S3:E15 A Hidden Identity Revealed: Fred Nicora Path to Self-Understanding

Imagine being 41 years old and discovering at a family gathering that you were adopted. That's exactly what happened with our guest, author and adoptee, Fred Nicora. A unintentional disclosure sparked a massive transformation in Fred's understanding of his identity and started him on an ongoing journey of self-discovery and healing. He offers an incredibly honest view into the life of a late discovery adoptee, revealing the intense struggle to reconcile a new identity and learn to trust again.

Fred doesn't just share his own story, but also his strong advocacy for change in regard to adoptee birth certificate access. He talks candidly about his personal experience with current legislation and how it perpetuates the shame and stigma tied to adoption. With a firm belief in a system of truth and transparency, Fred discusses his support for bills which aim to grant adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates and adoption records. His story is a powerful testament to the importance of honesty and openness when it comes to adoption.

While the journey has been far from easy, Fred also shares how he found strength and coping mechanisms in his spiritual journey and his battle with alcohol. He encourages fellow adoptees and listeners alike to seek out tools that can aid their journey towards healing. His story is a testament to resilience and the power of self-discovery. Join us for this honest and captivating episode that touches on the human journey towards self-understanding, the complexities of adoption, and the importance of identity.
 When it comes to the amplification of male adoptee voices, it is crucial to recognize the unique experiences and perspectives they bring to the table. Each male adoptees has a valuable role to play in helping to shape the narrative around adoption by providing insights into their own personal journeys. This six-episode series will take us on a spectacular journey of meaningful conversations, were male adoptees have been empowered to share their stories, break down stereotypes, and contribute to a greater understanding of the adoption experience as a whole. 

Find your people, cherish your people and love your people.

#adoptee #adoptees #adopteevoices #adopteestories #adopteestrong #adoptionreality #adopteejourney #adoption #wanderingtreeadoptee 

Website: www.frednicora.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/frednicora.fitness/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/fred.nicora

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, Lisa Am.

Speaker 2: 0:10

She wanted to spend time with them. She wanted to know who they were. She was torn about how do I have them know who I am, but yet nobody can know who we are? You know? I mean the whole thing. She was stuck and it was hard on her. It was very hard on her Even when she died. I wasn't allowed to go to her. She was petrified Somebody would find out that she had a baby out of wedlock.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Welcome to today's show. I am excited to have with me an author, an adoptee and just an overall good human, and I really want to allow this person an opportunity to introduce themselves With us. Today is Fred Nakora. Welcome, fred, to the show, hi.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Lisa, thanks for having me here. I really appreciate it. I can't tell you how excited I am that you've allowed me to voice my story on your podcast. I think it's great. I've listened to quite a few of your podcasts. I think you do just a spectacular job at interviewing and bring out really some good points. So today I'm very excited, meet your audience and kind of spread the word about you know what's going on in my life and how that's been impacted by being an adoptee. We need discovery adoptee. I'll even say at that where I've gone, because it's you know for myself.

Speaker 2: 1:29

My journey, while you could say it started in 1959 when I was born, which would be a very true story, the conscious part of my journey started in the year 2000. I went at the age of 41, slip of the tongue at a large family gathering. I suddenly found out that I was adopted and I didn't know that before. So both my parents had passed away at that point too. So there was some digesting, some understanding, some internalizing that had to really take place. And I'll say the last 23 years. I can't wait to talk about them here because it's been interesting. You know, I can say I've been out of the fog for 23 years and I think I've seen things fairly clearly. Don't get me wrong my journey is not complete and I am not sailing. I'm healed. I am not. I am continually a work in progress, but at this point I do have, I think, greater clarity on where I want to take it and where I think it can go, and that has something to do with some advocacy that we'll talk about later too Perfect.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Well, if you don't mind taking a couple more minutes and just sharing a little bit about the term late discovery adoptee. I know for a few of us it's a common term, but there may be new listeners that haven't heard that before or really don't understand its impacts as well. So if you wouldn't mind just doing a little bit of expansion on that for everybody.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Sure, I'd be happy to. So you know the term late discovery does get kind of interesting because you know, when I first discovered I was adopted immediately I found out I was an LDA. I was a late discovery adoptee and I'll be honest, at the time when I discovered I didn't really see that I had a lot in common with the adoptee population as a whole because of my MPE experience about, you know, in that whole part of it. So it is kind of interesting in today's world and I've seen so much change in the whole, I'm going to say, arena of who we're all talking about when we start talking about biological roots, when we start talking about genetics, when we start talking about identity and how that's formulated, when that's formulated. So when I start looking at you know what actually constitutes what would be considered late discovery adoptee. I think pretty much. At least most late discovery adoptees I've talked to and many people in the profession would agree that you know, anytime that it occurs after you know some fundamental identity establishment has occurred would be considered late discovery.

Speaker 2: 4:00

You know, we, you know and I'm going to say I'm a retired middle school and high school teacher. I taught for 20 years. I've had education training. I've got lifetime teaching license, so I understand human development and I understand what happens in that period, you know, roughly between the onset of puberty all the way through early adulthood. And it's interesting to see because for myself I would say, you know, having worked with middle school kids and high school kids, you can see where they really move away from that point of being an adult focused creature to a peer focused creature. That is often they stop listening to mom and dad and start listening to what their friends are saying and that crucial moment there I would say that is a pretty solid defining point of when it becomes late, because that foundation work has now been laid, based on all their experiences, all what they've learned, you know.

Speaker 2: 4:51

So I would say you know, late discovery can occur as early as maybe 10, 11, you know if, just depending on where they are at in developmental stages, you know, for most people I think it would be sometime, maybe in their later teens, 17, 18, up through 20s, you know, and any time after that. So for me, at 41, while I'm not going to say I'm the latest discovery adoptee, I'm on the later end of it, you know, I would say a lot come out in their fifties, some sixties, you know. So for myself, at 41, I guess you could say I was a mid range. That's how I would say. That's where I would take late discovery, adopte.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Now, because I don't sit in that space. I'm a closed adoption. I've known for, you know, since I was in kindergarten. That's that's when I was told right before I went into kindergarten. So, since I don't sit in the space, my next thought as you were talking was centered around how you found out slip of the tongue. Is it common that it's through that type of you know, maybe an event more like a surprise than it is a coordinated, later in life?

Speaker 2: 5:58

I think you're asking about, is it more common that it's a surprise than it's an intentional act later in life? And what I would say, you know, if I look at it. You know I can really only speak from my experience. I have talked to other late discovery adoptees, you know, and as I have, it's always. It's fascinating to me, you know, just to see how we've processed things. Very similarly, you know one thing I would say in my case in particular, and I think it's pretty common you go back in time and I was conceived in 1958, I was born in 1959, the times were very different than they are today.

Speaker 2: 6:33

You know, you look at what a woman went through If she came home and told mom and dad she was pregnant and she was unwed in 1958. What have you done to the entire family? You've groomed us all. We need to hide this. It needs to be a secret. You can never reveal it. You're an awful creature for doing this. How dare you do this to us? You know that was the theme, the whole shame all the way. Go away for six months, have your baby. Then you come home and you don't dare mention this to anybody because if you do, you will destroy us all. You know the message was so heavy and so late. You know, I think the women of that time, really, you know, struggled with that as they moved forward. So adoption is different today.

Speaker 2: 7:16

So when I look at my parents, you know who made that decision and I'm saying my adoptive parents back in the late 50s really 1960s is when it went into fruition and my father was the driver. From what I understand, they had both passed away at the time of my discovery. From what I understand, my father was the driver. His parents went through a divorce in the 1930s. As a result, him and his brothers ended up in the county orphanage for a period of time, a number of years. From what I understand, what I've been told and I believe it because, you know, I didn't know him fairly well His view of it was he wanted to spare me from the stigma of being an orphan, of having to live with that shame and that burden. I can understand what he's saying. You know, I'm going to say, from my perspective, I wish he would have told me, but at the same time I'm going to say I can respect that. They were a product of their time and they bought into the philosophy.

Speaker 2: 8:09

Now, when you get into the second part of your question, which was do you think it was a planned reveal, I think what I saw happen around me in retrospect, after I discovered and looked back throughout that period of time when I think they should have told me and they just didn't I think the train was on the track, it was going 900 miles an hour, they didn't know how to turn it around and so then it became almost how do you pass the hot potato without getting caught? The other thing that I would say fortunate for them and their desire to hold the secret. I once I turned 18, I basically moved away from home and I moved everywhere and anywhere for a long time and didn't really return home till I was 40. So from 18 to 40, I was away. You know I'd come home for periodic visits and stuff and more. My parents would come out and see me or I'd maybe join up, you know, some gathering or something, but really I wasn't around.

Speaker 2: 9:08

So those slipped clues that I could have caught, they just weren't occurring as much because there just wasn't a presence there. So I think the vast majority of the surprises not. I don't. I don't think anybody comes out later and says man, let's tell them now that he's 30,. You know, at that point it's like oh my God, we do not want to be caught. Let's pretend this never happened.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Yeah, I think it's. It's definitely core to why people are late discovery. Just, you know the little bit of knowledge I have through conversations and reading, by the time you get to a certain point, I think that that that real sense of well, how are we going to explain this 30 years later? And then you know again, all the shame and all the very key points that you just brought out are part of that element as well. With that said, I kind of want to move us into a little bit about not necessarily your journey. You wrote about your journey and so can you tell us a little bit about your, your book, because I want to give you that opportunity to one plug it. I've read it, great story and yeah, let's just go, let's go a little bit into. You know the your journey wasn't all roses, and do we want to say rainbows and unicorns and yeah, I'll hop in here.

Speaker 2: 10:23

Yeah, and I'm going to intertwine this a little bit with you know, a bit of the discovery itself. So for me, you know it really happened. I went to a twin uncle's birthday party in the year 2000. Both my parents had passed away. We had moved back to the Milwaukee Metro, had been back here roughly, I'd say, a year.

Speaker 2: 10:40

You know, it was kind of funny because I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting invited to like family gatherings. The whole reason I wanted to move back was to get my kids back to where I grew up so they could be around family. We lived in the Twin Cities area. We, you know, we enjoyed living up there, but all holidays were spent traveling and or lonely. That was the only options really. So you know, we got back here and it was like all of a sudden, you know, my parents had passed and all my relatives were kind of like Fred, who, you know, I, I don't know, I guess we just forgot to, you know, invite them to this or that or whatever you know. So that was kind of a shocker.

Speaker 2: 11:13

But I did get invited to this birthday party because I was pretty close to one uncle in particular. It was my uncle Bob. He and his twin brother turned 60. While there there was an elderly aunt of theirs who I knew quite well because I grew up around that family. While I was off getting drinks at the bar, she said to my now ex-wife I've known Freddie since the day they adopted him. And so when I came back to the table and my wife explained to me what she said you know it's interesting, I'm going to say I fractured, I fell apart, I went into shock.

Speaker 2: 11:45

I would say the overwhelming feeling immediately was embarrassment. And the reason I think people discount the embarrassment when you think about the interaction you have with everybody around you it's based on one common core belief that at the end of the day, I know myself better than you know me. And whether we agree, whether we disagree, I can stand solid on that fact that I still know me better than you know me. And so for me, at that point I came to terms with that's not true. These people all knew me better than I knew myself as a grown man at 41.

Speaker 2: 12:24

That was really the eradication of my foundation, because really how you grow up and how you establish your identity, at least how I did and what I can see in retrospect and discovered through a lot of counseling and a lot of discussion. You know it's based on the true principles that you're learning from your family. Those are the things that you're accepting as true. That's how you establish your values and how you make those connections to what you want to do, what you're interested in, who you value, how you make friendships and other types of relationships. And those were all the things that really got washed away.

Speaker 2: 12:57

And what became very interesting then is embarrassment turned to anger. That came within, I'd say, a couple of days. It took a while, just took a long time for it to settle in. You know I'm still functioning as a father of three and trying to navigate a family and a job and everything, and you know, inside I'm just crumbling. So the next week, when I contacted the state of Wisconsin to verify that I indeed was adopted, really the second swing of the wrecking ball came because, as a person who doesn't know and is naive about adoption laws and record laws, it never would have dawned on me that the state would have the information and then just choose not to give it to me.

Speaker 1: 13:35

Well, I'm going to have us pause there for just a minute, because you said something that I've never heard anyone else say. That is the embarrassment angle. How prolific is that thought, though, fred. I mean wow, I'm kind of sitting in this space of no one has said they were embarrassed. I've heard lots of anger, but the embarrassment part I'm kind of stuck there for a minute. I'm stuck in okay, your foundation was shook. You're now questioning who you are for sure, definitely probably sitting in some trust issues, and then you have an embarrassment layer before you even got to anger, or you know, in conjunction with that, that's wow, that is something.

Speaker 2: 14:15

You know, and I'm going to say it even took me a while to recognize that embarrassment, recognize exactly what that was, put a finger on that feeling, Because I knew, you know, at the time that I found out at that gathering, I mean I kind of felt bad for a lot of people there. First of all, that poor aunt who was in her 80s. You know, I gave her a shake down when I wanted to find out the information like I've never seen before. I was afraid I was going to throw her into a coronary. Really, this party, you know, at that moment in time I hijacked the party. It no longer was about in Rich's 60th birthday. It suddenly became about Fred just came out of the closet as being an adoptee. You know, I mean, that's really what that party turned into and I immediately gathered my family and left.

Speaker 2: 14:58

I just needed to get out of there and that's why, when I look back, that's that was the embarrassment. That was like, oh my God, I'm totally naked here, Everybody can see me and I don't know what they see. I don't know what they see Felt very judged, you know. I mean, there's there's so many layers. That was, that was the loss of you. You know you just mentioned the trust issues. Well, that was the loss of a lot of trust right there, and it was the other thing that I think people don't understand is it wasn't just that I lost trust in everybody else. I lost trust in myself. I lost trust in the ability for me to really believe that what I was perceiving was reality, Because such a big piece that I believed to be reality was not true.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Oh, that's so interesting. One of the things that I say about myself is I can spot things that are real versus not real very quickly, and it's because I spent a lifetime constantly watching a room and reading people. My foundation was very different, and so just to hear you say it in a different context of not knowing reality anymore, that's a well. Now I'm thinking I'm at three wows, so in a short time period in this conversation I've got three wows going. We might have wanted to create a little bingo card for the listeners so many times. Well, I don't think I've heard you say to our listeners what the name of your book is yet, so I want to make sure we get that in there.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Yeah, and what I do want to say is so, yeah, once the state spent their time educating me that I had no access to my records, that legally I had no right to find out who I was, the social worker on the other end of the phone line could read my entire file, take a black magic marker and eradicate anything in it that would allow me to understand my life in the context that she or he understood it. That was such a radical thought for me at that time. It was really the complete fracturing of my understanding that I'm on equal footing with everybody else. I suddenly came to terms with that. What I'll even say is, at that point in time it took about a year for me to really internalize it I understood discrimination at a whole different level and I'll own this, I'm not proud of it. I'm a white male, I mean, even though I was a teacher, even though I went through sensitivity training, even though I thought I was trying to treat everybody as equally as possible for me, the reality was, wow. I suddenly had to come front and center with all those preconceived notions I had of what adoptees were. As I grew up and found out somebody was adopting and attributed what parts of their behavior to that specific characteristic, all those things that became my own filter of life, my experience filter. All of a sudden I had to wear those coats and that was pretty radical in itself.

Speaker 2: 18:00

So at that time and I'm getting to your question, which is what's the name of your book I know I'm off on a date so when I did start to dive into the trying to find out who I am, after the state eradicated my understanding of who I am and after the family that I trusted had kind of pulled that rug out from me, I started reading. I started this was 2000,. There was stuff on the internet. By no means were groups available like they are today. Today it's great to see Over the last 23 years, I'm going to say, there's been such an increase in dialogue and a lot of it's really positive dialogue. Back in 2000, when I dove into it, there was just anger in these email chains and it was not a pretty place to be. It's just a lot of anger, a lot of empty, and I still see some, I'm going to say, facebook groups, some other social media groups in my term. They're stuck in the muck, they can't quite get out of that phase of it and it's a horrible phase to be stuck in. And I'm going to say for myself, I ended up going through a recovery program because of the lack of available information on late discovery adoptees, on males that are adopted, and really an overall just lack of place to turn.

Speaker 2: 19:18

You know, if you find yourself in this position, didn't make me want to write my book, you know, and that's what started me to drive down that path, which was in about 2006, 2007. And the more I did it, the more I found it really was something that was very cathartic in nature and the thing I wanted the reader to really understand is that you know this happens to you and when it happens to you, it unsettles you, you lose who you are and as an adult, especially when you're trying to manage a family and manage being part of a family and everything and all that goes on with that, you're lost. You're just completely lost and you don't have time to just take. You know, stop everything else. It's going on.

Speaker 2: 19:59

So in the book, the book does carry you through other things that are going on in my life, but I do try and then give the spin of how, now that I found out I'm adopted. How does that play into this whole? And I think there's also a tremendous message within there that eventually I did come to terms as I started to research my, my relatives and find out where my roots came from. You know, my passion then became how do I help change the system so that other people in my situation, or the adopted population as a whole, don't have a separate set of laws, don't have a separate set of circumstances, don't have to feel special, because I'm going to say special is not a good feeling in this context, it's not as good as that's what special means in the context, you know. So the book I started writing I wrote most of it in the two years then, 2006, 2007, going into 2008,. It's when I really kind of brought some conclusion to the whole. Initial, I'm going to say blast and search and then really kind of started to except so it didn't become a 24-7, I'm out of control. It did take that long.

Speaker 2: 21:10

Name of the book is Forbidden Roots. It reflects the roots that I was forbidden to access. I still to this day, even though I do have my original birth certificate. I went through the process. I did reunite with my birth mother. I've been through union I've met siblings and everything else. I also know that I was somewhere between three days and three months until I was brought into my adoptive home. State knows they won't tell me. They don't tell me. I'm not allowed to know where I was.

Speaker 1: 21:37

I don't know if I've ever shared with you, fred, that I actually reference that as my life gap, that's my term, life gap, and that is an element of our journeys and those of us that have been in that space that it's hard for people to understand why it's unsettling. So what I really like about the title of your book, fred, is the Forbidden Roots and how that resonates with you in terms of not only you didn't know, but how you are blocked from access of the birds, and we just mentioned I call it life gap and you have a period of time as well, so it just resonates so well with people. I think this is a good spot for us to kind of talk about what you're doing in your state to help overcome some of that. You have some advocacy going. Yeah, I'd love to do that.

Speaker 2: 22:31

But that really became at the end of it as I boiled through the many, I'm going to say, phases. And there's a whole chapter in there too that maybe I'd like to touch on a little later, and that has to do with coming to terms with alcoholism and how that impacted kind of where I went with the book, where I went with myself and where I went with my journey, and I can add that in later. But today, and today becomes very important because in Wisconsin right now there's actually two bills that are in Perk I guess I would say they're on the back burner. They're at the state Right now, they're working through some other issues, they're about to go on recess, but they'll probably kick up in committee in the fall and that's Wisconsin SB 15, which is the Senate bill, and the corresponding Assembly Bill, which is Wisconsin AB 13. Both those bills are looking to provide access for adult adoptees to gain their original birth certificate. So it's really about looking at the ability for us to have the same right to access our original birth documentation as other individuals. And it's kind of interesting because, as this plays out in Wisconsin, minnesota just passed legislation that is allowing basically it's turning their old laws away because Wisconsin actually patterned their current laws after Minnesota's laws. So now I mean a great talking point in what I'm going to say. A reality is, minnesota discovered it didn't work the way they were doing it.

Speaker 2: 24:05

Wisconsin has the state acting as an intermediary where currently and this is a system I went through 23 years ago and it's still the one in place is originally, I can get a copy of my redacted information. That, of course, takes money and time. Once I have that, then I can apply to my birth mother. I can write a letter to her indicating who I am and why I want to know who I am, which is just ludicrous to begin with, but that's what I have to do and then that is turned over to the state of Wisconsin, who and then in turn will find her, call her, read the letter to her, educate her in terms of her response.

Speaker 2: 24:45

You know her responses and rights. You know she has a right to anonymity. She has a right to decline my request to find out who I am. If she declines, for whatever reason, I have to wait five years. That time I can attempt a second letter and if she declines the second letter, it's terminal. I'm not allowed to pursue anymore until she's deceased.

Speaker 2: 25:06

But they won't tell you that she's deceased. You just have to keep checking it out, you know, can you find a body somewhere? You know, let me check the obits, you know. I mean I don't know what we're supposed to do. So you know, it's a system that, and I'm gonna say, as I went into reunion with my mother because she did allow me to find out who I was on that first swipe and I'm very grateful for that it came with a cost. In my letter I swore that you know I'm willing to do it at whatever level you need. And you know, when you start thinking about this whole process that she went through where the state contacts her, basically says you know, we're here to let you know that that baby that you told everybody didn't exist and denied all your life, and that you know you went through that shameful experience. If you wanna keep that in the you know that shame away, here you go, you can turn it down, you know. And so it reinforced the shame.

Speaker 2: 25:57

The whole process to me really hurt her more than it helped her, even though she allowed me to find out, because even as we went through reunion I had three kids of my own, which are her grandkids. She loved finding out if she wanted to spend time with them. She wanted to know who they were. She was torn about how do I have them know who I am but yet nobody can know who we are. You know, I mean the whole thing. She was stuck and it was hard on her. It was very hard on her Even when she died. I wasn't allowed to go to her funeral. She was petrified Somebody would find out that she had a baby out of wedlock and she couldn't live with that. She couldn't live with that shame, you know. But it all worked out, you know. I mean, in the long run, even in the book I've masked her name, I've masked her hometown. You can't really figure out who she is. You know, I've kept that at bay.

Speaker 2: 26:45

You know what I'm passionate about is trying to get rid of that shame for everybody. I think you know we went through the period when for some reason, we thought our only birth control method was shame and secrecy and trying to guilt women out of having babies. I don't know if that was the actual conscious thought about it, but I think everybody figured out that didn't work very well, you know, and, as a result, I wanna see us move to truth and transparency. Let's just let it be what it is. It's, you know, it's a form of life. It's how we operate as people, as mammals, as creatures, as part of, you know, the entire global population that we are. It doesn't have to have the shame on it, and really getting rid of it at the legal level is you know.

Speaker 2: 27:27

Some people will say, does it really matter? I mean, can't you find this stuff out anyway? Oh, yes, a lot of people are finding it out, and it's a very it's messy. It brings into play so many people that it's really none of their business. And my reality is, if she doesn't want a relationship with me, I don't necessarily want a relationship with her. I'm at that point where I can accept that I didn't need to have a restraining order placed on me to keep me from harassing her. You know, I don't know of any other person that, based on a birth status or straining order is placed on them, that they are prohibited from finding out information about their own being. So others might be spared humility.

Speaker 1: 28:09

Yeah, and there was a key point in there that you had, which is information versus relationship. And let's blend it a little bit together with coping mechanisms, because when you're in the position that you've been in, where you had your foundation shook, you had the embarrassment, the anger, inability to access your records, making promises that you've upheld in order to get information and try to figure this all out. Now we move all the way forward. We can talk a little bit about the difference between what you're stating today and the legal available information versus a relationship. That chasm is pretty significant. If you could get to that in any conversation with anyone, just say it is about equality, that's about information. I'm not necessarily jumping right to relationship, would you agree?

Speaker 2: 29:03

Yes, and I think that's that's been a hindrance of progress in the past that I think too many people have tried to address or state their belief that they believe they have a right to a relationship with their birth family.

Speaker 2: 29:19

I, in the 23 years I've been chewing on this puzzle and really kind of look at it, I don't necessarily think that's true, and I don't think that's true for the general population, and I think even those that weren't privileged at birth. Many struggle in their relationships with their parents and are estranged from their children, and so we're not different in that regard, and relationships shouldn't and can't be guaranteed, but access to factual information should be. And why is that important? Because if you're going to go down that trail, if you're going to try to find out who you are, and you need an anchoring piece in the DNA databases, because if you're free floating, it's very, very difficult to figure out where you land, unless you luck, you luck out, somebody pops up as a parent or as a sibling. Otherwise you're kind of free floating in a, in a turbulent current, you know, until you can anchor it in some family. That's what you have to be able to do.

Speaker 1: 30:21

So tell us a little bit about anchoring yourself, or the lack of an anchor, and what did you do to, you know, kind of move yourself through this journey to recovery?

Speaker 2: 30:34

Yeah, and so for myself, what I'm going to say is going into the whole thing. You know, back in 2000, I was not in a good place with good coping mechanisms to deal with the blow that hit me. And I'm going to say, the piece that I was missing, I'm going to say, is my spiritual health. And because of that lack of spiritual health and what I mean by that is my ability to use spiritual tools and techniques to help me cope, as opposed to looking for numbing techniques such as alcohol and drugs to avoid. I felt heavy on the alcohol, drugs and want to avoid side of it. I was putting on a good face, I was putting on like this is all just on one big adventure. But you know, inside I was getting pretty chewed up and struggling quite a bit with it and had a hard time with it and I was shutting people out. So, from that standpoint, as I went, what I saw for myself, once I discovered, once I started going through the identification, through some of the reunion pieces, through the assembly of a new identity, trying to figure out how to put pieces together in a puzzle, that now at least I was looking at pieces that belonged in that puzzle and I wasn't trying to fit pieces that didn't belong in that puzzle. What I can say is in retrospect, I was continually increasing my alcohol use significantly and shortly after I finished the first complete swipe on the book, I came to terms with the fact that I did not have control over my drinking and I needed to go through a treatment program. And I did so. I went through an out initially an outpatient treatment program. I went through an AA program and it really helped me develop and find those additional coping mechanisms and tools that helped me manage my day-to-day living. And that becomes important because I think sometimes, as I start talking about spiritual tools and yeah, I'm talking about maybe faith, maybe faith is a tool that you use, maybe a gratitude list is a tool that you use and I'm saying all these are tools, I'm not saying that they're gospel, I'm saying they're tools.

Speaker 2: 32:45

And so when I bring it up, sometimes people will counter with you know you're just avoiding trying to heal. You know you're running away from it, you're not facing the pain that you have and letting the pain, you know, become internalized and healed. No, I'm trying to deal with the pain. I don't need to be submerged in the pain 24-7. As a matter of fact, I don't want to be submerged in the pain 24-7. I want to have the best possible life I can. So at times in between my healing, when I'm ready to heal, I work on healing. When, psychologically, I'm just not there, I just don't, and maybe that's when I'm using some of those spiritual tools to help me cope.

Speaker 2: 33:29

So my number one recommendation in hindsight if to anybody, if you're pulling out of the fog, if you discover you're suddenly adopted, if you have an MPE, assess your coping mechanisms, because you're going to be in for a rough ride. You're going to be in for a bumpy ride. You're going to have to have something that's going to hold you together, not pull you apart. So I'd really encourage anybody to check that out. If you find your first inclination to, you wouldn't believe what I heard pour us a drink. That's probably not a good sign, you know. And what I'm going to say is get that under control first, because there's a good shot. You'll mess a lot of things up as you go through it.

Speaker 1: 34:12

Well, it'll become your go-to right, and I loved the way that you position that as, instead of coping on the numbing experience and there's a lot of ways to do that there's, you know, as you said, for you alcohol, there's drugs and there's, you know, other vices, I would say as well. I think it's just a really good lived experience to share out that in the early stages of whatever journey you're on, or whatever stage of the journey that you're on, know what they are. I don't know, even for myself, if I know what all of my good tools are. I would say every day that I need a new tool anyway. Just for me. There's, you know, there's a lot of things that I wish I could do differently or behave differently, so you have to be very pragmatic about that.

Speaker 2: 35:01

Yeah, and I'm the first to admit that I my initial reaction and I would say I've learned a lot more about myself and I can see that many times I'm reacting out of old wounds that just didn't heal up properly and it will create responses that maybe could be handled better if maybe some of those other tools were in place. Some of those. You know one of the things I remember, you know, going through AA, pause you, just before you react, you just stop, think about it, put it on the back burner, decide you're not going to decide till tomorrow, let it stew, let the emotion work through itself. You know, I mean that's just another tool, a gratitude list. I'm feeling down, I'm frustrated, I can't get anywhere. Just start thinking about you know what is good. Well, so far, at least now I'm dealing with reality, at least now I know I'm adopted, now I have a birth mother. You know I do have my own. You know you can start to build that.

Speaker 2: 36:03

And you know one of the things that a counselor told me and he would say Fred, where's your gratitude list? I was like I took it as a negative thing Like, are you trying to punish me? No, he wasn't trying to punish me. He was trying to help me learn how to redirect my emotional well-being, how to get out of a hole and then come at it later from a different angle, but not be stuck in it, not be ruled by it, and that's what I think so many of the tools from recovery as I went through the I'm going to say, the healing process in adoption, coming to terms with who I was, what I was, where I came from and how that impacted me, those tools came in very handy and they were lifesavers.

Speaker 1: 36:46

Yeah, I could see some great value to some of those. And I wonder, in the context of the gratitude list, you're not insinuating gratitude for being adopted or right? That is an entirely different topic. I would never want our listeners to pull that together. As you know, I'm trying to be grateful for the situation, it's just grateful for life.

Speaker 2: 37:10

Yeah, yeah, at the end of the day, I am not the adoption. The adoption is an experience that has affected me. So from that standpoint, you know when I talk about a gratitude list, there's many other aspects in my life and what I try to do on those times when sometimes it just gets overwhelming, I reach into those other areas of my life. I have children of my own. I can start thinking about that. I can look at other aspects. I live out in a rural area. I love being rural, I love walking my dog, I love being by Lake Michigan, I love walking on the beach. I can think of those other aspects in my life that aren't where I'm stuck right now. I mean because that's what happens, I think and that's why I call it stuck in the muck is I saw within myself I would just get stuck there for so long I didn't have the tools to help get me unstuck.

Speaker 1: 38:03

I like that. So I always ask this question and I never tell my guests I'm going to ask it and if you've listened, you might not already know what I'm going to say. But if there was one thing, fred, in this conversation today which has been fantastic that you would have liked me to ask you or you would have liked us to have touched upon, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 38:23

You know, I'd say, if there's anything else, respect your own journey, for whatever it is. You know, I think too many times it's easy and comfortable to fall into I'm going to say the trap of like well, they did it this way, or I don't want to hurt these people, or whatever. I mean. I think your journey is going to be your journey and it's time to push your push. When it's time to back off, back off, I would say the one little asterisk I'm going to put on that is never forget. People die and people change their minds. So if you have access to something, there is that pressure on there. But at the same time I'm going to say you need to balance that against yourself. And if you're not ready to move into a new corner, maybe you're not ready to meet your biological mother, maybe you don't want to really meet your siblings, Maybe you don't want to go to the graveyards of your ancestors. You know, maybe you don't need to see your original birth certificate today. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.

Speaker 1: 39:30

That is a great perspective. I love that and I love to the respect your journey. I might steal that sometime. I got this great level of information from this great guest friend and you know so much to take away, but a nugget just respect your journey. Well, I want to thank you for being with us today. One more plug for your book. It'll be in the show notes. It is Forbidden Roots. It was released in October of 2022. I have read it. It's a great read and I love that. That. It is the perspective of a male which we need more of that to come out in our community. Forbidden Roots, fred Nicora.

Speaker 2: 40:10

Thank you, lisa, I really appreciate it and thank your listenership. I appreciate the opportunity to tell my story.

Speaker 1: 40:16

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Make sure to rate, review and share. Want to join the conversation? Contact us at wanderingtreeadoptdcom.