S3E42 - RACIST FAMILY ADOPTS BIRACIAL CHILD UNKNOWINGLY AND NEVER REVEALS — AUTHOR SHAWN, "BORN WITHOUT A RACE" - Mind Your Own Karma - Beyond The Bandage

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Mom said sticks and stones, sticks and stones.
And I said, well, they're called.
They say I'm black and she's you're not black.
You were born white. Your hair was straight.
They gave you medication and that turned your skin darker and
that made your hair curl. Before that, your hair was
perfectly straight. And I thought OK.

(00:21):
Hey there, it's Melissa Brunettiand welcome to the Mind Your Own
Karma podcast. Hey there Karma crew.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of Mind your own Karma,
The Adoption Chronicles. Today I have Sean on the show.

(00:44):
In 1963, Sean was placed for adoption because his white and
brothers family didn't want biracial grandson as an infant.
He passed for white, so he was adopted by a racist rule Indiana
family who didn't and realized that he was black.
Ashamed of his ethnicity, his mom concocted lies to hide his
race from everyone, including Sean.

(01:06):
This lack of racial identity caused depression, confusion,
and conflict with his education,relationships, and career.
But his mom insisted that he wasnot to search for his birth
family until after she died. Around age 40, Sean and his wife
decided that they were well suited to adopt other biracial
babies. Through the adoption process,
Sean discovered clues that helped him locate and reunite

(01:28):
with his biological family. Although Sean's author name for
his book, Born Without a Race, is Doctor Michael Bauer, he
wishes to be addressed in this interview as Sean for personal
reasons. Here is my interview with Sean.
So we are welcoming Sean to the show today.
Hi, Sean. Hello.
I am so glad you are on the show.

(01:50):
You are an author of Born Without a Race.
You're a transracial adoptee. And I love your book because it
brings so many different dynamics.
And it's not just an adoptee book or an adoption book.
So I feel like other people willpick it up and read it that
aren't adoptees and maybe get educated.
And that's really what this showis all about, is educating

(02:13):
people about adoption. So I feel like you're going to
draw another people, not just adoptees, and maybe they'll
learn something. So thank you so much for putting
that out in the world. Oh, you're welcome.
Yeah. It talks on a lot of racial
identity issues and what happensif you don't know your racial
identity? How do you identify?
And that was me. Yeah, yeah.

(02:33):
And thank you for educating me on that because there were so
many things I didn't even think of.
I know being transracial and an adoptee just adds a whole nother
layer of challenges, you know, being an adoptee that's
transracial. So thanks for educating me as
well. So let's educate the world today
with your story. So let's kind of start at the

(02:54):
beginning. Tell us what you believed
growing up and what you know nowis the truth about why you were
placed for adoption by your biological mother.
Let me start with my biological mother story, 'cause that helps
a lot understanding when I tell you what I believed growing up.
So my biological mother grew up on a tobacco farm in southern

(03:17):
Indiana, just around the Ohio River.
Her father was a tobacco farmer,her mother was a teacher, and
she wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps.
So she went to a teacher's college up here in northeastern
Indiana, and she graduated and got her teaching degree.
And she had a really tight groupof friends, and they're still

(03:39):
together. And one in particular was a nice
lady who eventually that became her wife.
But at the time, they were kind of seeing each other on and off
like college students do. But when she graduated with her
teaching degree, she wanted to go on and earn her Masters.
And she had all these friends. And so she just re enrolled in

(04:01):
the same college. During breaks from school, she
would go back to her hometown and stay with her parents.
And there is a mental health facility near there.
And she volunteered as an associate instructor there.
And that's where she met my father.
So it's like, how did those two get together?
You have to know that she. He was not a patient.

(04:22):
He worked there. Sure.
We'd make that specific. Yeah.
So they had a fling, and he was a fun guy.
They had a lot of fun together. But when she was down there, she
was seeing him. And when she was up here, she
was seeing her, her future wife.I'll call her Wanda.
That's why I called her in the book.

(04:44):
Yeah. So when she became pregnant
after one of their little flingsdown in southern Indiana, she
had a problem. So my father was married with
three kids and one on the way, and he did not want to interrupt
his family. He's very happy with his family

(05:04):
and she didn't want him to interrupt his family.
And the other complication is hewas black.
So that kind of takes her familyout of the picture 'cause they
were, as her father was second generation Irish, her mother was
second generation German. And they they was racist.

(05:25):
And once my birth mother in highschool, they took a church trip
down through the southern states.
And one of the girls in that group had a darker complexion
and they were afraid of where togo.
So this is in the 1950s. So they're still white and
colored water fountains. There's white and colored
restaurants and they're all circling around the one girl

(05:48):
with a darker complexion, afraidthat she's going to get arrested
for going into the wrong restaurant.
So. So that was her background and
thinking of, you know, did she want to go through with that
with the baby? Said where am I going to take
him to the bathroom if he has togo?
So she left her parents home andnever spoke of it and moved back

(06:11):
in and her, her future wife tookher in and she moved in with her
parents and she took care of herall during the pregnancy.
And she drove my mother to the hospital at the university when
she went into labor with me. So the three of them were there.
And this is significant as to why I chose your adoption or

(06:32):
your podcast because 60 years later to the day, my birth
mother's wife had a massive stroke and she was in the same
hospital. And my birth mother called me.
I thought she was wishing me happy birthday and I was
working. I didn't take the the call and
she said Wanda's had a stroke, we're at the hospital.

(06:53):
So I went all rest right over there.
And that was the end of her life.
So we were there after the beginning of my life and it was
the end of her life 60 years later.
So that's what I thought was karma.
And when I was looking at different podcasts, I thought, I
think someone that specializes in karma will find that
interesting. So I'm, I'm asked you to would

(07:17):
you have me as a guest? And you were kind enough to let
me on. So I appreciate that.
Yeah, cool. Well, I didn't know that story.
So that's that's interesting. So when I was born, she didn't
want to list the father because that would mean the lawyers
would have to contact him and that I was a secret.
So she filled out her information, but she didn't fill

(07:38):
out my his. So there was no discussion of
what my race was. And when I was born, I was very
sick. Now let's switch to my adoptive
parents. They are from a very white
community. My grandfather was in the Ku
Klux Klan. My dad's brothers, several of

(07:59):
them were in the Ku Klux Klan, and some of my first cousins
were in the Klan, also on my mom's side.
They were just as racist. I never saw their KKK cards, but
you know, I've heard some incredible racist things.
So I have no doubt if my parentsknew that I was half black, they
would never have adopted me. So when they got me home, well,

(08:21):
it took a while because I was born with some genetic
disorders. You probably have never heard of
Pfeiffer syndrome. It's not very common.
That I have heard of it, but I wasn't familiar with what it all
entailed. If you Google it, you'll see
that Prince's son had Pfeiffer syndrome and he died shortly
after birth. So I had a lot of problems when

(08:44):
I was born. I had three surgeries.
I was in and out of the hospitala great deal.
So they didn't really have me until I was later on and you
really couldn't. My race wasn't a big issue.
I had no hair. I have blue eyes.
I was jaundiced. So I mean, it was just never

(09:04):
discussed. So eventually after my after I
was 3 and I had my third surgery, then they brought me
home and then they started to see some of my black
characteristics. My hair grew in curly and I
turned much darker in the summerthan their other two kids.

(09:25):
I should I should have said why they adopted.
They adopted because they've been married for 10 years and
one of the bias a plot of land raised some horses and cows and
they needed boys to do that. So they adopted my older brother
about two years before me. Then when they closed on the
land, they decided one boy wasn't enough, so they adopted
another boy. That was me.

(09:47):
Now it got more complicated. I I was healthier after age 3,
but mom was finally able to carry a baby to delivery.
So three years and three days after I was born, she had her
own son and he was the golden child.
He was the heir to the throne and the me and my brother, like

(10:12):
Prince Harry, we were spares. Yeah.
Yeah. So.
So that was evident to you, to you growing up that that was the
IT. Was evident, it was evident to
everybody, but they were not very truthful to me and my
brother. They always said, oh, we treat
us all the same. They we treat you all the same.
But anybody that was paying attention could see that they

(10:34):
don't treat us all the same. When to give an example of that,
when I was three, after my thirdsurgery, then my asthma became a
problem that was a gift from my biological father.
But my parents knew nothing about asthma, and they were
doing a lot of things that made it worse.

(10:54):
But they didn't know that, so the doctors didn't know how to
treat me. So they sent me to the best
pediatric pulmonologist in the state.
He's right downtown at on the circle of Indianapolis, on the
top floor. German guy.
I still remember he's had a beard and he had an accent.
He reminded me of Sigmund Freud later on, not when I was 3, but

(11:17):
when I saw Sigmund Freud. Hey, that's Doctor Kraft.
And now he's on the top floor and the building had seven
floors. So Mom's taking me there and
she's claustrophobic, so she is not going up the elevator.
So she she drags a three-year old up these steps and we're
running late. So we're running.

(11:37):
I get up to his office and I'm about to die so I can barely
breathe. So he sends me right to the
hospital, says I'm the worst case he'd ever seen.
And so I spent a couple weeks inan oxygen tent and on and off
from age 3 to 6, I spent a lot of time in oxygen tents.
Do you know what those are? Yeah, I think I was in one when

(11:58):
I was a baby 'cause I had pneumonia.
Oh, OK, so you know what it's like.
Yeah. So yeah, I was in one.
And I can remember when I was 5 and 6, being in one and after my
asthma got under control that first time, he had me back and I
wasn't a happy camper. I didn't like being in the
oxygen tent. I didn't like this doctor.

(12:20):
I didn't like going up all thosesteps.
But I was breathing well enough he could examine me at least.
And I, I, my mom said I was not very cooperative.
And he said at least you broughthim here before he was a total
brat. Oh wow.
Yeah, she says, well, I can't spank him.
If I spank him, he coughs and then he coughs and he goes into
asthma attacks. And this German high level

(12:43):
pediatric pulmonologist said he won't die of an asthma attack.
If he needs a beating, you give him a beating and so spare the
rod and spoil the child became mom and dad's mission statement
from that day on. So I got quite a bit.
My older brother got the most beating and he was so abused

(13:05):
physically and emotionally. He moved out when he was 17.
He was done. I was next.
I got it. The younger brother?
Never. Got it.
Yeah, if if we were both doing something, Mom would smack me
and say next time you're gettingit.
And there was never a next time for him to get.

(13:27):
Him Wow. What was it like growing up in a
in a racist family, in a racist community?
Mom tried to hide it and it was very difficult.
But yeah, in school, I was the only, you know, kid of my color.
In high school, there might havebeen one a few years older than

(13:49):
me, but I don't remember ever interacting with him.
And all the other kids were white, so it was difficult.
Mom tried to hide it. She when I had come home crying
from the bus because someone hadcalled me a or hit me, punch me,
made fun of my hair. Mom said sticks and stones,

(14:09):
sticks and stones. And I said, well, they're
called. They say I'm black and she's
you're not black. You were born white.
Your hair was straight. They gave you medication and
that turned your skin darker andthat made your hair curl.
Before that, your hair was perfectly straight.
And I thought OK. Yeah.
So, so I'd, I was small still and so I just took it.

(14:34):
I just took all those, all that bullying all through school.
Eventually I quit riding the bus.
I started walking or riding my bike the two miles.
And then when my older brother was old enough, he would drive.
So I would, he would drop me off.
And then when I was got my license, I drove I, I didn't go
down certain hallways in the high school.

(14:56):
I, I went to Catholic grade school.
So I was somewhat protected because everybody knew
everybody. We all went to church together
and they they knew who I was. Nobody really questioned that.
But when I went to public school, hey, look at him.
So So I had to stay away from certain hallways and certain
lockers. I didn't eat lunch in the
cafeteria even once all through high school.

(15:19):
I just got through there and kept a low profile, graduated
first in my class, gathered up all my scholarships and left.
Yeah. At what point did you start
questioning your racial identity?
Do you remember? Besides the school bus just
telling them mom just said don'twear your feelings on the sleeve

(15:42):
that you're they're just trying to upset you so ignore that.
So I quit questioning it then. But when I got to college, I
went as far as my scholarship money would take me, which was
IU Bloomington, which is still mostly white back then, but it
was a very international community.
The Dalai Lama's brother settledthere in Bloomington, and there

(16:04):
are people from every part of the world there.
And living in the dorms and going to classes, people would
ask me, what nationality are you?
Are you, are you coming to the black study table?
I don't know if I'm black or no.Are you Jewish?
There's a guy on my floor who was Jewish.
He's asked me about, you know, going to the church or the

(16:24):
synagogue with him. I thought, I'm not Jewish.
I do you look Jewish. I don't know.
I'm adopted Middle Eastern. I mean, professors from all over
the world, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, they're all asking me,
you know, are you, are you from here?
Are you from there? And especially the one from

(16:45):
Egypt, I said, well, I'm not. I can't say that because that's
that'll give away the name of the town that I grew up in.
But so at the Christmas break, Iwent back to mom and said, look,
everybody's guessing what national anthem can I see my
adoption pagers and go through it and see if there's anything
that indicates what nationality I am.

(17:06):
And she just repeated, no, you, you are white.
Medication made you look that way.
But then she added to the story that but your lawyer did say,
the lawyer did say that you would be smart because one of
your parents was a rocket scientist and the other one was
a brain surgeon. Now I thought, really, And that

(17:31):
made me feel good. I was like, wow, that's what I
am. OK, I'll take that.
So that, you know, I, I took that and ran with it.
But I think that was a lie she made-up because her biological
son didn't do nearly as well in in school as I did.
And the teachers were like you, Sean's brother.
What happened? They they expected more from

(17:53):
you. And so she told him and told the
teachers, yeah, you can't compare him to Sean.
Sean's parents were a brain surgeon and A and a rocket
scientist. So.
So that I went through college, went back second semester
freshman year and my German professor and I got along really

(18:16):
well. And in fact, we shared a
Greyhound bus back at spring break going home.
And he we were speaking in German the whole time and he was
telling me about his trips and he, he said, you're so natural
at German for only having a little bit you've had.
He says, are you German? I don't know.
I'm adopted. So he said, I can tell in your

(18:39):
eyes you're German. You should go to German.
So I thought, OK, someday. He says, no, I mean, now he
says, I, I said that, you know, my parents will never pay for me
to go to Germany. He says there's a program where
you can go and you'll study in Berlin.
Well, W Berlin because I'm old and it was divided back then.

(19:00):
And you'll study there in for a month.
And then you go to work at at Bayer Chemical Plant in Cologne
and you pay off your debt and you end up owing nothing.
Wow. That's offered from one of the
satellite campuses. So I visited the that campus and
applied and they accepted me. So that's how OK, I'm think I'm

(19:21):
German, so I'm going to go to Germany.
Wow. I get, I get there and we're
studying with a group from Finland and nobody there really
questions what I am. But we're all together and we're
all 1920. We're having a good time.
We're away from home and we hangout together and we're walking
across the pedestrian Plaza there in Berlin, going from

(19:44):
place to place looking for a bar, I think.
And we come across a group of punks.
And when I say punks, I mean black leather colored mohawks,
piercings, spikes. And they're skateboarding there
on at the at the pedestrian Plaza.
One of the ugly Americans says something in English.
He doesn't think they'll understand, but they understood.

(20:06):
And the guy, guy closest came tohim and broke his nose with one
blow. And then their whole group was
on our whole group. And the one that came from me
stop short. He drove back and he said.
Are you Turkish? In German?
And I thought, I really don't know how to explain.
I'm adopted, I don't know what race I am in German.

(20:26):
So I just said yeah, I'm Turkish.
And so he goes, good, good. Then he went and beat up another
guy from my group. Poor George.
Sorry. George But then I thought, all
right, I came here thinking I'm German.
I find out I'm Turkish and then,yeah, I have a good time in
Berlin, get to Cologne. And when we go to the factory,

(20:51):
the foreman asked me, are you Turkish?
And I'm like, heck, yeah, I'm Turkish.
But Turkish were migrant workersin Germany at the time, Maybe
still now kind of like Hispanicshave more difficult jobs here.
So I was given the worst shifts and the worst jobs.
That they. Had and it was night shift, so
you know, I just did it. I, I grew up shovelling manure,

(21:14):
baling hay, splitting logs that heated with woods.
He wouldn't pay a gas company oranything.
So, you know, I was used to dirty jobs that didn't bother me
and I had my days free and somebody had loaned me a bike
and I rode all over the immediate area.
I Renault, I rode from Cologne to Dusselderf and what that
meant was I was outside a lot inthe sun and I got dark again.

(21:36):
I got really, really dark. Mom and dad had a pool, but I
wasn't allowed to go into the pool during daytime hours and
that was something I didn't realize till much, much later.
Looking at the old pictures, Momalways had me in long pants and
long shirt and my younger brother's buck naked running.
Around in the backyard. But I had to cover up and she

(22:00):
was keeping me from tanning. So.
So I'm in Germany and I'm tan and I don't go to anybody to cut
my hair because I don't know if they know how to cut my hair.
So I had a full Afro by the end of that.
And my very last week, I was standing on a scaffolding
working on a piece of equipment and one of the guys named Dieter

(22:20):
came and crashed into it with his fork truck and knocked me to
the ground. And I fell pretty hard.
And I got up and I'm ready to fight.
The other workers break up the fight and the foreman calls over
a work student from a German work student, tells him to take
me to the Infirmary. And the guy that hit me hit the
scaffolding. He called me a name and I wish I

(22:41):
could remember it, but I just don't.
And I asked the German work student when we were walking to
the Infirmary, I said what did he call me?
And he said it was a racial slurfor someone with dark skin, like
an African. So he said probably close to the
N word in your country. So.
Oh, OK. So I started out thinking I'm

(23:03):
German, told I'm Turkish, and then now I'm African.
OK, So I've checked out. OK.
But human resources, the other work student told them what
happened, and they decided they would give me medical leave for
the rest of the week and then I wouldn't have to go back into
that. So I come back to the United
States and fly into O'Hare. Mom and Dad are picking me up

(23:25):
and they're asking me about this.
And that's the next time I question mom about my hair.
They just said, OK, this is whatthey think, Like, think I'm
Turkish, they think I'm German, they they think I'm African.
Is there any clue of what I am in my adoption papers?
And mom and dad had some friendsdrive up.
So I'm just asking this in frontof the friends.

(23:45):
And that does not make mom happy.
So she kind of grits her teeth and repeats the same stories
that she's always told me. OK, I'm not getting anywhere
with this, but I go back to college and the same thing keeps
happening. People asking me where I am,
'cause I'm always meeting new people, They don't know who I
am. You know, other adoptees say I'm
triggered when I go to the doctor and they ask for family

(24:08):
history. I'm asked every day what race I
am. I can't answer it.
I'm triggered. Well, not every day, but you
know, 3 or 4 times a week I'm triggered.
Yeah. How did?
How did that affect like your personal relationships, like not
having an identity when you started having relationships
later on? I I withdrew from people.

(24:31):
I just lived by myself and if people were getting too close
then I would run away. I would go camping somewhere in
the woods down down near Bloomington just by myself, walk
trails, just really didn't have very many friends there as the
college went on. I did this the people in class.

(24:53):
I didn't date through high school.
I guess I should say that. So let's go back to the adoption
story. How did I find out I was
adopted? My dad sat me down and said
there was a whole room full of baby boys.
And he picked me and said, OK, that's great.
Mom said you're I found you lying under in the garden

(25:18):
underneath a cabbage leaf. You're the ugliest thing I ever
saw. And I took, I had pity on you
and I took you home. Oh.
My gosh. She repeated over and over.
You're the ugliest thing I ever saw.
So I just had no self-image of any, any self-confidence.
And you know, the people in my high school, they're all white.

(25:38):
I stand out. I don't feel comfortable, you
know, being around anybody then.So I was very much a loner.
Yeah, I but you did date, I mean, and you kind of had a
crazy relationship that you wrote about in the book.
OK, that's a good way. That's where you're going.
I mean. OK so I graduated and I

(26:01):
interviewed at different places.I took a job in Northern Indiana
for a while and it was too much like my parents hometown so I
just couldn't stand it. So I was licensed in South
Carolina and Kentucky. So I took a trip and I ended up
interviewing at a place near in Myrtle Beach and it was a very

(26:23):
professional office and I reallyliked it so I accepted the job.
So my job was doing eye exams ontourists that came down and wait
it out in the ocean lost their glasses because this is 1991,
nobody has a cell phone, there'sno Internet, so they need to
come in and get another exam. And that was a great job, but it
only lasted during the tourist season.

(26:45):
Then that doctor that hired me let me know that he was part of
this national or statewide chain.
And I was assigned to all these different communities, and they
would bring me in to solve problems that the other doctors
couldn't see. And in the first year I was in
South Carolina, I worked in 30 different offices.
And then because I was at MyrtleBeach, I turned dark, even

(27:09):
darker than I did in Germany. And I let my hair grow out
because I was, you know, late 20s, and the light bothered my
eyes. So I started wearing amber
colored contacts. Eventually I caught the
attention of the owner, so I wasdoing such a good job.
He decided me to move me to Columbia, which was the busiest

(27:31):
office in the chain. And when I got there, it's like,
oh, people didn't like it. People shield away from me.
The, the white staff there in particular treated me like dirt,
like like I was the lowest person in the whole company, but
there was 3 black people that were on staff and they treated

(27:54):
me like I was royalty. And I really wasn't
understanding what was going on because I still didn't have an
identity, a racial identity. In fact, I was so depressed when
I lived at South Carolina, I attempted suicide once.
But when I got to Columbia, the receptionist there was a law

(28:15):
student and she was just workingthere, working her way through
college. And she takes me into the
conference room and says, doc, you're black.
And I heard you say that, yeah, you're adopted.
You don't know what race you are, you're black and they're
treating you black. Said patients will come in here,
we'll get some white patients from out in the country and

(28:37):
they'll see you. And they say I ain't having my
eyes exam by no. And they turn around and leave.
And she said then that's why thestaff treat you the way they do.
They see you as black. It doesn't matter if you know or
not. You are.
And she really helped me. And we became close.
And then, yeah, she was the crazy one that we dated.

(28:57):
But you know, she was right. And I really respected her.
I never had anyone give me that kind of care and attention.
So we even talked about getting married.
But the problem with that, the longer I was in Columbia, the
more my tan faded and I became lighter and lighter.

(29:20):
Eventually the owner said, I'm not paying to put you in a hotel
anymore. I'm I want you to move to
Columbia permanently. So she went back with me to the
beach. I was after about 3 months and
we were packing everything and she saw pictures of my parents
for the first time because I didn't bring them with me to the
hotel I was staying in. And she goes, who are these
people? And that's my parents.

(29:43):
She's like, Oh my gosh. And that was the first time she
saw me without my amber colored contacts and saw my blue eyes.
And she freaked out. She said you lied to me.
I said I didn't say nothing. I didn't say I was black.
You said I was black. So she became very concerned.
She did not. She's very racial proud.

(30:06):
She still is. So she's a political consultant
now, and she said you've got to prove to me that you're really
black. So I said OK.
Like but I don't know. So yeah, I don't know.
So going back to mom again, and I said, OK, mom, I'm I need to

(30:26):
know, can I see my adoption papers and see if it says
anything about my race? And this is about the 5th time
I've asked her and she's repeatsthe same old lies.
No, you were born white. Your father was or one of your
parents was a rocket scientist. One was a brain surgeon.
The medicine turned your hair curly and made you brown.
I said well I want to look at itmyself and see because I said my

(30:50):
girlfriend is black and she wants to know if I'm black or
not. And Mom went stone cold.
I bet, she said. You said you were dating a law
student. I said yeah, she's black.
She's gritting her teeth. How black is she?
Wow, but. I don't know how to answer that,

(31:13):
mom. And she's she's like, is she
kind of light like that one MissAmerica, the posed nude in the
magazine or is she the other kind?
But OK, gave it a thought and I said, OK, who can I compare it
to? And said, OK, she does.
She's not the color of Vanessa Williams.

(31:33):
She's more the color of Oprah. But her mom likes Oprah.
Everybody likes Oprah. But.
Mom's got mad and stormed off and I thought, well, just wasted
my time there. But she came back out and she
had a single piece of paper frommy adoption file, and this one
had my birth mother's age and her race.

(31:55):
She's 23 and she was white when I was born.
On the birth father's side. It was completely blank.
And I've heard other adoptees say that was blank.
And I'm saying, mom, why is the first father's side blank?
She goes, oh, she probably sleptwith so many men that she didn't
know which one it was. Oh, OK.
Yeah, great. But one of them was a rocket

(32:16):
scientist, OK. Yeah.
How did you know that? We did know that, but.
Yeah, we didn't know that so. Have you ever left a therapy
session feeling like you achieved major breakthroughs,
only to discover that the issuesyou wanted to eliminate continue
to sprout up and grow? With somatic, mindful, guided

(32:36):
imagery, we get to the root of your symptoms easily, gently and
efficiently so you can spend less time wedding and more time
cultivating. I go back to my girlfriend and
say, OK, this is what I was told.
One of them, I've never told herthat.

(32:57):
Mom told me one of the parents was a rocket scientist and one
was a brain surgeon. And my girlfriend says, well,
how did she know that I really goofed up here?
How did you know that one is notblack?
And mom said, well, there are norocket scientists and brain
surgeons that are black. Yeah, that wasn't a good thing

(33:18):
to say. And my my girlfriend went off
and she just, she's just laughing hysterically.
She goes for somebody so smart. You're stupid.
She said that's a lie. Your mother is lying to you.
She said if there was a brain surgeon and a rocket scientist
that got together in small town Indiana and they did the nasty

(33:39):
and had a baby, it's like, why would they give their baby to a
couple crackers like your parents?
It's like, I mean, how unlikely is that OK?
It is unlikely. It made me feel good, the time
for the 10 years that I believedit.
When people ask me, when did youcome out of the fog?
I think that was the first step.OK, Mom has been lying to me.

(34:00):
And I started researching the medication and I could not find
the medication anywhere in my records or anywhere in the
literature where a medication would do that.
I mean, some people have chemotherapy and their hair
comes back early. Some people have, you know,
there's medication or supplements you can take to tan

(34:21):
yourself. But there's nothing that made
sense to me. So I thought, OK, this is the
first time I really realized my parents have been lying to me my
whole life. Yeah.
But that that really didn't savethe relationship though, so.
Yeah, she was kind of, I mean, like very abusive, verbally,
physically abusive to you. And you, just you you kept

(34:44):
hanging in there for a long time.
I mean, why did you, why did youdo that?
As an as an adoptee, you know, we get, we have very low
opinions of ourselves and we just take it and we just take
the abuse we think we're supposed to.
So, yeah, this is the first one that really made me feel good
about myself. I I was really happy when I was

(35:07):
with her. And in the beginning, in the
first six months or so, it was wonderful.
But then after this happened andI became more and more white, we
just drew more and more distant.I went to church with her.
And, you know, she always kept me at a distance from her
friends because her friends didn't.
I never met them, but they didn't like me.

(35:29):
I was white. They called me the Pillsbury
Doughboy. Hide my back.
They said, you go. He's Indiana white.
So he you go buy some paint, youdon't you want the whitest paint
they got. You don't ask for bone or
eggshell, you ask for Indiana white 'cause that's as white as
it go. So his family's Indiana white
so. Yeah.

(35:50):
Eventually we broke up and it was not a good breakup.
No, it wasn't. It's it's still affecting me
today that. I bet.
That complaint she filed damagedmy ability to, I just left.
I didn't fight it and saying, you know, the, the medication I

(36:10):
used on her, I cured it, but, and it wasn't approved in South
Carolina at the time, but it, itwas a few months later.
But I, yeah, it was just a very common medication.
And in Indiana, we were more advanced in South Carolina.
So I had it on my person and that's what I use when she
scratched her eye. But they, I didn't fight it.

(36:33):
I just left the state and I thought, this is nuts.
I'm, I'm done trying to be blackin the in the summertime and
trying to identify white in the winter time.
I don't know what I am. I'm done with this whole game.
So I just moved away. I didn't fight the suspension.
The suspension took place and itwas just never really
reinstated. And that hurt me with Medicare.

(36:55):
So I haven't been able to to. They never released my Medicare
number to be transferred to Indiana, so that hurt my billing
for the rest of my career. Yeah, yeah, you'll have to read
the book and and get the nitty gritty on the whole story,
listeners. Most people don't ask me about
her. Yeah, yeah, that was that was

(37:20):
really something. And so, yeah, if you read the
book, Granny's cat is me coming out of the fog.
Yes. Definitely.
Yeah, when I realized that, you know, boy, your grandparents
were really, really racist and your parents were racist, Yeah,
that's when I was really coming out of the fog and
understanding. Yeah, it's funny how like you,

(37:41):
you know, you just go through life and you don't even, you
hear that, you know what was going on, you see what's going
on, but you don't, it doesn't compute.
Like what? What really is happening?
Like you just, it's just everyday life for you.
And so you're just, you know, that's just what they what they
called the cat, I mean. You know it.

(38:03):
It would. Yeah.
That's what's the cat's name. You don't think it was Quack?
Yeah, I didn't think about it. And you never thought about it
when I moved out and went to college.
I mean, that was just in the back.
In the back, back memories. And.
Yeah. And it's funny until you have to
really tell someone you're like,oh, wait a second, that's not
good, like. Yeah.
You know, it's like the light bulb goes on.

(38:24):
Definitely. So you talk about your birthday
and how you struggle around thattime.
Tell us what you felt and experienced regarding that time
of year around your birthday. I was very, very sad and
withdrawn it. It was especially hard because

(38:44):
my parents biological son was three days after mine, so our
birthdays were always lumped together.
He wanted this big celebration, these big presents.
I wanted nothing. They say I don't want anything,
I don't want to celebrate and that would make my parents mad.
So there was me getting nothing and him getting this big

(39:05):
celebration. If there was a party, I might
have one friend there and he'd have like 20.
And then when I got to college especially, I would run away and
hide during my birthdays time. The one birthday I spent at the
beach and made me so depressed. I thought, I'm done with this.
I'm just going to go for a long swim because I thought there's

(39:28):
got to be a way. In the book, I go into more
detail about being 27 and 28 because I thought, you know, a
lot of adoptees are a suicidal and I thought when I was 27 that
was the best time. I mean, look at Jimi Hendrix
died, Jim Morrison, Robert Johnson, they all died at 27.

(39:53):
So I thought that's the time, ifI'm going to do it, this is the
time. And I just didn't want anyone to
know that I committed suicide because then that would make
them feel bad. I'm an adoptee and I'm always
worried about how other people are thinking.
So I thought I'll just go out swimming and I'll just keep
swimming until I'm exhausted andthen.
I'll be lost at sea and you can't prove that I committed

(40:13):
suicide. So that's when I attempted the
day before my 28th birthday because I wanted to do it while
I was 27. Still, that sounded cool to me.
But I did swim and I did go under it.
But I ended up the storm was coming in and it blew me back on
the shore and I was like, OK, here I am God, what do you want

(40:37):
me to do now is. It meant to be.
Was it meant to be? So that was the worst birthday I
ever had and after that I met the girlfriend and started
feeling better about myself and I never felt that way about my
birthday again. I I would still try to plan a
trip or go away camping, do something just to get away from

(41:04):
it, just to keep my mind occupied.
But when my daughter was born, she was born just two days after
my birthday. So then that that took care of
it. So my daughter's birthday was my
birthday. I never had to think about my
birthday. What am we going to do?
Yeah, we're going. We're going to Chuck E Cheese.

(41:24):
That's what we're going to do. So being a adoptee, how did that
affect your decision? Because you adopted two
children? How did being an adoptee play
into becoming an adoptive parent?
Yeah, I didn't get married. I met a became reacquainted with
a woman I knew in college and westarted dating and we got

(41:44):
married. We talked about having kids, but
it wasn't a big priority. Her sister had had a very
difficult pregnancy and we thought, no, we're just enjoying
the way we are. If it happens, it happens.
If it doesn't, it doesn't. That's fine.
But the priest who married us came in for an eye exam and he

(42:05):
was talking about how cancer affected his eyes.
And I spent a lot of time talking with him.
I really like the guy. And I asked him, well, how do
you reconcile cancer with God? I mean, you're such a good
person. How do you justify that God gave
you cancer? He said cancer is a gift and

(42:29):
then come again. He said yes, it's a gift from
God. Everything that you get is a
gift from God. And he said this is knowing that
I'm terminal. It had me make my decisions of
what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I asked him if I have something that's going to take 15 years to
accomplish, can I do that? And I said probably not.

(42:51):
How about five? Yeah, five.
They gave him five to seven years.
So he applied for a grant from Eli Lilly and went to Spain and
studied Spanish, became extremely fluent.
He was already fluent, but he became really good with Spanish
and he studied woodworking techniques.

(43:13):
And then he came back and he would take groups from his
church to Haiti and Mexico, at Haiti, yeah, Haiti and Mexico to
build houses a couple times a year.
And then he was a a chaplain on cruise ships in between them.
So yeah, God, God blessed me. And when I was explaining that

(43:33):
to my wife, we're thinking of the parable of the talents and
think, OK, So what talents do wehave that we're not using?
Said that means all the struggles you had in your
adoption, that is something thatyou should be using, that that's
why God gave it to you. So that's when we decided that

(43:55):
we would try to adopt transracial babies.
We made this very specific because that's where my level of
expertise was. So we went to Catholic Charities
and told them that's what we wanted.
And biracial babies are no more popular in that that time than
they were when I was born. So yeah, we went right to the

(44:17):
top of the list and we adopt. Ended up adopting two children.
So yeah, my adoption was 100% the reason why I adopted
children. Yeah, how did you finally find
out your ethnicity? Tell us that story.
When we went to the hospital, itcame in layers.

(44:38):
When we went to the hospital, mymy daughter was born and we
weren't in the delivery room, but we were at the hospital at
the time and the nurse was bringing her back and forth
between the birth mother and ourroom because the birth mother
hadn't completely decided yet. And there was like 3 in the

(44:59):
morning. They bring her in.
This black nurse is in there andteaching us how to change
diapers because neither of us were ready.
And we asked her can you tell what race she is?
And she's told me, well, she's looking her over and said I'm
looking for pigment blotches. There's pigment blotches on

(45:20):
biracial children. And the mother's definitely
white, so. And she was jaundiced also.
So it was hard to tell that she didn't have any pigment
blanches. And my wife is elbowing me.
And that what she says after thenurse left, she goes, you have
pigment blotches. I do.

(45:41):
So that was the first clue that that I really did have African
roots. So that's that made me feel
good. I was a little odd timing there,
but it made me feel pretty good that I knew what I was.
But it wasn't until much later that 23andMe came around and my

(46:05):
kids also wanted to know what they were.
And my son in particular, he could have been anything.
He he really was getting some ofthe same treatment.
The kids at school wondering what he is and he knows what he
is. He's met his birth father, but
they're still questioning him. So he's wondering.

(46:27):
So we get 23andMe kits and we'reto say we're going to put this
all to bed. So we find out that, you know,
he is really Sicilian. His, his great grandmother was
from Sicily, a first generation.And that was my confirmation
that my, my father was black. It was listed there.

(46:49):
I mean, his father was black too, but he didn't know that his
grandmother was great grandmother was from Sicily.
So that was kind of fun. So then I'm fully in, I'm fully
convinced that I am German, Irish and black.
So I was right to go to Germany.I really was.
Those people were right when they told me I was German.

(47:11):
Right. So your adoptive mom made you
promise not to search or find ormeet biological family until she
passed, but that kind of was a hard promise to keep in the end.
Share about your reunion, whatever you want to share about
that. Yeah, I did agree to that 'cause

(47:31):
my older brother was also adopted and he agreed to that.
He was a very strict rule follower and he still is.
So I was kind of following his lead.
He was the older one says no, Mom says no, we don't need to.
I'd I just wanted to see what race I was.
But mom knew if I saw that paperwork that I would find out

(47:54):
who I was and I would find my birth mother.
So she just continued to refuse.When my daughter, it started
when my daughter was 12 and we're all sitting in the living
room. I'm watching the local news and
they're covering an apartment fire on southern on the South
side of Indianapolis and they'reinterviewing one of the

(48:14):
residents. And there is my daughter's birth
mother and we've exchanged pictures back and forth.
She visited with her both, both kids got to visit with both
their parents for the first year, a year and a half.
And then both of their parents had other kids and they were
done. So we continue to send pictures
and letters and they would sometimes make artwork and send

(48:38):
it to their their birth family. We would never hear anything
back it. It would go through the adoption
agency. So it was not closed, not open.
It was a hybrid. So we knew what she looked like.
And when my daughter saw her mother on television crying
because everything she owned andburned up, she went into a deep

(49:00):
depression and I really felt forher.
So we called the agency or emailed the agency and said can
we have a visit? And the birth mother said no.
And we kept it up. We kept it up.
We'd send pictures and and letters and ask for a meeting.
Birth mother always no, no, no. And my daughter would just be

(49:23):
crushed every time the answer came back no.
And we were really worried. She even shaved her head there.
And this went on for over a year.
And finally the social worker called and said the birth mother
still says no, but her mother says yes.

(49:44):
So would she be willing to meet her grandmother?
So they arranged a meeting at the adoption agency.
And the birth mother had to surprise us.
She actually showed up with her,her mother.
So they both came together and that was very, very emotional.

(50:05):
That was the first reunion that I witnessed and I saw something
I didn't expect. I didn't ever consider what the
birth mother was going through. And when I saw the tears of joy
and my daughter looks just like a birth mother and she acts just
like a birth mother, and they were just hugging and crying and

(50:27):
talking about their similarities.
And she was so happy that the decision she made in 13 years
ago to let us raise her daughterwas a good one.
And I thought, oh, crap, that's it.
I got to do this for my birth mother.
So she's might be out there worrying all this time.

(50:47):
I did the math. She would be 75 at that point.
And I got to do it and I got to do it.
Now I, I can't wait until my birth, my adoptive mother dies.
So I wanted her to know that I'mOK and I turned out well.
So how to do that? My wife is very crafty and she

(51:10):
remembers what was being said about my the rocket scientist
thing and the brain surgeon. She said, well, let's go to the
university and see. And she ordered yearbooks from
the university and we were concentrating on pre Med and,
and engineering and aerodynamicsclasses and things like that.
We, I still thought they had to be a student.

(51:31):
That's the only way they would be together.
And I'm not finding anything. I mean, I saw one black guy in
the aeronautics club and looked him up.
He's a bus driver in Nebraska. It's like, OK, that's not him.
I mean, there's just not enough there.
So we decided we're going to go confront my adoptive mom one
more time. This time my wife went with me

(51:52):
and my wife had a really good relationship with my adoptive
mom. They got along really, really
well. So we took pictures of the the
reunion of my daughter and her birth mother.
And I thought maybe that would move my adoptive mom.
And I said there was something peculiar about her adoption

(52:14):
papers and I wanted to see if I could see mine to compare, just
to see if it's the same way. And mom didn't say anything.
She just got up and went back into her bedroom, came back out
and she brought in an A big envelope, an old brown brittle
envelope. And it had mine and my brother's
name on it, said give to them when I'm dead.

(52:37):
So she hands it to me and I pullout a wad of mimeograph pages.
You remember what mimeograph pages look like?
And I'm looking through there and I immediately see this is my
brother's adoption records. And it has both his mother and
his father's name. Holy cow.

(52:57):
And they're familiar names because, you know, they were
families that were not far away.And so I pull out my phone.
Let's look her up. And within seconds, I'm looking
at her obituary and, and she looks just like my brother's
daughter. And I'm, I'm upset.
I'm really, really upset. I said, oh, his birth mother's

(53:20):
dead. Mom said she can't be dead.
She's younger than me. What?
And that, that triggered me. I'm triggered again.
So I'm saying, Mom, there's a hell of a lot of people lying in
the cemetery who were born afteryou.
I'm telling you, this is her birth.
This is his birth mother, and this is her obituary.
Then Mom didn't say anything. Then I followed the link to the

(53:43):
father and I saw his obituary. They died within six months of
each other about 10 years prior.And they were married to each
other. Well, that's a surprise.
So, you know, I'm just scanning.It's easy to find this stuff.
I said they were married for 40 years, so I'm doing the math.
So they married each other nine years after my brother was born,

(54:09):
Huh? And I see that he had three half
sisters by another name. So I'm putting the pieces
together and said, OK, his mother was married to another
man and he was serving in Vietnam.
She had three daughters. She had an affair with my
brother's father and put put my brother up for adoption without

(54:32):
telling anyone. So he was a big secret.
Yeah. That's the best I can figure
from what I'm reading here. And I said, said mom said yeah,
or, you know, my mom said, that's right.
What do you know about it? So when they first adopted my
brother, his birth mother stalked them.

(54:54):
So I didn't know all this. And she would come by the house
and just kind of peek and look in from the road, see him
playing. And she decided somehow my mom
knew that she decided that they were a good home for him.
And so she quit doing it. She just let it go.
And they did. After she divorced the man, her

(55:16):
first husband, she married my brother's father and they were
married 40 years and it seemed like they had asked him for a
reunion and it was just a few months before she died.
So. So I'm reading all this and I'm
in tears. I said.
So his birth mother and birth father probably knew that they

(55:38):
were terminal, and the one thingthey wanted to do was meet the
son that they had together. And my mom said, yeah.
And he said, no, you knew about this.
He said yes. He promised me he wouldn't
search for them until after I was dead.
And he just didn't care about meeting them anyway.
Like you said at the beginning, it's harder to get guys to talk

(56:00):
about. And he was like that.
He put that completely in a different compartment and never
talked about it. And I thought, Oh my gosh.
And all the time I'm going through this exchange with mom
and Dad, my wife has picked up the envelope and she's taking
pictures of all my records like it's Mission Impossible or
something. So then I'm done arguing with

(56:24):
mom about my brother. And I look at mine and I'd seen
what my wife had done. So I just said, oh, OK, here you
go. When I give it back to her
because I had everything. I had all the information and
she goes, you don't want to keepit.
And I said no, I just want to look at it.
I saw what I wanted to see. And then she took it and put it
away. And then my wife took over from
there. And she's quite a detective.

(56:46):
So she's she started searching. And my birth mother has a very,
very common name. And this is going to be a long
shot, but we still went back to the university and looked up
that name in the records and there she was.
Yeah. I came home from work one day
and my wife had a little packagefor me that oh, look, I got you
something. What's this?

(57:08):
It's a it's a yearbook from the college.
I thought, OK, we've been through this before.
She's not in here. She goes, no, she's in this one.
And how how do you know? Why would she be in this one?
Said she graduated early. She was extra smart and
graduated in three years insteadof four.
Wish I would have thought of that.

(57:30):
And she's flipping through the pages.
Here, here, look. Here she is with a bunch of
other students. Look how small she is.
She's That's why you're so short.
This is the face. These are your eyes.
This is your mouth. Said, OK, OK.
I said, this is probably her same name.
I'm not going to argue with that.
That's good. Said, where is she now?

(57:52):
She says, glad you asked. She had already found her
address. She had retired from the
university where she taught elementary education, and she
lived just 15 minutes away from where I grew up.
And so I thought, well, now whatdo we do?
OK, so I don't know if I want a reunion.

(58:12):
I said, I don't know if I'm going to be intruding on
anything. I said I'm OK not knowing.
I've already set my identity. I've gotten over my crisis.
I don't want to interrupt if shehas a happy life.
And she's never told anyone. And my wife says there are no
Akas. There's no name changes there.

(58:35):
There's no evidence that she wasever married.
There's no evidence that she ever had any kids.
You're it. And so so we dwelled on that for
a while and we and I can search some of the same sites she was
searching and I couldn't find iteither.
I was her only child. I thought, OK, let's go see.
So we pick a night and drive by her house and she's at the end

(58:58):
of a cul-de-sac and it's dusk and so we have to turn around in
the cul-de-sac and oh, a woman'sfigure comes to the window and I
go into full asthma attack. She's.
Like, Oh my God, there's my birthmother.
Oh, go in and say hi. No, I can't go in and say.
Hi. But after that, I see that she's
alive and she that's where she lives.

(59:20):
And I write her a letter tellingher what everything I wanted to
tell her that I was born at thishospital On this date.
She would know that. And I just wanted to let her
know I went to I was adopted here.
I grew up in this town and she went to this school.
I you went to college, became aneye doctor.

(59:44):
This is my office. I put it on letterhead so she
know I wasn't scamming. She could, you know, Google that
and look that up and see that I was a real person.
I who I was, I got married and Ihave two kids now and just one
let you know I'm fine. And here's my contact
information. If you if I don't hear from you,
that's fine, I understand. But if you want to have a
relationship, you can call me anytime.

(01:00:07):
So a few days later she called me.
And I didn't take the first phone call, but when I called
her back and said, yeah, I wouldlike to meet with you, she said,
well, that weekend was Mother's Day.
And she says I do not deserve a visit on Mother's Day.
Save that for your adoptive mom.But let's let's plan on another

(01:00:29):
time. So the following week, we got
together and she was still living with the same woman that
drove me to the hospital. So when I drove up, they were
both standing on the front porchwaiting for me and and her wife
was just as happy to see me because she remembers all this.
There's three people that know that I was born was the birth
mother, the birth father and andthe birth mother's wife.

(01:00:52):
They're the only three people that ever knew that secret.
And she was just grinning from here to here.
She told me a little bit about herself and then she says I'm
going to leave and let you guys catch up and my wife and made a
whole big scrapbook about my life from birth with lots of
little baby pictures and, you know, grade school embarrassing

(01:01:14):
pictures laying on the rug, you know?
Yeah, we all have that. Old diaper, here you go.
So yeah, we laughed at every picture and it stopped when my
my wife and I's first day and then just said to be continue
because that's either, I think that's all my wife had time to

(01:01:34):
do. So then she told me all about
her and she'd never been marriedand her and Wanda were a couple.
And that's fine, you know, I'm fine with that.
And her, her. But she wasn't close to her
biological fan or her family because just being gay, they

(01:01:57):
didn't really want to have anything to do with her.
She had a little contact with her nephew, her brother.
No, no contact with him. So yeah, I was in it.
So that was one of the better decisions I made.
I brought that back into her life.
You've got a family and we stilltalk.

(01:02:20):
Talk to her a few days ago. I have to make some boundaries
because of my adoptive kids. It it kind of hurts my wife
being an adoptive mother to see me with my birth mother as I
don't refer to my birth mother as mom and my kids since they,

(01:02:45):
after the reunion of my daughter, it didn't go well
after that. So they have no real, no
connection with their biologicalfamilies.
And then it's like, OK, let's gosee your other two grandmas.
It's like we just, yeah, that was just too much for them.
So confusing, yeah. Very confusing.
That's a good word for it. So we've put up boundaries and

(01:03:06):
they respected it. If if there was a school event
and I said, do you want to invite her?
And they sometimes yes, sometimes no, said OK, we'll
invite her. That's good.
Yeah, that's great. So I want to ask you, why did
you write Born Without a Race and what message do you hope to
convey by telling your story? I wrote it during the pandemic

(01:03:34):
because I was deemed non essential so eye exams were not
essential unless it's an emergency.
So I had to come to the office and sit and wait and if somebody
had an emergency I could see them.
If they didn't, I didn't. My house is pretty far.
It's a good half hour away from the office.

(01:03:55):
So I just came into the office anyway and I was sitting there
and I got bored reading. So I started writing different
essays about the things that hadhappened to me.
Now that I understood my race and how that applied, it's like,
Oh my gosh, they were identifying me as black.
Like I remember getting pulled over as a teenager, driving,
doing nothing. Or I remember this store

(01:04:18):
detective following me around inthe store when I'm with my two
brothers. They singled me out and searched
my pockets and it's like, why? So I I just keep writing these
little essays and pretty soon I put them all together and it's a
pretty good sized book. And I shared it with a few
people, especially people that were in the book, like π was the

(01:04:40):
first person I sent it to. That's my old college roommate.
And he said, this is good. He says you got to get this
published. I thought, I just want you to
read it because you're in it so much.
And other people, some of my patients that are curious about
them, we've had talks about my race and my adoption.
So I sent them copies and they said this is good.

(01:05:01):
So I thought, OK, so I'll publish it.
But I became non essential during the pandemic and then I
became essential again. And there was a lot of backlogs.
I didn't really have a lot of time to put in publishing.
I did query some some publishersand some agents and I almost

(01:05:21):
never heard back from them. I had a couple that really liked
it. I just felt uncomfortable with
selling the story, just handing over the rights to it and what
they would do with it. So I don't know if I I wanted to
share the message of being adopted and racial identity, but

(01:05:42):
I really didn't know how. So I just self published it and
then made it available on the Amazon and I'd send it to
people, links to people that asked about it and that's all
I've done with it. Yeah.
So what do you hope to accomplish by putting it out
there? I would like for adoptees to
read it and understand that there are people like them.

(01:06:05):
I would really like for adoptiveparents to read it and the some
of them that have read it and commented me that that boy, this
has been really helpful. So when you adopt A child,
there's more than just the physical aspects.
There's also the emotional, intellectual.
So you can't just adopt A child and expect them to be like you.

(01:06:33):
So when we adopted children, we opened up all kinds of different
things for them to try to discover their likes.
That's what I would want adoptive parents to do.
Try to find out what your kids like, what they don't like.
I was never given that. Yeah.
And really adopt the child. For the child, you have to put

(01:06:53):
the child first. Yeah, what would you like
struggling adoptees to know? I would like them to know that
there are a lot of people out there like them.
I would like for them to join some of the support groups
because that's been extremely helpful.

(01:07:15):
Talk to people like you. If you're an adoptee that cannot
find your family, read stories about people that did because
there's a lot of stories that people who went to great lengths
to find their family and now wish they hadn't you.
You may not like what you find and if you do find if you are

(01:07:37):
one, then you have these options.
Find out what other people have done to find their families and,
you know, follow some of their examples and some of their
leads. Yeah, yeah.
Well, thank you so much for coming on today.
Like I said, it's difficult getting men on the show and to
open up about their stories and especially transracial.

(01:08:00):
So thank you so much for being vulnerable and coming on the
show. Thank you Karma Crew for
listening today to such an important topic about
transracial adoption. If you would like to Share your
story on the podcast, get in touch with me.
You can e-mail me at mindyourownkarma@gmail.com.
Someone out there is waiting foryou to tell your story so they

(01:08:24):
can feel validated. Are you struggling with adoption
trauma and want to find out how somatic mind forgetting imagery
can help? Somatic Healing journeys.com If
you want to know more about me and somatic mindful guided
imagery, I do free consultations.
Come talk to me and let's find out how Somatic mindful guided
imagery can help you. If you are struggling with

(01:08:47):
suicide or suicidal ideation, don't forget to call 988 in time
of need. As always, take what you need
and leave what you don't. And always remember to mind your
own karma. I will see you next time.

(01:09:08):
This podcast is created for educational purposes by the
telling of adoption experiences.The views expressed in this
podcast may not be those of the host or Mind Your Own Karma.

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S3E42 - RACIST FAMILY ADOPTS BIRACIAL CHILD UNKNOWINGLY AND NEVER REVEALS — AUTHOR SHAWN, "BORN WITHOUT A RACE"

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S3E42 - RACIST FAMILY ADOPTS BIRACIAL CHILD UNKNOWINGLY AND NEVER REVEALS — AUTHOR SHAWN, "BORN WITHOUT A RACE"