November 20, 2025 • 54 mins
In this episode of the podcast, Karlos Dillard speaks with Jeanette Yoffe, a psychotherapist and advocate in the field of foster care and adoption. Jeanette shares her personal journey through the foster care system, her experiences with adoption, and the complexities of identity and attachment. They discuss the historical context of adoption, the impact of mental health on family dynamics, and the importance of therapeutic parenting. Jeanette emphasizes the need for understanding and compassion for those who have experienced trauma, and she offers valuable advice for youth navigating similar challenges.
Watch the Video Podcast!
If you would like to be on the show, please fill out the form here
www.JeanetteYoffe.com
YouTube Channel:
Jeanette-ically Speaking About
Foster Care Adoption and Mental Health
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis/emergency,
please contact the 24 hour-7 day a week, crisis line:
LA COUNTY ACCESS at 1-800-854-7771
NEW CHILDREN’S BOOKS:
What is Adoption? for Kids
What is Foster Care? For Kids
Watch the Video Podcast!
If you would like to be on the show, please fill out the form here
www.JeanetteYoffe.com
YouTube Channel:
Jeanette-ically Speaking About
Foster Care Adoption and Mental Health
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis/emergency,
please contact the 24 hour-7 day a week, crisis line:
LA COUNTY ACCESS at 1-800-854-7771
NEW CHILDREN’S BOOKS:
What is Adoption? for Kids
What is Foster Care? For Kids
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Content warning.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The Wards of the State podcast may contain material that
may be harmful or traumatizing to some audiences.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Heylight Shiner's welcome back to Wards of the State podcast.
We are trucking along, guys. I'm just so thrilled that
we continue to have so many people y'all. I know
the last episode I said, please submit some submittals for
it to be on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Y'all really showed up a showed out. We had over
seventy five submissions.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So if you have applied to be on the show
and we haven't reached out to you yet, give us
some time.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Like I told you, guys, I am building my new team.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So I did just get a new scheduler, so she
should be reaching out to you guys.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Her name is Lampa.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
She's amazing, so she should be reaching out to everybody
giving you guys schedule. We only record on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
If you guys have a special day that you need.
Let's say you work Tuesdays and Thursdays and those days
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Speaker 1 (01:21):
Let lamper know.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I do make some caveats, so if you if you
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to share your story, just send my scheduler an email
replying back to her form request and then she will
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Speaker 1 (01:39):
If I can make that work for you.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
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Speaker 1 (01:45):
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(02:09):
we can share.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
So, without further ado, I do.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Want to go into our next guest to Jeanette, who's
going to share her experience being in foster care and adopted.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Hey, Jeanette, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
How are you? Thank you, Carlo, so great to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
My pleasure.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Thank you for coming on and sharing your lived experience.
So just start off, how did you get introduced into
the child wol first system?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
What state were you in? And start off with your story.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I am originally from New York, born and raised. And
my birth mother, my first mother, also called a birth
mother for some. She was an immigrant from Argentina, Buenos Sattes,
and she was a dancer, had a dance company Buena Sattas,
very established, wanted to bring her arts to New York.
(02:58):
Of course, this is the seventies, okay, And so she
came to New York City to be a dancer and
work with the Martha Graham dance company. Excuse me, met
my father, they had me, I was she was pregnant,
but they were not married. She was Roman Catholic. She
said I need to get married. I'm Roman Catholic. My
(03:19):
father said yes, of course, so they eloped at New
York City Hall in this nineteen seventy In nineteen seventy,
I was born in nineteen seventy one. I lived with
my birth family for the first fifteen months of my
life in New York City on the Lower east Side
of Manhattan, and my mother had mental health challenges. Her
(03:44):
mother was dying in Buenos ADDIE's here she is. She
was on a work visa to be working and dancing
in New York City. She was not at the time
she had me. She was struggling. She also had some
early childhood trauma that was undiagnosed and untreated. And of
course this is the seventies, so mental health was not
(04:06):
as prevalent back then and supporting mothers, and so she
became significantly stressed. And she was talking to a woman
at a park in the Lower east Side and the
woman said, well, you can bring her to a child
care agency. My mother was stressed. She was at this
time seven months pregnant with my brother. I was about
(04:28):
thirteen months old young at the time. And this woman says,
go to child's care and get some childcare. So, and
if you can imagine a woman who doesn't understand the
United States child care system, she looks up and finds
a place called Jewish child's care. Jewish childcare is not
(04:54):
child care, it's a foster care and adoption agency. So
she thinks it's a government resource for families to receive childcare.
She doesn't know any other She brings me, I'm getting goosebumps,
brings me to Jewish childcare and says, here, please take
(05:16):
care of my baby.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
She doesn't speak very good English. She doesn't tell my father.
I don't. I'm still putting all the pieces together of
what happened to them. And then me and my brother
and I have another sister who she left in Buenos
Adi's who was six years old at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
With her fock.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
So she brings me to the agency and says, here, please,
please take care of my baby. She remembers putting me
in this room. And I know this because I found
her in search for her and her fifteen years ago
in Buenos Ares, and she signed some documents. She's thinking
it's child's care. She's thinking they're going to take care
(06:02):
of my daughter for a few weeks. She's thinking it's
overnight childcare.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, she didn't. She's like, this is a good deal.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
That's right, that's right. So I actually contacted And for
those that don't know me, I'm a psychotherapist. I'm an
advocate in the field of foster care and adoption. I
do a lot of blazing, trail blazing here in Los
Angeles and New York, and I actually reached out to
the director of Jewish Childcare. I said, I want to
understand what happened. I want all my files. I was
(06:33):
in foster care for six and a half years. I
received my files, this thick of information between Jewish Childcare,
my mother and my father. So what happened was she
signed these documents, which actually was a surrender. She was
relinquishing her parental rights. No one explained anything. And I
(06:54):
don't know if you know, I've heard stories in the
early seventies, but it was the baby boom, and adoption was.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Trending in industry.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It was it was an industry, and really what happened
was and a lot of people don't know the history
behind adoption.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Adoption was like a faux pod.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
It had been existing since the early twenties, but it
really was hush hush, you don't tell anyone that they're adopted.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
You lied to the.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Adoptee until like the seventies, and then it actually conjoined
with the civil rights movement, and that's actually when we
saw an influx of transfracial adoptions.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It was after that Martin Luther King I have a dream.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Speech and everyone's like, oh, let me grab a black
child because Martin Luther King said that he saw kids
wroking hand in hand.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
So if you look at history, it actually it exploded
in the nineteen seventies did so, yeah, it very.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Much did, right, and a lot of if you're a
white baby, right, black baby, healthy, adoptable, right, We're going
to get all those babies. And because it's it was
an industry about money, people made a lot of money
selling babies. I mean they still do. They's still five
billion dollar d exactly. So a lot of corruption. So
(08:03):
she goes back home and my father apparently says, where's Jeanette.
She's a Jewish childcare, thinking it's okay. When he goes
to Jewish childcare, he finds out what happened. He's embarrassed,
he feels like a victim, he feels victimized. He goes
into a whole narcissistic wound and is very angry with her.
(08:26):
And what's very sad about my story is he actually
deports her back to Argentina because he's so angry because
what happens after this is I'm now in foster care.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And I learned also that he didn't tell anyone in
his family that he had married an immigrant woman had
not only one child with her, but two children. He
didn't so did he send.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Her back while she was pregnant with your brother.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
So after my brother was born, he stayed with her
for nine months. She had another episode. She became very
stressed and overwhelmed and actually went to Bellevue Hospital where
I was born and asked the staff for help. So
she was very alone and isolated, and they actually hospitalized
(09:14):
her and she received because they thought she was losing
her mind, and they diagnosed her with schizophrenia. And she
actually received shock treatment at Bellevue Hospital in New York
City and she was there for two months. So there's
a lot of pieces here, and I don't want to
confuse the your listeners. So when my brother was with
(09:37):
her for nine months, they were having visits with me
in Jewish childcare. I was already placed in a foster
home on Long Island. Her diagnosis, my father didn't realize
that she had schizophrenia, and when she was placed in
the hospital, they placed my brother in foster care at
that point. So now my father's dramatized again. He loses me,
(10:02):
his wife is in the hospital for two months, his
son now is in foster care in another home. He
went to the Bronx, so they didn't even keep us together.
And then when she's released from Bellby hospital, he's livid
and feels like a victim, and he deports her back
to Argentina. So that's what happened because he felt she
(10:25):
could not care for two children as young as we were,
and on his own, he didn't feel that she could
care for them for us, and he didn't feel that
he could care for us. And also we were a
big secret. No one knew about us, so we were
now in the system. But the amount of paperwork that
(10:45):
I have talks about Jewish Childcare actually wanted. Of course,
you know, they do want to reunify children with their
birth families, so they did their due diligence. There's a
lot of back and forth paperwork between Jewish Childcare and
the Argentinian Consulate because they were going to place us
(11:08):
with an aunt and an uncle in Buenos Ares, but
that fell through, and when I was five and a
half maybe six, I met my brother for the first time.
My social worker came to the house and she kind
of prepped me and said, you're gonna meet your brother.
And I'm thinking, well, who's that. I mean. I was
(11:28):
fifteen months when I was placed in fosterre I didn't
know I had a brother. She said, yeah, and You're
gonna go on a long plane ride with your brother
and go to a place called Argentina. And I'm like, what,
I don't even know what Argentinia is. Okay, I'm six.
And so we actually met for the first time. He
(11:50):
came to my foster home. I remember being on top
of the stairs looking down and seeing this child at
the door, and it was the first time I saw
someone who looked like me. It was shocking, it was confusing.
And then we went to Burger King and then we
had passports made. And I'm going to tell you something, Carlos.
(12:13):
I've been doing this work a long long time and
I'm still trying to figure out my story. I work
with I've worked with hundreds, thousands of adoptees foster youth
here in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County has the largest
amount of children and child welfare, and when I look
at the passport photo. The look in my eyes are
(12:35):
just so telling of what is happening here. Somebody please
explain to me where am I going. I mean, I
have a birth and no way even talk to me
about a birth family. I thought my foster home was
my family. Also, I didn't understand what foster care was
that was pulled out from under us. We had the
(12:56):
passports made, we were told this was going to happen.
My aunt and uncle didn't feel comfortable that they could
care for both of us together. We were then to
remain in the United States and I then never saw
my brother again. He remained in the Bronx. I remained
on Long Island, and the foster home could not. At
(13:17):
the time, it wasn't like today where you're certified to
be a foster parent to adopt right. Were working towards
permanency today in child welfare, and they did their due diligence.
There was no other family, but they didn't to be
clear here, they didn't search. The dad side did not
know about anything, and he had two sisters at the time.
(13:39):
And I did find my aunt later in life, and
she told me, if I knew about you, I would
have taken care of you. So that was very sad
and heartbreaking for me because I longed. I longed because
when you've lived with your birth family for some time,
not only are you bonded, but it's your your family,
(14:00):
it's your you know, and I.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Don't know how much you know about my right, I
don't know how much you know about my story. But
I was with my birth family until seven, and then
I got adopted at nine, and then my adopted mother
wanted me to She even now on her Facebook she says,
I don't understand why my son wouldn't just deny and
reject his previous life and reject his birth family and
accept us.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I'm like, well, why would that be an expectation.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That's that's my family, like I will never and especially
I bonded with them for the first seven years of
my life. That's a long time, right, and that's the
formative years for childress. I'm never going to see you
as my mother, and she wanted She wanted that so badly,
and that's ultimately what ended up making our adoption not
a positive experience because she wanted to replace my birth
(14:45):
family when that's.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Not what adoption is, right.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Adoption is just giving a child a family, not finding
a family for a.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Child, right, not replacing their family exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
It's just giving them another village, another another hut in
the village, right in their village, right. And I think
a lot of adopted parents lose sight of that, right,
They just lose sight of that these kids have other families.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
That's right, That's okay, that's right, right, and they're grieving
the loss of their previous families and even a foster
home they form an attachment to. So we want to
allow children to have love for all their families. Don't
put that pressure that they need to decide or make
a choice, because that creates guilt.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
For the child.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Another mental health challenge.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
If I tell where the fog comes from, right, if
they adopt some fog, the fear of the obligation, the
guilt that's fog like from foggy I don't know how
to feel. And then when and then when the fog
is unaddressed as adoptees, we have grown adoptees who literally
have no understanding who they are.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And if you're navigating life not knowing who you are,
you're not going to be able to navigate other people
other relationships, professional or private is going to be very
very hard because you don't.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Know who you are, that's right, and you're stuck in
the past trying to pick up all the pieces and
make sense of who you are to get in the
present so that you can begin to self actualize what
you want to be in the future. And yet that
you need that foundation and as we know, that's been
pulled from us.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So your foster home that you were in for all
those years, was that the same foster home that ended
up adopting or did you get adopted by someone completely.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Different, completely different?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So I was with them for six and a half years,
loved them, and so my social worker when the rug
got pulled, we weren't going to Argentina, and she said, oh,
you're going to have some visits with some other families,
and so I'm and I don't know if you know
this phrase. We're not adoptees. We're adaptees. Like okay, jump
(16:48):
how high? Like okay, tell me what I need to
do because I'm a child here, I don't have any
You're not giving me any sense of control or agency,
So I just need to do whatever you're telling me to.
So I'm gonna fall and make everybody else okay, right,
so I can feel a sense of normalcy in this
completely abnormal experience. So, being in foster care, I then
(17:14):
had visits with families, which potential adoptive families, And I
remember this one time and I went to this home
and everything was pristine and clean, and I felt dirty.
I felt unworthy, I felt unlovable. The whole pervasive shame
(17:34):
was just I was just that kid. Like I had
hand me downs, I never had new, brand new clothing.
I wore hand me downs, I had tokens for lunch.
Like I knew I was the other kid. I knew
there was something wrong with me intrinsically, and it still hurts. Hurts,
and I have a lot of interventions for that, and
(17:55):
I still, as an adult, need to practice my self
care and self esteem and build myself up, and it
takes a lot of strength and a lot of discipline
and daily practice. So I go to this one home
and everything's clean. At night, they say, okay, dide, I
have time to go to bed. So I go in
this big room. I'd never had a room like this
(18:15):
because the room I had at My foster home was small.
It was a guest room. I knew I was the guest.
My sisters were biological to my foster parents had their
names on the wall. I didn't have my name. It
wasn't it didn't feel permanent, like I knew I was
not staying here. You just knew the rug was going
(18:37):
to be pulled anytime. So I'm at this house and
I and I don't remember consciously doing this, but I
slept on top of the bed spring because I didn't
want to mess up her sheets with my dirtiness. And
so the next morning they were very confused, like, wow,
(18:57):
she must be a really good daughter, like she's making
her bed. But they questioned, They said, Jeanette, did you
even sleep in your bed? And I said, ye, I did,
but I didn't mess up the sheets, and I just
slept right on top really carefully. I was so scared
to be rejected treated like, oh, yeah, there is something
wrong with your say she's not good enough for us,
(19:20):
And so I was always trying to be what other
people wanted me to be. And when I came home
from that, there's another little story here which is so
important about behavior. And that's where I became a psychotherapist
to really help people understand behavior is a form of
a communication of an unmet need. Because when I came
(19:41):
back from not only this visit, a few other visits
of potential adoptive homes, I wrote my name with crayons
on my bedroom floor in my foster home, and my
foster mother was furious. I got yeah, I got hit.
Furious made me scrub it off the floor, my name
(20:04):
off the floor. And as an adult and becoming a psychotherapist,
I was, oh, my gosh, look what I was doing.
I was trying, and I was trying to mark my territory.
That's right, that is right, And it was so again,
(20:24):
just the invalidation, don't matter, don't belong here, You're going
somewhere else, you know. And I even wrote a one
woman play about this whole life growing up in foster care.
It's called What's your Name? Who's Your Daddy? And in
the play you see me scrubbing the floor and I
start saying, I'm gonna scrub this floor like there's no tomorrow,
(20:48):
Like there's no tomorrow and so, and doing that show
is therapeutic and cathartic and actually inspired me to become
a therapist because I was an actress. I was so
good at being other people, but it wasn't healthy for me.
I had a lot of anxiety being an actress. Auditioning
was very difficult. That rejection it felt like a self
(21:11):
fulfilling prophecy, like, Okay, I'm coming here and you can
pull the rug out for Monday reading because I know
exactly what that's like and I'm not being me right now.
I'm somebody completely different, so.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
You can do that.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
But in essence, it became very taxing emotionally and psychologically.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
And that's why I just googled.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
I just I just googled you, and I can't wait
to watch this flight.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
I'm trying to find it, and you have some amazing headshots.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
I'm like, can I see what? I want to watch
the flight? So I found it, I will it, Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
So I I do have a YouTube channel and it's
called Genetically Speaking Speaking.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, I'm right here. You know, hey, you're not a
small following. You have fourteen thousand followers. Go ahead, you nah,
let me follow you, let me subscribe now.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Thank you. So there are video clips from the show
that was in nineteen and that perfect, and then I
recorded it on audible only during COVID because I said,
you know what, this could be a really good learning
tool for families because I talk from the child's point
(22:21):
of view. And one of my scenes is a little
girl who comes out and she starts auditioning, and she's seven,
and she does her whole dance number, and then the
auditioner starts asking her really strange questions like what kind
of foods do you like to eat? Do you know
how to tie your own shoelaces? What kind of experience
(22:43):
do you have? And so I go into I'm going
to get this part, and I go I will eat anything,
but if I don't like butter on my spaghetti, but
if they want me to eat sauce, I'll eat the sauce.
Whatever they want me to, I'll do it because I
think I'm really ready to be a really good daughter.
(23:04):
And the audience is just like, Okay, this was funny,
and now I'm scared and sad.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
There's a part I think it's in my second memoir,
and I explained about my relationship with cottage cheese and
how I accidentally fell into an eating disorder.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's because my adoptive mom was.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
She would force me to eat things that I did
not like, right, And this is why I don't like forcing.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
It's okay if the kids like brought bruschl sprous.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
No kid wants to eat brustl sprouts, right, So it
was like a vegetable or something like that. Sure, don't
force them, but like try to find a vegetable that
they do like, right, but something specifically like cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
I'm a texture person.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I have sensory issues right from being traumatized so early
in life, So textures inside of my mouth, tapioca caught
anything alloed like the alo drink, but anything that's chunky
and liquidy not happening, just.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Like just not happening.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Then she I actually love bobus And then you know why.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
It's because it's different.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You can drink the boba itself the tea and then
save the You can separate them. You can separate, but
like if it's like tappyokle, you can't separate the chunky
from the liquid. So if you can separate the chunky
from the liquid, I'm okay with it. But if you
can't separate the chunky from the liquid, like how does
sheese it's not. And my mom would force me. It
was her favorite thing to eat, and she would force
it and she would try to put it with like
(24:23):
strawberries or chocolate sauce, so.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Like whatever, and I just didn't like it.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And what I would do, like you were saying, I
wanted to so badly show them that I was adoptable.
I wanted to so badly show them that I was
in my file, I was in all of these foster homes,
but I could be loved.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So I would just eat it.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I would like, like, shovel it down right, And then
she's thinking like, oh, he's loving it.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
He's loving it right.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And I would then shove everything and then ask to say, hey,
I need to go to the restroom. And I'm eight
nine years old. I'm not actually understanding what is happening.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
I purged, and.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Then I threw it up, and then I'm coming back
and I'm like, all right, I'm hungry again.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
So she's just thinking like he should.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And then after a year and a half of doing that,
it became an ed where I would just binge and
purge and didn't throw it up, and it made me
feel better because I was giving them.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
She was satisfied. Well, she was happy that I was
eating her food, even though it was disgusting.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Right right, I'm so sorry. I know we so much
want to be loved and we're so scared of losing
the attachment. Children need attachment figures, they need for security
and stability.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So what happens when there is an attachment? So I
never attached to my adoptive parents. We did rebirthing therapy,
we did attachment therapy, we did the whole wrap me
up in blankets thing. We did all that for two
and a half years. We did breastfeeding at nine.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
At nine, I yes.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I did not attach.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
There wasn't anything that she was going to do because
I knew my family. All I wanted was a safe
place to lay my head. If she would have treated
me kind of like a foster kid that she really loved,
I think our adoption would have went well. She tried
to replace her children that she was infertile, she had
infertility issues, and she tried to replace her thought of
what her children would be with me, and that's just
(26:13):
was me. And then the phenomenon of adopted parents who
struggle with infertility, adopting and then having their own children.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
That happened to me. She popped out like three kids
after my adoption, So now I'm the trouble one.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I'm the one that And there were so many times
she goes, I don't need you anymore. Can you imagine
your I don't need you anymore? And it's like, what
do you mean?
Speaker 1 (26:32):
You don't need me anymore? And she showed it.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
After she had her second child. It was I was
in respite care, I was at trouble teen institutions, boarding schools,
anything to get me out of the house so she
could raise her children. And she would say, I don't
want you anymore, I don't need you. And then finally
it went to just leaving me on the street. And
I haven't seen her since I was fifteen years old
when she left me on the street, and ten years
ago she found me after I became famous, and she
(26:57):
was like, oh, wow, you made something of yourself. So ma'am,
I could have been dead right. You wouldn't even have
known or cared. And that's just something that a lot
of adoptees like that attachment.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
That's right, right you.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
I think a lot of people see adoption as the
attachment will happen. But attachment is not something that you.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Can force it.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
No, no, you cannot.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
So what happens when they're just not an attachment? What happened?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Like because human beings like that, Like, that's like marriages.
That's like expecting one hundred percent of marriages to work, right,
and that's sixty percent of marriages don't work.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
And these are two.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Consenting adults that love each other, that's right, right, So
how do we have one non consenting party that paid
for a human being and we're forcing that relation.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
They're not going to work all the.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Time, that's right, and that's okay, right, But.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
What we need is for the child to be able
to legally annol. Also for the parents. I think that
this is also some adopt some adoptive parents. But y'all
might not like me, but when I say this, but
I think that you guys should be able to rehome
legally and safely. Let's let's if we're staying child centered
and you're not attaching to that child, that child not
attaching to you, Let's find them a safe placement that
(28:03):
they feel safe in and that they will attach to
a person. Because I think a lot of them because
legally adoption is so permanent. People feel stuck and people
adopt children and they don't attach.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
To the marriage.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You feel stuck, but you have divorce right, But you.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Have divorced right, you can you have a way out,
and what adoption? The only way out is rehoming. And
then that's why we have things like Facebook rehoming where
they're exchanging children in these Facebook groups and it gets
really grossome.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Really unsafe. So I just I think that that word
attachment is so pointed here in this conversation, and let.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Me clarify that, and I'm so sorry that that happened
to you. Right, you needed your mom to really be
a therapeutic parent and understand there's a difference between bonding
and attachment, which I talk about a lot. A parent's
role is to bond with their child, fall in love,
(28:52):
not attach. Your role is to facilitate attachment from your
child to you. That means they can come to you
when they get hurt, they get their needs met, they
know how to reach out for help, They come to
you for comfort, they come for you for guidance. However,
parents need to understand there's limitations and children who've been
(29:14):
in foster care have are compromised. They're not just going
to love you and attached to you quickly. It's going
to take time, and bonding actually takes a minimum of
six months to two years. And even Charlie Starone, who
adopted an African American child, it took her over two
years to bond with her child because she had to
learn the nuances, learn his nonverbal cues, learn what comfort
(29:38):
he needed. She needed to learn all his sensory dysregulation
and help learn how to soothe and so that he
felt secure and stable in her arms. Because of course
she's white, he's black. That there was the mismatch of
genetic mirroring and are you my mommy, and so that
consistent it takes parents to adopt. Don't recognize you're not
(30:03):
getting a child like other children. You are receiving a
child who does have attachment challenges, and they may have
attachment challenges the rest of their life. And there's different
types of attachments.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And thees include babies, because I know y'all think that
babies are blank slates, they are not. Maternal separation trauma
starts as soon as that baby is disconnected from their mother.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That is the primal wound.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Once a baby is disconnected for any reason from their mother, trauma.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, and some babies are hard to soothe. I cried
for three days when I left my birth family. My
foster parents told me, and I was shocked, and I
was very hard to soothe. And there are certain things
you need to accept. Babies, young children, teenagers are going
to have difficulty attaching and feeling safe and secure and
(30:54):
trusting you, especially if they've had attachment trauma, especially at day.
Are going to need a lot of therapeutic and a
different type of parenting, which is attachment focused parenting, which
is what I teach. I'm an attachment focused family therapist.
I teach all my family's attachment focused parenting, trauma and
(31:15):
form parenting, grief and lost parenting, so they understand all
of these layers. And it takes a village too. But
everyone needs.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
To be trained, everybody, and everyone needs to be trained.
You know how hard I go for trauma and forum
training and child center training. And also don't always listen
to the agencies, and my adoptive parents agency said reattachment
therapy is the way to go. They're not always the experts.
The experts are usually the people who've lived through what
you're trying to do. So if you are an adoptive parent,
(31:45):
the expert is probably going to be the adoptees who
are now working in the same field or the system
to say, hey, this works, this didn't work. But also
as the child, right, I remember going to equin therapy
and I loved it, like it. Equin therapy work for
me because I couldn't attach to other people because I
didn't have confidence in myself. So how can I trust
to you when I don't even trust myself?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Hell no.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So what equine therapy did for me way better than
talk therapy, and really there was no talking. It was
something that means a connection that me and the horse made.
They it made me feel confident that I can take
this one ton horse and make it like jump over
stuff and like kneel down. And it literally it was
the only first thing on the planet that listened to
me with listen to me, and it was and it
(32:29):
didn't have to It was just you. And sometimes they
don't listen to you and then you get bucked off, right,
But it's also it's about mutual respect. If you come
upsett and you were being mean to the horse and
you were tearing their mouth up with the store.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
They're going to buck you off because you're not respecting them.
That's right. They have feelings too, and they have they're
bigger than you, right.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
So what happened was after I got confident with equine therapy,
I became confident in myself and that's where the attachment,
that bond could have been built. But because of all
of the rebirthing therapy and all of the other things
that had happened, it just it was already done.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right right right there.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
It was like you said, you can't force attachment, right,
you need to feel safe in your body first. You
need to trust your instincts. And having equine therapy that
unconditional love and regard you also received. You were loved
for who you were, regardless of what you did. That
horse always came back and loved you no matter what.
(33:26):
And that's the conditioning that unfortunately, when parents do traditional
parenting with traumatized children, it's conditional. If you don't behave
you don't get this. If you don't stop crying, you
don't get this. And that doesn't work with us. It's
I'm so sorry you're feeling so sad. You have a
(33:46):
lot to cry about. It's okay to cry. Let me
hold you just that. Let your child have their emotions.
They have so many thoughts, feeling, sensations going on inside
of themselves, and you need to be that therapeutic parent
that will facilitate trust.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
And the traditional let me remove this from you never
worked for me because I had lost my family. I've
been thirty seven foster homes. Everything I've been taken from me.
You're gonna take a game, boy, ooh, I'm scared right,
So like taking stuff from me never works. No, you
know what did work? Speaking to me, talking to me,
(34:29):
getting down on my level. And then the craziest thing
for me specifically was I was always expecting a big,
big blow up, getting hit, getting When I actually met
my dad where I called my dad now, he took
me off the shoe when I was sixteen, when I
got in trouble with him, there wasn't a big thing.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
He would just look at me.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
He would sit down and say, Carlos, I'm so disappointed
in you, and I think that you know that you
can be a better person, and I'm going to allow
you to do that. And that was my consequence. My
consequence was that he was just disappointed in me. That
was worse than anything for me because I have this
attachment I want to please you, right right, So when
you say I'm disappointed in you, that's that's worse than
(35:10):
you slapping me across my face because I've lived with
slapped in Christ.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
That's a natural consequence. That's a natural consequence. I'm disappointing
your actions, your behavior, and I know you can do
better better.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, And as he left it at that, there was
no consequence, there was no taking away, there was no hitting.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
It was just you have to rebuild.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
And that's discipline. That's teaching. He taught you. He taught you,
and that's discipline.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
So let's get back to your story. So you're adopted.
You meet all these families, you get adopted at what age?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
So then I meet one family a town over from
where I was living, and I was seven and a half,
and as I was when I got there, my potential
adopted mother had done research on me and she found
out that I liked tuna fish without relish, and she
knew I liked cats and hearts and pink. So she
(36:06):
had plan and I remember her telling me. I made
tuna fish, but no relish, because I know you don't
like it that way. And I remember looking at her, going,
somebody knows me. Somebody had took interest in me, like
I haven't felt that way ever, And so I started
looking at her because she took interest in me. And
(36:29):
then she gave me a gift and it was these
heart sunglasses. And I have a photo of the day
that I met her wearing those heart sunglasses. And I
remember leaving her house with the social worker and I
turned back to the to Diane. I adopted him, and
I said, can I come back again? And that was
(36:50):
the telltale sign. This feels like it's home, it's right
for him. And so then and I'll just in the
last part of it, which was not done well. It
was the day that I left my foster.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
That was abrupt. Did they not transition, you guys, They
didn't transition, Absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
It was an abrupt.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
It's supposed to be a three to six month process.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Oh yeah, they still we still don't even do that
here in California.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
That's dangerous.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
It caused me another trauma because they packed up my bag.
They dressed me on my favorite outfit and I remember going,
what's going on. They're like, you're gonna go live with
the Kappatowski family, and I'm thinking, what, I'm not going anywhere,
and I screamed bloody murder the whole neighbors. The neighbors
(37:41):
came out, what the heck is going on over at
the house and I They're dragging me into the cab.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
That this was supposed to be a positive experience. It's
supposed to be like you're getting adopted. This is all
supposed to be positive.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
I had no idea I was kidding. I didn't even
know what adopted nett. And then another quick story when
I so I ended up going to their home. I cried, cried,
cried again for my foster family. And then when I
was brought to the courthouse, my father told me my
hands were clinging to the car. I were in the
(38:19):
parking lot. I see this huge building, an official government building,
and I'm thinking, they keep telling me you're we're here
to get adopted, and I'm going, so you're bringing here,
You're bringing me here to send me to a family
to be adopted. I would not leave the car. My
hands were slain. So just having said that we need
(38:42):
to explain to children what's happening. I created two animations
in our way to general what is adoption for kids?
What is foster care for kids? I worked with the
kid less than six months ago. She didn't even know
she was in foster care. She's seven years old, and
I identify with ours and like I didn't know I
was in foster care either. And guess what, We're going
(39:04):
to watch an animation together right now, and we're going
to talk about it so that you can make sense
about it, so you can move through this experience. But
you know, maybe hard, scary and sad, and we're going
to do our best to help them through it. We'll
get through this together. And that's really for me doing
this work to hold enough fosters and I'll guide them.
(39:29):
It's just it's priceless. It's just it's I feel like
I'm an adult now, like you, Carlos, we can make
a difference.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Right, And I was slogan, be the doult that you need.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
That's right, right, total, that's my slogan and I always
use and I sell the same praise. I feel the
same way about when I work with the system. But
what I like to do, I'm a lived experience person.
I like to share people like even this podcast. I
think that it is so important for me to have
other false youth and adoptees share their stories because we're
(40:02):
never heard, and we never get platforms, and we never
get recognitions, and we're always clawing our way just to
get half as far as what I call kept people right,
So like that same passion that you have, like when
you're doing your therapies with children, I get that same
thing for this, for having other adoptees like share because
it's so powerful and putting words behind your experience, it
(40:23):
concretes it. It concretes your experience also helps. I believe
that words are healing. And when you speak and when
you talk about your experience, not only does it help
another person, but it helps you because to hear something
out loud gives you power.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
You take the power back.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
That's right, That's right, And I love that. So I'm guessing, Diana,
your adopted mom. She sounds great, you had a great adoption.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yes, she adopted me.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Well, we call it net positive because every adoption starts
with trauma, that's right, but net positive.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It sounds like it was a net positive experience.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Yes, I had a childhood from seven and a half
on it my first birthday party at eight.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
So yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
I love that, And this for listeners, this is what
I talk about when I talk about adoption reform. We
need more people like Janet or Jeanette's mom right where
they understand trauma, they understand the research. Replacing exactly, I'm
not replacing something that you lost.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
I'm just I'm adding that's right.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
You would love this quote. There's a book called Life Givers.
It's old, it's like from the seventies, and the quote
is the birth family creates the life. The foster and
adoptive family sustains that life, and together they affirm that life.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
I love that. I do love that.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
So speaking of that, before we wrap up, tell me
about your reunification. You said that fifteen years ago you
did find your mom. How did that come about? Did
your adoptive mom support that, Did you ever find your dad?
Speaker 1 (41:50):
What happened with your birth family?
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Yeah, this is a kind of a long story, and
I've wanted to write a book, but I said at
the time, but in a nutshell, my brother found me,
He searched for me, he grew up in the Bronx.
He found me. We were in our twenties and we
had reunion and he had a photo of our birth
mother and I'd never seen our birth mother before and
(42:14):
I looked just like her. And then we found our
birth father together, and our birth father wanted nothing to
do with us. He was still living in the same
New York City apartment. He was traumatized.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Did he ever tell his family about you? Guys? That
I'll probably not.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
I found his family and I told his family, Oh yeah,
blazing a trail. I said, I am not a secret.
And then I actually showed up at a bar and
approached him. He was at a bar and I walked
up to him, and I was in therapy for this
for a good two years. I said, I need to
show up for me.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
You.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
I am not your little secret. I am a grown woman.
I am not my birth mother, Celia. I am my
own person, and I want respect. I want you to
see me, no matter how uncomfortable it is for you.
I've had to deal with my own trauma all these years,
and so that he actually sat with me, but it
(43:12):
wasn't pleasant. He's a very bitter victim man. And so
then my brother and I searched for our birth mother
and we found her in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So when
our father deported her, she did. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
She went into a woman's psychiatric institution and lived there
(43:33):
for forty years. Yes, and I'm talking like Buenos Adds
a big room with women in beds and walkers. Okay,
for forty years. So she was shunned and shamed I
hate to say this by her own husband, who had
his own mental health challenges. Obviously he kept us a secret.
(43:55):
He then deports her. Thinks, you know, this is just
gonna no one's gonna think or think about this, or
my children are never going to find me. Well we did.
We found him, we found her, We had reunion with her,
who was lucid, she was heavily medicated. We got to
meet her. She did share the whole story about meeting
the woman at the park who told her to go
(44:16):
to his Jewish childcare. She was very frightened when she
told us. She even said to me, Janette, they kidnapped you.
They kidnapped you, and I'm just sitting there like, when
is this pain going to end? When is the trauma
going to end, because.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
It never does. You just learned how to navigate exactly.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
And my birth father, you know we're in a podcast.
He left New York City and I left New York
City because he rejected me multiple times. He's now living
twenty five miles from me here, and I'm just sitting
in this place now and now in my life going
why are you here? And now I'm grieving the living
(44:58):
like you wanted nothing to do with me. You broke
up our whole. Well, you could have cared for us,
like loved us and taking care of our mother, but no,
you chose to deflect, dismiss, deport, and try to make
this all go away, and it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
No, And you know my dad did similar and he
tries to like my mom has passed now and before.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
She passed, she know she I got the whole story
from her.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
I got her side, I got her lived experience, and
you know I got the apology that I needed from her.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
And you know, with my dad, he just he's like
your dad.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
He's just very just nasty, has his own addictions and
addictions and he just.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
A lot of it.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Like one day he loves me, the next day, I'm
a faggot and he can't possibly be my dad because
he doesn't have gay children. And then the next day
he's so proud of me and how far I've come,
and it's very abusive, and there it becomes a point
where I told him my said, Dad, for you, I
can't be part of your life for you, it's not
I'm not good for your mental health you seeing me
(46:01):
be and I'm And the thing is, I'm a splitting
image of him, like I'm like DNA just copied it.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yes, And I know because I trigger him.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Every time I talk to him and I tell him
about my life, he goes down a bench and I
have to recognize until you get yourself, okay, I'm not
healthy for you.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
You seeing my success is your shame. I'm your shame.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
That's right, and you have to unpack that.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
And hopefully he unpacks it before he dies. You know.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
I understand that he wants to be so close to me,
and I'm just like, it's not, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Like we're probably as close as wherever.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Going to be and me just talking to you, and
that's okay because you made decisions, and decisions were made
and that's okay.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Right right, And it's mental health. The best thing a
parent can do a birth parent is go and talk
with someone a trauma specials. You've been traumatized to losing
your children. You have your own unmet needs from your
own families of origin that weren't met, so it's hard
to meet your children's needs. I hear needs happen, and
(47:07):
that's one thing.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, and that's one thing I learned from both of
my parents. My dad was kicked out of his house
at fourteen. His parents that I don't want you, I
don't need you, and the same thing with my mom.
That's how they met. They met each other at like
I think, like a trouble, like a juvenile type place, right, So,
like it makes sense of how two trauma tized people
found each other in trauma and then recreate. That's generational trauma.
(47:29):
Like you just literally recreated it, right, So it doesn't
justify your behaviors or actions or decisions, but it definitely
helps me understand it as a trauma informed person myself.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
That's r right.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
So, Jeanette, thank you so much for sharing your life story.
I can't wait to go through your YouTube and all
of your stuff to go see.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Ask a question to all the guests, and that question is,
is there a piece of advice that you would give
a child with similar lives experiences you what one piece
of advice would you give?
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Well, this has helped me and this is what I did.
But what I feel like, I'm falling, I fall reaching,
I fall reaching. There's always someone, whether it's a friend,
your pet, a neighbor, a therapist, a counciler. Fall reaching
and reach for help. It's okay to reach for help
(48:17):
and support. If help feel shaming, talk to somebody, Let
allow yourself to cry, give yourself permission to have your feelings.
Your anger. Anger is valid. We have a lot of
anger because of what happened to us. So when you're
feeling emotional and you feel like you're falling, there's fall
(48:38):
Reaching up and know that there's someone there for you.
There are people out there who want to help. And
one of the things that I also did was I volunteered.
I knew that there are people less than that needed help,
less than me, like and I said, I have so
much to give. I'm going to give to someone who
(48:59):
needs support. And that's really the volunteering was really what
led me to become a psychotherapist and go, you know what,
I really want to do this as a career. This
feels right to me, So that would be my advice
and guidance. And I wish you all well and have
compassion for what you've been through. Don't be so hard
(49:21):
on yourself. Please have compassion. It takes a lot of
empathy to get through this, as you can feel and
hear in my voice, I've been emotional a few times,
and that's okay. Our vulnerability is.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Our strength, absolutely, Jenette, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
And I want to add on to that light shiners,
when you're reaching while you're falling, don't reach for somebody
who's falling.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Also, okay, no.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Like reach for reach like Janet said, but if a
person's falling next to you, you're holding hands, falling, reach.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
For somebody, right, good to add that point that's really important.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Cause people like I'm falling, I'm reaching.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
If you reaching for the person that's behind you already falling, baby,
that's gonna drag you down further. Right, the people who
are stable, we're about falling.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
That's right, And there's plenty of people plenty plenty.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
I love that which and I thank you so much
for coming on the War to the Same podcast and
sharing your lift experience with foster.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Care and adoption. I'd love to hear that positive experiences,
and I.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Appreciate you sharing your unique story and just sharing your
beautiful existence. Is there anywhere that the listeners can follow you,
any work that you have coming up, anything that you
want to promote.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Yes, well I've just got a big, big deal. I
am now a contributor on Psychology Today the Inner Life
of foster Care.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
I love that. So is that like a magazine, an article.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Blog contributor, expert contributor of foster care. So if anyone
wants me to talk about anything, right, no one talks
about this. You know, psychology today is the number one
resource when understanding it's a health challenges for any population.
So you can email me Janette at Yofftherapy dot com.
My website is Jeanette Yoaft dot com and you can
(51:10):
find me there. And I also just wrote a book
called The Traumatized and at Risk Youth Toolbox. It's one
hundred and sixty interventions that I do with children in
foster care and those who have experienced trauma, so it's
for caregivers, parents pull Shorkerson's parents.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
I love that, and a guy who will have links
for all of that in the show notes. So if
you're listening right now, just throw down and you will
see the links to Jeanette's website, the book and all
that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Well, congratulations on your success to much and you're.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Inspiring to me. I'm so inspired. I really inspire guys.
So thank you, because it's rare. It's rare that I
see people who have similar lift experiences as me and
I could actually still look up to be like oh okay,
like because honestly, most people want to they've become victim
to the statistics. That's so we're looking at a lot
(52:01):
of foster youth who have addictions, who are homeless, who
have job insecurities. So when I see a person like
yourself who's gone to college and like something that like
your whole career is something that I want to go
out in and help the community.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
So you know, we're going to keep in touch.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Top I'm going to send you some some email about
some things I want you to blog about.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Please do.
Speaker 4 (52:25):
Definitely keep in touch, and thank you gave for sharing
your story and light Shiners, Like I say every week,
always shine your light because you never know how bright
you might shine for someone that guide them through the darkness.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
And even if your light is dim, it still shines
bright in the dark brood. So I aways shine your light,
light Shiners, and then until next week. I'll talk to
you later
Content warning.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The Wards of the State podcast may contain material that
may be harmful or traumatizing to some audiences.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Heylight Shiner's welcome back to Wards of the State podcast.
We are trucking along, guys. I'm just so thrilled that
we continue to have so many people y'all. I know
the last episode I said, please submit some submittals for
it to be on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Y'all really showed up a showed out. We had over
seventy five submissions.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So if you have applied to be on the show
and we haven't reached out to you yet, give us
some time.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Like I told you, guys, I am building my new team.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So I did just get a new scheduler, so she
should be reaching out to you guys.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Her name is Lampa.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
She's amazing, so she should be reaching out to everybody
giving you guys schedule. We only record on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
If you guys have a special day that you need.
Let's say you work Tuesdays and Thursdays and those days
any of those days never work for you.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Let lamper know.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I do make some caveats, so if you if you
need it, maybe a Saturday, maybe a Sunday, but the
main days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you if those
days do not work for you and you do want
to share your story, just send my scheduler an email
replying back to her form request and then she will
see she'll ask me if I.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
If I can make that work for you.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
So, without further ado, I do want to run you
guys to leave a one, two, three, four, five star.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Rating and reviews. We haven't had a lot of rating reviews.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
So we need some more of those. Also, we will
be having some new sponsors in between the commercials, so
keep your eyes out for that and make sure when
the sponsors do show up, y'all show up and show out.
They're going to be from Better Help and some other sponsors. Though,
if those are the things that you use or you
will consider using, the links will always be there for you, guys,
And the more that you use those links, the better
that they support the podcast and the more stories that
(02:09):
we can share.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
So, without further ado, I do.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Want to go into our next guest to Jeanette, who's
going to share her experience being in foster care and adopted.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Hey, Jeanette, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
How are you? Thank you, Carlo, so great to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
My pleasure.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Thank you for coming on and sharing your lived experience.
So just start off, how did you get introduced into
the child wol first system?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
What state were you in? And start off with your story.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I am originally from New York, born and raised. And
my birth mother, my first mother, also called a birth
mother for some. She was an immigrant from Argentina, Buenos Sattes,
and she was a dancer, had a dance company Buena Sattas,
very established, wanted to bring her arts to New York.
(02:58):
Of course, this is the seventies, okay, And so she
came to New York City to be a dancer and
work with the Martha Graham dance company. Excuse me, met
my father, they had me, I was she was pregnant,
but they were not married. She was Roman Catholic. She
said I need to get married. I'm Roman Catholic. My
(03:19):
father said yes, of course, so they eloped at New
York City Hall in this nineteen seventy In nineteen seventy,
I was born in nineteen seventy one. I lived with
my birth family for the first fifteen months of my
life in New York City on the Lower east Side
of Manhattan, and my mother had mental health challenges. Her
(03:44):
mother was dying in Buenos ADDIE's here she is. She
was on a work visa to be working and dancing
in New York City. She was not at the time
she had me. She was struggling. She also had some
early childhood trauma that was undiagnosed and untreated. And of
course this is the seventies, so mental health was not
(04:06):
as prevalent back then and supporting mothers, and so she
became significantly stressed. And she was talking to a woman
at a park in the Lower east Side and the
woman said, well, you can bring her to a child
care agency. My mother was stressed. She was at this
time seven months pregnant with my brother. I was about
(04:28):
thirteen months old young at the time. And this woman says,
go to child's care and get some childcare. So, and
if you can imagine a woman who doesn't understand the
United States child care system, she looks up and finds
a place called Jewish child's care. Jewish childcare is not
(04:54):
child care, it's a foster care and adoption agency. So
she thinks it's a government resource for families to receive childcare.
She doesn't know any other She brings me, I'm getting goosebumps,
brings me to Jewish childcare and says, here, please take
(05:16):
care of my baby.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
She doesn't speak very good English. She doesn't tell my father.
I don't. I'm still putting all the pieces together of
what happened to them. And then me and my brother
and I have another sister who she left in Buenos
Adi's who was six years old at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
With her fock.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
So she brings me to the agency and says, here, please,
please take care of my baby. She remembers putting me
in this room. And I know this because I found
her in search for her and her fifteen years ago
in Buenos Ares, and she signed some documents. She's thinking
it's child's care. She's thinking they're going to take care
(06:02):
of my daughter for a few weeks. She's thinking it's
overnight childcare.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, she didn't. She's like, this is a good deal.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
That's right, that's right. So I actually contacted And for
those that don't know me, I'm a psychotherapist. I'm an
advocate in the field of foster care and adoption. I
do a lot of blazing, trail blazing here in Los
Angeles and New York, and I actually reached out to
the director of Jewish Childcare. I said, I want to
understand what happened. I want all my files. I was
(06:33):
in foster care for six and a half years. I
received my files, this thick of information between Jewish Childcare,
my mother and my father. So what happened was she
signed these documents, which actually was a surrender. She was
relinquishing her parental rights. No one explained anything. And I
(06:54):
don't know if you know, I've heard stories in the
early seventies, but it was the baby boom, and adoption was.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Trending in industry.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It was it was an industry, and really what happened
was and a lot of people don't know the history
behind adoption.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Adoption was like a faux pod.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
It had been existing since the early twenties, but it
really was hush hush, you don't tell anyone that they're adopted.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
You lied to the.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Adoptee until like the seventies, and then it actually conjoined
with the civil rights movement, and that's actually when we
saw an influx of transfracial adoptions.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It was after that Martin Luther King I have a dream.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Speech and everyone's like, oh, let me grab a black
child because Martin Luther King said that he saw kids
wroking hand in hand.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
So if you look at history, it actually it exploded
in the nineteen seventies did so, yeah, it very.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Much did, right, and a lot of if you're a
white baby, right, black baby, healthy, adoptable, right, We're going
to get all those babies. And because it's it was
an industry about money, people made a lot of money
selling babies. I mean they still do. They's still five
billion dollar d exactly. So a lot of corruption. So
(08:03):
she goes back home and my father apparently says, where's Jeanette.
She's a Jewish childcare, thinking it's okay. When he goes
to Jewish childcare, he finds out what happened. He's embarrassed,
he feels like a victim, he feels victimized. He goes
into a whole narcissistic wound and is very angry with her.
(08:26):
And what's very sad about my story is he actually
deports her back to Argentina because he's so angry because
what happens after this is I'm now in foster care.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And I learned also that he didn't tell anyone in
his family that he had married an immigrant woman had
not only one child with her, but two children. He
didn't so did he send.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Her back while she was pregnant with your brother.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
So after my brother was born, he stayed with her
for nine months. She had another episode. She became very
stressed and overwhelmed and actually went to Bellevue Hospital where
I was born and asked the staff for help. So
she was very alone and isolated, and they actually hospitalized
(09:14):
her and she received because they thought she was losing
her mind, and they diagnosed her with schizophrenia. And she
actually received shock treatment at Bellevue Hospital in New York
City and she was there for two months. So there's
a lot of pieces here, and I don't want to
confuse the your listeners. So when my brother was with
(09:37):
her for nine months, they were having visits with me
in Jewish childcare. I was already placed in a foster
home on Long Island. Her diagnosis, my father didn't realize
that she had schizophrenia, and when she was placed in
the hospital, they placed my brother in foster care at
that point. So now my father's dramatized again. He loses me,
(10:02):
his wife is in the hospital for two months, his
son now is in foster care in another home. He
went to the Bronx, so they didn't even keep us together.
And then when she's released from Bellby hospital, he's livid
and feels like a victim, and he deports her back
to Argentina. So that's what happened because he felt she
(10:25):
could not care for two children as young as we were,
and on his own, he didn't feel that she could
care for them for us, and he didn't feel that
he could care for us. And also we were a
big secret. No one knew about us, so we were
now in the system. But the amount of paperwork that
(10:45):
I have talks about Jewish Childcare actually wanted. Of course,
you know, they do want to reunify children with their
birth families, so they did their due diligence. There's a
lot of back and forth paperwork between Jewish Childcare and
the Argentinian Consulate because they were going to place us
(11:08):
with an aunt and an uncle in Buenos Ares, but
that fell through, and when I was five and a
half maybe six, I met my brother for the first time.
My social worker came to the house and she kind
of prepped me and said, you're gonna meet your brother.
And I'm thinking, well, who's that. I mean. I was
(11:28):
fifteen months when I was placed in fosterre I didn't
know I had a brother. She said, yeah, and You're
gonna go on a long plane ride with your brother
and go to a place called Argentina. And I'm like, what,
I don't even know what Argentinia is. Okay, I'm six.
And so we actually met for the first time. He
(11:50):
came to my foster home. I remember being on top
of the stairs looking down and seeing this child at
the door, and it was the first time I saw
someone who looked like me. It was shocking, it was confusing.
And then we went to Burger King and then we
had passports made. And I'm going to tell you something, Carlos.
(12:13):
I've been doing this work a long long time and
I'm still trying to figure out my story. I work
with I've worked with hundreds, thousands of adoptees foster youth
here in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County has the largest
amount of children and child welfare, and when I look
at the passport photo. The look in my eyes are
(12:35):
just so telling of what is happening here. Somebody please
explain to me where am I going. I mean, I
have a birth and no way even talk to me
about a birth family. I thought my foster home was
my family. Also, I didn't understand what foster care was
that was pulled out from under us. We had the
(12:56):
passports made, we were told this was going to happen.
My aunt and uncle didn't feel comfortable that they could
care for both of us together. We were then to
remain in the United States and I then never saw
my brother again. He remained in the Bronx. I remained
on Long Island, and the foster home could not. At
(13:17):
the time, it wasn't like today where you're certified to
be a foster parent to adopt right. Were working towards
permanency today in child welfare, and they did their due diligence.
There was no other family, but they didn't to be
clear here, they didn't search. The dad side did not
know about anything, and he had two sisters at the time.
(13:39):
And I did find my aunt later in life, and
she told me, if I knew about you, I would
have taken care of you. So that was very sad
and heartbreaking for me because I longed. I longed because
when you've lived with your birth family for some time,
not only are you bonded, but it's your your family,
(14:00):
it's your you know, and I.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Don't know how much you know about my right, I
don't know how much you know about my story. But
I was with my birth family until seven, and then
I got adopted at nine, and then my adopted mother
wanted me to She even now on her Facebook she says,
I don't understand why my son wouldn't just deny and
reject his previous life and reject his birth family and
accept us.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I'm like, well, why would that be an expectation.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That's that's my family, like I will never and especially
I bonded with them for the first seven years of
my life. That's a long time, right, and that's the
formative years for childress. I'm never going to see you
as my mother, and she wanted She wanted that so badly,
and that's ultimately what ended up making our adoption not
a positive experience because she wanted to replace my birth
(14:45):
family when that's.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Not what adoption is, right.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Adoption is just giving a child a family, not finding
a family for a.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Child, right, not replacing their family exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
It's just giving them another village, another another hut in
the village, right in their village, right. And I think
a lot of adopted parents lose sight of that, right,
They just lose sight of that these kids have other families.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
That's right, That's okay, that's right, right, and they're grieving
the loss of their previous families and even a foster
home they form an attachment to. So we want to
allow children to have love for all their families. Don't
put that pressure that they need to decide or make
a choice, because that creates guilt.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
For the child.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Another mental health challenge.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
If I tell where the fog comes from, right, if
they adopt some fog, the fear of the obligation, the
guilt that's fog like from foggy I don't know how
to feel. And then when and then when the fog
is unaddressed as adoptees, we have grown adoptees who literally
have no understanding who they are.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And if you're navigating life not knowing who you are,
you're not going to be able to navigate other people
other relationships, professional or private is going to be very
very hard because you don't.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Know who you are, that's right, and you're stuck in
the past trying to pick up all the pieces and
make sense of who you are to get in the
present so that you can begin to self actualize what
you want to be in the future. And yet that
you need that foundation and as we know, that's been
pulled from us.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So your foster home that you were in for all
those years, was that the same foster home that ended
up adopting or did you get adopted by someone completely.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Different, completely different?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So I was with them for six and a half years,
loved them, and so my social worker when the rug
got pulled, we weren't going to Argentina, and she said, oh,
you're going to have some visits with some other families,
and so I'm and I don't know if you know
this phrase. We're not adoptees. We're adaptees. Like okay, jump
(16:48):
how high? Like okay, tell me what I need to
do because I'm a child here, I don't have any
You're not giving me any sense of control or agency,
So I just need to do whatever you're telling me to.
So I'm gonna fall and make everybody else okay, right,
so I can feel a sense of normalcy in this
completely abnormal experience. So, being in foster care, I then
(17:14):
had visits with families, which potential adoptive families, And I
remember this one time and I went to this home
and everything was pristine and clean, and I felt dirty.
I felt unworthy, I felt unlovable. The whole pervasive shame
(17:34):
was just I was just that kid. Like I had
hand me downs, I never had new, brand new clothing.
I wore hand me downs, I had tokens for lunch.
Like I knew I was the other kid. I knew
there was something wrong with me intrinsically, and it still hurts. Hurts,
and I have a lot of interventions for that, and
(17:55):
I still, as an adult, need to practice my self
care and self esteem and build myself up, and it
takes a lot of strength and a lot of discipline
and daily practice. So I go to this one home
and everything's clean. At night, they say, okay, dide, I
have time to go to bed. So I go in
this big room. I'd never had a room like this
(18:15):
because the room I had at My foster home was small.
It was a guest room. I knew I was the guest.
My sisters were biological to my foster parents had their
names on the wall. I didn't have my name. It
wasn't it didn't feel permanent, like I knew I was
not staying here. You just knew the rug was going
(18:37):
to be pulled anytime. So I'm at this house and
I and I don't remember consciously doing this, but I
slept on top of the bed spring because I didn't
want to mess up her sheets with my dirtiness. And
so the next morning they were very confused, like, wow,
(18:57):
she must be a really good daughter, like she's making
her bed. But they questioned, They said, Jeanette, did you
even sleep in your bed? And I said, ye, I did,
but I didn't mess up the sheets, and I just
slept right on top really carefully. I was so scared
to be rejected treated like, oh, yeah, there is something
wrong with your say she's not good enough for us,
(19:20):
And so I was always trying to be what other
people wanted me to be. And when I came home
from that, there's another little story here which is so
important about behavior. And that's where I became a psychotherapist
to really help people understand behavior is a form of
a communication of an unmet need. Because when I came
(19:41):
back from not only this visit, a few other visits
of potential adoptive homes, I wrote my name with crayons
on my bedroom floor in my foster home, and my
foster mother was furious. I got yeah, I got hit.
Furious made me scrub it off the floor, my name
(20:04):
off the floor. And as an adult and becoming a psychotherapist,
I was, oh, my gosh, look what I was doing.
I was trying, and I was trying to mark my territory.
That's right, that is right, And it was so again,
(20:24):
just the invalidation, don't matter, don't belong here, You're going
somewhere else, you know. And I even wrote a one
woman play about this whole life growing up in foster care.
It's called What's your Name? Who's Your Daddy? And in
the play you see me scrubbing the floor and I
start saying, I'm gonna scrub this floor like there's no tomorrow,
(20:48):
Like there's no tomorrow and so, and doing that show
is therapeutic and cathartic and actually inspired me to become
a therapist because I was an actress. I was so
good at being other people, but it wasn't healthy for me.
I had a lot of anxiety being an actress. Auditioning
was very difficult. That rejection it felt like a self
(21:11):
fulfilling prophecy, like, Okay, I'm coming here and you can
pull the rug out for Monday reading because I know
exactly what that's like and I'm not being me right now.
I'm somebody completely different, so.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
You can do that.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
But in essence, it became very taxing emotionally and psychologically.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
And that's why I just googled.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
I just I just googled you, and I can't wait
to watch this flight.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
I'm trying to find it, and you have some amazing headshots.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
I'm like, can I see what? I want to watch
the flight? So I found it, I will it, Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
So I I do have a YouTube channel and it's
called Genetically Speaking Speaking.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, I'm right here. You know, hey, you're not a
small following. You have fourteen thousand followers. Go ahead, you nah,
let me follow you, let me subscribe now.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Thank you. So there are video clips from the show
that was in nineteen and that perfect, and then I
recorded it on audible only during COVID because I said,
you know what, this could be a really good learning
tool for families because I talk from the child's point
(22:21):
of view. And one of my scenes is a little
girl who comes out and she starts auditioning, and she's seven,
and she does her whole dance number, and then the
auditioner starts asking her really strange questions like what kind
of foods do you like to eat? Do you know
how to tie your own shoelaces? What kind of experience
(22:43):
do you have? And so I go into I'm going
to get this part, and I go I will eat anything,
but if I don't like butter on my spaghetti, but
if they want me to eat sauce, I'll eat the sauce.
Whatever they want me to, I'll do it because I
think I'm really ready to be a really good daughter.
(23:04):
And the audience is just like, Okay, this was funny,
and now I'm scared and sad.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
There's a part I think it's in my second memoir,
and I explained about my relationship with cottage cheese and
how I accidentally fell into an eating disorder.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's because my adoptive mom was.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
She would force me to eat things that I did
not like, right, And this is why I don't like forcing.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
It's okay if the kids like brought bruschl sprous.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
No kid wants to eat brustl sprouts, right, So it
was like a vegetable or something like that. Sure, don't
force them, but like try to find a vegetable that
they do like, right, but something specifically like cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
I'm a texture person.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I have sensory issues right from being traumatized so early
in life, So textures inside of my mouth, tapioca caught
anything alloed like the alo drink, but anything that's chunky
and liquidy not happening, just.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Like just not happening.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Then she I actually love bobus And then you know why.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
It's because it's different.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You can drink the boba itself the tea and then
save the You can separate them. You can separate, but
like if it's like tappyokle, you can't separate the chunky
from the liquid. So if you can separate the chunky
from the liquid, I'm okay with it. But if you
can't separate the chunky from the liquid, like how does
sheese it's not. And my mom would force me. It
was her favorite thing to eat, and she would force
it and she would try to put it with like
(24:23):
strawberries or chocolate sauce, so.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Like whatever, and I just didn't like it.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And what I would do, like you were saying, I
wanted to so badly show them that I was adoptable.
I wanted to so badly show them that I was
in my file, I was in all of these foster homes,
but I could be loved.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So I would just eat it.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I would like, like, shovel it down right, And then
she's thinking like, oh, he's loving it.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
He's loving it right.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And I would then shove everything and then ask to say, hey,
I need to go to the restroom. And I'm eight
nine years old. I'm not actually understanding what is happening.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
I purged, and.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Then I threw it up, and then I'm coming back
and I'm like, all right, I'm hungry again.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
So she's just thinking like he should.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And then after a year and a half of doing that,
it became an ed where I would just binge and
purge and didn't throw it up, and it made me
feel better because I was giving them.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
She was satisfied. Well, she was happy that I was
eating her food, even though it was disgusting.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Right right, I'm so sorry. I know we so much
want to be loved and we're so scared of losing
the attachment. Children need attachment figures, they need for security
and stability.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So what happens when there is an attachment? So I
never attached to my adoptive parents. We did rebirthing therapy,
we did attachment therapy, we did the whole wrap me
up in blankets thing. We did all that for two
and a half years. We did breastfeeding at nine.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
At nine, I yes.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I did not attach.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
There wasn't anything that she was going to do because
I knew my family. All I wanted was a safe
place to lay my head. If she would have treated
me kind of like a foster kid that she really loved,
I think our adoption would have went well. She tried
to replace her children that she was infertile, she had
infertility issues, and she tried to replace her thought of
what her children would be with me, and that's just
(26:13):
was me. And then the phenomenon of adopted parents who
struggle with infertility, adopting and then having their own children.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
That happened to me. She popped out like three kids
after my adoption, So now I'm the trouble one.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I'm the one that And there were so many times
she goes, I don't need you anymore. Can you imagine
your I don't need you anymore? And it's like, what
do you mean?
Speaker 1 (26:32):
You don't need me anymore? And she showed it.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
After she had her second child. It was I was
in respite care, I was at trouble teen institutions, boarding schools,
anything to get me out of the house so she
could raise her children. And she would say, I don't
want you anymore, I don't need you. And then finally
it went to just leaving me on the street. And
I haven't seen her since I was fifteen years old
when she left me on the street, and ten years
ago she found me after I became famous, and she
(26:57):
was like, oh, wow, you made something of yourself. So ma'am,
I could have been dead right. You wouldn't even have
known or cared. And that's just something that a lot
of adoptees like that attachment.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
That's right, right you.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
I think a lot of people see adoption as the
attachment will happen. But attachment is not something that you.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Can force it.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
No, no, you cannot.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
So what happens when they're just not an attachment? What happened?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Like because human beings like that, Like, that's like marriages.
That's like expecting one hundred percent of marriages to work, right,
and that's sixty percent of marriages don't work.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
And these are two.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Consenting adults that love each other, that's right, right, So
how do we have one non consenting party that paid
for a human being and we're forcing that relation.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
They're not going to work all the.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Time, that's right, and that's okay, right, But.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
What we need is for the child to be able
to legally annol. Also for the parents. I think that
this is also some adopt some adoptive parents. But y'all
might not like me, but when I say this, but
I think that you guys should be able to rehome
legally and safely. Let's let's if we're staying child centered
and you're not attaching to that child, that child not
attaching to you, Let's find them a safe placement that
(28:03):
they feel safe in and that they will attach to
a person. Because I think a lot of them because
legally adoption is so permanent. People feel stuck and people
adopt children and they don't attach.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
To the marriage.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You feel stuck, but you have divorce right, But you.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Have divorced right, you can you have a way out,
and what adoption? The only way out is rehoming. And
then that's why we have things like Facebook rehoming where
they're exchanging children in these Facebook groups and it gets
really grossome.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Really unsafe. So I just I think that that word
attachment is so pointed here in this conversation, and let.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Me clarify that, and I'm so sorry that that happened
to you. Right, you needed your mom to really be
a therapeutic parent and understand there's a difference between bonding
and attachment, which I talk about a lot. A parent's
role is to bond with their child, fall in love,
(28:52):
not attach. Your role is to facilitate attachment from your
child to you. That means they can come to you
when they get hurt, they get their needs met, they
know how to reach out for help, They come to
you for comfort, they come for you for guidance. However,
parents need to understand there's limitations and children who've been
(29:14):
in foster care have are compromised. They're not just going
to love you and attached to you quickly. It's going
to take time, and bonding actually takes a minimum of
six months to two years. And even Charlie Starone, who
adopted an African American child, it took her over two
years to bond with her child because she had to
learn the nuances, learn his nonverbal cues, learn what comfort
(29:38):
he needed. She needed to learn all his sensory dysregulation
and help learn how to soothe and so that he
felt secure and stable in her arms. Because of course
she's white, he's black. That there was the mismatch of
genetic mirroring and are you my mommy, and so that
consistent it takes parents to adopt. Don't recognize you're not
(30:03):
getting a child like other children. You are receiving a
child who does have attachment challenges, and they may have
attachment challenges the rest of their life. And there's different
types of attachments.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And thees include babies, because I know y'all think that
babies are blank slates, they are not. Maternal separation trauma
starts as soon as that baby is disconnected from their mother.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That is the primal wound.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Once a baby is disconnected for any reason from their mother, trauma.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, and some babies are hard to soothe. I cried
for three days when I left my birth family. My
foster parents told me, and I was shocked, and I
was very hard to soothe. And there are certain things
you need to accept. Babies, young children, teenagers are going
to have difficulty attaching and feeling safe and secure and
(30:54):
trusting you, especially if they've had attachment trauma, especially at day.
Are going to need a lot of therapeutic and a
different type of parenting, which is attachment focused parenting, which
is what I teach. I'm an attachment focused family therapist.
I teach all my family's attachment focused parenting, trauma and
(31:15):
form parenting, grief and lost parenting, so they understand all
of these layers. And it takes a village too. But
everyone needs.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
To be trained, everybody, and everyone needs to be trained.
You know how hard I go for trauma and forum
training and child center training. And also don't always listen
to the agencies, and my adoptive parents agency said reattachment
therapy is the way to go. They're not always the experts.
The experts are usually the people who've lived through what
you're trying to do. So if you are an adoptive parent,
(31:45):
the expert is probably going to be the adoptees who
are now working in the same field or the system
to say, hey, this works, this didn't work. But also
as the child, right, I remember going to equin therapy
and I loved it, like it. Equin therapy work for
me because I couldn't attach to other people because I
didn't have confidence in myself. So how can I trust
to you when I don't even trust myself?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Hell no.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So what equine therapy did for me way better than
talk therapy, and really there was no talking. It was
something that means a connection that me and the horse made.
They it made me feel confident that I can take
this one ton horse and make it like jump over
stuff and like kneel down. And it literally it was
the only first thing on the planet that listened to
me with listen to me, and it was and it
(32:29):
didn't have to It was just you. And sometimes they
don't listen to you and then you get bucked off, right,
But it's also it's about mutual respect. If you come
upsett and you were being mean to the horse and
you were tearing their mouth up with the store.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
They're going to buck you off because you're not respecting them.
That's right. They have feelings too, and they have they're
bigger than you, right.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
So what happened was after I got confident with equine therapy,
I became confident in myself and that's where the attachment,
that bond could have been built. But because of all
of the rebirthing therapy and all of the other things
that had happened, it just it was already done.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right right right there.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
It was like you said, you can't force attachment, right,
you need to feel safe in your body first. You
need to trust your instincts. And having equine therapy that
unconditional love and regard you also received. You were loved
for who you were, regardless of what you did. That
horse always came back and loved you no matter what.
(33:26):
And that's the conditioning that unfortunately, when parents do traditional
parenting with traumatized children, it's conditional. If you don't behave
you don't get this. If you don't stop crying, you
don't get this. And that doesn't work with us. It's
I'm so sorry you're feeling so sad. You have a
(33:46):
lot to cry about. It's okay to cry. Let me
hold you just that. Let your child have their emotions.
They have so many thoughts, feeling, sensations going on inside
of themselves, and you need to be that therapeutic parent
that will facilitate trust.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
And the traditional let me remove this from you never
worked for me because I had lost my family. I've
been thirty seven foster homes. Everything I've been taken from me.
You're gonna take a game, boy, ooh, I'm scared right,
So like taking stuff from me never works. No, you
know what did work? Speaking to me, talking to me,
(34:29):
getting down on my level. And then the craziest thing
for me specifically was I was always expecting a big,
big blow up, getting hit, getting When I actually met
my dad where I called my dad now, he took
me off the shoe when I was sixteen, when I
got in trouble with him, there wasn't a big thing.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
He would just look at me.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
He would sit down and say, Carlos, I'm so disappointed
in you, and I think that you know that you
can be a better person, and I'm going to allow
you to do that. And that was my consequence. My
consequence was that he was just disappointed in me. That
was worse than anything for me because I have this
attachment I want to please you, right right, So when
you say I'm disappointed in you, that's that's worse than
(35:10):
you slapping me across my face because I've lived with
slapped in Christ.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
That's a natural consequence. That's a natural consequence. I'm disappointing
your actions, your behavior, and I know you can do
better better.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, And as he left it at that, there was
no consequence, there was no taking away, there was no hitting.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
It was just you have to rebuild.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
And that's discipline. That's teaching. He taught you. He taught you,
and that's discipline.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
So let's get back to your story. So you're adopted.
You meet all these families, you get adopted at what age?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
So then I meet one family a town over from
where I was living, and I was seven and a half,
and as I was when I got there, my potential
adopted mother had done research on me and she found
out that I liked tuna fish without relish, and she
knew I liked cats and hearts and pink. So she
(36:06):
had plan and I remember her telling me. I made
tuna fish, but no relish, because I know you don't
like it that way. And I remember looking at her, going,
somebody knows me. Somebody had took interest in me, like
I haven't felt that way ever, And so I started
looking at her because she took interest in me. And
(36:29):
then she gave me a gift and it was these
heart sunglasses. And I have a photo of the day
that I met her wearing those heart sunglasses. And I
remember leaving her house with the social worker and I
turned back to the to Diane. I adopted him, and
I said, can I come back again? And that was
(36:50):
the telltale sign. This feels like it's home, it's right
for him. And so then and I'll just in the
last part of it, which was not done well. It
was the day that I left my foster.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
That was abrupt. Did they not transition, you guys, They
didn't transition, Absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
It was an abrupt.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
It's supposed to be a three to six month process.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Oh yeah, they still we still don't even do that
here in California.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
That's dangerous.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
It caused me another trauma because they packed up my bag.
They dressed me on my favorite outfit and I remember going,
what's going on. They're like, you're gonna go live with
the Kappatowski family, and I'm thinking, what, I'm not going anywhere,
and I screamed bloody murder the whole neighbors. The neighbors
(37:41):
came out, what the heck is going on over at
the house and I They're dragging me into the cab.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
That this was supposed to be a positive experience. It's
supposed to be like you're getting adopted. This is all
supposed to be positive.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
I had no idea I was kidding. I didn't even
know what adopted nett. And then another quick story when
I so I ended up going to their home. I cried, cried,
cried again for my foster family. And then when I
was brought to the courthouse, my father told me my
hands were clinging to the car. I were in the
(38:19):
parking lot. I see this huge building, an official government building,
and I'm thinking, they keep telling me you're we're here
to get adopted, and I'm going, so you're bringing here,
You're bringing me here to send me to a family
to be adopted. I would not leave the car. My
hands were slain. So just having said that we need
(38:42):
to explain to children what's happening. I created two animations
in our way to general what is adoption for kids?
What is foster care for kids? I worked with the
kid less than six months ago. She didn't even know
she was in foster care. She's seven years old, and
I identify with ours and like I didn't know I
was in foster care either. And guess what, We're going
(39:04):
to watch an animation together right now, and we're going
to talk about it so that you can make sense
about it, so you can move through this experience. But
you know, maybe hard, scary and sad, and we're going
to do our best to help them through it. We'll
get through this together. And that's really for me doing
this work to hold enough fosters and I'll guide them.
(39:29):
It's just it's priceless. It's just it's I feel like
I'm an adult now, like you, Carlos, we can make
a difference.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Right, And I was slogan, be the doult that you need.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
That's right, right, total, that's my slogan and I always
use and I sell the same praise. I feel the
same way about when I work with the system. But
what I like to do, I'm a lived experience person.
I like to share people like even this podcast. I
think that it is so important for me to have
other false youth and adoptees share their stories because we're
(40:02):
never heard, and we never get platforms, and we never
get recognitions, and we're always clawing our way just to
get half as far as what I call kept people right,
So like that same passion that you have, like when
you're doing your therapies with children, I get that same
thing for this, for having other adoptees like share because
it's so powerful and putting words behind your experience, it
(40:23):
concretes it. It concretes your experience also helps. I believe
that words are healing. And when you speak and when
you talk about your experience, not only does it help
another person, but it helps you because to hear something
out loud gives you power.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
You take the power back.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
That's right, That's right, And I love that. So I'm guessing, Diana,
your adopted mom. She sounds great, you had a great adoption.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yes, she adopted me.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Well, we call it net positive because every adoption starts
with trauma, that's right, but net positive.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It sounds like it was a net positive experience.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Yes, I had a childhood from seven and a half
on it my first birthday party at eight.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
So yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
I love that, And this for listeners, this is what
I talk about when I talk about adoption reform. We
need more people like Janet or Jeanette's mom right where
they understand trauma, they understand the research. Replacing exactly, I'm
not replacing something that you lost.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
I'm just I'm adding that's right.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
You would love this quote. There's a book called Life Givers.
It's old, it's like from the seventies, and the quote
is the birth family creates the life. The foster and
adoptive family sustains that life, and together they affirm that life.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
I love that. I do love that.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
So speaking of that, before we wrap up, tell me
about your reunification. You said that fifteen years ago you
did find your mom. How did that come about? Did
your adoptive mom support that, Did you ever find your dad?
Speaker 1 (41:50):
What happened with your birth family?
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Yeah, this is a kind of a long story, and
I've wanted to write a book, but I said at
the time, but in a nutshell, my brother found me,
He searched for me, he grew up in the Bronx.
He found me. We were in our twenties and we
had reunion and he had a photo of our birth
mother and I'd never seen our birth mother before and
(42:14):
I looked just like her. And then we found our
birth father together, and our birth father wanted nothing to
do with us. He was still living in the same
New York City apartment. He was traumatized.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Did he ever tell his family about you? Guys? That
I'll probably not.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
I found his family and I told his family, Oh yeah,
blazing a trail. I said, I am not a secret.
And then I actually showed up at a bar and
approached him. He was at a bar and I walked
up to him, and I was in therapy for this
for a good two years. I said, I need to
show up for me.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
You.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
I am not your little secret. I am a grown woman.
I am not my birth mother, Celia. I am my
own person, and I want respect. I want you to
see me, no matter how uncomfortable it is for you.
I've had to deal with my own trauma all these years,
and so that he actually sat with me, but it
(43:12):
wasn't pleasant. He's a very bitter victim man. And so
then my brother and I searched for our birth mother
and we found her in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So when
our father deported her, she did. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
She went into a woman's psychiatric institution and lived there
(43:33):
for forty years. Yes, and I'm talking like Buenos Adds
a big room with women in beds and walkers. Okay,
for forty years. So she was shunned and shamed I
hate to say this by her own husband, who had
his own mental health challenges. Obviously he kept us a secret.
(43:55):
He then deports her. Thinks, you know, this is just
gonna no one's gonna think or think about this, or
my children are never going to find me. Well we did.
We found him, we found her, We had reunion with her,
who was lucid, she was heavily medicated. We got to
meet her. She did share the whole story about meeting
the woman at the park who told her to go
(44:16):
to his Jewish childcare. She was very frightened when she
told us. She even said to me, Janette, they kidnapped you.
They kidnapped you, and I'm just sitting there like, when
is this pain going to end? When is the trauma
going to end, because.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
It never does. You just learned how to navigate exactly.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
And my birth father, you know we're in a podcast.
He left New York City and I left New York
City because he rejected me multiple times. He's now living
twenty five miles from me here, and I'm just sitting
in this place now and now in my life going
why are you here? And now I'm grieving the living
(44:58):
like you wanted nothing to do with me. You broke
up our whole. Well, you could have cared for us,
like loved us and taking care of our mother, but no,
you chose to deflect, dismiss, deport, and try to make
this all go away, and it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
No, And you know my dad did similar and he
tries to like my mom has passed now and before.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
She passed, she know she I got the whole story
from her.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
I got her side, I got her lived experience, and
you know I got the apology that I needed from her.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
And you know, with my dad, he just he's like
your dad.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
He's just very just nasty, has his own addictions and
addictions and he just.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
A lot of it.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Like one day he loves me, the next day, I'm
a faggot and he can't possibly be my dad because
he doesn't have gay children. And then the next day
he's so proud of me and how far I've come,
and it's very abusive, and there it becomes a point
where I told him my said, Dad, for you, I
can't be part of your life for you, it's not
I'm not good for your mental health you seeing me
(46:01):
be and I'm And the thing is, I'm a splitting
image of him, like I'm like DNA just copied it.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yes, And I know because I trigger him.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Every time I talk to him and I tell him
about my life, he goes down a bench and I
have to recognize until you get yourself, okay, I'm not
healthy for you.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
You seeing my success is your shame. I'm your shame.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
That's right, and you have to unpack that.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
And hopefully he unpacks it before he dies. You know.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
I understand that he wants to be so close to me,
and I'm just like, it's not, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Like we're probably as close as wherever.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Going to be and me just talking to you, and
that's okay because you made decisions, and decisions were made
and that's okay.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Right right, And it's mental health. The best thing a
parent can do a birth parent is go and talk
with someone a trauma specials. You've been traumatized to losing
your children. You have your own unmet needs from your
own families of origin that weren't met, so it's hard
to meet your children's needs. I hear needs happen, and
(47:07):
that's one thing.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, and that's one thing I learned from both of
my parents. My dad was kicked out of his house
at fourteen. His parents that I don't want you, I
don't need you, and the same thing with my mom.
That's how they met. They met each other at like
I think, like a trouble, like a juvenile type place, right, So,
like it makes sense of how two trauma tized people
found each other in trauma and then recreate. That's generational trauma.
(47:29):
Like you just literally recreated it, right, So it doesn't
justify your behaviors or actions or decisions, but it definitely
helps me understand it as a trauma informed person myself.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
That's r right.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
So, Jeanette, thank you so much for sharing your life story.
I can't wait to go through your YouTube and all
of your stuff to go see.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Ask a question to all the guests, and that question is,
is there a piece of advice that you would give
a child with similar lives experiences you what one piece
of advice would you give?
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Well, this has helped me and this is what I did.
But what I feel like, I'm falling, I fall reaching,
I fall reaching. There's always someone, whether it's a friend,
your pet, a neighbor, a therapist, a counciler. Fall reaching
and reach for help. It's okay to reach for help
(48:17):
and support. If help feel shaming, talk to somebody, Let
allow yourself to cry, give yourself permission to have your feelings.
Your anger. Anger is valid. We have a lot of
anger because of what happened to us. So when you're
feeling emotional and you feel like you're falling, there's fall
(48:38):
Reaching up and know that there's someone there for you.
There are people out there who want to help. And
one of the things that I also did was I volunteered.
I knew that there are people less than that needed help,
less than me, like and I said, I have so
much to give. I'm going to give to someone who
(48:59):
needs support. And that's really the volunteering was really what
led me to become a psychotherapist and go, you know what,
I really want to do this as a career. This
feels right to me, So that would be my advice
and guidance. And I wish you all well and have
compassion for what you've been through. Don't be so hard
(49:21):
on yourself. Please have compassion. It takes a lot of
empathy to get through this, as you can feel and
hear in my voice, I've been emotional a few times,
and that's okay. Our vulnerability is.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Our strength, absolutely, Jenette, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
And I want to add on to that light shiners,
when you're reaching while you're falling, don't reach for somebody
who's falling.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Also, okay, no.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Like reach for reach like Janet said, but if a
person's falling next to you, you're holding hands, falling, reach.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
For somebody, right, good to add that point that's really important.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Cause people like I'm falling, I'm reaching.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
If you reaching for the person that's behind you already falling, baby,
that's gonna drag you down further. Right, the people who
are stable, we're about falling.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
That's right, And there's plenty of people plenty plenty.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
I love that which and I thank you so much
for coming on the War to the Same podcast and
sharing your lift experience with foster.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Care and adoption. I'd love to hear that positive experiences,
and I.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Appreciate you sharing your unique story and just sharing your
beautiful existence. Is there anywhere that the listeners can follow you,
any work that you have coming up, anything that you
want to promote.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Yes, well I've just got a big, big deal. I
am now a contributor on Psychology Today the Inner Life
of foster Care.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
I love that. So is that like a magazine, an article.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Blog contributor, expert contributor of foster care. So if anyone
wants me to talk about anything, right, no one talks
about this. You know, psychology today is the number one
resource when understanding it's a health challenges for any population.
So you can email me Janette at Yofftherapy dot com.
My website is Jeanette Yoaft dot com and you can
(51:10):
find me there. And I also just wrote a book
called The Traumatized and at Risk Youth Toolbox. It's one
hundred and sixty interventions that I do with children in
foster care and those who have experienced trauma, so it's
for caregivers, parents pull Shorkerson's parents.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
I love that, and a guy who will have links
for all of that in the show notes. So if
you're listening right now, just throw down and you will
see the links to Jeanette's website, the book and all
that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Well, congratulations on your success to much and you're.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Inspiring to me. I'm so inspired. I really inspire guys.
So thank you, because it's rare. It's rare that I
see people who have similar lift experiences as me and
I could actually still look up to be like oh okay,
like because honestly, most people want to they've become victim
to the statistics. That's so we're looking at a lot
(52:01):
of foster youth who have addictions, who are homeless, who
have job insecurities. So when I see a person like
yourself who's gone to college and like something that like
your whole career is something that I want to go
out in and help the community.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
So you know, we're going to keep in touch.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Top I'm going to send you some some email about
some things I want you to blog about.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Please do.
Speaker 4 (52:25):
Definitely keep in touch, and thank you gave for sharing
your story and light Shiners, Like I say every week,
always shine your light because you never know how bright
you might shine for someone that guide them through the darkness.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
And even if your light is dim, it still shines
bright in the dark brood. So I aways shine your light,
light Shiners, and then until next week. I'll talk to
you later
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