Haley Radke, Host/Producer of the Adoptees On podcast is my special guest for this special 100th episode!
Haley shared her story of gaining access to her open adoption record in Canada when she was 18 and quickly connecting with her first mother via email. They met soon after, but that rapid connection at Haley’s young age had its challenges. After secondary rejection, she was much more cautious with her reunion with her birth father. Hard work in therapy saw them through to a good place and inspired her offer therapeutic information for free through her own podcast that I’m sure you know. This is Haley’s journey.
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Haley (00:03):
But you're right in the moment. I mean, I didn't really have another choice but to just show her and go through it with her and I, I mean I was so young who knew that this was like a trauma, you know, and I'm like bringing up horrible memories from the past. Right? It's just never occurred to me.
Damon (00:27):
Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
Damon (00:34):
Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Haley. She called me via Skype from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Haley shared her story of gaining access to her adoption record in Canada when she was 18 and quickly connecting with her birth mother via email they met soon after. But that rapid connection at Haley's young age had its challenges after secondary rejection. She was much more cautious with her reunion with her birth father, hard work in therapy, solve them through to a good place and inspired her to offer therapeutic information for free through her own podcast. That. I'm sure you know this is Haley's journey. I'm not even going to play that game with you where I interview the person and I later reveal their secret identity. My guest for this very special 100th episode of who am I really is one of my fellow adoption podcasters, Haley Radke, host of Adoptees On and someone we all appreciate for her work to bring adoption stories and her healing series to podcasting. Haley told me she was adopted as an infant into the home of elementary school teachers in a remote Northern Mennonite community called LA Crete.
Haley (02:01):
Most people spoke low German, which is a dialect very close to German. It's just a little different. So my, my parents were like the "English speaking" people. I'm putting that in quotation marks and everyone else was Mennonite. So already there was a other factor and I only knew one other person growing up that was adopted and in fact, fairly recently I got to have a conversation with her about those experiences growing up, adopted in this very small town. And our stories are so different because I had no idea who my birth parents were and I really wondered mostly about my mother. Um, but she had no idea either, but everyone around her knew. So we had very opposing experiences growing up in La Crete, which looking back on that now is just so interesting to me. How, how challenging it was for both of us in different ways.
Damon (03:04):
When when you say she, everyone around her knew everybody around her, knew that she was adopted or everyone around her knew whose child she was.
Haley (03:15):
Everyone around her knew who her mother was except for her.
Damon (03:23):
Haley's parents waited seven years on a waiting list for the chance to adopt her. So they were 38 and 40 years old. When they became parents, they wanted to adopt another child, but if they had to wait another seven years to be considered again, they felt they would be too old to start over with an infant. So Haley grew up an only child discussing what it was like growing up in her home. She reiterated that her parents were teachers, so they were focused on child development milestones, spent a lot of time with her and read to her a lot.
Haley (03:54):
I did feel lonely a lot. Um, I remember playing by myself in my room, so very often wanting siblings. Um, my mum worked halftime, she was a kindergarten teacher and so I would often get babysat by family across the road from us and they had six kid I think if I'm remembering correctly and it was so rowdy and loud over there, then I would be thankful. I wasn't only kind of went back and forth.
Damon (04:27):
I did the same thing. I would go to my friend's houses and I would be like, Oh my God, you've got a brother, you've got a sister. And then I would see them fight over stuff and I was like, Oh man, I'm going home. I've got all my own stuff. I don't have to worry about any of this at home. Thinking back on the one adoptee Haley knew in her community, she said that her community was very homogenous when she was younger. So she doesn't think there were any other adoptees besides themselves today that very religious community has shifted to have more families who adopt often transracially, which we agreed might create some automatic othering for those adoptees. While Haley looked like the members of her community, they spoke English at home, so she got a taste of what it's like to be different from everyone else.
Haley (05:11):
I don't understand what it's like to be a transracial adoptee and the extra layers of that except in that tiny piece that I do share sometimes. I did grow up very culturally different from all of my peers because almost all of them, like 95% were Mennonite and spoke low German at home and I was like, I don't know. I don't know what any of this is.
Damon (05:33):
Yeah, that is kind of fascinating. Wow. So you did feel a little bit of that othering then.
Haley (05:39):
Yeah, definitely. And um, I did come to learn a few words in low German and the only one I can remember now is a swear word.
Damon (05:49):
I wondered how Haley was alike or different from her adoptive parents. Personality wise, she's pretty similar to her parents living more quietly and calmly like them. She said that with two parents who were teachers, she was often surrounded by her parents, friends who were teachers and people even seem to expect that one day she might be a teacher.
Haley (06:10):
There's no way I was going to be a teacher. I did not want to be that and so I wanted to be different. I think somewhere in my subconscious I wanted to be different than they were,
