Meg Cee & Billy Baraw begin their next life adventure - a podcast! On the day they met Billy saved Meg's life and now all these years later she has found a way to pay him back.
Meg Cee & Billy Baraw begin their next life adventure - a podcast! On the day they met Billy saved Meg's life and now all these years later she has found a way to pay him back.
Transcript of Episode 1
Meg Cee: Hi, this is Meg
Billy: And this is Billy.
Meg Cee: And we are
Billy: the adoptwins.
Meg Cee: Welcome to a podcast from two adoptees who are navigating life loss, moving on and growing up.
Billy: For our adopted friends, we hope to bring you a familiar point of view and for our friends who aren't, welcome to the complicated jungle of how we get on.
Meg Cee: So we are officially starting our podcast.
Billy: I know it's happened. It's happening right now.
Meg Cee: I know it's a thing. I think it'll be good for us and for our listeners out there.
Billy: I think so, too. Yeah. We're going to be doing some good work together and we're going to be very funny.
Meg Cee: Or at least we'll think we're funny.
Billy: We're going to think we're hilarious.
Meg Cee: And hopefully we find other niche people who have the same sense of humor as us.
Billy: You know what they're going to be called?
Meg Cee: What?
Billy: Adopted people. That's who's going to find us funny. Everybody who is adopted is going to be like, finally, somebody who gets my sense of humor, that very well timed and perfectly groomed delivery with just the faintest whisp of sadness.
Meg Cee Yup. That just kind of explains how my life goes in general, I suppose.
Billy: Oh, yeah. All day for me. I've gotten really good at hiding it, but by God, is it always there.
Meg Cee: You know, growing up as an adoptee is something. We are going to pick a certain theme or topic for each of our episodes as we move through our season. But before we actually dive into adoptee topics, we should kind of explain who we are.
Billy: All right. Yeah. That's probably very helpful for all the listeners out there.
Meg Cee: Right. Because there are so many.
Billy: yeah. And listen, I don't even know if I'm going to share this with my parents, honestly. I don't know if I want to break their hearts. It's just like, hey, so you're our little boy, right? Of course I am. But obviously you stole me from somebody. You took me from the hospital. And my real parents have been looking for me. And they're rich. They're so rich, famous. They have many chateaus and they just need to hear my call and I can get all their sweet, sweet money.
Meg Cee: Mine were famous or they are in the government sector and they just didn't want me to grow up in the spotlight, so they felt it was best for me to be removed from that. And here I am in small town Connecticut instead of in big bustling city somewhere in Korea.
Billy: It's so funny when you said government, because for some reason I just thought they're like part of the IRS or they're in the secret service, they're really innocuous job and they're just like, oh, God, now a kid. Off it goes, yeah, no, we don't want to put the kid through that level of anxiety. We're just going to let it be adopted.
Meg Cee: My ghost kingdom wasn't really at that part of the government I was thinking more like president.
Billy: I get it now. Yeah.
Meg Cee: Sure, I mean, I suppose not wanting to have your child die of boredom at the age of five, that might be a good reason too.
Billy: I think it's just that covid has killed my ability to dream big. And so that was as high as I could go when I heard the word government. Like middle class, maybe upper middle class. Yes, that makes sense.
Billy: I want to be a gentleman. So, Meg.
Meg Cee: Yes.
Billy: Tell us about yourself, who you are.
Meg Cee: By now, you should know that my name is Meg. I do have a Korean name as well, but I found out when I was 14. That name was actually given to me by a person who was supervising the first orphanage I went to. So...
Billy: So what name is that?
Meg Cee: That would be Na Hee Han, but I don't feel an attachment to it since I would hope that I had a Korean name given by my birth parents at some point before that name was given to me in the orphanage.
Billy Right.
Meg Cee: Beyond that, I am a single mother.
Billy: Congratulations. It must be very easy.
Meg Cee: It is the easiest thing I've done in my life.
Billy: I mean, we'll get into it soon, but I know that you've worked a lot of short term contracts, so this is definitely something that is similar to that. There's always a potential end date to motherhood.
Meg Cee: Yes. You're told that it's about an 18 year contract and then you could re up to 25. Re up beyond that. It all depends on how well you do with your job. Typically with contract positions, when you do well, your contract gets extended. But I feel that with the motherhood contract, if you don't do well is when your contract gets extended.
Billy: Now, for all the listeners at home who still have their kids living with them at 25, we're not saying that you're bad mothers.
Meg Cee: It's a difficult world out there.
Billy: It's a very difficult world out there. As somebody who's not a mother, I can recognize the hell that I put my mother through. I can recognize because you have a little boy, right?
Meg Cee: I do.
Billy: And I was awful to my mother, bless her, but just because I was just a boy, you know what I mean?
Meg Cee: Yeah. Boys are something else. But he is intelligent, he is beautiful, he is funny, and he is impulsive, and he is quick to anger. And he very much reminds me of myself.
Billy: That must be a trip to just see little you walking around not only in physicality, but then like, I know why you're doing this. You should really stop doing this. But I get why you're doing this.
Meg Cee: Something I talk with my therapist about just about every week.
Meg Cee: I also am an actor. I was acting for quite some time, and then I gave it up to actually have my son because there's this thing with the entertainment industry that you can make a living, you can be fine and you don't have to have a second job. And that's great, and that's where the level that I was at. However, if you decide to start a family and you're at that level, you would need to have the village to help you with your child. Now, if you're at A-lister level, you've got the nannies, you've got the trailer, you're allowed to bring your kids to set. But for someone who's just a working actor, you get none of that.
Billy: You don't say.
Meg Cee: Yeah, so surprisingly, you don't get a trailer, you don't get nannies, you're not allowed to bring your children to set, and you also don't even know what time you're going to go to set until they wrap production the day before. So finding child care for that day could be very difficult because finding a babysitter who is awake at, say, 01:00 a.m. And available to come to your house at 07:00 a.m. For at least 12 hours, if not more, and they really won't know until past that twelve hour mark, kind of difficult to find.
Billy: Yeah, but I mean, once you pass a certain level, like you make all this money as an actor, if you're there for 24 hours, and at that point you could still pay for the babysitter who probably had other plans that had to be canceled in order for child negligence not to be charged against them because you weren't able to come back home. I can't believe he gave it up. I mean, I've heard that the film industry is a very healthy environment, especially for young, single mothers. Shocking.
Meg Cee: I know. And so that is why I went back to the film industry.
Billy: Oh, you went back?
Meg Cee: I did. When my son was about three years old, I went back, I did my first audition. It was for a costar role in a short film, and I should have only had one scene to film. And I did my audition and they said, hey, you didn't get the part. Well, I haven't auditioned at that point, it had to be four years, five years for anything. So that makes sense. You get rusty, those skills you need to keep up with. But they said, we actually want to offer you the lead role.
Billy: Oh stop it.
Meg Cee: Yeah, I got the lead role. So that was cool. I got lead role, I filmed and I said, yes, I am back. I am doing this. This is great. We went past the time I told my babysitter by 3 hours. It was on a Sunday that we were filming. So I got back around midnight and she had a nine to five job, which nine to five don't actually start at nine. Typically want you there earlier than that.
Billy: Yeah, and there's commutes.
Meg: Absolutely .
Billy: And I take it this was pre-codvid when people still had to go to work.
Meh Cee: Yes. If anyone is familiar with Connecticut and 95 traffic, I feel very bad for Sarah to this day about that. As you bring up pre-covid we filmed March 1 of 2020.
Billy: Oh. Oh! I was scrolling incessantly on reddit updates about how this thing was spreading. On March 1, my soon to be wife was looking at me like, why are you acting like this is going to be the end of the world? It's not. Can we go back to watching America's Next Top Model? She was not concerned. I'm like, I think there's a big old wave coming and everything I think is about to get shut down. But you filmed and finished everything that you were filming.
Meg Cee: We did. And I said, all right, great. I'm back. This is it. And then the entire industry shut down. And I said, well, I guess I'm not supposed to be back yet.
Billy: It was just the universe telling you specifically Meg, not yet. So thanks for that. If you had just stayed at home and been a single mother just scraping by, working at a place that you couldn't stand, we would have never had the novel Coronavirus come to our lands.
Meg Cee: I'm pretty sure that's a big part of it. And the fact that my birth family is in the film and entertainment industry or government sector, I believe more so that they may be in film and television. And they just very much just didn't want me to be in it.
Billy: Obviously, they've been keeping tabs on you. We're just going to let this out because our daughter is about to make a huge mistake by recommitting to the film industry.
Meg Cee: We need to stop her.
Billy: We need to stop her dead, well, not dead in her tracks. Some people will die, but we need to stop her in her tracks. What better way to do that than a worldwide pandemic?
Meg Cee: Yes. And it worked.
Billy: A little bit about myself for those who are listening in. My name is Billy. I am an actor as well. I guess, like to start off with where my current head space is that I think describes me as a person. Recently I purchased a treadmill, an omnidirectional treadmill, so that I can be more immersed into virtual reality by running through it and walking through it and jumping through it, as opposed to just pressing the stick forward. I am a huge nerd, and it took covid for me to be able to really embrace that, because before covid, I thought it was important to have a purpose in life.
Meg Cee: Yeah, I mean, we're kind of told that from a young age that we need to find a purpose.
Billy: I mean, you have the pressure on you as an adopted kid, too, because you're just like, oh, boy, I got to make this count. It could have gone a way different way. I really thought that my purpose was to be an actor that would, I guess, be able to have these great roles in these amazing movies and create an amazing career that could move people with the projects that I was able to be a part of. And funny enough, similarly to you, I got a little distracted in my path, I guess you could say, towards that because, funny thing about the world in America, you need money to survive.
Meg Cee: What?
Billy: Yeah. And there was like a point when I was just getting out of college where either I could make $25 a day being an usher at an off Broadway house, or I could go to a Costco, make $30 an hour and sing into a karaoke machine for 11 hours a day.
Meg Cee: Obviously, you chose the Broadway route.
Billy: I really thought that I was a Broadway star. While I was thinking Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in Walfam, Massachusetts.
Meg Cee: Into your karaoke machine.
Billy: Right into that karaoke machine. And I don't know if any of the folks at home have ever been to a Costco, but it's not where people do karaoke, but money. And I found a bunch of these other jobs that were similar, these promo jobs, where you could pop in, work few hours, maybe a week and make some decent money without hating humanity. Because a lot of my friends who were doing entertainment industry stuff and still working on getting that big break were working in restaurants.
Meg Cee: Oh no. No no no. That is not the way to go.
Billy: I jsaw so much light drain from people's eyes just from working in the restaurant industry because they had no control over what could be what they brought home. You know what I mean?
Meg Cee: Right. I worked in the restaurant industry for a while and I tried to fool myself and be like, okay, well, I need to learn the menus so that's like a script. So I'll memorize the menu and then with each table, I can go over and play a character and it will all be improv because I know what they're going to say back to me.
Billy: It's all training.
Meg Cee: It'll be great. And, it is not great.
Billy: Just to go up to somebody who just doesn't even look at you and just like, this is wrong, Meg. We lost. You're back.
Meg Cee: I am back.
Billy: Did the industry create such a horror you had to scream for just a moment off microphone?
Meg Cee: Yeah, you know, I kind of was having some PTSD flashbacks of my time in the restaurant industry, so I needed a moment to myself there.
Billy: All right, so sorry. I'll move on from that. I found myself working, doing these promo jobs, brand ambassador work, and absolutely loving it. And for a while I had an equal amount of effort put into my film work and an equal amount of effort per year put into my promo work. Basically, the promo work would just feed the beast to go out and spend the time to make as much as I could. I was getting to a point back in 2019 and early 2020 where that sort of promo life was turning into management jobs and there was the potential of climbing a corporate ladder as cool as money is. It's not where my heart is. It's not what I love.
Meg Cee Sure.
Billy: And I started giving an honest to goodness try at making acting my career, making it how I make money. I was working with a coach. I was doing auditions. And I remember feeling pretty elated at my last audition before covid, because it was at the SAG office in Chicago. It's a sign I had gotten on the actors access. It was a decently, legit project that was very interesting.
Meg Cee: What is actors access? Just for people who may not know.
Billy: For the kids at home?
Meg: Yeah.
Billy: So actors access. It was what I thought, a massive scam where you would pay money for people to post backstage postings in order for you to find auditions. And when I was coming up, I was taught you never pay to have somebody to find an audition. You just go to the audition, you never pay. What are you, a sucker?
Meg Cee: Oh yeah, I was taught the same thing.
Billy: So ten years later, I'm noticing there's so many suckers.
Meg Cee: And they're doing better than me.
Billy: They are getting work, they are getting paid. The few projects that I was doing without actors access, I'm like looking at everybody else in the cast and just like, how did you find this? And all of them are just like, actors access. And I'm still like an old cremogeny man. Who's just like, you idiots, you morons, paying for this. Meanwhile, they're lined up with gigs. It's basically the stop gap between you having, like, an agent and also an impressive real and talent. It's like, what can get you over the hump. I've never had an agent, personally, and so I was using this and went to the SAG office. You know what I mean? This is it. And auditioned. And the people who are auditioning me were like, hey, that was different than how we imagined it, but we like it. And then NBA shut down. Like, the NBA player was like, I'm not going to get covid. And they start touching the microphones, and then they're like, hey, that guy got covid. And then, well, if the NBA is shutting down, everybody stay in your homes. And so I found myself for the first time since I was five, because I've been pretty much consistent doing different acting jobs since I was five with an opportunity to not think about the business.
Meg Cee: Were you on the Mickey Mouse Club?
Billy: I was not on the Mickey Mouse Club.
Meg Cee: How about all that?
Billy: I have seen all that.
Meg Cee: What jobs were you doing at, like, five?
Billy: So I was working at dinner theaters. I was in navy housing. And the first opportunity I had was a neighbor of mine, Kate Kazanowski. She stopped me on my bike as I was rolling on by, and she said, hey, sweetheart, can you sing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer? And I never met her before, but I did. And she said you should audition for A Christmas Carol. You'd be a great Tiny Tim. And so my parents took me to the audition. My parents actually have the tape of my first audition, and there had to be about 30 other kids at that audition. And the director, Matt Seroveo, amazing director, he played Tevia multiple times, just really sweet and just loved the theater.
Meg Cee: You were throwing out everyone's first and last name.
Billy: Well, you know, it's the industry, darling. But they're also good friends, too. And there are 30 other kids. I wiped the floor with them. Meg. I wiped the floor with them. I was up there. I was cute. I had my little Rhode Island accent, even though I had just moved from Florida. But when you're adopted, you know how to adapt really quick.
Meg Cee: Of course you do, you have to, otherwise you won't survive and you won't get adopted.
Billy: I could be whatever kind of puppy you want. You want me to drop my Rs? What Rs? What are Rs? Yeah. So that's how I got involved when I was five, got Tiny Tim, and then I worked essentially at that playhouse. It's the Newport playhouse. And then did a cabaret with them, which was this after show that they would do after all of their shows, which was a little more raunchy, but it was Christmas themed, so I didn't really have to worry about anything that was going to offend my parents and just kind of became friends with adults. I don't know if you had that too, when you were young, but at an early age was like, kids are dumb. I love adults. They are my people.
Meg Cee: Yeah. And I've had a couple of theories as to why that was. Was it because I was an only child, or is it because I was an adoptee? And I just just couldn't relate to kids that grew up with their birth parents and in secure homes? Because adults are more damaged.
Billy: Oh, yeah.
Meg Cee: So maybe that's why I got along better with adults, right?
Billy: Same.
Meg Cee: I was always around adults because I didn't have any little brothers or sisters to fight with. So either or maybe a mix of the both.
Billy: Yeah, I could see it. I never thought of it as the fact that it's just like, you guys are so messed up.
Meg Cee & Billy: You are my people!
Billy: I clung to that because I moved from Newport to Connecticut. When I got to Connecticut, I had two things going against me. One, I was so full of myself because I was getting paid as an actor in Rhode Island, so I thought I was better than everybody. And two, I was horrifically damaged and didn't know how to make friends with peers. I was talking to these kids as if they were adults. If I had a crush on some, somebody was like, I'm going to give you a cooties shot. And I'm like, what's that? And they're like, well, it's to protect you from girls, germs. I'm like, Why would I want protection from that? Isn't kissing amazing? And they're like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, what's wrong with you?
Meg Cee: And how old were you at this point?
Billy: That was third grade.
Meg: Okay.
Billy: I was getting snuck off into tool sheds with kids my age when I was in first grade, second grade, I had girlfriends and stuff like that. Not girlfriends, but like, yeah, cute little like, hold my hand. You're my girlfriend.
Meg Cee: Yes.
Billy: But there were a lot more of the people in Coventry who thought cooties shots were cool than people like me, and so I had a rough time growing up there.
Meg: Were there a lot of cooties in Coventry that you were unaware of at that time?
Billy: That point you were new to? I refuse to believe, and I know that this is a very controversial topic, especially in today's day and age, I refuse to believe that cooties exist.
Meg Cee: So you are not vaccinated against cooties to this day?
Billy: I was forced against my will to get a cooties vaccination. Yes. Just because I wanted to fit in. But I already spoke my piece, so I was already the weird kid who got the shot but didn't believe he needed the shot. Very ostracizing.
Meg Cee: And have you come down with a case of cooties since getting your shot?
Billy: I've come down with a lot of things, Meg, but I never gave anybody cooties, and I want that to be on the record. Wait, did you ever give somebody cooties?
Meg: Oh, well, the thing is, I
Billy: Because when you came over, you stayed in the same town straight through, right?
Meg Cee: Yes. Until 18. Yes.
Billy: Okay. What was that like?
Meg Cee It was. Next question, please.
Billy: Oh, come on. I just bore my soul about the trash that I lived with that were just like, EW, girls. Gross! You're dumb for that times eight years.
Meg Cee: Yeah.
Billy: Do you not want to offend anybody?
Meg Cee: No, no it's fine. I offend people all day, every day. That is kind of why things were bad in childhood. I think just my very presence offended people.
Billy: What, oh no, because of racist stuff?
Meg Cee: Yes. Yeah
Billy: Come on.
Meg Cee: Yeah. So I don't think I ever had the opportunity to catch cooties, to be able to give anyone cooties. I think I am safe on both of those. But I did make sure to get the cooties vaccine just to be safe.
Billy: You did get it, okay?
Meg Cee: I did, yes.
Billy: Oh, that's good.
Billy: Was middle school just a shit show for you, too?
Meg Cee: Oh, middle school was horrible. It was a nightmare. I mean, I saw a psychologist before psychiatrist, and he referred me to a psychiatrist, and my first psychiatrist told me when I was 14, I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown.
Billy: When you were 14?
Meg Cee: Yeah. That's how middle school went.
Billy: That's rough. You were in the middle of one, too for days prior. You were out of your mind because everybody's the worst and everything is the worst.
Meg Cee: Yes, absolutely. It was great. I loved it.
Billy: Do you have any reckoning of being adopted at that point to be like, wow, everything is just a little messed up. More like immediate things that were causing the anxiety.
Meg Cee: I guess it was a little of both. The racism was difficult and then my parents made sure every day to, not every day, but often enough to remind me that I was adopted.
Billy: What?
Meg Cee: Yeah. I think it was just so that it wasn't a surprise.
Billy: They think you had the memory of a goldfish.
Meg Cee: Yeah, but they didn't want me to have some kids find out later in life that they were adopted and oh my gosh, oh boy. I was adopted from Korea and I recently took two DNA tests and I am 100% East Asian and the people that adopted me are 100% white. So I'm a pretty smart person. I don't think that I would have thought that I was biologically theirs at any point in my life.
Billy: Let me ask you a serious question that could probably have helped parents ascertain the situation. When did you stop believing in Santa Claus?
Meg Cee: Ohh, well, my friend Meghan from the neighborhood who was a year ahead of me in school, she told me one summer I was, I think in third grade and my mother, my adoptive mother told me that that's correct, there was no Santa Claus. And I cried for about 4 hours and then she told me that she was just kidding. Santa Claus is real.
Billy: What?
Meg Cee: And that was that. It got me to stop crying. So yay.
Billy: At least they didn't yoyo on if you were a biological spawn.
Billy: People come up to me and like one of the fun games as I was growing up was them trying to pick out the features of my parents that I have and resemble letting people just do that until I say I'm adopted, actually. So everything you said is wrong based on nothing. You're very imperceptive. So having that, there's always been me sort of like leading the charge when discussing it rather than other people. I also thought it was kind of neat and it was something that people would at a young age would be interested enough to keep talking to me about and so I would just keep on going with it.
Meg Cee: My mother was pretty involved in school and everything, so most of the time the comments we get is, oh, you don't look like your mom, you don't look like your mom. And that's how the conversation would come up.
Billy: How would somebody say that out loud? Like, that's something that's in your head.
Meg Cee: Children don't really understand that's not okay.
Billy: The children got it right.
Meg Cee: It's the children, elementary school kids. And I remember one time specifically, I have two stories, but one time specifically being at the grocery store with my mother and I had to be about three or four. The woman who was ringing out our groceries, she just kept on commenting about how much I looked like my mother. My mother is very fair skinned, blue eyes, brunette, her background is English, Irish and Hungarian.
Billy: For the listeners at home, that is not what Meg looks like.
Meg Cee: Yeah, so that was a thing. And then the town I grew up in had their centennial when I was in fourth grade. So they had us all go down in front of City Hall. We sang, and then there's a park next to City Hall. And they had bought us McDonald's. And we were eating, and my mother was there, and everyone knew my mother at that point. But my father came, and my father was usually not at any of these events, and if he was, he went and then he left, so they didn't know him. And this one kid, Matt, who I was very good friends with, he looks at my father and he looks at me, and then he's like, so you don't look like your father either. I remember I was holding my burger and it was like, near my mouth, and I just didn't know what to do. And I just continued holding it there.
Billy: Matt thought he was going to crack the code that day. He's like, really? Not seeing it with the mother. Dad must be super Asian. Really? He's not. What?
Meg Cee: So then my mother had a whole conversation with Matt and the other friends that were sitting around about adoption.
Billy: Oh, no. You just get to sit there and be like, yup.
Meg Cee: Still holding my burger, not eating it.
Billy: All you wanted to do is eat your burger. You wanted to have a good time at the thing. And it's just this is what it is now, huh? Well therapist, we've got something for you!
Meg Cee: Do you remember how we met?
Billy: I remember there being Southern accents, I believe we were walking around Union Square, but for this specific thing we met for I'm thinking it was a gig, right?
Meg Cee: It was. Earlier you had mentioned the experiential marketing, and I also did experiential marketing when I was making my way to trying to be an actor, because the money was very good, as you mentioned, and I had already lost my soul to the restaurant industry, so I needed something, and it was for the New York City Ballet.
Billy: Oh, wow.
Meg Cee: And we just had to pass out little postcards inviting people to go to the ballet.
Billy: And were we down in Union Square? Because I remember what I remember most of all. The first formative memory is not working particularly, but maybe we were working, but. There was a guy
Meg Cee: The British man.
Billy: The British man. The drunk British man.
Meg Cee: Yeah, that was St. Marks.
Billy: That was St. Marks. Okay.
Meg Cee: This is all New York City, by the way.
Billy: Yeah. For the kids at home. New York City is not the capital of New York, as some people think. Okay, so wait, were we passing stuff down out in St. Marks or was this?
Meg Cee: Yes, we were passing out New York City Ballet flyers in St. Marks. I don't know how to describe St. Marks to people who may not know St. Marks, but it is not the ballet audience in St.
Billy: No, it's not. They were reaching. They were like, Listen, nobody is coming to the ballet. I don't know. Throw a dartboard at Manhattan. Hey, maybe St. Marks. Maybe if the ballet had hard liquor and blow at the concession stand, it would get people from St. Mark's to head on up there.
Meg Cee: But yes, the British man we met in St. Marks and
Billy: Because we just started talking accents to each other. We were having a great time.
Meg Cee: Yes. Because we both found out that we were both actors, and so it was a good fit from the start, and so we used it as another chance to continue working on our craft.
Billy: Yeah. And we worked hard on our Southern accents, real hard that day.
Meg Cee: Absolutely.
Billy: And yeah, our improv skills were impeccable. Everybody from the outside in thought that probably thought we were the funniest people they had ever seen, put us on SNL immediately.
Meg Cee: How could you not have an Asian woman with a Southern accent?
Billy: Uh huh. And how could you not have a white guy who is tall and lanky and it looks like that hair might be going bud? Who also is continuing a Southern accent as well. It's in the stars.
Meg Cee: Until we met him.
Billy: Hello governor. He wasn't even talking game to you. He just hated you.
Meg Cee: Yes.
Billy: Like, out of nowhere. Just such vitriol and vile on the streets of New York, and it is night out.
Meg Cee: Yes. And in St. Marks, which is never really the safest of places now because of the blow and the hard liquor.
Billy: Right. I felt very protective in that moment.
Meg Cee: Yeah, you saved me. Because he grabbed me at one point, he was talking, oh, the ballet. You want to dance? You want to dance? And he grabbed me at that point, you stepped in and you saved me. And yeah, I appreciated that a lot, and I owe you for that.
Billy: Now we're doing a podcast. You don't know me anything anymore.
Meg Cee: How did we decide to do this anyways?
Billy: So you reached out and you're like, I want to do a podcast. I had had no thought whatsoever that my life would ever go in the direction of podcasts. But then I thought with Meg, yeah, that would be fun. And I remember we were tossing around the idea of we should just kind of talk about our traumas. And I being somebody and I might get some crap for this. But being somebody who has lived in Chicago and seen quite a lot of one person shows and all it is is pretty much trauma. I thought, well we could also probably focus on something it's tied to but also there's some fun stuff that it can be tied to too. I feel you were right on board with the idea of, well, we could talk about not only our adoption story and our experiences, but also we can talk about what's happening around the world and in the country when it comes to legislation and just movements and preconceived notions and talk to people who are also adopted as well.
Meg Cee: Yeah, and I think that's a really important part of things. There's a lot of movement towards adult adopted voices and getting those voices out there and not letting it all be from the parents who have adopted or from the agencies who do adoptions, who foster the adoptions. And adult adoptees don't always have happy stories. They don't always want to tell how wonderful things are. But our stories are real, and people need to know them so that they can make educated decisions when it comes to whether personally they want to adopt and when it comes to laws that affect human lives when it comes down to it.
Billy: Yeah, because you're starting to talk to some assembly members right over in Connecticut.
Meg Cee: Yeah. I've been talking with some people about the Adoption Citizenship Act. Which is actually through the US senate and the House. For those of you that do not know international adoptees who were adopted before the year of 2000 and who were over the age of 18 as of the year 2000 do not have automatic citizenship in this country. Which can cause problems for many different reasons that we'll get into further in that episodes. But I want this place, this podcast of ours, to be a safe space where we can share our stories and share the stories of other adoptees and we can share the good times and the not so good times and help hopefully foster conversations that can make adoptees lives better.
Billy: I'm happy that you called me for it.
Meg Cee: And I am grateful that you agreed to it.
Billy: Well, on that sappy note, I am looking forward to hearing people's stories, and I'm excited to engage with all the listeners out there, hear the stories because Lord knows we both have encyclopedias that can all be tied back to kind of had a little something to do with our adoption and that's how we got into that sticky situation. And it's important to have an ally for a voice of an ally that you can consistently listen to. And that's what I'm looking forward to in the next several weeks.
Meg Cee: As ideas and comments come up through our listeners. We do have pretty much our season one kind of outlined, but ideas for season two on topics that you'd like to hear. And we'd love to have people on as guests to talk and share their stories. And you can find out all that information on our website as well.
Billy: And what's that website?
Meg Cee: It is adoptwins.com. That's A-d-o-p-t-w-i-n-s.com.
Billy: That's it. And then you'll hear me saying it in the outro. This is our first podcast, everybody. We're figuring out how to end it. I think this has been a great conversation. It's always nice learning new things about you and hearing about your experience.
Meg Cee: Yes, you as well. And I hope our listeners, which are in the millions by this point like.
Billy: Like literal definition of legion.
Meg Cee: Yes, yes I hope that you've all learned a little more about us and continue on this journey with us.
Billy: So thank you very much, everybody. Hope you have a great day. I think that's going to be us signing off.
Meg Cee: That's all we've got for this week.
Billy: Thanks for listening.
Meg Cee: To our fellow adoptees. We hope you know you have a safe space with us and for our friends who aren't, we hope you've learned a bit more about life as an adoptee.
Billy: We'd love to get to know you. Give us a follow on our socials. All links can be found on our website adoptwins.com. That's a-d-o-p-t-w-i-n-s.com We'll catch you next time.