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Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 109. We're the Nelson's. I'm Lanette.

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And I'm Shaun. And in today's episode, we have a conversation between Alisha Gallagher, our Director

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of Communications, and Steven Roley. We're going to go ahead and just jump straight to that conversation

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and Alisha will introduce Steven and of course, Lanette and I will share a few thoughts at the

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end of the episode. We're also going to have a little bonus content at the conclusion of our

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episode, which invites birth mothers to participate in a research study. Yeah, we are really thankful

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for Dr. Rowley for sharing these thoughts. This is a really enjoyable episode. We really enjoyed

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listening to this and we're so grateful for him and for Alisha. Okay, welcome everybody. We have

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Steven Roley here on the podcast with us. Steven Roley is a psychotherapist practicing in Washington

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States. He also worked as an elementary school teacher, principal and college professor. He holds

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a master's in psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and a PhD in administration and policy

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analysis from Stanford University. He's also an adoptee and an adoptive father. His new book is

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The Lost Coin, a memoir of adoption and destiny. Steven, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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Yeah, just from that intro, you've done a lot of different things in your career

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and I'm curious why write about this topic and why now? It seems like there would be some

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sort of urgency behind the moment of writing it at this moment.

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Yeah, I'll back up here at the time in this. I'll put it that way. So why the topic? Well,

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as you know from the book, I knew from my early stage I was a dot at it. It wasn't until I was

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in 13 that I after kind of a rift with my mother that I became ever more determined to find out

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my identity, my birth mother, the circumstances of my adoption which were shielded legally through

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sealed records. And to this day, I don't know exactly what more my parents knew or didn't

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know about my background. I don't think it was probably less than I think. But I spent up until

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age 40. In fact, I was living in Redwood City at the time. When I finally after a long detective

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story about how I found who she was, where she was living, and then flew back to these

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codes to actually meet her. So that was such a seminal moment in my life and for hers as well.

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I mean, it's emotionally just too big to really even describe. I've tried to describe it. I think

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I do a good job at that. But still, that something that impact that all that it meant to both her

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and me. And so yeah, so several years later, my wife and I adopted a four year old. And that was a

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monumental discovery and falling in love at a time with our son to be the time we had absolutely no

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reason whatsoever. We were vowed where my wife was a teacher. I was a principal at the time

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for a Central Office administrator. We didn't want kids in life with kids all day. So we want to have

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our adult time later. Right. That all that all changed with one kid and it would still be true

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after him. But we this one we had to have. So that's this whole story how how adoption came into my

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life. And then I would say, although I wrote about it and certainly considered I really didn't have

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the drive to find my birth father, partly because my efforts were thwarted by the fact that the

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records I had it was spelled as name. So it wasn't until much later. So then come to just a little

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over two years ago, I got a 23 and me notification from a first cousin, which was unusual. I've been

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I've been I've been 23, we almost from its beginning. So I'm really used to getting these

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notifications for second, third cousins, which I realized, forget it. I mean, it just it adds up to

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nothing. But this one was a first cousin. And this person lived in the Midwest and cut cut,

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make the story short. Within within minutes, we discovered, and he suggested he got his mother

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in touch with me. And his other aunt, who was a genealogist, got in touch with me when I realized

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in a flash, after I gave him some information about what I did know about my birth father,

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which was not the right information. It was like incidents like suddenly, I knew his name, he was

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he had died in the ladies. And it was name I now knew I had four half sisters who live in the Midwest.

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Most of them in the Midwest, and we're all relatively close in age. So we exchanged pictures and stories

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and all that stuff. So but I'd say from the moment that I heard that I hadn't really found him, but

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he came my way. It was as though the light went on. It's like, okay, now it's time to write. So I've been

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involved in writing, we could deal with my life. And but this one, I just boy, it just spilled. And so

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I wrote within a day or two, I wrote five or six hours a day, five or six days a week until Labor

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Day. So I had first draft done in five months, which then is a whole other story, which you get

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to draft and all the other things that happen in terms of getting it right. But that was that

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discovery really marked the kind of the that was the bookend for the other the missing third. I mean,

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I found her. Now I found him. Although I never had the drive, but nevertheless, was in or out of

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was interesting, particularly when I saw the pictures of both of them. My birth mother, I had her

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picture for a long time. And she was a charming and beautiful young woman. I likened her to a kind

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of a young Jean Turing movie star from the 40s. Okay. And when I saw my father's picture, same age

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at age 19, my age, I was not looking at me, it looked like, of course, I'm romanticizing now,

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but it looked so much like you're the younger and ascending way who I just happened to still like.

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So but it just sort of everything clicked because I'm like, God, I have these two really good looking

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pairs on the other hand, or by then I already knew that that he had wanted to know nothing to do

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with me or my life then. And certainly, whereas she I think had a deep yearning to reconnect with me,

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just didn't have the means to do so. She after I, she gave me a production. She was married soon

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after another man. And largely did not have a very happy life at all. Like by drug addiction,

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drug addiction, alcoholism. And when I caught up with her when I was about 40 back east,

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she had recently been released from a halfway house. So the place where we met was in state

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sponsored housing, I kind of a dingy tenement. And at first she was quite hostile. I mean, she

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when my half sister who brought brought me there, who I'd only known for a few hours,

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knocked in the door and she opened the crack, open the door crack, looked at me and said,

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who the hell gave you the right to look me up? I didn't ask you to come. I was like,

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time to breathe. Yeah. So that probably wasn't what you were expecting or were you expecting that?

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Were you anticipating some? Well, I don't know what I was expecting. God knows where everybody

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was nervous, but I wasn't expecting that. I mean, she knew I was coming. But after a little back

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and forth, I brought her some flowers, which she said she'd never on that or ever given her flowers

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before, which was just like, Oh my God. But then was well to the book, I won't go into detail now,

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but it was we're in the kitchen, we've been the guy began to realize just how bright she was.

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And I also realized then and later how much she had sacrificed. I got I got the break. I got to

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live in a great house, supportive parents, affluent by Midwestern standards at that time,

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supportive of education, supportive of me. I had a privilege from the beginning.

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Had I stayed with her, I want to actually go into that a little bit. There was a part where

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I believe it was your sister who had written you a letter. And she said, I hope you know now that

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you were spared. You were the lucky one. And to read like what, how did you read that? I mean,

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because there's so many adoption stories where you imagine that maybe you didn't end up as lucky as

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the as the biological family, maybe you were placed with option and then they went off and made this

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other life and and you missed out. But here you have a family member saying, No, you were the lucky

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one. How did that hit you? I think at the time, and certainly since then, it seemed like such a

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conundrum because on one hand you're left with as I talk about the inner life, the indelible

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impertipious separation of mother and child, the primal wound stays with you creates a sense of

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yearning, one to connect, wanted to find who it is, wanted to reestablish it. At the same time,

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realizing, well, if that hadn't happened, I would if I would have been with her either as a boy

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with a single mother or maybe with a man she didn't want to be with. I realized just how

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bad that would have been. So it's like, God, yeah, I escaped. So I want to connect and I'm

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glad I escaped. That's a kind of push and pull. And I think the, I think the both are true.

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Yeah, I did adopties live with that from my conversations with so many that you,

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you want to connect, but you have all these questions about this at the same time or you,

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you're happy about reunifying but also sad for what you lost or it's just so many opposites

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that live at the same time in perfect unity. Right. We Jungian psychotherapists call that the

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Jung's idea of the tension of the opposites and to hold two ideas, whether this is a good example,

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hold both to be true. And in terms of therapy or even just the academic reading of Jung and so

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forth, the importance is to be patient with those opposites, not try to resolve, to choose a story.

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You know, like, you know, oh, by all means, I always wanted to get back together. Well, yeah,

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but there was the other side that you were in it. So, but I think by holding those for as long as I

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did it and still today, it's created a, like a dialectic, it created a new fusion, a new sort

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of resolution. And so that later in the book, it took me to a very different place with some of the

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ritual things I experienced when I could change my perspective out of me being the child and my

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mother being the adult. Not my birth mother, my real mom. And because I'd never talked to her

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about it after we had our big riff, I never talked to her. I swore I never would. But I had a revelation

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actually was on her 100th birthday when I saw my relationship with my mom and what I was doing all

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of my life and what she was doing, completely different. So I was the teacher and she was a

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student and then everything changed. So by hanging out with that, those opposites, it didn't seem like

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it involved my, my mom, who I grew up with my, my mom is my mom was my mom. Something else emerged

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out of that that was unexpected and brought enormous resolution. And my mom died a year after

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on her 100th birthday. By the time she left all of my little petty jealousies and chip on the

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shoulder with her and maybe hers with me just vanished. And it was such a sweet ending because

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when going to her funeral and all that kind of thing, I just felt such enormous gratitude and

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connection with her and such a deeper affinity and love for her that I hadn't experienced before. So

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I can't prove that that happened because of holding out of this office, at least

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rationally, the part of my own training is that you have to relate intuitively as you do, I think,

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in terms of where you find your meaning where not every adoptee wants to find their parent,

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nor should everybody. It should because sometimes there's people you don't want to be reunited with.

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Sometimes certain information from you legally or otherwise is blocked from you.

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It's a hard, it's a hard pill to swallow. I've met plenty of people. That's been the circumstance.

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Many people actually who are from where I was born, the Willows Maternity Sanitary in Kansas City.

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I did a last February on my 75th birthday, I did a reading there with a friend who was a historian

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of the Willows. Kansas City at that time was the hub of adoption in the United States for probably

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four decades, a big center and they have maybe 10 or 12 different homes for Enwood mothers.

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The Willows was sort of the, it was called the Ritz. They advertised back in New York newspapers

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and magazines. A lot of people came from the East Coast to bring their pregnant daughters.

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But there, we did a speech on the second day, we did a speech at the Kansas City Library and

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most everybody who came to the speech, pretty good size group were connected to the Willows.

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Either they were born there or they had a friend or relative who was there. So those are the

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moments where you start to hear the stories. You start to hear the theme of this sort of like

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either the joy or the frustration of linking up. One way or the other, that damic underneath the

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surface of it, this kind of like yearning for reconnection. Now that's not always true. I

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would never claim that's true for all people, but for some people it's sometimes just repressed.

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We may be true, but it's in the unconscious. How do we know it's in the unconscious?

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So, but a lot of, most many adoptees trying to find their records, trying to find the

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dissident relative or trying to find where they're, where that person might be buried is a,

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is a powerful driving force that I dare say you have to be in those shoes to understand it.

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Because it doesn't logically, you can't make a case for it, but intuitively and emotionally, absolutely.

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Yeah. Yep. So back to your experience being kind of unique. Did you feel like your desire to explore

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your adoption story was discouraged growing up? And that's why you decided I'm not talking about it.

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Discouraged? Yeah, two levels. One was discouraged, of course, by my mom who when I said I would

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like to know more and she said, you know, kind of in so many words, how dare you don't you think we

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love you enough? And I was so embarrassed. I was so humiliated and so angered by that. I ran to my

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room, went to my room, slammed the door and swore I'd never bring this up again. I didn't want to

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experience that kind of amelioration. So I just simply went on my way and at that age when I was 13,

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I knew I'd have to wait to get to college before I had my own mailing address. I couldn't be mailing,

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there were no cell phones or, you know, no Google, no anything. Now, the second layer to that was

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that and this is often the case, the people with my adoption agency in a tunnel Iowa were

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paternalistic would be a apply way to put it. I sent numerous letters, I kept copies of my

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correspondence and theirs. And, you know, they tried to be this kind of like, oh, you know,

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sorry, can't help you, you know, go have a good future. We can't help you. And always like, well,

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the law says we can't give you anything. So in time, by the time I got into my early 30s,

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there was a new director there and who had a totally different disposition. I had helped him

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write a letter to the Iowa State Senate when they're trying to get some of the rules changed,

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so we're already friendly. And I wrote again, again, say what's changed, what can I have.

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And he kind of said on one hand, the letter said, well, these records are sealed. And then

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inside there's a little piece of paper, he says, here's something that's not sealed, maybe this

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will help. Well, it had everything I wanted to know. My birth mother's name, her hometown,

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the name of my birth father, where he went to college, where they both worked. I was like,

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I saw that, I was like, jackpot. It was like, I knew then, I was then the hunt was on.

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Yeah. That's so interesting that you, there's some people who get a little bit of information

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at a time over a long period of time. But it sounds like so much information that you got was all

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at once. We were just turning on the lights. Well, I got dribs and drabs, but nothing that really

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like stitched it. And this one did stitch it. Now that said, of course, then there's other,

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you know, the other thing, okay, well, now we know her name. I know where she lived. I talked

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in the book about going to her hometown in Iowa, showing up at the first, the high school, which

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like an idiot, I was closed in the summer. I should know as an educator. And so I went to the public

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library and asked for a yearbook. Those here, I'm in my, this is the 80s, right? I'm in my, you know,

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look like Tom Selleck, yeah, bushy. And in the Midwest, no less. I got my flip flops,

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his drip, it's super hot. I come into them and ask the person, the woman at the desk,

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if she had a whatever year, it was 1942 yearbook. And she looked at me like,

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what do you want with that? And it turned out because the paper, so she's, I don't know what

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really happened. There was paper sort of, so they didn't even have covers for things. Let me see

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what I can, well, she did. And then after I did enough searching, I finally found the picture

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with her name. And when I saw that picture, I think she was probably 15 or 16th of the time,

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which would have been roughly my sophomore junior year. I was looking at me. I was looking,

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if I'd have been a girl, that's what I would have looked like. Now from that, again, difficulties,

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okay, now I know that she is who she is. But where does she live? So at that point, I had stole a

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telephone book brought back to the Bay Area and wrote everybody in the county with the same last

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name. And explaining that it was for a purpose of a reunion, I didn't say who I was. By then,

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I was a doctor. And she had been a nurse. So I let it to think that, well, doctor nurse reunion,

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maybe it's a hospital thing. I heard nothing for a long time from anybody. I must have sent out

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20 of us. One day, yeah, a small car, don't get envelope came in, single piece of paper, really

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small at her name, including her new her married name. And I think it had her address, I think,

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yeah, I think an address and town where she was from, that's all I didn't say anything else.

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That's all I needed. So as you see from the book, I sat down, wrote her a letter,

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which I'm glad I kept a copy of that. And then that letter was intercepted. So there's

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these obstacles all along the way. No one said, oh, the doors are open. Here we go. It's like,

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well, then I had to, you know, well, we don't know if we could see her. The psychiatrist

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in things, psychiatrist, well, now I find out she's been a halfway house. And

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at some point after exchange of letters and phone calls, I realized just how bad off she had been.

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And my position with my new half sisters was, I'm coming. I'm coming. No, I will not,

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I will comply with not meeting her if that's what it comes to. But I will see her. If I have to

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stand across the street, I'm going to see her. So by the time all that happened, finally,

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the way was clear. And I got to meet her in person. As I say, at the beginning, that was really tough.

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After that, the door is open to our souls. I understood everything I needed to know about

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her and her with me. I was a reunion. I realized then I realized how much she and her other three

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kids from another marriage had been waiting for me to show up. One sister said, Oh, we always had,

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we always had a, there was always another chair at the table. We always thought it'd be yours.

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So they knew about you? Oh, yeah. When are you going to show up? So,

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but like I say, the two, the one, the one son I've never met, he lives in the Midwest, the other

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two, once deceased and one is still living back in the back in the East Coast. And we've had scattered

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correspondence since then. But, but I, you know, when you're the one who's the adoptee,

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making yourself known to a family, who's a family member has been responsible for your bird.

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It's not, the dynamic is not the same. I'm like, here I am. It's like, you know, and they're kind

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of like, you know, well, in the case of my birth fathers, family, they certainly were polite and

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they answered most questions I had. But it's like, well, you're just reminding us that, and it's turned

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out, I think two of them were already born by the time I was conceived. See what I mean? Difficult.

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I mean, even though their mother is no longer alive, but I don't think they want to ask,

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I got the feeling, don't ask them more questions about her or what we knew about our dad too

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painful. And I kept to respect that. So, but that's okay. I did what I wanted to do. And I knew where

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my limits were. I mean, one day, I think one of them maybe can be out in the summer, but I'd be happy

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to be. I've seen their family pictures. I kind of look at, you know, all four of the girls,

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all got married, all had children, a huge family. And I look at, if you take the,

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the actual, the blood lineage and look at the faces, kind of go, yeah, I see myself in every one of them.

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I mean, now they're by Midwestern standards, very traditional conservative, kind of Republican types.

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And I always kind of raised that way, but I'm, I'm a West Coast, as you are living in a blue state.

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So we're not, we're not living in it. And she told that one of them said, she says,

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it's a good thing you weren't around when my dad was still alive. I said, you'd have never gone

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along. You know, you never know, athletically would have been very similar. But our, you know,

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that just shows you how life takes you in a different direction. So yeah, it really does.

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So our, did your birth mom and your mom ever meet or was your mom alive when you had this

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reunification experience with your birth mom? Yeah, my mom was alive. And I eventually found

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out that she found out about my reunion. She never brought it up. And I didn't tell her, okay, okay.

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So you can't tell her how that you made that you didn't want to.

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Well, I call it more like a grudge. And of course, it's embarrassing to say now, but

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but like I say, at the end of her life, we had a, without words, a major reconciliation that made

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my perspective of what her world was like adopting me. So I was six months old. She didn't think she

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was ever going to have kids. Actually, the adoption agent actually picked me to be with them.

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They didn't come to pick me. They said, we have the boy that's going to be right for you in terms of

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development and early IQ testing. My dad's a surgeon. She's a nurse. So that part really

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worked out well. So, but I know that she, I think she had to have been enormously nervous about

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adopting me and unsure about her own capacity. You know, you get a six month old, big strapping

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boy. It's like, here, here you go. Check him out. It's like, you know, so now I do know that they

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had, their close friends in town were aware of me being adopted, but my dad was well known in town.

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I don't think many people knew or cared that I was adopted. So it was never, to my knowledge,

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most people never knew all the way through high school that was adopted. I didn't go advertising

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it either. So people wish happens with my son. But they did talk to you about it. You knew from

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the time you were young that you were adopted. It was until. And many people would say, oh, you know,

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you look so much like your dad. And people say that about my son. They go, oh, you look so much

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like your dad. So, well, you have brown eyes. So you have brown eyes. Yeah, people like to look

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for the similarities. Yeah. But, but, you know, there was a, for me, my temperament being with

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the parents who has raised with us. I was just born to be independent. I was, I was, I was exposed

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to things that I talked about in the book at an early age that were different than most of my

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classmates growing up. In fact, I'm going back to the death of one of my classmates. Two of them

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have died in the last couple of weeks. I'm going back and I want to, but I, but I, my grandparents

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had a big hand in raising me as I talk in the book in the beginning, be exposed to race and

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racism at an early age, being exposed to the fact that even then I may not have the words for it,

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but we lived in a nice big house across the street from the Gulf and country club. I didn't,

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I didn't think of us being rich because I don't think we were rich, but, but I realized that

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most of the other people I went to school with were, were few others like me and others who

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were middle class and below that. And so I realized, you know, like, I'm not, I'm, we were

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definitely schooled not to, you know, like keep yourself humble, you know, don't, don't brag

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about what your blessings you do have. So that was a good way, good lesson. Still, I was aware

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that I had opportunities. In fact, one of the people who died just three days ago, who was a

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childhood friend from fourth grade, and we play sports all together all the way through high school.

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I realized even then that I knew I was going to college. There was never a question.

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And my friend had certainly had the smarts for it and eventually did, but it was really clear that

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the emphasis in his family kind of working class, though you got to work, you got to pay your way,

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work menial jobs, go to the least expensive place you can eventually go to after community college.

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So the bar was set in my mind, this is a judgment I realized, set low for him and other classmates

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just kind of like, Hey, in our hometown of the 60s, you can make a decent living with it working

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in a factory, you can have a small house and raise a family, of course, that's impossible today.

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But that's a kind of like, well, what a what a what a gift to have this my grandmother, I think,

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will that for both my mom, for my dad or and his sister, my aunt, to not grow up to be farmers.

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One became a teacher, one became a doctor. So that was sort of the I was, I was raised in that

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environment where I was never lectured whatsoever about you got to go to college is like, well,

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you're going to say, yeah, you're going to the given, just that's something else. There's something

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when you look back, write a memoir like this, and even today, even with clients and so forth,

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that you realize the hand of fate, how do things turn out the way they do luck and bad luck put

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together. Somehow it's not just decisions by me or somebody else or choices we make. And that's

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that kind of where the title of the book comes in this sort of ineffable quality of mystery, at

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least where I ended up and how I assess the archival that we're talking about as being guided by

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forces that I can't account for. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Well, I'm it's fortunate you've had

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that experience to be able to reflect and write about it and the forgiveness almost has happened

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for your mom and for your birth mom to just understand why they felt the way they did,

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why they made the decisions they did. And even in the letter that you wrote to your birth mom,

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the themes that you write are similar to what I've heard from other adoptees that I don't have any,

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I hope no ill will toward you. I just want to meet you. I just want to see you. But the story

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and the narrative that some of the birth moms are telling themselves is I couldn't possibly try to

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look for him. He probably he might hate me. He might resent me for making the decision I did,

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but I haven't heard that from any adoptees all all they want. And what you express wanting is I

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just want to meet you. I mean, as a writer, of course, I'm trying to create some drama and

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pay those. If you don't mind if I just read one short paragraph. Sure. This is after I've been

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to her place. I come back the second day. I meet her roommate who's schizophrenic, who she introduces

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to me as her son, which took my breath away. She does that later. She was even when I asked her,

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do you remember my birthday? She said, Of course I do. You're my son. You have a mom and a dad,

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but I'm still your mother. And I don't forget that. So this is when I'm leaving. Again, this is a

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dingy tenement back in the east coast. It's cold. It's I think it was December.

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Later that evening, we hugged as I stood to leave, but I can't remember how much after that.

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I do recall we held each other closely for a long time.

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We both knew that we might not see each other again. Before I opened the door, I brushed a few

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strands of her wig back and gently caressed and kissed her forehead with total loving deliberation.

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Then I was gone out the door. I kept my head down as I walked into the freezing evening air

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in a neighborhood I knew I would never visit again. So that's I kind of like.

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Yeah. Now, did I actually think that at that moment? It was seemed utterly obvious because

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I was going back to West Coast. I had a job. She was not under good health. We didn't, you know,

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I knew I'd still be in touch with it. She wrote a letter to it was never just wasn't the same,

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but it didn't matter. I don't think for a second, I doubt that her, her, the connection and depth

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with which I connected with her was exactly was reciprocal with her. You can't top that. I mean,

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that was that was the what we want to accomplish. I thoroughly believe we're both kind of coming from

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such a different place in time. And yet, as I say in the book, he said the last time we held

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each other like that, I was 10 days old. So, okay, admittedly, nostalgic. Okay. Yes, definitely.

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The same reason going back, same reason going back to Kansas City on my birthday and 75th

307
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birthday. Nostalgia, for sure. Yeah. Yet, I think for the audience of the, there were 30,000 of us

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born at the Willows. That's a lot of kids in for several decades and many of whom were there and

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they all got it. Yep. How nice to be surrounded with people who get it because there's so much

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explanation that is sometimes required if someone doesn't get it. Like, why are you searching? Why

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do you have these questions? Why do you why don't you and just easier to be with people who have

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witnessed it or have experienced it firsthand reading that I appreciate that. So we have,

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I just have one more question for you before we wrap up. You are a psychotherapist. Do you work with

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adoptees? That's a really good question. No, not particularly. No. Okay. Despite all the notoriety

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and publicity and so forth, I haven't had a lot of people come to me. Now, I'm trying to remember

316
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I have an intake. I have a lot of people who are first session, have some intake and finish.

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I can't sound stupid to say it this way. I don't think I have a question of whether they were

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adopted, but usually as you get to know the client pretty well. Yeah. But no, I'm not, I'm not shopping

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myself as some sort of adoption therapist. What I am, what I do in terms of my handle, my,

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my special is about a trauma. So what I've labeled as the separation of mother and child as a form

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of developmental trauma, it disrupts the normal development. Let's say it's fatal, but it does

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affect you at least that imprint. Now you can take other kinds of trauma, sexual trauma, you know,

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violence, abandonment, abuse, physical. So those are kind of running in parallel. So trauma, the

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response to trauma or the telltale inference of trauma and the ways in which people in one or two

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ways, particularly respond over time to that, not always in a healthy way. That's what I understand.

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That's what I think it's my, so I see through that lens, not everybody, but I, but I have a

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sniffer for that. And what with our son as I talk about the book, he was four years old, his

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birth mother was, it just been killed in an accident. His birth father was living halfway

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around the world and wasn't coming back. I understood something in him. I knew something

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in him from the moment I saw him. And I liken it to seeing the sense of a minor trapped in a mind

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deep down. And I think my wife and I both in so many words, we wouldn't have said it this way,

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but I think I'm on a fourth level. It's our job to rescue him. I mean, bring that little one back

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out. And I think for those facing the possibility of foster care and so forth, it's an appreciation

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for what you don't know. But you can't know. You can have a pretty darn good guess. Maybe we can

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talk about the offline sometime, but anyway, but that, that I think begins to inform how the premise

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of the one of the themes, if you will, of the book is that on this on the workaday level, the

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stories of our lives that we went to school with, and who graced you and who you fell in love with

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and who you divorced from and what job you have all that external life, all really important

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to navigate all that. But the depth psychological perspective dealing with the unconscious brings

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in the fact there's an inner life. And to and we as adoption community, my argument is that many of

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us not all that many of us have are much more similar because we've been affected by that

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initial primal wound of separation. Some people don't care, don't know, don't believe it. I'm

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others dial right into that. And it's just that kind of, I said, if we were our adoption community

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had a theme song, it'd be Dylan's like a rolling stone. How does it feel to be on your own a

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complete unknown, no direction home like a rolling stone, that yearning of that song when I revisit

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that many times. And I read that to that group in Kansas City, like, you can hear that you can hear

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that the whole audience just gas like, Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, like a rolling stone. Now, so we

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have as I said, the book kind of a, this is a psychological, psychological construct, we have

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these inner archetypes. So for us, I argue, at least among those that we have shares that orphan

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archetype, that that our orphan energy. Now the inner the life's can be different. What do you

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think of as an orphan? What I think about is irrelevant to that, to that energetic presence

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that makes us a never in my mind, always in some, you know, a perpetual state of low grade yearning,

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even when we find our birth parents, I still have. Now, I think long reconcile that like, like,

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is oh, that's a big fat bummer, why can't why, why can't I keep feeling that way?

355
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Realizing that this energy, this sort of quest to know more, this curiosity that it creates,

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has been, what's made me, and does and does today, I'm doing a course right now on my teaching

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about some of these subjects, I've got another book in mind. You know, in later life, getting the,

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getting the creative itch, it's got to get scratched. I mean, I, that's that kind of curiosity,

359
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like it got, you got a good taste of what it's like to be really creative to write a book. Well,

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now it's, I'm on a roll without that, that, that orphan art that I bang around and they're

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saying, I want to find out more that I dare say they might not. Who knows? Well, that makes

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sense then why you'd want to write it now, because you got the two pieces of your story that you

363
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didn't know anything about from your birth bomb and your birth father. And then, and you could

364
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write the story, you could, you could look back at the information perspective you have, but

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you're right that the searching and the yearning is, becomes a part of an adoptee's identity. And

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then once that search is complete, then it's, I wonder if there's a new sense of grief that comes

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into play, because then you know more. And so all the possibilities of how your life might have been

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different, it all goes a million different ways. You're grappling emotions and experiences.

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I will say, as a, maybe a piece of advice to people who adopt children, when those kids are

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younger, or grow up to be old enough to have some understanding without the details. The parents

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usually have a position of kind of providing the story. Here's how we came to get you,

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or here's what we know about you. But as they get older, and I'd say by the time they get

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to round up what I was curious, by the time you get to mid teen level, then there's this kind of

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subtle but important transition. And through the encouragement we hope of the parent, is that

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mom and dad have a story for you. It's, we think it's a true story. It's not untrue. But now the

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kid's got to be able to kid their own story together, their version of it. It may not be what mom and

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dad say, their version. And I dare say, as you will, as an adopted, a parent of an adopted child,

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and as children get raised in this way, your story will change too. One of the years from now,

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your story you have today will be really different. There's will be quite different. But it's that

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ownership. That's, I think we talked about having your own voice, having your own personal authority.

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Owning your story, as I've done kind of in space with writing a natural memoir, is

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it's everything. I mean, that's, that's your, that's you. And it does change over time,

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even if it's contradictory sometimes, or even then you filled in the blanks with stuff you don't

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even know about, whatever. But so important for kids to have that sense of validation.

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Yes. That says you have, we trust you to find your own for.

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How empowering that is for a child to hear. That's perfect. Well, let's end there. Thank you so much,

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Stephen, for your time. Again, Stephen Rowley on the podcast with us, his memoir is The Lost Coin,

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a memoir of adoption and destiny. There's so much more that we couldn't cover in our time together.

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So if anyone's listening and is interested in more about his story, then they can go and find his

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book. Thanks again, Stephen. Thank you. Well, we want to give a huge thanks to both Alisha and

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Dr. Rowley. We love interviewing and talking with adoptees. And of course, with every adoptee

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interview that we do, I learned something new. And particularly this, this conversation just

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highlighted to me how much adoption has actually changed for maybe the better or how we maybe made

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some improvements. Like more ethical, yeah. Yeah. I mean, having been born in a birthing center or a

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place where unwed mothers were kind of shipped off to in Kansas City, I was really unaware of this

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aspect. And I think you mentioned 30,000 people over many years. I feel like I read something

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about that. I hope Kansas was like the center of where women were sent, young unwed mothers

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percent to these babies. So I think one thing for me was just culturally and maybe systemically

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adoption, I think he's made some steps in the right direction. And grateful that he was willing

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to share his story with us and his reunification and connection, which was hard and hard to listen

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to, but so grateful for his perspective. Absolutely. I really appreciated hearing his thoughts as an

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adoptee as well as an adoptive dad and hearing how he strikes that balance of acknowledging trauma

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and working through trauma and ensuring that like we're not hiding from these hard parts of adoption,

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but then also really showing that love, tenfold and making those connections. I just

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really appreciated hearing his perspectives and thoughts. So big thanks again to Dr. Roli and

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thank you so much for listening to this episode. So before we wrap up, we do have a little bit more

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to share. We have a research opportunity for any first parents or birth parents who are interested.

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The first families project is a research project that's being conducted by Dr. Paulina

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Inara Rodis as well as Dr. Ashley Larson-Gibby, who is actually my advisor at BYU. So they are

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wonderful. They're trying to give voice to these experiences that birth moms have. And so if you

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or someone you know would be interested in participating in their research, please look them up.

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You can find them on Instagram at First Families Project. So we're going to go ahead and listen to

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a little more about that research and then we'll be back in a couple of weeks with a new episode.

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Hi everyone, my name is Paulina Inara Rodis and I'm an assistant professor at Colorado College.

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Part of the work I do is thinking about how identities and relationships influence the choices

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we make. I'm here speaking to you today because I just started a new project called the First

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Families Project with an amazing friend and colleague, Ashley Larson-Gibby at BYU.

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We've noticed in literature that there's not a lot that focuses on the specific stories and

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experiences of birth parents and we'd like to change that. So we're hoping to find and interview

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women who place a child for adoption in the US. Participants who take part in the study will

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receive a $50 gift card. So if you're interested, please reach out to us. Our email is FirstFamiliesProject

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at gmail.com. We really would like to speak to you and hear more about your stories and make sure

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that everyone hears more from birth parents and families and extended families. While we're studying

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birth mothers now, we also hope to speak to other members of extended birth and first families

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eventually. So if you're interested in what we're doing or want to take part, please reach out to us.

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Thank you.