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.

The post 100 – Purely Loving Intentions appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

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,

Damon (06:23):

I'm sure to her parents. Great joy. Haley was a reader.

Haley (06:29):

I loved reading. Reading was my number one thing. I basically read every single book in my elementary school libraries and middle school libraries and our community library was the same as our high school library. So when when I got books out from there, you were allowed five books out at a time, which was enough for a week for me, kind of when I, when I moved over to the high school, you were only allowed two books out if you were a student there. And I remember being so irritated that I couldn't take up more books again anymore

Damon (07:04):

later. Haley's family, not quite as conservative as the Mennonite community around them. Got a computer. She learned tech stuff like computer games, web design and tech nerd stuff to use her words. As we were talking, I realized I didn't really know what Mennonite was, so I asked Haley to explain it a little.

Haley (07:24):

So in La Crete, um, predominantly Mennonite, very small town, I'd say maybe 2,500 people. Most of the people there have immigrated to Canada from Bolivia and they have a very conservative religious culture. And Mennonite is one of the main features of the Mennonite religion is pacifism. So they would move to La Crete to escape being drafted for the war. And so that's sort of where the roots are. But the old colony Mennonites would be very similar to um, how to write in that. Like some of them, you know, when let their kids go to school pass grade nine, um, there's a lot of farming up there. Their churches wouldn't have electricity. For example. A lot of my friends weren't allowed to have TVs. Like when I say conservative I'm like speaking like it's a very like literally conservative and you know, going back many years in time. But yeah, it's, it's, it was, it was weird Damon people dropped out of school after grade nine because they had to go work on the farm and I had girlfriends who, you know, weren't allowed to cut their hair and they made their own dresses. Like it is like a whole different world.

Damon (08:54):

Yeah, it sounds like it. And if you weren't raised that way, it must've been really interesting to be part of a community where there was, you know, somewhat of a different language as a whole bunch of different beliefs in the system. That's really fascinating. I inquired with Haley about the catalyst for her search. She said she often wondered about her origin story and about her first mother when she turned 18 and had moved to the city in the early two thousands she realized she was of legal age to apply for her non identifying information in Alberta, but she wasn't really thinking about searching as even a possibility. She just wanted more information. She said her non ID was only a few pages

Haley (09:34):

and it was very sparse. But everything on there I was like, Oh my goodness, I can't believe this. And one of the things that it said was that my mother was an avid reader and I remember just being like, Oh my gosh. Like of course she is. That's where I get it from.

Damon (09:51):

(laughter)

Haley (09:53):

I was so excited to like, as you're listening, know everyone that is adopted. Like if you have never had any type of genetic mirroring around you, like this one, one little fact of like, Oh my gosh, I'm like someone else. That was gold.

Damon (10:11):

Yeah. And to read it right there on the page before you've ever come anywhere near meeting the person. There's a real um, magnetism to them or at least identification with them, right, because you feel like a piece of you is, is in some way a piece of them. It's really kind of amazing. There were mentions of physical traits and information about the sizes of her maternal and paternal families, but not enough information to act on for a search. Haley tucked all of the information away and closed the door. But when the Alberta government opened adoption records, soon thereafter, she reopened that door. In 2005, Haley applied to receive her full adoption records, which were sent in a huge file of detailed information, but most of it was redacted with many sections blacked out.

Haley (11:03):

But within that, there was my birth mother's name, my birth father's full name, and there was even an address that was her address at the time of placement for me. So I got out the phone book and I looked up her surname. It was, it's a very common surname, so I looked at pages and pages of the surname to try and see if I could find that address. And sure enough there still was someone there with that same last name and I thought this is probably my grandparents. And so I wrote a letter.

Damon (11:46):

What did you say? Do you remember what you said in your letter?

Haley (11:50):

I have it here. Well, here's my first paragraph. I say tier and then there's her name family. I'm not sure what it would be like to receive this letter is actually kind of surreal for me to be sitting here and writing it. Just know that I'm not writing to disrupt lives or your family. I have purely loving intentions of finding my other family. So then I go on to give some details and about how I found their address and all of these things. And then I ask to be connected with my birth mother. And I do the same thing that so many of us do. Right. You have to show I'm not a scary person. I just kind of want to know and I want to express that. I want to know my family and I don't want to, you know, steal from you. I mean, what are the other struggles of like, exactly, yeah. Rock your boat, include myself in your family, take over in some way. Um, and I also say at the end, if you don't want to connect with me, could you just please acknowledge the receipt of this letter?

Damon (13:06):

I thought that was really smart. So many adoptees send out an introductory letter that's never answered, but we don't know if it was received and unanswered. If we add an incorrect address or if they just didn't want to talk to us. It's frustrating.

Haley (13:21):

No kidding. The next day after I had mailed it, I got an email back from my grandfather and it was so beautiful and welcoming. I'll just give you the last line because it's so key to just how, um, my maternal grandfather is. It says, PS, I was told not to email you until after we spoke to your mother, but I think I've stayed in the background about 22 years too long.

Damon (13:59):

Oh my gosh, he sounds so awesome. Oh my gosh.

Haley (14:06):

That was such a relief and it was so welcoming and loving and I just thought this is going to be great.

Damon (