The Hidden Trauma of Adoption with Janet Sherlund

Today we're diving into the complexities of adoption— exploring the emotional and psychological impacts on adoptees. Janet Sherlund, author of Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me , shares her personal experiences and insights, emphasizing the trauma associated with being adopted and the societal expectations surrounding it. We also consider the societal narratives surrounding adoption, the dark history of the adoption industry, and the importance of focusing on the needs of the child rather than the desires of adoptive parents. 

Learn More About Janet Here.

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Janet's Recommended Reading: Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson , Who is a Worthy Mother by Rebecca Wellington, Maggie O'Farrell's writing 

Keywords
adoption, trauma, identity, belonging, motherhood, generational perspectives, biological connections, open adoption, policies, gratitude, adoption, trauma, adoptees, parenting, adoption industry, reform, identity, belonging, infertility, societal norms

Chapters
00:00 Understanding Adoption: A Deeper Perspective
03:03 The Adoptee's Experience: Trauma and Identity
05:51 Generational Perspectives on Motherhood
08:49 The Search for Belonging: Filling the Void
12:07 Biological Connections: The Impact of Meeting Birth Parents
15:00 The Complexity of Adoption: Gratitude and Trauma
18:03 The Challenges of Open Adoption and Current Policies
30:02 The Adoption Industry and Its Implications
35:51 The Dark Side of Adoption
42:01 Understanding Trauma in Adoption
48:03 Reforming Adoption Practices for the Future

Transcript

Ryann (00:06.239)
Hi Janet, welcome to the Racing Wild Hearts podcast.

Janet Sherlund (00:09.804)
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Ryann (00:11.773)
Yeah, it's great to have you. And in reflecting for this conversation, I started to go like, what does the word adopt mean? And I actually, because I'm a word girl, googled the word adopt because I wanted to see what Webster had to say, right? And it means to legally take one's child as their own or take up one's child as their own.

And I thought that was really interesting because to me, thought, well, children aren't just a piece of property, right? They're these vessels to be nourished and protected and guided and held and loved and the many other responsibilities that we have as parents. And so that got me really thinking in like when someone chooses to adopt a child or even foster a child.

there's nothing in the contract that says you must love this child, you must pour into this child, you know, there's nothing that says that we have to do those things, of course, as parents either, right, no matter how we get our children. And so I just thought that was very interesting. And it seemed as though your mom had a hard time being a present and nurturing and nourishing mama.

Janet Sherlund (01:21.047)
Right. Right.

Ryann (01:36.457)
And I related to that because one, because I know how hard motherhood is and two, because I had a mother who had her own struggles and a grandmother and down the line. So I want to kick off with your mama and your relationship with her. She was going through her own trauma and that was very evident. How did you eventually heal with your adopted mom or did you?

Janet Sherlund (02:05.821)
I did. But one of things I just want to react to is that the dictionary definition of adopt, again, it comes from the adoptive parents point of view. And everything in our culture surrounding adoption comes from the adoptive parents point of view. It's what do they need to feel secure? What do they need to feel safe? What do they need? We even give adoptive parents tax benefits and

Everything is surrounded about the adoptive parent point of view. And then you can hear discussions more and more now, thank goodness, about the biological, birth mother and biological parents points of view. The point of view that is missing from our cultural conversation is the adoptee's experience. And that's why I wrote my book, because adoption is a trauma. It's a culturally unrecognized trauma. And it's the only trauma in which the victim is expected to be grateful.

And those of us who had a perfectly fine adoption, there many who don't, but those of us who did, you can be grateful for that adoption and still have been traumatized by being adopted. And so it's very interesting to me that even I hadn't looked it up in the dictionary, but the very dictionary definition is not, you know, something that's done in the benefit of the child, which is how it should be. Adoption should be centered around

a child needs a family, what is in their best interest and how do we best raise them? In our culture, it is not. is about, know, babies are commodities and they're sold to people and they're, and sadly, our world judges who is a fit parent by their income or the size of their home, we, while we give tax benefits to adoptive parents,

we don't give a dime to a birth parent trying to keep their child. so there's, you know, I just had to react to that first and foremost because that's one of my, one of the struggles I've had as an adoptee is people think of it as a hallmark story. And it is really hard to grow up with no connection to your heritage, with not understanding your authentic identity or your origin story with no one mirroring you.

Janet Sherlund (04:28.39)
with feeling just visually and chemically, cellularly different than your family, even if they love you. And to deal with the fact that love alone is not enough, you cannot heal the trauma of adoption by loving your child. You can only help the journey by recognizing and respecting the other family. You're raising someone else's child.

We've got to give up the fantasy that you can adopt a child and make it your own and make it in your nurture is the answer and it's going to be in your following your foot. No, this is someone else's child. They have the actions and the intentions and the interests and the chemistry and humor of their family of origin who they've been separated from by no choice of their own. And so you have to...

You have to come into that. And I think that's one of the things that my parents struggled with. They weren't able to have children that reflected them and their interests. And they didn't understand the different personalities and the different beings that they got. And there was no discussion about that. So my parents adopted four children, and yet we never talked about

what it felt like to be adopted or what it was like. It was just all pretend, you know, like we were all supposed to just be, you know, follow in the, for the hopes and dreams of our adoptive parents. And that creates such stress. And you already have adoptees who feel insecure, who feel abandoned and rejected, and now they're with the adoptive family. And so there's usually one of two responses, either,

the helly engine, I'm gonna push back and I'm gonna push you as far as I can and see if you throw me out, or the goody two shoes of I'll do everything you want, I just wanna be perfect and I want you to love me forever. And I certainly saw that divide in my family, two of us acting one way, two of us acting the other. And my mother was an educated and accomplished woman who served her communities her whole life and so many volunteer.

Janet Sherlund (06:48.194)
positions. She was a math professor as a profession when she was younger. She became an ordained minister later in life. She was seen by the community as just a pillar and a savior. yet she became a mother, I think, through adoption because in the 1950s, if you weren't a parent, if you didn't have a family, you weren't matching the status quo. You weren't part of the norm. This huge

middle class that developed after World War II and that was part of how communities and families were formed and so they adopted us but she really didn't enjoy being a mother. That was not a job she enjoyed.

Ryann (07:32.456)
Yeah.

Did she ever admit that to you? Like, did she ever say like, man, it was so hard? Like, did you ever get that? No. Yeah, I heard recently that closure, like the idea of closure has nothing to do with like the other person, that it's all like kind of an internal job. And I like that. You know, I think so many of us want to hear these phrases and these words and these apologies and even compassion from the people who have hurt us and whether that was inadvertently

Janet Sherlund (07:39.553)
No, no.

Ryann (08:03.223)
or just downright mean. And you know, we many of us never get that. And so I was just wondering. Yeah, to me, I had this sense I wrote down here that having children was like something else to add to your mom's resume. Like it was just checking the boxes. It was like.

Janet Sherlund (08:21.121)
Yeah. And it wasn't just her. mean, the 1950s, this was really a cultural phenomenon. was, it was, after the war, was building this, huge middle class that was now, you know, I don't know, 60 % instead of 13 % of the country. And it was what you had to have to be a part of that. And, you know, it was, and my mother was an A plus student, you know, valedictorian of her high school at age, you know, 14 or something, and always had to get straight A's. So if having children was part of the norm, she was

Ryann (08:26.227)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (08:49.194)
going to have children one way or the other. she did, it's interesting your question. Did she ever acknowledge that a few weeks before she died? Well, no, actually that's not true. It was a year before she died when my dad died and I read her the eulogy I'd written for him. And of course I adored my father and we had a very close relationship and he was a very special, very kind, very loving man. And when I finished she was teary.

And she loved it, but she said, I'm sorry you won't be able to say such nice things about me. So that is the, I was really surprised to hear that. I didn't know that she really had a concept of herself. And I think after that, I remember in the year between dad dying and then mom dying a year later, just really seeing her maybe go into herself more. And maybe she was doing that work that.

Ryann (09:27.795)
Wow.

Janet Sherlund (09:47.669)
some of the work you need to do before you let go of this world and consider her actions more. So that came close to what you were asking about.

Ryann (09:57.961)
Yeah.

Okay, so that was as close as she could go like this round like she it wasn't quite you know, all out like I'm so sorry or like spelling out like I remember saying this or doing this it was more just like a quiet thing and to me this could be wrong but perhaps that's a little generational to you know, I think of your mom kind of as my grandmother be only because my mom was born in 56 and so there's a similar timeline there.

And my grandma had six children, she's 97 now, about to be 98 in August. And so I look at her a lot and I, as much as I can, I want to talk to her and figure out her experience and how it was then and what her choices were or her perceived lack of choice, which was a lot for her. And yeah, it's so interesting, like the generational, yeah.

Janet Sherlund (10:44.553)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (10:49.671)
Yeah.

It is, there's definitely generational different ways of approaching things in those generations. And my mother had been born in 1922, so that was a very different generation.

Ryann (11:04.148)
Yes, my grandmother was born in 1927. I don't know if that math checks out, but anyway. Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (11:09.063)
Yeah.

Ryann (11:12.026)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so for me, your book, Abandoned at Birth, Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me, it was an is because I'm still reading it as I told you before we hit record. It's such a story about belonging and throughout you so beautifully described this like void inside of you this like dark, deep black hole. And I felt that like really viscerally throughout your words and

I really got a sense of like there was just something that you couldn't even name but it was dark and deep and and maybe even scary and just very unknown and so I'm so curious how did that void finally get filled did the book writing help in filling that void and where do you find that sense of belonging today

Janet Sherlund (12:07.762)
Well, I really appreciate your words. glad I wrote the book, trying to get non-adoptees to feel what it feels like, because it's hard, know, growing up when I'd say to people, I wish I could see someone who looked like me or, and they'd go, well, that's not important. I don't look like my parents. You know, they really dismissed it. And it was really what I was longing for was something deeper. It was that sense of belonging, of being a part of a clan and a family, which I didn't have. as, you know, certainly the world has opened up with online

discussions and posts now and all the reading I did as an adult, you really discover that that description of the big black hole at our center is a really universal adoptee experience. so what we're feeling is this, you know, it's very hard to describe this to people who grow up in their biological family and you see yourself in aunts and uncles, grandparents, parents, siblings, there can be common sense of humor or

or little actions, the way you move a hand or a head or the way you walk or things. And as you grow up, that's so important to your development. And you hear the stories of the generations before you and you come from that. And there's just a sense of being tethered to history. And when you're adopted, you don't have that, especially those of us adopted in the 50s through the 70s, where our adoptions were closed and we knew nothing about ourselves. And so...

You know, you've never seen another person that looks like you. You don't know anything about yourself. I didn't even know my ethnic identity. And you just, and you know you're with this family that's adopted you and they're fine and they're not doing anything bad to you, but you just feel so unconnected and disconnected and untethered and sad and lost. And because no one's talking about it and no one's telling you, you know, those are really normal things to feel when you're adopted.

And babies aren't blank slates. When you're in utero, hear your mother, you feel her rhythms. mean, you're sharing chemistry. You're part of her body. And when a baby is born, that's why it's important for them to stay near their mother, because they have that sense of safety and belonging. And when you're taken from that and handed to strangers, you feel that they're strangers. You chemically feel the difference.

Janet Sherlund (14:30.606)
They're like, they sort of smell different, they sound different, they move different, and you're just really traumatized and unsettled. we're doing this to infants who don't have language with which to process that. So you fundamentally start out life feeling uncertain, tentative, scared. You feel this great primal sense of loss. And you are remembering that even though you don't have language for it. And you're going through life with this feeling of something's wrong.

This isn't really who I am and where I belong. And then, you you're aware that you've been given to strangers and they've assigned you their name and you're living a false identity. you're, everyone's acting like that's a normal way to live. It's like a child being on the witness protection program. It's like what? And so, yeah, and so everything about your life is capricious, you know, and you know, like it could have been some other family that adopted me. You know, I would have been somebody else. Whole sense of identity and belonging is so capricious.

Ryann (15:13.938)
Right. Right. That's exactly.

Janet Sherlund (15:28.417)
And so it really shakes you to your very core. And what I discovered when I finally met my birth father, and I guess I thought maybe when I had my own children, I would feel that sense of connection. that was certainly, I mean, I love being a mother and that was certainly the best. But it was when in my late 50s, I finally met my biological father when my biological mother refused to meet me. And it was...

The minute I met this man, I, it was the first time we're ever meeting, I couldn't tell you three things about him. And he just looked into my eyes and I looked into his eyes and slam. mean, in that moment that our eyes met, this big black hole in me like filled up. It was like, was just this, and I'm thinking, and I just, felt found.

And I felt seen and I felt like I made sense for the first time in my life, but I couldn't tell you anything about him. But I was just like looking into my face in a way and he had looked into my, and he goes, you were Janet. And it was just, and so this, was like my cells recognized their kin. It was this biological sense of belonging. And I just made sense. And then,

My oldest son, we'd always wondered sort of who Will looked like. He didn't really look like Rick. I looked down, my father was holding his high school yearbook to show me pictures of he and my birth mother. And it was like looking at a picture of my son. I mean, all these years, my son looked like his grandfather, but we never knew his grandfather. so it is one of the things I've taken away from this experience of searching and finding is how biological belonging and identity are.

And it is deep and it's stuff that's not, we don't have words for it. It is, I know, it's hormonal or it's just like, but it is this physical, visceral cellular connection and just a sense of, get it. I see the thread, I see the bonds, I get it. And it is probably hard for people who have that to understand how important and significant that is.

Janet Sherlund (17:53.447)
And I know there are people who are in their biological families who reject them, who push back and say they don't understand me, I don't like them. At least you have that to push against. For those of us that have nothing, there's nothing to push against.

Ryann (18:03.454)
Yeah.

Well, and that's individuation that is pushing against right the the family that you've come into and that's getting to know who you are as separate from them and child development tells us I think it's two which is why there's the terrible twos which I don't buy into but that's a whole nother episode but that's why two year olds are so fierce in their like because they realize for the first time that they are not

Janet Sherlund (18:24.19)
Yeah.

Ryann (18:33.682)
their parents. And so a newborn comes into the world. I am mom. I am dad. And if I'm not mom and I'm not dad, that's such a soul shifting event. You know, it's it's it's biological. And to me, it's spiritual. And I loved your biological dad because of the way you talked about meeting him. And because of that instant connection, thought, my God,

Janet Sherlund (18:34.696)
Yeah.

Ryann (19:03.686)
just so cool. just love him and he seemed so kind and so open and willing to be with you and share this experience with you and actually

I was adopted by my stepdad. So my biological father gave up the rights to me. I think I was three-ish, so I don't actually have any conscious memory of him. And so I understand a little bit of what you're talking about, because I always had this void, this very strange sense of who am I? And nobody else has this other name that they weren't born with, and this stepdad who's now their dad.

Janet Sherlund (19:39.612)
Mmm.

Ryann (19:42.617)
and they're calling dad and now the name has changed like it was all very confusing to me like my parents I call my stepdad dad today my parents got married when I was seven and so I do have this sense of that void and I really like as a kid would be like is he gonna call is he gonna send a card and he never did and he died and I was my sisters my half-sisters called me and they said you know

Janet Sherlund (19:46.768)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (20:03.366)
time.

Ryann (20:08.764)
Our dad is very close to death and I said, I'm getting on a plane and I'm coming. And I thought in my mind, you know, the movie script played out and I thought, he's gonna tell me, he's gonna tell me everything. And we're gonna have this moment and he's gonna look at me and I'm gonna look at him. And he died while I was on the plane. And I thought, my God, I was so mad. I was so mad.

Janet Sherlund (20:21.697)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (20:35.525)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryann (20:38.48)
And so for the past decade plus, this was about I think 13, 14 years ago, I've really been unraveling that he could never do that for him. And so I had to really just address that on my own. And as much as everyone said like, your dad loved you or God, you're so lucky with your stepdad or imagine what your life would have been if you stayed in that house because he was an alcoholic and.

Janet Sherlund (20:59.451)
Yeah.

Ryann (21:05.96)
He was abusive and he had these really dark demons that he was battling with. And none of that shit mattered. And I wanted someone to just say, wow, how terrible is that that you got taken away from your dad at three years old and that he didn't want you? That's all I wanted someone to say.

Janet Sherlund (21:12.184)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (21:16.868)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And you know that you can't like, can't trade traumas, right? You can't rank, or crank them. And so when people say things like that, you think, yeah, I'm certainly had a easier life since being adopted, especially because my birth mother was, you know, she wasn't a saint. And she was a difficult woman, But I also wouldn't have had the foundational trauma that I had.

Ryann (21:39.924)
She was spiky. She was spiky. I had... Yes, yes.

Janet Sherlund (21:50.529)
of being abandoned and never looked at, never cared about, just rejected outright. so, when a biological child is born into a family, they don't get to come into the world and say, no alcoholism, no mental problems, no harsh personalities in this family, I just want a perfect life. They don't get a perfect life and they have to deal with and manage what comes to them in their family. And I just think...

You know, many times adoptees are infantilized, you know, like, we have to give them this what looks like a perfect family, which never is. But, you know, like, no, we can handle the same thing anyone else has. And you can't rank traumas, but it certainly is a trauma to be separated from yourself and to live a life that's a lie. And you just want someone to recognize that and you don't. And like I said, there comes that gratitude thing. As an adoptee, you're supposed to have gratitude and you're considered, you know,

Ryann (22:23.892)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (22:46.39)
an awful person if you don't. you know, I talk about that, again, you can have the gratitude and still have been traumatized, but it is also the gratitude that we do have that further distances us from ourselves because we can't be honest. Because if we're so worried about offending or hurting our adoptive parents who we love and who were desperate to have them keep us, right? We were given away by our very own birth mother and family didn't keep us so.

Who are we? And so you go through your life not telling the truth about how you feel because you don't want to hurt these people you love. So, you know, on another layer of being silenced and taken away from normal, healthy development, if you can't be honest and you can't be real, then you're not developing as a healthy, intact human being. And we know adoptees have over four times the suicide rate and overrepresented in hospitalizations for both mental health and addiction.

I this is a trauma and you have to deal with it and it's really hard to deal with and thus that end result for so many. And for others, you you dig in, you just go there and you dive in and you look at it and you read about it and you get therapy and you get help and you try and heal yourself by finding out the answers and going there and dealing with those really dark, deep emotions. And if you don't,

There are all sorts of ways to cope with that. None of them are usually pretty successful. when people ask me if I healed, going there for me and going on this journey was really hard and really difficult and I got a lot of support along the way. I am more integrated, more healthy and

content than I've ever been. But it's trauma and it's grief. And you never get over grief. Someone doesn't say, or have you healed from your grief? No, you just, after a while you accept it and you walk alongside it. And it's part of my life, but I have worked really hard to gather all those pieces of myself and find out who I biologically am and then

Janet Sherlund (25:07.188)
integrate that with who I was raised to be in an adoptive home and then have to figure out, well, so what does that make me? Who am I? And my biological mother, like your biological father, we never had a moment and there was never any acceptance and closure and she died. And that still haunts me.

I mean, at my age and at her and with all that I have, I have a lovely marriage, 200 children, now beautiful granddaughter. I mean, I've been very lucky and someone in the past year asked me if you could say one more thing to your mother, your birth mother, what would it be? And I'd say, I still want her to want me. After all of this, that's just such a criminal thing. Yeah.

Ryann (25:55.734)
Mmm. I'm crying. Yes. I want her to want me. I want him to want me. That's right.

Janet Sherlund (25:59.998)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I understand that my adopted mother, when she's a minister and did a lot of work with youths in her later years, and she said it really always struck her that even children who are in just terrible, abusive households didn't want to be separated from their parents. They wanted their mother. I mean, that connection to our blood, to our mother is so deep in us.

You know, and my husband pointed out, goes, look on the battlefield, the dying soldier, last breath calls out for his mother. I mean, you know, like this is, it goes beyond our rational brains to like more almost, you know, primal animal kind of responses and feelings. And what we need as human beings to survive and to thrive. And yeah, it's, we need to understand more.

how much identity and belonging are physical, biological, cellular, so that in adoption, we stop living in the shadow of our adoptive parents' needs and make a structure that really supports what the adoptee needs, because they're the one that's lost everything. They've lost everything.

Ryann (27:17.66)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. And knowing what we know now, like about attachment theory and child development and all these things, right, that weren't perhaps mainstream then, you know, knowing that now, how have policies changed? Have they changed? Are they more in favor of the adoptee? They've gotten worse. Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (27:40.625)
They've gotten worse. mean, there are things like open adoption, but there are plenty of people out there who have experienced that who will tell you, you know, that doesn't take away all these other things and all the problems. But the big issue with open adoption that I was shocked to discover in the last year, it's not legally binding. So you have parents often negotiating with the birth mother within 24 hours of her giving birth when she is not mentally together, emotionally together. To enter into this contract,

Ryann (28:06.105)
Right.

Janet Sherlund (28:08.588)
It's legally binding and the adoptive parents can and usually do this disappear at some point and take away the contact between their child and the birth parent. And adoption now in our country is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Industry, yes it is. it is babies are the commodities they need and they're not enough. And there is such pressure. There is such pressure to young mothers who

Ryann (28:27.239)
Is it really?

Janet Sherlund (28:38.04)
may be having a difficult time financially or are young. the things that are being done in this world today to pressure women to give up babies, to relinquish them so that they can be sold to adoptive parents is shocking. And I'd urge everyone who wants to know more about this to read Gretchen Syson's book, Relinquished. But I mean, things like these adoption organizations are like big

marketing machines. They do things like put, and I'm forgetting the term for it now, but there's a way from a satellite you can beam down, can put an electronic fence thing around an area that signals when cell phones come in and out of it. And they will encircle like this, planned parenthood or abortion clinics, whatever. And anytime a woman's phone pings it, they will then ping her phone with ads for adoption and

and glowing, you know, these manufactured, you know, marketing ads and booklets about these wonderful parents that who have so much more than you do. And, you know, you'd be terrible not to give this child all of this. you know, again, it is shocking to find out what's going on nowadays, even with all the knowledge we have. Again, it's not about what's best for the child. It's about

Ryann (30:02.878)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (30:03.788)
what the adoptive parents want or the adoption industry wants. And we have to be aware of that. it's appalling that the last, or the judgments are being made that that child will be better off in this other family because they have more than, and again, financial incentives for adoptive parents, none for biological parents. It's,

Ryann (30:32.582)
I'm shocked. I would have never thought like, that's an industry. I never really connected those dots. I have three children of my own. I've been like, I wonder if I would ever adopt. I feel like I hear this narrative of like, there's so many kids out there who need adopting. of like, you hear that narrative with dogs too, and I'm not making a correlation there. I'm just, you hear that same narrative. And it's like.

Janet Sherlund (30:33.389)
to shocking him.

Janet Sherlund (30:58.999)
Well, even with dogs, they don't separate the puppies from their birth, the mother for eight weeks. separate infant humans immediately. there is kind of some crazy irony in that whole analogy.

Ryann (31:11.46)
my god, that's a great point. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, that's that is wild to me and I you know, I go like into my mind and I go okay If I was never able to have kids what which I was and so I it's hard for me to put myself in someone else's shoes, but I imagine a parallel universe where I'm not able to conceive right and I think and this is my belief that like

This is not meant for me. Motherhood is not meant for me for whatever reason. Like I have a very strong belief in a higher power. I prefer God or universe, whatever. It doesn't matter. And so I would think like, OK, this journey is not for me. And so I would not necessarily seek out even IVF. And I don't think people who are doing that are wrong or bad. It's just my belief and what I would do with my body and my family. And I would just, I don't know, throw my life into something else.

I've thrown my life into parenting now. so I feel like there's this, like your mother had at the time in the 50s, this desire to keep up with the Joneses and look at these kids and look at how cute they are and how they match and how they have pigtails and look at our family photo. And it's like a status thing. And I think it's still very much like that today. And there are also many women who choose not to have children.

Janet Sherlund (32:40.875)
Yeah.

Ryann (32:41.11)
And then there are women who have children, not by an intentional choice, but guess what? that's your baby. That's your calling. That's your job. That's where you are now. financially strapped or not, challenge will make you stronger. And if you step up to be a parent, I would argue, that will make you stronger. That will make you more successful. That will make you fight for something that's bigger than you.

Janet Sherlund (32:49.79)
Yeah. Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (32:55.314)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryann (33:11.1)
giving you a purpose and I'm not saying that our children are purpose because there's a problem with that too but like so that's my take on it hard to say because I live the life I live yeah

Janet Sherlund (33:19.626)
Yeah, I know. think you're right. And that one of the first things you said, it rings very true. Babies aren't the solution for infertility and no one is owed a child. And I'm very sorry if someone wants children they can't have. I can't imagine that. That would be devastating. I would be devastated. But you still aren't owed someone else's child. And you shouldn't feel like you can just buy them.

Ryann (33:49.03)
No. No, and I never thought about like, let me just buy a baby. That sounds insane to me. Like how much is a baby? I mean, this is silly, but how much is a

Janet Sherlund (33:49.566)
which is how it is now a day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 50,000 to $100,000. No, and the birth mother gets nothing. The birth mothers are expected to give their baby to an agency. The agency will take and the price goes up by the desirability of the child. Their parents, their ethnic background, yeah, it's really...

Ryann (34:05.46)
Stop.

Ryann (34:22.324)
Man, I know I'm just like, like, but yes, but good though. It's this, yeah.

Janet Sherlund (34:22.888)
your eyes will be badly opened. Yeah, shockingly opened. it's, yeah, it's like, and there's that, like, you see that phase, oh, you can always adopt. Adoption is not the answer to infertility. we have, America is like, somewhere between 3 and 35%, that's a big range. More adoption, stranger adoptions than any other country in the world, any comparable country in the world. And, you know, pre-

1900s, if children needed a family, they were fostered or there were kinship adoption there within the family. It's only been, you really since the early 1900s, but especially since post World War Two, that this stranger adoption has become such a part of again, creating an image of a family. And then, and it was Georgia Tan, I don't know if you know Georgia Tan, she was the woman in 1924, the Tennessee

Children's, I forget the exact name, authority, who saw the market for babies and stole. I mean, this is there have been many movies and books written about her, but stole babies off of front porches in in Tennessee or had people of power. She adopted. She found babies for many politicians and Hollywood celebrities and so she she had doctors working with her that would tell, especially poor mothers or

young mothers that their babies died in childbirth when actually they take them and they sell them. And so then she had all these powerful people who she had helped find children and she didn't want the parents who had lost those children or the children themselves to threaten that in any way or maybe neighbors to judge parents for adopting which is not seen as a desirable thing. So she was the one that lobbied to have all the birth records sealed so that no one could ever

trace the... so she literally erased the fact of birth and heredity of all of us who then lived with sealed records. so it's really been... there's really a very dark side of adoption. Very dark side.

Ryann (36:34.974)
That's dark.

That's dark. I'm like, I can feel like the anger rising up in my body. Like I'm so pissed off. This is all new news to me. And I'm so glad we're having this discussion because I think this is how like the ripple effect happen happens. Like this is how people start talking in their homes and in their communities about the real issues behind the issues. And I think this is so important for that.

Janet Sherlund (36:41.402)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (36:52.932)
Yeah. Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (37:03.138)
Yeah. And Who is a Worthy Mother is another great book that really goes into just beautiful book. they just, but they're so upsetting to read because you're just, you know, one of the other things I want to say about, you know, the external people outside of the constellation, the adoption constellation, they often say if they know adoptees who are successful, they say, well, like what a great life, you know, adoption stuff, this person's had such a great life and

and been so successful and they certainly wouldn't have had that life with their biological family. And I'm saying you cannot see inside somebody and you cannot see the trauma they're living with. I know We've all heard stories of people maybe even late in life who looked like they've been very successful and suddenly said they commit suicide or something and you think, what? How could that? And you've got two things going on with adoptees, especially for those adoptees that feel so insecure that they try and excel at everything.

so that they are earned their place in their family and their love. So they're working really hard at everything and excelling at life because of that. But inside, what they're going through, you just don't know. You don't know how much more it's taken for them to get where they are because every day it's like someone living with this deep depression and grief that they're covering up and they're not being able to really address it and be honest. And that's why at some point in life, usually,

there's a crisis or there's death of adopted parents or the birth of their own children is something that makes them just stop and have to take a look at all of that. But you can have very successful, very together looking people that are struggling in their lives every day. And a friend of mine who was adopted herself and then became a therapist and is very successful and lovely life has said,

we by adoptees wouldn't wish this on anybody. That's a powerful statement. That's how fundamentally, primally painful and deep this is. And that's why we have to change things in the adoption industry. We have to look at it from the point of view of the children, of the adoptees. And we also have to bring that awareness to donor-conceived individuals.

Janet Sherlund (39:30.529)
sperm donor babies who are bonding and saying, need to know more than our father was number one, two, three. And people don't understand that. But we have very poor understanding of what creates belonging and identity in this world. also, you know, there are discussions of the kind of pain and trauma adoptees live with when you're talking about reproductive rights. You know, it's just...

you know no matter what your viewpoint is on all of these things you need to know the truth so that you can come to informed decisions and not be swayed by an industry or political there are lot of political issues around adoption and the whole abortion adoption dialogue these days but it's and it still is it still is pertinent and new issues are cropping up in our world that these fundamental issues apply to

And again, in 40 states, our birth records are still sealed. So at the very least, here in one of those states, maybe it comes up on a ballot, you can vote with better understanding of why that's important to those of us who have lived a hidden life.

Ryann (40:40.168)
Totally. My mind went to politics actually and religion specifically too. We're in Florida and when you drive up through the state, know, there are billboards which came to my mind of like, you know, anti-abortion basically, like they're very Christian based. It seems like they're originated in some sort of Christian organization. And now I'm going, well, what about this hidden agenda to do away with abortion? So now there's more babies for people to adopt. I mean, that's where my mind goes.

Janet Sherlund (40:43.742)
Nah. Nah.

Janet Sherlund (41:07.283)
Yeah. Yeah. that's definitely. Yeah. You're not. Your mind went in the right place. Yes, absolutely.

Ryann (41:10.951)
Right?

Yes, I put that together and I also love this conversation because you said something that you know about success like and you hear people all the time like look at me I was spanked as a kid and I'm fine or look at me I was and I'm fine look at me and I'm fine like and and no are you are you really though because most of us aren't you know most of us have some sort of something that we're going through and

Janet Sherlund (41:33.95)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Ryann (41:42.667)
these challenges that make us who we are. Yes, they make us stronger. They allow us to develop resilience and from the outside people can look totally happy, totally together. The family's perfect. The million dollars is in the bank and there's still this depth of unhappiness, unfulfillment. And so this is an important conversation for that too. It's not from the outside. It's from the inside, you know?

Janet Sherlund (42:01.512)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (42:09.062)
Yeah. Yeah. And so many people, unfortunately in our society, still feel like they shouldn't talk about their problems or their issues. When actually, when you do and you make yourself vulnerable, you find so many others open up to you and share their stories. But I've had both experiences in publishing this book. I've had many people, most of these friends, as many people coming up to me and saying to I had no idea and

and this is what I've been through and sharing realities and struggles with me that I never do. And you just both feel closer together. You feel more human, more seen, more appreciated. And I've also had people who are kind of taken aback and say, wow, like, you know, they're trying to cloak it nicely. You were really brave to write this. you know what, what I know they're saying is like, how did you reveal so much about yourself, especially things that weren't flattering and weren't nice? And I'm like,

Ryann (43:00.114)
You're like, thank you?

Janet Sherlund (43:06.223)
This is life. This is the life I, like, I'm sure we've all lived, we all have this, but I can still see there are a lot of people who aren't comfortable going there and just don't want the world to know anything other than everything's fine. And I'm like, you know, okay, that is not a way to live. And that's also not bringing you closer to anybody else. I mean, that's just, I don't, that hasn't been a healthy experience for me, but,

Yeah, it's definitely still there. It's definitely still out there.

Ryann (43:40.329)
Yeah.

Yeah, I so appreciate this conversation and the conversations like this that I have on the podcast Really for that reason like there is this depth of getting to know one person's story one person's point of view You know, and it's important for me. It's so fulfilling I I walk away from these interviews and i'll walk away from this interview so filled and so inspired and Just like a little bit more human, you know like

Janet Sherlund (44:10.586)
Well, the more specific you get, the more universally you become. Because we all live a life that's not easy. No one gets an easy pass. It's just not. And I think the best way to deal with that is face it. Go there. The only way out is through. Go there, but get help.

Ryann (44:11.375)
share and be witnessed and it's beautiful.

Ryann (44:22.772)
No, no. And I hope, yeah.

Janet Sherlund (44:34.553)
get support. There's a lot to read, there's a lot of conversations to have there, there are therapists out there that can help you. Whatever you find, wherever you find support, but inform support, especially for adoptees. If you're going to a therapist, find someone who understands adoption and who's not going to just placate you with things. yeah, I really feel like, I feel like if you're in any trauma, going there and dealing with it is the way you're going to.

accept it and live with it the most peacefully.

Ryann (45:06.696)
Yeah, the only way out is through. think that's beautiful and that's certainly been true in my life. so I can, you know, my grandma the other day was like, what makes you qualified to like tell people what to do? I was like, you know, she's trying to understand like what's a podcast and what I do. I'm like, well, grandma, I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm actually just asking the really important questions to spark a dialogue and to get people to start thinking for themselves and, you know, to get people to be brave enough to step into that.

Janet Sherlund (45:21.923)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (45:36.345)
You

Ryann (45:36.63)
messy work that is the growth and the evolution and the challenge you know that that that we need that yeah yeah yeah

Janet Sherlund (45:43.577)
And being human and being in touch with that really counts for a lot. it's one of the things like with people, not adoptees, tell adoptees how to feel or what's important and like what gives you the qualifications. go, well, I've lived that life for 70 years now. And this is my story and I'm telling my experience, but what I found is that my experience is so universal.

Ryann (45:59.442)
Yes. Yes.

Janet Sherlund (46:09.923)
This is an exception. You can't look at this and say, well, that's just her story. No, this is the story of a huge world of people that are affected by this. So it's been so affirming and so gratifying to, again, start these conversations, raise awareness so that people can go, I didn't realize. I never knew.

Ryann (46:32.67)
Totally, yeah, it's opened my eyes to so much and thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for being vulnerable. Thank you for showing up today and talking to me. Before we start to wrap up, I just want to like get your 30 second take. You've hinted to it before, like that the solution is, you know, renaming these laws or rewriting these laws in favor of the adoptee. So if you had a magic wand, if you could snap your fingers and change it all, like what's the solution?

Janet Sherlund (47:03.263)
I can't cloak it in terms of laws and I'm not an expert in that to know, but it would be to focus on the adoptee, to focus on that individual. People used to say child because adoption usually happens to an infant or child. Focus on them and say, what does a child need to be raised to be a healthy and attacked human being? What is damaging in adoption? How can we correct that? And how can we shift, literally re-,

re-educate and inform our society, our culture, unto these realities instead of vice versa. And how can we maybe make illegal some of the practices of the adoption industry, which is not into anybody's benefit but their own pocket. But it's really to start with the adoptee and make everything work in the honest and truthful

steps that they need to grow, which will involve a lot more insecurity maybe on adoptive parents. you can't take, that's just, you know, I'm like, when you adopt a child, you are raising someone else's child and you can never forget that. And you have to respect and honor where they came from. And you have to inspect and be comfortable with their need to know that. And you can't take that from them because you're scared. And so again, everything should be.

Ryann (48:28.765)
Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (48:30.746)
what does this child need to grow up healthy, not how do we protect adoptive parents and quell their fears or how do we continue to let this industry thrive. there are lot of, there are so many levels, there need to be changes, but it would be, let's start at the beginning and have the right focus.

Ryann (48:40.285)
Yeah.

Ryann (48:44.404)
Yeah.

Ryann (48:48.902)
Yeah, and where my mind goes with that, because this is like the through line of the podcast is like when we grow, when we evolve, we leave the world better for the next generation. I'm always I've always been drawn to children. I've always had an affinity for babies and children. And I just feel so deeply that things need to change with the way we speak to children, the way we raise children, the way we get all of it, all of it. And so what if culture

was just different and it doesn't matter if it's an adoptee or a biological child, no matter what, we're just very conscious of this little individual human and soul in front of us and they're going to have all different needs. I've got three kids and they all have a different bag of tricks. like everybody needs something different. So wouldn't it be beautiful if we could just like change the world to just like be better to kids? Like, come on guys, we gotta be better to the kids. So yes, this conversation

Janet Sherlund (49:36.039)
Yeah.

Nah.

Janet Sherlund (49:44.732)
Yeah.

Ryann (49:48.679)
Has been so inspiring. I'm glad we brought it back up. We got a little dark there, but we brought it back up guys We're ending a little lighter here So I would love to find out where we can get your book I'm assuming everywhere books are sold abandoned at birth searching for the arms that once held me

Janet Sherlund (49:52.956)
Yeah. Yeah.

Janet Sherlund (50:03.26)
Yep, And Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, any of those places. There's also an audiobook for those who like to run while they listen. And my website is abandonedatbirthbook.com. And I a very active Instagram, really focused on both my writing, an author as well as an adoptee, but at Janet Sherland Official.

Ryann (50:14.824)
Yeah.

Ryann (50:31.316)
Perfect. That's great. Alright, so I'm going to put that down in the notes. Click down there, get the book, follow Janet. Alright, now as we officially wrap up, I'm going to ask you the three questions I ask everybody at the end of the interview. The first one is what's bringing you joy today, Janet?

Janet Sherlund (50:47.682)
I think, well, one of the first days of spring, it's feeling like here, but one of the more consistently, have a six month old granddaughter and just was with her again last week. And my gosh, it just is, they're right, being a grandparent is the best job in the world.

Ryann (51:05.158)
Yeah, our parents consistently remind us that it's like the best.

Janet Sherlund (51:08.271)
Yeah, it's the best. that is just a new joy. And having raised two sons and now I'm with a little granddaughter, it's just, yeah, it's the best.

Ryann (51:15.182)
Yes! So sweet. And then you gave us already a couple good great book recommendations, obviously including your own. But what if anything are you reading right now?

Janet Sherlund (51:27.3)
Gosh, know, I have, I'm always reading a lot. I love to read. And the one there, I'm not reading anything right now, but the one name I always want to put out there is Maggie O'Farrell. I mean, I just love Maggie O'Farrell's writing and it's just delicious. It's so beautiful. I could just eat it with a spoon. I mean, just love her work. that's right now, the books I'm reading right now, don't, you know, they're all fine, but.

If I'd urge someone to read something, would be, take up anything by Maggie O'Farrell and just treat yourself.

Ryann (52:01.438)
Thank you. And she writes fiction? Okay, good. I'm a nonfiction girl, but I dabble in fiction every now and then when I need a good story in my life. So I will check her out. Thank you for that recommendation. Okay, good. And then the last question I have for you is who or what has taught you the most?

Janet Sherlund (52:03.204)
Yes.

Janet Sherlund (52:11.002)
Yeah. Beautiful.

Janet Sherlund (52:21.018)
You know, I always say my dad, my adopted father, he is the one who, when I asked him when I was little, know, daddy, do you believe in heaven? He said, I think heaven is the feeling you leave in other people while you're still here on this earth. And I think I sort of patterned myself after him because I loved him so much and he had that, he treated everyone with such respect and grace and.

just was just the kindest most gentlest soul and you know I guess contrasting that with my mother who's always screaming and yelling all the time but you know I to the best of my ability I just you know took him in and and took that philosophy with me so I would say my adoptive father.

Ryann (53:08.02)
That's beautiful. remember the moment in the book when you wanted to just like go and kind of like slam a glass into your mom's feet and just like tell her like, would you shut the hell up? And you kind of had this sense of like, wait, I can actually choose calm. And to me, so much of that was modeled by your dad. And I felt that in the book too.

Thank you so much again for being here, Janet.

Janet Sherlund (53:37.581)
Thank you for a great conversation and for this opportunity. I really appreciate it.