What happens when two domestic adoptees and passionate artists join forces in advocating for their community? In a captivating episode of Wandering Tree Podcast, we're thrilled to have Rebecca Autumn Sansom and Liz DeBetta sharing their stories, artistry, and insights on the adoptee experience.
Liz, who was adopted at birth, has been using her talents as a writer to share her journey and healing process in her upcoming book, while Rebecca, a dedicated documentary filmmaker, is working on a mission to incorporate more adoptees' voices and create connections. In this heartwarming conversation, we explore the importance of community building, connection, and empathy to heal the primal wound of adoption. We also discuss the power of art in understanding and supporting the adoptee community, and the exciting collaboration between Rebecca and Liz – Operation Fog Lift. So, join us as we celebrate these unique stories, experiences, and the transformative power of art and connection.
What happens when two domestic adoptees and passionate artists join forces in advocating for their community? In a captivating episode of Wandering Tree Podcast, we're thrilled to have Rebecca Autumn Sansom and Liz DeBetta sharing their stories, artistry, and insights on the adoptee experience.
Liz, who was adopted at birth, has been using her talents as a writer to share her journey and healing process in her upcoming book, while Rebecca, a dedicated documentary filmmaker, is working on a mission to incorporate more adoptees' voices and create connections. In this heartwarming conversation, we explore the importance of community building, connection, and empathy to heal the primal wound of adoption. We also discuss the power of art in understanding and supporting the adoptee community, and the exciting collaboration between Rebecca and Liz – Operation Fog Lift. So, join us as we celebrate these unique stories, experiences, and the transformative power of art and connection.
Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, lisa Ann, and it was a very emotional experience for me as an adoptee watching you. know you, rebecca, go through all of that journey that you captured in that way. Welcome to today's episode of Wandering Tree Podcast. I'm so excited and we're going to jump right in with introducing our guests today, and we have a return member from season two, episode eight Rebecca Autumn Sampson. And welcome. welcome to the show today.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me, Lisa Ann. It's so good to see you.
Speaker 1:It's so good to see you too, and with us we have a new guest. Her name is Liz DeBetta, and so we would like to welcome you also, liz, to the show today. Welcome, thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah, i'm so excited about this episode. We have a lot of things going on And I want to just maybe do a little bit of a calibration on stories. I think a good number of the listeners are familiar with Rebecca, but, liz, would you mind telling us just a little bit about your story? your background is it relates to this adoptee community. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:So I am a domestic adoptee. I was technically adopted at birth, but I spent several months in interim foster care before going home with my adoptive parents in 1977. And so I have a sort of big gaping hole at the beginning of my life that I don't really know much about. I've been in reunion with my first mom for about five or six years now, And that is a slowly progressing relationship, but a good one.
Speaker 2:I write a lot about my experience as an adoptee. I publish a lot about that. I in fact I have a book coming out which is my gift to the adoptee community. It's called adult adoptees and writing to heal, migrating toward wholeness. So that should be coming out in the next, probably in about the next month, which I am super excited about.
Speaker 2:And a big part of my work is in addition to writing and the sort of creative process of using writing as a tool for healing with other adoptees. I also have written and performed a one woman show called Unmothered, which was part of my dissertation work several years ago, and it is something that I feel really strongly about. It's a really powerful piece of performance, work that I just won an award for back in November at the United Solo Theater Festival I won Best Autobiographical Show, so I think of my performance work as advocacy and activism for the adoptee community to help people understand the ways that trauma really interrupts and disrupts our lives, and so it's really important for me to be as public as I can with my storytelling.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a lot. I love it, and I'm going to pick a couple of things out of that One. We have something in common that I didn't realize as we were prepping for our conversation, with that interim period, and I loved how you say it's like the escaping hole. I call it my life gap. That is literally what I've called it, and it's about the same duration. So it's weird to hear somebody else talk about it And as soon as you said it, i'm like, yeah, i get it And I know exactly why she brought it up. So that's number one in going back a little bit. So what I also like to hear about you is you're unmothered and your kind of your creative process to get stuff out into the ether, as I like to call it, of our community. So kind of help me dissertation. For what are you, what's your profession? Is there a connection to that as well? that would be of interest for our listeners today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I got my PhD in interdisciplinary studies, humanities and culture specifically, and my emphasis was women's and gender studies, and I got a certificate in creative writing And my PhD program was really focused on social justice. And so I had the unique opportunity to take my background as a performer and a writer and kind of smash it together in this creative, theoretical project, which originally was going to be a memoir. And then, as I started doing my research and reading more and understanding more about myself and taking more classes, i realized that I had been writing poetry my whole life, since i was about 14 years old and i was, and that was a way of helping me manage really intense and difficult emotions, and so we came pretty clear to me that I needed to do something along that line.
Speaker 2:And then the idea morphed into writing and performing a one woman show and actually embodied performance is a research method. You can use performance to create empathy And engage in discussion around difficult issues, and at the time i was teaching. I was teaching writing at a university and not teaching at the moment i, but i work As an advocacy program manager at the university of michigan. So just a little bit about my professional background at the moment, and because of my Advocacy and activism work, i joined the center for the education of women plus at u of m and i take leadership over their advocacy initiatives.
Speaker 1:Sounds great, what i'm also picking up here and some of the kind of transition a little bit to rebecca, because i've been a while since you've been on the show. Season two, episode eight. Go listen to that, if you haven't already. What? what's been going on in your world? i mean, we, we've had some really cool stuff going on. I think you've had a show you've. You launched kind of an awards type thing, if i remember correctly, or do i have that right kind of fill us in what's been going, what's new.
Speaker 3:Yes, i've been working tirelessly on the wavy awards for the. This will be the third year and you know how things just get Bigger and more overwhelming. But thanks for remembering that that'll be in november this year in new york city. If there any music lovers, i'm going to try to incorporate as many adoptees into the show this year that I can, which is kind of a neat segue into like what Liz was saying. And why we bonded is because, like this artistry and like tying in academic Research methodologies into something like a play or my passion, documentary filmmaking, is kind of the same mode that we are in to create these conversations. So that's why we developed what we're going to talk about soon And I have been trying to implement more in person screenings.
Speaker 3:So Lisa and we just saw each other at the untangling conference, right, and that was kind of the first Streaming of the documentary.
Speaker 3:And of course, for those of you who are new or don't know, i'm the filmmaker behind reckoning with the primal wound Which was me trying to put this more academic work into movie format, because that's my medium and it was so nice to see people in person to talk afterwards.
Speaker 3:It's a different vibe and I love it. So now i'm I really think that through music there's so many adoptees who use songwriting and produce whole albums about their experience and I would love to like think about that going forward and I sort of have like that's a new project with an adoptee that I just met, we've known each other and then it's one of those things where you realize they're also adopted like years into your relationship and so thinking about like Mary Goshay and the foundling and her whole album about that and Your adoption to, and then like I even have right here David, right except me, his CD called my adopted curse. So there's so many musicians and it's like should we have a concert series? like we could I don't know, but I do want to have do a tour of the film for sure struggle bus tour and then operation fog lift, which is what Liz and I are partnering, is happening the summer, so that's what's been going on.
Speaker 1:It's awesome and what I want I want to, before we go too far there into the announcement, i do want to get a little since. How did you two meet? I mean, the creative connection is clear. How did you guys truly just connect up? I think that that, because that is so important in our community, as you guys know, we have a co friend, jennifer Diane ghost, and she is the podcaster for Once upon a time in adopting land, her and I do a lot of what I'd say co, lifting each other up. I'm all about that lift each other up, don't tear each other down. But it's just nice to make connection and being community. So how did you two connect so that you could start collaborating and we can talk about the upcoming announcement?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I actually reached out to Rebecca I don't remember it was a Facebook message or a message on Instagram, because I had been posting a bunch of stuff about unmothered after I won the award And obviously had been seeing the film everywhere and had seen clips of it and I was like Rebecca, we need to talk, because I think we need to combine forces and, like, do something together.
Speaker 2:I just had this like deep, intuitive feeling that we needed to connect and we needed to do something. So she was like, yeah, let's connect absolutely. And so we started talking and I said I think I think your film in my play Are like perfect companions and I would love to think about doing some kind of an event where we could do a screening of your film, do a performance of my play and and then have a talk back and really get you know, get people in community together, witnessing both of these really powerful art forms. And then, in the course of the conversations we started having, we figured out that we are getting similar reactions to our work, that people are like whoa, i never thought of it this way. I I didn't know. That's a piece of information about adoptees or adoption that I had never considered right And there's also like a really deep emotional reaction to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like what I get is raw and poetic And that is unmothered. Like after I watched the play I was like oh, somehow Liz portrays the same. Like you get those same adjectives when you see unmothered and it's really powerful. It's an hour long, So I feel like they're bite-sized enough that it's going to be a nice collaboration of your two?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yeah. Well, let's go ahead, then, and why don't we talk about an upcoming event that you guys want to kind of get out there? We're, you know, we're working through a lot of different activities, your promo activities. That's why you're here today as well, and let's go ahead. Let's who wants to just drop it out there and say this is what we're doing, this is what it's called And this is when it is.
Speaker 3:We can both go, but for some background I'm from Nashville and a lot of the cast is in Nashville or can get to Nashville. I've edited most of the film at this place called the filming station, which Demetria Caledimus owns. She's my Emmy award winning journalist, mentor, friend and is letting us use the venue to host both of these things, because it has a little theater and it also has a black box studio where we can do a play. They've done a play in there and it also has this beautiful backyard so we can have a reception.
Speaker 2:It's in the middle of downtown Nashville, yeah, So so I don't have any ties to Nashville, but I will now through Rebecca. But, yeah, so we are planning to head to Nashville on August 5th and 6th of 2023, coming up in the next couple months, to do the first, we hope, of many operation fog lift events, the sort of concepts behind operation fog lift to many brainstorming conversations, and this is like how our creative brains work and another reason why we are so sympathetic always, my mother would say is we came up with operation fog with because we were trying to think about, like what is it that? what is it that we're doing with our art? Like what is it that our art is asking people to do? right?
Speaker 2:So We really we figured out like, oh, what are what we're doing with this work, with these, with these pieces of Creative offerings, is we're helping people to come out of the fog? We're helping people to understand the ways that Adoption has impacted us and many other people, the way that trauma has Interrupted and disrupted us, and we're trying to put the pieces back together. And and so We came up with operation fog lift because we were like this is a really great way to to get people to come together In community to view, i'm gonna say the same story. It's not the same story, but the foundational Elements of the story are there. Right to the explore this concept of the primal wound wound in two different ways and to have a really like Visceral experience around, like what it means to Gravel with coming out of the fog for us as adoptees but then helping other people along the way and not even Adoptes or people in the constellation.
Speaker 3:But I was thinking the audience would be hey, bring You know your friends and family to this. This is more a societal fog lift, yes, primal wound theory, and that's what I hope we can do with it, because neither of our projects are too Heavy-handed, they're very personal stories that you can't really argue with, and not super academic, you know. So it's what do you think we saying? excited?
Speaker 1:one to be helping move this forward and to be even slightly connected. So thank you for that opportunity. I love it. A couple of different things just to kind of think about. I actually went to one of your screening events.
Speaker 1:Rebecca was in Tulsa with our friends, the adopted chameleon and Emma Stevens, and I took a friend, so I'm just gonna share this a little bit out into the. I don't know if I've ever talked about it in Previous episodes. If I have, i apologize. I'm just gonna restate it. I took one of my friends and it was a very emotional experience for me as an adoptee Watching.
Speaker 1:You know, you, rebecca, go through all of that journey that you captured in that way and to be able to Not only empathize but have lived portions of those experiences myself, and I know others in the room felt that way too, and so you know, there were times when I was crying almost uncontrollably and but not like, like, not in the sense that I couldn't be comforted, it was just tears just rolling down my face. Right, we, we drove, my friend and I, we drove from the Dallas Fort Worth area up to the Tulsa area and, and so then, where we went after that did a little bit of sightseeing, blah, blah blah. But what's really interesting is we drove, we had to drive back, and on the way back, my friend, who is one of my dearest, closest friends and has lived a lot of my 20 past 25 years of life, said to me Why were you so emotional? and that it just took me back. I wasn't expecting her to ask that question and I said because I felt her pain. Number one, i felt all of the things that she was going through.
Speaker 1:I've been in some of those situations not all of them and It is hard, i believe, for non-adopties, and it doesn't mean that they don't try, but they don't always have the capacity to really sit in our experience and To understand it. They can be empathetic and sympathetic, but they still. There's just still something missing in the connection of the synapses of the brain where they can say, yeah, i get it right, because it's just, it's just that weird little nuance. So anyway, wow, i'm excited about this event And that I'm excited about this event for that reason, mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:It could Do you think that she got it more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she has a story. She doesn't talk about it. It's really interesting and if she listens to this episode girlfriend, you know who you are and I apologize. So her first husband was an adoptee and so she has her own, like little Connection to that as well, and we've talked through kind of like what he has done in his life And you know some of the things that maybe drove them apart and maybe why. So she definitely gets it in in the context of that. Now let's fast forward. I have one of my really good friends here the mon. She's been on the show before, so the mon's here for this weekend and we were talking about untangling the roots very similar Rebecca, like really like, what was the download? and then we were talking about August and so I've invited her to come in August And she has accepted that invitation and she's she's in it, she's equally in it with me, and and so she's now excited to come as well.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, you know what? and with this is Y'all saw that I kind of put it on Instagram what two days ago. People are really excited about this. People are excited about in person In general, but the reaction is really positive and I'm excited and thank you for bringing your friend.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to meet well so you've mentioned a little bit of the logistics. Do you guys mind going into a little bit more around the details of the event for our audience So that we can start, you know, grabbing on to them and bringing them into the fold with us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like I said that the dates are August 5th and 6th, we'll be starting at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and we will do a screening of the film, then there'll be a short intermission, probably about a half an hour, and then with time for some mingling and a little reception in the backyard and and then followed by performance of my show, and then the final Activity of the day, so to speak, will be a talk back with Rebecca and I and the audience, so that folks have some time to ask us questions, to process what they've just been part of, and for us to sort of engage in the really important piece of this, which is to educate people and to empower adoptive voices and to start to shift the narrative Right. And I'm going to let Rebecca jump in with other details too, because I know there's more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks Liz. No, that was the run of show. I'm very excited because so many cast members are in Nashville so I'm not going to announce who all's definitely coming, but it's the most as far as cast members go Probably Jill, definitely me And then I'll announce those as it gets closer. It's an intentionally intimate venue in space. It's very dear to my heart, this place, and I just announced that I'm taking waitlist or we're taking waitlist emails. Now we haven't fully announced tickets but they will be on event right shortly within the month.
Speaker 3:So if you want to be the first to know, you can email me at info at reckoning with the primal woundcom and just tell me that you are interested in getting there. And then, of course, i want to do a struggle bus situation where I get a party bus and in downtown Nashville if anybody's been there recently, it's bananas, so you can rent a tractor with a hot tub on the back. I would like to do that And that might be an add on. So if anybody wants to think about that and get in that mood And the whole thing is like, and I think my role that I play in this space is healing kind of through connection and fun. So, like I say, the opposite of feeling isolated and like you don't belong is feeling like you do belong. And so community building and listening to pop music or riding around on a tractor and a little pool or hot tub is my idea of that memory that I want to build with people. I want to do that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I like where you guys are going with the event, just knowing how they have started. Rebecca from the, you know your online presence and you're showing of your movie through. You know the pandemic and how that was getting out there, transitioning into live events We just spoke of. You know my experience at one. I know you had one in the LA footprint, so I am so excited to have one in Tennessee. I live in Tennessee And I'm close with Jennifer Diane ghost and we mentioned her just previously as well. She and I are working also on, you know, all kinds of things that we can do to bolster the community here in Tennessee. It is so good to have a member of the community that you can connect with that you. You are able to do these type of things. So, yeah, i'm excited It's going to be a Nashville. It makes it easier for me to participate and attend I and I'm excited to see how it's growing and and the community is building around these types of events and doing things not only just associated with the event but your struggle bus idea, which then creates more connection with one another.
Speaker 1:And you know we then lean on each other for all of the various stages of our journey. Some days we're having a great day, that's just humanity, and some days we're having, you know, quite honestly, a crap day And we're just like I am really struggling per year struggle bus with this anxiety that I carry. That I now know through all of my other journey that is part of my trauma response And no one, no one, really understands that in the context of the why I got there. They do understand anxiety and PTSD and trauma response. There are a lot of people that do right, they have nothing to do with adoption. So I want to be clear It's not us, it's not segmented only to adoptees or for sure. The reality is how did you get here and understanding that and being that, you know, living in that shared life journey experience So cool.
Speaker 3:Which is totally yeah. Why I did that? just for anybody who doesn't know why I did the struggle buses? because I got a party bus for all the influencers to go to LA and then we all started talking about our problems. So it turned into the struggle bus, like I had the who was on the bus Garrett Maroschi, Daria Rottenberg, Sierra Watts, Raya Snow and so more like adoptees, but gravitated towards talking about these issues and we were all going through something. But being on there and then we just crank.
Speaker 3:The pop music was cathartic and like kept us in a positive space And I feel like that's my role and I wanna do that more. And then, talking about Jennifer Diane Ghoston and you, Lisa Ann, I tell everyone when they ask me what they can do, you know, to heal their primal wounds. After I tell them that if they see the film 25 times they'll be good that they should listen to the podcast, because that's where it keeps going And that is continual. So it's like wandering tree and once upon a time in Adopt D land, Jennifer Diane Ghoston's podcast are crucial and they are the recommended resources on the website what people can do for post support and to continue building the community. So thank you so much for everything you're doing And I'm glad we're collaborating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i am too. I am too. You know. There's so many good resources out there. You've hit on a couple of them. I appreciate that. Shout out I know Jennifer does as well and books, man books are becoming very powerful for our community as well. I've done the love bomb of books That's what I call it where I sat in 20, latter 2020, 2021 and I read nothing but Adopt D memoirs, or to the point of where I got in a state of I'm exhausted, and so I love the diversity of ways to find outlets. That's where I'm going with this The diversity of ways to be in community, build community and outlets. So, yeah, podcast books that are upcoming in Liz's many others. There is not enough. That's my message.
Speaker 1:When people ask, do you feel like you're competing And I'm sure you guys get this too Do you feel like you're competing with one another? Nope, i don't feel that at all. In fact, i feel quite the opposite. It's just all coming together and I see our community just really rising to some really good, healthy places. So August 5th and 6th in Nashville, the event is called Operation Foglift. It will start around the three o'clockish timeframe, is what I heard. It is a multi hour event. So screening of Reckoning with the Primal Wound, a mini intermission reception. The unmothered in person live excited. I have not seen that. I'm excited, liz. And then a talk back event, a collaboration, a little bit of how we're all talking to one another. So a little more community And then, if it works out, maybe some socializing. Yep, that's it.
Speaker 3:I always want people to feel like they belong somewhere, and so please come to this or at least be in touch for future things. Operation Foglift is kind of a play into the branding of Adopti Army, so we have everybody behind us and we do have like supports in communities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're literally dropping ourselves into communities to bring these two pieces of art to. We're creating a movement right, and, just like you said, lisa, a few minutes ago, all the Adoptis that are producing podcasts, that are publishing memoirs and writing and other documentary films and other artists in the Adoptis community what's happening is there's a movement to, as I said before, shift the narrative right That we're all grown adults now and saying wait a minute, i've been quiet for too long And I do that through my own work, Like if I can get up on stage and show you my story, then maybe somebody else leaves feeling empowered too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so powerful. Well, ladies, I'm looking forward to August.
Speaker 2:And I say one more thing, because the one thing that we need to do this is help. So if folks are listening and you are local to the Nashville area and maybe you have connects because you're in the restaurant industry and you might wanna donate some food or drinks, or if you want to make a financial gift to us to get this going, we would so appreciate that too, so you can email us for those things. but this is the beginning of what we hope will be something big, and so we're looking for some event sponsors and we can send you more information about that. But if you can help, let us know.
Speaker 1:All right, ladies. You guys have a great day and thank you again for your time. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Make sure to rate, review and share. Want to join the conversation? Contact us at wanderingtreeadoptdcom. This has been KINE��超 ו Recognize this job. Wk Pontius sich k.