SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Adoption, Adoptive parents, Birth parents, Adoptee, Family dynamics, Identity, Grief, Belonging, Open adoption, Support groups, Mental health, Medical history, Child safety, Emotional complexity, Community support
SPEAKERS
Donna Pope, Speaker 1, Tina Gosney

Tina Gosney 00:01
Hey, welcome to coaching your family relationships: help for parents of adult children. I’m Tina Gosney, a family conflict coach and a parent educator. This is where we talk about the complexities of being a parent of adult children, and how to approach a relationship that has changed in ways that can be very confusing and might even be creating conflict in your family. Today’s episode is a conversation that I had with Donna Pope, and she is a an adoption specialist. Adoption is often talked about as an event. A child is placed with a family, papers are signed, a new family is formed. But adoption is not just a single event. It becomes part of your family story, and that story continues to unfold across the lifespan. As adopted children grow into adulthood, they might have new questions that come up: questions about identity, biological family, medical history, ancestry, belonging, and where certain parts of themselves came from. Those questions do not necessarily mean that something went wrong in the adoptive family. They simply reflect a very human desire to understand your own story. At the same time, adoption can add layers of complexity to family relationships that are really easy to underestimate. You know, the the adopted person might be carrying questions and grief, curiosity, loyalty conflicts, or a longing for information that they don’t have. Birth parents might carry their own grief, their loss, uncertainty, and complications, complicated emotions, and adoptive parents might carry fears and insecurities that are rarely talked about out loud. They might wonder, was I enough? Did I do something wrong? What does it mean if my child wants to know more about their biological family? Now, these feelings can become especially powerful when adopted children reach adulthood, and they begin looking back at their childhood maybe through a different lens, and that’s why this conversation matters. So today, this conversation is with Donna Pope. She is an adoption specialist, and she’s also an adoptive mother. We’re going to talk about what adoption can look like later in life, and how it continues to shape family relationships long after childhood. We’re going to talk about why adopted people often want to know answers about where they came from, why that curiosity should not automatically be interpreted as rejection, and how adoption adds complexity to already complicated parent-adult-child relationships. We also talk about something that I think is especially important, and that is every person involved in adoption needs their own line of support. The adopted person needs space for their own experience. Birth parents need support for theirs, and adoptive parents need somewhere to work through their grief, fear, insecurity, and feelings of inadequacy, so that those emotions don’t have to be carried by their adult child. Donna is going to share stories from both her professional work and her personal experience, and that’s going to help us to see adoption with more nuance, compassion, and curiosity. If adoption is part of your family story, whether you’re an adoptive parent, an adoptee, a birth parent, or someone who loves a family that has been touched by adoption. I think this conversation will give you a broader understanding of what might be happening underneath the surface, and most importantly, I hope that it helps you to approach these relationships with a lot more curiosity and room for everyone’s experience to matter. Here you go. Enjoy my conversation with Donna Pope. I’m so pleased today to have someone who is going to address a topic that I have never gone over in this podcast before, because I just did not feel like I have the expertise. So I’m so glad that I can welcome someone that does, and we can ask her about how adoption affects family relationships, and her name is Donna Pope. And I’m going to let her introduce herself and and let you know a little bit about her. Hi,

Donna Pope 04:11
thank you for having me, Tina. I’ve been again. My name’s Donna Pope, and I’ve been in the world of adoption for decades now, I didn’t start in adoption. I actually started as an educator, and in medicine, that was my forte. And I did medical research, but then my sister was involved in adopting. She adopted three children, and then wanted to adopt a fourth. And so I got involved in helping her find another child to adopt. Also, at the same time, I was housing birth mothers. Now, what that means is that women who are considering doing an adoption plan, oftentimes are homeless. They need to get away for whatever reason, maybe. They have some mental illness or some problems, and they just need somebody that that will provide them a home. And so, in the process of doing that, I got to know these women really well. And so, I decided, having worked with agencies, that I wanted to do an agency that would work with these women in a little different way because one of the things that bothered me is that oftentimes they were treated disrespectfully, and the the actual challenge of their situation sometimes was not recognized. Now, in adoption, you’ve got three parties: you’ve got the adoptive family that has their challenges. Many times they’ve gone through infertility. They’ve realized they couldn’t have children. They’ve gone through IVF. They’ve had failed experiences in parenting, and they have a lot of emotions and a lot of sense of loss and failure that they they bring to the situation. And then you’ve got the birth parents. You’ve got the mother who who finds herself in a situation that she can’t parent this child, and she has to make a big choice, and that is to place the child for adoption, or parent the child, or have an abortion. And so these are huge choices for her to to deal with, and then sometimes there’s the birth father who’s a part of it, and he has lots of feelings. Sometimes feelings of failure, sometimes anger, frustration that he feels powerless in the situation, and then there’s the adoptee, and the adoptee has no choices in the matter. They’re placed for adoption, and they grow up and they’re going. I didn’t choose this life, and so we’ve got these three very different groups of people that come together into the adoption scenario. And so for the last 30 years, my job has been to try to work with these three these three groups of people, now besides working with birth mothers closely, my sister adopted. I have since adopted and and raised three boys that are adopted, and so in the process of raising them, I have gotten to know both their feelings as well as talk to many many adoptees, so I see kind of the feelings of all the people around

Tina Gosney 07:26
it. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And you also run work with an organization that facilitates adoptions now,

Donna Pope 07:34
right? It’s heart to heart adoptions, and we have been around since 1998. We’re a nonprofit organization, and we provide adoption services for people throughout all the United States. We’re we’re licensed in several states, but we work within even more states than that. And we have adopted families come from everywhere. We have birth mothers who want to place children come from everywhere, and so we’ve been involved in that 1000s of adoptions.

Tina Gosney 08:06
Oh, thank you. And such a we were just speaking before we hit record about how emotional this experience can be for all parties involved. So, just holding that emotion for and and the many different stories and narratives that happen in each person’s story that you mentioned

Donna Pope 08:25
is a

Tina Gosney 08:25
difficult position that you work in and and thank you for the service that you give especially in a nonprofit. You mentioned that you’re an adoptive mother, so what do you think you’ve learned about adoption that you understand differently now than you did when you first started. Say when you helped your sister adopt her child.

Donna Pope 08:46
You know, anytime you go into anything, the longer you’re in it, the more you realize you don’t know. I remember my mom saying this. She said, “You you get knowledge. It’s kind of like when you’re young, you think you know everything, and then after a while you feel like, oh, I I know nothing. And it seems like the more you learn, the more you realize you need to learn. And I think there’s sort of a cockiness, I suppose, when you enter into parenting, or you watch people from the outside, and there’s a certain amount of judgmentalness. Well, if I did that, I would do a lot better.

Tina Gosney 09:28
Yeah.

Donna Pope 09:28
And then when you’re actually in it, you realize this is harder than I thought it was going to be. And and I think the The world of adoption is harder than I thought it was going to be. Parenting is harder than I thought it was going to be. At the same time, I can’t think of anything more valuable. I can’t think of anything more important than parenting. I can’t think of anything more important than. Helping other people to parent and helping women make these decisions, and I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve been in education, and education is important. I’ve been in medicine, and medicine’s important. But this is an area that I find is is very satisfying, but also very challenging.

Tina Gosney 10:20
Well, yeah. Do you do you find that your past work in education or medicine has come to in helpful for you as you’ve been doing this? Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Donna Pope 10:31
Absolutely. No, I was. I did medical research, particularly in an area called adult respiratory distress syndrome, and so in the process of doing that, I learned a lot about everything. I was in in the primary children’s hospital as well as in the shock trauma unit, and so I learned a lot about medicine and find that sometimes that becomes extremely important in in working in medicine in adoption, oftentimes children are born with sometimes pulmonary distress. They end up on ventilators for periods of time. A lot of times, they’re born with drug addiction, and so they need help for long periods of time, and one of the biggest challenges is that adoptive families come into these situations with all of the emotions that they have, and all the fears. And so, if they have someone who kind of can help navigate through the medical challenges that they’re faced with. I remember going to a. So this is a birth mom that, first of all, she wouldn’t go to the hospital. She refused to go to the hospital, and the reason was is because she knew that there was drugs in her system. She knew that if the the children’s safety, so the division of children’s safety was aware of it, then they would take her child, and she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want it, so she refused to go to hospital. And her sister was a nurse, and she had her sister come and she delivered the baby there in a hotel room, almost died. Had her sister not been a nurse herself, I don’t know that she would have lived because she bled quite a bit. But even then, she wouldn’t go to the hospital. And then from that position, she called me and said, “I want to choose the family that my child goes to, and that was what was the most important to her. She knew that she couldn’t parent this child, but she also knew that she wanted to have a choice in where the child went, and she wanted to have a relationship with the child. So I went and had a really hard time because she wouldn’t tell me where she was at, and she kept moving where she was at, but finally we got together, and then she needed to leave. And the reason she needed to leave is because of drugs. So she left the child with me, and there was the child was not doing well. But eventually, the next day, she gave rights to me to take the child into the hospital, and working with the hospital was a really important thing. And because I understood hospitals, that I was able to help navigate through that experience. The family came. The child ended up in the NICU for about a month, and we were able to get the birth mother and the adoptive family together, and they had a really good experience. But that was one of the things that was helpful.

Tina Gosney 13:52
Well, it sounds like everything that you’ve done in your life culminates to help you. Kind of feels that way for sure. Yeah, I also like how you mentioned a few minutes ago that you know you start out as a young person thinking that you know so much, and the more that you learn, the more you realize that you don’t know, and the more that you get involved in something, the more you realize how much there is left to learn. I think so many people can resonate that with that. I know that that’s how I’ve seen my life go as well,

Donna Pope 14:22
for sure.

Tina Gosney 14:23
Do you do you see more open adoptions, closed adoptions? Is is either one? I know closed used to be the norm. Is it has that changed?

Donna Pope 14:34
For sure, it’s absolutely changed. And you have to kind of go to the question of who do you care about the most in the adoption scenario because you’ve got these three different people. Well, we are a child placing agency, and our first priority needs to be with the child. And so then we have to ask the question: Well, what’s the best interest of the child? Well, you know the. Person that’s going to have to decide that the most is the biological mother, and then of course, hopefully, with in consultation with the biological father, because you don’t really know what’s in the best interest of the child. The mother has to kind of make that decision. But then, when you think about now, the child is placed in a home. Now, how do you best assist that child. What do they need? Well, that’s one of the things that being an adoptive parent has taught me. And what they need is answers. Sometimes they they need love, they need caring, they need all of those things. But as an adoptee, they need sometimes answers. And where do you get those answers? Well, most of the time you have to get them from the biological parents. Their medical records need to come through what, why the mother placed the child for adoption. What’s the story with the birth father? All of those things are issues that most adoptees wonder about, and you can ignore it. You could not tell them, but I don’t know that that’s in the best interest of the child to not know. Now, of course, it has to be age specific, and you have to be careful in how you present that information. But not knowing sometimes is not the best solution. So because of that, how do you get the answers? Well, hopefully, I have at least a partially open adoption with them. So one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve created what we call Hearts Connect, and it’s a sort of a mini Facebook. It’s an online way of having these these private groups that can be moderated and supported, where birth mothers and adoptive families can communicate, and then sometimes after the years go along, sometimes the child will actually want to be involved in it as well, and relationships can be supported and maintained in that way, and that seems to be a good way

Tina Gosney 17:03
to do it. Yeah, is that does that Facebook group consist of adoptive parents and biological parents, or one or the other? Both,

Donna Pope 17:10
both, both. And so, even even when a birth mother says, “I like this family, and I want to place this child, my child, with this family,” we create this little group, and then we let them start to get to know each other. And most of the time, that relationship can build. And then, of course, they get to meet each other and talk on phones. But they’ve got this this safety net of of talking to each other through this platform, and that can go on forever. We we want it to be there for years, in large part because sometimes the child may want to become involved as well.

Tina Gosney 17:50
Yeah, you know, in my life, I’ve seen that the more people that love the child and that have that child’s best interest at heart, it benefits the child. We’re talking about you know some tricky relationship dynamics with adoption, and sometimes the child might see things a little differently, especially as they grow older. Might see things a little differently than the parents did, and they might describe their childhood differently than the parent, the adopted, adoptive parents remember it being. So you know, I work a lot with parents of adult children. So, you know how, which is I see, I say that’s common without adoption too. You know, as as children get older, they see their childhood differently than their parents did. But I think adoption adds a complication. Maybe I shouldn’t say a complication. I’d say another layer of complexity on top of that narrative, you know, changing over time. How do how do you see that handled? Are you are you able to see into the future, or do you ever have relationships with families that far into the future that you see as their children become older and maybe some conflicts arise because of adoption issues?

Donna Pope 19:13
Oh, for sure, absolutely. It was funny because this weekend I was over with my brother, and he has seven boys, and they’re all doing amazing. They’re all doing amazing. And I was thinking some of the complications that my sister, who adopted, is having with her children, and that I’m having with my children. And and you know, as siblings, you always tend to compare. And first of all, we need to try to not do that because these are unique relationships that, as you said, have a layer of complexity that you don’t always find. Are they? Are my children my children? Yes, without a doubt. Are my sister’s children her children? Yes, without. A doubt, but there is some additional complications because, for one thing, they don’t. We don’t all look alike. My children don’t look like me. Her kids don’t look like her. Many adopted families. I there’s a neighbor that adopted five children, and they’re all darker than them, and and so there there’s that complication, and so you always have that feeling of, do I really belong? And so there there’s a certain amount of of concerns when it comes to that. So what are the guidelines we need to follow? Well, first of all, acknowledging that this is normal. That that this layer of complexity is to be expected. I I remember my sister, and and I probably shouldn’t tell stories on her, but I’ll tell this one. Her daughter was having her bridal shower, and well, and she was getting married that week, and she had an open relationship with her birth mother, not just her birth mother, but with her birth sisters, and so her birth mother and the two sisters that were being parented by her birth mother, came to the bridal shower, and then of course my sister and her other daughter came to the bridal shower. So now you have the birth mother and the two biological sisters, and you have the adoptive mother and the adopted sisters, and they’re all sitting across the table from each other.

Tina Gosney 21:40
Yeah.

Donna Pope 21:41
Well, there’s a lot of dynamics when it comes to that. And are there feelings? Yeah, there’s lots of feelings. Should you avoid situations like that? Well, it sure would be easier. But this was an important thing to my niece. It was an important thing to have these two groups of people together, and one of the challenges is for us as adults to be able to suck it up, be able to have open hearts enough that we welcome and we not just allow, but we actually welcome these types of experiences. But sometimes our feelings of jealousy, sometimes our feelings of inadequacy, sometimes our feelings of I’m not as good as them rise up. My son has asked me, well, we have talked about in the past, how I felt when with with my oldest son, I had a really close relationship with his biological mom, and that was easy. She she actually stayed with me for a period of time, and then she went back out onto the streets, and she had some struggles, and yet she kind of pulled her life together, and we’ve maintained this relationship. And he’s asked me how I felt about that. Well, in all honesty, I felt inadequate, and that’s a hard thing to admit. I felt that maybe I wasn’t as good a parent as she wanted me to be, or as good a parent as maybe she should could have been to him, and that is a unique feeling in adoption. It’s also part of step parenting. Have struggles with that. Any types of of blended families will have some of those struggles, and how do we deal with them? Step one probably is to get support through counseling or through some through support groups, through podcasts, anybody where we can find out that these emotions are not abnormal. They’re they’re they’re normal emotions that we can feel, and when we put it out there, and others hear, oh yeah, I felt that way too. That helps in us normalizing the feelings that we have. So that’s something that’s grown in the world of adoption is being able to have these kind of conversations.

Tina Gosney 24:20
Yeah. Do you ever see that there are times where maybe the the bi not the biological mother but the adoptive mother or parent feels that need for reassurance, that inadequacy, and that comes out into the relationship with their child, and it makes it more difficult for the child then to speak honestly and openly.

Donna Pope 24:47
I call it the tug of war, and it’s a tough thing because, especially, you’ll have the birth parent and you’ll have the adoptive parents. And then there’s cute little baby, and there will be this emotional tug of war. And this this happens in blended families. It happens in all kinds of places. We can’t, as adoptive parents, we have to work with that and and try to avoid that tug of war Feeling where, especially putting the child in a position where they feel that they have to be loyal to one family or another, we just have to kind of avoid that. And the best way is to come around to the side of the other part, and then you’re not tug of war. And how do you do that? Well, you get to know them, you get to know the biological parents. You get to know them and love them. Now, is that easy to do? Sometimes it’s not because we’re dealing with our own insecurities. But if we can really strive to know and love the biological parents and care for them, then it makes it a little easier for us to not feel this tension, and the truth is that oftentimes how you feel about the biological parents kind of reflects, for a minute at least, how you feel about the child. Now, in time, the child becomes themselves, and your relationship with them is is unique, but learning to know and understand the biological parents can be very helpful in bonding with the child too.

Tina Gosney 26:33
Oh, thank you. That’s such good advice from your own experience as an adoptive mother. And by the way, you have a lot of adoption in your family. You and your sister both have adopted all your children.

Donna Pope 26:44
Yeah. Well, she actually had a biological child. Okay. After she adopted four children, so then she had, and it was kind of a surprise. Yeah.

Tina Gosney 26:52
Wow. So, so from your experience as an adoptive mother, has there been any been anything that you’ve learned to hold more loosely to like let you know a grip on as your child has become an adult.

Donna Pope 27:08
Yeah, I would like to say everything, but I I’ve got to be. It’s not everything, but I think the thing to hold most tightly to is their right to choice. Holding on to your own belief that they have the right to choose. Choose what? Well, everything. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t need your love and your affection, even in the process of making their own choices, and sometimes those choices are not the choices that you would necessarily make for them, and sometimes they’re not the choices you think will bring them the most happiness. But holding tightly to their right to make those choices is, I think, one of the most important things. And then at the same time, you hold to their right to make the choices. Hold to their assuring them that you’re still there, and will always be there. That’s that’s a tough balance to walk.

Tina Gosney 28:28
Yeah, it sounds like you’re describing you know one of the situations that we all encounter in relationships is having a safe home base and also the freedom to go out and make our way in the world and make our own mistakes.

Donna Pope 28:46
And you mentioned that they, you never have too much love and and having more parents. I think if if I could say anything about adoption that sometimes people don’t understand is how much biological parents love their children. Sometimes that message doesn’t make it to the child as well as it probably should, because every child asks themselves the question, “Why did I get placed for adoption?” And the follow-up question to that is maybe she didn’t love me or maybe he didn’t care, but that’s never the case, and and I use that word never without hesitancy. I have worked with 1000s and 1000s of women, and they love their children, and the reason that they choose to do an adoption plan is out of that love. You go well, then just you should. Well, they can’t, for whatever reason, they’re not in a position to parent, and so them having the option to choose a situation where they can place their child, and. Know that their child is going to be okay and loved and cared for in a way that they are not able to. That’s a that’s a loving decision. Now, for a child, is that painful? Sometimes it is, because there is a separation, and so as us as adoptive parents, we have to kind of recognize a the birth parents love the child. B they’ve given us the responsibility to kind of follow through with that love, and then also combine that with but this is my child and and that connectedness and so it’s quite complex all the way around,

Tina Gosney 30:44
right? And and your what you’re describing sound to me sounds like. Tell me if I’m understanding this correctly. But before you talked about feeling inadequate, about not doing a good enough job, maybe the birth mother could have done another a better job, and that is factoring into they love them so much. I love them. I’m the one that’s here that’s parenting them. I’m also feeling this this additional layer of inadequacy. Like that’s a lot of things to hold at the same time.

Donna Pope 31:16
It is, and that’s why kids support. Yeah.

Tina Gosney 31:20
Yes. Thank you for saying that again. I think we can probably never say that enough.

Donna Pope 31:25
Yeah.

Tina Gosney 31:27
Do you have a situation that you can share with us where you know adoption-related issues then contributed to conflict or distance between the parent, the adopted adoptive parent, and the adult child.

Donna Pope 31:43
Yeah, for sure. We could talk about it all day because it it does. I think of one, and I did not want him to do this, but the adoptive parent didn’t feel adequate enough, and so actually contacted the biological parent and said to the biological parent, “Can you come in and help raise this child?” Not always a good idea. That that wasn’t a good idea because the the biological parent now feels a responsibility to do something that they didn’t feel like they could do in the first place, and so that created. So learning where there’s a boundary, and and you don’t you don’t you don’t abdicate the responsibility of of raising the child, but at the same time allowing biological parents to have an influence to a degree, is is okay, but it’s a difficult road to walk, and it can oftentimes create conflict that probably shouldn’t be there.

Tina Gosney 32:51
Do you have Do you have an idea of what adoptive parents might not be willing to say out loud that they kind of hold privately.

Donna Pope 33:04
Yeah, what I’ve already said. Yeah, I was wondering if it was going to be the same thing. Yeah, that that they often feel inadequate. Yeah, that they they often feel they feel like they aren’t doing as good a job as they they would like to have done, and and they often feel that way. But I think all parents feel that way to a degree. I think all parents think I got to do a better job. I think they all do that. The difference is that adoptive parents have this biological parent over here that they they go, and and so there’s a there’s an additional sense of am I doing a good job?

Tina Gosney 33:54
Yeah,

Donna Pope 33:55
yeah, yeah.

Tina Gosney 33:58
Have you ever seen Adoption play a part in in difficult relationship dynamics between the when the the child is an adult and then their adoptive parents.

Donna Pope 34:16
Yeah, for sure. You know, we always tell the story because you always hear that you often hear adoptive parents will say and and adoptees will say this too that at some point in their relationship as the kids were growing up the child would say you’re not my real parent and and that that gets thrown out there I’ve talked with a lot of adoptive parents about you know the appropriate response to that. When it was thrown out to me, I probably didn’t respond. I just said, “Well, I’m as real as you’re going to get,” and and so there that. Feeling of what is a real parent, and because in the process of trying to understand themselves, every adoptee will question the relationship they have with the adoptive parents. They they all will. It just they just it’s a natural thing, and so recognizing and allowing that to happen, and and not responding as I did with frustration and anger is probably a better plan. I don’t think I answered your question. Tell me your question again. I got off. Well, I

Tina Gosney 35:41
think you you addressed maybe we’re talking about a younger child. Oh yeah, it sounded like that’s kind of like a develop, you know, maybe is a developmental complexity of you know as a child is growing up, but then once they’re an adult, do you see do you see other issues come in. I mean, do they still not want to throw that out as you’re not my real parent or you’re not my real mother?

Donna Pope 36:08
Sometimes, and and like the example I gave with my sister, she developed a relationship with her biological parent, and that was really complicated relationship. In fact, all of those kids that are now in their 30s, they have developed. Not all of them, but many of them have had relationships with their biological parents. So that’s a challenge because we see sort of a pattern. The questions start to happen in the early teens, and then a little more information. They want they they want more information. But then when they get in their early 20s, now they’re out on their own, and now they’re going. I wonder about my biological parents. Now maybe there has been a relationship, and and so the wondering is a little bit less. But sometimes it goes even later on in life that they look for a connection, and they’ll search for them and they’ll try to find them. Well, my sister she made an effort to help them, and and went back through yearbooks and did a lot of work to try to find them, and then facilitated the connection, and that’s a tough thing for adoptive parents sometimes to do. To say, okay, let’s get you connected with your biological parents, and knowing where that could go, and sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn’t go well, and so you go well. What would make it not go well? Well, lots of things. One is that it may not go well because they connect so much with their biological parents that they leave the values and the connection of the adoptive parents, and that can be painful. Sometimes they meet their biological parents, and it doesn’t go well, and they don’t like these people, and they go, “Oh, I don’t like them at all.” And then they feel let down that they had this opportunity to get to know these people, and it didn’t go well. And so there’s a disappointment there. Is there ever a healthy way? Well, I think the healthy way is as children can accept, these are my biological parents with all their foibles and their idiosyncrasies and their struggles, and these are my adoptive parents who hopefully I love and I feel connected to. Sometimes we fight with, but you know this is my these are my parents, and that seems to be kind of a comfortable way of doing it. My oldest son, because I had such a good relationship with his biological mother, and we’ve maintained that relationship. He has spent Christmas with them. He’s gone up and gone camping with them, and I think one of my, one of the the experiences I had that kind of made me feel good, is he called me one time and he said, “Mom, can we help?” And he gave the name of his biological mom. Can we help her? I said, “Well, what does that mean, honey? What what is it that you? Well, she’s her health is not real good and she’s struggling. Is there a way we could help her? And that that the fact that he was now caring enough about her that he wanted to be able to support her to me that that seemed like a healthy thing. Now on the other hand, I have a son who I found the biological father. Well, the father found me, and we got to talking. And I suggested that they connect, and he didn’t want anything to do with it. So, one of our jobs as adoptive parents is to kind of follow. Their lead to some degree.

Tina Gosney 40:02
Yeah, thanks for that. What do you think that adopted children might be afraid to say to their parents?

Donna Pope 40:12
Yeah, I’ve told this story a number of times about when my oldest son was probably about eight or nine years old, and we went to a counselor. And I said to the counselor, “Well, the counselor asked me to step out in the foyer and wait.” And so when he had been in there for just a minute or so, the counselor called me back in, and I wondered what did he feel like he could tell her that he didn’t feel like he could ask me? And so I went in, and she said he’s wanting to know why his biological mom placed him for adoption and kept his brother. I didn’t even have any idea he was thinking that. I didn’t know he was thinking that, and yet the minute he felt like he could ask the question and someone safe could help him answer it, he asked. And I wonder, I have wondered since then how many of those questions are percolating in the minds of adoptees that they are not asking that we as adoptive parents could maybe support them trying to get the answers to. That’s the why is always a question. It’s always a question, and that that’s probably the biggest one,

Tina Gosney 41:41
yeah. Do you you mentioned that he felt safe enough with the counselor to ask her that question just right off the bat? Do you think that maybe also him waiting to ask somebody else that question might be because he was afraid of hurting you?

Donna Pope 42:01
For sure, for sure. Or maybe

Tina Gosney 42:03
maybe that was it. Maybe it wasn’t totally a safety thing. It might have been I’m trying to protect my mother,

Donna Pope 42:10
probably. And and and I’ve heard lots of adult adoptees say talk about the first time they ask, and they will tell me almost in detail about what response they got, and this response of their adoptive parents to their question of why was I placed for adoption, or where are my biological parents, or any of those questions, just bringing it up, they will they can tell me in detail how their parents responded, because it’s so important, and and for him, I think probably he was maybe afraid of how I might respond, and and and the the hurt that that might make him feel if I didn’t respond right. I mean, remember when he said I wasn’t his real parent, how I responded. And so maybe so our challenge in all of the adoption community is to try to be aware of how sensitive our response is to to what’s very sensitive to

Tina Gosney 43:27
them, and probably if they do or when they ask that question, they’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It might come as a surprise to you, like it did at that day at the counselor’s office, but for them, it’s probably been percolating in their mind for quite a while,

Donna Pope 43:41
right? And I hear story after story from adoptees that they don’t try to find their biological parents until after their adoptive parents die, and and the the irony of that is that oftentimes now their biological parents have died as well, and and their reasoning is that they didn’t want to hurt him. They love the parents. They they love their, and they don’t want to hurt him. So the challenge is how do you let these adult adoptees know it’s okay? Well, first of all, you’ve got to feel it’s okay. You’ve got to get your own support and your own counseling and your own feelings of self worth enough that it is okay. It’s it’s it’s okay, and and and I’ll help you. And that’s sometimes difficult for parents to do.

Tina Gosney 44:42
Yeah, that’s the first step. Get get let it be okay with yourself. Get to a point where you’re you’re able to let that happen. Yeah. Do you have a story from your decades of experience here, which I think we’re so privileged to get to talk to you today. But is there, you know, a story from those times that captures the complexity of adoption better than anything we could read for it from a textbook?

Donna Pope 45:10
I wished I had. I have lots of stories. I don’t know if it’s the best stories because there’s so many of them, and there there’s so much, so much variable. We had a a man that came to us, and he, I know these are hard stories to hear, but he placed three children with us

Tina Gosney 45:34
at the same time.

Donna Pope 45:35
Uh huh. At the same time, and they were older, they were a little older. His wife had died, and he was not able to care for these children, so he placed them for adoption. But he wasn’t able to place them with all the same family, and so now he had a son over here, and he had two girls over here, and they they they were good friends, but none of them could take all the children, and that and that was really hard for him. But then he started regretting his decision, and he started feeling really bad. It’s particularly about the the son. And but then the adoptive family started feeling possessive because he, you know, was coming around a lot, and it was making it difficult for the child, and it was making difficult for them, and so they started putting some boundaries up and saying, “You can only visit this much, and we’ll only communicate in this way, and then that made him feel more insecure. And then he started pushing a little bit harder, and he actually showed up at their church one time, and and there he was sitting there. And so, these are complex feelings that people have to struggle with, and then when you ask the question, well, how did the child feel? The adopted parents are feeling possessive, and he’s feeling rejected, and he’s feeling that he wants to come in. And so, how does the child feel? Well, that’s hard for the child because he was old enough to know his dad at the time, and he was old enough to care for his dad. I remember when I left him at that home, and he came up to me and he said, “Donna, if we live here, how will my dad know where to find me? And I said, “We will make sure your dad knows where to find you.” And so he, because he wanted to maintain that relationship. Now those are more complicated because the children are older and they’re a little more aware. Now when they’re placed as babies, then it’s it’s it’s a little easier because the children are not as aware. But we don’t know how much they’re aware.

Speaker 1 48:10
Right.

Donna Pope 48:11
But that was a complicated situation. They’re not all that difficult, but they’re all difficult to some degree.

Tina Gosney 48:21
Yeah. Gosh, that does sound so complicated. And with children that are aware of their father and their siblings as well, is there looking back at your time working in this area? What do you think separates families who can talk openly about adoption from families where it’s a little more emotionally dangerous to approach that topic in their family.

Donna Pope 48:48
It’s it’s we will say it again. They need to get their own help, and that and I don’t mean help like in go get some help. I I mean support. Seriously, get some support from somebody, and and the role of that somebody is twofold. It’s one to validate your feelings that what you’re feeling, the jealousy, the the inadequacy, the the all of these emotions of loss and grief and everything that goes into all aspects of this. They need to be validated. Someone, then you need to be able to say them to somebody, and them say, you know, that’s a legitimate feeling. And then having someone who can help you learn how to modulate those feelings or manage those feelings when you feel them, so that you don’t spew them out onto somebody else. That that because you do it just once, and now you’ve damaged the relationship with the other party, and then they become defend. And they start to get back, and then then it just exacerbates the situation, and then you’re justified. Well, I shouldn’t have ever said anything in the first place. So that step one: make sure you have it. Doesn’t have to necessarily be a counselor, but if it’s a counselor who understands the principles of adoption and understands these feelings, it would be really good to to start there. Not just when things get bad, but start early so that you’re ready when things get bad because they do. They’ll get bad.

Tina Gosney 50:38
Yeah, and and thanks again for bringing that up again, because I don’t think that it can be emphasized too little. You know, we get pretty good at managing our lives in the status quo, and then we add something in like a new child and adoption, and often we’re not prepared for the complexity and the issues that it brings up in our life, so that we, if we can develop the some capacity around a new issue and a new source of relationship stress in our life, I think that is maybe how we can look at it. Not that we’re deficient; we just need to increase the capacity that we had from before, because we didn’t have to deal with that before this.

Donna Pope 51:24
Right, right, for sure.

Tina Gosney 51:26
Yeah. Okay. So my last, maybe my last question. I don’t know. So if you can go back and prepare adoptive parents when their children are young, maybe like 567 years old, for a conversation they might have when those children are 30 or 40. What would you teach them?

Donna Pope 51:49
Yeah, well, again, we’re going to go back to make sure that you’ve done your own work, so that whatever you say to that child comes from a place of sincerity. There’s nothing children read through the insincerity so easily. So make sure that if you go and you are going to have this conversation, that whatever you say, you really do mean. And so, what does a child need to hear. Well, we’ve hit on several things. One is they need to hear that you, as their adoptive parent, love them, and that you are totally dedicated to them as a parent, and that, like I’ve said earlier, that you choose, you chose them, and you choose to continue to give them the freedom that they need to to live their life, including finding out more about their adoption, finding out more about their biological family, and so honestly believing that, and that you’re there to support them in that choice. The second thing is make sure you know whatever you can know. I do a lot of adoptions where the biological parents oftentimes are delivering the baby, so the mom’s there in the hospital bed and she’s delivered the baby, and the adoptive family comes in. I call that a sacred time because they’ve got this little cocoon of time there in that hospital. Now it doesn’t always happen in the hospital. It can happen sometimes on a playground. It can happen in our office. It can happen in lots of places. But this little cocoon of space and time, where the biological and the adoptive parents can just talk and get to know each other, take advantage of that as much as you can, because two things will happen. Hopefully, one you will love them. I sat with a an adoptive father the other day, and I said, “What was something that surprised you about this whole process?” He says, “You know what? He just right in there told me how much I love her.” He said, “I didn’t doubt that I would love the child, but I am so surprised at how much I love her.” And and they had spent quite a bit of time together, and that feeling of of gratitude and love towards the the biological parents of your own children makes a big difference. And and then also that time to get to know them, because that will help as you’re noticing things about the child growing up, and then you can share that in whatever way that you want. I have a son that when he came to me, his mother spoke German, and so. It was important. I tell him the stories about how he would say the lampa, and and he would speak German. And now he’s an adult, and he keeps he’s frustrated because he can’t seem to learn German. But that’s that’s part of his heritage, and that’s part of what matters to him. And those little stories matter to him. So, gathering as much information you can, holding it in your heart and caring about it, trying to deal with your own emotions, so that the jealousy and the the tug of war doesn’t start to come up, so that you can Genuinely support the adult adoptee as they’re making the decisions that they make.

Tina Gosney 55:48
Oh, thank you so much for that. So helpful. Is there anything that we haven’t touched on yet that you think would be helpful for parents or older children that are adopted that might be listening to this,

Donna Pope 56:03
yeah, for sure. Find your own support, meaning of your own peers. So adoptees find support with other adoptees. Adoptive parents find support with other adopted parents. Birth parents find support with other birth parents, and and we’ve talked a lot about this this supporting each other, but find your own support with your own peers that they can. Now we we’re developing a platform called Adoptions.com, where we hope to facilitate that. Where anybody can come in, and groups will be they can find groups there, and and the biggest reason is so that the emotions that you’re feeling, that you may feel shame about, that you may be embarrassed about, you can learn that other people have felt them as well, and maybe learn from them how to manage those feelings. Now, there’s always a danger that people will get together and they’ll just gripe at each other and say, “What? Well, don’t go into those groups. Find the right group. Go into groups that are positive, that build you up and help you become better, not that drag you down. But find people that will build you up. That’s what I would say.

Tina Gosney 57:20
I love that what you brought up was community. I think we thrive and find so much healing in community with people that understand what we’ve been through and can be there for us. And we offer support and receive it at the same time.

Donna Pope 57:36
Yeah.

Tina Gosney 57:37
Thank you so much, Donna. I really appreciate your time and lending your expertise to everyone who’s listening, would you remind us again what the name of your organization

Donna Pope 57:47
is? Yeah, we’re Heart to Heart Adoptions. We’re licensed in three states, and we work in lots of other states. And the platform that we’re building that we hope to have out within the next, I’m hoping two months. I’m hoping next month or two we actually can launch it. It will be called Adoptions.com.

Tina Gosney 58:10
Thank you so much.

Donna Pope 58:18
You’re welcome. Thank you.