Stranger in a Strange Land

Parichard Holm – Healing Through Movement

Born in Thailand and raised in Germany, Parichard Holm struggled with identity and belonging. Feelings of disconnection, anxiety, and panic shaped her early years as she searched for a sense of home within herself.

At 18, on the search of her birth mother, a healing Tui Na massage in Thailand transformed her life. This powerful experience awakened her passion for Qigong, Tai Chi, and Qi Healing as a way to restore balance and reconnect with her true self.

Now, she helps others overcome emotional and energetic blockages, guiding them toward inner wholeness, vitality, and a deeper connection to their true self, the source of awarness and self-love.

Instagram: @parichard_holm

www.taichimatrix.com

This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice.

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https://www.patreon.com/secret_son

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Podcast: www.secretsonpod.com

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/secret_son

Mike Personal Site: www.miketrupiano.com

Voice: https://soundcloud.com/heartlandrefugee/sets

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Show Link:

https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1659085017

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Produced by: Trout Sound GbR Trupiano & Staudt copyright 2024

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Transcript

Secret Son: Season 2, Episode 5 – Stranger in a Strange Land

My interview with Parichard Holm

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice. Thanks for listening.

Show Intro: Good morning, Secret Sunshiners. This is Secret Son, the adoptive podcast about searching identity and secrecy. Hi, it's Mike. Welcome to Secret Son. Thanks for listening. My guest today is Parichard Holm. I first met Parichard eight years ago at a friend's birthday party - March of 2017. I was thinking recently - how did I find out she was adopted? I'm pretty sure - I did not even discuss this with her - she might not have remembered - I barely remember and I'm just sort of piecing it all together but we must have been chatting - maybe she said something like, "what's up? What's new?" and I said, "well, I'm going in a few months to see my mother again. I was adopted." I reconnected with her the prior year - 2016 - after initially finding her in 1995. Then we had - what - twenty/twenty-one years of no-contact. Thankfully she was still alive. I could reconnect with her. Then the following year the plan was to go back to my hometown, St. Louis, in the middle of America to see my mother again in June of 2017. That brings us to this birthday party where I met Parichard. I said I'm doing this - I'm going to see my mother - and she said, "oh, I'm adopted too." Didn't exchange numbers. Then I start the podcast and I'm thinking, 'I've never interviewed Parichard. So, I contact her and scheduling this interview was an ordeal. First she got sick and we had to reschedule. We reschedule - I get sick. We reschedule - she gets sick again. We reschedule again - I don't feel like getting sick. So, she tells me it's a school vacation - can we do it some other time? We reschedule it again. My wife and I, a few days before I was scheduled to interview Parichard, decide to go to Spain for a much-needed break from the German winter. So, we finally choose a date, have the interview. It's a good interview. We get to the last minute. The worst thought imaginable runs through my mind - did I remember to enable dual track recording? Meaning - are both voices on their own track? Which makes it easier to edit and I thought - I don't know if I did that. The interview ends. I look. I did not in fact enable dual track recording. So, we recorded on one track. Now there are worse problems. We've cleaned up this episode a lot in the editing process - myself and my final editor, my wife - and I thought - oh my God do we have to reschedule again? And I thought - I cannot reschedule this again. This was a good interview. If we need to do a follow-up, we'll do a follow-up and these things happen. My motto for this new year is 'embrace the imperfection.' That should be the name of the podcast. By the way, I'm coming out with a new limited-run podcast about a very fun topic - fairly short interviews. I'll announce more about that soon. Before we get to the interview, let me just say 'thank you' to all of my patrons who donate to help keep this show running. If you like this show - if you love this show - if you're ambivalent about this show - it doesn't matter to me - if you love it, that's great - you can go to www.patreon.com/secret_son and you can make a one-time donation. Some people do that. Once every six months they send me twenty euro or twenty dollars, depending where you are. Patreon handles the conversion. I don't have to deal with any of that. Maybe you're in Russia; maybe you're in Japan - you're listening. I do have listeners there, at least in Japan. I'm not sure about Russia but I know I have some in Japan. How you doing? How are things over there? If you feel like donating some Yen - I'm pretty sure it's still Yen - Patreon converts that. Maybe you're thinking - I don't want to give Mike the difficulty of converting Yen. It's not an issue. So, once again - thanks to my patrons. Thanks to all you soon-to-be-patrons who love the show and you want to keep it running. If you want to support the show. Don't even think of it as donating. www.patreon.com/secret_son. Now here is my interview with Parichard Holm. 

Parichard: I was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand - end of the Sixties - a special time, I guess. My German parents were living and working there for six years and I had an older German sister and they decided to have a baby from Thailand. They came to the orphanage and they saw me and decided to adopt me. For me, it was very unconscious, the whole process, I guess. Later on in my life I always felt that I'm different but that's maybe something different to tell about. 

Mike: How old were you when you were adopted?

Parichard: I was nine months old. I think the funny part was that I stayed with my birth mother for the first seven months. So, I only had been in the orphanage for two months and it was planned. That's what she told me - my Thai mother - years later when I met her. The family was planning on it to have her away from the village to the bigger city - the second capitol of Thailand - next to Bangkok - to have me in the orphanage. They just told her that she's welcome to come back after giving back but that she wouldn't dare to come back with me. 

Mike: You were her first child?

Parichard: First child and the only child. 

Mike: Your German parents were working in Thailand. Did you live there a while with them? Or did you come immediately back to Germany? 

Parichard: I lived there for the first four years of my life with my German parents in Chiang Mai. My German younger brother was born in Thailand. Then we moved back - 1972 - when I was four years old. So, I was very adapted to Thai surroundings, the climate and the food and also the language. When I moved to Germany, I only started to speak in German. 

Mike: I think it's a whole different thing. What do you think about that? I'm what's considered a domestic adoptee - born in America, grew up in America - the same city. It's different challenges. There are transracial adoptees - what they call themselves. So, it's different. It's harder to 'pass.' 

Parichard: Yeah. This was kind of an interesting process. I went to Turkey last year and there was an event at the Tai Chi/Qigong festival where I was also working and it was about thinking about your first dream you can remember - write it down what you can remember and how it felt to you. So, I was thinking about it and my first memory of a dream was about hearing my German parents talking about moving to Germany and how difficult it might be to do this in the winter time and I was four years old and it was kind of very bizarre and abstract hearing them talking about it because I had never experienced it before but I can remember very precisely when we arrived in the winter time in Germany wanting to be dressed and you have these pictures where I'm running around without gloves and without a hat. It was like a shocking event. I really can remember the whole process. 

Mike: Yeah, I guess you got the hard part over with right away. You didn't come in the summer. 

Parichard: That's right. 

Mike: You were not in Berlin though. I don't know. You're in Berlin now. I was in Berlin. I'm still sometimes in Berlin. I'm looking out the window - it's been snowing for over an hour. 

Parichard: The mood is exactly how I felt when I arrived to Germany and it's always a challenge to me being in the wintertime here. When I lived as a young adult in California for ten years, I didn't miss the winter at all. 

Mike: I wonder sometimes if I'll get to that. I like looking at it. It's very nice. It's picturesque looking out the window at the snow. I had a challenging adoptive family. They had their own issues to work on. We don't have to talk about your adoptive family but how was it - you're a middle child, right? I mean, it's Germany and it was Germany forty/fifty years ago. How was it culturally? I guess, it all stems from - it's maybe luck of the draw. You come to a good neighborhood or a good school and people are more accepting. How was it in terms of being the Thai kid, the Ausländer? 

Parichard: I got aware of being the adopted different kid maybe later. I became naturally the black sheep of the family because I always was different but it's a different process, I guess, to become the black sheep. It's also a decision you make at a certain point. I think I was lucky in a way that my parents were academics. So, we were living always at the same place in a very nice neighborhood - in a safe neighborhood. Everything was taken care of financially. There were never problems to get whatever I wanted to get and I was very educated. Of course, I had tons of hobbies and everything, which was connected to education was very much supported by my parents. I think it was more a challenge meeting people in the environment because they always pointed out and asking questions about me and why I would be there and if I would be a part of the family. So, I experienced from the beginning a division or a feeling kind of - a position - where I had to explain myself. I would say my parents did it for me when I was young but then later I also tried to find a way to tell a story why I would be here and in this kind of constellation. Only they much later with thirteen I can remember I really fully recognized that I would look different because I imagined myself always having blond hair, blue eyes or green eyes. So, it was very much another kind of shocking event to look into the mirror. 

Mike: So, you thought as you grew up, as you matured, the Aryan would kick in and you'd become blond? Was that the thinking? 

Parichard: I didn't feel so different from my family because I always saw them as they were. So, I thought I'm a part of them and I didn't realize that I really did look different. I have Asian features. My face is different - my hair. Also the way how I would be - how I am - I was different too but there were similarities like my voice. So, every time when I went on the phone, people always thought I would be my mother or my sister. So, the way I'm talking, it's very similar and also the whole way to think about things was very much like my family. There was no difference. The only real distinct difference was that I looked totally different and I understood then that also people got it and they were always asking, "who is this child? What are you doing with this child? Do you have a guest? Like a permanent guest?" 

MIke: Right, an exchange student. 

Parichard: Until I was thirteen, I thought, 'what are they talking about? Ah, ok, yeah. Maybe there's a story to talk about' but my feeling was - hey I'm a part of my family. I think luckily I had my sister and brother because they always felt totally natural and comfortable with me. I learned later that my parents did make a distinction between me and themselves and also between us children, which was also very painful but I had to deal with that later on. 

Mike: In terms of like favoritism - something like that?

Parichard: Similarities like when you're, for example, sitting together in the living room and you start to talk about uncles and aunts and ancestors and general stories and parents start to mention, "ah, you look very much like my mother" or " you have similarities" even if it's something also just a story which is maybe not true - "you behave like your grandfather. He was also very stubborn." Something like that. Nobody knows really exactly if it's true but nobody talked about me - ever - not even one sentence. You're very similar to whomever. There was no referral to another human being who would be similar to me. So, this was difficult. 

Mike: Yeah, the lack of mirroring - first of all, the lack of physical mirroring, I found a challenge. Yeah and then these historical references too - the lack of those. I see it in people we know with kids. Maybe I'm more aware of it or more sensitive to it - constantly - it seems to me constantly - probably not constantly but saying, "oh, yeah, she's just like her grandmother who sings" or something like that. Having found both sides of my family has probably been a lifesaver for me - to at least in retrospect get some historical context to things. You've searched. When did you start thinking about searching?

Parichard: It was when I was eighteen years old I decided to travel to Thailand with my former boyfriend and I said to my German mother, "you know, I decided to travel for four weeks to Thailand to look for my mother" and she said, "ok, I think it's a good idea." She asked me three weeks before I was leaving Germany what my plans were - how I would think about to find my mother and I said, "I don't know." Actually, I didn't make any thoughts. I thought just to go and - 

Mike: Knock on doors. 

Parichard: Exactly. I was this kind of person and maybe not so much changed until today. She said, "you know, I had some thoughts about this. I have a friend, she's in science and music and culture. So, she can speak German very well and with Thai you should at least have a Dolmetscher (translator). She told me" - she was the key person to the whole story - "that she had already started to make some research. She went to your orphanage and the orphanage couldn't find any documents and were referring her to go to the hospital where I was born. So, maybe something will come out of it." I said, "ok, sounds good." I met Gretl in Chiang Mai and she said, "you're very lucky. A friend of mine is Thai and she wanted to help you and she went to the hospital and they actually found the address of your mother. So, we can go there maybe in two days or sometime soon." That's how it was. It was very demanding. I got very sick. I think I was very overexcited. I could not travel because I was sick, laying in the hotel room. I didn't know - I was wondering when I would get healthy. This was the first time when I met Qigong because an American architect, who was sailing with his own sailing boat over the ocean, he helped me to get healthy within one long session. I think it was at least about three hours. He was talking to me and doing acupressure massage. He could sense that I was excited and that I had too much heat in my body and that I didn't want to let it go. So, I had fever. I had digestion problems and then I was ok after he treated me. I also decided that finding my own mother was a chance for me to connect to myself on a very deep level, that to understand life to me it seems to be a process of self healing.

Mike: This is an amazing connection because you teach Tai Chi and Qigong. 

Parichard: Yes but I started to learn Tai Chi and Qigong much later - eight years later - when I was twenty-six but since then I knew I'm going to learn it one day when I'm ready. 

Mike: So, how do you meet your mom and what happens after that? 

Parichard: I didn't really meet her on this trip. We decided to take the train and drive down east of Chiang Mai to the village. It was New Years over a couple of days. We were also - not expected in a sense but over New Years the whole family gathers together and we were knocking at the door and the door was open and people looked at me. They said, "come in" and we were sitting in a circle of my aunts and nephews and cousins without talking for the first at least half hour. Very bizarre. They were staring at us, especially to me and one of them there showed me a picture of my mother and she looks exactly the same - exactly the same. So, they knew I'm part of her. 

Mike: Where is she when this is happening? 

Parichard: She was in Saudi Arabia. She was for many years a housekeeper for rich families. So, she traveled to Saudi Arabia and then later - I think it was also eight years later - no she came back and then when I was twenty four, I came the second time back to Thailand with my whole German family to meet her for the first time. Then later I met her in the United States where she was also a housekeeper. 

Mike: You go to Thailand to meet her and it turns out she's in Saudi Arabia. 

Parichard: That's right but at least I had a contact who started to exchange letters and ideas and I think this was for me perfect to learn more about my story and how she feels and to understand what she experienced. 

Mike: And in the meantime, those six years, did you have contact with cousins or any of the relatives? 

Parichard: Not really because I think nobody knew about me honestly. It was only her. She was also adopted. So my grandmother, she died very early and my mother, she was nine years old and my grandfather decided to give her to another family - some friends - because they always wanted to have a daughter. So, she was the youngest then and this family, they were kind of - how they used to say it - but she said they're a well-known family and they helped me. The uncle was also the director of the hospital where I was born. So, that took care of us while she had to be in Chiang Mai and also I had a friend who was the major of Chiang Mai who also trusted financially that he would take care of me until I would be adult. This was good for her in a sense but they were very strict on "you're not married. You're pregnant. We don't want to have this child in our family." So, nobody knew about it. Even my real uncles - I have four of them - but they're all dead by now - they didn't know about me. So, they saw me the first time. I think they could not really relate to me because they were just very busy with their own lives - not only workers, we have also kind of doctors in our family but somehow there was no really connection. 

Mike: It really struck me what you said about you see the soul purpose - not 'sole' as in S-O-L-E - but 'soul' S-O-U-L purpose of all this - like you made a meaning out of all of this, this kind of alienation, etc. What have you come to and how did you come to it? 

Parichard: I always had the sense that everything has a meaning and nothing is by accident, even if I felt alone or sad or excluded or very different. I was always kind of - I was always awake and alert. Maybe later I learned that my whole system was kind of in survival mode or fight or flight. 

Mike: As a teenager, did you have a punk phase? Did you have a Goth phase?

Parichard: I had an ‘everything’ phase. I was a hippie. I was a Popper - how you call people in Germany who were wearing like Lacrosse T-shirt, for example, and I was a punk also. I tried to be on my own very fast. I moved out when I was fifteen years old but it was not that I could make it very well. So I had to move back for a half year when I was nearly eighteen years old. I had another second chance or transition time because I wanted to be on my own. I never really felt very close to my home emotionally but somehow I always was wondering about what does it mean to me and how I deal with it and how I would extend myself in a different way because I didn't want to be too tied up to the story of being adopted because I was always listening to other people's explanations why I would be there in this family. It was for me very clear very fast that family is bigger and that the world is bigger and that it's up to me where I want to place myself and how I would place myself and that it's up to me to become very independent and seeing how to live my life and how I want to feel about myself and also trying to balance out the parts which were more dark or sad because I could feel that the darkness and the sadness doesn't disappear. When I was very sad, I always felt this very big, big, big pain - like this big kind of black hole in my body or feeling lost and feeling not connected but I also made the experience when you go through these kind of phases or experience kind of toxic experiences that at the end of the tunnel, the light is there and there is change and there are also answers. Life moves on. 

Mike: You teach Tai Chi and Qigong now. How does that play a role? Was that a breakthrough for you to start doing Tai Chi? Did that help you reach some higher level? 

Parichard: It did. It helped me. When I was young sometimes a little bit depressed and I had also anxiety attacks between twenty and twenty- four while I was studying design and when I was interested in art and it felt like a very kind of insecure existence, I started with Tai Chi and Qigong about when I was twenty six and my whole energy shifted within a couple of weeks. I never had panic attacks again. 

Mike: It is amazing. 

Parichard: That's something. So, I was saying to myself I'm just continuing. I don't need this kind of anxiety - like fear and depression and totally sadness. It's still a process to understand that everything can come together or everything can be there. It's not so much about doing so much. It's more about embracing and seeing and feeling and enriching myself as a multi-dimensional being on an energetic level. 

Outro: Thanks, Parichard. I love that interview. Thanks for listening to Secret Son. If you're interested in Tai Chi and you want to find out more about Parichard, go to www.taichimatrix.com. If you feel like donating to keep this show going, go to www.patreon.com/secret_son. As I mentioned in the show intro, I have another project coming out soon - another podcast project. I know it'll be fun for me and I really think you'll like it and that's coming very soon. I will announce it. Thanks for donating. Thanks for listening. See you next time.