What if you had the chance to hear a powerful story of adoption, mental illness, and healing from someone who experienced it firsthand? We're honored to have Danielle Gaudette, author of Healing Tree, share her incredible journey with us.
From being adopted just 10 days after her birth to reuniting with her biological mother at 21, Danielle opens up about the challenges she faced growing up with an adopted mother suffering from bouts of mental illness and how it affected her own life perspectives and health.
Together, we discuss the struggles she faced with loyalty, anxiety, and neurosis when reconnecting with her birth family. Danielle shares how Body and Brain became a vital outlet for her healing process. Through her experiences at the center, Danielle learned about her own energy and how to ground herself, leading to significant personal growth and understanding.
In our conversation, Danielle and I examine the eight steps of healing and self-discovery, emphasizing the importance of practice and patience in order to retrain our brains and create the lives we want for ourselves. We also discuss the power of muscle memory in building cognitive development. Finally, Danielle shares her insights on the process of healing for adoptees and the importance of self-mastery and self-growth in order to authentically support others with similar experiences.
Check out the Pilot Course: Self-Mastery for Adoptees https://info.bodynbrain.com/smp-a
or
Connect with Danielle via the following
FB - https://www.facebook.com/danielle.gaudette.33
Website - https://www.daniellegaudette.com/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/danielle.gaudette/
Good Reads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22338461.Danielle_Gaudette
Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/stores/Danielle-Gaudette/author/B09X7BJD4C?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
What if you had the chance to hear a powerful story of adoption, mental illness, and healing from someone who experienced it firsthand? We're honored to have Danielle Gaudette, author of Healing Tree, share her incredible journey with us.
From being adopted just 10 days after her birth to reuniting with her biological mother at 21, Danielle opens up about the challenges she faced growing up with an adopted mother suffering from bouts of mental illness and how it affected her own life perspectives and health.
Together, we discuss the struggles she faced with loyalty, anxiety, and neurosis when reconnecting with her birth family. Danielle shares how Body and Brain became a vital outlet for her healing process. Through her experiences at the center, Danielle learned about her own energy and how to ground herself, leading to significant personal growth and understanding.
In our conversation, Danielle and I examine the eight steps of healing and self-discovery, emphasizing the importance of practice and patience in order to retrain our brains and create the lives we want for ourselves. We also discuss the power of muscle memory in building cognitive development. Finally, Danielle shares her insights on the process of healing for adoptees and the importance of self-mastery and self-growth in order to authentically support others with similar experiences.
Check out the Pilot Course: Self-Mastery for Adoptees https://info.bodynbrain.com/smp-a
or
Connect with Danielle via the following
FB - https://www.facebook.com/danielle.gaudette.33
Website - https://www.daniellegaudette.com/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/danielle.gaudette/
Good Reads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22338461.Danielle_Gaudette
Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/stores/Danielle-Gaudette/author/B09X7BJD4C?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, Lisa Ann.
Speaker 2:And I sign yoga. I need yoga. My mother, my doctor mother, said oh, i saw a place on the street, i think, where she sat at the red light, like in front of the gas station. She spotted it up above, so it was very remote. It was a huge blessing that I stumbled upon it, and now I'll Welcome to today's show.
Speaker 1:I am very pleased to have with me today as our guest Danielle Goddard. She is the author of the book Healing Tree, an adoptee story about hurting, healing and letting the light shine through. Welcome, thank you. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, it is absolutely a pleasure to have you aboard with us today. I am really looking forward to our discussion for our listeners, and we're going to kick it off with a little bit about you. If you could give us a you know kind of an overview of who is Danielle today.
Speaker 2:Okay, sure, so Danielle is a 20 year. I'm a 20 year body and brain coach, i said. The interesting thing about that is that I got to this work and this place in my life because of the healing journey that I embarked on about 23, 24 years ago now, which was also on the heels of my reunion with my biological mother. So all these things are kind of connected. I was born 1977 and adopted 10 days later.
Speaker 2:My adopted family came down to Manhattan where I was born through the Catholic Charity Bureau and they picked me up and I was raised outside of Boston in a suburb called Watertown, massachusetts. And yeah, they were great parents, very loving, very. We had very good connections. They were very honest and loyal and sincere people. But I would say the pain of my childhood was that my adopted mother, who was really my best friend at that time she suffered from very severe anxiety and depression. It was really a mental illness that would just unravel at any time and we were all kind of on our toes with that from the time that I was about six years old. So I did a lot of caring for her and I suffered with that and that was my life until I met my biological mother at 21, pretty young, yeah, which is not common.
Speaker 1:So we're going to note that and your experience relative to the decision to search and how you came to come to connection. I found that a little interesting. It was almost like the perfect happy path that many other adoptees would love, and you just had an opportunity to experience that For our listeners. tell us a little bit about that. You know you've known all your life. you were adopted. What was the decision? When could you come to the decision? What was the decision? How did you proceed?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my parents were very honest and transparent people. They raised me telling me that I was adopted, so I always knew, and they also told me that when I was 18, i could search if I wanted to. I wanted to look for my biological parents and I had that somewhere in my mind. I was so consumed with the world of well, my dramatic teenage years, plus my connection with my parents and also my mother's mental, emotional struggle, that I really tried so hard to help her with that. It was in my mind, but when I turned 18, i just was not anywhere near doing that.
Speaker 2:And then it wasn't until a couple of years later I transferred from the University of New Hampshire to the University of Iowa and I just felt a lot more stabilized in my life. I felt happier in my school and I was meeting lots of people and they were always asking oh, where are you from? You know what's your heritage? And they were guessing because I didn't know the answer And I just started to feel like you know what? I? just I want to know. I don't know the answer and everybody else knows. Why can't I know? I have a lot of adopted friends. I had my younger sister who was adopted but that she was really the only other adoptee in my life.
Speaker 2:So it was a curiosity thing and I thought I was late. Right, i was behind schedule because I could search when I was 18, but no 20, and I haven't even started yet. That's what I was thinking at that time. So I thought maybe if I could just find some pictures and the heritage where does my blood line come from Then that will satisfy my curiosity. So, as you said, it was kind of smooth and easy in comparison probably to many other stories.
Speaker 2:I don't know everybody's story. I thought mine was going to be long and are five years, 10 years, like knocking on someone's door. I thought it was going to be really, really complicated. But I just wrote a letter to the Catholic Charity Bureau where I was adopted through. They wrote back saying my files were burned in a fire. They told me to contact the state of New York. I did. They wrote back. This was kind of over the period of what Six, seven months. They wrote back and said you were born in New York but you were adopted through Massachusetts courts. Then they gave me this brochure but they were like we can't help you, but they gave me this brochure from this International Sound Ex Reunion Registry Company. They said if you or one of your birth parents become members, this organization will match you. That's what happened, literally two weeks later after I filled it out and sent it in.
Speaker 2:I got a match, they made a match. It happened so fast I think for me, even though it was easy and smooth, it was overwhelming because it was that easy. It was like a gentle knock on the door and the door went flying open and I kind of fell on my face. It felt like that.
Speaker 1:That's a great analogy. I also like the hope that you might be giving to others that it can happen in a smooth way. Maybe it doesn't. We've heard stories both directions. I like the positivity of it can happen A little bit of hope. Nothing's wrong with hope at all.
Speaker 1:You've mentioned a couple of different things that I would like us to maybe dig in a little bit here relative to your upbringing. As we know, especially now in today's society and areas of thought that we're going through, mental health is one of the key marks that we're focusing on and more cognizant of, to help people. In your book you talk a little bit about the mental health aspects of your adopted mother and what that was like for you as a child. I'm going to reference the page kind of one of the sections that ran home for me in your book. It is well, i lost it. Of course I would lose it. Sorry listeners, i lost it And now you're going to hear me going through the book. It was really the framing around your thought process as it relates to your adopted mother and how you ended up with this negative kind of mentality to that. Do you want to speak to that a little bit more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So she started to really have these episodes from the time that I was about six years old And I really I feel like it really shook my sense of safety and stability And even though I loved her so much, but that that that that safety of that love would disappear whenever she would kind of unravel. I really grew up first of all trying to take care of her, doing everything I could to make her happy, make her smile, but also meanwhile I was developing very extreme version of worry and anxiety, to the degree of neuroses and hypochondria. I mean, all my teachers would be like Daniels a worry, war, you know she has.
Speaker 2:Everyone knew this about me And that just wore on me as I grew older and it just morphed into an extreme fear. And so when I got, when I started my healing journey, i started really looking inward. I first examined my childhood and the feelings that I found there were. Well, there's this fear and the successive habit of worry, and then there's this deep sadness And I keep looping back around in my mind like, oh, my mother was sick And so it was hard and I had to take care of her, and it was really sad and I became really anxious And it was just this loop, it was like a belief.
Speaker 2:So the chapter you're referring to is when I did this course right, and I did this healing water meditation, where I was making this healing water for my mother. So I was meditating deeply on my journey with her and seeing so clearly, just in that 40 minutes of sitting there staring at a glass of water, i was watching my mind loop around on this track And at some moment I think, in examining it so honestly and clearly, and also my desperate, deep, deep, deep wish for healing, first and foremost for my mother, but also feeling the compassion for myself suddenly like wow, i had this sadness in me since I was very little.
Speaker 1:This has been an agonizing track in my brain, something open I think, because I was really wishing so much for healing in that meditation and that healing water meditation that something shifted And I write about it there, how the track shifted Yeah Well, i think a lot of people can resonate with the negative pattern, and so the way that you have described it I was immediately in the thought process of oh, i've heard this, i've thought this, i've probably said this, and you kind of capture it with my mother was mentally ill. It was so painful for me. That's why I'm depressed.
Speaker 1:Life is hard, and I could say my mantra in the similar context is my mother wasn't very emotionally loving. I constantly was looking for her approval. We had a difficult relationship. All of my relationships seem to be difficult. Why is life so hard? And so I loved the reframing of it through this process and your healing process, which we will dive into more about what that is, what it's really named, where you then change the mantra. Do you mind if I read what the mantra was and how you've reframed it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, please do.
Speaker 1:You change from a negative pattern into one that is a little healthier, and it goes. My mother was mentally ill. It was so painful for me. I did my best to help her. Through helping her, i cultivated a healer's mind within me. It was her suffering that led to my soul's path in this lifetime.
Speaker 1:I am so grateful for the perfection of my journey And I'm not there. I love that you were able to get there through this healing process, Your tools we'll talk about the toolbox as we move forward, but I started thinking about it and I'm really going to try to reframe even my perception of my mother and how that all came about. Maybe she's made me a more loving person at the end of it. Right, i'm very empathetic, by the way, like I can cry on a dime. I don't know about you, but someone will walk in and they'll be crying and all of a sudden I'll start crying because they're crying And I just want to take care of them and nurture them And I loved that.
Speaker 1:That, by the way, for listeners when you get this book, because I'm going to highly recommend page 88. And you're right, the chapter is called Healing Water. So very, very good. Well, let's talk a little bit about your reunion, because your reunion kind of some of the things you were feeling, your disconnection, i think, from yourself really led you into not only this book, really your why life's path journey. So you want to talk a little bit more about that kind of bring us into some of your ups and downs of your reunion journey and your disconnection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that happened when I was 21 years old. So 25 years ago was my reunion and I have been in reunion since then. And you know, think about this, this young, worried, anxious, fearful, neurotic girl who's having a hard time just managing her own thoughts and emotions as it is, who's having a hard time accepting the world as it is because it scares her. That's the kind of condition that I was in. And then I knock on the door, go spline open, i meet my biological mother and somehow It was amazingly hopeful that it was so smooth for me. But emotionally it caused a huge overwhelm that I didn't expect, i didn't anticipate, although I hadn't really wanted to have a relationship with my biological mother or father because prior to finding them, because I was so close with my parents and that felt like a point of conflict for me. So it opened this massive door of conflict. I felt guilt in every direction. I felt guilt towards my parents, even though they didn't they supported the reunion. They didn't. They didn't try to make me feel like I was doing anything wrong, but I just felt guilty. Now I have these other people who I'm calling mom and I'm calling my siblings or dad. I just I didn't sit right with my loyalty. And then I felt guilt to my birth family because they all wanted to to me to come into their world And I had all my guards up 100% walls. Even though I was trying, i didn't really feel like it was fair or reasonable, my, my defensiveness. So that was the beginning And I just started unraveling. The anxiety, the worry, the neurosis just guy rocketed And I felt like I needed help. So that's how I found a body and brain center And I began my healing journey, which I know we'll talk about a little bit more.
Speaker 2:But through that journey I kind of unraveled more and more, because that was now I'm doing my healing journey, right alongside with the reunion. So in real time I was basically discovering my primal wound as I was getting to know my biological mother, like it was in our real time communication that these things were coming up, these hurts, these rejections, fears, shrinking insecurity, trust, like whoa every. It was a crazy roller coaster And I realized this is the wound. It was like I on, i ripped the bandage off and the wound was just I say that in healing is passing and oozing And I had to face it. So that was my, i guess, coming out of the fog, or whatever you want to call it. It was my recognition of the deep affect of all of this on me as I was trying to have a relationship with her and overcome being a 21 year old neurotic. So I faced a lot of fear and a lot of deep, deep lack of confidence, lack of self esteem.
Speaker 1:Well, i don't know really too many 20 something year olds, especially that early, that are super confident. Anyway, we're all. I don't know I'm old, but I'm still young enough to remember just trying to live on our own in many instances, trying to figure out how to have a career or not have a career, or you know what are we doing next? and acclimating ourselves to realities of the real world, i call it, where you have bills and all of the other stuff going on, and so that is a lot to work through, and your outlets have been twofold One is through writing and the other is through your introduction to a set of tools in a toolbox that came from an organization, a center called brain and body, correct, body and brain, body and brain.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get it wrong every time, that's all right, we'll get back to it, right? So the uh. So my guess, my point or my question to you, danielle, would be bringing all of that in and synthesizing and finding an outlet. That's a dream for some people. When we were talking a little bit prior to this actual interview, we just kind of mentioned it was in the most odd place for you to be and its facility was not like blinking neon lights, correct? No?
Speaker 2:it was. It was like behind a gas station, above a dry cleaner talked away. It was my adoptive mother who said because I just thought I need yoga, i, i just thought at that time of my life I'm losing it. I need to find some kind of inner peace. Nothing makes me feel peaceful in the world. The world is scary and crazy. No relationship sooth me. Everywhere I look, i'm worried insanely about something. I got to find it inside I, i don't know. I had that kind of feeling or sense at that time. Now, by now, i'm about 22 and I signed it yoga, i need yoga. My. My mother, my doctor mother said Oh, i saw a place down the street, i think, where she sat at the red light, like in front of the gas station. She spotted it up above, so it was very remote.
Speaker 2:It was a huge blessing that I stumbled upon it in that way, because that was the first critical piece of the healing was doing the practice. It's an energy. It's a mind, body, energy practice. So I needed to learn about my energy. I didn't know anything about it and then how out of balance I was and how to ground myself and all of that. So just to also speak. You talked about the writing. I loved writing from the time that I was very young and I wanted to be a writer and I even went to college, you know, taking a lot of creative writing courses and really wanting to be a writer. But I put that all on holds from the moment that I started my healing journey because I just wanted to deep dive into me. I didn't have words to express, i just was processing, processing, processing, and it took a lot of processing before I was ready to start writing again And I feel like the writing has been more the latter part of the journey, the healing journey.
Speaker 1:Well, i find it interesting that you had it at the front end, you had the middle, which is where you're healing, and now you have it on the back end, and part of me has the sense that the front end was you prepping yourself for the journey through the. You know your creative avenues And your back end is now I know what I need to articulate and continue down my creative path. Yeah, and so there's a great Mary Mint there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i agree, i feel like writing was a lot about getting in touch with myself, but then after I started the practice, i was really getting in touch with my what I would call my true self in a very deep way And it was fulfilling me And I just didn't really have anything to say. But the more recent part has been now putting the journey into words and sharing, and so, yeah, it's been a beautiful kind of full circle to be able to now share. It's like, oh, i want to write because I want to share my healing experience.
Speaker 1:Well, there is a paragraph I'm going to take liberties again and share a little bit of it In your book. It is on page 82. For our listeners, it's part of your Breaking Free chapter, and I always like to know the why behind why people are doing things. My why is I wanted to just help one person start to heal, just like I was. I needed to start talking about it. I do speak frequently about when I was in reunion and getting overloaded with many of the same things you said, right, regardless of age, and I thought I was prepared and I wasn't. There was nothing that could have ever prepared me. It just wasn't. And so this podcast. My why to this podcast is I needed to start talking or I was going to implode.
Speaker 1:So when I was reading about you and your why, what I'm like oh, that's our why, and it goes like this What I truly wanted in that moment was to dedicate my entire self to my inner work and to the path that lay before me, a path of helping other souls wake up. And what's interesting is not even anywhere near where I think you thought your why was in the book And I'm like well, there it is. That's her why, that, like even as she was in that moment working on herself, she knew somewhere along this journey, her why would be helping others build a toolbox, because not everything's for everyone, but giving them options to heal, because our journey never ends. And so let's talk a little bit about the toolbox. We've mentioned that it is body and brain I got it right this time and it is a platform. It's, you know, a practice you've been studying and in study and teaching for quite some time. Give us a little bit of sense of what that is and your next step in that practice for adoptees.
Speaker 2:Or yes, so it's. It's a mind, body, spirit, energy training and it works also with the brain. It's based on a program, a curriculum called brain education. So it's about educating our brain And kind of like what you talked about earlier in the healing water chapter, the reframe, educating our brain. But that is a long process and journey and it happens through the body right. So we're awakening the senses of my body, we're awakening the senses of my energy system, we're awakening the senses of my mind so that I'm no longer controlled by it. But I start to discover myself at the center, like who is the controller here? I feel like I didn't have a center when I was young and I found the center and then how to manage and navigate.
Speaker 2:I talk in the book a lot about this mentor that helped me early on understanding brain education. Brain education usually comes with five steps, but she I worked with her for about four years and she really broke it down into eight smaller steps And somehow, just where I was at in my life meeting with myself, meeting with my wound, meeting everything and the way she taught it and the way I practiced it, it had such a powerful effect, those eight steps, and I held onto those eight steps with dear life at that time And I practiced them every single moment. I can share what they are. I really practiced and integrated them and got over so many hills and through so many dark valleys with those eight steps, to the degree that I'll come back to what they are, but to the degree that I then became a teacher and a trainer and about 2012, i started teaching more specialized course to help people manage their emotion And I realized I really need to. I've just been busy practicing these steps And it's time for me to share them, really make a class, build a class around them, and I saw so many people benefit from it Many, many people in many cities all over the country where I worked that that's why I put them in the second part of healing tree.
Speaker 2:Healing tree part one, right, is the memoir and part two is the teaching aspect, the what I did to help myself with my wounds. So I really I put them all in there. There's eight chapters, one for every step, and now I'm trying to, because I put them in there. I want people who really feel like they might be helpful for them to have a chance to really practice with them, even go beyond reading about them and really practice with them, which is why I've now started a course called self mastery for adoptees. At this point, i'm a body and brain coach. I'm teaching online, i'm teaching all kinds of things, and I wanted to do a specialized course for adoptees only so that I could really like drive these tools home for the very specific adoptee things that I use them for in myself That make sense.
Speaker 1:It absolutely makes sense And I like that. I like things that focus on where there's a relatable component to our journey. Trauma is trauma, and so when you are focusing on helping others put tools in their toolbox that is directly correlated to that trauma experience, it definitely helps all of us. Eight steps Let's go over the eight steps real quickly, at the highest level, if you don't mind.
Speaker 2:Sure, okay. So step number one is awaken. So in the steps sometimes we kind of redefine the word a little bit, and here the word awaken means awakening your senses of your body, your energy, your mind. Essentially, what it means is bringing your awareness, your attention back to yourself, off of the person or thing that's causing you suffering, and coming back to yourself. That's where the processing begins. We cannot do self mastery by just pointing and blaming and complaining and criticizing, and we all do that, i do that, but it's realizing. Wait, how am I going to solve this? Okay, come back to myself.
Speaker 2:Step number two is simply feel, which comes next right Once I bring my attention back to myself feel everything. So step two is feel, feel everything, whether it's good, it's bad, just allow myself to feel myself. Step number three is called watch, which means here being able to feel my feelings and identify them without judging them. That's the key of watch. So, just as a side note, you mentioned about sensitivity, empathy. I think a lot of us experience that.
Speaker 2:So how to practice with all these overwhelming feelings? we have to learn how to not judge by making some distance. So that's what watching is Separate from it a little bit and being able to see it from a distance. Step number three. That leads us to step number four except, which is, now that I have some distance, practicing to accept this feeling completely, whether it's a feeling or a belief, as we talked about in the healing water, it could be a habit. So accepting involves cultivating myself, love, self forgiveness, ability to embrace everything I have within, and it also includes ownership. Like I have this feeling, it's mine, but it's not me, it's not who, I am, it's mine.
Speaker 1:Let's stop at those four for a minute, because I can identify with aspects of my personality that may struggle with all four of those, and the one that I would say is that my largest struggle is embracing some of who I am. I believe some of my behaviors are very hard for me to accept because of what I have experienced in life and then why I have behaved in those ways I am open about. I have anxiety issues. I didn't realize that's what they were for a very long time. I have a huge fear of abandonment huge So much so that I will put up the wall and push you away, so that I leave before you do, and I have a tendency to be what people would consider maybe oversensitive. I don't think any longer I'm oversensitive, but I can understand where those four steps, even as a beginning, could be just so beneficial. All right, let's go on to the next four.
Speaker 2:And I have all of those two. I totally understand. That's why I love working with the deputies, because we're all like, yeah, yeah yeah, we understand all of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the one that bothers me the most in myself is the abandonment aspect.
Speaker 2:No, and it can be such a shortcut to so many triggers. I have that too And you have to, we have to, i have to. Okay, let me just start with me. I have had to really examine and to try to catch it. So the more I allow myself to feel and feel it without judging it and just like, okay, i have this, but it's not me. I have this, but it's not me.
Speaker 2:So I talked at the beginning about true self. It's really recognizing there is an essence in me and everything's okay right there. That essence is just breathing with the universe. It's nature, it's just pure, it's kind of like the baby within us, that very pure love, unconditional love inside. But that can say that's me, so these other things are not me. So it's easy to say. But it's a lot of practice to feel that again and again. And the more I feel it, the more I can be like, okay, that's not me, i have that. Then I can embrace more easily. I can kind of embrace it when I really separate from it's not me And feel that. So that takes a lot of work. So I call myself a coach because there's a lot of coaching and support and a lot of like fine details in the process And I feel like awake and feel, watch.
Speaker 2:Except the first four steps, we need to practice them over and over and over and be very, very patient with ourselves in them. Then we can move when we're ready to the fifth step, which is choose. So choosing a new pattern, like you read in the healing water, choosing a new emotion. Maybe I want to choose love right now, or maybe I want to choose to trust because I'm feeling unsafe. Can I choose to trust? It's not the thing that happens quickly, but we practice and practice and we awaken the sense of how to be able to access that, because we really have all the solutions inside of us. So we're learning how to go in, connect to them. Then we can choose.
Speaker 2:Then the step after choose is act. So now we're on step six act. Follow your choice. Say, i'm going to go buy a journal today and every day, at the end of the day, i'm going to write down five things that I loved about myself today Or I love about this day. Small action and it seems so small, but actually when we keep doing that, we're retraining our brain.
Speaker 2:And then the ultimate step eight is create. We want to be able to create whatever we want to create. I want to create a happy life for myself. I want to create myself as a confident person, as a loving person. I keep repeating these steps. So there's the step right before eight seven evaluate. Evaluate is when we did all of this, but the thing we wanted to create didn't come out exactly the way we wanted to create it. We just go back one step and we evaluate, which means we awaken again, we feel again, we watch again, we accept again, we choose again and we act again for the goal of what we want to create. So it's a lot about being kind to ourselves and recognizing it as an ongoing, but also realizing how good it feels when we have those victories and how we grow confidence in our own mind And when we start to see changes happen in our lives. As we do that.
Speaker 1:I rarely talk about this but, as you've been talking, and we've been really digging in and this is Such a great conversation for our brains. I work in software development, so I am constantly analyzing, thinking, finding problems. That's my core. That's been my history. I now lead a team and I love it. What is really interesting, and the connection between what you're talking about, is how we approach the things that we develop for our users.
Speaker 1:I work in a part of the industry that is associated with helping others. I don't know if I've ever said what I do, but the point here is that the people we're helping are also helping others. The software we're building helps others, help others If that makes sense. And there is a key to every where we are looking at it from a user experience, that what we do creates repetitive pattern, so that there's muscle memory relative to the brain and your cognitive development of the activity. They don't have to think about what they're doing. It's the creation of muscle memory And that's what I really feel the eight steps are. It is so cool to pass converging. It is so unbelievably cool.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's amazing, our brains are amazing.
Speaker 1:All right, i asked you to do a reading, if you wouldn't mind, from your book, reading the chapter called Mercy.
Speaker 2:Yes, sure I love to. In order to do that, i feel like I just need to say a couple of things so people can follow me. The most interesting thing about my reunion experience is that my biological mother happens to be an actress. Some people know her, some people don't. Her name is Kate Mulgrew, and so when she was pregnant with me, she was Mary Ryan on Ryan's Hope, and when we met and during our reunion, she was Captain Jane away on Star Trek Voyager, and then later during our reunion, she was red on Orange is the New Black. I referenced some of that in this chapter. Kate is my biological mother and then her two sons. My half brothers are Ian and Alec. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 2:Despite our busy lives, kate and I have made genuine efforts to get together over the years, due to the pandemic. 2020 was the first year I did not see her in a long while. I would often visit her in Manhattan. I loved barreling down the Henry Hudson Parkway during my 45 minute taxi ride from JFK to Kate's apartment. The thrill of holding on for dear life while the cabbie chatted away in this thick New York accent, of watching the bridges, the river, the medley of people going about their days amid tightly packed buildings, all let me feel the strong pulse of human life. Sometimes I would even get an eerie feeling as if I had once lived in this city myself, even though I had left New York 10 days after I was born. I had always felt an odd familiarity whenever I returned. When Kate took me to see Phantom of the Opera, to shop at Eileen Fisher or to dine at Carmine's. Our jumping in and out of taxis and bustling through the city streets made that familiar feeling come alive. If I wasn't visiting Kate, she would come see me wherever I was working. We munched on burgers at the Cherry Cricket in Denver, were entranced by the mountain view at the Opera House in Santa Fe and sipped margaritas as we rode the Ferris wheel overlooking Seattle's City Light. We had many walks, many laughs and many cozy chats in hotel rooms sprinkled across America.
Speaker 2:For several years I spent Thanksgiving with Kate and my half brothers in California. Ian would come from Santa Barbara, alec from LA and Kate would fly in from New York, taking a break from her orange as the new black filming. She would rent a beautiful home for us all, stock the kitchen with more food than we could eat and prepare us an amazing holiday meal. Always we were engaged in conversation. One year we sat around a gaslit fire pit under the stars reciting our favorite poetry. Another year we took turns sharing odd dreams that we had had and offering possible interpretations for them.
Speaker 2:But the time that most stands out in my mind was when we went around the table sharing what we were grateful for about one another. That year, kate's sharing took me aback. She expressed her gratitude to Ian for the wisdom he embodied, to Alec for the joy he brought to her life. And when she came to me she spoke of mercy. She said she had learned from me about mercy and for that she was grateful. The word struck me mercy. It echoed in my mind. It seemed like such a strong and powerful word and not one I was expecting her to use when referencing me. It made me think of church. Wasn't it something you asked the Lord for? Was I really worthy and deserving of such a word? I'm sure she explained further, but I had not been comfortable enough to expose the fact that I wasn't digesting what she was saying.
Speaker 2:When I went back to my room that evening I was still struggling to wrap my mind around what she might have meant. I decided to Google the word mercy, compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm. That. Was it Within one's power to punish or harm? Punish or harm, punish or harm? Did Kate really feel that it was within my power to punish or harm her all these years? Was she living with that feeling? deep inside That night I realized something I had not previously been aware of Kate's part, kate's heart in all of this. Kate's guilt, kate's shame.
Speaker 2:All this time I had been busy feeling my own pain and examining our relationship from my own point of view, from the depth of my own ability to observe myself. It had been all about me. It was about my suffering, my struggle. Although I had certainly developed compassion in the face of being adopted, it was mostly through opening, compassion toward myself, feeling a sense of forgiveness and a letting go. But I had not yet taken the time to stand quietly in Kate's shoes and see through Kate's eyes. I hadn't had the maturity, the power, the strength of heart nor the wisdom to do so.
Speaker 2:After that visit to California, i allowed myself to imagine what Kate's pain might have felt like. I could sustain it only for brief moments at a time. But when I did, i felt a different kind of weight, not my own weight, but hers, the weight that she must have carried for my entire life. I felt sorry, truly sorry, that I had been unable to recognize it. I had been so consumed with myself, absorbed by my own suffering. Even though I had heard Kate recount her heartache time and again, my ears had been closed and my heart had been numb to it.
Speaker 2:It was maybe a year or two later, after Born with Teeth had been published and she had finished her book tour, when Kate said to me I don't want to talk about the adoption anymore. I wrote a book, i told my story. It was hard for me. I would love it if we could just talk about science and history and the world. Could we do that? I understood It was a big ask for a person like me who processes her feelings by talking about them endlessly.
Speaker 2:Nevertheless, i got it. I felt the mind behind that simple ask and that mind spoke a thousand words. I knew then, out of respect for this woman who gave birth to me and went through tremendous effort to get to this very moment of our lives, i would honor her request. It was time for me to move into a new kind of relationship with her, one where the fact that she had given me up for adoption was no longer the focal point of our connection. My choice was to move forward, sharing as much love as I possibly could, birthing a new story with Kate. In this lifetime, of course, i will continue to process my own inner world as an adoptee, since there is no other option for me but to do so. As long as I live and breathe, i need to face my primal wound, own it, accept it and love it as part of my journey in this life. I do this for my awakening, for my peace and for being able to authentically support others with wounds like mine.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I asked you to read this for a couple of different reasons. I was very empathetic to this chapter for two reasons. I never think of myself as merciful in this conversation regarding my adoption journey. When I sit in reflection, i realize we probably are more merciful as adoptees than we realize, and with mercy typically comes some grace. We're giving grace to others. We also need to give grace to ourselves. At the same time, my heart broke for you a little bit, and I felt it was so aspirational for you to write it for others to experience. Where the door has been closed on the topic. My door has been closed because my birth mother passed away before I could ask all the questions. I don't know how I would feel, though, if I were in the reverse position.
Speaker 2:I admire your strength in honoring her request and respecting that In this book I really wanted to include all of the really healing nuggets that were huge, pivotal moments for me in my journey. I feel like it took me a long time to get to that feeling that I just read about. I feel like if she had perhaps said that at the beginning or even, i don't know, a year or maybe even months prior to, i might just be sitting here complaining about it to somebody. But because of the work and because of that moment where I really took time to feel her feeling and I felt the depth of her shame, the weight of that and how complicated it is and how I think all along our reunion it caused her to say many things that I it was hard to understand, but when I saw it just for a moment, my awareness popped out and saw it from that perspective. From that perspective I could accept.
Speaker 2:That didn't mean that I didn't still need it. What I really wanted and needed was to just kind of keep processing together. I feel this, you feel this, i feel this, you know. But I realized I need to do that work on my own And if she wants to come around again someday and reopen the door, i'll be here, but in the meantime I need to keep doing my work so that I can keep forgiving myself and forgiving her and letting it go inside of me and letting go of my want from her. So it took me actually a lot of this self-mastery and these steps and this brain education and all the processing work that I did to even get to be able to say that wholeheartedly.
Speaker 1:Well, it's very powerful again and I love the work that you're doing. Let's circle back so that we can make sure that you are sharing out with the listeners what you are doing, what is upcoming how do they connect to you and what you want to leave with today.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I am now a body and brain coach. I'm teaching all kinds of classes online. I'm especially teaching these eight steps. I have some classes that are just movement-oriented and I have other classes that are emotionally-oriented. But the big thing that I'm wanting to share with the community right now is both the book Healing Tree as well as the course Self-Mastery for Adopties, which is for Adopties Only. I'm only taking 20 Adopties.
Speaker 2:We just ran a program. It's an eight-week program and I'm running another one starting in July, just because I've met so many people on this journey and I want to be able to offer an experience with practicing it and rather than just reading about it or hearing somebody speak. This is the program. It starts July 11th, it runs for eight weeks and program I guess I'm just going to say it directly and honestly it has quite a high value, be a highly discounted price. So I'm really hoping to reach out to as many people as I can through it, and I think I gave you the link for it so people can find information and they can also reach out to me on Facebook or through my website if they have more questions about it.
Speaker 1:Well, absolutely So. In the show notes there will be all of the links to your book, to your website, to this event, and then, in addition to that, it'll be all over the socials. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to get to know you, to have met you. We actually connected at the untangling our roots, and I do remember walking up and saying I want to read your book, and so I appreciate again you coming here and being with our listeners and offering us things that we can do differently along this journey, and powerful to have a toolbox of things that we can go to. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and giving me a chance to talk about this, and I hope that if anyone stumbles upon this and it helps them in any way, that's what I feel as my purpose, so thank you for giving me a chance to share it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you again and we look forward to having you back soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to today's episode. Make sure to rate, review and share. Want to join the conversation? Contact us at wanderingtreeadoptcom.