Hey there, it's Melissa Brunetti, and welcome to the
Mind Your Own Karma podcast. They didn't know, you know, And
from my perspective, like I shouldn't have survived, you
know, there were a lot of reasons why I shouldn't have
survived those circumstances. Hey there, Karma crew.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of Mind Your Own Karma,
The Adoption Chronicles. Today I have Doctor Liz de Beta
on the show. She's a creator of Migrating
Toward Wholeness, is an adoptee and independent scholar,
activist, and artist committed to changing systems and helping
people navigate trauma through creative processes.
She believes that stories are powerful change agents and when
we write them and share them, we connect and heal.
Liz is a proud member of Actors Equity, SAG, AFTA affiliate
faculty at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and
part of the Diversity Scholars Network at the National Center
for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan.
She has published articles on auto ethography and adopting
narratives as an award-winning one woman show called UNMOTHERED
and facilitates trauma Informed Healing workshops for adoptees
and women. Here is my interview with Doctor
Liz Dabetta. So we are welcoming Liz to the
show today. Hi, Liz.
Hi. So I just wanted to say I found
your book, Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal for Myself so
validating in so many ways. So I just want to start off by
thanking you for that. You know, it's different from
all of the adoptee books I've read so far.
And what I love the most is that what you write about is so
universal for all adoptees and it doesn't really matter what
your story is. So I love that the details
really don't matter and just so many validating statements for
myself and I know other people would think the same.
And you put in the book you wrote trauma rewires and
adoptees brain and reorganizes the way we respond to different
situations. And for me, just hearing that
one sentence was like, yes, it's scientific fact.
It is scientific fact that adoption rewires our brain.
We're not weird, we're not strange, we're not broken.
We're adopted, and so I just want to thank you for that.
Just straight up off off the top, but let's get into the book
in a minute. I just kind of want to hear your
adoption story, what you know about it, why you were adopted,
and so we can kind of get a feel for where you're coming from.
Sure. Yeah.
And and thank you for for that comment about the book.
And I know we're going to get into talking about that later,
but it's validating for me to hear that because that's such a
big part of why I do what I do and why I use my story, you
know, as the central point of all of the work that I do for
myself and with other adoptees. Because I, I do find that our,
our stories, our internal experiences are so connected,
despite the difference in our individual circumstances.
And so that's a good segue into my story, which is, you know,
like all of our stories, complicated and emotional and,
you know, always in flux. So I so I'm a domestic infant
adoptee here in the US And so I was a white kid adopted into a
white family in the late 70s, nineteen 77.
I was, I'm one of two adopted kids in my family or now we are
adults and I have an older brother who is 14 months older
than I am. And, and from, you know, sort of
what I've been told my whole life, sort of unusual to have
two kids adopted into the same family relatively close
proximity, you know, again, 14 months apart.
The story that I was told about that was that my mom was home
already raising my brother and I was born prematurely and they
didn't know what kind of needs I might have.
And that the adoption agency felt like that that my family
might be a good fit in case I had special needs or extra needs
because of my, you know, being born 2 lbs eleven oz.
And in the 1970s, in the NICU, before the NICU was the NICU
that we. Know it to to be.
Today And so like, you know, and so my, the story that my parents
have told is one that's that basically says that, you know,
they got this call and you know, we have a we, we have a, a baby
girl who who's going to need to have a family.
And do you want to do you want to have another baby?
And they were like, yeah, of course we want another baby,
right? And, you know, and the story was
very much that, you know, they felt like my parents would be a
good fit because my mom was already home and in case I had
these extra needs or whatever. But it was all sort of really
TBD because they didn't know, you know, and from my
perspective, like I shouldn't have survived, you know, there
were a lot of reasons why I shouldn't have survived those
circumstances. And that is not lost on me, you
know, And, and that's the thing that I always kind of carry with
me is like, you know, that that little baby Liz was like, Nah, I
got something to do. I got something to do in this
life. Don't worry about it.
I'm not fully up. But I'm gonna get there, right?
And, you know, and so, like, that's part of the, like, sort
of origin story. And, you know, there's a little
bit of like, you know, saviorism and glorification of my adoptive
parents in that, you know, which I can see now in retrospect as
an as an adult looking at that story.
But I was also told that I that my first parents or first family
wanted me to go to a Catholic family, that they would not sign
a religious release on any of the paperwork and that they
wanted me to go to people with college degrees.
And so that was one of my entrance narrative, right?
How come I got adopted, how I ended up in my family, all that
jazz. I found out many years later
that most of that wasn't actually true because when I
was, yeah, when I was about 20, I started to have some
significant like mental health challenges and relationship
issues and decided, oh, maybe I need to think about my adoption.
Maybe that's something. And so I had requested my non
identifying information at that point and got the file in the
mail. And you know, it was 1997, I'm
going to say. So Internet baby stages, we
don't know, you know, we, it was hard to find any information we
don't have, we didn't have the access then that we do now.
And so I kind of like explored it for a while, but didn't get
very far and then put it away for many years and, and didn't
get back to it. And, you know, it's, it's all of
it's challenging because half of the information that was in that
paperwork turned out to also not be true.
Wow, so you must have found your biological family.
Yeah, so in 2017 I had just that, you know, right, couple
weeks before the beginning of 2017, gotten Adna kit for
Christmas for my, my partner. And because we were very much
having these conversations about, OK, now is the time for
me to, to, to start to search. Like I think I'm ready in my
life and I'm, I'm prepared to do the things that I need to do to
try to find my first mom. And so he was like, well, let me
get your DNA kit, right. So did that spit in the tube,
sent it away. And then a couple of days later
had come across an article that was posted in one of the adoptee
groups that I was on Facebook, part of on Facebook.
And somebody, you know, posted this article that New Jersey,
where I was adopted, had changed the laws to allow for partial
access to original birth certificates.
And I was like, oh, wow, this is great timing.
So I sent away for that. It took me three tries because
the paperwork is so opaque and the directions were not clear.
And they kept sending it back saying you forgot this or you
sent the wrong, you know, proof of identity or whatever BS.
And so, you know, it was a sort of couple months, you know,
almost two months long process. And then on my 40th birthday, I
got the envelope in the mail from the New Jersey Records.
And I will never forget it because it was a, there was a
snowstorm and I was working from home that day.
And I waited until my partner got home.
And then I was like, look at this, you know, and, and then we
opened it after we had dinner. And that was like a strange and
kind of wonderful birthday gift, I guess, you know, 40 years
later and I, I found out my first mom's name.
There was no biological father listed on the birth certificate,
nor did I have a name. I was just baby.
Wow. And how does that feel?
How does that feel? Yeah, You know, I know this is a
challenge for a lot of adopted people, right?
Either the finding out of I had a different name or like not
being named. And you know, I don't have any
deep feelings about it. It it just all feels kind of
strange, you know, And for a long time I, I had a big
separation in internally about like my baby self and my, my
actual self. Like it took me a long time in,
in therapy and particularly EMDR to sort of integrate that those
parts of myself, right, because I didn't, I didn't feel real and
I didn't feel connected to baby Liz in any way.
Like I would look at, you know, the very, you know, the, the,
the I have this one picture of myself from my christening,
which is probably one of the first baby pictures I have of
myself. And like I was looked at that
like knowing it was me, but not feeling connected to me, if that
makes sense. And so, you know, I was just
like, OK, this is just another crazy function of, of the story
that I'm trying to piece together, the story that I'm
trying to understand, the story that makes up who I am.
And I, you know, and funnily enough, there is a name in the
non identifying paperwork somebody and I don't know who
they called me baby Alicia. So I did have a name, but I
don't know where that came from because that part of my.
Story You weren't officially adopted till you were like nine
months or. Nine months old.
That's right. OK, so maybe foster parents or
some, yeah, maybe named you because what do they can't just
not call you something, right? Baby.
Yeah, a baby. A little baby.
Yeah, so did. You always a little baby.
Yeah, you were. Did you always know you were
adopted or do you remember being told or?
Yeah, I do. We, we and I say we 'cause it's
my brother and I I don't ever remember not knowing.
We we knew from the time we were, we could remember that we
were adopted. So, you know, early on, it
wasn't a secret. It was something that was, you
know, just open knowledge in in our family, both like our, you
know, immediate family, but also extended family and friends like
it it my parents didn't didn't make it a secret, but when I was
five, my mom got pregnant and had my younger brother who has
Down syndrome. And that really changed the
focus of our family, understandably, right?
You know, But also that was 1982.
It was just after deinstitutionalization.
And they were really scrambling to figure out like, what what,
how to meet his needs, like what he was going to need because we
didn't know. And, you know, so after Frank
was born, we just kind of stopped talking about adoption
in our family. Now, is he biological to your
parents? OK.
Yes. Yeah, totally understandable.
I want to talk about when you started discovering writing and
how that was kind of a surprising but huge impact on
you. I mean, you're pretty young.
I believe you were like at 14 when a teacher kind of
encouraged you tell us what you're writing catharsis look
like and where were you when you started and kind of where did
that lead you along the way? Yeah.
So yeah, I was 14 and had like super big crazy emotions.
Like lots of big feelings, lots of overwhelming feelings all of
the time. Lots of just exploding tears,
you know, because that's my default reaction.
I'm a crier, that's my stress reaction, that's my grief
reaction, that's my anger reaction, that's my overwhelm
reaction, that's my over tired reaction at all of the things,
right. But you know, at 14, I had no
concept of the impact that adoption had on my life.
It wasn't even on my radar, right?
I just was continually overflowing, you know, and
feeling really sad and really confused so much of the time.
And I had a, a really smart and insightful teacher and coach,
Mr. Anthony. George Anthony is his name, and
I'm still in touch with him, which is a beautiful thing about
my life. Who said to me, you know, did
you ever think about writing poems?
And I was like, what? No.
I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, Right?
Like, I was like, no, that's silly.
Who writes poems? Come on.
And he was like, well, just think about it.
And then, like, a couple of weeks later, we were sitting in
his office talking about something.
And he's like, hey, can I share something with you?
And I was like, yeah, sure. And he read me this poem that he
had written when he was in college that had been published
in a college literary magazine. And he told me the whole story
about how he wrote this poem and why he wrote this poem and what
it meant. And I remember, like, having a
real paradigm shift in that moment of going like, oh, well,
if this this man, right? And I had these very gendered,
you know, stereotypical gender role ideas at the time.
I have since moved way past them.
And he, you know, I thought if this man can write this poem,
like, maybe it's not so stupid. Like maybe there's something
here. And so I got this little
notebook, this little pretty notebook.
I went out, you know, on, you know, the way home from school.
I stopped in the local stationery store that was in my
town after I got off the bus. And I bought this notebook and I
started writing and it was really private.
Like it was not anything that I shared with anyone for many,
many years. It was just my own space where I
didn't even like sit down to consciously.
Like, now I'm going to write about this.
I would just feel so overwhelmed.
And I'd be like, OK, And a thought would come to me and I'd
just grab a pen and I would write, you know?
And, and at the time, that experience was just cathartic in
the way that As for as long as, and I say this in my one woman
show unmothered, it helped me find some release for as long as
my pen moved across the page, right?
I just knew that when I wrote, I felt better and that and that I
felt like that everything felt a little bit less raw and a little
bit less intense. And so it was a lifeline for me
early on and for many, many years, whenever things felt
really big or overwhelming, I knew that I could put a pen to
paper and, and write a poem or 10 poems, you know, and, and
express whatever that thing inside me was that needed to get
out. Where that took me all of these
years later is incredible. And I didn't really know at the
time that what I was doing was going to turn into what it has,
right. And I, I and I discovered
writing and healing when I got into grad school And, and
there's kind of two stories there, but I'll, I'll pause in
case you have another. OK, You know, it's funny, 'cause
I, you know, talk to people about coming on the show all the
time, lots of adoptees. And there's been a few times
where in fact, today it happened where I get an e-mail from
somebody and they've scheduled, we're in the process where, you
know, it's coming up like within a week and something shifts and
they're like, I can't, I can't do this now.
I can't tell my story. It's going to hurt this person's
going to hurt that person, even though it's really what they
want to do is share, you know, something like that comes up and
they just can't do it. And so when I was reading your
book, I was thinking that's a way 'cause, you know, the guests
on my show usually say, Oh my gosh, it was so healing even for
me, you know, just telling my story.
So I get sad when I hear that, but I totally understand, you
know, where they're coming from. Totally get it.
But I'm thinking this is a way for them to channel and heal
privately and, you know, maybe at some point they will be able
to come tell their story. But, you know, I thought, wow,
this would be something that they could do in the meantime to
kind of tell their story and and, you know, get some feelings
out and and he'll a. 100% I mean, in that, you know, that's
really the reason why I wrote the book.
And I, you know, say it in the, in the introduction that like
it's my gift to the adoptee community to have a resource.
And, and that comes very much out of not only my sort of at
this point, really lifelong, you know, it's over 30 years now of
writing, you know, that, you know, from the time I started at
14 and now I'm 47. And like, that is decades of, of
writing and, and discovering myself in my writing.
And, and the book is, you know, what is really meant to be a
resource for folks that, that need to give themselves
permission. And that's actually part of the
whole migrating toward wholeness process that I lay out in the
book and that I've developed over the last, you know, seven
or eight years, which is that we need to give ourselves
permission to tell our stories. And, and sometimes there is a
cost, right? And sometimes it's safer to stay
silent. And, and I recognize that,
right. So what are the options if right
now is not the time? You can, you know, you can put a
pen to paper, you can open a Word document that you don't
show anybody and do this as a private activity.
Because if, if the, if the story doesn't go somewhere and if the
internal feelings don't go somewhere, if we don't give them
a container, right, they live inside of us.
And, and that's where the sickness comes from.
That's, that's where the, you know, the unresolved grief, the,
you know, we know trauma lives in the body.
And so very, I talk about how this, this healing process of
using writing helps us to migrate embodied trauma.
And it does because we're putting the, we're taking the
words outside of our bodies and, and giving them a place to live
outside of ourselves, even if we don't show it, share it with
anyone yet, right? Just giving ourselves permission
to speak in whatever way we have access to is a first step in the
process. Yeah.
There's different ways to Share your story.
It's not always doesn't have to be publicly, no.
So you talk about in the book cognitive behavior therapy and
why it may not be helpful in some cases when we're dealing
with pre verbal trauma. Can you talk about that a little
bit? Yeah.
So this also really comes out of my, my experience of having been
in therapy for, you know, just, you know, the better part of 15
years and, you know, regular CBT, cognitive behavioral
therapy, right, which is traditional therapy modality
that many people utilize and are familiar with and and have
experience either on one side or the other, right.
And in those 15 years with the same therapist, never once
talking about the fact that I was adopted, never once like
that being even a consideration as the, you know, sort of the
source of how to put this in quotes.
My issues, right? My issues with relationships, my
issues with finishing things, my issue, you know, like making the
kinds of choices I was making. I mean, you know, and when I
started reading the adoption literature as I was finishing,
you know, my master's degree and sort of starting my own healing
journey, and then, you know, sort of thinking about maybe I'm
going to get my PhD. And then when I got into my PhD
program, I really started reading the literature and I was
like, oh, I'm not crazy. There's a, there's, you know,
there. This all really lines up with
my, with my experience and my story and I, I, I, I, and with
me going to this therapist for 15 years, I stopped going
because I hit a point where every time I left, I felt worse.
I felt worse than when I walked in that door.
And I'm like, well, this is not helping me.
And of course, at the time, I didn't realize that I needed
something different. And and also I didn't realize
yet that all of the stuff that I was continually dealing with was
connected to being adopted and was connected to my pre verbal
trauma that had gone on, you know, acknowledged and
unaddressed. And it took me another several
years before, you know, I actually went to an adopt D
conference. I went to the American Adoption
Congress conference, I think in 2018, I think it was 2018.
It might have been 2019. And that was the first time that
I had come together with other adoptees, many of whom were also
therapists, and started having these conversations.
And, and somebody was like, you know, said to me, you know, you
might be having somatic memories.
And have you ever thought about that?
And like, just really eye opening.
And then I started, you know, kind of putting the dots
together. And then when I got home, I
realized that I need a different kind of therapy and that I had
not had adoption competent or trauma competent therapy.
And because they had the intellectual understanding of
those things and I had done the reading and the research and I
understood, right that that that the, the trauma informed folks
were like, no, cognitive behavioral therapy doesn't work
because we can't talk ourselves out of something we don't have
words for, right? And so I then I realized I
needed a brain based therapy and I and sought that out and I was
very lucky that I was able to find that.
But it shouldn't take anybody 40 years.
You know, that's, that's the tragic part of it.
Well. Unfortunately, we don't, we
don't validate ourselves in that way until we're 40 or 50, most
of us, you know? Yeah.
So I want to talk about identity a little bit or lack of identity
for the adoptee. Talk about your personal
experience with your identity and do you think that adoptees
can regain our authentic selves? Yeah, that's such a good
question and the yes, I do. And it's also a journey, right?
Like so much of, of this experience as adoptees of my
experience as an adopted person and like the experience that I
share with other adoptees over the, you know, many years that
I've that I've been able to be friends with and also work with
so many people in our community is the knowledge that we can
find a sense of authenticity. But it takes work, right?
And, and it, and it takes a lot of support.
And I say that because I have done it.
I have worked really hard to figure out who I am in this
world and what I need and how to, how to take up space, right?
How not to continue to disappear into the background.
And it's all part of this healing journey.
And it, none of it is linear, right?
That's another thing that I talk a lot about is, is the fact that
healing isn't linear and neither is coming into that sense of
self. But that's the idea behind
migrating toward wholeness. For me, that idea of migrating
toward wholeness is really about finding authenticity and and
finding home in ourselves. And because I think I have spent
so much of my life chasing things that are external to me
because I, I didn't know who I was and I didn't know where I
came from and I couldn't find answers to things that I just, I
was focused on all of these things outside because I
couldn't make sense of the internal chaos.
And, and then when I started to figure out the answers that I
could figure out, some of the puzzle pieces started to click
into place. And then the pieces that I that
I didn't know, and I still don't know.
I have been able to rewrite those parts of my story in a way
that makes sense for me so that I can continue to inhabit that
sense of wholeness, knowing that I am capable of being and doing
and making choices, right? And having agency over my own
life. And part of that agency is
telling my story. Right.
Another thing that you talk about in the book is attachment
and bonding. What's the difference?
I think, I think the difference is that like attachment can, can
is, is sort of that like what's the word I want?
Like we think like that's the, the goal is attachment, but but
when we don't have a healthy attachment, so like we don't
have a healthy attachment early on, then it becomes really hard
to distinguish the difference between like attachment and then
able, being able to like have a healthy bond with someone.
And so like, for example, I guess the best way I can talk
about this is through a story is like, I had such severe
separation anxiety, right? Because I had such disorganized
and anxious attachment, like I, when I couldn't stay away at
college because I didn't know how to, how to separate from my
family, right? My identity at that point was
very much tied to my role in my family, which was as a
caretaker. I was taking care of my mom.
I was taking care of my younger brother.
So it was very attached to them and, and because they needed me,
it was like, you know, Velcro, right, sort of a Velcro thing.
So you think about like attachment as Velcro, like we
can stick together and that's fine, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that that's a firm bond or hold, right?
Like it can, it can be broken, right?
We can, we can rip that Velcro apart.
Whereas the bonding and, and this is, you know, that like
adoption one O 1, like we, you know, we didn't get that with
our, with our first mothers, right?
We didn't get held immediately. We didn't, we didn't breast get
breastfed. We didn't, we didn't get the
skin to skin contact. And so it can become really hard
to form significant bonds with people without having that early
experience. And it took me fully into my 30s
to start to differentiate between the two, you know, and I
was attached unhealthily to a lot of people and a lot of
things, but didn't have the necessary bonds for successful
relationships. So I, I would say that the
differentiation for me is about like the bonding is about it
ties into authenticity, right? Like, I think, you know, as I've
come more into myself, I have been able to create successful
bonds in my relationships because I'm no longer hiding and
I'm no longer afraid and and I can take up space.
Yeah, that's huge. So in the book you say as a
society we struggle with the idea that adoption is traumatic.
Why do you think that is? Because, you know, Western
society, the United States, we like a happy ending, right?
We like the Disney story and we don't, we don't have space in
our culture for, for grief. We don't have space in our
culture for anything that doesn't feel neat or tidy.
It those those kinds of things are too hard.
And so, you know, just based on my personal experience, you
know, also my academic and intellectual training, you know,
like I see it in the literature, but I see it like in media that
we don't like, nobody talks about trauma, right?
And like, nobody wants to like, look at the dark side of things,
which is that when you separate a baby and its mother, like
there's irreparable damage there, right?
But we don't, we're not going to talk about that because it's
uncomfortable. And, and I think really the, the
reason I wrote that and the reason I think that that, that
this to be true is that we people don't like being
uncomfortable, right? We like to stay comfortable.
And I say we meaning like in general, right?
Like, but for me, like we don't grow by staying comfortable and,
and so much of my own journey and so much of my own healing
has, has come from being really fucking uncomfortable, you know,
and having some really uncomfortable conversations,
really difficult conversations and like getting through them
and realizing, OK, this isn't going to kill me.
I'm not, I'm not dead. I'm not dying.
I might feel like I'm dying, right?
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For me, I feel like if someone finds out through conversation,
you know, somewhere that I'm adopted.
It's almost like, let's change the subject really quick.
We don't want to talk about that, you know, that that might
that might make you uncomfortable, meaning me
uncomfortable. But really it's like, no, I want
to talk about it and I, you know, ask me questions.
I don't get offended. To me, that's educating people,
you know, and you know, I've had a lot of people be like, oh,
wow, thank you for putting, you know, putting that perspective
on it. I never thought of it that way,
you know, Yeah, I think people really do get uncomfortable, and
they're just like, OK, well, you have great parents, so you're
OK. Right.
Next subject. Right.
It turned out OK, right? Next subject.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the same reason people don't want to
talk about race, right? Yeah.
They don't they and I mean, you know, partly if they don't maybe
don't, maybe don't know the questions to ask or have the
context right and and they're. You know, even in grief, when
someone passes, you know, a lot of times the person who had the
loved one pass, they want to talk about that person and and
everyone else is like, well, I don't want to bring him up
because it's going to make her sad when really they want to
talk about it, you know. But yeah, I think a lot of it is
we just don't know what to say. You know, it's a lot of it.
We talked about or you talked about how adoption is Trot you
some superpowers that you had. Talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, I mean, I, I have developed an extraordinary
amount of empathy, you know, I mean, I might adopt these
superpowers, you know, being really empathetic.
I'm really good at reading people and rooms and energy and
knowing just just knowing things about situations and about
people and, and being able to kind of feel my way through
things. It I'm also a really good holder
of space for other people. I'm not always good at holding
space for myself. It's the thing I'm working on,
right, because we're always in works in progress.
And I always remind myself of that, you know, and it's because
I, over the course of my life have, you know, I grew up with a
brother with a disability. I'm, I'm adopted and I have
always had to be the chameleon in the room, right, to be able
to fit into any situation. I did theater for a long time,
which was the other sort of lifeline besides writing that
really helped me. And, and those, those are all
skills that helped me to form this extraordinary ability to be
in community with other people and feel their feelings and, you
know, have insights into sort of the human experience that a lot
of other people don't have. Yeah, I think that, I mean, why
don't we go through anything hard is, you know, to learn and
grow and find out what gifts that brings because they, I
think, I think everything that you go through does become a
superpower if you can kind of shift that mindset and look at
it a little bit differently. What do you hope that people
gain from this book? I, I really want people who read
the book and use it as a tool to gain some insight into
themselves, to gain some power and agency over their stories in
order to find a greater sense of wholeness.
You know, I want them to find healing and healing, you know,
is one of those words that we talk a lot about these days,
especially in the adoptee community.
And what is healing? And you know, what does it mean?
And, and can we heal even, and, and I think it's a really
individual experience, right? Because what healing looks like
for me looks very different for you, Melissa, right, like, and
for every other person. And so we we have to think about
healing as an individual experience.
And so that's why I, you know, use the term migrating toward
wholeness because maybe healing doesn't feel like the right word
for you. But maybe a greater sense of
wholeness is the healing journey, right?
To find a greater sense of wholeness through the stories
that you are able to tell through the insights that you
are able to gain by doing the writing exercises in the book.
And by connecting, I mean, so much of the work that I've laid
out in, in the book and also the work that I do in my small
groups and, and one-on-one coaching with adoptees is about
making a deeper connection, a deeper connection to ourselves
so that we can more deeply connect to other people.
And they're, they're, you know, when and when we do that, we
become a little bit more whole and a little bit more authentic,
you know, and sort of like the Velveteen Rabbit, right?
Like we become real even if we're rubbed a little bit bare
in some places. Yeah, well, we met on Beth
Cybersyn's healing database. We had a meeting and that's
where I met you and you kind of did a short little quick
workshop with us. And I don't consider myself a
writer or that that really helps me.
But I was like that exercise that you did taking home and
taking each letter and like making a sentence.
I just found it on a sticky note the other day because I don't
know about you, but my desk, I have like a stack sticky note.
So like, I need to go through these.
And I was like, oh, that's a thing I wrote from your prompt,
you know, from when we met. And I was looking at it and I
was like, wow. I mean, I was like blown away by
what I wrote. Just in 5 minutes, you know,
I'll try and read it. So you take HOME and you write a
sentence. So I put home is me, myself and
I only. I am home, my only true
authentic refuge. Enter with compassion and
kindness. And I was like, wow, I wrote
that. And that, you know, I still
think about when I look at that, just those one, you know, 4
lines, how deep I could go with each one.
And I think that's kind of what you were saying to do, you know,
now look at that one line and then go deeper with it and keep
writing. So just as such a simple
exercise and the more I look at it, the more I see the depth of
each each line that I wrote. So that was so cool for someone
who was is not really consider themselves a writer, you know,
So I just kind of wanted to share that with you, but kind of
come into an end here. Talk about your award-winning
solo show and Mothered and your migrating toward wholeness.
Work with adoptees. Yeah.
So Unmothered came out of my dissertation, I had the really
fortunate experience of going to a grad program that was really
interested in both creativity and social justice and making us
scholar practitioners so that we, you know, had the
theoretical knowledge for whatever it was we were
exploring, but that we could do something with it out in the
world. And so, so both both these parts
of my work are connected to that.
So Unmothered. I originally wrote and performed
as part of my dissertation, which was Unmothered.
A story of adoption and patriarchy.
An auto ethnography. Auto ethnographic narrative.
I don't even know dissertation titles.
Right. Anyway, auto ethnography was the
research method, embodied performance was the other
research method, and it was really about using personal
storytelling and performance as vehicles for social change and
empathy building to get people to think differently about
adoption by by putting myself into in in to conversation with
an audience through the lens of my story.
And so unmothered is is a really deeply personal exploration of
all of my early write, not all of my early, but lots of my
early writing there. The, the, the show itself is
then I would say the narrative thread is really the poems.
That's kind of the narrative thread and the emotional glue
are all of these poems. Because I went back through my
poems and used them to create a sort of timeline and A and a,
you know, a map of different parts of my story.
And then I linked them together with with some narrative text
and it has evolved a little bit over time.
The original production was about an hour and a half long.
It was the story I needed to tell at the time.
And then I took a couple of years break because COVID and we
all did. And then I revised it and
restaged it with the help of my brilliant and beautiful partner,
Jeremy Sortor, who is just, you know, a really beautiful life
partner, but also a really beautiful creative partner.
And he, he helped me, he has helped me through the entire
process of, of, of staging it using Fitzmaur's voice work,
which is a trauma informed breath and body practice for
actors. And we used that as part of our
rehearsal process to work on the text and to figure out, you
know, the, the, the, the movement, you know, which is not
necessarily choreographed, but it is, you know, it is an
integral part of the, of the show.
And then we, you know, sort of looked at the the script again
ahead of going to the United Solo Theater Festival in at the
end of 2022 and did some judicious cutting and, you know,
rework the script a little bit to, to kind of organize the
story in, in the way that it could be told now.
And I performed it at the end of 2022 at the United Solo Theatre
Festival in New York. And I won best autobiographical
show. And I'm super proud of that.
And since then, I have continued to perform it in various places.
I was part of Operation Fog Lift for a a short time and got to
perform it in New York City. Just recently performed it for
the adoptive and the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of
New York's annual conference. And that was a really, really
cool experience to be part of and just a powerful audience to
get in front of because there were so many adoptive parents
there who needed to see it, right?
Who needed to be able to wow what?
Was their feedback from them on? Yeah, they people were so many
people thanked me for doing what I do and for, for telling my
story in the way that I tell it, for helping them understand
their kids better. And, you know, and, and for the
adoptees that have seen it, there's, you know, like we
started this conversation right where you said you read the book
and you felt so validated. People that's that have seen my
my show tell me like, Oh my God, you just put words to all of the
things I have felt my whole life.
Now I can start to talk about them because you you said it
right. And that's the point of that,
right. And so like having the ability
and that's the the other superpower I have right words is
being able to find the words to to say the things right.
And, and it's because it was silenced for so long and I
finally was like, you know what, F this, I have to get this out.
And because my, you know, undergraduate degree is in
theater and I have a background as a performer, It felt like a
really natural progression when I was thinking about what
ultimately my dissertation was going to be like, what am I
going to do? And I was like, oh, what if I
write a one woman show, you know, and I did and, and it has,
you know, it is, I'm so glad I did because it's, it's such an
important gift and tool. You know, it's a gift to other
adoptees who may not have the words to explain the things,
but, you know, for, for for us to be seen and heard and
validated to begin to tell the stories.
And, and you know, and that's also really where the the
migrating toward wholeness is, is the other outgrowth of all of
that work is recognizing that I had been using writing for so
many years to manage all of these really intense emotions.
And then knowing that there was a whole field in which
therapeutic writing was is proven to have mental and
physical health benefits. Likewise, specifically poetry
can be really therapeutic. And so I started, you know, so
part of my dissertation work is connected to that as well.
But when I after I graduated, I was work, I had have been
connected with the right adoption Research Institute
since 2019 when I was part of their summer research program.
And so I've and I've maintained that really wonderful
relationship. And they were doing a year long
virtual conference about adult adoptees and they were like, we
want you to be part of this because our other one got
cancelled. And I was supposed to have
performed an ex excerpt from Unmothered, but that didn't
happen. And we had to shift because of
online. And they were like, let's let's
have these conversations, let's talk about it.
And they were really interested in my writing and healing work.
They were like, we're really interested in this.
Can you do something with that? And I was like, yeah, sure.
And then it evolved into what is now, you know, what is now the
pilot of Migrating toward Wholeness, where I brought
together a group of 11 adult adoptees, all varying, you know,
if ages from 20s to 60s. And we spent seven weeks
together writing. And it was a very emergent
process. And I, you know, I didn't have
like, here's the series of prompts that we're going to use.
I, I, I just kind of intuitively came into that space and decided
that it, it was going to be driven by the conversations that
we had and what was coming up from our personal stories.
And what, that seven weeks, you know, what unfolded in that
seven weeks was then the process that I have outlined in the
book. And then the final chapter of
the book actually goes into a little bit more depth about that
original group and, and sort of pays homage to those folks who
really laid the groundwork for the the work that I'm now
continuing to do using this process that that that they
trusted me to develop with them. That's awesome.
Wow. So in closing, what do you want
struggling adoptees to know? I want you to know that it gets
better and that there are there. There is help if you, if you, if
you look for it, you know that there are those of us out there
that are that are here to connect with you, to be life
lines. I want them to know that they
can reach out to me at any time. I, I, I would tell people I
think of me as a resource and a, and a, and a connection point.
I people e-mail me all the time and they're like, hey, and then,
you know, we either have these long e-mail conversations or we
get on Zoom and they're like, can we connect, you know?
And, and yeah. And I, I want adoptees to know
that wherever you are, it's OK. And that if you're feeling
really lost or really confused or like there isn't any hope,
please reach out. Yeah.
Because there's lots of us here in this community that are here
to to hold you. Yeah, well, just like you were
saying with the writing and the acting, when you were in the
depths of, you know, whatever you were going through as a
teenager, you know, just trying to survive, those things helped
you. And then those became your
superpowers and helped you develop what you're doing today
and finding so much joy in doing and sharing with all of us.
So I just want to thank you for coming on the show today, Liz.
And where can we find you in your book and whatever you're up
to next? Yeah, easiest way to find me and
what's going on next is my website, which is super easy,
Liz debeta.com. You can also find me on Facebook
Doctor Liz Debeta is my page or Instagram Doctor Liz dot Debeta.
OK, well, all of that will be in the show notes, so if anyone
wants to get in touch with Liz, look there for that.
And listeners, just thanks for joining us today.
As always, take what you need and leave what you don't.
And always remember to mind your own karma and I will see you
next time. This podcast is created for
educational purposes by the telling of adoption experiences.
The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the
host or Mind Your Own Karma.