Craig Mod

Episode Transcript
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Haley Radke (00:00):
This podcast is for educational and
entertainment purposes only.
Nothing stated on it either by its hostsor any guests, is to be construed as
psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You are listening to adopteeson the podcast where adoptees

(00:20):
discuss the adoption experience.
I'm Haley Radke.
What a delight to host our guesttoday, Craig Mod, the author of
Things Become Other Things, A WalkingMemoir joins us to share his story.
We deep dive into Craig's recentreunion with his birth mother, including
the complexities of searching in thedigital age when so much of our personal

(00:44):
information is publicly available.
Being fairly new to adoptee land Craigalso gave me a chance to talk through some
of those things that complicate the usualsunshine and rainbow views of adoption.
We do make reference to sexual assaultbriefly at a couple of different
points during this conversation.
So please take care when deciding if thisis a safe episode for you to listen to.

(01:09):
We wrap up with some recommendedresources and as always, links to
everything we'll be talking about todayare on the website, adopteeson.com.
Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcometo Adoptees On Craig Mod.
Welcome, Craig.

Craig Mod (01:26):
Thanks for having me.

I'd love it.
If you would start the way weusually do, if you would share
some of your story with us.

Craig Mod (01:33):
I am a writer and photographer and 99% of my work
is book related writing books.
And for most of my life I've been likean independent book maker all throughout
my twenties and a big chunk of mythirties, I was running independent
presses and or I was art directingindependent presses and involved with

(01:55):
the publishing world in that capacity.
And then I did some digital book stuffaround 2010, but now I am just fully
my own person producing and writingbooks that are mainly connected
with my big walks across Japan.
So I've been living in Japan for 25 years.
I moved here when I was 19 and for thelast decade or so, last 15 years, I've

(02:18):
been doing huge walks across the country.
So I've walked from Tokyo to Kyotothree times on various different
paths to Nakasendo, the Tōkaidō.
I've done pilgrimage roots.
I've walked a lot of the Kii peninsula,so I've just really tried to touch as
much of the country as I can on foot.
And that is my life now.
So it's working on the books,living in Japan, which is my home.

(02:41):
I consider myself animmigrant to the country.
I bristle at the word expat,which is filled with these
connotations of apartness and likeliving above a place or a people.
And also historically, if youkinda look into it it's fairly
racist to a certain degree.
There's a kind of built in racism,embedded in the word, in the
sense that expats were their ownlittle group and they felt like

(03:04):
they were better than the locals.
And so I definitely don'tconsider myself that at all.
In fact I've struggled my whole life toconnect with the expats that are here.
It's I don't naturally feel anaffinity towards the moneyed kind of
foreigners that choose to live in, notjust Japan, but like a lot of Asia.

(03:25):
That's a pretty common trope.
So I consider myself an immigrant tryingto be as engaged as possible with the
country and the people and try to bean additive part of the world here.
And I try to do that through my booksand walks and I write for the New
York Times and all sorts of stuff.
So that's basically it.

And how about your adoption story?
When did you find out you were adopted?

Craig Mod (03:47):
I found out I was adopted for as long as I've had memory.
I don't, there's no, I have a vague,fuzzy memory of maybe when I was, I
don't know, four or five or somethinglike of getting an adoption book.
And I think my adoptive parents, andat that point it was just my mom.

(04:07):
So the parents who adopted megot divorced almost immediately.
So I was raised by my mom and herparents, and I just remember getting
this kind of, this sort of picture bookfor adopted kids and them explaining
it to me and it not making any sense.
I think this is this is the thing Ithink adopted parents misjudge over

(04:28):
and over and over again, is how complexemotionally and like physiologically,
this idea of birthing and who you comefrom and what you come out of and who
you know, who you literally, who youcome out of and how that's family.
And I remember for years and years askingmy mom my parents went to Hawaii on their

(04:51):
honeymoon and I just assumed that babieslike sprouted in bellies on honeymoons.
That's how where I thought kids came from.
And I remember asking, even after I knewI was adopted over and over again, I'd
tell friends, oh, I've technically I'vebeen to Hawaii because like I was in my
mom's belly, but I remember saying thatover, several times to people, to kids
and thinking back on it now, it's justso funny how that it didn't register for

(05:15):
me what it really meant to be adopted.
And then I think my parents, I mean myfather taught me like literally nothing.
It's like amazing to thinkback to my adoptive father.
He's gone now and there's awhole story of burying him.
He moved into the woods andI had to go bury him alone.
And I wrote this whole novel based off ofthat, which is not published, thank God.

(05:37):
But that was like mytraining novel basically.
I used that to get a bunch of residencies.
I did Ragdale and VCCA andI've gotten into Tin House
with it and stuff like that.
But Iowa Writers Workshopwith that manuscript.
But my mom and my grandpa, her parents,I think they tried their hardest, but
like they also didn't really get it.

(05:59):
I think they didn't really empathize withme as an adoptee and the amount of work
I think an adoptive parent has to do tohelp a kid work through the notion of
being adopted, I think is about a thousandtimes more than most parents understand.
And so I was left wondering.

(06:20):
And also, the amount of guiltI think an adoptive kid feels.
Towards their adoptive parents in thesense of if that, if the parents don't
hyper normalize the idea of thinkingabout where you came from or the fact
that you came from somewhere else sothat you have this blood connection
to a totally different family.
If that isn't hyper normalized,I think it's real easy to feel

(06:41):
incredible guilt about having thoseimpulses to search or to look.
And so my family did not do agood job at assuaging that guilt.
So I've known my whole life, I'madopted, but it wasn't until just a
couple years ago that I did any kindof real work to find my birth parents.

Did you hear she loved you so much she gave you away?

Craig Mod (07:07):
Oh, yeah.
Or no.
It was the call from the adoptioncenter was a call from Jesus himself.
That was

Oh.

Craig Mod (07:13):
Yeah, that was the framing.

God ordained family separation.

Craig Mod (07:17):
Yeah.

So you had a story growing up about the circumstances
of your conception and the reasonyou were available for adoption.

Craig Mod (07:26):
Yeah.

Do you wanna share that and then,

Craig Mod (07:28):
yeah.

So when you find out the real story.

Craig Mod (07:31):
Yeah.
So the little bit of information we hadwas in the adoption papers that it was
a Catholic adoption service that didthe adoption, and they gave us a little
paper that said a little info about themom who was 13 when she got pregnant
and she'd smoked weed and done Valium.
That was like, those werelisted on, I don't know why that

(07:53):
was listed on the paperwork.
So my mom smoked weed and liked horses.
I think that was all I knew.
And my birth father was listed withalmost no information except for the
fact that there was a car accident.
I think he was listed as 17 or somethinglike that, and there was a car accident.
And then at the site of the car accident,he got in a fight and was murdered.
So that was my genesis story was justthis terrible, oh, my birth father

(08:17):
was murdered and my mom was 13.
It was probably kinda rapey, and I, and ofcourse to protect myself as a kid, because
with other kids this idea of being adoptedis you were thrown away or whatever.
Oh, you're not your realthey're not your real family.
In movies, the general comedic tropeis, oh, you're actually adopted.
That's what older brothers say toyounger brothers that they don't like.

(08:38):
And so to protect myself, I was like,oh yeah, my mom was a hooker and she
probably got, she was a drug addict.
She smoked weed.
She probably did crack or whatever.
That you just concoct this reallyterrible sort of genesis story in order
to protect yourself from the other kids.
And also from the, because of thefact I wasn't given permission by
my birth parent, my adoptive parentsto do a bigger investigation into

(09:01):
things or to be like, Hey, I'd tolook, let's find out more about this.
What's the real story?
That wasn't part of the set ofoptions available to me that I
think concocting this kind of worstcase genesis story was a way of
setting up walls to protect myself.
But that's what we knew.

And so I heard you talk briefly in another interview about
not wanting to be curious becauseof some sense of adoptive parent
loyalty, which is so super common.

Craig Mod (09:31):
Yeah.

Or not wanting to talk about that when did the curiosity
like come to the surface for you?

Craig Mod (09:37):
Honestly, it was not until, my whole life there's
been curiosity of course.
And it's funny, since I've come outpublicly with a little bit of this
story, I've gotten all these messagesfrom old friends who, who were like
reminiscing about my meditationson adoption when I was a teenager.

(10:00):
So clearly this was really, I don'thave any memory of these conversations,
but for a few friends that were likereally powerful moments of me, yeah,
just being, talking about how I didn'tfeel like I connected with my adoptive
family and I felt apart from it all.
And I don't really have a strongmemory of that, but clearly my whole
life that's been underlying something.

(10:22):
And I don't know, in my twenties I was sofocused on figuring out who I could be.
I moved to Japan when I was 19 and a bigpart of that was to kind reset the game,
the whole system, to reset socioeconomicstatus and to also reset just
personal narrative, genesis narrative.
And to be able to be in a place whereyou are forever gonna be the other.

(10:46):
And so you're given permissionto embody whatever you want
to, whatever you wanna be.
You aren't seen through the eyes, theclassic eyes of contemporary American
sort of judgment or whatever, which,me coming, I came from a middle lower,
I'd say working class factory town.
My grandparents met at the factory,my parents met at the factory.
Their parent, everyone'sparents were working there.

(11:07):
And then when I left my town, I feltacutely the fact that a big part of
America going to university did notcome from places like I came from.
And you could just feelthis kind of judgment.
So Japan was like offeringme many layers of reset.
And my twenties were spent just purelytrying to figure out who I could be in

(11:27):
the world trying to desperately lookfor archetypes of people I could trust.
I think trust was a big part of it.
And I imagine a lot of adoptive kidshave issues with trust because that
is having your core identity theexploration of that, not normalized
by your parents is actually apretty big breach of trust, I think.
And so I, I can imagine a lotof adoptees being like having

(11:51):
lots of weird trust issues.
Anyway, I definitely did.
And my twenties were about figuringthat out and it wasn't until my thirties
and I moved briefly to California andI and 23 And Me came out and I was
like, oh, I'll do that just to find,not to find my birth parents, but to
just find out genetic information.
That was like, for me, that was 99% ofthe curiosity was just, I just wanna know

(12:12):
genetically what's happening in my body.
And so that prompted the 23 AndMe registration, which didn't
really bring up much, to be honest.
23 And Me seems like it's likethe, now they're bankrupt.
They just filed for bankruptcy, butthey seem like the redheaded stepchild
just to use all of the terrible thingswe're probably not supposed to say

(12:33):
about it, poor redheads, poor stepkids, but it felt like the unloved DNA
resource, because it wasn't until manyyears later, almost a over a decade
later, when I joined Ancestry thatthen I really connected with, found all
these people from, my birth father'sside and mother's side popped up.

Yeah, when we talk about search now, folks do DNA
testing in multiple places.
They import their stuff into GEDMatch.
There's all these tools that havecome so far and yeah, 23 And Me, I
don't know, people are deleting theirdata, so just so you know, like.

Craig Mod (13:10):
I deleted mine.

There you go.

Craig Mod (13:14):
But it never had, there were never any good matches on it.
That was the thing.
It's it was always like, oh,your fourth cousins on here.
Which like, we're probablyfourth cousins, I mean it's.

We could be.
Well, and it makes sense that youwould test there 'cause they were
the ones giving you the medicalstuff more so than anyone else.
That was their whole deal.

Craig Mod (13:31):
And they were first out the gate.
I think they were the first at homespit in the tubes and put it in the
mailbox and get your matches or whatever.
And it actually, even before I didAncestry though, I found out my birth
mother's name actually my birth name,because I was able to get my birth
certificate, I was born in Connecticutand state law changed in 2009.

(13:52):
I didn't even, like no one told me,it's like I, I didn't have any Google
alerts about adoption law changes,and I emailed the Catholic Agency
and I said, hey, is there any wayI could get my birth certificate?
And they were like, oh, you can just emailthe town hall of the city you were born in
and they'll, they can send it to you now.
They don't need parental permission.

(14:13):
And so I got that actually twomonths before I joined Ancestry.
But that was interesting.
That was quite powerful to see.
Oh, I have a birth name.
Oh, I have, oh, wow.
This is my last name.
It's, it was pretty affecting.
It was pretty, it was more interestingthan I thought it would be.

There's so many states that are still closed, you can't
get your original birth certificate.
And there's, so there's a lotof adoptees advocating for that.
And yeah, when people gettheir OBCs, it's just whoa.
It's a lot.

Craig Mod (14:44):
Yeah.
Yeah, to see the definitive name ofthis person and of you, in their eyes.
It was also interesting to see shegave me first and middle name, and so
just imagining like a 13-year-old goingthrough all of this and then naming
this child that, she's gonna give up.
It's a pretty, it's apretty intense thing to do.

Did you feel, okay, so did you feel like, oh.
This makes it more real that there'sa person in versus the honeymoon
Hawaii baby or the stork drop.

Craig Mod (15:16):
Yeah, a little bit.
I, I think something I hadn't realizedwas just how pervasive my walls were
that I'd built up over my entire life.
And, like I have not had, I would say,many adults acting like adults in my life.
And I think I was terrified.
Probably the scariest thing about,and the reason why I didn't do more

(15:39):
intensive searches earlier is thatI think I was traumatized by the
lack of actual adults in my orbitfor pretty much all of my childhood.
And thinking back, just, there'sjust all these different things
where you're just like, why?
How, and this both on a local level,like in my immediate orbit, but
also on a more global level like.

(16:01):
Why wasn't the statetaking care of my town?
Why wasn't the countrytaken care of my state?
Connecticut's therichest state in America.
The GDP average in Connecticut is insane.
It's probably close to a hundredk . And yet my town was like
less than a quarter of that.
And you just go, okay, whywasn't my school funded?
Why weren't these programs funded?
And so I think that also createda bunch of trust issues about

(16:23):
adults not really being adults.
And so the last thing I wanted inmy life was to have another adult.
So my, and my, of course, mygenesis story being so terrible.
My mom's a drug addict and a hookerand blah, blah, all this stuff.
It's I don't want that close to me.
So that was subconsciously orconsciously a huge barrier to

(16:45):
going and doing the search earlier.
And I think seeing her namedid shift that a little.
It just humanized her.
She wasn't this, apparitionin my mind, oh, she's a name.
And then I could Google her 10 secondslater, and now I know everything about
her, see her Facebook page, I cansee the family and all this stuff and
my worst case scenario was like, oh,she's this destitute, she needs money.

(17:07):
It's gonna be this issue of someonein debt or someone with extreme
political views that don't align withmine, America right now is so weird.
You don't know who you'regonna get on the other end.
And it's the last thing I want is tobe connected with someone that I can't
talk about the state of the worldwith, or don't agree or have to like
do phone calls where we pretend to likewanna talk to each other or whatever.

(17:30):
Which is basically the relationshipI've had, I had with my dad for all
of my adult life, just politicallyextreme in the opposite direction
and to a certain degree with my mom.
And so I was just like, I don't needanother one of these in my life.
But getting the birth certificatewas and being able to like
Google her and I was kinda like.
Looking at the Facebook page,I was like, did they look like

(17:52):
they might own AR fifteens?
I'm not entirely sure howmany guns they might own.
I'm like, I don't know if Ineed these people in my life.
And it was just nice to seethem and be like, oh, okay.
That's good.
That's all I need.
Again, like the, just funny feelingall these walls and being like, okay,
I've taken a peek and I made like adocument where I was just like dumping

(18:12):
screenshots of just creating thisfamily archive thing that I could
go back to if I wanted to later.

And so what happened when you tested with Ancestry?

Craig Mod (18:20):
So then, yeah, I went on this walk, I run these walks
with this guy Kevin Kelly, who isthe co-founder of Wired Magazine.
He's 73.
We met 15 years ago, and I'd say one ofthe things that's come up, unsurprisingly,
the fact that I didn't really have adad, and so I've been drawn to surprise,
surprise, like really having theirbleep together, older male figures, not

(18:44):
in a father figure search sort of way,but just as like a set of archetypes
of what is possible in the world.
I think that's really important to saythat it's not about finding, it was
like none of these friendships were,and they are friendships about finding
a father replacement, or, oh, my birthfather was murdered and my adoptive

(19:05):
father was not really present at all.
And so you could go areyou searching for dad?
It's, and it wasn't, it was just, I was, Ihad seen no real fathers ever in my life.
And so when I started writing and gettingmy name out there and connecting to
incredible people via my writing, Istarted meeting these amazing humans.

(19:28):
And so Kevin Kelly was one of them.
And we just started walking togetherand slowly but surely, I just
realized listening to how he raisedhis kids was mind-bending to me,
just in the fact that he was sucha present force in their lives.
And so he became like archetype numberone of the prime archetype for me of what

(19:48):
an incredible father can do in the world.
And so anyway, we run these walksrecently, like twice a year.
We just finished one in Spain.
I just got back two days ago.
And we run these walks.
We invite people from around the world.
We do these walks together for a week.
And every day we haveconversations as we're walking.
And then at night we do Jeffersoniandinners, which is a single topic

(20:08):
dinner where there's only oneconversation, so there aren't, so
everyone sits around a kind of acircular table and we all talk together.
And there aren't like subconversations happening on the side.
And about two years ago, 20, or Iguess three years ago now we were
doing one in England and everyonewas like, you gotta do Ancestry.
They're like, you aren't on Ancestry?

(20:29):
And I was like, no I did 23 AndMe, they're like, oh man, get
off 23 And Me, that's garbage.
And I was like, all so I came backI'd gotten my birth certificate
and then I joined Ancestry and ofcourse, boom right away matched with
my birth mom and I knew her name.
And so it was like, okay, yeah, this isdefinitely her 50% DNA match and all that.

(20:49):
So that was pretty interesting.
But then as soon as we matched, likeher Facebook page shut down and she
started locking down, like her LinkedIn,my take was like, oh damn, okay.
She was on there because like maybe herfamily coerced her to joining it and
she didn't really want to connect, andnow I'm like, this thing she's never
talked about maybe with her family.

(21:11):
And so I don't wanna create chaoseither, so I'm just gonna step back.
So that was to me, like seeingkind of all these things shut down
right after we connected on there.
I was like, all right, that's great.
Definitely her and I focus more on thedad side, which I, the paternal side
of ancestry had all these interestingconnections and I started looking people

(21:31):
up and like my, like an uncle figurecharacter with three, so three cousin
like figures, which is really fascinating.
Like the uncle was the CEOis the CEO, he's not dead.
At least he wasn't a couple years ago.
He's the CEO of a biotech startup.
I was like, oh, that's cool.
I resonate with that 'cause I have astrong technical background I've done,
even though I'm doing a lot of book stuffmy major in university was I focused

(21:55):
on computer science and fine arts.
So I have a really strong technicalbackground and I've done a bunch of
work with the startup community andI was like, oh, this, that resonates.
That's cool.
And then his son's one is like apoet that lives in Brooklyn and does
like directing and has worked onHBO shows as like a AD or whatever.
And I was like, oh yeah, that resonates.

(22:18):
And then one of the othersons was something else.
And then one of the other sons was, Ilooked at his Instagram and he's this
super hardcore gay swimsuit influencer.
Like he's just naked.
Yeah.
He's just like super buff and like inhis swimsuit and like showing off his
body and he's got all these followers.
And the, I was like, that's cool.

(22:38):
Like that resonates with me.
Like gay swimsuit influencer.
And I was like, oh these people makesense to me in a way that like looking
at, and again, this is also superficial,but like looking at my birth mom's
stuff, I was like, ooh, I don'tknow like this could go either way.
They could be like extremely conservative.
Whereas like this paternalside was like, oh, these guys

(22:59):
are pretty liberal and funky.
And I actually met up with mycousin two years ago after we, I,
we connected on Ancestry and I foundhim on Instagram and I just DMed him.
I was like, hey man, I think we'recousins like could we do a call?
And he is yeah, he was super into it.
He is like 29.
I think people in their twenties areexcited about finding birth connect, blood

(23:19):
connections that are there's a mystery.
And then we had lunch in Brooklynand it was like, it was fun.
But also he was like, my dad, he said,my dad totally shut down the conversation
'cause apparently like one of our uncleswas in the mob and he like abandoned
his family and disappeared for 20 years.
And he thinks that maybe you'rethe son of this mob uncle, so he

(23:40):
is I, he didn't want to touch it.
I was like, whoa, okay.
That, but that kind of alsotracked with the story.
I was like, oh, maybe this mobster gotmurdered and he raped this, young woman.
This young girl.
And I was like, oh, this all kindof makes sense to a certain degree.
But it was also reallyinteresting and it was fun.
It was like, it was just nice to meet mysort of cousin, I say cousin because it's

(24:02):
not ex I'm, we're still not entirely surewhat the connection is, but it's close
if, whether it's a first cousin or secondcousin, a first cousin once removed.
I actually don't know all theterminology, but cousin ish.

Sure.
Yeah.
And they give you the percentages and theyestimate what your relationship is, but.

Craig Mod (24:19):
Yeah.

Yeah.
A half sister could be anaunt percent, like there's

Craig Mod (24:23):
Yeah.

All kinds of, yeah.

Craig Mod (24:25):
Yeah.

Okay.
Did he know who you werewhen you met up with him?

Craig Mod (24:31):
Just in yeah.
Yeah.
And that's because IDMed him on Instagram.

Okay.
So he saw your profile and Yeah.
Okay.

Craig Mod (24:37):
Yeah.
And I trusted him, it was like,'cause on Ancestry in 23 And Me I was
anonymous to protect myself again, Ijust didn't wanna open these doors.
I couldn't close.
And so I was deliberately veryanonymous, no information in my profile.
With this guy, it's oh, a poetwho lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn

(25:00):
and works on HBO TV shows.
I'm like, yeah I want toconnect with this guy.
I want, I just wanna be friends with him.
So I was happy to de anonymizeimmediately with him.

And how about your mom?

Craig Mod (25:11):
The mom thing was a little more complicated just in that, when we
connected or when we matched on Ancestryand I was, still anonymous, she shut
down or locked down her Facebook profileand locked down her Instagram profile.
So two months before when I got the birthcertificate, I could see everything.
And then after we connected onAncestry, suddenly that was all I
could only see like the profile pic.

(25:31):
So I just treated it as great.
I'm glad we were able to connect andI know kind of everything I need to
know in, in the sense of she's beendemystified, I have the photos from when
her Facebook page wasn't locked down.
And I was like, that's fine.
That was it.
And so I, and I didn't wanna send her amessage, I didn't wanna, I would let her
make the first move if she wanted to.

(25:54):
And it seemed like she hadmade a move indicating that
she didn't want to connect.
That was how I read all that.
Again, walls protection, selfpreservation, it's like, how do I not
get myself hurt in this situation?
These are, there's so many layers of that.
And then it took a year for her to sendme a message and she sent me this really
weird message that was all like lowercase,and it was like one sentence and it

(26:19):
just said, Hey, I think we're related.
Are you American or something like that?
It was just, it was, 'cause I think theonly thing my profile said was, I live
in Japan and, but it was like 50% matchand exactly, 13 years younger than you.
It's obviously, it's like I, I'm your kid.

(26:39):
So that really frustratedme getting that message.
It really annoyed me.
'cause I'm like, great, another adult,I've gotta like parent, I've gotta
be the one, it's like I had this corememory of like my dad crying in the
car after I graduated high school.
My adoptive father, like saying oh, youdidn't in include me in your life enough.

(27:03):
And I was just like, whatare you talking about dude?
You're the adult.
Step up and enter my life.
It's yes, you weredivorced but you weren't.
It's not like you had been your legs hadbeen chopped off and you were in like a
wheelchair and you couldn't like walk andyou couldn't you lost some kind of agency.
It's like you could havecome to anything I was doing.
You could have entered mylife as much as you wanted to.

(27:24):
So just the fact that I remember justsitting there this guy is looking
for some kind of absolution from mefor not being a great, it was just
like, oh my God, I can't have anotherone of these people in my life.
And so I sat on it for three monthsand I talked to my therapist, which I
highly recommend having a therapist.

(27:44):
I've been doing therapy now foreight years, pretty much weekly.
And if I could say one thing that'shad the greatest positive impact on
my life, it's a hundred percent that.
Committed weekly talk therapy withthis guy in New York that I just
zoom with and I love him to bits.
I don't know anything about him really.

(28:05):
I've very deliberately kept ourrelationship professional and even though
we've been talking for eight years, II vaguely have a sense that he is like
married and has a kid vaguely, but I lovethat we have this, anyway, this distance
that for me, that's been really good.
And I talked with him about it.
I talked with a couple friends.
I was just like, what the bleep?
I can't have another one of theseparents that need me to parent them.

(28:28):
And finally I just thought,okay, you know what?
If I was her just trying to sumup as much empathy as possible,
what would I want if I was her?
And I just wanna know.
Am I okay.
And so I wrote this kind of snarkyletter that was a little distanced,
but it was just basically hey, look,I know it must've been really hard for

(28:50):
you to do what you did, and I thankyou for going through that, and I'm
sorry that you had to go through it.
I can't imagine how difficult that must'vebeen to have been pregnant at your age
and then to like, put me up for adoption.
Those are all, such emotionallydifficult, complicated things to do.
So thank you for doing that.
And just, here's a little snippet.
This is what my life is like.

(29:11):
And my childhood wasn't perfect, butthe people who adopted me tried the best
they could, which I do think is true.
Although I really wish they, I reallywish they had a few more parenting skills.
Looking back on it now, and look, I'veplayed music in front of thousands
of people I've given talks in front.
It's like I've had this in many ways acharmed life and I just wanna let you

(29:33):
know that things are good and thank you.
And that's it.
I didn't tell her my name, I didn't giveher any identifying details, like she
couldn't have Googled me or anything.
And then I got no response from herat all and I was like, great, this is
completely dysfunctional adult that youknow, has got a closet full of automatic
weapons and this is my, and yeah.

(29:55):
Okay, great.
She doesn't really wanna connectand okay, I can't deal with this.
Three months later I'm in likethe busiest period of my life.
I have this new book coming out.
I'm running a walk with Kevin in Thailandwhere everything is super intense.
My adoptive mother and her, mystepfather are coming to Japan to
visit and I'm trying to organize that.
I'm just so overwhelmed.

(30:16):
And in the middle of all that, I get thisreply from my birth mom and she's oh my
God, I don't have email notificationson for Ancestry I didn't see this.
And she writes me like the mostempathetic, beautiful, emotionally
intelligent, like 3000 word letter.
And it's just overflowing with smartsand curiosity and I'm just like, I

(30:41):
just, I don't, I can't process it.
This is when would this would'vebeen, yeah like 15 months ago.
And I'm just like what do I do with this?
I can't, I don't have the room for this.
And I, so I didn't respond to it.
And then three weeks later, she sendsanother one even longer, even more like
beautifully written talking about, oh,this is what your grandfather was like.

(31:02):
And I'm, I have four siblingsand I'm one of five kids and
he passed away when I was nine.
And we all, the oldest was 17 andmy mom was a single mom and we were
all working hard 'cause the familydidn't have much money and all this.
And we, here's all the pets Ihad, and this is what I used
to do with your grandfather.
And you come from this line of hardworkingPolish immigrants and all this stuff.

(31:23):
And I'm just like, I've, again I'mlike, I don't, what do I do with this?
I can't.
I don't have the time, I'mcompletely freaked out and exhausted.
And then I got this weird MRSA infectionin my arm, like MRSA bacterial infection.
I'm in the hospital.
Anyway, it was like therewas this too much going on.
And so I just sent her a littlenote and I said, oh my God,

(31:44):
thank you for these letters.
They mean a lot.
I do not have the time to respondto these properly right now.
I'll get I'll send you amessage in the new year.
New year comes, I'm just as busy,burnt out on a bunch of stuff.
I'm doing all this media here in Japan.
I'm doing all these radio showsand TV shows, and basically
I've, I did not respond.

(32:05):
And then Mother's Day comesand she sends me a note on
Mother's Day on Ancestry again.
I'm like, anonymous, right?
And she goes, thinking of youon Mother's Day, and I hope
you're hugging your adoptive mom.
And just, I just wanted to let youknow that I'm here if you want to talk.
And but again saying I realize thismay be a lot for you if you don't wanna
talk I understand if you do, I'm here.

(32:26):
I hope this isn't our last communication,but I also under understand if it
is she's saying things like that.
So being really, again, emotionallyintelligent, very adult, not being
selfish, not being narcissisticabout things, not expecting or
demanding love to be returned.
She was honestly like textbook doingthings exactly how you, I think you're

(32:48):
supposed to do things as a parent.
But she was also excited.
I think she was just like, oh my God, I'vebeen waiting my whole life to connect with
this kid and here he is and now it's likeI might lose him or he's not responding.
So then I went on another walk withKevin and co like these Kevin walks.
Actually, now that I'm replaying thisare actually pretty seminal weeks

(33:08):
of my life 'cause I get to be aroundseven to eight, nine other people who
are all top of their class, just bestof the best doing what they're doing.
In Spain, I was walking withthis neuroscientist who is
probably gonna win a Nobel Prize.
Just that level of just incrediblehumans and then also who are all great

(33:29):
parents and incredible archetypes.
And so I was in Bali and Kevin waslike, we were having dinner one night
with everyone talking about families.
And I was like, oh, my birthmom keeps sending me these
messages and I feel so terrible.
It's now I have two moms thatI'm not being a great son for.
I feel it's like I'm not sendingenough messages to my adoptive

(33:49):
mom, or now my birth mom.
And Kevin was like, justgo have lunch with her.
And I was like, oh God, Ican't just go have lunch.
She lives in Chicago.
And it was like, I, whenam I gonna be in Chicago?
And then a couple weeks later Iwas like, you know what I bleep it,
let's just go have lunch with her.
And I just messaged her on Ancestry,was like, hey, do you wanna have lunch?
I was giving a talk in Portland,I'd been invited out for a talk.

(34:12):
And I was like, all right,I'll slap Chicago onto that.
And I was like, do you wannahave lunch on like August 14th?
And she was like, yes, I'll here forabsolutely, I'll make reservations.
And again, I'm still anonymous,haven't told her my name.
And I was like, apologies, apologizing.
I was like, I'm sorry I'm still anonymous.
I'm just, this is just a lot for me.
And I would rather you notknow anything about me because

(34:32):
you can Google me and find outeverything about me before we meet.
I'd rather just meet I don't know,on that plane of an anonymity.
And so we set up that lunch andI'm like, I'm a little nervous,
not super nervous, but also, Ifeel really good about who I am.
There was no part of me that waslike, oh, I need this to be something.

(34:53):
I need her to be some person inmy life or occupy some space in my
life as like a mother or whatever.
None of that.
And I was also like even if I didn't thinkshe wouldn't like me, but I was just,
I was thinking, and maybe this soundsa little like narcissistic, but I have
to say this is not, I do not think thisis a narcissistic way of looking at it.
In fact, I think it speaks to the amountof self love I've worked hard on over

(35:18):
the last 10 years to build up for myself.
I just felt like she's solucky to meet me as I am today.
I feel I just feel good about who I am andwhat I'm working on and what I've built.
And I have this incredible relationshipwith my stepdaughter from a previous
relationship that in the end we broke up.
But I have this stepdaughterout of it, and she's 15 now.

(35:41):
And building up that relationship withmy stepdaughter and going through,
when she was 8, 9, 10, 11, especiallyabout being a father to her and
being adopted, that's a superpowerwhere it's like blood doesn't have to
matter and you can create these strongfamily connections without the blood.
And for me on, for people on the outside,it's oh my God, I can't believe you're
such a father figure to this kid.

(36:02):
But for me it's I, we had theconnection and I'm just honoring it.
And even though I've brokenup with her mom, we separated.
That doesn't stop that connection.
It's I think that's the adopt again,adoptive superpower is not needing the
blood to define things or feel like, okay,because we don't have a blood connection.

(36:22):
And because I broke up with the mother,now I don't have to be in your life.
That's absolutely not the case.
But when we were, when she was 8,9, 10, 11, we were still together.
And obviously I was a present in herlife and feeling like I could be a
good father through all these smallinteractions that we started to have.
And I think parenting, this is I've becomethis real strong advocate of parenting

(36:42):
because these experiences I had withmy stepdaughter, I don't think could
have appeared anywhere else in my life.
And the way they forced me to grow.
Like we'd get in a fight and I would belike, okay, she's gonna throw me away.
Which is an insane thing to think aboutan 8-year-old, I was like, oh yeah,
she, we these stupid little fights.
And then she wouldn't talk tome for a week and I would just
go, okay, she's done with me.

(37:04):
Because I had so internalizedthis narrative of I'm
something to be thrown away.
And I think that was just such acore narrative for me, such a core
narrative for a lot of adoptees.
And I was like, okay, this eightyear old's gonna throw me away.
This nine year old'sgonna throw me away now.
And it killed me.
And then we would reconcile and I'dnever witnessed reconciliation again

(37:25):
this is why I say I had no real adultsas parents in my life in the sense,
because there wasn't a reconciliation.
So when would get in a fight,or they would break up.
And my mom had all these boyfriendsand she would, they would break up
and then they would just disappear.
There was no attempt to think about meand who these people represented for
me and to go, hey, maybe for Craig,we should talk to him about this.

(37:50):
It was always, there was an incredibleselfishness on the part of my
mother around these relationshipsand never saying, oh, maybe Craig
needs this guy who broke up withme, still in his life in some way.
Anyway, so reconciliation wassomething I had never witnessed.
And then with my daughter,I just call her my daughter.
I don't call her my stepdaughter.

(38:11):
I think that's like a weird pejorative.
And then with my daughter, we startedreconciling after these like little,
these dumb little fights, which isinsane to think now, like how certain
I was that she was gonna throw me awayfrom these like dumb little things.
We started reconciling over and overagain and I came to realize like not
only was reconciliation, actually reallyeasy to do, but she was so hungry for

(38:32):
it and she didn't know how to do it.
So it was like two eight year oldsessentially, me and her sort of trying
to figure this thing out of oh wow, youcan get in a fight and then reconcile
and actually be stronger after it andhug and she was so hungry for that.
And, oh, in fact, not only did shelike not want to throw me away, she
really needed me in her life andwas so happy to have me in her life.

(38:53):
So that was, those were pretty seminalmoments I'd say, in the last eight years.
And so to have gone through that andto feel this value in myself as a
father and to my, to this daughter.
And so to have done all that stuff andthen with the work I'm doing, being
really proud of the work I'm doing andthere's all this stuff with Japanese

(39:13):
cities that I've done that, there's ahuge story around that, but like with
New York Times and blah, blah, blah.
But these have been pretty powerful,impactful things like, I've had a
hundred million dollar impact on oneof these Japanese cities, like in
terms of growth and helping it outand giving resources to the city.
And so to have done those thingsand then to be able to meet my birth
mother, I was able to go to thatmeeting and be like, man, she's

(39:35):
really lucky to meet me as I am today.
As opposed to 20 years ago whereI was basically an alcoholic and
didn't know who I was and had nofaith in my ability to be a parent,
let alone even take care of myself.
Anyway, quite a bigshift in, in the story.
And so I, I go to Chicago with thatmindset and with this version of who I
am today, and that felt good to be ableto go to that meeting as that person.

This reunion is really recent.
Yeah, I know.
You're like it's 15 months ago.
It's super recent.

Craig Mod (40:08):
Oh, but the Chicago was eight months ago.

Okay.

Craig Mod (40:11):
Yeah.

Okay.

Craig Mod (40:12):
Yeah.

So eight months ago you went but anonymously.
So she still didn't know really youraccomplishments and all of those things.

Craig Mod (40:21):
And so anyway, it's the morning of, I'm like starting to
feel, oh yeah, what's gonna happen?
Are we gonna burst intoflames when we hug?
You know what's, I don't knowwhat, how does this work?
And so I go to the steak restaurantshe had made a reservation at this
steak restaurant, and she was, she'sI'll be standing in front of it.
And I knew what she looked like.
And I showed up andwas like waving, hello.

(40:43):
Hey, I'm the anonymous weirdo thatwouldn't tell you my name, and we hugged
and it was we're both just so nervous.
And looking back on it, I realizedlike she was so nervous and she
hoped, she so hoped I would like her.
So like that, it's interesting tothink about her perspective of it.
Like just really desperately wantingto be liked by me or just being

(41:03):
nervous about it, or just being,you think of the parent as not
being nervous, but actually she was.
Very nervous.

Well and a 13 year age difference is.
You're essentially peers now.

Craig Mod (41:14):
Yeah.

Age wise.

Craig Mod (41:16):
It's so weird.
So we go in and sit down in thisbooth, the waitress comes over and
she's just oh my God, okay you guyshoney's you just take your time.
We didn't order for two hours.
It was like we could, we sat down andthe first thing she does is she like
opens her wallet and she takes out ababy photo of me and she goes, I've
been carrying this my whole life.

(41:36):
I guess the adoptionagency gave it to her.
I've been carrying this my whole life,and every year on your birthday, I
think of you and I think I pray for you.
I hope you become a good personand you've had a good life.
And and I'm just like, oh my God, I, Ican't believe already, it's starting to
rewire this genesis story of, wait, maybethis wasn't traumatic for her in a way

(41:59):
that I had always assumed it was, and shejust starts telling me about everything.
It's like she was 13 and she was, shepresented much older than she was, or
more mature she says, than she was.
And she was working part-time job ata deli, because everyone in the family
kinda had to work because the family,it was the father had passed away.

(42:20):
She just met this son of the deliowner and he wasn't 17, he was 22.
So there's a lot of, okay.
He was a pedophile a little bit, but shepresented, oh yeah, I think she probably
told him she was, 16 or 17 or whatever.
Whether I, now that I've, I have adaughter and I've seen her at 13.
I go, when it's a 13-year-old,this is like pretty weird.

(42:42):
Anyway, but her retelling of it allwas that it was totally copacetic.
It was not like this weird power thing.
And they slept togetheronce she got pregnant.
And yeah, she was just like, hedidn't want anything to do with it.
He didn't believe it was his, andshe was just like, all right, bleep

(43:02):
you, I'm gonna figure this bleep out.
She just had this really likeworking class I'm going to get
this done, bleep all of you guys.
And she just described, she's finallyshe told her mom, she was like
trying to figure it out on her own.
I think she tried to have anabortion, but it was like too
late or something in Chicago.
And then she finally told her mom, andshe was, and her mom was like, oh, okay,

(43:23):
yeah, we can't deal with this here, butyour aunt and uncle can maybe help out.
And so she went and lived with her auntand uncle and they were super supportive
and she was like, oh, that time livingwith my aunt and uncle was actually great.
And the high school I went to was sosupportive, even though I was like six
months pregnant, when I started there andthey gave me like a senior that was like
my mentor and I was, getting prenatalvitamins, so like this image of her like,

(43:45):
oh, she was just smoking weed and doingcrack and was, and this desperate place.
She was like, I was, surrounded by somuch love and I didn't want to give you
up, but I knew I couldn't support you.
I knew I couldn't raise you, we justdidn't have the resources and I wanted
you to have the best possible life, andso I had to put you up for adoption, but
I got to hold you for two days in thehospital and I, loved just holding you.

(44:07):
And I wrote you this letter.
Did you get the letter?
And I was like, what?
I was like, I don't have a letter,but just imagining this 13-year-old
writing this letter to this kid shejust gave birth to and feels all this
love for and having to give him up.
That was all, it was just so wildto hear her describe all this.
And then she was, she's I'vejust always been so independent.

(44:28):
When I was 16, I bought myfirst car, second car when I was
18, first house when I was 24.
She's I never graduated college.
She felt really bad about that, butlike I just hacked my way through things
and it turns out she's like a computerprogrammer, which is crazy to hear.
It was just so in insane to hear that.
And just as I'm sitting there andshe's telling me her story and

(44:50):
she's erasing all of this traumagenesis that I had concocted and I'm
listening to her talk about how shenavigated life and navigates life.
I'm, I was just in awe because allmy life I had felt almost no cerebral
connection to any of my adoptive family.
Anything you, like a black familycould have adopted me and I don't

(45:12):
think I would've felt more adoptedin certain, in a certain way.
It's like a family that kindof looks like me, adopted me.
And so we, that was also what wasweird about being a kid is that we
didn't talk about me being adopted.
So people would be like, oh, you look,you have your grandfather's nose.
And we wouldn't say anything, wouldn't belike, technically it's not his, because,
and but psychically, from a very early ageand certainly from teenage years, I did

(45:34):
not connect with my adoptive family on amental level, to have this woman sitting
in front of me telling me her story andbeing like, I get every beat of this.
Everything you're saying makes sense.
Everything you're saying is how I'veapproached the world and how I've
hacked my way through the world, andhow I've been like, all right, bleep you
guys, I'm gonna figure this bleep out.

(45:56):
Oh, you don't wanna be a, you don't wantto be, take responsibility and be a dad.
Whatever.
I don't need a dad.
I'm going to, I'm gonnafigure it all out on my own.
Screw you and she, her brain.
For the first time ever in my life,I realized I have her brain, her,
that's where my brain came from.
I felt that it was like, oh,birth mom's brain is in my head.

(46:16):
That's interesting.
And that was prettyprofound and pretty crazy.
And she was asking me, she goes,oh, do you know anyone in Chicago?
I'm like, yeah, I've got a couplefriends, I'm gonna, I've got dinner
reservations with a friend tonight and shewas like, you have dinner reservations.
And like we had just over, messageson Ancestry, just planned a lunch.
So I thought that's all we were doing.

(46:37):
She was like, I booked, I got us ticketsto the symphony and I got us pizza
reservations on the river and like that.
And we were, I wanted to takeyou on an architecture tour.
And I was like, oh my.
I was like, yeah, great.
These are, and she's sayingall these things that like, I
would really love to do, that.
And I'm just like, like someoneinviting me to the symphony.
Like it sounds insane, but that, I waslike, that's a dream invite for me.

(47:00):
No one's ever invited meto the symphony before.
So that was really interestingand really bizarre.
And we ended up walking around Chicagofor six hours and I was like, I have to
go back to my hotel and just decompressfor a couple hours before the symphony.
And she was like, of course.
And we went to the symphony togetherand it was just so bizarre 'cause again,
yeah, our age difference isn't that big.

(47:22):
And it wouldn't be that insane for meto date someone 13 years older than me.
And so it kind, it was like this,looking around it was like, how
are people perceiving us together?
Would they ever think we're mother andson and we kinda went to this symphony
thing and we're taking selfies togetherand I'm just, it just felt so out of
body, surreal, the whole experience.

(47:44):
And like the pizza place she booked waslike this, it ended up being terrible.
She didn't know.
She had never been, it was like a clubthat served pizza and it was so loud.
And again, I was just like, oh myGod everyone thinks we're on a date.
And it was just funny.
And we had to scream to like talkand I was also just so exhausted and
overwhelmed and I was like, look, itwas like 10 30, and I was like, she

(48:08):
clearly just wanted to talk until3:00 AM She just wanted to keep going.
And I was like, I'm so sorry.
I have to go shut down now.
And she's of course.
She walked me back to my hotel.
It was just, it was a lot.
It was so much.
I'm still processing it eight monthslater and doing this, like going on a
show like this is part of my forcingfunction to force me to think about

(48:29):
this stuff more, because I think myimpulse, I'm so busy with my life.
I've got so much going on.
I have this new book comingout in May, prepping for that.
I am doing a book tour.
I'm running all these other things.
I've got all this media stuff coming in.
I have 12 seconds to myself a day.
And so my impulse is to be like,okay, great, that happened.

(48:49):
Let's never think about that again.
That's that's the bizarre impulse.
But yeah.
So talking about these thingsin public, I think for me it's
forcing me to just sit with it.
A little bit.
And also I did the Tim Ferriss showa couple weeks ago, and I've just,
my inbox is bananas right now withpeople, mostly adoptees reaching out

(49:13):
and some birth parents reaching out,sharing just hundreds of stories.
And so I also feel like havinga positive adoption reconnection
story is maybe more rare than I knew'cause like I told you over email,
I have engaged with this world 0%.

(49:34):
I have never looked at anadoption Reddit subreddit.
I have never read any forums.
I've never listened to any podcasts.
I've never looked at any YouTube channels.
And again, that was part of thepreservation thing and also part of
the guilt thing, like my adoptivemother, I think feeling like by
engaging with this world, I'm doingher disservice, or I'm hurting her,

(49:55):
or dishonoring her in some weird way.
That narrative waspretty strong in my head.
And so also part of doing this is toeviscerate that narrative, to get rid
of that narrative and also to maybehelp others who might be listening
think about whether or not theyhold that narrative and whether that
narrative's holding them back or not.
So with the birth mom, anyway,I go to bed, it's like Saturday.

(50:15):
Clearly she just goes back to the hoteland calls literally everyone in her
family, like all of the aunts and uncles,the, all of her brothers and sisters,
the aunts and uncle she connected with.
And I'm telling her my story duringthe day and she's just oh my God,
I can't believe you're my kid.
I can't believe you're doing these things.
And so then like even a couple dayslater, I start getting dms from
like cousins in Wisconsin who arelike, hey, I run a flower shop.

(50:38):
And I heard you're my cousin.
That's cool.
Do you wanna do a call sometime?
And I'm just like, what is happening?
So I went from having myadoptive family is so small.
A bunch of only children.
Everyone's dead, basically zero family.
There's almost no, my adoptive momis the only person left in my life,
essentially from that family, bothsides, mothers and father's side.
And so to go from this super tiny thingwhere all of my life I dreamed about

(51:01):
having a Christmas with, a big family,and all these, and now I've got four
aunts and uncles on my mother's side.
I've got a bunch of aunts anduncles on my father's side.
I've got all of these cousinsnow and everyone wants to
integrate or to accept me.
And it's just whoa, what?
What is going on?

(51:22):
And during that day of talkingwith my birth mom, I said, so
what is the story with dad?
He was murdered.
Who was this guy?
And she goes, actually,yeah, he wasn't murdered.
I picked him out.
I picked a random guy out of thenewspaper who was murdered and said,
that's the birth father becauseyour real birth father was 22.

(51:43):
And so it was statutory rape and Ididn't wanna deal with legal stuff.
And it turns out that he'salive and he lives in Florida.
It was like, what?
Oh my God.
So again, like this.
And it turns out you have a halfsister who's 28 or something like that.
I was like, oh my God.
And actually, of all the informationI got, that first day, that half
sister thing made me so happy.

(52:06):
And I had not realized how hungry, Iguess my, I've been my entire life to
have a sibling, a real sibling, and partof what this book that's coming out in
May is about, this book, Things BecomeOther Things, is this brother person I had
throughout my childhood who is murderedas soon as we graduate high school.

(52:28):
And so like that one person who wasa brother had been taken from me.
And so to suddenly havethis half sister was really
profoundly moving and affecting.
I was like, oh, my impulse was likeimmediately I wanna protect her.
It was like really bizarre.
Again, this sort of whatever, me havingto be the father all the time, like
I, immediately went to that placebecause my birth mom was like, oh, she
has this terrible relationship withher birth father, with your father,

(52:51):
and he has a bunch of problems andhe's an alcoholic and they haven't
talked in 10 years and all this stuff.
And I was like, whoa.
And so my, I was like,I want to talk to her.
Let me connect with her.
And through a few channels,there's, the whole story's extremely
complicated and long, and we, youneed diagrams to figure it all out.
But through some channels I heard backthat she wasn't ready to connect with me.

(53:11):
So she didn't know I obviouslydidn't know I existed.
And I was, I feel like I'm, I'vebeen really lucky connecting
at this point in my life.
Again, I needed nothing fromthis meeting with my mom.
I was going in there not expectinganything, not demanding anything.
I didn't need for her to like me,I didn't need for her to accept me.
I didn't need for mystory to be a good story.
Like I didn't need any of that.

(53:32):
I was just going into it as an adventure.
Okay, this is a really weird thing to do.
And I would probably regret notdoing it if like I'd heard she passed
away or something, and I missed theopportunity, so let's just go do this.
And then same with the half sister stuff,where I was like, I'd love to connect
with her, but if she's not ready, that's,this is heavy, weird, complicated stuff.
She has one guy in her life,her father, that kind of

(53:54):
doesn't work as a relationship.
And I can totally see her being like,I don't need another dude, older dude
who I'm not gonna get along with.
I'd like completely sympathize.
So that thankfully didn't hurt meor I didn't feel bad about that.
I was like, you know what?
If she ever wants to connect, that's cool.
And then two months ago, my father'solder sister who I'd also tried to connect

(54:19):
with and didn't wanna connect with me,emailed me outta the blue and she said,
I just read this book about adoption.
I'm really sorry.
I didn't want to connect with you.
I've thought it over.
I'm ready to connect.
Now.
The first of all, everyone knows whoI am, so it's like, all right, I don't
have this anonymity armor anymore.
So like everyone knows they can Googleme, they can see what I'm doing.
Do you wanna do a call?
I was like, yeah, of course I do.

(54:39):
'cause like I wannaconnect with everybody.
I'm like, I, this is now.
And it's sure, let's just do it.
Let's just connect with these people.
So we did a call, she's super cool,really interesting, very smart.
She doesn't have any kids.
She's become like a motherfigure to my half sister.
And I said, look, I stillwanna connect with my sister.
Can you make that happen?
She's I'll try, I'll ask her again.
And then two weeks later, she'sokay, she wants to connect.

(55:01):
And so we did a zoom call.
It was me, my halfsister, and her husband.
So she's 28, her husband's 27.
And my aunt, I guess as,almost as like a chaperone.
Oh, it was very.
A little bit strange, butmy aunt immediately had to
like, go do something else.
So she left the zoom call and it wasjust me and my sister and we talked
probably for an hour, 90 minutes.

(55:23):
And we just clearlyreally liked each other.
Immediately it was just like,or at least I liked her.
I don't know.
She, I was just like, she's,I was like, you're just such
a cool, kind, smart person.
Like everything you're saying is awesome.
You are, you've got this likekindness to your eyes that is
really affecting and beautiful.

(55:43):
And I was just like, wow.
Like I feel honored tohave you as a sister.
Great.
And I don't think she knewwhat to get out of it.
And I think if you get me as asudden sibling, it's pretty cool.
I'm just doing a lot of cool stuff.
Again, not in a narcissistic way, just inan objectively, like I have a cool life.
I'm doing cool stuff I like,and it's taken me a long

(56:06):
time to be able to say that.
Or believe it about myself orhave that kind of like self-worth.
And so I'm like, of course she'sgonna be excited to connect with
someone like me doing cool stuff.
And so after the call, like immediatelyshe messaged me and she's hey bro,
just wanted to say it was so amazingconnecting and she's can I call you bro?
Is that weird?
And I'm like, no.
Like I, so calling hersis, she's calling me bro.

(56:27):
And we've been like texting likepretty regularly, sending little
photos of our life to each other.
And then I'm going on thisbook tour in May, all over
America, and she's can I join?
Can I come like my husband andI wanna fly out to one of these
to, and I was like, of course.
And so today actually, she justmessaged me and said, we bought our
tickets, we're gonna see you in Seattle.
And I'm like, awesome.

(56:47):
I'm like, I'm so happythat they're gonna come.
That's she's is it okay tocome to the event, the reading?
I'm like, yes.
Like I'm realizing like people are beinglike way too cautious at this point.
I'm like, you guys like you, you geta free pass, sis gets a free pass.
Anything you wanna do, I'm here for you.
Come on.
Hopefully next year they come toJapan, we can do a walk together.

(57:09):
I'm trying not to give toomuch information about them.
I, because they don't know I'mtalking about them, so I'm not
saying like where they live orwhatever, but I wanna go where they,
visit them and do stuff together.
And, I don't know, it justfeels, it feels really wonderful.
I don't to have this new person whowe both like each other for now.
We may hate each other.
Sibling rivalry.
Sibling rivalry to come, but I don't know.

(57:31):
It's all of this is so new.
Like I said, connecting withmy sisters like two months
ago, I think that happened.
Connecting with my birthmom was eight months ago.
We only just did another videocall like a couple weeks ago.
I've just been so busy and she, with mybirth mom, it's been such a respectful
amount of texting and communication.
She's so cognizant of notoverwhelming me and, but at the same

(57:56):
time, letting me know she reallywants me to be part of her life.
Same with the sister.
We're just, everyone'sbeing really careful.
It's awesome.
The birth father side of things is alittle more complicated, a little weirder.
He, you Google him and he's got two,the only two Google results are court
records and one's 20 years ago filingto pay lower child support payments, and

(58:18):
then the other, and then the other one isfiling for bankruptcy and it's oh, great.
Yeah, he's, he embodies exactly what Iwas, my worst case scenario for these
kind of birth parent figures would be.
And his sister told him,hey, here's your son.
And, do you want to connect with him?
Even though I wasn't asking to connectwith him, and he wrote back, he's
he, here's, give him my home address.

(58:38):
He can write me a letter.
And I was just like, what?
Write you a letter, like bleep youlike another one of these baby adults.
Who are these people?
Write me a letter mother bleeper.
If you're gonna, sorry, I don'tknow how like language sensitive.

We'll beep it, it's fine.

Craig Mod (58:52):
You'll beep it.
I'm like, this is just thelanguage of where I come from.
I'm like, write me a letter, ding dong.
And then two weeks later I get anothermessage from the aunt and she's
oh, now he sent his email address.
I'm like, F you man.
I like now, okay, you likewrite your sister a letter
and have her give it to me.
So I ignore that and then a monthlater I start getting these insane

(59:13):
emails from I guess his girlfriend.
The emails are coming and likethe entire body of the text of
the email is all in the subject.
It's like one of these like crazy, supercrazy people that like don't know how
to use email properly and like theydon't know where to write the letter.
Anyway, I'm getting these likeemails with these insane subjects
that are like, have no punctuationor are like, I can help you.

(59:33):
I know your father, here's my number.
Please call me now with noperiods or all lowercase.
I'm just like, what the heck?
And she's sending me likethree, four emails a day.
I just ignored 'em all.
I'm like, I can't letthis crazy into my life.
I think having those boundaries is reallyimportant when you do these things.
And for me right now.
Processing the goodness of mybirth mother and my sister,

(59:57):
and then the extended family.
I've got like an aunt in Switzerlandwho's like a yoga teacher or
whatever, like all just cool stuff.
Another aunt who's like a beekeeper orsomething like super weird, wacky bee
keeper aunt I wanna sit with and justrelish and feel the love and coolness
of that connection, the father stuff,because I've dealt with these sort

(01:00:19):
of non father fathers my whole life.
I actually have a lotof empathy for this guy.
I feel like I may be the only personin the world who can absolve this man,
who can give him a second chance to tryto have a relationship with someone.
And this isn't, again, it's not an attemptto save him or it's not this attempt of

(01:00:40):
subjugating myself or diminishing myself.
There's a bunch of stories I cantell about these older, broken male
figures that I've connected with,and we've formed these interesting
connections that were, I think, mutuallybeneficial and mutually elevating.
And so I, I have a weird abilityto empathize with broken men and
me, myself also having been abroken man for most of my life.

(01:01:02):
And so I do not think it's my role orI have any duty to help or elevate this
person, but I think some interestingessays can come out of going and meeting
this guy and sitting with that and justseeing if, as in the twilight of his life,

(01:01:23):
'cause now he's, in his late sixties, Idon't know how he's doing health wise.
Who knows how much longer.
Maybe he's got 20 years left, maybehe's got three years left, who knows?
But in this kind of twilight periodof his life, can he and me too, I
think have an interesting connectionthat doesn't feel parasitic.
And a, again, to use thatterm, mutually elevating.

(01:01:46):
Is there a way to be mutuallyelevating in this relationship
in a way that's really careful?
And obviously that I don't put myselfat risk and psychologically, but again,
it's only because I'm in this placethat I've gotten to myself to in the
last, I'd say five to eight yearsthat I can even think about this.
And because I've had experienceswith super interesting, older, broken
people in weird, very weird connectionsthat have turned out to be really

(01:02:10):
beautiful stories of my life in my life.
So that's how I'm thinkingabout the birth dad thing.
But man, just processing mom and sis like.
That's a lot.
And.

Haley Radke (01:02:22):
Reunion is so complicated.

Craig Mod (01:02:24):
Yeah.

And layering all of these new people into your existing life.
And trying to right sizeall of those things.
And I would say you're in the early days,we often call it the honeymoon stage.
The complexity is yet to come.
And I often don't interview peopletill they're well down the road

(01:02:46):
past how long you've been in reunionbecause there's so much to process.
So I feel honored that you sharedthis with us and I'm excited for you.
You got quite a journey ahead of you.
More walking to do.

Craig Mod (01:03:02):
Yes.
More walking literally and metaphorically.
But do you have any advicefor me in this position?
You've talked to so many people,you've heard so many stories.
Is there anything to like, look out foror to be careful of or I don't know.

The fact that you have a therapist to walk
alongside you during this time

Craig Mod (01:03:21):
Yeah.
Is super important.

Yeah.

Craig Mod (01:03:22):
So you can process those things outside of your
relationship with your birth mother.
And your sister and slow is better.
I think,

Yeah.
Slowing down is better because we getreally caught up in, in all the things.
It's really easy.

Craig Mod (01:03:41):
Yeah.

To get caught up in it.

Craig Mod (01:03:42):
I feel like the pace that we've taken Connecting on
ancestry, no message for a year.
Weird message, nothing for threemonths, me responding nothing for
three months, and then some lettersand then we still don't even meet
until eight months after that.
I feel like that was a pretty sane pace.
And then also after the super intense,we ended up spending that Saturday

(01:04:04):
together and then Sunday morningwe had brunch and it was cool.
We, I have all of these friendswho are whatever famous, people
who've are connected with all sortsof different crap in the world.
And one of my friends is abig food guy and he produced
Chef's Table, the Netflix show.
And so anywhere I go, he's always dude,who do you want me to connect you with?
You should eat here.
You have to eat here.

(01:04:24):
And so he connected me with this brunchplace that doesn't take reservations
and that there's like a two hour lineevery day waiting outside of, and
he's don't worry, I've messaged them.
You're all set.
Go in the back kitchen door andjust tell 'em who you are, and so
my birth mom and I meet at thisplace and she's oh my God, the line.
And I'm like, come with me.
And we go through this like back patiospace and I opened the kitchen door

(01:04:47):
and like we walk into the kitchen andthey're like, Craig, oh is that you?
Oh my God, we've been waiting for you.
We have your table right over here.
So it was just so funny 'cause mybirth mom was like, who are you?
Who am I having brunch with?
So it was a pretty funny to, to be ableto like flex that weird oh yeah, I'm a
guy who like gets us in the kitchen backdoor, skips the line, sort of person.
And we had this amazing brunch andat the end she, we hadn't cried or

(01:05:10):
there hadn't been anything reallyemotional through the whole thing.
And then at the end of brunch, shewas like saying all the things she
wanted to do now I wanna go on this.
Let's walk down this tour.
Let's do, and I just said,look, I can't do this.
I'm done.
I'm so overwhelmed.
Like this brunch even waslike my breaking point.
And I'm like, I just need tobe alone now for four days.

(01:05:32):
That's what I need.
And she's I totally get it.
And she just, started tearing up andsaying, thank you for trusting me and
for making the time and for coming out.
And she's I have a gift bag for you.
And she had this like very cute giftbag that had, she's don't open it now.
It took me like three days to open it.
I like just couldn't just so much.
And I think.
I've also learned that you can operateon your own timeline and actually having

(01:05:56):
a therapist, the great thing about thattool and something it's taught me is if
something in your life is happening that'semotionally overwhelming or you get a
stressful email or something stressfulis happening, not that this is stressful,
this is more just so many emotions.
When you have someone like a therapist,a tool like that, a resource like
that, you can say, okay, I'm gonnaput this over to the side now and

(01:06:21):
then in five days I'm gonna talk toDan and we'll unpack this together.
And I think I've just learned to dothat even without the therapist, just
knowing okay, I don't have the mentalspace to open this gift basket right now.
That's like too much.
And then when I did finally open it,it had this Christmas ornament for
the city of Chicago in it, and it hadall these, like a chocolate bar and

(01:06:43):
Twizzlerss and these other candies.
And she was, and she wrote me thisletter clearly the night after
we met, she wrote me this bigletter about the meeting that day.
And she created a book of the, ourfamily history, so like a full family
tree and photos of my grandparents andgreat-grandparents and talking about

(01:07:04):
this grandparent ran like a hat shopand this is what your grandfather did.
And like he, I want you to know whoyou are and where you come from.
And it was just amazing.
Like she had just, she hadn't met me, shedidn't know who I was, on that brunch.
She was like, I was so worried.
You were like, gonna bemorbidly obese or something.
And we couldn't walk around the city.
And I was like, I didn't knowwhat we were gonna be able to do.
And like she had, had all these worst casescenarios in her head, but even though she

(01:07:27):
did, had no idea who I was or who I wouldbe, she still had all of this love for me.
And, went into this book and wentinto wanting me to know these things,
which I found to be really affecting.
And that was quite amazing.
So any birth moms or dads whoare listening to this story.

(01:07:48):
Do what my birth mom did all of this stuffwas, I couldn't imagine a better reunion
unless, the only better reunion would belike, she picked me up in her private jet
and was like here's a suitcase of gold.
I've, it's I don't even I'vejust tried to imagine there's
like only these insane things.
Oh, and by, it's like I have no ideawhat could have made this better.

(01:08:08):
Just her level of emotional intelligence,of her concern for my wellbeing.
Also, there's some selfishness onher part in the sense of like really
wanting to connect and really wantingto be, have this work out and like
you could tell she was nervous and shereally wants to maintain a relationship
and all that stuff, but that's, it'stempered with this understanding and
affection for who I am and emotionalintelligence from what I'm feeling

(01:08:31):
and a concern for what I'm feeling.
And that altogether was amazingto feel that from an adult because
it's been so rare for me to feelthat from any of the adults for most
of my life as a child, certainly akind of selflessness in the meeting.
And I think that's how, that reallyis how you have to go into it.
And she's just been,she's just been so cool.

(01:08:53):
Just little texts here and theresharing, hey, I'm running this project
in Portland, she's got a consultancy.
She's been to Taipei and Shanghai andTokyo, like with work and stuff, yeah.
I'm having dinner at thisMichelin starred restaurant.
It's really great.
Here's some photos of theentrees, I'm just like, great.
That's exactly the kindof message I wanna get.
And then I think she's also followingalong with all the, all this stuff

(01:09:14):
too and not saying she is, 'causeshe doesn't want me to be too
overwhelmed by it, by her presence.
And so again, just like a perfect,at least at this stage, being
like a really perfect birthmother in this reuniting process.
And my sister too.
Sensitive and emotionallyintelligent and grounded and
concerned for how I'm feeling.

(01:09:35):
Really amazing to have humans at operatingat this level entering into my life.
So we'll see.
So if you're listening and you'reon the non adoptee side, do what
these people have been doing'cause it's been pretty good.

For you.
And for some adoptees that might'vebeen like, whoa, this is a lot.
And I can't deal.
And so it's amazing that you'reboth in the right place and the
right mindset and all those things.
You got a lot of good stuff going.
Your new book, Craig.
Things Become OtherThings, A Walking Memoir.
I loved it.

(01:10:10):
It's so what's really beautiful, you,we didn't even get to talking about
photography or anything, but thephotographs are so beautiful and moving.
The stories, the mystery of yourfriend propels people forward.
You mentioned earlier, he waslike a brother figure to you, and
as an adoptee activist, I reallyappreciate mainstream books that

(01:10:35):
talk about adoption in a true way.
And you have all of these nods tothe complexity of adoption rather
than the usual glossing over happyrainbow sunshine all the time, and
instead the impacts it had on you.
So I really appreciated that, and Idon't know if you expected this or not,

(01:10:55):
but I'm a mom to kids who are about theage that you were when you were, you're
telling these stories of childhood.
And so I'm reading it with my momlens and being like, oh my gosh,
if my kids were up to this stuff.
And so I had all kinds ofexperiences reading it, and
it was just really wonderful.

(01:11:16):
I know it's gonna be well receivedby so many it's just an honor to
get to read early and I loved it.
Congratulations.
It's so well done.

Craig Mod (01:11:24):
Thank you.
Yeah I'm happy the adoption stuffis in there in the way it is.
And I've had a few, my PR person atRandom House is actually also adopted
very different adoption experience.
This part of the Korean adoption waveadopted by non Korean families in America.
And it's a different kind of complexity,but she actually was first of all,

(01:11:49):
she's like the most amazing PR person.
She's just been the mostincredible person to work with.
But also she was like, Ineed to be on this book.
She's I love how this book istalking about adoption and I've
highlighted all these passages youwrote about it and I need to be, I
need to be your person for this book.
So that felt,

I wondered why I got the email.

Craig Mod (01:12:08):
Yeah.

Oh, that is so cool.

Craig Mod (01:12:11):
Yeah.
And so to hear you also say theadoption stuff is, feels true or not
exploitative, not that it could beexploitative, but that means a lot.
And part of why I'm doing thisbook with Random House is because
I think the themes and the storiesin it deserve a bigger platform.

(01:12:33):
And so part of my book tour,I'm doing this book tour.
I think when this pod comes out, it'llbe just at the start of the book tour.
And so people can still cometo a lot of these events.
I'm doing this book tour.
All across America anddefinitely adoption.
And that part of the story will bea central part of the themes I'm
talking about at all these events.

(01:12:53):
So I know I said earlier, I've neverengaged really with the adoption universe
as part of a form of self preservationbecause I wasn't really ready to.
But I love that you're doing this andI have listened to a few episodes.
I went through to justsee, what's the deal?

See what you're getting into.

Craig Mod (01:13:10):
What's the deal?

Yeah.
What's the deal with Haley?
Yeah.

Craig Mod (01:13:12):
How much crazy am I walking into even?
But I love that you're doing this and Ithink if I had been in a more, if I had
been in a better place in my twentiesto think about this stuff, I would've,
I think this resource of allowing peopleto tell these stories is so profound.

(01:13:34):
And I think it's, I think it'sjust magical and wonderful
and I'm so grateful that.
You're doing this and.

Thank you.

Craig Mod (01:13:43):
Man.
I'm sure.
You must get lots ofemails from people too.
And I'm overwhelmed by the number ofadoptees out there who have struggled
or are struggling or have had suboptimalreunions and stuff like that, as I've now
just started to get these emails from.
And so any kind of resource to helppeople process that, it's a big deal.

Send them my way.

Craig Mod (01:14:04):
Yeah.

We have a show about them.

Craig Mod (01:14:06):
Oh yeah.

Thank you.
I can I read to a couple lines?

Craig Mod (01:14:10):
Sure.
Yeah.

Okay.
Okay.
You write, how does it feel to be adopted?
It feels like floating off in your ownlittle bubble apart from everyone else.
A bit lonely, a bit distance,a bit mythic, and you go on.
It's so for people that listen to theshow and they're like, oh, you're new
to adoptee land what is that gonna be?
Craig gets it.
You can read it.

(01:14:31):
It's a safe book.

Craig Mod (01:14:32):
Oh, that's so interesting that people might be like, oh
he's, he is a, he is still wetbehind the ears about reconnecting.
That's funny to think about that.
Yeah.
No, I've been.
Thinking about adoption andit, being adopted and it has
clearly shaped, I live in Japan.
I've this is my home.
You have, there's a lot of brokenstuff in me to have chosen to live.

(01:14:56):
No, truly to have chosen tolive in a culture that will
never accept you as part of it.
That speaks to some kind ofself preservation technique.
And I think that's all, you cantrace it all back to the story.
The stories of adoption thatwe tell ourselves and the pain
that finding out you're adopted.
That psychic wound of it because itis a psychic wound, especially if
the adoptive parents don't work sohard to normalize it and to make it

(01:15:22):
part of the conversation for you andto make it part of your identity.
It becomes, and if that doesn't happen,I think it just becomes this wound.
And so.

Even if it doesn't, I'm gonna, I'll disagree even
if they do normalize all of it.

Craig Mod (01:15:35):
Yeah.

Nothing about being separated from your biological origins is normal.

Craig Mod (01:15:40):
So is there on, from your side, have you, what is
the best case strategy for.

With family preservation?

Craig Mod (01:15:46):
How do you minimize, how do you minimize that psychic wound?
What's the strategy?

Let's go back in time and go up river and talk about, so why
couldn't someone come alongside yourbirth mother and her family and support
her in some sort of kinship parenting?
I know 13 is super young.
My, my birth mother was 15 and it's so whyare we leaving our biological families?

(01:16:17):
It's not.
It's tough.
It's tough.
I'm very for familypreservation, you'll find.

Craig Mod (01:16:25):
Yeah.
I see.
That's interesting.

And I think open adoption has been promoted as the panacea, and this is
the fix to the secret closed adoption era.

Craig Mod (01:16:36):
Yep.

And the secrets and lies.
That's what's making us feeldisconnected and crazy and stuff.
Open adoption adoptees have the sameidentity issues you mentioned in your
book, and you shared just brieflyhere that you struggled with alcohol.
Adoptees are overrepresented.

Craig Mod (01:16:55):
Yeah.

in addictions.
Gee, I wonder why.

Craig Mod (01:16:59):
Yeah.

You're not alone in that by any stretch.
There's a wound and we can putband-aids all over it, but adoption
is, it's a primal wound as thefamous adoptive parent book says.

Craig Mod (01:17:14):
So there's no, that's, so that's really interesting.
I think about there's no cohesivestrategy to not make it feel
painful in some way or another.

Yes, get your kids into therapy, but what heals the deep truth
that you were separated from yourbiological origins and you get to
meet your birth mother and your halfsister and you're like so connected
and you find all these similarities and

Craig Mod (01:17:43):
Yeah.

Like you, you mentioned your people saying, oh, you look
so much like your grandfather.
You have your grandfather'snose, or whatever.
People said that to me.

Craig Mod (01:17:51):
Yeah,

I'm adopted.
I would be like, no, I'm adopted as a kid.
I'd refuse it.
Yeah.
I'm like no, we're not connected.

Craig Mod (01:17:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I definitely, I definitely saidthat to, friends and stuff, it's
no, it's not, that's not real.
That's not, the realconnection or whatever.
Yeah, it is funny.
I think you could, not to diminish things,but like I think you, it's one of these
people will see patterns where they wannasee patterns and so it's like you could
have almost put a random person, a randomwoman in front of me in that steakhouse

(01:18:23):
and had her tell a story and I would'veprojected into it a certain amount of
kinship that said, there are a lot ofthings like I don't see connections with,
so physically I wasn't like, oh my god,it's my eyes, or this thing or that.
I didn't feel any of that.
But there was just something aboutthe brain processes that, and
the fact that she's a computerprogrammer is pretty wild.
And I have this like really strongtechnical side and the fact that

(01:18:45):
especially women of that age group, beingcomputer programmers is pretty rare.
Those things did feel real.
And the sister thing too, I thinkI'm more, and again, I'm trying to
parse out like, are people excited toconnect with me just because I'm me?
If I was less successful, wouldany of these people be excited

(01:19:07):
to, to have me in their life?
And so that's something I'm tryingnot to overthink because that again
allows you to shut down pretty easilyand just write this stuff off and be
like if you know you, if you couldn'tGoogle me and find all this cool
stuff would they like me or not?
But I think, even with, I'm notsure my birth sister knew who I was
before we did that first Zoom andmy birth mother certainly didn't.

(01:19:28):
So there, there seemsto be a kind of truth.
And I think my part of being anonymous wasto create kind of a bulwark against that
voice in the back of my head being like,oh, these people only want to connect
because of maybe I can give them money,or this thing or that thing or whatever.
And in fact, my birth mom was like,don't connect with your birth dad.
'cause he's just gonna ask you for money.
It was really funny that she had,even though she hasn't talked

(01:19:50):
to him in 43 years, she had thisnarrative of oh, this guy's no good.
I've talked to his sister andshe says, he's always asking
her for money and yada, yada.
But that's funny to hear you saythat even open adoptions don't, but,
open adoptions to me intuitivelyseem to make a lot of sense.
Intuitively.

(01:20:10):
It's yeah.

We could have a whole nother conversation about that.
Yes, it does seem to make a lot of sense.
A lot of it open adoption's close.
They're not legally enforceable.
Have, open adoption can meanthe adoptive family sends photos
to a birth mother once a year.

Craig Mod (01:20:29):
Wow.

It doesn't mean you have any sort of meaningful,
ongoing relationship with a parent.
Also, even if you do as a child,it's wait, so you're here, but
like you're not taking care of me.
Like it's very confusing.

Craig Mod (01:20:45):
Sure.

So for all of it, our identity is impacted.

Craig Mod (01:20:50):
Is training for adoptive parents just not good enough?
Is that something we'rebutting up against?
I don't think, I don't think there wasany training for my parents, whereas
like I talked to, I have a friend whodid fostering and the amount of work
he had to do before he was able toaccept a foster kid was bananas, a
year of classes and all sorts of stuff.
Before where I feel like my parentswere just like, hey, we want a kid.

(01:21:12):
And we're, hey, we're Catholic.
And they're like, oh yeah, here's one.
And then, God forbid all thesefreaking Korean kids who were just
shipped often with like fake birthcertificates and what, just shipped
out to America in the eighties.

That's still happening here.
That's still happening in North America.
I'm Canadian.
People think I'm American, butthat's still happening here.

Craig Mod (01:21:34):
Wow.

In, private infant adoption, there's maybe 45 to 55
couples for every available infant.

Craig Mod (01:21:43):
Wow.

And adoption agencies are like, actively, the most money
they spend is on marketing andrecruiting to try and find mothers to
relinquish, just like in Korea, where

Craig Mod (01:21:54):
Wow.

Government officials were, going down the street and
paying people to take babies.
Essentially we have similarthings happening here.
I know, Craig, we could go downa very terrible rabbit hole.
I don't know if you wanna gothere, but it's troublesome.

Craig Mod (01:22:10):
Wow.

Yeah.

Craig Mod (01:22:12):
Yeah.
And I, and at the same time,if I was aborted, I wouldn't
know about my, I wouldn't beable to mourn my own existence.
Yeah.
So that's like theinteresting paradox here.
But for most of my life.
I'd say my teenage years wereincredibly painful psychically and
my twenties were just so terrible,and my sense of self-worth was

(01:22:33):
so low throughout my entire life.
And it's funny saying thesethings actually I'm getting
some permission from you.
Hearing even just this small bit ofinformation again, like having, I feel
like a dilettante having engaged zerowith the community, but hearing from
you how common all of this is, I thinksaying this almost feels like it's an
indictment on my adoptive parents, butreally they, because like I, because I

(01:22:57):
feel like they don't have the emotionalcapacity to process this stuff in the,
in ways that I would hope they could.
So that's kept me from, I think,engaging with a lot of this stuff or
thinking about a lot of this stuffdirectly, because I'm always like, if
I engage with it directly, it's I'mdishonoring them in a weird way, even
though they tried their best and blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, all that crap.

(01:23:18):
But actually it was a irreconcilablewound that even if they had been
super awesome, maybe to a next levelof greatness, like they could have
probably, smoothed some of it out.
But you're, what I'm hearing fromyou is that there is a fundamental
like kind of Adam and Eve, eatingthe fruit, like understanding of evil

(01:23:40):
that's implanted in every adopted kid.
The psychic pain of the knowledge.

Let's say it is a, actually it's an indictment on society.

Craig Mod (01:23:51):
Yes.

And the narratives that they have force fed us and everyone else that
everything's good here, everything's good.
However, adoptees are the butt ofjokes and however, adoptees are the
ones that come back looking for money.
And we're the serial killers, and

Craig Mod (01:24:10):
right.

There's a lot to dig into.

Craig Mod (01:24:13):
Okay, here's a crazy question.
Is it better to pretenda kid isn't adopted?

No.
No.

Craig Mod (01:24:19):
Is that better?

There's no secrets anymore.
No.
That's we call thoselate discovery adoptees.

Craig Mod (01:24:24):
Yeah.

And there's no secrets anymore.
So those folks, when I interview them.

Craig Mod (01:24:28):
If you could avoid the psychic trauma as a child and teenager
of adoption, and then get it whenyou're 25, is that a better scenario?

I have only ever interviewed one late discovery adoptee who said yes
she was happy her parents lied to her andshe didn't find out till her mid twenties.

Craig Mod (01:24:47):
That's so interesting.
We need to run some experiments.
Can we?
We need to start some Harvardfunded adoptee experiments.
That's.

Oh, don't worry those have already happened.

Craig Mod (01:24:57):
Right?
What is it?
Three Perfect Strangers thatyou know, that film that
came out a couple years ago?
Heartbreaking, insane.

Oh, there's actually one of the books I was gonna
recommend for you to read is calledThe Guild of the Infant Savior.
It's by my friend Megan CulhaneGalbraith, and I think you'd really
enjoy it because it's essays and herart and there's photographs in it.
So it's like a hybrid memoir.
And she has an essay in it where shetalks about this program where they used

(01:25:27):
to take babies who were gonna be adopted.
But they brought them into ahome economics program to train
young women how to be mothers.
And they put these babies on a schedule,and these college mothers would come and
take care of them and train the babies.

(01:25:47):
Then if they were good enough, theywould be adopted out into families.

Craig Mod (01:25:52):
Oh.
If the babies were good enough.

But if the babies, yeah, and if the babies didn't
take into the schedule, thenthey might go into foster care.
They're called the domecon babies babies.

Craig Mod (01:26:02):
Oh,

yeah.

Craig Mod (01:26:03):
We're so twisted.

Yeah.
This is from the twenties.
All the records of which babieshad been in the domecon program,
the records were destroyed.
So if you were adopted at that time, youwould never know you were a domecon baby.

Craig Mod (01:26:21):
Whoa.
And Japan has an interesting historywith adoption in that a lot of it
is adult adoptions into familiesto continue businesses or trades.
But it's, it's considered very real.
Like they, they really do.
You're now part of the family and Ithink the monocultural element of Japan
where everyone is of the same race,the same quote, unquote blood according

(01:26:45):
to their mythologies or whatever.
So I think there's a little bitmore fluidity there of moving people
between families because it feelslike everyone's already close.
But it is interesting that.

And there's a connection still to your original identity.

Craig Mod (01:26:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.

It's not the full erasure.
Like our practice of adoption is.

Craig Mod (01:27:02):
Right.
Geez.
Wow.
It's a lot.
Yeah.

Sorry, Craig.
So we call this, there's thisnew paper out, it's called the
Adoptee Consciousness Model.
So we used to call it ComingOut of the Fog, and that sort
of has a negative connotation.
Oh, you're in the fog, so youdon't get it, but you're outta the
fog and it's like a binary thing.
But the adoptee consciousnessmodel talks about unpacking
all these different touchstones

Craig Mod (01:27:26):
Yeah.

In your life and you may think about adoption differently, or you
may think about your adoptive parentsdifferently or your biological parents.
All these things.
But yeah, I feel like I'mlike dragging you through the.

Craig Mod (01:27:39):
No, I love it.
I love it.
I wasn't in a fog.
I was in the, I was in a freaking swamp.
I was just like swamp in a swamp.
I was deep in the adoptive swampwhere of self-loathing and suicidal
ideation and stuff like that.
It just like really.

Yeah.
That's so common.

Craig Mod (01:27:54):
Yeah.

It's so common.
Suicidal ideation for us too.
The studies will show that we're fourtimes more likely to attempt suicide.

Craig Mod (01:28:01):
I believe it.
I definitely, my drinking wasdefinitely a version of that.
The number of days I woke up andwas just like, I can't believe I'm
still alive after what I just did tomy body, just falling over, waking
up, cracked open head stuff like,just really looking back on it.
Very sad stuff and even difficultnow to fully empathize with who that

(01:28:25):
person was 'cause it feels just likethe journey has taken me so far from
whatever that place was, and yet stillknowing that's in there, that those
feelings, that impulse or whatever.
So I basically stopped drinkingcompletely like 13, 14 years ago,
mainly because I felt almost like atheological pull to do the work that

(01:28:45):
I'm doing, and so it's I know peoplecan have like religious conversions
and that's like how you're able topull yourself out of it or whatever.
But for me, getting around a lot of theaddiction stuff was creating a narrative
around my work and wanting so badlyfor nothing to get in the way of that.
And then realizing the easiest way Icould gain back so much time and energy

(01:29:07):
and capability was to just not drink.
That allowed me to start saying noto drinking functions and drinks and
stuff like that because it was, therewas a clear purpose there and it, and
building up self-worth, I'd say the mostpivotal parts of my journey coming out
of whatever the adoption haze, fog swampwas creating a sense of self-worth.

(01:29:27):
I'd say that was probably the most,the thing most affected by adoption was
probably that I, from such a young agebeing like, oh, I'm a thing you throw
away, I'm a thing people can throw away.
And then my parents getting divorced so,so quickly and my dad not being present.
It's like all of that stuff, justlike layering on that narrative.
Oh, see, that's more data.
It's like I'm, I get thrown away.
I'm the person who's thrown away.

(01:29:48):
I don't have any value,blah, blah, blah, blah.
And ratcheting my way out ofthat place was I think the first
step that, we talk about therapy.
I had to get myself to a placewhere I felt like I had enough
value to warrant therapy, to beable to do that therapy, reach out.
And that was that was a big deal.

Yeah.

Craig Mod (01:30:09):
And for me, running was the first step in creating self-worth.
That sounds like weird, but running,quitting alcohol, charging more for my
work and then using my work, I gettinga little bit of like the fame that I
was accruing through some of my work.
Being out in the world to connectwith great people and spending more

(01:30:30):
time with great people, going onwalks with great people and just
feeling that greatness and believingthat it could exist in the world.
And then believing that I deservedto be in the presence of that.
And then from that believing, oh, maybe Ihave a little bit of goodness in me too.
And that's why these incredible,kind, empathetic, emotionally
intelligent, wonderful people wantto be near me and just, but it

(01:30:51):
takes, that process is so slow.
This is, I started dragging myself outof the fog swamp probably when I was 27.
And it wasn't until I was 37 that Icould think, oh, I should do therapy.
It took me 10 years to be able toget to the place where I felt like

(01:31:12):
I had enough worth to do therapy.
And then the therapy and the daughterstuff and all this stuff, compounding
and compounding as resources havegotten me, got me to where I am today
and got me to the place where I wasable to do that birth mother meeting.
And so now, yeah, a big part of whatI've, the next stage of processing
is definitely adoptive mom processingstuff where I'm like 'cause I just

(01:31:35):
told her for the first time twoweeks ago that I met my birth mom.
That was its own thing.
Maybe we could do a follow up in ayear and see how things are going.

I'd love to, we can, if you would like, we can also talk
privately so you don't have to airall your everything for all to hear.
I thank you.
Thanks for letting us in.
I'm really honored tohave heard your story.
What do you wanna recommendto us today, Craig?

Craig Mod (01:32:02):
Therapy, definitely.

Okay.

Craig Mod (01:32:04):
I just, it's like I can't, I literally can't point to anything else
in my life that's had a bigger impact.
And for me, therapy is just having atotally switched on, completely present
listener in my life, which is someoneI've never had, I'd never had before this
therapist, I'm doing it all remotely.

(01:32:24):
So don't even think you have to.
Oh God, I don't have a therapist near me.
I, I can't do therapylike try a few people.
It's, there's definitely a kindof pheromonal thing that happens,
like whether or not you connectwith the person on the other end.
And talk to three or four peopleat least, and test them out.
And for me it was just like,wow, okay, this person's smart.

(01:32:45):
They are super present, theydon't have a horse in this race.
So that they're able to listento me in an objective way.
I trust them implicitly.
I can tell them my story and Idon't worry about them judging me.
I can tell them exactly howI feel about X, Y, or Z.
A lot of people will say, oh, I don'tneed a therapist 'cause I have this
good friend and we like go out fordrinks and we can talk about anything.

(01:33:07):
And there's a lot of peoplewho say that's not therapy.
That is, your friend is bringingso much crap to the table.
They, your friend I'm almost certain,unless they're a trained therapist,
is trying to solve everything for you.
And so that is not what you need.
That's not what therapy is about.
It's not about that solving process.
It really is about having thisperson who can listen and synthesize

(01:33:28):
for you and reflect back to you.
What you've said, not justin a session, but over time.
And so I have this eight year relationshipwith this person who's heard, who's
seen me go through by these last eightyears of my life have been insane
just on every level personal and as afather and professionally and starting

(01:33:50):
my membership program and doingthese big walks and, all this stuff.
And so to have someone in your lifethat you're going on this journey with
and having them be able to point backto these different moments and say, hey
what's happening to you now remember,this is this happened three years ago.
This happened five years ago.
And do it all in a non nonjudgmentalway and help you think about these
things is you cannot overemphasizethe power of that resource.

(01:34:16):
It is so bananas.
And I really think if I could snapmy fingers and give everyone the
world something aside after nationalhealthcare as sane countries do, and,
whatever, like funded schools andblah, blah, all that baseline crap.
The bonus would be everyone has agreat therapist, and I just think
that would literally solve like,most of the issues in the world.

(01:34:36):
It's crazy.
It's crazy,

yeah.

Craig Mod (01:34:38):
When you think about it.
So do that.

Absolutely.

Craig Mod (01:34:41):
And try to go on a big walk.
I do these things called walk and talks.
I've written about 'em on my website.
You can find Kevin Kelly and Ihave done a full writeup of exactly
what we've learned running thesethings for the last 10 years.
It's a blueprint for howto run one and do it.
And I would say walk the Caminode Santiago, do it in Spain.

(01:35:01):
The Santiago is so easy to set up.
The resources are so good.
It's such a wonderful path to walk andgo invite five incredible people that
you want to connect with, you wannaspend a week with and do our walk and
talk style thing where every night youdo a Jeffersonian dinner and you have
one topic and you talk for two or threehours about that topic and invite, really

(01:35:22):
invite five or six people that you loveand want, just want to connect with,
and you will have a life changing week.
It is so rare as an adult to spend thatmuch time with other adults, especially
adults that are non narcissists.
That's a huge thing.
Don't invite narcissists.
We've invited narcissists in the past.
They're the worst.
They're really hard to deal with.
Don't invite the narcissist and goon, try to do a week of walking.

(01:35:45):
I know that sounds like it mightbe a lot, but like Santiago for
a week, it's basically $1,300.
You can book everything.
It's not that expensive.
The flights will cost more, but try tofind that time and do that kind of walk.
And maybe, you should think about in doingan adoption walk and talk, that would be

adoptee walk

Craig Mod (01:36:03):
be incredible.
That would be, and every day is like adifferent adoption topic and you just
kinda spend the week breaking this stuff.
It might be, everyonemight lose their minds.
Like it's almost too emotionalto talk about for a week

Just cry all week.
Yeah.
We'll be dehydrated for sure.
Oh, I love that.
Yes.
I read that today when I waspreparing for our conversation.
So I'll make sure to linkto that in the show notes.

Craig Mod (01:36:25):
Cool.

Okay.
So your new book, Things BecomeOther Things, A Walking Memoir.
Folks can find iteverywhere books are sold.

Craig Mod (01:36:32):
Yep.
Yep.

And follow along with your book tour, we'll link
to that as well in the show notes.

Craig Mod (01:36:36):
Awesome.

Thanks so much.
What a delight to meet you, Craig.
Just an honor.

Craig Mod (01:36:41):
Likewise.
Thank you Again, thank you for makingthis program and thanks for having me.

That was so enjoyable for me.
We had originally booked anhour and we just kept going.
And so I love that Craig gave me extratime and we got to talk through so much
more than I anticipated getting to hear.
And if I'll never get over this wherean adoptee gets to share with another

(01:37:15):
adoptee for the first time, theirreunion experience, their story.
Like it's just really special.
So I'm so glad we gotto share that with you.
And Craig's book I enjoyed it so much.
I'll discuss just a little bit more.
The photographs are so beautiful.

(01:37:37):
They're black and white.
We didn't go into this Craig is colorblindto a certain extent, and so he, he
just has this ability to capture lightand shadow just like it's remarkable.
And they're just so stunning.
And they go along with, of course,all the stories and the vignettes
he's sharing about his walk.
And I loved it because it's so much aboutJapan and things that I never thought

(01:38:07):
about before and the rural landscape andwhat it looks like now and the farmers he
met and all of these different charactersfrom his past and the adoption identity,
the adoptee identity, adoption complexity.
It's sprinkled throughout the whole book.
Like all the spots I marked in mybook were adoption related 'cause

(01:38:29):
those are the things I wantedto ask him about or touch on.
And I've asked Craig to do bookclub with us and so I think
that will happen this summer.
You can pay attention to oursocial media to see when, if that's
available and I'll keep you up todate on that, but it'll be so cool
to read that in community with y'all.

(01:38:50):
So thank you so much forsharing your story Craig.
I'll just, reiterate, it was just apleasure and I had no idea who Craig was
when the publicist reached out to me.
So it was really cool to investigateand be like, oh my gosh, this
guy's a literal book nerd.
And making books.

(01:39:12):
The old fashioned way, and it's very cool.
He has so many amazing projectsand neat things going on.
We didn't get to touch on 98% of them.
So if you connected with him and foundhis story interesting, do a deep dive, do
just do a quick Google and you'll see allthe amazing things Craig's working on.

(01:39:36):
So what a pleasure to welcomehim into adoptee land.
Okay, before we say goodbye, I wantto personally invite you to join our
Patreon adoptee community today overon adopteeson.com/community, which
helps support you and also the show tosupport more adoptees around the world.
And if you're new to adoptee land,this is a great place to land.

(01:40:01):
We've got so many amazingpeople in our community.
We do live Zoom eventsa couple times a month.
We have book club or documentaryclub, or we have adoptees off script
parties where you can meet fellowadoptees and connect and talk a little
bit about deeper things that adopteeswanna talk about with each other.

(01:40:22):
So I'd love to have your support there.
Thank you so much for listening.
Let's talk again soon.

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