Do you need to find some light within you during the daily wins and losses of the adoptee journey? This episode welcomes international adoptee, author, and adoptee empowerment life coach Michelle Madrid. She shares intimate insights from her own experiences growing up in foster care, being labeled with limiting words, and the intense feelings of being unwanted by her birth and adoptive parents. What if you could reclaim your identity and purpose?
As we explore the adoptee journey further, Michelle unveils the eight pain points that many adoptees grapple with - from the deep sense of unwelcome they often experience to the pain of broken bonds and having the truth concealed from them. We reflect on the fear of abandonment that lies at the heart of these pains and how it can manifest as people-pleasing and a lack of self-acceptance. We also discuss the powerful exercise, "Putting Down the Baggage," which Michelle has designed to help adoptees recognize and let go of the emotional burdens they've been carrying since childhood.
Finally, Michelle gives us a sneak peek into her upcoming podcast, Electricity of You. Here, she aims to provide a safe and sacred space for adoptees to reconnect with their light, ignite their purpose and share their grief. This episode provides profound wisdom and advice on the adoptee journey, the power of reclaiming identity, and the healing power of sharing grief. So, are you ready to light up your inner electricity?
Find your people, cherish your people and love your people.
#adoptee #adoptees #adopteevoices #adopteestories #adopteestrong #adoptionreality #adopteejourney #adoption #wanderingtreeadoptee
Visit Michelle online at http://TheMichelleMadrid.com.
Here’s the link to the book’s product page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Let-Us-Be-Greater-Adoptees/dp/160868847X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SVDF0EUYX7PS&keywords=Michelle+Madrid&qid=1694831079&s=books&sprefix=michelle+madrid%2Cstripbooks%2C92&sr=1-1
Also great ways to connect with Michelle include:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetHerBeGreater
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themichellemadrid
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-madrid-62b1661a/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMichelleMadrid
Do you need to find some light within you during the daily wins and losses of the adoptee journey? This episode welcomes international adoptee, author, and adoptee empowerment life coach Michelle Madrid. She shares intimate insights from her own experiences growing up in foster care, being labeled with limiting words, and the intense feelings of being unwanted by her birth and adoptive parents. What if you could reclaim your identity and purpose?
As we explore the adoptee journey further, Michelle unveils the eight pain points that many adoptees grapple with - from the deep sense of unwelcome they often experience to the pain of broken bonds and having the truth concealed from them. We reflect on the fear of abandonment that lies at the heart of these pains and how it can manifest as people-pleasing and a lack of self-acceptance. We also discuss the powerful exercise, "Putting Down the Baggage," which Michelle has designed to help adoptees recognize and let go of the emotional burdens they've been carrying since childhood.
Finally, Michelle gives us a sneak peek into her upcoming podcast, Electricity of You. Here, she aims to provide a safe and sacred space for adoptees to reconnect with their light, ignite their purpose and share their grief. This episode provides profound wisdom and advice on the adoptee journey, the power of reclaiming identity, and the healing power of sharing grief. So, are you ready to light up your inner electricity?
Find your people, cherish your people and love your people.
#adoptee #adoptees #adopteevoices #adopteestories #adopteestrong #adoptionreality #adopteejourney #adoption #wanderingtreeadoptee
Visit Michelle online at http://TheMichelleMadrid.com.
Here’s the link to the book’s product page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Let-Us-Be-Greater-Adoptees/dp/160868847X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SVDF0EUYX7PS&keywords=Michelle+Madrid&qid=1694831079&s=books&sprefix=michelle+madrid%2Cstripbooks%2C92&sr=1-1
Also great ways to connect with Michelle include:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetHerBeGreater
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themichellemadrid
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-madrid-62b1661a/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMichelleMadrid
Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, Lisa Ann.
Speaker 2:And so, ultimately, I think the shift comes when we realize that losing ourselves is the greatest tragedy of all, abandoning our truth is the greatest tragedy. It's the greatest loss when we leave ourselves behind.
Speaker 1:Welcome everybody to today's episode. It's a pleasure to be here today with our guest. I'm going to read a little bit about her in a couple of minutes, but I just want to share out that. Her credentials really sat heavy with me in the context of I almost felt like I wasn't going to be able to measure up and made me a little nervous about this episode. But at the end of it all I am so thankful she's here. I'm going to share a little bit about her and then I'm going to turn it over to her so she can tell us also a little bit about her adoption story.
Speaker 1:So, with that said, I'd like to introduce Michelle Madrid. She is the author of an upcoming and soon to be released book called Let Us Be Greater a gentle, guided path to healing for adoptees. She is also going to be launching a podcast here in the next couple of weeks or so and it is going to be labeled Electricity of you. We'll touch a little bit on that as well today. Michelle is an international adoptee, a former foster child in the UK and an adoptee empowerment life coach who has been recognized as an Angels in Adoption Honoree by the Congressional Coalition of Adoption Institute, ccai. And if that isn't enough for all of us, she has been inducted into the New Mexico Women's Hall of Fame for her work in adoption. Currently she lives in Los Angeles and you can visit her online at her website, which will drop in our show notes. But for kicking us off, it is TheMichelleMadridcom, and so, with that said, welcome, michelle to the show. It is a great pleasure to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here with you and with everyone listening.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. If you don't mind, let's start out with a little bit about Michelle and her adoption story before we jump into the book itself.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. If I take you way, way back, I was born in the United Kingdom, the daughter of an English woman and my father my first father was Spanish, first mother English. My mother was married with three children, but she wasn't married to my father. She and my father had an affair and I was the product of that affair, and so complicated times, right Decisions of what to do and ultimately the decision was made to place me in foster care. I was placed into foster care as a baby, but not after having spent some time with my first mother. She needed close for me. She held me and then she drove me with her husband to my foster mom, my foster carer, and she left me there. I have read in my foster records that when she left me, it was a winter day and the foster home was, as they put, cold and chaotic, because there was something wrong with the chimney and there were like workers around trying to fix it, but it was cold and chaotic. My mom walked away and that's where my journey to adoption began, inside of foster care. I should mention, because I think this is pivotal for me or it's poignant for me, it's important for me to say because it's part of the pain points of my own personal existence, my own personal journey as an adoptee.
Speaker 2:I was labeled with a lot of limiting labels while I was in foster care Difficult to place, strange looking, unwanted, illegitimate. Social workers really were concerned that I wouldn't be adopted because of my story, because I was this illegitimate child as they, and also because I was darker in coloring. This is all stated in my foster records. I really believe that the words spoken around children, about children to children, stick to us Even when we are nonverbal, before we can even speak our first word. These things adhere themselves to us and I grew up with just a sense of feeling pretty worthless, even after I was adopted. Even after I was adopted, I was adopted by Americans who happened to be living in the United Kingdom, in England at the time. They had two sons. My mother wanted a daughter and so I was adopted and brought to America. I think a lot of people would say, oh well, that's great. That's where the story ends. You were adopted, isn't that wonderful.
Speaker 2:That was a struggle for me because I had a new family, but I also lost the first me, as I call it. I was Julia Dawn before I was adopted, my first mother named me Julia Dawn. Upon being adopted, I became Michelle Ann. There was a whole lot of confusion in my young head growing up because I felt that little girl, that Julia Dawn, in me. I didn't know what to do with her, where to place her. I grew up with a lot of confusion over that. I grew up in an adoptive home with an alcoholic father. There was a lot of hurt inside of the home. A father who wasn't terribly keen at the time because I think of his alcoholism just to lean in and be a dad to me. He was never physically abusive, but he was verbally abusive. I think that was an added layer of hurt to feel not wanted by my first parents on some level and then, within the adoptive family that I was brought into, not necessarily wanted by my adoptive father.
Speaker 2:The journey for me has been an interesting one, but one that I feel like if I were to define myself, I would say I'm just a seeker of truth and I wanted to know the truth about me and what that meant to me. Even when I couldn't clearly understand that, there was just something in me that drove me forward to wanting to know more of who I was and who I'm here to be and to certainly find some sense of why this journey happened in my life, not just why my first parents left and all of that, not that, but just why. What does it mean for me personally, as a human being, as a soul on this planet, that this transition, this shift in my life happened? What does it mean Also, what do I do with it, how do I make a difference with it? Which has led me, I think, here today, with you, inside of this conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and thank you so much. I think that's a great segue into a little bit about your book. I want to thank you. It is rare to get somebody's terial before it's actually hit the shelf. I feel very honored to have had that opportunity to read that. So I'm going to talk again about the title of your book, and it is called Let Us Be Greater A Gentle, guided Path to Healing for Adoptees. That sounds like a very personal title to me. What does that mean for you and how did you get to that?
Speaker 2:It is a very personal title and thank you for those kind words you just spoke. I really appreciate it. I think actually I know Let Us Be Greater is the book that I longed for when I was growing up, adopted. I remember just reading books on adoption that just made it feel the experience feel sort of cold and I didn't resonate with them, almost like I had a diagnosis that needed to be cured and I didn't feel seen, heard, understood, known as out of the books. And so, truly, let Us Be Greater is the book that I longed to read. It is very personal because I go into very personal moments along my own journey as an adoptee and the title actually is seated in Ethiopia.
Speaker 2:I have a beautiful, brilliant, radiant 13-year-old daughter named Eviana. She is adopted from Ethiopia and she and I preface this because she and I have conversations and this is a part of her story that she is comfortable with me sharing, because there's a shared experience there between she and I as mother and daughter. Her story is hers to share, but I also want to make very clear that she has given me permission to share this part of our journey together. I learned in Ethiopia that she had been given a name by the police officer who found her and she was in Southern Ethiopia but the name is Northern Ethiopian. So there is belief that the police officer was living in Southern Ethiopia but is from the North. And the name is Tiblet and it means let her be greater. And I remember being in Ethiopia holding my daughter for the first time and learning the translation of her name Tiblet. Her name is Eviana Tiblet. There is meaning to her first name, eviana. It means living water. She was very sick at the time with Giardia from unsafe water that she had been given as a baby. So her name is, you know, living water. Let her be greater. There is such power in her names. But I do remember holding her, learning the translation of the name Tiblet and thinking to myself that it was a divine message. It hit me that I needed to take that name in let her be greater because I was holding this child and she was very sick. She was malnourished, very tiny for her 10 months of age, yet I could see all the potential of her, right in front of me, in my arms. Like a moody, I saw everything, like her power, her grace, her beauty, her intelligence. I was just drinking it in and there was this moment where I thought, oh, I can see all of this in my child, but I can't catch a glimpse of this in myself. Why? Why can't I see the same value and worth? And so it started me on an exploration of deeper sense of self and value worthiness.
Speaker 2:The title of the book, for me, is really a crying out to all of us as adoptees, that we can be greater than the circumstance, the broken circumstances that so many of us find ourselves in. Sometimes those broken circumstances can just feel identified by those things, by the brokenness. But there are ways to do the inner work. I'm a big believer in that, the inner work of coming home to ourselves, accessing a power that maybe we feel adoption has taken away from us. I felt disempowered for a very, very long time. So, yes, this is a personal title. It's woven within the story of my daughter and I becoming mother and daughter, and then, beyond that, it is a mantra, I think, to all of us as adoptees let us be greater. It does start with us. It starts with each and every one of us doing the work of claiming what is ours to claim, and that is our identity and our voice and our truth and our power, and I want that for every adopted person.
Speaker 1:I think that's beautiful. And with that I wanna talk a little bit about your identification within yourself. You speak of your first me. You have a first name and you spoke of it earlier in our dialogue. Can you kind of grab ahold of that a little bit more and speak about the first me in relationship to yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it was a part of me that I felt I had just been severed from, without explanation, without my permission. It was me before this change happened in my life, this shift. There was a little girl and her name was Julia Dawn. She had an identity, she had parents, she had a nationality, she had a story. And then adoption happened and that shifted and I was being told that none of that mattered anymore. And it was so painful because I didn't want to displease my new family, I didn't want to disappoint my new mother as I grew, but I couldn't shake this feeling that it wasn't right to ask me to forget something I can never forget because it's a part of who I am. And so, getting back to that little girl and understanding that there was hurt there that I needed to get to, there was a little girl there who had been somehow made invisible, not erased, because I still felt her, but she had been asked to be silent and to be quiet and small inside of myself. And it was such a burden and it hurt and it was painful and I did not feel whole. I felt like I was living this life of separation from my first chapter. I don't ever skip ahead.
Speaker 2:In a book, I read that intro, I read the first chapter before I get to the second and I wanted to understand that little girl who was in my first chapter.
Speaker 2:I wanted to know her, I wanted to help her and I knew that if I could get back to her, she could also help me by identifying the wounds that I had buried, because I didn't feel like I had permission to uncover them, to look at them, to explore them, to examine them in order to get back to myself. That's what I mean about the first me, because every adoptee has that. They have a first chapter. They have first identity, first family, first me, and I think that part of themselves needs to be safely held and it needs to be nurtured, recognized and acknowledged. I think that is such a beautiful gift and we need to do that. We need to recognize and acknowledge, as part of who we are, in ways that feel good and right, that when we connect to that precious child inside of us who had such a shift in their life and felt so out of control, unseen, unheard, unknown, in that moment and beyond, it is a powerful thing and healing starts to happen in that moment where the first me and the big me reconnect. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Well, during that discussion and your explanation of first me, I heard you reference at least two, if not more times the internal pain and the pain points of our adoptee journey and I was wondering if you would like to expand on those. You call them out in your material. You reference them as eight pain points. Let's dive there a little bit.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I moved through eight pain points that I have definitely moved through in my own life. Many, many, many I coach have moved through these pain points, sometimes all of them, sometimes a few of them, sometimes one of them. They'll be dealing with when they arrive to me. The first is the pain of feeling, you know, unwelcome in the world, just a sense of not feeling welcome in the life that they've been given. Sometimes I've described myself and I don't know about you and other adoptees, those I coach have agreed with me as maybe a foreigner in my own life, a stranger in my own life, someone on the margins, sort of peeking in. I used to feel like I lived outside of this glass house and I could see all of these people involved in my life. I could see them, but I wasn't allowed access in, but I knew that they were there, you know. So I felt this feeling of feeling unwelcome in the world and it is a pain point that many adoptees share with me. The second is the pain of broken bonds and just a deep sense of loss, and adoption is rooted in loss. One family had to come apart for another family to come together. It is absolutely the truth that we must speak out loud and it has not done adoptees any service to not speak that truth out loud. Adoption is rooted in loss. There is no shame, there's no blame in that. It is the truth and we must speak to it so that we can help ourselves in each other. Being denied access to truth, what a pain point. You know the truth of who we are, the truth of our medical records. You know the ability to seek the truth of ourselves on even a spiritual level, when so much of the world tells us, you know or defines the narrative that we are here to live. You know the saying that truth will set you free. I believe each and every adoptee deserves access to truth.
Speaker 2:Familiar rejection and words that harm is number four, I think, just the pain of the sense of rejection. As you know, our lives shift and our first families disappear. You know there is a feeling of that. They're gone. I understand that there is open adoption and that there's a sense of rejection. I think that is so at the core of the adoptee journey, no matter what the adoption structure looks like. We must talk about that. Even adoptees who are in open adopt adoptions can feel the sense of rejection and confusion so important that we're able to talk about that in safe, sacred spaces. And certainly you know words that harm my golly.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of words that are thrown around out there about the adoption process that can make adoptees feel diminished in their lives. We need to work on that. That can be out in the world. It can even be within our homes. Let's be really careful with our words. I think that's very important. I certainly know, growing up in my house, there were a lot of harmful words that were spoken and they do stick. You know, it's like a sticky residue. It's very important that we get to a place where we start to peel those things off and understand that those words and even the rejection that we've been through, it's not who we are. The pain of distrust that hits hard. Learning how to trust ourselves.
Speaker 1:Just makes your heart bleed almost, doesn't it? Yeah, I agree with you, it's a heart bleeder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a heart leader and what makes my heart, you know, the ability to trust others, but the ability to trust our own selves. I didn't trust me for a long time because I didn't know why I didn't really know why my parents left. So how can I trust anything or anyone around me when there was so much truth that was kept from me, the ability to speak about the loss I felt inside, the rejection that I feared all of it? I just felt like there was who could be trusted and unfortunately, that even was turned against my own self. I didn't trust myself for a long time.
Speaker 2:Banished biology the pain of banished biology was a real one for me, just feeling like I couldn't openly express what I felt pulsing within my veins. My mother used to say you are Southern now and you are, you know, white now and that's who you are. Because we adopted you, You're one of us, and I'm sure her she meant well with that on some level. I think she was trying to show me or say to me hey, we include you, right, but it didn't allow me the chance to be who I am and to do that transparently and openly. And so I think that sense of banished biology. We need to help adoptees connect back to the truth of who they are in that way.
Speaker 2:Pleasing others versus pleasing the self is the seventh pain point that I explore really is rooted in that fear of rejection, and so we put others above us and unfortunately oftentimes can hurt ourselves in the doing. And I think it's really important to help adoptees realize that pleasing yourself, honoring yourself, is priority number one, and it's really a beautiful thing to give yourself permission to do that. Lack of transparency and acceptance is number eight just that sense of not being able to be transparent in our lives and accepted as who we are and who we're here to be. Those are the pain points that I've moved through in the book and they're heartbreakers and heart leaders indeed.
Speaker 1:But they're also, michelle, the heart and soul of a lot of the emotions and the perspectives and the journeys that adoptees are on the commonalities of those themes. We hear them over and over and over, and to get them pen to paper is so important because we need those types of tools where people are, like yourself, saying I've been here, this is how I've worked through it, and I want to share with you how I've worked through it. So I'm going to pick out two of the pain points that I can relate to very heavily for myself, and I'd like us to talk through them a little bit, and I'm going to go out of order. I apologize in advance.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 1:People pleasing the people pleasing one is. You know what one of my favorites and in one of my early seasons with my husband and a friend of ours called the Mon, we actually spoke about people pleasing in correlation to abandonment. I was just curious what some of your thoughts or how you've been coaching others through the aspects and the downsides of people pleasing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like you know, people pleasing is such a. It's a form of really self-harm emotional self-harm and I think it's really important to identify. You know where you believe your people pleasing pattern started. Now I can go way, way back and say that for me, I believe it started, you know, the moment my first mother walked away. I was not verbal at that time, but I felt her leaving, there's no doubt about it. And so I think in the mind we begin to think what do we need to do so that others will stay? And while you know I better, I better be good, I better you know please others that do what they say, or they might leave me too, and I think that is something that is sort of embedded in us on a cellular level as adoptees. But beyond that, I think you know, coming into our adoptive families, I just really remember feeling I better please my mom because I was this daughter that she had always dreamed of and wanted, and she had thoughts about who I was here to be and who I was, and I needed to fit that mold because if I displeased her I would risk being sent back. I remember having that thought very clearly as a little girl and pinpointing, I think, for me, when that really seated itself inside of myself.
Speaker 2:I remember being at my adoptive grandmother's home and she had remarried and we were about to leave her home we had been there for the day and her new husband I was just a little thing, I was a little girl and maybe I was, I don't know seven. I was young and I didn't feel safe around him for some reason. I didn't like him really. He made me feel uncomfortable and I didn't know him, you know. But my mother wanted me to give him a kiss on the cheek, goodbye. And he was sitting at the end of the dinner table and I didn't want to do it. It was the first time I kind of pushed back, like no, I don't want to give him a kiss, and you know, my mom said Michelle, be a good girl, go kiss, you know a thing, goodbye.
Speaker 2:And I did it and I remember feeling just this sense of shame and a sense of being made to do something that I don't feel comfortable with. But I have to do it because if not I'm really going to disappoint my mother. And it just started, I think, for me the thought pattern that I didn't have power over my own agency. I didn't have agency over myself with my words, with my thoughts, with my actions, with my desires, with my dreams. I better do what other people want or I risk losing them. And so, ultimately, I think the shift comes when we realize that losing ourselves is the greatest tragedy of all. Abandoning our truth is the greatest tragedy. It's the greatest loss when we leave ourselves behind. And so it is. It takes work, but it's so important to build that daily muscle of shame, showing up for yourself as an adoptee, of doing the things that please you and ignite the light within you, and doing that first and holding yourself as priority in that way.
Speaker 1:And that takes work. That takes an immense amount of work and time and effort, and I will share with the listeners that in the last 60 days I have been hyper-focused on some of exactly what you're talking about In the context of daily journal. I have six questions I ask myself every day. I intend to do it for a 63-day period. This is getting beyond the 21 days of a habit. This is really trying to reframe my brain and reprogram some of my thought process, and part of that is in the context of people pleasing and it's weird. They're weird things. I'll share my six questions I ask myself every day did I overeat? I know that sounds silly, but it matters to me because I have learned in the last probably year.
Speaker 1:I use food for two reasons. Now, I'm not overweight in the context of that's why I care, but I have found that I eat and I'm uncomfortable, like physically uncomfortable, right. I also ask myself did I listen to something with the intention of learning? So I listen to other podcasters. I speak about them frequently on here. I listen to stuff that is associated with reframing your mind, positivity, right, mind reset, those types of items and then I ask myself did I read today? Because I'm a reader. And did I move today? Because I would now work remote? And I've worked remote for a decade and I can tell the difference in my activity level I went from endurance activities to hardly moving at all. But the last question that I ask myself every day in journal on which is the most important one what am I grateful for today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are so good. I'm so proud of you. Gratitude is so key. That's hard when we've been adoptees who've been told just be grateful, just be grateful and move forward.
Speaker 2:But gratitude to me is different. It is so expansive, the space of gratitude, and I can hold on to a piece of gratitude, a moment of gratitude from my day, and I think that's what you're suggesting. It's like if I close my eyes, if I'm journaling and I get really still, what from this day can I be grateful for? Even if it's just one thing? Maybe it's my breath, maybe it's my beating heart. I like to tell people your heart beats 100,000 times a day. You don't even have to think about it. It's a gift. We can hold gratitude for our beating heart. There's always something we can find to fill ourselves up with a sense of gratitude and it is so life-affirming and it is so healing Just saying that sharing about breath and heart.
Speaker 2:I feel it in my body there's a shift and it feels really good and you know what we deserve? That and that's connecting with that light inside of us, the gratitude that we can hold for our lives, even the harder moments from our lives. You know, I like to ask and I encourage adoptees to ask, even in the harder moments, if you can sit and journal on asking yourself these three questions what was that, or is that here to teach me? What was that or is that here to show me and how is that here to grow me? Those are three questions that I think can start some really beautiful reflective journaling, even in the harder moments. You know they say you can't have a message without a mess. I really believe that adoption is messy. This experience is not perfect, although the narration out there has tried to make it so.
Speaker 1:It's messy.
Speaker 2:But if we can please ourselves but ourselves as the priority and say, okay, these messy moments have happened and that's okay to say they hurt. But let me do the work of seeking out what might be the miracle awaiting me there, what might be the thing that fills me up with gratitude. You know that was hard, but look what I learned, look what it showed me, look how, look how it grow, it grew me. So I think your questions and journaling is is such a beautiful process to put pen to paper and explore your own thoughts in that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it wasn't necessary evil, to be frank about it.
Speaker 1:And I, yeah, it's not, and I recognize that and I know many other adoptees recognize that too, and all I can say is let's encourage each other to find ways. You know, if it's, if it is something as simple as two questions make it repetitive do something right and it's. It's important to me under the context of all of the preverbal trauma which you know, we, as adoptees, we really start to understand that as we are working through this journey and we're starting to learn more things about ourselves. But you have a different approach which I really liked as well. We we do mention, you know, in many instances a primal wound. We mentioned trauma response, but in your book you actually talk about grief and the definition of grief and the phases of grief, and I was wondering if you would be willing to talk a little bit about that too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think I would pinpoint in on disenfranchised grief. Anything is really so important to clarify in this adoptee journey because it's it's core in our experience. If you think about it and I define disenfranchised grief in the book I'm just going to read it there is a kind of grief known as disenfranchised grief and it very much applies to the way that many adoptees experience their loss. Grief becomes disenfranchised when others do not validate or recognize a loss or the subsequent grieving process. Adoptes are told even today that they shouldn't be grieving, they should just be grateful. They shouldn't spend their time wondering about who or what came first. This has been the primary attitude for decades, for decades, but it is beginning to change. As awareness increases and I'll stop there because just our conversation is that piece of awareness as we connect as adoptees, as we, as we share within our adoptee constellation, as we get real and raw and vulnerable, we're beginning to open up space for talking about grief and I think that is a very healing thing. I do talk about the five stages of grief, and this should be. I don't want this to be complicated, going through this book and reading, so let's break down. You know the five stages of grief and they're based on psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler Ross's model.
Speaker 2:Denial is the first stage of grief in the Kubler Ross model and I think it's not unusual for an adoptee to you know, truly spend or respond to their strong feelings of grief by pretending that the loss never happened. I used to say that a lot. My friends would tease me, you know, in school. I would say they would ask me why did your you know, why did your parents give you up, or why did they want you those things? Every adult, yeah, we've always, all of us, have been faced with those kinds of questions. That hurt, but I used to deny that I had been laughed. I would say, well, my mother's the Queen of England and my father's the King of Spain, and they're very, they're very busy, and so I'm here right now and that would at least shut these kids up right For the moment. But but there was denial and it was a coping mechanism. It protected me in that moment. I didn't have to go right to the heart of the hurt and it stopped the questioning in that moment.
Speaker 2:Anger is the second stage of grief and you know, it's one that can look like frustration or irritation. Anxiety is the stage of grief. Or an adoptee may think why me? This isn't fair, why me? And they may find it incomprehensible that the loss has happened in their life in the first place. And you know, I think anger is such a healthy phase when we're, when we're able to do it in a safe space and really explore the anger that we feel. But I think that for a long time we've not been able to be angry as adoptees because we're just supposed to be grateful and happy and how lucky. You are right. Those things may be true.
Speaker 2:Each adoptee looks at their adopt adoption experience differently. Adoption for each adoptee is as unique as the adopted person. But I think that we can't be, we can't be afraid of the anger. You need to explore it and feel it and and understand that it's valid. It's a valid feeling. Bargaining is the third stage. You know I don't know about you, but I tried to bargain with God a lot. You know if I, if I'm a good adoptee, can I someday maybe see my first mother again? Or you know, there's a lot of bargaining that can happen.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting, michelle, because I I don't know if I've ever shared this. I have to really think if I have, I used to actually say this on the regular God, what lesson have I not learned yet? What lesson do I still need to learn? Let me know, because I'm kind of getting exhausted. So I would do the bargaining with God as to this journey and my life and the things that were happening in that and I know now it was very much seated in not only my trauma, but you know the concept of grief as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I mean, when we recognize that it's grief, we're not a. I like to say we're not angry adoptees, we're grieving adoptees, but we have the right to feel anger. We have the right to feel anger and it's important that we do because we're grieving and we need to feel those things. We need to feel what is real in order to heal. I did, you know. I did the bargaining with God. You know, if you would just please stop my, my adoptive father from drinking, I promise I'll be the best daughter and I'll never feel sad about being adopted again If you just do this, you know that's just so powerful, and it also stabs you in the heart when you hear someone say that, but we know that it happens in many instances.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely it does. Depression I'll move on. Depression is the fourth stage and I think it's probably maybe the most well-known, you know, within the stages of grief, and it can be difficult, it can be messy, it can be loud, it can be quiet, but it is, I think, the stage where adoptees can find themselves, maybe withdrawing from their life or isolating themselves, numbing themselves. Maybe they feel a little bit too overwhelmed to face it and that's an isolating place to be and it can cause us to feel deflated emotionally and depressed, maybe even overlooked, since the wider narrative in the adoption conversation does suggest that adoptees have nothing to grieve. So why would we be depressed after all?
Speaker 2:It's really important to look at this stage. And then the fifth is, I think, acceptance. And acceptance is interesting within the Kupla-Ross model because it's, you know, it's not saying it's okay that I'm adopted, and where we arrive within that space of acceptance is I'm adopted and I'm going to be okay. And I think that is so transformational when we can say that I'm adopted and I'm going to be okay. We've been asked for a very long time just to say I'm okay, I'm adopted and it's okay. Let me back that up. I think we have been urged to say it's okay that I'm adopted, and getting to that place of saying I'm adopted and I am going to be okay.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that spin, I like that reframing of that and I think I'm going to sit in that for a little bit, michelle.
Speaker 2:It's when we begin to recognize our grief, we begin to honor it, we begin to see that it's valid and that these stages of grief, these emotions we feel are valid. We become more aware that they're there and we frequently observe our grief and it's okay. What is that saying? Light burns off fog, igniting a light within us that maybe we've dimmed down because we thought we've had to. And then we start pulling the light up a little bit, a little bit and a little bit, as we frequently begin to observe our grief, and we burn away the fog that, in my opinion, has kept us from ourselves. That's how I look at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really do like that and I am going to spend some time reflecting on that when we close out our conversation today. It's just one of those things that I know will be stuck in my repeat brain that might overthink your brain. It will happen.
Speaker 2:Well, I hope you'll send me your notes and thoughts on that, because I'd love to know.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely Well, you mentioned points of light and I want us to tackle a common theme. That drew me to your book as I was reading through it and I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel like we were channeling each other at some point in time and we didn't know each other at that point in time. And so you have an exercise it's called putting down the baggage, and you reference the term burden, and it's important to me because I equally, have been giving thought over about a calendar year now and curating my thought process around the burden that adoptees are asked to carry, and so I define that. We connected through. Another podcaster and I want to give him credit is Simon Ben. He does the thriving adoptees podcast. Please go check him out and he connected us together and I'm so thankful that he did. But as part of that, I was on his podcast again, thriving adoptees, and it is episode 207. It published in November 2022.
Speaker 1:It is called the hidden and not so hidden burdens of the adoptee, and my approach to that conversation, michelle, was we are asked from the earliest age to start holding on to the burden of this adoption and it's not ours to hold, and each of the phases of development. We pick up another piece and we we start, you know, putting it in our backpack or in our suitcase or however we're going to hold it, you know, internal to our body. It's really deep in my heart that that happens to us. It's it's even above and beyond our trauma response. It's above and beyond the narrative. It's above and beyond processing grief. It is we are literally just walking through life.
Speaker 1:We'll hear someone say something to us and we'll pick it up and we'll be like, oh, I can't do that again because, because and then we'll go into, uh, let's just say, the childhood ages you referenced. You know the things kids said to you and how you, you know, react to that. And then you'll start carrying that burden, right, the burden of how other children impact you. And then you'll be sitting with uh and you referenced and she, you know the the need to go and show affection to an adult that you didn't know and didn't care for. And you'll hear your aunts and your uncles that you're being raised with oh, you're so special, we talk about that in our community and you start carrying that burden. And so what I love about us together in this conversation is I recognize how we get them. I'm talking about how we're getting them and I'm encouraging us to lay them down, but you actually have the tool or a tool in order to lay those burdens down, and you want to talk about that a little bit with us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely those burdens. Thank you for sharing that, because those burdens are so heavy and they weigh us down, and they weigh us down, and they weigh us down and they dim our light, you know, until I think it's just a flicker in the dark. Um, I have always approached my healing through so work modalities. I've tried more traditional, but it's always been the alternative methods that have, I think, have produced the most transformation in my own personal journey. Putting down the baggage is the exercise that you're referring to and, um, you know it's it's. It's one that's very powerful for me, because oftentimes we don't even recognize that we're carrying this baggage. We can feel the weight of it, but we don't recognize that that's exactly what it is, and I think we put the burden on our shoulders from a very young age as adoptees. I mean, for me, I can say you know, I must have done something for my first parents to have left. I must have done something for my adopted father to drink. You know all of it. I must be a good girl and do what my mother wants me to do in order to be loved, and all of these, these burns. We pick up another piece and we, you know, put it in, like you said, the backpack or or the suitcase so much of. I think are hurt, those pain points, adoptees, is truly rooted in this, this residue of adoption loss. It can cause us to feel so disconnected in our lives, I think, especially when that residue of loss can't be safely explored. You know, it goes back to the ability to explore our feelings, those wounds that are resided, that we're carrying with us as we go on, as we grow, and so that heavy weight is placed on our shoulders, and knowingly on, or unknowingly, as as adopted people.
Speaker 2:And so this exercise asks a question to adoptees, and the first question is what baggage are you carrying that doesn't belong to you? Now, that is a transformational question, because number one you have to think about. Well, wait, wait, a minute. Am I carrying around baggage that doesn't belong to me? Am I carrying around someone else's burden? And what does that look like for me? How does that feel? What are you carrying right here and right now that was never yours to carry Can be the follow-up question. And what heavy load remains on your shoulders? You know that that really needs to be let go up. What do you? What have you placed on your shoulders that was never yours to carry.
Speaker 2:So the exercise is based on the Dickens process and it's a technique that it guides the adopted person to think about what their life has been like, is like currently, and what it will be like if they continue to carry the baggage of the past with it. And now the past, let me just say, can be 50 years ago, five years ago, five minutes ago, right, because, as you say, we can put, you know, those burdens on ourselves every single day, multiple times a day. So if you know the Charles Dickens story, a Christmas Carol, you know that the character Scrooge was shown his past, his present and his future, what his future would look like if he didn't, you know, change his ways or his outlook on life. So in putting down the baggage, what we do is a similar process of identifying a pain, a limiting belief, a hurt, a wound, a burden, and we look at it in depth through the lens of three questions. And the first question is what did this burden, this baggage, this pain, this hurt that I've attached to myself? What did this cost me and those I love in the past? Journal on that. What does it cost you in the past to carry this burden around? And then the second question is what is this costing me and those I love right now, here in the present Journal on that, what's it costing me right here and right now? And then the final question is what will this cost me and those I love in the future?
Speaker 2:We look future, forward. What's your life going to look like one, three, five, ten years down the road if you continue to carry this baggage? It doesn't belong to you and we really step into that feeling. We step into the experience of that feeling, the magnitude, the consequences of it. I say you know, see it here, feel it, really immerse yourself in the feeling and through this immersive process of really feeling it, seeing it, what's it going to be like? What's it been like in the past? What does it feel like today? What will it be like in the future? You're really asked to witness your life as you carry this baggage around and ultimately, you're motivated to put the baggage down once and for all and to free yourself from the weight and to create new thought patterns, new supportive language and behavior patterns that support, I think, healthy whole relationships, both with self and with others.
Speaker 1:I like that. I'm going to transition us a little bit because I want to go now to a little bit of the lighter side. That's a lot of heavy in our conversation, but there's also a lot of health and wealth and benefit in the conversation, so let's lighten up. You talk about points of life. There's a mantra that you really have utilized to help guide through you and it's impactful for you and I'd like you to share that mantra with us. And then my third item just putting them all right in a row for you is talking a little bit about connection to community and things that you see are taking place in the adoptee community to our benefit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the mantra you're talking about is where focus goes, energy flows. Yeah, that's, oh my goodness. Our thoughts create a reality. It took me a long time to realize that, but it is so true. What you think of, what you're thinking about, what you're keeping your focus on, the energy of that is going to show up. And so if you think you don't hold worth, the energy of that is going to find you and I promise you the energy is going to show up and show you how you're not worthy of love, how you're not worthy of your dreams, how you're not worthy of abundant life, health and wholeness and joy. But if we can shift our thoughts as adoptees to how worthy we are of those things even though there were moments in our life that were hard and there were things that happened that were beyond our control, we have control over our thoughts and that, to me, gives me traction to know I can choose a belief that is healthy and whole for me, that loves me and that's supportive. I'm worthy of love, I am love, I am light. I want to focus on those kinds of thoughts because I know the energy of that will find me. I mean, just when I speak that I feel the tingle of it.
Speaker 2:If you are able to notice a limiting thought or belief when you have it and stop and say you know what? Wait just a minute. I see that this thought is a limiting one and I recognize it. It's not who I am, it's what I'm thinking. Right, it's just a thought and I'm going to forgive it and I'm going to let it go and I'm going to choose.
Speaker 2:I'm going to change the channel on that thought, I'm going to change the channel on that programming and I'm going to choose a thought that is healthy and whole for me, and when I do that, the energy of that finds me. I mean, I'm telling you in the moment, it will find you. As adoptees, we deserve to access that part of ourselves that reminds us of our worth, that is life affirming and can help guide us, I think, closer to a greater way of being in our lives, individually and collectively. I just urge your listeners to really take in where focus goes energy flows. Be careful of the thoughts, be careful of the limiting beliefs, be careful of the words you use with yourself. Choose well, because, my gosh, you deserve it.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that and I think they will as well. It's definitely an uplifting mantra and ties in nicely to the toolboxes that we carry around to help us thrive and heal and do all the things that move us forward into the world. Well, let's then transition about the adoptee community. My advocacy is how we can touch one another, how we can connect, how we can be in community. It's important. I know for myself, every time I meet an adoptee, I feel an immediate connection just from the simple statement I see you, adoptee. So I would really like you to, just if you have a couple more minutes with us, talk a little bit about connecting to community.
Speaker 2:It's so key. I used to tell myself that I didn't need community. I was actually afraid of community because I just saw life as pretty fragile and I didn't trust that people would stay at communities with. You know, stick around. And so I tended to, I didn't lean in. And it was when I started to lean in where I started to feel seen and heard and know.
Speaker 2:There's nothing more beautiful than someone saying I understand, I get that, I've been there too and I want to hold your hand and I want you to know that I see you and I hear you and I know you and do I understand? I think it's so beautiful. Community is key and I think that this is why there's this shift and this tipping point within the adoptee community, the adoptee constellation, because we are connecting, we are plugging into each other, we are sharing our perspectives and my gosh, there's a wide variety of perspective and I think that is OK, I think it's beautiful. So a wide variety of experience that we hold as adoptees and we need to share them all. We need to honor each other. You know, no judging, but let's just hear each other out. I want to hear adoptees. I want to hear their stories, I want to hear their perspectives and their wisdom. They hold so much wisdom.
Speaker 2:We are an incredible community of people, but I do think that you know, through connecting social media, et cetera, in the various ways that we are plugging into one another, that we are seeing a tipping point, and I think that we are seeing, you know, the damage that's been done within a wider narrative that's not represented our true lived experience, and all we're saying is we want to be the ones to speak our experience.
Speaker 2:We would really appreciate if the adoption conversation could be more centered on the adoptee, because that's who it impacts, in my opinion, the most. So I think, voice by voice, adoptee by adoptee, we're shining light in the darkness and we're reaching other adoptees who have felt very much alone and isolated within this experience. We each know what that feels like and we're having the difficult, uncomfortable, sometimes messy conversations that we need to have to challenge people to consider their you know, preconceived notions of what it means to be adopted. And I think that there is an energy and electricity that's being unleashed within our community. It's unstoppable and it's creating change, and I am all here for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am too. I appreciate that perspective, and we're going to end a little bit with you talking about your upcoming endeavor into podcasting, and you know I'm here for you, so let's talk about what you're going to launch here in a few weeks.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, you have already given me some great tips, by the way, and some tools to use, some secrets of the trade, so thank you so much for that. We are launching the Electricity of you podcast, and this goes back this is seated way back in my childhood as a young adoptee, feeling very much alone in the dark, in the fog before that was even a term that I knew alone and isolated in my experience. I used to, you know, cuddle up in my bed at night in the dark, and I used to sing this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine, and I know you said you, you know that song. Some of your listeners may, some may not, but this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. Right, and I would sing that because there's so much of my experience as an adoptee that felt like it was very much in the shadows and in the dark, and so this podcast is going to explore, through the diverse guests that I'm going to have on, people with incredible wisdom, incredible stories to share.
Speaker 2:You know what caused their light to go on dim? Because mine went on dim. I believed it was there somehow, some way, but it it was dimmed down, it was doled out for a while. And what was that like? You know, what was the dark valley that they moved through and how did they find the direction to reconnect, plug back into their light and ignite their true promise, their true purpose, their reason for being, and to stand tall in their truth. And then what does that look like? And you know what are the tools that they want to share with listeners and that can help them, you know, get that traction today to start reigniting their lives, reigniting their purpose and the promise that each of us hold. And so I'm so excited to be releasing that. The first one comes out, episode one, in just a couple of weeks. The electricity of you podcast is going to be special.
Speaker 1:I am looking forward to adding it to my list of listening to learn activities, and so congratulations, and I wish you the best of luck with it too. It is such a joy and an honor and I know you're going to you're going to resonate with these words as well over time to spend in conversation with people and to have guests, and so, as we close out, I just really want to say thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing so much positivity and really encouraging words for the listeners. I don't want to mis misrepresent the book again, because you know I might just accidentally do that. The name of the book is Let Us Be Greater A Gentle, guided Path to Healing for Adoptees. The podcast is Electricity of you. Our guest is Michelle Madrid and she can be found at themichellemadridcom, and I'll put all of her socials in the notes as well. As we close out and say goodbye to one another, there's one last question I want to pose, and it is around your lived experience and what you want non-adoptees to take away from the conversation.
Speaker 2:It's so important to understand that number one, that adoption is rooted in loss. And that takes us back to the beginning of our conversation, right, I think non-adoptees really need to understand that and really lean into that truth. Adoption is rooted in loss and so adoptees grieve that loss and it's important that we are given safe, sacred, safe space to grieve. And then, I think, beyond that is and it goes along with the grief we have to feel what is real in order to heal. And I think we have to feel what is real in order to become more of who we're here to be, Not sanitizing this experience, speaking real and raw about it in order to, you know, I think, step into the light individually and collectively.
Speaker 2:I would want them to know non-adoptees, If you know adoptees, if you know us, if you love us, if you love us unconditionally and that's the way we all want to be loved you want us to feel what's real for us. You'll want that for us. You'll want us to have access to grieving what's been lost and you'll say we understand that adoption is rooted in loss and we want to know what is that like for you. I mean, those kind of words are so healing, they hold so much power and for non-adopties to help make space for meaningful conversation without any judgment, without any expectation, and just be open to hearing the adoptee perspective. Please be open to hearing us. We're not here to harm anyone. We're here to help ourselves and each other heal, and I think that's a very powerful thing, such profound words and what a great way to end this episode.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, michelle.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. You are so dear. You are a point of light in my life and in the lives of so many adoptees, and I thank you for lighting up my day because you have.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Make sure to rate, review and share. Want to join the conversation? Contact us at WanderingTreeAdoptDcom.