind of thought as a before and after state.
(0:39:25) speaker_2: But like we always say, adoption is a lifelong journey, it’s a lifelong process, and so it makes sense that, um, that the consciousness part of it, even if you become conscious of certain aspects of adoption, you can…
(0:39:41) speaker_2: There’s so much history there.
(0:39:44) speaker_2: There’s always more things to be conscious of and new, um, new information that’s, that’s coming out that sparks new curiosities and questions and consciousness.
(0:39:57) speaker_2:
(0:39:57) speaker_1: And if I can add to that, the other thing I’ve seen is that in the adoptee community, it’s been used to, um, shame other people for not thinking the same thing that you think.
(0:40:11) speaker_1: So, I have seen so often people say, “Well, they’re not out of the fog,” or, “They’re still in the fog.
(0:40:19) speaker_1: ” Yeah, and in a way that, um, as we know from (laughs) it…
(0:40:24) speaker_1: when you’re trying to help other people understand something that they may have some resistance or hesitancy to believe, shaming them by telling them that they’re in the fog is not going to be the way, (laughs) the way to help people want to be, uh, kind of seeing what you’re seeing.
(0:40:42) speaker_1:
(0:40:42) speaker_2: Mm-hmm.
(0:40:42) speaker_1: Right?
(0:40:43) speaker_1: So I think, uh, I don’t like to see it leveraged against other people in ways that make adoptees feel shameful, because I feel like the greatest healing that we have, the, uh…
(0:40:56) speaker_1: that I’ve personally experienced has been through being with other adoptees and learning and sharing and hearing what’s worked for them and how they’ve processed their adoptions and what new knowledge they’re learning.
(0:41:09) speaker_1: I, I love to share all these books or these, uh, films or this discussion that we had, for me has been really he- healing.
(0:41:18) speaker_1: (background music) And, um, you shut people down when you just say, “Well, you’re in the fog.” Or “They’re in the fog.
(0:41:26) speaker_1: ” And then that, that could prevent them from feeling comfortable and engaging in adoptee spaces, which can be really scary.
(0:41:34) speaker_1: I remember the first few times in ’99 and 2000 that I attended events with other adoptees and how scary that felt.
(0:41:42) speaker_1: So, I don’t want that to be limiting for anybody else who wants to start engaging in their own process of coming to consciousness.
(0:41:51) speaker_5: (instrumental music) Why would an adoptee resist, um, delving into this consciousness, um, adoptee consciousness?
(0:42:19) speaker_5: Um, is it because it’s, it, it’s too scary? It opens them up to vulnerability?
(0:42:32) speaker_1: I think as people we, uh, humans, humans just kind of have a tendency to want-… to know the answers to things. Like, they want, they want…
(0:42:44) speaker_1: Who’s to say? A lot of us tend to like simplistic, uh, responses, and that’s why I think we struggle with this concept of both/and.
(0:42:54) speaker_1: So, a lot of adoption practices, to me, have been built around you can’t have the both/and. It has to be one or the other.
(0:43:02) speaker_1: You can’t have birth parents in your life and adoptive parents in your life. You can’t, you know…
(0:43:08) speaker_1: So I think as adoptees, we’re raised in our society to, um, to feel like we’re being disloyal, and we’re hurtful to our adoptive families and our adoptive parents if we don’t just wholeheartedly accept the dominant narrative.
(0:43:28) speaker_1: It’s, I think that that’s really frightening, you know.
(0:43:31) speaker_1: Uh, not every adoptee probably will feel this way, but I- I’ve talked to adoptees who have said, “I’ve already lost one family.
(0:43:40) speaker_1: If I express any kind of criticism or negativity about being adopted, then I might lose another family.” And that-
(0:43:48) speaker_2: Mm-hmm.
(0:43:48) speaker_1: … you know, abandonment, I think is so much at the core of so many of our emotions and our feelings and our actions and behaviors.
(0:43:56) speaker_1: So, I think for some adoptees, they just wanna feel the positive part of it, because, um, it is, it’s so hard to think that we have trauma in our lives o- and, um, that’s, that’s just, uh, engaging all those negative emotions that I think sometimes are really necessary to engage with in order for us to kind of grow.
(0:44:22) speaker_1: But I can totally see why a lot of adoptees don’t want to go there.
(0:44:27) speaker_2: Yeah, I think it’s really emotional, and it also really means, um, like, a letting go and relearning of everything that we’ve been told about adoption.
(0:44:38) speaker_2: Um, I think that, you know, as children, you wanna believe that your parents, you know, have done everything in your, in your best intentions, or, um, for your benefit, and, and I think that it can be really hard to question when you learn some of these things about adoption.
(0:45:05) speaker_2: Like, why did you do this?
(0:45:07) speaker_2: Or, why, why has adoption been set up in, in these ways that, in China, you know, required anonymity, or around the world where there are so many paper orphans?
(0:45:19) speaker_2: When you really begin to see and then question those things, it’s…
(0:45:26) speaker_2: I think oftentimes, even if, if we might have an inkling that mm, you know, there are some things that, that might not be as simple as we believe, it’s easier to believe what we’ve been told our whole lives than to really be forced to integrate new and sometimes devastating information.
(0:45:48) speaker_2: And I think that, um… I think about, you know, the ways that we learn history.
(0:45:58) speaker_2: In school, we learn really hard subjects like, um, you know, the, the removal of indigenous peoples from their lands.
(0:46:11) speaker_2: We learn about, um, the transatlantic slave trade and the US’s involvement in that.
(0:46:19) speaker_2: But we don’t learn from a young age all of the history involved in these, um, child placement and adoption movements across time.
(0:46:32) speaker_2: And so, I think that it’s really jarring to, to suddenly learn all of that, and to suddenly see our place in that history.
(0:46:46) speaker_0: It sounds like, yeah, that we can suddenly at a delayed state or age, um, in years, that we suddenly learn about more of the, um, the systematic, you know, violence and, and, um, uh, support, uh, lack of support for women in South Korea, and, and just the way the adoption system, um, meaning, you know, ideas of for-profit, um, uh, and, and child trafficking, um, illegal documents, uh, falsified identities.
(0:47:35) speaker_0: I mean, these things that you learn as an adult, you know, it, it can create kind of this, this rage, and if you have been encouraged in our family systems to keep a status, you know, the status quo, don’t rock the boat, keep the peace, um, it- it’s, it’s, you know, presents kind of this, this challenge internally of on the one hand, I feel this rage (laughs) of this new information I’ve just, you know, about, you know, my life that I’ve just learned, and then being in a family system where that’s threatening to others.
(0:48:15) speaker_0:
(0:48:15) speaker_1: I think the- that last part that you just said, Kailimi, about, um, being threatening to others, too, is a huge aspect of it, that we don’t, maybe we don’t talk about enough, and this is where I also think like the lack of support that we’ve had, um, historically for adoptees, um, you know, part of what I do in my day job is I read research studies and I- I’m very interested in going back and looking at these so-called outcome studies from-…
(0:48:48) speaker_1: the 1920s and 1930s on-
(0:48:52) speaker_0: Oh, *******.
(0:48:52) speaker_1: …
(0:48:52) speaker_1: um, people who were adopted out of foster care or, um, the foster care system, or orphanages and stuff, and indigenous, um, the adopt- Indian Adoption Project and boarding schools.
(0:49:03) speaker_1: And we’ve known for a long time that this child placement is really hard on children, that being raised in these different, um, systems outside of our original families is really tra- traumatizing.
(0:49:19) speaker_1: We have outcome studies that talk about that from the 1930s and ’40s, and yet we continue to practice as if nothing has changed.
(0:49:31) speaker_1: And so I think that, um, it just that…
(0:49:34) speaker_1: Part of it, part of it for me is that we haven’t highlighted that we’ve known about this for a long time, because these larger systems that benefit from adoptions, um, I think have actively tried to suppress this knowledge.
(0:49:51) speaker_1: And so when you’re, as an adult, learning about all of this, and then learning about how these organizations and these systems have, uh, intentionally suppressed this knowledge and information on…
(0:50:03) speaker_1: For- to you, it can be, it can be really, really difficult. It can be very traumatizing. It’s very emotional. Um, yeah.
(0:50:13) speaker_0: Okay. Um, what does the model look like? Um, if you were to draw it on a piece of paper, is it a circle? Is it a square?
(0:50:24) speaker_1: The out- the… It’s a circle, but it’s really a spiral.
(0:50:29) speaker_1: So, um, we have it as a, as an image where we’ve got five different touchstones that adoptees can find themselves kind of in, and those are status quo, rupture, dissonance, expansiveness, and then forgiveness and activism.
(0:50:48) speaker_1: But our pathways to each of these different touchstones, um, can occur not necessarily in a linear place.
(0:50:58) speaker_1: So we have kind of these dotted spiral pathways inside the circle to kind of illustrate that you can move within this larger framework and be in any of these areas at multiple times, even within the same time period, meaning I might have one touchstone that kind of talks about where I am in terms of thinking about my birth family, and I might be in a totally other place when I’m thinking about something like, uh, a- my adoptive family or around knowledge around the system of adoption and how, in my case, Korean adoption created us as orphans, um, for adoption.
(0:51:43) speaker_1: Um, you know, so there can be many different aspects as we kind of uncover and think about who we are and w- and where we fit into the larger adoptee community in each of these different, uh, kind of areas.
(0:51:56) speaker_1: And we intentionally didn’t want it to be like, first you have to be in this and then you have to be in this.
(0:52:03) speaker_1: A lot of identity models do that, but I think we see our model less as an individual identity model and more like where we are within larger contexts around, um, both a community or a family or, um, kind of systems, if that makes sense.
(0:52:23) speaker_1:
(0:52:23) speaker_0: So it’s not like stage one, stage two, stage three, or… I-
(0:52:27) speaker_1: Right.
(0:52:28) speaker_0: You go through this and then it unlocks this.
(0:52:30) speaker_1: Right. Exactly. You uncover things at every stage. Or you-
(0:52:36) speaker_0: Okay.
(0:52:36) speaker_1: Or you can, yeah.
(0:52:38) speaker_0: And different folks might… Their path might look different.
(0:52:43) speaker_1: Exactly. Mm-hmm.
(0:52:46) speaker_6: Yeah. One adoptee might spend a long, long time in dissonance, whereas someone else’s dissonance phase might be much shorter.
(0:52:59) speaker_6: Um, I think that the, the spiral nature of it really allows that, that movement and, and a natural progression of development around consciousness.
(0:53:17) speaker_0: Is the idea that adoptees… You know…
(0:53:21) speaker_0: (laughs) I just popped up, I thought of Nirvana, but is the idea that adoptees all should strive to a certain point in their conscious- in your, your consciousness model?
(0:53:35) speaker_0: Or is it that people will all kind of maybe settle, their final stage might be, or final place might be all over in that model?
(0:53:48) speaker_1: Personally, I try to stay away from the shoulds and that I don’t want to prescribe for anybody else where they should be.
(0:53:54) speaker_0: Okay.
(0:53:55) speaker_1: Uh, I think our responsibility as a community, I know my responsibility, I feel, as a scholar is to kind of uncover and through my research and my community work, help people understand where they might be at these different stages or phases, um, or their pathways through them so that they can better under the- stand themselves, but also so that they can find and understand the larger community and the supports that might help them while they’re in any of these different areas.
(0:54:28) speaker_1: Because I don’t want to say that the forgiveness and activism stage is like the perfect stage to be, because there are still things that can happen in that touchstone for you that, um, are challenging and difficult and hard.
(0:54:43) speaker_1: Um, I, I hope, I hope I’m explaining it well, but…… for me, I see this, um, model really for us to kind of think about, “Okay, where are we?
(0:54:55) speaker_1: What kind of support and community might be helpful to us at this place that we’re at now?
(0:55:02) speaker_1: ” And, um, for some of us it might be, “I wanna get over here someday,” but for other people, it may not be.
(0:55:08) speaker_1: You know, everybody is so different and unique, and I would rather see us kind of thinking about how can we support people at every different place in the model, rather than try and force people through it in a way that actually isn’t healing for them.
(0:55:23) speaker_1:
(0:55:23) speaker_2: Yeah, I agree with that.
(0:55:25) speaker_2: I think that another part of our model that we really emphasize is, um, the need for empathy for different perspectives and for adoptees wherever they fall, uh, on this spiral.
(0:55:39) speaker_2: I think that as Jaeron kind of mentioned earlier, in terms of this shaming of adoptees who are maybe still in the fog, I think that what we really acknowledge is that, um, yeah, that adoptees are gonna be in, in these touchstones at different parts of their lives.
(0:55:58) speaker_2: They may go around the spiral many times. They may go around it once.
(0:56:04) speaker_2: They may only re- like hit two of these touchstones or, or for some adoptees, you know, who, where coming into a larger, like political collective consciousness is, is a much scarier prospect.
(0:56:19) speaker_2: In some ways, remaining in status quo is a, is a protective measure, and, um, yeah, that we as a community, um, that, you know, has been so, um, marginalized and misunderstood in a lot of ways, like internally, we need to have respect for where, um, adoptees are at each of these places so that we can understand them, and then as Jaeron said, professionally, so we can understand what are the needs of adoptees who are, um, experiencing these different touchstones and different places in their consciousness process.
(0:56:58) speaker_2:
(0:56:58) speaker_0: Are there implications for, um, i- uh, implications for mental health, um, for providers, for adoptees, um, in addressing their own mental health needs?
(0:57:13) speaker_0:
(0:57:13) speaker_1: I, I’ve been hearing from, um, uh, from practitioners and mental health professionals who are aware of our model, um, that they’re using it to help their adoptee clients or other folks, maybe adoptive parents, um, to talk through the model and help them see, um, some of the points that we’re trying to make.
(0:57:35) speaker_1: One which is that everybody’s progression happens on their own, and that it- one of the things that we’re learning in our research and that we hope will help inform to your question, “Can we help mental health providers and other folks can help support adoptees?
(0:57:51) speaker_1: ” is the need for support and community at each of these different levels, and that adoptees, we’re finding, are really seeking support.
(0:57:59) speaker_1: They’re seeking a sense of belonging wherever they are in the model.
(0:58:04) speaker_1: They’re looking for people that, um, not only share their views but also, um, understand and have empathy for them, um, and I think that that’s one of the things, uh…
(0:58:16) speaker_1: with mental health professionals, there sometimes tends to be a tendency towards trying to have adoptees think about, like, “You should be here or there,” you know?
(0:58:29) speaker_1: And, um, like any other profession, the mental health profession needs decolonizing and, you know, trying to force people into certain places and spaces isn’t always healthy, and even adoptee therapists can fall into that same trap because we’re operating under a larger system, uh, health insurance and DSM and, you know, the larger medical model.
(0:58:59) speaker_1: So for all of us, I think there’s work to do, and we really do hope that this is something that can be a useful tool for, for people, and we’re trying through our social media to offer different ways that we can think about and be supportive to adoptees wherever they find themselves.
(0:59:17) speaker_1: Um, and I’m hopeful that maybe, maybe some mental health professionals will look at our model and, and apply it further, or adoptive parents.
(0:59:27) speaker_1: I’ve been- I’ve had some adoptive parents say, “We need a model like this for us because we also go through a similar process of consciousness.
(0:59:36) speaker_1: When we started adopting, we thought it was just the great thing to do, and now we’re realizing that we participated in the system.
(0:59:45) speaker_1: ” So I think that there’s lots of room for the application outside of just, uh, adoptees.
(0:59:53) speaker_0: You know, I kind of, I, I just thought of, you know, even my own experience in the adoptee community, that having this greater understanding of the different touchstones that adoptees might be experiencing, um, is so useful because I think, myself included, um, full disclosure (laughs), you know, th- this Facebook, we’re s- the Facebook, uh, algorithm where we only see kind of like-minded, uh, people in our feed or, or, or, or opinions, um, and that’s because we select people out (laughs) that we don’t wanna see their opinions, and, um, and so then we sort of just surround ourselves with like-minded people, and even in the adoptee community, I think there’s a tendency…
(1:00:49) speaker_0: I mean, o- obviously you want to be with others that you enjoy what they have to say and you’re sort of on the same page, um-…
(1:00:57) speaker_0: but I think that can create kind of a…
(1:01:00) speaker_0: there can be kind of a dissonance where, uh, you know, people within our adoptee communities are only hanging out with like-minded adoptees, and, um, and then they, there’s not an empathy that, uh, developed, actively developed towards others that are, you know, moving through a different, uh, touchstone.
(1:01:24) speaker_0: Um, I don’t know if that makes sense at all, but…
(1:01:28) speaker_1: It, it does for me, for sure. Mm-hmm.
(1:01:35) speaker_0: Um, how did you g- I know we’re, we’re at sort of an hour here, but how did you go about, uh, the three of you, um, to develop this model?
(1:01:45) speaker_1: Um, well, I think, uh, Susan and I and, in consultation with Paula and Kripa had already kind of talked about some, some of the ideas around not wanting to have a super linear model, and so we had conceptualized a spiral, and I think we had started to talk about some of the different touchstones.
(1:02:10) speaker_1: And we wanted to, because community was so much a part of it, and we were thinking about it, you know, again, not just as, like, me JaRon going through my individual, um, identity development.
(1:02:24) speaker_1: There’s all these established identity development models about race and, um, I always found them to be instructive, but a little limiting because as an adoptee, some of the things really didn’t fit with my own racial identity model.
(1:02:38) speaker_1: Like, there’s one about Asian American identity development, and because I didn’t grow up in a family that looked like me, my, uh, and I didn’t have that biological connection, there were some aspects of that model as an Asian woman that I couldn’t relate to.
(1:02:56) speaker_1: And so Susan and I were both really familiar with some of these models, and, uh, we, we started talking about what it might look like, um, if it wasn’t a linear model.
(1:03:08) speaker_1: If it was just, like, we might be in these different stages and go back and forth, and then we…
(1:03:17) speaker_1: I had discovered, um, Gloria, um, Anzaldua’s model of, um, consciousness and told Susan, like, “I think…
(1:03:26) speaker_1: ” So she outlines, like, these seven different steps and I said, “There’s so much here that she’s writing about that makes sense to me,” and then we looked at kind of other liberation models, uh, Paulo Freire’s, um, the, uh, Pedagogy of the Oppressed and kind of how people who are oppressed come to understand their own oppression.
(1:03:51) speaker_1: That’s what both of these different scholars are kind of talking about, and I was like, “Oh, that’s what we do as adoptees.
(1:03:58) speaker_1: We come to understand the mechanisms of oppression that led to us being adopted.
(1:04:05) speaker_1: ” And so, that’s where we kind of really started to flesh through what the different stages might look like, and, um, and then, you know, those were some of the things we had when we got Grace involved, and then, Grace, you can speak to, to what you think about it, but, um, so much of what she wrote about in her paper we thought was such a good illustration of some of the concepts we were, we were talking about.
(1:04:33) speaker_1:
(1:04:33) speaker_2: Yeah, I was thinking, um, I think in terms of the development of the model, I came into the project, um, the initial paper fairly late, and so I think, you know, a lot of what, um, Susan and JaRon and the others had been thinking about was already there, um, but I think that, um, yeah, like JaRon said, a lot of what I wrote about in my paper there, Trauma and Healing of Consciousness, I think really related well to what they were trying to illustrate with this model.
(1:05:18) speaker_2: And then I think subsequently as we’ve held focus groups for, um, our study that we’re using to, um, explore how adoptees move through these touchstones in their, uh, consciousness process, I think that, I think just the saliency of, um, these touchstones and, and the, um, each of the tasks and experiences that happen throughout the, the consciousness process.
(1:05:51) speaker_2:
(1:05:51) speaker_0: I wanted to… I was, I was particularly drawn to this, um, the forgiveness and activism, uh, touchpoint.
(1:06:01) speaker_0: Um, could you talk more about that, and who, who are we forg- forgiving, and, and how does that, uh, how does the activism show up?
(1:06:15) speaker_2: Sure.
(1:06:15) speaker_2: I mean, I think that the forgiveness and activism touchstone is the one that we’ve received the most questions and potential pushback on as well, and I think that a lot of that kind of comes from, uh, the, you know, the idea that adoptees are, are supposed to be grateful or supposed to be whatever, so what does it mean to forgive when we don’t want to feel those ways?
(1:06:46) speaker_2: But I think that forgiveness and activism, um, is, is so much bigger. I think that f- forgiveness in this touchstone can be forgiving a-…
(1:06:59) speaker_2: oneself for not knowing, uh, what they didn’t know before and for not understanding, um, their own, their own identity in, in these critical ways.
(1:07:14) speaker_2: Of course, forgiveness can be, um, forgiving adoptive parents if that feels right, uh, similarly for, um, for acknowledging, you know, that maybe they also didn’t have the full information when they stepped into this or, or that they were doing what they thought was best at the time given what, um, adoption professionals thought, uh, were the, the best methods or best, uh, ways to go about things.
(1:07:48) speaker_2: Um, I think forgiveness, you know, can be towards birth family and, um, I think that, you know, sometimes there’s a lot of anger around that and, and how a family could have let go or, um, relinquished or replaced someone for adoption, and then when we know the fuller histories, we realize that maybe they didn’t have a choice or maybe, um, the s- the situation surrounding relinquishment was a lot more complicated than, than we could have ever known, and so forgiving, forgiving family in that way, I think, um, activism, uh, when we talk about activism, um, I think a lot of times, um, after kind of coming into some of this information, a lot of adoptees do feel activated to, um, either create, like, generative projects like blogs or memoirs or podcasts that, um, not only, uh, allow them to process the…
(1:09:06) speaker_2: what the consciousness experience and, uh, all that knowledge means, but also in ways that, uh, help contribute to the adoptee community at large and kind of push back on these narratives and, um, the situations that led to this kind of suppression of knowledge and, and the traumatic awakening that consciousness can bring.
(1:09:33) speaker_2: So, um, DaRon?
(1:09:36) speaker_1: Yeah. No, I think you, that… I don’t have anything really to add to that. I think that’s right, yeah. That’s how I see it too.
(1:09:45) speaker_0: So both of you, being experts in this field and, um, uh, leading voices, um, after working through this model, was there anything personally that the two of you, um, that learned or, um, especially, um, resonated with you?
(1:10:10) speaker_0:
(1:10:10) speaker_1: I, I think for me, um, this is DaRon, um, I, I really love to work in collaboration with other people so, um, it’s not a surprise but I think what’s meaningful to me is that, um, Susan and Grace and I along with, um, some feedback from the community and other colleagues, Su- um, Kripa and, and Paula too, I just…
(1:10:46) speaker_1: I feel…
(1:10:47) speaker_1: I guess it’s just been meaningful to me to feel like we’re working on something that resonates with the larger adoptee community and not everybody likes it.
(1:11:00) speaker_1: I’ve, I’ve seen some feedback that people don’t resonate with it and that’s, that’s fine too.
(1:11:06) speaker_1: Um, ultimately I just wanted to help forward these larger conversations and I feel like this has been such a important and meaningful way for us to do that.
(1:11:16) speaker_1: I really enjoy working with Susan and Grace on these focus groups and, um, to me community is really, like, a high priority for me and, um, community has shown up as a theme in our coding for our focus groups that Grace talked about and so to me that’s kind of validating that people are really talking a lot about how important community is.
(1:11:41) speaker_1: So for me I would say those are kind of the, the things that, um, I found in working on this project that have been really meaningful.
(1:11:52) speaker_2: Yeah, I’m not sure how much I can share about the focus groups but I think that one thing or a couple of things that have kind of come out from the focus groups, um, that we held, uh, in relation to this I think is, um, one, I was surprised by, um, how, for how many adoptees the initial rupture or the initial point of coming into consciousness was a dual consciousness, um, so not just their adoptee identity but another critical salient identity, um, awakening was kind of happening at, at the same time, and I think another, um, thi- theme that’s kind of come out is the ways in which adoptive family and friends even potentially have been kind of dually helpful and unhelpful in the consciousness process for adoptees and so I am…
(1:12:57) speaker_2: um, I just feel so honored that we were able to receive, um, our participants-…
(1:13:04) speaker_2: narratives about their experiences in the consciousness process, and I also feel, um, very humbled and excited to, um, you know, be working with JaRon and Susan on this, uh, forthcoming paper, and, um, you know, I…
(1:13:30) speaker_2: And to be able to, to give to the adoptee- adoption community, including adoptees, and parents, and professionals information that, um, hopefully can better serve adoptees who are going through this and, and also, um, you know, increase understanding, um, of adoptees, because I think that a lot of adoptees during, during this consciousness process and, and, uh, throughout their experiences as…
(1:14:07) speaker_2: Feel kind of, like, misunderstood.
(1:14:10) speaker_2: And so, if we can provide any information that helps, um, adoptees and families better understand this, I think that, um, that’s…
(1:14:23) speaker_2: I think that’s our goal, and that’s, um, something that I feel really grateful to be able to do.
(1:14:28) speaker_0: I wanna thank you so much, um, I understand, I mean, obviously for developing this model, um, but also just the emotion- I want to acknowledge the emotional labor it takes just to even be on this podcast and spend, you know, an hour plus with me to just, you know, talk about it, so, um, to help explain it, so thank you so much.
(1:14:53) speaker_0: What’s next for, for the both of you?
(1:14:56) speaker_1: Well, for me, um, I, I just got a, a small grant to look at adoptees, like the topic of adoptees and mentoring, and so many adoptee organizations and adoptee groups, um, have mentoring programs, and we’re- my collaborators are, um, Angela Tucker and her Adoptee Mentoring Society, and, um, some folks at the University of Washington Seattle and, and, uh, a new group called Air Roots, and, um, we’re looking at the ways that adoptees provide, um, mentoring and mutual aid to each other, and what we need as a community for support.
(1:15:42) speaker_1: Um, so that’s one thing I’m working on, and then, um, I’m kind of collaborating with Holly McGinnis on her, um, Mapping the Life Course of Adoption survey that she did, and we’re working on some analysis with that as well, and I’m just really enjoying the ability to focus on adoptee research, um, right now, and, um, and because all of these have a component about only giving back to the community and being able to share with our broader adoptee community, because I think my frustration and one of the things that got me interested in becoming a researcher was that so much of it was not accessible to adoptees.
(1:16:24) speaker_1: And when I was finally able to look at the research and then see all these articles about adoptees that were written by adoptive parents, or adopting professionals, or just other people that didn’t have a connection to adoption, and I was really frustrated that I didn’t have access to that until I was in graduate school.
(1:16:44) speaker_1: And, um, and so a big component for me is being able to find ways to share, so I- I appreciate being on this podcast and being able to talk about the model because, again, it’s another way for people who don’t have access to academic scholarship to be able to know what’s, what’s going on in our community in that area with the research.
(1:17:06) speaker_1:
(1:17:09) speaker_2: Um, let’s see. Well, for me, my main goal is, you know, just continuing on my PhD journey.
(1:17:19) speaker_2: Um, I am working on a project with, um, Angelique Day at the University of Washington Seattle, um, a paper about adoptive parents, and I also am hoping to begin a paper with my advisor, Dr.
(1:17:38) speaker_2: Gina Samuels, uh, at the University of Chicago kind of tracing, um, the history of different waves of Chinese adoptees and Chinese adoption.
(1:17:51) speaker_2: I’m, you know, still at the very beginning of my PhD program, but thinking of Chinese adoption research i- for my dissertation, and so laying the groundwork for that is, um, probably, uh, part of my next steps.
(1:18:10) speaker_2:
(1:18:10) speaker_0: Where can people find out more about, um, the Adoptee Consciousness Model?
(1:18:16) speaker_1: We both have it posted on our blog, and we can send you the links to that.
(1:18:22) speaker_1: Um, it’s also published in an academic journal, which is free access, so we can also send you that, and then we post it on our social media accounts as well.
(1:18:34) speaker_1:
(1:18:35) speaker_0: Okay. And what are those accounts? How can people follow you?
(1:18:40) speaker_1: I’m @harlowsmonkey kind of everywhere. (laughs)
(1:18:49) speaker_2: (laughs) I- my handle, uh, everywhere is @redthreadbroken.
(1:18:55) speaker_0: Okay. Well, I- I appreciate you s- guys so much.
(1:18:59) speaker_0: Um, I’m going to be reading, uh, more closely about this model too, and, um, I think it’s gonna be, uh, i- it already is, but I- yeah, I think it’ll be a great resource for……
(1:19:15) speaker_0: The community to, um, to just learn about each other more and about, um, being in community with each other.
(1:19:27) speaker_0: I think that’s maybe the piece that I could see that it being really helpful is understanding, um, the different places that we all are within our adoptee experience.
(1:19:43) speaker_0: Um, so thank you so much.
(1:19:45) speaker_7: Thank you.
(1:19:46) speaker_8: Thank you for having us.
(1:19:48) speaker_9: (instrumental music)
(1:20:07) speaker_0: Thank you, Jaeron and Grace, for your time. Thanks also to new and sustaining Patreon supporters. You know who you are. Until next time, I’m Kayomi Lee.
(1:20:17) speaker_0:
(1:20:17) speaker_9: (instrumental music)
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