Annie, from Auckland, New Zealand is a late discovery adoptee. When she learned that she was adopted the news made her blood run cold. She said her life split into two people: the people pleasing adoptee who wanted to remain in her family and be accepted and the rebellious adoptee who refused to be what others expected.

In reunion, Annie found her birth mother had been waiting years for her to return and a birth father she unexpectedly learned to appreciate, especially juxtaposed against the adoptive father she grew up with.

Annie is an adamant unwavering advocate for adoptee rights.

This is Annie's journey

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Cold Cut

[00:00:00] Annie: she'd just sit there crying. So she wanted to kill herself and how can you do this to me? And I'm like, oh my God. So then when I met my father, I thought, I can't ever tell her about him because if this is how she feels about mom. So I lied about my father and when she died I could finally get to know them.

And you know, it was just years later we'd lost so much. You know, because you have to be good and you have to be this grateful person.

Show Open

I'm Damon Davis and you're about to meet Annie. She contacted me from Auckland New Zealand. Annie is a late discovery adoptee. And when she learned the news that she was an adoptee, it made her blood run cold. She said her life split into two people. The people pleasing adopt the

who wants to remain in her family and be accepted and the rebellious adoptee who refused to be what others expected.

Opening

When we started chatting Annie's first question was, do you allow cursing on your podcast? I told her. Sure. No problem. So this is your warning that Annie uses some colorful language, do not let her self-expression subtract from the message she carries. I encourage you to stay at. So the end to hear something important about how we view quote, angry, adoptees. As always i started by asking Annie what adoption was like in her young life she responded by saying

And then I came along and I think because mum had told the other girls about adoption, she, in her head somewhere, she thought that was quite comforting for her. I think that it was gonna be okay and everything was fine. So I don't think she felt the need to tell me. And we were going up to the shops in the back of the car and.

one of my sisters said, oh, you know, adopted. And I said, what does that mean? And then I remember my mother saying, oh, well I'm not your mother and you know, I'm, I'm just looking after you cuz your mother couldn't have you. And I just remember staring at the back of her head and thinking, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

And it was very, very plain to see that you just had to carry on and suck it up.

You

It was in another level of, she was so broken, and I think what happened to her is she had so many miscarriages, she had such an infertility issue. She'd had anorexia when she was 16, and she had to be taken down to Christchurch. Now, in regards to where you guys are that would be probably like you flying to.

And when my mother was eight, her father went out sailing one day and he never came back. Mm. her mother was so, Upset and angry because she was left with these two children and there was no widow pension that then there was no financial aid from the government. So she basically had to bring these two girls up and mum never had any rights cause she wanted to be a nurse and her mother wouldn't let her.

She didn't wanna marry him. She started adopting these children and filled a place of joy in her life. But as far as she was concerned, In her head, we belonged to her. We were her children. There was no if way, but around it, we were hers. And that was made very clear. And you never mention adoption again because that's just something that happened and I need to tell you about, but it doesn't belong to you at all.

And we're just gonna carry on and bullshit land and pretend that everything's fucking hunky door and

And that unde with trauma can manifest itself in a lot of crazy ways. and, and it doesn't necessarily make for good parenting. I gotta say. I want to go back to another thing that you talked about too, which was the idea that you found out at seven years old that you were adopted and everybody else already knew.

Can you tell me a little bit about this feeling you described of going cold? What, what does that mean for you as a seven year

I've written a book called, where the Fuck Is My Mother? And it's the growing up adoptees to try and get the trauma and the triggers that most of us have that are very synonymous and very similar, especially in the baby era when I was, cause [00:07:00] I'm 52 now. And just that feeling of, I don't trust anyone anymore.

I dunno who you are. I remember looking around the car at the back of my mother's head going, okay, you're not my mother. And then I looked at my sister and went, oh, you're not my fucking sister and you are not my sister. Oh, and you are not my sister. And then I went home and my head and went, oh my God, that's not my dad.

That's not my auntie. They're not my cousins. Where am I? What is happening? And I just remember going home and sitting in my room and mom came in with the bullshit letter that we all got from, you know, the department, social welfare. And she gave me this piece of paper that had bullshit information on it.

And mum, mum bought into that that bullshit and that rhetoric that was actually banding a route by the church and the crown. And I've got a lot to say about that because, you know, it was really all coerced by the church and morals and how dare you. And at that time, you know, after the second World War, there was a lot of people that couldn't have children and they just kind of went, oh, well we can just get them from the.

And I'm pitching to the government at the moment to end that and I'm actually getting my adoption redacted and I'm actually getting my original birth certificate back so that my liturgy is restored to [00:09:00] my parents because they're the ones that actually had me. And it's not about good or bad adoption.

It's not about, you know, that I'm angry with my adoptees. It's about my right to my DNA and my footprint on the first I, why should I be a second class citizen?

And it's a, it's an odd thing that people ever thought that this was something you could just do, that you could just take a child from one family and just pick 'em up and put 'em over here and de-identify 'em and then everybody would be just fine. it's really wild. Yeah. and it has come back to, to bite the system.

I think

I'm pretty sure it's unanimous. Globally. Suddenly there was a fire and there was a flood, and all your records are gone. And you know, they actually, legally by law, you are not allowed to take a child off, another person without a lawyer. And they have a 10 day clause in that contract where you, they're allowed to take you back.

But what they did is they trapped them in, in these places, in these hostels and boarding homes, and they were sent away from their parents. They were taken from their infrastructure, their friends, their family, everything that they knew. They were terrified to death because they'd never had a baby. They were disgusting and ashamed and dirty and put down and told that there were whores.

She had to pay a dollar when she left the hospital for the paperwork to give me away. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And no counseling and no help. And no support. Yeah. And to me, that is actually human trafficking and it's criminal.

Because I was in a legal binding contract that I was not privy to. I was in a legal binding contract that was done to me. And now as an adult, I still have no rights until the day I die. Mm-hmm. That is disgusting.

That's a criminal offense. Well, they tampered with mine, but they're not up on charges.

[00:12:17] Annie: Correct. Yeah. And tomorrow I can change my sexual identity and become a man on paper and they will just grant that to me. But I'm actually not allowed to get my birth certificate with my parents' names on them.

Legally, I'm not allowed to. And I've written to everyone here. So I'm actually taking what we call a private members bill, which I don't think you have there. I know you've got senators, we've got mps, which are called members of Parliament, and they act for you. They're writing, they've written up this massive contract for me and they're taking it to Parliament for me.

I'm not. I refuse to see that rhetoric. How can you take somebody from their family? And give them to strangers and accept them to be grateful?

and the news blew her mind. That her teen years of living with her adopted family would be pretty challenging. I mean, if she felt her blood run cold, when she was seven, what must it have been like in her family as she grew and matured. And he said, she felt like she had split into two different people.

And I remember thinking, I have to be good. I have to be a good girl because I don't know where else to go. I can't leave. But if I could have, I would've left. I would've walked out and never come back cuz I was so angry with them and violated that they would lie and trick me in such a hideous fashion.

And then to give me no information about where my mother lives or what happened or anything, it's just like, be quiet, be good. I go to the doctor and. She, lies in front of the doctor and tells the doctor, well, no, we don't have any of that in our family. And I'm like, you could kill me. This is bullshit.

to her, I was a golden child. I was perfect and good. She'd send me to church camps and I just fuck all the boys. But she never knew. So I, I had this double life that I lived behind her. I played the game and the day she died was probably the happiest day of my life. Mm-hmm. My father was bipolar, so he had massive mental health issues and my mother came to me like shit to a blanket.

So I was her husband really. And I just had to keep up this pretense when I got, I got pregnant at 18, so I followed in my, my natural mother's footstep. I basically got kicked out of the house. She's signed me up for an abortion. And you know, I'm like, what a constriction that you, you can't have a baby.

Wow. And in the end, mum came around and she just loved him so much and he became the perfect golden boy.

And you know, that again was so insulting. Yeah. But double standards and. Yeah, so I learned to disassociate, no, I, I study and teach at the moment and I help, I do trauma counseling for people because that is the crux of it. When you go into trauma as a child, you often have disassociation disorders and for me I still have it, but I'm dealing with it.

But it's incredibly difficult as a child to navigate your way through that. I'm surprised I'm still here actually. Yeah,

It sounds like you were sexually active in sort of going against everything that she was trying to turn you into. Was that sort of, because Yeah. Of the adoption anger, like. You adopted me and you thought you wanted me to be this, so I'm going to absolutely 100% go the other direction and be that.

But yet I was still her favorite cause I've got this really big personality and this magic, but she never knew. What I was doing behind her back. Mm-hmm. And I basically was [00:18:00] rebelling because I was so fucking angry at being trapped in this paradigm that I don't belong in. And I remember sitting and looking at her face while she's talking to me.

And in my head I'd be going, don't give a fuck. You're not my mother. I hate you. I just want you to die. But I'd never let her know. And I'd smile sweetly and give her a cuddle. And she'd read me praise every night in bed up till I was 18. I mean, the woman was mad.

But, but you have said like, I decided that I needed to be good. Tell me a little bit about that juxtaposition of there was a point where you said, I need to be good [00:19:00] and, and you've said, you know, I would go along and I would coddle her, basically. But I was thinking in my mind, you know, I wish you were dead.

How does that work in terms of sort of putting on this facade of, you know, an angel, but like the person inside you is like, their hair is on fire with red devil eyes, and they're like, ready for this person in front of them to die. Tell how, how did that work for you? Exactly. That's

I became that person and it's learnt behavior through trauma and I became really, really good at it. I was so good at it. And I still find that in my life now. Like I carry that on and sometimes I dunno where my actual thoughts begin or end because I always have to be good. I have to be a good girl. I, everyone has to like me.

You'll be abandoned again. You want, no one will love you or like you, this is the only thing you've got. So you may as well just learn how to play it. And it's almost like a beaten wife syndrome. You just, you know, people go, won't you leave when you can't because you're trapped in the. Paradigm and everyone's watching you from the outside.

How is she gonna perform? How's she gonna fit into this God? Mm-hmm. She's good. She good? Mm-hmm. But behind her back I was just frantically lying. So that was that split personality where, we don't have boundaries we have to do, I kicked back a few times, quite brutally, and I got put back in my place and she would take things from you and she would torture you and she'd take money and food off you and shake the car off you.

[00:21:03] Damon: It sounds like it would've been super exhausting. Like it's hard enough for people who are not dealing with the trauma at the level that you're talking about, to just feel confident in themselves and be honest and, you know, operate with integrity.

Maybe not hard enough, but you know. It like it, it takes a while to sort of figure out who you are, who you want to be and operate in that. But what you've said is you are living two lives. There's this one that I have to maintain the perception with my mom, you know, the, the person who adopted you, and then there's this other, you know, raging individual who's trying to break free.

Was that exhausting for you to, to have this constantly beyond your mind?

I think your mind can control, you know, a lot. Mm-hmm. There's no real such thing that antidepressants creates serotonin that's not even been proven. It's just a bullshit lie. It's, it's your mental attitude about being kept in a cage. How you're gonna cope with being kept in a cage. Are you gonna go mental and eat yourself or are you gonna just learn to live in the cage and understand how your mind can set you free?

So I basically had to put up with my dad being absolutely mentally insane. He went to a mental institution about four times and they gave him electric therapy, you know, in his brain she was loopy as well. Religion was incredibly heavy. She'd read the Bible every night at the table. I figured out that, In my eyes that God isn't real.

And so now I have to watch myself because I, I'm a rescuer and a giver cuz she was, she needed rescuing, so I rescued her. So that's Luke behavior. Dad was sick, so I rescued him. I was the caretaker in the, since the day I was born. I was the appearance really. But no one came. What my anger is too, is no one came to check on us.

You know, how can you just sign up for babies, get them, and then no one comes to check on you to see if everything's all right. The paperwork's done. And that's the end of that. No one came to see if we were okay. Mm-hmm. How can you do that? Yeah. It's insane.

It took Annie a year to find her family through the social welfare department. Annie requested her file, which contains her original birth certificate, showing her birth mother's name. Her birth father's name was unlisted, Which was a common practice for birth fathers unfortunately

With her original birth certificate, any and her baby got on the bus for the long ride into town to access the electoral roll at the library. And he sat and wrote by hand at least 100 people's names who had her birth. Mother's last name as well. After the long bus ride home with her baby. And he started making phone calls . To ask the people on her list. If they were her birth family. Since Annie lived way up north, her calls were toll calls, so they were costly. And as a young mother, she had [00:25:00] very little money.

And he said she could only afford to make about three calls at a time. She would save her money during the week, then make a few calls working her way down the list. She would call and ask if the person on the other line knew her birth mother, some people were polite and kindly responded with a no.

Others were course and abrupt and asked who Annie was and what she wanted and still others just hung up.

We've got nothing in New Zealand for adoption health support at all. They said to me, this is what you do. You say, oh, I'm a friend from school, a foreign out of charge. Do you have her contact? Well, anyway, this lady, what do you mean Susan's Mary Sue? Like that she was really angry and mean. [00:26:00] And I went, oh yeah, Sue.

And she went, well, who are you? And I said, oh, I'm just a friend from school falling out, you know, dunno where she's, well, she just lives down the road. I'll give you her number. And she went away to get her number. Came back, I wrote it down, and then I've got my mum's number. Wow. Now what, what, what the fuck do you do with that?

Am I gonna ring her up and ruin her life and she can reject me again? What am I gonna find out at the end of this? What, what's gonna happen to her? You know, does she wanna speak to me? I don't know. Terrifying. So I waited for a few weeks, but one night I think I had a few wines and went okay, Dutch courage and rang her

[00:26:41] Annie: got her husband. I didn't know who he was, and he's like, and I think I again said Susan, and he goes, what do you mean? Susan? And I went, oh yeah, Sue And I went, okay. And he goes, yeah, hang on. And, and then, you know, she came to the phone and I'm like, [00:27:00] that's me.

You know? Cause I was so emotional like I am now. And I said, it's your daughter. And she went, oh darling, waiting for this call my whole life. And the first thing she said, look, are you okay? And I went, yeah, kinda. But, oh God. And then, Proceeded to tell me that she had three children and she was married.

And then she asked, are you any children? And she just found out she had a grandson. You know, I mean, it's insane, eh, what they did to us. Mm-hmm.

[00:27:45] Annie: Oh, it was just so good because, you know, she could have hung up on me.

And I mean, I don't know if I could have cope with that. But I also have done a lot of research on trauma and cellular memory and everything. And I think the problem that I have is because my mother did not want to give me away. And I was taken and I think my father's family tried to keep me as well.

So it was my grandmother who I rang who, who made mum give me away. She called me it and she still called me it and wanted put me on family tree. No way. And I think it's cause Mum wanted me and we've got that bond that was severed and I think ethereally in our heart somewhere that we were connected because we never wanted to be apart.

[00:29:03] Damon: After arranging to meet one another. And he took a bus two and a half hours with her son in tow to meet her birth mother. They agreed to meet at a coffee shop to see one another for the first time.

Your auntie, that's where you got your aunties here, your brothers noses, whatever. None of them Yeah. Mirroring for me until I was 20. Yeah.

I just looked in her eyes and they were my eyes and her hands and my hands and it was just so comforting. Cause I'd never seen anyone that looked like me. And that was just so nice.

And so we tried to form this amazing bond and I wanted to see her and drink her up and I wanted to hear all her stories, but I couldn't because my mother was still alive. And I remember one day getting her to my house and snuck her around, you know? Cause my other mother was always fucking there. She never rang or anything.

She'd just turned up. She was so invested in my life. And my natural mother was in the kitchen and we were busted. And it was just the most horrific feeling and. You know, my adopted mother was just, you could see on her face, she was so angry at me and so traumatized. And then I'd get the hell in fury from that for weeks and weeks.

And you know, it was just years later we'd lost so much. You know, because you have to be good and you have to be this grateful person.

Eventually one day she just popped in one day and your biological mother was sitting there in your house and this was this, oh shit moment. Then you could never live it down, right?

You know, it just wasn't worth it. Mm-hmm.

[00:32:26] Annie: Yep, I did. And then, but the other thing for them was I didn't want to let them know how bad my life had been because, and I've only just told mum in the last book, she's been hearing my podcast and it's so confronting for her because she rings me and she lives in Australia now. She brings me in crying and she's like, I'm so sorry.

And when N says, wherever you've been all weekend, you've gotta lie. And I'm, I'm doing that to my five year old, you know, and I'm doing the same thing she did to me. And it's like, That's when I'm just so, I get so angry at this whole bullshit mm-hmm. That we have to do.

That's right.

Your adoptive mother and therefore you sort of coerced your own son into lying about the relationships that you had developed and it was just the cycle all over again. Yeah. That's really fascinating. Yeah,

That was it. You can meet her, get, ask what happened, and that's it. You're not gonna have a relationship with her. You're not. And I'm like, oh, okay. Why not? We'll, well I'm your mother. And I'm like, yep, okay. Fuck. It's not a competition. But I knew it was just so bad. There was no way in the fire pits of hell [00:35:00] that I could have a relationship with her because the price on my head, the bounty on my head was too great.

Mm-hmm. And then money plays a part because, you know, my mum helped me get into my first house when I had my baby at 18. I got married to Dean, their father, who you know, was a lovely man, but he was a bit broken like my dad and all this shit. And then I feel guilty because she broke me up and wipe my ass and given me money.

And how dare I just go often and hang out with this other lady who's my mother, you know? Mm-hmm. You had that guilt going holistic once. exactly. And my life's been filled with guilt. I can't please anyone. I can never make anyone happy, you know? And that's what pushes you down that suicide route because you just don't wanna be here anymore.

Cuz it's tiring. Mm-hmm. Like you said at the beginning, how tired are you? And it's exhausting pretending. So, yeah, it's a dichotomy, isn't it? Yeah. You're still living this lie.

I mean, many people will hear it and sort of be curious, but kind of run off and play. But as soon as the words were said, ice ran through your veins as if. You were on the wrong planet, it sounds like. And you've lived with this for Yeah. Many, many years. So I just wanted to say I'm, I'm super sorry that this has been the torture of your life and, and along those lines then I wanted to go back for a moment to something that you said earlier.

If I heard you correctly, you basically said the day your adoptive mother died was like the best day of your life. What does that mean?

There wasn't anything I could do to change her beliefs. I was not allowed to be me. I had to be this thing that she wanted me to be. Mm-hmm. And. I, just sort of touched on it before I said I went to this trauma counselor and he did reiki and I remember lying there and he, he put his hand over me and he goes, who owns you?

And I, I just said to him, oh my, my mother. And he went, wow, I'm gonna cut all that. I'm gonna break all those tires because someone owns you. And my mother would always say to me, you are mine. You are mine. I you are mine. I own you. You are mine baby. You are my baby. And I'd be like, oh my God, that's

That is crazy. He said that just, wow. That's unbelievable. He was able to detect that. [00:38:00] That's wild.

Even if you give birth to them and they're genetically yours, you don't own anybody. We, slavery is a abolished. Mm-hmm. I don't, I'm not a piece of property. I'm a human being, but for her to, to name me is that you are mine and you are my baby. And it's like, mm, I'm kind of not, anyway. So I just had to hold myself and just, I learned a lot though, which is great because now I can teach and I've got so much empathy and I can help other people and you know, it's really made me the person who I am.

You should know where you came from. Mm-hmm. The people who then take you and look after you should be guardians of you because they're looking after you and feeding you. Right. That's lovely. Yeah. But, but don't get me away and change my name and take my DNA footprint off the

And he told me that at 35 years old, she was quite broken when she tried to collect herself to form a relationship with her natural mother. Again. And his birth mother's family accepted her really nicely when she flew to Brisbane to meet them and form new bonds. Her birth mother still had contact information for Andy's birth father.

Even though she hadn't spoken to the man since the day Annie was born. And his birth mother offered to introduce Annie to her birth father

I don't, I don't wanna fucking meet him. I wanna you are my mother. Like, we never want your father in the middle of the night. Do you even be crying as a kid? You want your mother.

[00:40:38] Annie: and I remember. The three of us just meeting. And mum was crying and dad was crying and I was crying and the dad was like, you're so beautiful. And I'm like, oh my God, you're so handsome. Mum was so pretty and they still in love.

Yeah. So I met dad and he's, actually both of my you know, parents broke up when they met me. They had these 20 year marriages. They met me and they both broke up their marriages and I thought, that's my fault. Right. I've come along and I've tipped up the apple cart. I'm the new kid in the block.

Dad had three kids as well. Mum had three kids. They were all quite shocked. They. Found out about me, they met me and I think I opened cans of worms in their marriages. And I feel like I'm to blame, but I don't know how, what you do with that. But anyway, they all split up. Mm-hmm. Dad was so upset. He used to ring me every night because we had such a great connection and he used to cry on my shoulder and, you know, from my other parents.

And then he went, he went and had sex with someone else and then did the same thing to my brother and his sparrow. And his name is Sparrow. It's not a made up name, it's actually his name. So Dad gave me away and adopted me. And then Dad didn't do anything with Spur. He just basically abandoned him, said that he wasn't the father, and, and ran away up North and, and left him.

And my book is quite short. It's only like 12 pages and it's written as if it's written for children, but it's actually for adults. But it's really short and basic. And he'd put, he'd ring me and go, I'm struggling with this page. And I'd go make it darker, make it more horrible. The family tree tackles and leaves off it.

Put thunder behind it. Take the church, make it as dark as you can. People are dead. I'm like, I'm so sad. And he'd go, fuck, you're so deep and sad. And I'm like, yeah. Mm-hmm. So you and we, we held each other together through that, but it was so lovely to interpret it with my actual brother, you know?

That's, that's crazy. Wow.

[00:43:50] Annie: was cool. I had to drag him kicking and screaming, but he did it.

You said you work in trauma and your sort of, Fighting against the system. Can you just summarize again what it is that your life's mission is now in the adoption space? So,

There isn't, there's probably two in New Zealand and the whole New Zealand, like 6 million people. I would like to train in that. I feel like I'm kind of a bit too old to do that. And also it's really hard to get training in it because it's such a specifiec dynamic, isn't it? Mm-hmm. But however, I think I know enough to just be able to go out on my own and, and help and share because I've researched so much.

And the fathers never been put down on birth certificates because they had no rights either. They were stolen, their children were stolen too. Mm-hmm. You know, they didn't, didn't disappear. They thought about their children every day and they miss their children. I wanna fight the state and the crown.

I wanna make people accountable. But you know, you have to hustle and you've gotta work and, and pay the bills. So at the moment, I'm a botanical stylist and I do weddings and functions and with the Covid . Thing that's been hard. So I'm grateful for that cuz it's given me a lot of opportunity and time to sit down and actually you know, write my book and publish my book and, and research and talk and join groups and spend way more time than I would be allowed to if I was doing weddings every weekend and flowers up a ladder.

[00:46:23] Damon: You are right. You're right. There's a, a global fight for. Adoptee rights, you're 100% correct. Correct. And it's, there's millions and millions of kids out there who have grown into adults, some of whom are, you know, in many ways thankful for the opportunity that they've gotten. And many of them are just like, this was the worst thing that any anybody could have ever done.

but the, the fight for identity is real. And I'm glad you're fighting it, a lot of times people wallow in their pain and they don't take that energy and turn it into anything.

[00:47:17] Annie: Oh, thanks. And that's the aim, because lo, you know, lots of people that I talk to who are adopted, they go, why are you so angry?

Mm-hmm. And I'm like, I'm not angry. I'm angry at what's being done to us. I refuse to be grateful. And then they don't understand that because they've been told a lie and then they break up and they go, oh, oh, yeah. Shit, that, that's a good point. Actually, you know what? That's a good point. But I want to change my birth certificates of when I die.

It was lovely of you to take me in cause you didn't have another child and you just got one free down the road. Thank you. But I'm not buying into that shit. Mm-hmm. I want my fucking liturgy back where it should be. And back in the Coliseum days, if there was a child that wasn't wanted or was pushed outta the home, they'd take it to the coliseum.

They'd put it on one of the pillars. It would have to hold onto the pillar, and anyone else in the town could come along and take it. They'd take the child home and go, we'll look after you. But their name was still kept their name. Mm-hmm. They were kept, they had the same line energy. We, you can't just, you can't just a baby and give it to another group of people.

Everyone's like, amazing. It's so amazing how you fuck. That's not amazing. That baby now has no connection to nothing or no one. Mm-hmm. No one's looking after the mother or helping her. If the church is so great, look to your coffers and help that woman out cuz she ain't got no money. That's why she can't have the baby.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. For goodness sake, it's disgusting. Yeah.

[00:49:57] Annie: . That I can't believe it. It makes [00:50:00] me so angry.

This is incredible to hear your energy in fervor for making change. It's super important, and I'm gonna say again, I'm really sorry for what you endured because not every adoptee experiences what you did, and it sounds awful. And but I'm glad that you were able to make some connections back to your biology, that sound, sound meaningful for you to have them at your wedding and have them sort of be connected back to each other.

Sounds like at least some level of positivity and something, you know. To, to be happy about and yeah. And I hope that it is. That's really cool. It, I'm,

It's just, I'm gonna use, like you said, I'm gonna use the anger Yeah. To [00:51:00] change shit. And I think that's what happens though with people like me who's who are so motivated. That's how change is created. Yeah. Because we can't just sit there and whinge about it and do nothing.

A lot of times, quote unquote, angry adoptees get a lot of flack and. People see them as an angry adoptee and it kind of bleeds into the rest of their life as if they were an angry person in general. And I think it's important to just outline and underscore that that person might not necessarily be angry about every component of their life, but this particular piece where they were transplanted from one family to another and they don't know who their lineage is and all of the things we've already discussed.

Take care of the world.

[00:52:13] Damon: so much. My pleasure. Take care. All the best. All right. e You too. Bye-bye

[00:52:20] Damon: Come see. Oh my God. I would love to. I would love to. I'd love to. Take care. Bye-bye. Do it.

[00:52:26] Damon: Hey, it's me. Annie is a late discovery adoptee who learned about her adoption at the age of seven. I know that doesn't sound old enough to be a late discovery adoptee, but you heard how the news hit her hard and made her question everything.

That's what late discovery does to an adopt the, at any age.

I'm glad to hear Annie is turning her adoption experience into advocacy.

And remember adopt these like Annie have a right to be unhappy about their adoption. Just because they're angry about the adoption experience. Doesn't mean they're unhappy people in general. You heard her say she's a botanical stylist for weddings who could be angry doing that awesome job.

We're all allowed to have separate emotions that coincide with different segments of our lives. Adoption is a huge part of many people's lives and the person who lived it. The adoptee is allowed to feel however they want. I'm Damon Davis, and I hope you found something in Annie's journey that inspired you.

Validates your feelings about wanting to search. Or motivates you to have the strength along your journey to learn who am I really.