Hey there. It's Melissa.
Brunetti and welcome to the mind your own Karma podcast.
Hey, their karma crew, thanks for joining me on another week
of mind. Your own Karma.
I have a special guest today. She is an adoptee and she
contacted me as a fan of mind, your own Karma.
And I talked her into coming on the show and telling her story.
Let me tell you a little bit about Christine famous.
Christine is a mother of three and a grandmother of seven.
She was born and adopted in De and grew up with a younger
brother who was also adopted. She works in the medical field
and love showing empathy and caring to her patients.
I hope you're ready to enjoy Christine story.
Christine, welcome to the show. Hey there.
How are you? I'm good.
I'm so glad you're coming on today.
Thank you. Ma'am.
Going to jump right in. And let's start with what, you
know, about the circumstances of your adoption, okay?
I was born in Florida and adopted by a couple in Florida,
but my birth mother and all the rest of my birth family is in
Maine. So as far as what I can gather
my birth mother and father were having an affair, he was
married. And for whatever reason, she
doesn't want to share with me, she was going to give away the
baby. So, I don't know how she ended
up going all the way to Florida, but she did.
And I was adopted by a couple in their early 30s.
Who gave me a great last name? Yeah, they did My adoptive
father did not want children. He's very blunt about that.
He ended his first marriage because the woman that he was
married to wanted children and he did not.
So, I don't know what my adopted mother did to make him change
his mind. But they ended up adopting two
kids. I was the first one and then
five years later. They adopted my little brother
Curtis. Okay.
So somehow she talked him into. Yeah.
Adopting kids so they can have kids or would did they just want
to adopt? She couldn't have kids.
Okay, but she definitely wanted kids and I don't know whether
they discussed it before their marriage or not, but they were
married for about three years. And before they adopted me.
Okay so what was it? Like growing up in your adoptive
family, then over the Dynamics of that it was not very
pleasant. I've don't have any kind of
memories about. I wasn't physically abused.
My parents barely spanked Me, My adoptive father, never spanked
me, but my adopted mother was very adamant.
That I do things the way she wanted them so she would, you
know, give her ideas, her views, her opinions on life were the
way I should be, you know, it was like she had a little doll
that you was going to mold or whatever.
I don't know what she expected. Adopting, a baby would be but I
guess she thought she was going to get a little doll that would
grow up. Just like her and like all the
things that she liked and wanted to do all the things that she
wanted it do. Do as she specifically, they
picked us out because I had brown hair and brown eyes, just
like her. Hmm.
And then, when they adopted my little brother, they picked out
a little boy, that had blonde hair and blue eyes, like my
adopted Dad, okay? So it sounds like your mom was
the one that was Hands-On. And was your dad?
Like, not really Hands-On with you guys as kids.
No, he wasn't. We did a lot of activities but
we did Activities that they wanted to do as adults.
My parents always had boats. And so on the weekends, we would
go out on the boat. We would stay for the whole
weekend, cruise, and up, and down, up and down, up and down
up and down. And I mean, we got to go
swimming and we had our own little rubber Zodiac boat.
We could take that and, you know, go off on her own, but and
I played Sports and all that kind of stuff.
But my parents had a lot of money.
Money a lot of money and it wasn't like share the wealth.
You know, it wasn't like, oh, well, if you do chores, will
give you x amount of that kind of stuff.
It wasn't like that. And you know, when I was growing
up, I was very much when I learned the term in the fog.
Looks like that is so literal, it is so accurate and so literal
because I can remember like snapshots of my childhood but
It's just like little bits and pieces here and there and then I
had a lot of surgery on my head too.
So I don't know if my memory Oddities are from that or from
adoption. Trauma or both.
But it was just there. Literally was like, the whole
first half of my life was in a fog.
It's I really can't describe it. When did you like, you don't
have any memory problems now. It was just Oh no, I definitely
have memory problems. I can't remember what color
underwear, but as far as remembering back, I don't
remember a whole lot of my childhood.
I remember mostly things that were either extremely extremely
happy or extremely bad you want to share any of those.
Well I mean I remember what do I remember?
I remember always, you know, my parents have family and we would
always go see the family. I remember my grandmother, my
maternal grandmother very vividly because she lived until
I was 22, and she was very Hands-On with me in the
summertime. I would go up to Baltimore and
stay with her for a week or two before my parents came up and my
cousin, who's a You're older than me.
He lived up there. It was my uncle's son and his
parents got divorced when he was like seven.
So he stayed with my grandmother, a lot of the time
while she kept him when he got out of school and stuff.
So we would go up there and hang around a lot and I think that's
why I love Baltimore so much because that's where all my, if
I had to put a finger on happy memories, that would be where
they all originated from. Hmm.
That your mom's mom or dad's mom my mom's in Bombay.
Yeah. My dad's mom passed away when I
was five. And I mean, it's like, I kind of
remember things, but it's mostly what people told me happened,
you know? Yeah.
I remember sitting on the sink, in the kitchen, because my dad's
mom, she like, very old-fashioned every day.
She was baking with biscuits and bread and all that.
And I remember sitting on the sink, on the countertop, you
know, H everywhere. Helping her make biscuits sounds
like you had some good memories though to?
Yeah. Am I?
My mother's mother. She always took us to Ocean City
to the beach every summer and she would come down to our house
in the wintertime and stay for two or three months because she
loves swimming. And so she would come down and
stay and I'll just always take me swimming.
I love swimming too. Yeah, so looking back.
How do you see adoption affecting you as a child or a
teen? Now that you're looking back as
a child, I can't say too much because, you know, I went along
with that whole party line. Your mom couldn't give you a
good life. So she wanted you to have what
she couldn't give you blah blah blah.
And like I said my parents you know I was able to play sports I
did Ballet and they had boats. I had my own boat for a while.
So as a child I didn't seem like adoption was too much of a bad
thing, but when I was like 12 or 13, My adoptive father did tell
me that he didn't want kid that he didn't want to specifically
told me that he did not want to adopt us.
So that was kind of like right between adolescence and starting
to like, boys and all that kind of stuff.
And so that just kind of threw me for a loop because all the
things that I enjoy doing before that time, I put all those to
the side and started focusing on finding somebody that wanted me.
And when My adoptive mother had the birds and the bees talk with
me, she made it very plain to me that sex and love were all one
thing and that they were between a husband and a wife.
A mommy and a daddy. And that was look.
And it was all tied up in one, nice neat, little package.
So that's what I was looking for now.
Right? So, how did that conversation go
with your dad? Like how did that even come up
that he would say that he was giving me a ride home from
school one day and we stopped at Hardee's to have a snack before
dinner because dinnertime in our house was 8:30 if we were Lucky,
really late. So we stopped to get something
to eat and I don't remember how it came up, but I just remember
that. I was sitting in that heart,
he's on East Ocean Boulevard, and that's where he told me that
he didn't want us or he initially had not wanted us so
it, did you say anything to him or like, or even shocked?
I can't remember. Yeah.
I really just remember that. Yeah.
And like I said, I mean, you could just draw a line in the
sand where my life completely became different.
Mmm. I mean I just smoking weed all
the time every single day and you know, Boy The Boy, The Boy,
The Boy The Boy just always trying to find a boyfriend
because I always wanted I felt like I had to be in that.
Nice neat little relationship package that my adopted mother
described to me because that's how you get somebody to love
you. You know, hmm.
So yeah. Unfortunately, yeah.
So after your dad said that you started seeing boys and smoking
weed, I was after that. Yes, yeah, yes up until that
point I was still like going to pool parties and running around
with my best friend down by the river and riding horses, and all
that kind of stuff. And it would just all that
stuff. Just gone at that.
Did you ever think about your birth mom and did you ever feel
that abandonment yet? No, I didn't really feel
abandonment. I just felt like I used to
always say, if anybody asked me, if I wanted to look for my birth
mother, I would always say, I would be interested in writing
her a letter just to let her know how I turned out and let
her know that. You know, she made the right
choice and I had a good life and I you know, I never went It
hungry and all that kind of stuff.
I always had place to live and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. So I really like I said, was
just following the adoption party line.
Mmm. Yeah.
So you hadn't even made that correlation about your birth mom
yet and then your nope. They're adopted.
Dad says that to you. Yeah.
And then yeah things kind of start going sideways.
So how, as an adult, did you see that?
Same scenario, just keep playing out.
Well, I got out of their house as quick as I could.
I found somebody that was dumb enough to get me pregnant so
that I could get married and get out of their house when I was
17. And again, going back to that,
you know, nice neat little package.
That was told to me that that's the way to go.
That's what I was aiming for and that's not the way it worked out
because the Person that I married was completely in
another culture and another Financial setting, you know,
just everything was different and it wasn't going to be, you
know, this neat little package where I cooked breakfast lunch
and dinner and clean the house and had the baby and you were
going to go out and bring home the bacon.
It didn't work out that way. But that was what I was taught
that life was and yeah, I was very naive.
So yeah. You ever, you ever remember
being told that you were adopted when you were a kid or yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They my mother her made up this
little bedtime story and so she told me, I forgot that meant to
tell you that earlier, she told me that before we even knew what
she was talking about. She would tell us this little
bedtime story when we were going to sleep about how the mommy and
the daddy couldn't have a baby. And so they went to the adoption
agency to see. Mrs. Brown and you know, mrs.
Brown showed them this, beautiful little baby da da da
and you know, and I was just thinking about this the other
day. One of the things that was in
the little story that I always remember her being, so adamant
about was when we walked into the room and saw you laying rest
of it, you just set your eyes on your dad and you just would not
take your eyes off of him. You just loved him, loved him.
And I think about that now. And I think about was she saying
that? Because because she knew that he
wasn't like 100% on board, or I don't know for his benefit,
maybe. Yeah, to make it seem like, oh,
look at this baby. She loves you already Chuck's,
right? Yeah.
So going back to adulthood I know you were telling me
previously about your last relationship and how you saw
some things that may be correlated to adoption in that
relationship? Yes, I've always had problems.
I don't know if you'd call them attachment issues, but I had
problems feeling, you know, like my ex-husband, we were together
a long time and he was my first boyfriend in high Cool.
But he always told me how much he loved me.
Blah blah. And I may not say I love you
too, but I wasn't like feeling it.
You can hear something and you can know that somebody means it,
but that doesn't mean you feel it.
So the last relationship I had was about eight and a half years
and With that person, that's like the only time that I've
ever felt. Felt it in my life that I felt
but I felt somebody loving me and I felt myself loving them
but I grew up being a great liar, and I just, I can't
remember a time when I did not lie.
I've heard and read that. That's a very defensive measure
protective measure that we use to keep ourselves safe.
And like I said, not remembering a whole lot of my childhood.
I don't know if I didn't feel safe, but it's possible that I
didn't. So I did.
A lot of lying. And I felt like I always had to
have a safety net a backup, which would be in the guise of a
friend. But you know, I that's something
that I've always needed because you know my birth mother gave me
up and then My adoptive father didn't really want me even
though I grew up thinking he did and then You know boys
boyfriends. Nothing was permanent.
You know, nothing was permanent so that backup solution always
had to be there because if I don't then I don't have somebody
that wants me. You think that was you or them?
Me. Me and I mean, just like in any
relationship he was not perfect, he had issues too, but I was the
one who would have taken my lies to the grave and in the last
year and a half or two years. As I started stepping out of the
fog, I started looking at all that and acknowledging that and
I did spend a few months talking with him after a year and a half
of no contact and tried to come clean.
Tried to discuss the issue. Shoes that I'm going through and
that I went through and then I put him through and it just
wasn't. There was no resolution that we
could get out of it. So mmm, but it's a life lesson.
It's, it's a life lesson, you know.
I wish there was like a magic age like oh when you turn 28,
you're going to come out of the Fog.
Because, you know, that's a long time to 50 years is a long time
to be living in denial and not facing reality and not facing
your fears and your hurts. Yeah.
And I know that you had talked about collateral damage, mmm and
so, you know, I wish there was only 28 years of collateral
damage instead of 50. But it's okay because the more I
step out and the more things clear and the more I examine
things turn them over, look at them, hold them, you know?
Pull them apart then the more positive my Outlook becomes.
Yeah that's so true. I mean at least you come out of
the fog at 50 and you weren't in there any longer than that right
no it seems like the the normal age that people start coming out
of the fog is around 40 and 50 when you have what they call the
midlife crisis, but I like to call it the midlife Awakening.
Yeah. I've A few episodes where, you
know, there were people who were in their 20s.
Hmm 20:23 28 maybe early 30s and I've always tried to never have
regrets but that's like one thing that I really really wish
that would have hit me a little bit earlier.
Yeah I think just having these conversations and getting our
stories out there is going to help people come out of the The
fog quicker, you know? Yeah.
So did you search for your biological family?
I wanted to search for my biological mother.
When I was in my 30s, I contacted Children's Home
Society which is the agency that I was adopted through and their
search fees were like astronomical to me, $500.
Dollars for the first three hours of searching and then an
additional hundred and fifty dollars for every hour after
that. And of course 1971.
Yeah. Who knows where that box was?
Dang. That was back then.
That's what they're charging. Well this was in the 2000s so in
the 2000's. Yeah, but thing was on computer,
it was all in podcast and stuff so I could just imagine stuff
sitting in a base. Somewhere.
Yeah so I what I did was I kept my contact information up to
date with them just in case she came looking.
For me I went to there was a couple internet sites and stuff
that I put my name in my thing on but I never really got any
hit until I was 42 and when I was 42, I came home real late.
One night I had been out of town.
And I took my mail out of my mailbox and I saw the letter and
I knew right away what it was, because they had no other reason
to contact me from Children's Home Society.
Mmm, so I didn't even make it into my apartment.
I said on the steps right and opened up the like cuz I've been
waiting and waiting for this, you know, and really it was only
10 years ago now that I think about it.
But so my birth his mother and I were in contact, they let me
know that she wanted to talk to me.
So I had to provide an email address and then we were allowed
to email each other for a while until we were able to exchange
personal contact information. So, we were in reunions for a
few years and she refused to tell me.
She told me that I had six siblings.
Wow, my biological father had passed away about eight years
before she contacted me. But I had six siblings for from
his first marriage and two from his third marriage and I was
very, very excited at that, but that was it.
She snapped that shut so quick. She didn't want to tell me the
name. She told me that all of this and
everybody was located in Massachusetts.
Not main I guess to throw me off because she was a paralegal, all
her life. And I you know I asked her
several times to please give me their name and she refused.
So, So after about three years of, you know, talking to each
other and we did meet once in person, she cut me off because I
told her that I was going to go ahead and search on my own.
Wow, and she called me evil and all kinds of stuff so that was
it. Did she tell you who your father
was? No, she would give no
identifying information. As a matter of fact, from the
time she gave me up, she put on my non-identifying sheet that I
was Italian, that he that his family was all first generation
Italian and they're not, they're all Irish.
I'm Irish and English. What was her reason for
contacting you. If she wasn't going to give you
any information or I don't know she We met for lunch one time.
She drove down and she's my daughter and I were living in
Baltimore at the time. My oldest daughter and my oldest
daughter, and my grandson. We went and had lunch with her
down at the harbor and she shook my hand.
It was very weird. It was not like on TV.
No, I was gonna say, wasn't the Disneyland right.
Like on Oprah where they're running across this.
Yeah, she shook my hand. She sat across from me in the
booth. She did allow my daughter to
take a few pictures of her, but she didn't want to take any
pictures of the two of us. Weird.
I can't figure out why she even wanted to contact you.
I feel like she wanted to assuage whatever guilt she might
have had lingering and guilt or whatever.
I don't know. I don't know why she I don't
know why she bothered either. Maybe she told me that she had
three sisters and that I had a bunch of cousins and stuff but
again, no name, no location. So nobody still Nobody knew
about you still. Well, they did know about me.
No, they did. They knew about me all along.
She told them, she told her sisters and my cousins that she
had contacted me and I wanted nothing to do with her or any of
them. Wow.
How did you find that out? Well about, I'd say about four
years ago. My oldest daughter.
Did ancestry.com, and I had already done 23andMe, but I
didn't really get any hits. There were a couple people that
were like second cousins, but they actually were my first
cousins. But you know, how the ancestry
things come back? Yeah.
So she got her results, and she was so excited.
She said, Mama my, I have all these people on my family thing,
and their name is Bailey and I thought that it was her aunt.
Tim's her aunt was married to a guy named.
Last name was Bailey, and they all were from Jamaica and I
thought that was all them. Mmm.
Nope. She said their white people so
they were the two people were my brothers and she had jumped
right into a group chat with them and brought me in on the
group chat. And now all the sudden I'm
talking to two of my brothers. That's crazy.
How did that go? It went.
Well, the two brothers were Dale and Bob, and Bob is the oldest
one and Bob is the one that has been the most embracing.
Also my younger sister, Delta. I met her.
And I met Bob both of them last summer.
Hmm and so there are three others, my youngest sister
passed away. She was An accident when she was
14. So her name was Shana so there's
four others that I haven't met yet.
Three for something. Like, there's a lot of floating
around, are you in contact? Well, the, the one brother Dale.
We message each other, every once in a while, we're friends
on Facebook and that kind of stuff, there's family reunions
every year in August and I'm going up for that.
I missed it last year because I went, I was there the weekend
before. Now, this year, I'm going with
Without for grandkids and toe myself, good idea.
But it was just you know I my brother gave me his address,
they knew I was coming, they knew I was bringing for little
kids and it was just like they'd known me their whole life.
There was just no question about, you know oh well your mom
is happy there with our dad BlahBlah.
You know, we're all adults and, you know, maybe maybe for some
of them that would be an issue. I was thinking yesterday, when I
was out for a ride, what it would have been, like, if I had
grown up there and you know, we were all kids, then they might
have hated me. Made fun of me.
Beat me up picked on me cuz we probably would have went to the
same school and everything. No, wow.
Yeah. Are you, the Oldest or know
there are four. It's Bob, Rhonda, Ray and Dale.
They're older than me. And then, Delta and Shana are
younger than me. So I'm like right in the middle
there. So he had an affair with your
mom during that first marriage. Where the, for kids during the
first second and third marriages, with your mom through
all of those? Yes.
Oh my gosh, because my younger Sisters mom told me that her
older sister, who was the first wife and the second wife would
go to my mother's house, to see if he was there to see if the
car was there. Oh wow.
So slight, it's very Jerry, Springer s but you were their
only child together. As far as I know, I'm as far as
I know, she's never had any other children.
She never got married. Okay.
Okay, you were her only child and all these other brothers and
sisters are from your dad. Yes, yes, wow.
Yeah, but it's just even even my aunt, who is my younger sisters,
mom has, you know, made me feel very welcome.
You know, she told me, she said you are kids, even though you're
adults now, you were kids. Yeah, you had no hand in what he
was doing, what they were. Doing, you know she said you
guys it's it's no reflection on any of you also, you don't ever
feel like you know and I did felt that way for a long time
because when I found out that my birth mother had gone to
Florida, to give me up to go back up there and keep carrying
on with him. Kind of made me feel even more
like shit man. Oh my gosh that's crazy.
Yeah so did your adoptive Family.
But they, your mom and dad alive.
When that letter came, how did they react to the reunions?
If they were? Um, I was living him.
Well, yeah, we were all living in Baltimore.
I was living in a separate place, but they knew about it.
They said they didn't care. I mean, they were, I guess they
were happy for me. They didn't really say either
way. They've never really been.
They have their opinionated, but it's their own opinions, they
don't care really What's going on with?
So they didn't really have a preference of you like not
finding anyone or, oh, no giving you that Vibe.
No, they never gave me that Vibe at all.
It never seemed like it was secretive or that it was
something shameful or that I shouldn't do it.
And never, you know, discipline me or talk down to me when I
talked about wanting to even contact her when I was younger.
Yeah. So, did you have a good
relationship with your adoptive brother?
Um, no, no. I was so angry all the time.
It didn't matter what I was doing.
It didn't matter if I was playing softball or if I was at
my friend's house I just always had this simmering Lowdown,
hush-hush anger. And I used to beat the crap out
of my brother for no reason whatsoever until he got big
enough. F2.
But, you know, I've talked to my daughter about my oldest
daughter about this too, because I know that when my oldest
daughter was a baby, she would get upset.
I mean, kids get upset, they get upset, they cry, whatever.
I would just lose my mind yelling and cursing at her, you
know, two years old. You know, shut up.
No, just where did you think this came from the anger?
I'm assuming now that it's because she was a little kid,
and I think that when I looked at her, that I was looking at me
and I think that when I looked at my little brother, I was
looking at me, Hmm, I don't know.
That's something that I need to go further with because I'm in
the process of getting myself back into therapy.
I did work with an adoptee therapist.
How's that been a couple years ago?
I did experience. That was great.
Oh good. Yes, it was because that was
right when I first started coming out of the fog and she
gave me A lot of tips on. you know, when we, when we start
realizing that we have pains and traumas and stuff that we need
to take care of It can be so overwhelming and it's, you know,
in the last year that I wasn't in therapy, it was very
overwhelming to me. And I was not thinking of a lot
of the tips and the tricks that she had given me the tools that
she had given me too. Deal with things to prioritize
things and to piece them out, you know, one of the things that
she told me was, you know, you have to pick a time, not a time,
when you're sad, not a time when you're down in the dumps, not in
the time when you're weepy. But a time when you're feeling
strong, when you're feeling happy, you're feeling on top of
things. You need to grab a pen and a pad
and you need to write down everything that you can think
of. That is a hurt to you.
That you feel like you need to deal with because once you have
those things separated, they can't gang up on you anymore.
Hmm. Like my grandmother.
She was like the fame. Most famous for old saying, she
had old saying for everything. And and I do that too.
I love all kinds of old weird quirky saying and my favorite
saying is, you can't see the forest for the trees.
I think that that is just goes hand in hand with this tool for
separating these problems out because if we feel depressed, if
we're feeling like we want to drink or we want to smoke or we
want to chase after somebody to so they can make us feel loved.
you get yourself wallowing in all that stuff and when you're
wallowing and all that stuff, it can gang up on you but It only
takes three or four steps, sometimes their steps backward,
sometimes they're steps forward, sometimes, they're just moving
to the side a little bit, but all that stuff.
You get into the forest and the trees are all around you.
The sun light can't shine in and it's dark and dank and
everything is just there. And if you can just take, just a
few steps and step outside of the forest, it just changes your
whole perspective. Active the forest might be
pretty big. It might go for miles.
Yeah. But you can see that it has a
beginning and somewhere there's an end.
You can see that it's dark in there, but the sun is still
shining. You can see things in a
different way, in a different light, from a different View and
it just makes it so much easier. To say, you know what, I'm going
to do this in six weeks and get yourself a calendar.
Number one, number two, number three, four, five, six.
And each week, just concentrate on that one issue because that's
what works for me. Yeah.
And since the last time you and I spoke that tool that was given
to me came back. To me.
I was thinking about it one day and because like I said, the
last year I had the breakup and you know possible
reconciliation, that's not going to happen, Okay.
I have to move on but that's something that I you know, I
gained 30 pounds I was drinking every single day and I had to
get my perspective back. I have to step out of the forest
and Count the trees and put them in order.
And now I have to start tackling them.
I heard a good analogy the other day.
Like when you take off in a plane and it's stormy and the
clouds are all black and dark and you break through those
clouds and there's still the sun and the blue sky above those
clouds. But you couldn't see it but it
was always there. Yeah.
I heard that analogy that her
dad's like that's a really good one because that, you know.
Yeah, you're still there. Your essence, your authenticity
who you really are is still in In there.
But you sometimes, like you said the trees are in the way.
You can't see can't figure out where what's the navigation
system trying to tell you where he's supposed to go.
You know, but unless you start walking, yeah, unless you start
doing something then you're really not going to get through
those trees. So right, and I know I'm not
going to say that that will work for everybody.
And I've had my own struggles with drinking and all that kind
of stuff. And I have Considered suicide
earlier in my life. But I hope that somebody else
could use that tool to just kind of put things in their place
because it's so hard. If you that pain that I have,
whatever that pain is, whatever that Hangar is still in there
and I don't think it's ever going to go away, you know, and
I come close to opening up the lid of the Box a few times on
it. And I know that it's going to be
total shit show when I open it up, but knowing that I have
school and knowing that I can take these things and deal with
them one by one that I don't have to, I don't have to jump
into them and then end up drowning in the quicksand of it.
Yeah, I mean, everybody's got their own combination.
I think it's very a very personal thing.
You know. Yeah, and that's what's great
about all these people that I interview it seems like
everybody has their little twist that they bring in.
Like that little thing that maybe like you said, get help
somebody else. So that was that's really good.
Yeah. So did something bring you out
of the fog. What what happened?
I just felt like I was waking up to, maybe it was The Break-Up or
it could have been. It could have been, was The
Break-Up losing that losing? You know what?
I feel like was my only true love.
I don't know all my life, or after I moved out of my parents
house, every time I would see My adoptive mother, it would say to
me. No matter what, we were having
lunch when we're taking the baby to the doctor.
We were going grocery shopping every single time she saw me.
The first thing she would do is comment on my hair on how
beautiful my hair is. And why do you do that to your
hair? Why do you always put this in
then put that in it and why do you always chop it off?
It's so beautiful and thick, not another that.
And for holla, It's okay, we're talking about the fog and maybe
what, triggered that and I said about your relationship, okay?
Yes. Okay, the last three or four
years, my adopted parents were living with me.
They are in their mid 80s and it has come to pass that they now
don't have a pot to piss in. Oh, wow.
Bad money management. On my dad's part I guess he
didn't put away for their future.
So no more yards. No more cars, no more house.
Nothing. So they ended up coming to live
with me in my apartment. And I don't have a TV.
I haven't had a TV in about 12 years so I do a lot of reading.
I listen to a lot of podcasts. You know, I have an apartment
but I'm mostly in my room. When they moved in with me and
TVs on 24/7, because they did bring a TV, they brought to.
As a matter of fact, my dad sleeps in the living room and
the recliner. So there's always someone there.
They took over the kitchen, they took over the dining area.
So now I'm like in my room, I'm living in my room.
Yeah. So we were in that apartment for
a year and a half and then we moved into a two-bedroom
two-bath. So I had the master bedroom.
But again, you know, I'm in the bedroom and I have my own
bathroom, but other than to come out and to cook some food or to
wash my clothes, I have known Being space and all of the
things that I had already all the things that I knew, but
never really affected me. All of a sudden were affecting
me, and maybe that maybe The Break-Up does have a lot to do
with it. But I think that it was just
that they were so in my face now and in my space.
Yeah, I had no choice but to interact with them every single
day and it got to the point where my mother is.
I just didn't even want. I want her to talk to me.
I didn't want her to say hi to me.
Nothing because her voice was just like, nails on a
chalkboard. Yeah, it's all that repressed,
the repressed feelings and things that you want to say.
And the thing is with them, I've tried talking to them over the
years. I've tried talking to them, even
before I came out of the fog, I tried talking to my dad about
what he said about, you know, about not wanting kids.
And he, I don't remember saying that abla And my mother would
chime in. He never would have said
anything like that. Well, yes.
He yes, he did. And, you know, now you're just
backing him up those like right whenever I would try to address
it or try to talk to them as adults, they would just shut me
down. I'm you're crazy.
You don't know what you're talking about.
That never happened whole lot of gas lighting.
Yeah, you know, maybe when I was a kid.
Maybe my perceptions were a little altered because I was in
the fog. But now I'm 51 years old and I'm
not in the fog and I know what happened and I know what's going
on in my life and I know what you guys did and now you won't
even talk about it to me. So yeah, just I had to remove
myself from that situation. But if I have to say one thing
that would do, That would have triggered me waking up.
It would have been just that being faced with the reality
that they tried to make me live and then trying to not
necessarily throw it back in their face, but to confront them
about it and getting shut down getting a brick wall.
Yeah. It's kind of hard to talk to a
brick wall. You know.
I felt like I was doing them a favor.
I didn't feel like I owed it to them to let them live with me
and they certainly weren't living with me for free, but I
did feel that. Okay, well if we're going to
share this space together and then there are some things that
we need to. At least give me the respect to
you know let are this stuff out with me.
So did they move out on their own?
No, I moved. I left.
I left you actually. The landlord came to us.
This was two years or a year and a half ago when all this real
estate stuff started going crazy and they were offering him
ridiculous sums of money for a little mobile home, which he
never saw, but he told us that he had somebody was offering him
a hundred thousand dollars and we had to find a place to live.
And I said, well, when should we start looking?
And he said right now. So I applied for jobs with iPod
with my company in four different states and this is
where I got a great hit in South Carolina, got a promotion back
to the original job. I have with my company and I
offered for them to go with me and they declined.
And I think they knew that I didn't want them to but um, But
you know, they declined they said no will stay here?
We're too old. We don't want to move.
Blah. Blah blah.
Okay. See ya.
Yeah, you need. Not have to tell me since he was
essentially telling us get out. Yeah, nice Curry and um, he you
know he tried finding he tried to help him find a place to
live. I tried when it before I left,
but You tried to get them a place to live and they weren't
having any luck nothing that they could afford.
So and they won't live in low-income housing.
That's their their above that. So, are you out of the fog now?
Are you working? Work in progress.
I think I can like see the light out.
They're still working on it. I think that I'm out of it and
the reason I think that I'm out of It is because I can put a
number to these 123456, and before I had no clue, I was so
clueless about my whole life. And now I have things that I
know that I need to deal with, but I also know that I feel
comfortable in my skin. I feel comfortable with myself
as a person. I don't feel lost anymore.
Yeah, I still have triggers and stuff.
You know, where I feel like I'm not wanted or I don't fit in,
but But I know, I know who I am and I know that I'm a good
friend and that I'm a worthwhile person in myself.
Yeah, whether it's just me or not.
Yeah, that's great. So in closing, what is one thing
that you would like the adoption constellation to know could be
adoptees birth mothers. Adoptive parents.
What would you want any of those?
All to know about adoption. I just want a job.
These to realize that whether you found out where your issues
come from or not, we're not the some of our past our past is
something that we should learn from.
There's a lot of lessons in there.
There's a lot of lessons in mind. but just have to, it's
important to hear a multitude of stories because like you said,
Everyone has one little tidbit that's going to be for one other
person. May be halfway around the world.
But yeah the more stories do here and the more methods you
here and the more perspectives you get the more affirmation you
get ya. So tell your story.
If we don't want to tell it on a podcast, tell it to somebody you
meet at work. Since I moved up here, I've met
three young ladies that two of them that I trained that are
also adopting and they're young. They don't see any issues with
it, they're both in there very early twenties.
Hmm, and one is a transracial Korean adoptee but just tell it
to somebody. Tell it to somebody tell it to a
stranger, Yeah, because you never know who is going to
touch. But the thing is, is that the
more you listen, and the more people tell you, things about
your own life, the more affirmation you get.
Yeah, I met a young lady, I was training, a young lady last.
The last two weeks at work and she's not adopted.
She's gone through some situations with her family, you
know. And I was feeling blah, but she
said a lot of the same things, To me that you said to me a
couple weeks ago and it was just affirmation some people get
their affirmation through church.
Some people get it through support groups, through
friendship, groups, book, clubs, whatever.
But go and just talk to people because you never know who needs
to hear it and you never know who you're going to talk to you,
that has something for you to hear.
Exactly. Yeah.
In the universe never lets let you know.
Hang I mean if you're like, you said, if you'd start walking out
of that Forest the breadcrumbs will be there and it might not
be tomorrow that you're, you know, totally out of the fog and
just fine. Now it is a process and you know
and who knows if we ever truly totally heal from it but
definitely just keep walking keep walking out of there
because things Are out there for you and if you don't step out of
the forest, you're not going to you're not going to find those
things. Right?
And it really can be a blessing in disguise coming out of the
fog and talking about your stories and just getting it out.
Even just for yourself is so healing.
Not to mention what it does for other people.
Yes. And the one thing that I wanted
to say to adoptive parents or to people who are considering
During adopting. I don't know if any of them are
listening, but Start therapy now.
Counseling therapy. Whatever you want to call it.
Start it now and don't stop. Don't stop when the baby is
three months old. Don't stop when the baby is
three years old and stop when the baby is 10 or 13 years old.
Yeah, keep going because and try and find an adoption informed
therapist. Yeah.
You're not raising a puppy and you need lessons the whole way
along. Because exactly what I just had
an adoptive parent on this week on the podcast and she was
exactly said the same thing. She's like, get therapy now now.
Yeah, I know, hopefully, before you adopt because a lot of times
the adoptive parents have infertility issues or other
issues, where they can't have children.
And those are things that you have to deal with as well.
And then you just going to try and slap a Band-Aid over it with
this other child. Right.
It doesn't work, you know. So I'd like totally exactly what
she said was get therapy. Is that the woman that her son
is Joe and they have a podcast Joey?
Yeah, yes, yeah. I was listening to that the
other day that was another thing that reiterated what the young
lady at my job was saying. Yeah.
So you listen to the early ones when he was on.
Did you listen to the ones that he was honored though?
I was gonna go check. Out there podcast because I
didn't hear the ones where he was on with you.
I'm telling you, man, if you want to come out of the fog
quick, an adoptive parent. Listen to those episodes with
him on there, if they're amazing amazing.
He's so smart and just so articulate and can just help so
many adoptees. So I'm really rooting for him
right now. But yeah, go back and listen to
those early episodes. It's just crazy.
Well Christine, thank you so much for coming on the show
today. Thank you very much.
I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed getting a chance
to shed some light for somebody else.
Hopefully, thank you so much. Christine for being vulnerable
and willing to tell your story on mind your own Karma, I'm sure
there's a lot of adoptees out there that will be able to
relate to your story. Are you ready to tell your On
the podcast, if you are, please email me, mind your own Karma at
gmail.com. Let's get your story on the
podcast. Let's educate the world, one
story at a time. All of my links are in the show
notes. If you would like to find me on
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all those places they are
clickable links. So super easy to use.
If you haven't read and reviewed the podcast yet, please do so on
your listening. Form if it is allowed, it really
helps the algorithms, it helps get the word out about this
podcast and it helps educate the world about adoption.
As always take what you need and leave what you don't and always
remember to mind your own Karma. I'll see you next time.
Form if it is allowed, it really helps the algorithms, it helps
get the word out about this podcast and it helps educate the
world about adoption. As always take what you need and
leave what you don't and always remember to mind your own Karma.
I'll see you next time.