Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 112, We're the Nelsons. I'm Lanette.
And I'm Shaun. And we are really excited for this episode and to be able to share this conversation with you.
Today we talk with Jeff Thompson.
Jeff Thompson is a leading scholar of meaningful work and motivation.
He's the inaugural director of Brigham Young University's Sorensen Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership.
And he's a professor at the Marriott School of Business where he teaches in the MPA program.
He earned a PhD in organizational behavior at the University of Minnesota in 1999.
Shaun and I both took classes from him in the MPA program and we really admire and respect him.
He's a wonderful academic and scholar and teacher.
He's just really fun and just really easy to connect with. So personable.
Yeah, I love taking his class. I've loved being connected with him since and I loved having this conversation with him.
Yeah, throughout the class I just found myself thinking so often about how a lot of these organizational behavior principles we learned about also applied in adoption relationships.
And so a little more about Dr. Thompson. Dr. Thompson has won awards for his research on work as a calling and he's appeared in top management journals.
He's the author of The Zookeeper's Secret along with his colleague Stuart Bunderson,
which is a practical guide to discovering one's calling in life geared toward Latter-day Saint audiences.
And Dr. Thompson enjoys theater performance, racquetball, history, genealogy, literature, and travel.
He and his wife Amy are the parents of four children ages 30 to 20 and have three grandchildren.
Yeah, I actually remember one of the shows that we went and saw that he was in.
Yeah, it was like an old like I think it was the original take of You've Got Mail.
Yeah, it was Shuffling in the Corner, but the one before that the title that shows evolved. Anyway, it was so good.
It was fun. Well, anyway, again, we're really excited to share this conversation with Jeff Thompson and to learn from him.
We'll jump to that conversation now.
We are here on the podcast with Dr. Jeff Thompson. Professor Thompson is someone who Shaun and I both really admire and respect.
We're so grateful to have him here with us teaching us. Yeah, Lanette and I both completed our MPAs at BYU and Jeff was
one of the first professors we both had in that program and we learned a lot. So we're we're really excited to have you here today, Jeff.
Well, I'm honored to be here and let me just publicly say that you're both really good students too.
Thank you.
I mean, I was a student in the year of Zoom and 2020 right and so I don't know. That was a tricky one. Yep. Wild. Yeah, it was good times.
Well, there's a couple things, Dr. Thompson that we would like to consider while we're here with you today.
High level we want to talk about the importance of being an active listener and active listening.
And how do we bring psychological safety for those in in the relationships that we have and also a couple skills on conflict resolution and maybe how to handle some crucial conversation.
So we have some questions for you and I are really excited to hear what you can help us learn.
Sure thing. I'm happy to happy to share.
All right. Well, first off, let's talk about active listening. So in relationships, I feel like listening is one of those really important skills, but in our own adoption relationships and open adoptions, we have found that with both birth family members and with our
family members, listening is even more key and vital. It's such a big aspect of having healthy and strong relationships. So can you tell us what is active listening, what does it look like, what does it feel like.
Yeah, that's such a great question. And I have to say from from my perspective, I've probably thought more about listening.
For the last three years than at any other point in my career. So as you mentioned in the intro, I'm the director of a new center at Brigham Young University, the Sorensen Center for moral and ethical leadership and in striving to teach leadership to our students
in the way that that matches our vision and mission.
Listening is everything. I mean, listening listening is so essential to leadership that I don't believe you can effectively lead without a highly developed ability to listen.
So, so I'm glad that you're leading out this question because it's it's so fundamental and it's fundamental in the things that we're trying to train our students to do.
So when you talk about active listening compared to passive listening and active listener is engaged in the conversation is doing things like, you know, nonverbal affirmations, restatements, active listening involves.
And the irony here is sometimes we do we do visually less in active listening than we do in passive listening because an active listener is constantly inviting and a lot of inviting people to keep speaking is keeping your own mouth shut.
And not hijacking the conversation. So that's really important.
And another concept to the conversation though and it's one that we've been focusing on with our students here at the center.
We're training students to be leadership coaches. And I'll just give a little background on that.
I've always thought of coaching as something an athletic coach does where you you know you yell at someone and tell them what to do and you correct what they're doing wrong.
The type of coaching that we're training leadership coaching is really a process of deep listening, where your coach asks really probing questions and then carefully listens to your response and helps you make sense of your own response.
So when you're engaging with a really effective leadership coach, you are learning from yourself and you're you're you're reflecting on your own words, and it takes some really powerful skills to be able to coach in that way.
So, with that as backdrop, let me kind of give you coaching 101. One of the most fundamental of the first things we teach students is the difference between level one and level two listening, which is somewhat related to
active listening but level one listening is you're listening to someone to connect them to your reality. Okay, so you meet someone on the street, you say hey where are you from, and they say, I'm from Tuala, and you say, Oh, I have a friend from Tuala, do you know.
And, and all of a sudden we're working to connect that person to us, which is the basis of, you know, building a lot of relationships in the way that we usually do it.
But you notice how the attention shifts. It sort of becomes, I am interested in hearing from you, only to the extent that it relates to my reality. And so, level two listening keeps the focus entirely on the other individual.
So if someone says, Oh, I'm from Tuala, you might respond by saying, What was it like living there. Now, what did you enjoy about it, what do you miss about being in Tuala, and you're actually allowing them to dive deeper into their reality so powerful
leadership, powerful, powerful influence of other people focuses more on level two listening, where we are helping someone sort of dig into their, their values, their beliefs, their perceptions their misperceptions, and allowing them to explore it.
It's a very generous thing to listen at level two.
I feel like we've probably seen that both in in our personal relationship with each other as a couple, but also in our interaction with the biological families of our children, and that we want them to know that we are genuinely invested in them as individuals.
And so, asking those level two questions, I think helps them feel that genuine interest. One of the follow up questions we had for you on this is, how does that type of listening then impact relationships, what have you researched or what have you learned about that.
Yeah, I mean just observationally with the students that we're training and level two listening. They tell us that it changes all of their relationships with their roommates with their families, you know, and their, with their teammates at in in school, because what it does is provides a testament to the other
person's worth. I am not talking to you as an instrument to talk about me. I am I am talking about you, and about your experience and we're just going to keep digging into that and it, it may never come back to me and that's okay because I'm here for you.
And when you engage in that sort of listening with family members romantic partners associates. That builds a lot of trust and a lot of recognition that you have someone who is fundamentally interested in you for who you are and your own experience.
So it, it can be transformational to learn to communicate in that way.
This is maybe an awkward thing to bring up, but you are so good at this presser function you really are. I remember that there was this thing that we did during the semester that took organizational behavior from you where we would meet on zoom with you and talk about, like,
like how class was going, how the beginning of the program was going. And I met with you one time and I remember you asked a bunch of really great proving questions and I ended up. You probably don't remember this but I was just like in tears talking about these
weird things that were going on in my life, and I felt so I felt really awkward silly but I felt so safe bringing these things up because it felt like you genuinely cared about these things that were going on.
So I just a little plug. Thanks for talking about. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that I, I wish with what you're describing was, I wish I was always that successful at, I must have been having a good day.
Well, so our listeners are probably or yeah our listeners are here, probably thinking well what what can I do now to improve my own ability and listening and I mean one I think is just asking those maybe follow up questions like you mentioned but are
there any other skills or any other recommendations that you'd give to our listeners for how they might improve their, their own active listening skills.
I think we'll probably talk about this a little bit more later but getting getting kind of out of the way of our own emotions when we're listening and really
exhibiting the trust in someone that I can fully hear you out before I need to talk about my own stuff.
And the irony there is, if we are willing to be that selfless in saying I want to fully understand you first.
It dramatically increases the chances that the other person is going to be willing to hear us out as well. There's no guarantee they may not.
It makes it much more likely that because they have felt deeply heard that they will then be willing to hear, hear your perspective. So, I think it's almost like a switch that you throw in your head.
And it's interesting because we can provide students, an hour of training and practice and level two listening, and they can begin to implement it. So it is not really a, you know, it's not, it's not neuroscience.
It's not something that takes years and years of training. It's just sort of a personal commitment to say, I'm going to go into this conversation, more interested in that person than I am in myself.
I'm going to stay in there as long as they need and trust that eventually I'm going to have a chance to share my voice.
So I think that's the challenge that I would have for your listeners is to try that out. Just change that frame of mind. And you can try it on a stranger that you meet on the bus or a coworker that you haven't talked to for a while.
It's a laboratory. I mean, everything in life is an opportunity to practice this really key powerful skill.
I feel like with our kids.
Over the years, there have been a few times where I've come out and just said, you know, you're allowed to feel whatever you want to feel about being adopted right like any feelings are safe. I hope you always feel safe and comfortable telling me whatever you're feeling like it's
okay. And it always surprises me it shouldn't anymore, but it always surprises me how there's one of them that will like that will resonate. One time when I say even though I've said it before right like, yeah, I'm where it just sparked something in them, and like oh wait, I feel valid and having whatever my feelings are today.
Even though I thought that would implanting that seed. So I feel like it's such an ongoing process.
Open listening. That is such a great insight, you know, we, we like to, I think we fool ourselves into thinking that we have a conversation and then it's done.
But our entire relationship is a conversation and re asking old questions is not redundant, because as we evolve where you know we're at, we're, we're a slightly new person every day and we'll have new epiphanies and new challenges.
So thinking about staying in that conversation with your adopted children for their entire lives you know this, this conversation of you being safe and sharing your feelings that conversations never over, we never check it off.
Yeah, and I think for for our listeners who are maybe recent adopted parents or those hoping to adopt to this, this topic is really important for the relationship between us and our child's or children's birth parents, where at different phases of our
relationship we're going to experience and feel different things and just because we asked them one time, how they want to connect or have, you know, certain conversations in our relationship.
That doesn't mean that that answer won't change over time and so I that for me, it just making me feel like I need to ask some of those questions on repeat to the different cadence, so that I understand the ever evolving experience of our children's
parents.
I feel like this flows really organically into psychological safety and this concept of feeling safe, opening up and being vulnerable sharing our hearts with others. So can you share a bit about what, what is psychological safety, how do you explain it to people who don't know.
So,
how would I define it.
I'll take a stab at it, psychological safety is a state in which people feel liberated and trusting in sharing vulnerable information.
A lot of the research, in fact, when I when I taught this concept to you in class, it was in the context of teams and teamwork and research on what makes effective teams has really come up short with giving us any sort of, you know, magic formula like you need, you know, three women and two men and you need high IQ or low, you need extroverts, etc.
I mean, social scientists have looked at all of those factors and there doesn't seem to be an algorithm that says here's how you create an effective team.
Really, the only theme that runs throughout all effective teams as far as social scientists have detected is that teams experience psychological safety.
Effective teams experience psychological safety, which means I can tell my teammates if I'm having a bad day.
We can talk about disagreements.
And I don't fear retribution. I don't fear politics, because these are people that I can trust.
I feel really grateful right now to be working with a team that I believe has a high degree of psychological safety, which doesn't mean it's all roses and unicorns every day.
You know, we have hard conversations and we face up to tough issues, but we disagree pretty openly and we sort of push and challenge each other because we know we can and the relationship will still be in place.
So psychological safety is establishing that level of trust that we can be vulnerable and we can disagree and not worry that it's going to negatively affect the feelings we have for each other.
I love that. I feel like in adoption, that might look like a birth parent saying, hey, you know, I really would like to see my child more often like can we have visits more often without being afraid that adoptive parents will feel threatened and say, oh no, we're not going to have visits for a year now because you said that right?
Like, it's safe to talk about different feelings and different needs.
Well, yeah, and I think one of the phrases that you said is feeling, feeling able to do so without any, any fear of retribution right?
I think that that's a pretty human innate, I guess, feeling that we might have rights to actually voice how we feel, and maybe knowing that it might change a relationship or it might change how someone else feels toward us.
I'm curious if, obviously, you've studied this and taught this in the team setting, but when you're thinking of a one to one relationship or a more familiar relationship, what have you learned and maybe what could you share that might help us here?
So one to one relationships regarding psychological safety. I would say that the deepest, most enduring and most meaningful friendships, I have
are ones that have involved getting through conflict rather than never having it.
And, you know, I'm thinking of one example of a dear friend from for decades that we had, we had on occasion, a couple of times heart to hearts where we really saw the world differently and had to
come to terms with those difference differences in order to continue working together.
And
in the effort of getting through that and getting through that is not the right way to put it in in the effort of navigating those differences and those conflicts from a place of love and acceptance.
It's really created a foundation for a level of trust that I know if we had conflict again, we know exactly what to do. And so it's not something I need to be afraid of.
So I do feel very psychologically safe in that relationship, not because of the absence of tensions, but because of the evidence that our commitment to our friendship is greater than those tensions.
I love that thought that the most fulfilling relationships aren't
devoid of any conflict, right, but that being able to work through that conflict is really what brings fulfilling connections. I love that.
Yeah, we don't, we don't really value things that we don't that come easy.
Right. We give value to the and this is a this is a core psychological principle, right, that which we put effort into we become more committed to. And so the deepest relationships are the ones where we foster psychological safety, not by avoiding conflict because that's not a relationship, keeping the piece is not a relationship.
We establish psychological safety by showing to one another, we're willing to be vulnerable, we're willing to face differences and be committed that we're going to keep at it until we've worked through it together.
Yeah, that's great. And I think that this is also a great segue into talking a little bit more about conflict resolution. I don't know if you have a follow up.
I do have a quick question. I'm wondering, how do we get to the point where we established psychological safety and relationship, where other parties might be a little resistant to that right like wanting to avoid any conflict, or not really wanting to be as vulnerable and open.
How do you establish that safety if it's more one sided. Yeah, if it feels that way maybe at first yeah. Yeah. Well, there's no magic answer because everyone makes a choice about what they're willing to do.
They're willing to share and how much they're willing to trust. So what we can do is work on the conditions of the relationship that we contribute. And like I said earlier, maximize the likelihood of a good outcome and so I'm going to dial back a little bit to what we talked about with with listening.
And I think investing in a deep understanding of someone is is really key. So if you have someone who's being resistant, and you're experiencing conflict, and they are not willing to either open up or they're not willing to de escalate their emotions.
I always have the option of hearing them fully and validating everything I can validate, even if I disagree with their fundamental proposition. I can say, wow, this seems really hard for you, I sense of a lot of emotion here, you know, what's going on behind this emotion I know what it's like to feel angry and I see that and I'd love to hear more about that and
All of the things that we can do to allow another person to feel heard dramatically increases the likelihood that they're that they're going to feel safe and be willing to be more open with you.
No guarantees.
But, but that's the best shot we have. And I had a I had a professor colleague once who was talking about you know dealing with disgruntled students and students are upset about their grades.
And he said you have to understand compassion never costs you anything.
And I think we feel like the moment I show compassion I've lost the moment I, I look at someone and say, Oh, I can see you're angry that must be really hard and I understand why you might be angry that somehow, you know we're losing the competition.
So that's, that means you don't have psychological safety yet because psychological safety happens when it's not a competition and I am willing to just give compassion because it's free.
I think we should create some T shirts, Dr. Thompson. Maybe that's the term of that thought it's really really good. Um, maybe let's jump in and dive into a little bit about conflict resolutions or resolution misunderstandings in life are inevitable.
For sure in relationships, and for sure in in adoption relationships there's, that's not immune. So we'd love to talk about this a little bit.
If someone is struggling with a challenge where the relationship is important. And the issues are like, they have issues that are just weighing on them, what would you suggest how do they proceed in in those feelings.
Yeah.
So I, I teach principles from the book crucial conversations which is, you know, it's not the only source of conflict management training.
And I do not represent the company that produces the book, but I have found the principles to be very useful. And, you know, without going into a deep lecture on all of the different components.
I guess, I guess I would just highlight a couple of things.
Let me, let me start with one that might be a little different than what than what you're thinking, but I think it connects to with what we've been talking about. So, I've had this happen 1000 times and maybe you have as well, you're having a conversation with your
spouse, everything seems to be going fine. And then suddenly, something's off, you know, and, and you can tell either that your partner is now frustrated or you're frustrated and you don't know why there are these microcosm moments where it
and what has been just safe and comfortable
is all of a sudden frot.
I'm glad to see both of you are nodding.
This is not just my area.
This is definitely not just you.
Okay.
So when that happens,
the way that we talk about it in crucial conversations
is safety has been violated,
either for the other person or for yourself.
And we may not even know why.
Something just triggers this sense of, ah,
this is not safe.
We can get better at recognizing those moments
and processing those moments
rather than allowing them to escalate.
So there's this wonderful tool that's called stepping out.
So stepping out is, I think,
one of the key things you have to learn
in order to manage a conflict
because in that moment when the tweak happens,
when that line is crossed,
that's the time to say,
whoa, wait a minute, what just happened here?
So the stepping out function,
or the stepping out skill basically says,
in that moment we stop the conversation
and we step out and talk about the conversation.
So it's not like,
why do you guys get mad at me for not mowing the lawn?
That would be driving deeper into the content.
Instead, I'm gonna step out and say,
okay, what just happened here?
I think I'm gonna go to the bathroom
and I'm gonna say, what just happened here?
I think maybe I said something
that put you on the defensive.
Or I might say, I need to process a little bit here
because I had a twinge of something.
Can we figure that out?
And so once we remove ourselves
from the thing we're conflicting about,
now we're talking about the relationship,
which is us and how we talk.
And it's not judgmental, it's more observational.
Like, hey, what just happened here?
Let's get really curious about this.
There's a little tweak.
I'm expressing this to you as if I have this mastered.
Right?
As if I get this right every time.
I do not.
It's the work of a lifetime to become attuned
to those micro moments when conflict begins to happen
and we step out and work on the relationship
rather than drilling into the conflict.
So that I find is a wonderful tool.
There's this old YouTube video
about a woman that has a nail in her forehead.
Do you remember this?
Yeah.
And it's not about the nail, right?
Like stepping back and forgetting whatever the contention
or the argument is about and addressing the relationship.
I think that is some great advice,
especially in some of the relationships
that our audience might be managing.
Yeah.
It's even greater if you follow it.
And I don't always.
Yeah.
To know it conceptually is helpful,
but to actually put it into practice, it's challenging.
Yeah.
So I think the second thing
that I would share about conflict,
I'm happy to go back and talk more about that
if you wanted to.
No, no, no.
I think that's great.
The second thing is what do you do
if you are the one that needs to deliver a tough message?
And I think this happens in parenting,
it happens in our relationships,
it happens everywhere that the other person
may not be feeling any conflict,
but you need to express a hard message
and engage in a difficult conversation.
Here is a key, and I found this to be so important
in crucial conversations,
is preparing for that conversation,
separating out fact from story.
Fact is the observable behaviors and actions
that are incontrovertible.
This is the sentence that I said,
or this is the behavior that I'm seeing in you.
Keeping that as sort of like the pure objective,
definable aspect of the conflict.
And then you've got story.
And the story is your emotions, your interpretation,
your attribution of motive, all of that stuff,
which is subjective and imprecise.
Probably most of it's wrong,
but it's still our lived experience
as emotional human beings.
I mean, we are always going to have emotions,
but when we're preparing for that conversation,
we can say, okay, what are the facts that I can share
in a completely non-judgmental, non-accusatory way,
I saw this happen, I said this, I heard you say that.
I like to encourage my students to think about
just pulling out their phone and recording something.
Like what you see on the recording is the fact.
And then thinking about, okay, what's the story?
What am I telling myself?
What are the emotions I'm feeling?
And that's all me, I have to own that.
That's going on inside my brain and inside my heart.
So when we're approaching this conversation,
there's this, it's called the state model in chapter seven,
crucial conversations, my favorite chapter.
And it argues that we begin those conversations
with the facts, not with the story.
So you're working with a kid and rather than saying,
I'm so upset at you because you did this
and it shows how inconsiderate you are of me.
That's just like full of story.
But instead you might approach your child and say,
five minutes ago, I said this, do you remember that?
And your kid might actually nod, you know, at that point,
which is great, because when we're in the world of facts,
the other person can nod and agree with you.
And then if I remember correctly, you said this,
and suddenly we're building out a set of facts
that is a shared narrative where there's no judgment,
there's no attributions of intent.
Once we've established those facts, like, okay,
here's the story and we agree with the basic facts
of what happened, now I can own my story and say,
when I think about that, this is what I'm feeling.
And it's caused me to wonder if this is what's going on.
And I may be wrong about this,
but here's what I think is happening.
Now you notice I threw in a bunch of tentative language
in there as well.
And that's part of it.
We become tentative, well, we're tentative throughout
because we never have the full story.
But once we separate out fact from story,
we're inviting the other person to engage
with their stories, understand us better.
We're more likely to learn
from someone else's story as well.
So I love that and that has helped me time and time again
when I've had to approach kind of scary conversations
and didn't wanna get it wrong.
I try to establish the facts first
before moving into story.
And then moving into story tentatively
really propels us toward a conversation
where we learn from and hear each other.
Yeah, I love that.
And I think it's really important for us to remember
that the way we interpret facts is different
than other people.
That the story that we're telling ourselves
will never match exactly the way
that somebody else is telling that story.
In professionally, I have the opportunity
to train a lot of supervisors.
And one example I used to use in the past was,
there's a fact, this woman is a single mother.
What's the story?
Why is she a single mother?
And everyone has a different,
like, oh, well, she never knew the father
or her husband died or he left or like, right?
There's all of these different stories
that we might tell ourselves around this fact.
And we have to make sure that we can represent our story
in a way that doesn't offend others.
I love how you mentioned this,
but just talking really tentatively
about why we're feeling the way that we're feeling
in a specific situation.
And we have to remember that no one is gonna see things
how we see them.
Yeah, that's really important.
It's, again, it's a skill that you have to practice
your whole life because it isn't the default
for human nature.
The default is our emotions prevail.
Yeah, psychologists use the analogy
of the elephant and the rider.
The elephant is your emotional brain
and the rider is this tiny little, you know,
rational part of your brain
that's trying to guide those emotions.
And if we don't exert some effort,
we will be emotionally driven.
And I'm not advocating that we deny our emotions
or that we suppress them or set them aside.
We channel them and we use them
to help make sense of the facts.
I love that.
And in adoption relationships,
these relationships are so important, right?
And a lot of the time, like,
we are building these relationships for our children, right?
We're trying to help set them up for a life of connection
with their biological families.
And so they're highly important relationships.
And maybe sometimes we're in territory
that seems unfamiliar, right?
Because we're working with family members
who've been in our family for less time.
And we don't have as much history with.
And so it can be really easy to tell the wrong stories
because we don't have access
to everything in their heads, right?
And so I love that idea of being so much more compassionate
and careful with how to listen and how we respond
because I don't think like 99.9% of the time,
I don't think people are malicious.
I think we're just living our own truths
and not understanding other people
have different lived experiences
and are manifesting that so differently, right?
We have an experience that we've had someone share
on our podcast or with us from the podcast
where there was a grandparent who was giving gifts
to one of the grandkids, right?
And then not other grandkids.
And it was a question of, well,
is this because like we have a biological child
and you're like loving the biological grandchild more
than these other grandchildren who are adopted.
What's going on here, right?
And when we can step back and avoid the emotion
and the assumptions, we can find better answers
and better understanding
without destroying relationships or connections.
Which really brings us back to the starting point
of this conversation and why I have come to believe
that listening is one of the most fundamental skills
for having a positive influence in people around you.
Listening to appreciate another's story
it's transformational when we start acknowledging
the truths of other people's stories.
And I mean that with a small T, not the absolute truth
but the truth that they're living.
We can then be compassionate.
We can then make them feel psychologically safe
so that they can then hear us.
And as we put our two stories together
we come to something that's closer to an absolute truth.
Yeah.
So you've shared a lot of great information
about making it safe.
So if you had to boil that down
to like a couple of action items
that people can be like consciously trying to implement
in their lives, what might that look like?
Yeah, I think, well, to repeat
I would say practice level two listening
practice listening in order to understand someone fully
rather than injecting yourself and just see what you learned.
That's an excellent, it's an excellent practice.
And like I said, everything's a laboratory
that where you can practice that skill.
And I think the second thing that really
I feel it feels most compelling to me
is separating fact from story, owning your story.
And we didn't really get into this
but I think it sort of follows along.
Once you recognize that your story is your own
it also gives you some agency to work on that story
to consider different interpretations
to be open to other explanations
for the emotions you're feeling
and really take ownership of your story and your emotions.
I feel like we could speak with you for hours
and learn so much.
Well, we professors can talk a lot.
So don't push it too far.
You'll be here all afternoon.
No, no, you're so good.
Jeff, as you consider maybe who might be listening to this
in these important and sometimes difficult
to manage relationships, any other advice
or suggestions that you might make
from your academic study?
I think in any worthwhile endeavor
it's important to remember why you're doing it.
And when we lose the sense of why we can get discouraged
we can get tired and start to wonder if it's worth it.
I'm not an adoptive parent
but I see the work of adoption
of embracing a child into your home
to give them a life of love and growth
is really one of the most generous acts that I can imagine.
I know enough to know that there is pain
and there's sacrifice and there's confusion
and there's disappointment and then there's joy
and surprise and all of those things.
But I would say in the endeavor to try to manage
relationships with birth parents,
just making sure that you always connect to the why.
Why I'm doing this is going to make it all worthwhile.
I think that's incredible advice.
And probably a good note to end on.
I think so.
Dr. Thompson, thank you so much for being with us
and sharing some of your expertise.
We know, like you mentioned,
we could probably keep you here for a couple hours
but I think what you did share with our listeners
will be really helpful.
So thank you so much.
My pleasure.
I'm honored that you asked
and I wish you well on this wonderful podcast
and the services that you're providing.
It's great.
Thanks so much.
Thanks again to Jeff.
We're so grateful that he was willing
to spend some time with us
and impart some of his wisdom with us.
Yeah, we were so grateful to hear from Dr. Thompson.
So we're really excited.
National Adoption Month is coming
in just a couple of days, November.
It's National Adoption Month.
And this year, as our way of recognizing that
here on the podcast,
we will be having episodes once a week
rather than twice in the month.
And our episodes are going to be
adoptee-focused book club episodes
where we will have a guest adoptee join
in like a book club discussion
about some different adoption-themed books.
We have three episodes for sure,
potentially a fourth one,
if we can get that one squeezed in.
We'll be talking about Far From the Tree
by Robin Benway,
Orphan Train by Christina Baker-Kline,
and The Girls Who Went Away by Anne Fessler.
So those are the ones that we're for sure
gonna talk about.
And starting next week,
we're looking forward to learning.
So yeah, put those on your audiobook list
or go check them out at the library and read them.
And I mean, we call it book club,
but it's really a conversation
between Lanette and one adoptee
and their kind of conversation
and thoughts around the book.
They were really fun conversations.
I loved hearing all of these people's thoughts
on these different books and about adoption.
So I am excited for National Adoption Month.
That'll be great.
And I was so excited that we could use this episode
as our way to kind of spring into National Adoption Month.
So we'll be back in your feed next week.
Thanks so much for listening.
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