Adoption, Addiction and Healing

SPEAKER_02 0:03

And welcome to Call Her Cat. Today I have Diana Palmasano on today. She is a storyteller, a mother of three, an adoption advocate known for her raw, thought-provoking conversations about identity, generational healing, and what it means to break cycles. As an adoptee with a highly complex origin story, Diana uses her voice to challenge common narratives around adoption while creating space for nuance, truth, and emotional honesty. Diana, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hi, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit, tell everybody about you.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I'm Diana. I'm an adoptee, a mother of three, and a storyteller. My life began in a very complex origin story, and over time I've become deeply interested in what it means to examine where we come from without being defined by it. My work and my voice tend to live in the intersection of identity, generational healing, and conscious motherhood. Um, I speak openly about adoption, resilience, and breaking in here inherited cycles, not perfectly, but intentionally. At this stage in my life, I'm less interested in asking why did this happen to me? And I'm more committed to asking, what am I going to do with what happened? And that question really shapes the way I parent, the way I live, and the way I tell my story.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Do you want to tell maybe a little about your story?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Um, I was adopted at two months old, and I grew up pretty normally, um, other than having just like some behavioral issues going on. I met my birth mother when I was a teenager, and my birth father. I had lived with both of them. So I've experienced a lot of things that many adopted people have not experienced, and it definitely made me a different, more resilient person um today than I would have been if I hadn't gone through those experiences.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

How has not only that relationship with her, but the relationship with your adopted mom uh shaped you as a mom?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

I had two very different maternal forces, one um defined by instability and one defined by structure. They both showed me things about what kids really need in their lives. My birth mother lived in survival mode. Uh, her life was unpredictable and often unsafe. And I do hold compassion for her pain. I'm also very honest about what that level of chaos does to a kid or even a baby in the womb. Children don't experience um our intentions, they experience our nervous system. My adoptive mother provided me a home and opportunities, but adoption is layered. Love can absolutely exist, yet emotional attunement can still be missing. When a child feels misunderstood long enough, she learns to adapt and read the room and to become who I believed I needed to be in order to belong during times when I was young. The hyper-awareness followed me into adulthood, but becoming a mom kind of changed me. Uh, when I had my kids, I made a conscious decision that they would never have to perform to have me love them. In my house, safety isn't earned, belonging isn't conditional, and their emotions are not inconvenient. Both of my mothers in very different ways gave me clarity, not just about what I wanted to continue, but about what I was determined to change. To me, generational healing isn't about blaming the women the women who came before you. It's about becoming the woman who changes what's next.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

How has your how has adoption affected your own understanding of your identity?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Uh adoption made me a seeker very early in life. When you don't grow up with genetic mirrors and people that share your features and mannerisms and wiring, you tend to start seeking yourself elsewhere. For a long time, identity felt less like something I inherited and something more like that I had to assemble. And with age came a realization that changed everything for me. Identity isn't something you wait to be handed, it's something that you claim. Today, I don't view my adoption as a missing piece anymore. I see it as the beginning of a very conscious life, one where I've had the opportunity to decide with intention which version I want to be.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

What do you wish more people understood about adoption?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I think that a lot of people feel like adopted kids are supposed to be grateful, but adoption doesn't erase loss. It it starts with a loss. Before there's a family, there's separation. And even when an adoptee is really loved and has a great family, the body remembers what the mind cannot articulate. Many adoptees grow up holding a quiet question beneath the surface. They want to know if they were wanted or why they were given away. And those are two very different emotional experiences. What adoptees need most is permission to tell the truth of their inner world without being labeled ungrateful because acknowledging complexity is not rejection, it's emotional maturity, and you can love your adoptive family, but also long for knowing where you came from. Adoption expanded my life in many ways, but it also required me to build my identity very consciously, and that process has made me incredibly intentional, especially as a mother.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Do you think sometimes it was hard to, you know, feel those two things at once, like feeling the loss and then feeling grateful?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I don't think I felt grateful. I don't think I feel grateful because I didn't ask. I didn't ask to be born, I didn't ask to be sold, I didn't ask to be purchased, I didn't ask.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Um, you didn't get a choice in any of that.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

The adults around me made decisions for me that I had no say in, so I don't feel like I should be grateful in the way that people speak to adopted people. I love my parents and they gave me a great life, but they would have given any child that they got that same life. I'm not special. I'm just the baby that they got.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Understand that. Do you think all that combined, it made it difficult for you to trust people and let them close to you?

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Um I wouldn't say it's as much of a struggle with trust. It's more that I approach things with discernment. Um, my earliest experiences taught me that connection can shift or disappear. So I try to be very perceptive of other people, and I've learned to read energy and patterns and inconsistencies. Um hyper-awareness comes from trauma, but it turns into wisdom. I no longer see guardedness as a flaw, I see it as self-respect. Trust isn't something I give quickly, but when I do give it, it is steady and deeply rooted.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

You have do you have two siblings, is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yes. How is I have three siblings?

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Three siblings.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I have and one that is passed away, but I have three siblings, three brothers.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

What is the relationship or what were the relationships are like with your siblings?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Like how is that I have two brothers that I grew up with, and one is my half-biological sibling, and the other is my adopted brother. Um, he is the natural child of my adopted parents. We grew up as siblings, um, pretty normally. My other brother, Jeff, he lives in California, but he grew up around where we did. I just didn't meet him until 2024. I had given up and thought that he was a fake person, that he didn't exist because my birth mother told a lot of stories. Uh and then he was on ancestry.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Wild how you met him.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah, he's um he's he's an alright guy.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

How having such a complex um beginning how do you define family today?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Family isn't really I don't know. Um family to me is not defined by paperwork or proximity. It is the place where your nervous system can feel the most secure. It's where you're safe enough to be fully seen and fully loved. And as someone whose beginnings were complex, building that kind of family has been the most intentional and meaningful achievement for me.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

What in what inspired you to want to start to share your story?

SPEAKER_01 12:18

For a long time, I felt like silence was safer and I just internalized everything. But I came to understand that when we avoid telling the truth about our lives, the people living in those realities current currently often feel alone. If sharing my story does anything, I hope it widens the conversation around adoption, identity, motherhood, resilience, all of it. Because where we begin doesn't dictate what we're capable of doing. We are allowed to outgrow our origins. Um, yeah, I've had a few people message me and say different things or ask advice um or how I found my birth mother when I was a teenager. And it's a lot easier now. Everything's online. I did it when computer when everyone was just getting computers and it was like whitepages.com, and I just was like typing names into the fucking spots, hoping that something would like work. I was 14. I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

How does it feel when like somebody reaches out to you kind of like as an adoptee?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

I feel like that, you know, maybe the things that I'm doing are working, and maybe someone is hearing me.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

And what are some of the strengths that you think you've developed from your childhood experiences?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Uh resilience is probably the obvious answer there. But um, really adaptability is what carried with me. I learned how to walk into unfamiliar environments and figure out who I needed to be in order to survive there. The strength I value most today is self-awareness. I've done the intentional work to understand my patterns, my triggers, my emotional landscape, so that my children don't have to inherit wounds that were never theirs to carry in the first place. Uh, to me, the highest form of strength is not endurance, it's consciousness.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

It could have gone a different way with you, you know. It could have gone, you could have gone down a darker path, like, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

And now it was plenty dark. Thank you. I needed a torch.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

I needed was was where does um in what ways um has your is your childhood affected your view or relationship with alcohol or substance abuse?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

My parents did not were not like my adoptive parents are not substance users. My dad drank wine, you know, but my dad was he wasn't like my parents are not like that. My mom is like very straight edge, but my biological parents both were drug and alcohol users. My mom didn't drink as much. Um, she did it didn't really agree with her. It doesn't really agree with me either, but my biological father was an alcoholic for a long time, and his father was an alcoholic. Um it runs it runs deep. My dad is still a pothead to this day. Uh, he sends me like funny memes. Someone taught him how to use YouTube. He also sends me those. I it's great. He just got a Facebook. Um, and we talk about how he smokes his hits in his lazy boy.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

And then um I tell him about my my vape pens because I don't like doing hits, it's too harsh. And we just, you know, it's it's nice. I like my dad, but um, my childhood made me very honest about coping. And I understand how easily unprocessed pain can drive a person towards anything that promises relief or escape. I've always believed in self-examination, not just asking what we're using, but why and why it's helping us cope. For me, healing has meant learning how to stay present with my emotions rather than outrun them. And what we refuse to process, we often pass on. And breaking cycles requires an enormous amount of emotional responsibility. And um, parents that are using aren't capable of that type of responsibility. Um, I have learned that although my parents are were sober people, a lot of my friends' parents were not, and parents using substances really does affect the children even when we think it doesn't. They know when we're fucked up, they can tell.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Dysregulates their nervous system because you talked a little bit about that too. Um, how it's hard to be a mom if your nervous system is completely dysregulated. Yeah. What do you is it is it okay to ask? Like, do your children know much about your story?

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Do they know Yeah, they know everything. They can ask me anything. We don't, um, we're not quiet around here about things.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Oh, I love that. Yeah, you leave that door open.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Like there's no my nine-year-old, um, I think is still trying to figure it out, like understand it. And he this summer was like getting sassy talking about my adoptive parents, and he's like, Well, they're not even related to us, so and I was like, Whoa, hold on. I was like, I think I did something wrong here. That should not be what you say, like, those are still my parents, you know, that that is who took care of me. Genes don't just make you your family, you know, and so we talked more about that because obviously I made a mistake somewhere that he thought that that that would be okay, but that's why they're kids and they're learning.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

I love your approach because it's like coming from the the complex background that you came from and raising your children you know to be more aware, but to but to speak, you know, there's nothing that they can't like it feels like there's nothing they can't come to you about. Like if there's like a problem they can come to you and talk to you, there's an openness and you prioritize like their safety, their well-being. And how hard do you think that is for someone who's adopted to to learn that? Because your safety is kind of is your do you is there a lack of safety when you're adopted?

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Like, um, for some people, some people have horror stories, some people are bounced around to different families, some people are adopted within their families, some people are adopted, then like replaced for adoption. Um, you know, I think it's different for everyone. And I think that adoptees need more spaces to talk about it because it isn't very mainstream, it isn't very talked about. There's, you know, like support groups for substance abuse and for like divorce and for grief, but there aren't many support groups for adult adoptees, you know, and some people still don't know anything about their family when they've grown up. Uh my case is very different. I don't, even all of my adopted friends, none of them know as much about their family as I do. None of them have had the experiences with their biological families like I have. Um, and I don't think it's normal either to know everything so intimately, the way that I do about my birth mother, because it makes it very um, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for right now. It it's it's complicated because on one hand, I look at her through one lens and I'm like, ugh, you're horrible. But then the other lens, well, she was a victim as well. She started out as a victim and she became what she thought she had to to to survive. And unfortunately, by the time she was in her thirties and done running from the mob, she thought that. Selling babies was a good way to make a living for a few years. Until her body like couldn't do that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

In all this, do were you able to find forgiveness for her? Like your healing journey?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

It depends on the day.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

No, that's that's appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Some some some days I uh am a more compassionate towards her than others. Some days I shake her ashes in a can.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Yeah. You know, some days I'm like there's worse things you could do, you know, if it like if it gets if it gets it out for you. You know, I mean, what are some ways that you um you handle your stress a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Like that you uh I smoke pot, I drink tea, I do yoga, I live in a dimly lit den with fairy lights and candles that I like. Right now the big light is on so I can see, and so you can see me, but um normally it is not, and I have like nice little lights going on. I prefer to be in a calm, serene environment. I have anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

So yes, understand. Do you think, and I'm just curious, like your thought. Do you ever feel sometimes that maybe sometimes adoption is like is is glamorized? Like, you know, you always hear about celebrities like adopting, and it's like a you think it becomes I think I think private infant adoption should be illegal.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

I don't believe in purchasing a child um the way that it was done. I think it's not done that way very often anymore, from what I've seen and learned over the past few years about adoption today versus in the 80s and 90s. Um, they could get away with a lot more shit then because they didn't have all of these internet systems like linking us, tracking us, knowing exactly where where we are and what we're doing. So I think that actually I don't I wouldn't say adoption is glamorized. I just I don't think it's talked about enough. I don't think it's I don't think it's enough in the eye of people. I don't think it's like something people think about regularly.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

No. No, you're right, because I you don't hear about it very often. You know, you don't hear about like adoption support groups, you don't hear about um, you don't even see that many books about it, you know? Right. What do you if you could say something to anyone who is struggling with being adopted, like not knowing answers, like what would what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 25:13

I would tell them that they're allowed to feel everything, they're allowed to be curious, they're allowed to grieve, they're allowed to ask questions. None of that makes them disloyal. Your story belongs to you, not just to the adults who made the decisions before you had a voice. And there's nothing broken about wanting to understand where you came from. In many ways, that desire is evidence of your wholeness. I don't think secrets are the way to go. And if someone is struggling with being adopted or their adoption, and they have a way to reach out to me or someone else that is in the adoption community that does have some um firm ground under them and understand what's going on, um, they should do that because it's tough. And I say it all the time. My adopted friends, I have a different bond with them than I do with my friends that are not adopted.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

It's different. It's like being part of like a is it being like part of like a special club together kind of like it's like a family.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

It's like like on my birthday, I didn't want to see anybody because I'm dealing with grief. But my one friend, she was like, hi, so I'm still coming. And I, or she's like, I'm gonna come over. I'm like, well, I canceled my birthday. She's like, I know, I saw, but I'm still, I'm still coming. And I'm like, but it's canceled. She's like, that's nice. And she met my resistance with resistance, and like normal people wouldn't necessarily know to do that, but she does. And that's because we have a different, we're both adopted. She knows that sometimes that's really what I need. I need someone to just push through that and be like, no, I'm coming.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

How did that feel when she when she did that? When she's like, No, you know, you're not canceling your birthday.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Um it felt like that she saw me, so I thanked her for meeting my resistance with resistance.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

And in one of your in one of your posts, like I was on TikTok, there's this video, and I really liked it. It was of you or two of your children, and it says, I'm not raising obedient children. I'm raising children who know how to walk away from people. How do you like how is what is that how does what does that feel like to be able to teach your children that?

SPEAKER_01 28:03

So a lot of times people confuse obedience with respect, and they're different things. Um I want my kids to hear what I'm saying and think my mom isn't telling me something that's gonna hurt me, so I'm gonna I'm gonna listen. But if there's an adult telling them something that they feel is wrong, or anyone telling them something that they feel is wrong, they are strong enough to be like, uh, no. That's no. And and they're they're not obedient. That means they don't do what everyone tells them, what someone tells them. They're not just gonna blindly follow some person to their doom. They're respectful, they're not telling their teachers to get fucked. But if the bus monitor tells Dean he's being disrespectful, he's gonna tell her she's being res disrespectful to him.

unknown 29:09

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

That's okay. That's I think that's important because sometimes kids can get into that people-pleasing behavior, you know, and kind of lose their voice. Um, and I like how you you're instilling that in your kids that they can have a conversation and set boundaries, you know, that they don't just have to blindly listen. They can and that was it always in kind of inherently in you to be like that, to like follow your own path, to yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Um uh yeah, I don't I have a problem.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

If if you're writing a book, aren't you? You're working on a book.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

I am, I'm working on a memoir currently.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

How is that what does that feel like for you?

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Um, it is interesting territory. Um brains are fascinating, and when you are writing your memories, other memories start coming up, and you it's almost like you're in that time, and you just all these feelings and thoughts are coming up, and it's it's interesting, it's like actually pretty therapeutic, and I'm processing a lot. Thank you for asking.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

No, I think because I think it's really important that as hard as it is to share, and I don't imagine any of this was easy for you to share, um, to hear like these complex stories and to see that people can come out the other side and still be really good parents and good people and have boundaries and grow from that, that there's not just they just there's not just a dark path waiting for them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah, um, you know, you have to kind of decide what you're gonna do with yourself, and you can choose to be a piece of shit or you can choose to not. And I say it all the time. I get so mad at people that I know for being shitty parents, and I'll be mad and venting, and I'll be like, I wish I could be a piece of shit so fucking bad. Like, I wish, but I wasn't raised that way. Like, my mother would hang me if I did not be a good mother to my children. She would kill me. So I'm okay. I would rather be this version.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

I think you're raising you know, really strong children, you know, and especially the little one.

unknown 32:01

Especially the little one.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

I feel like it's setting such a powerful example for them to see their mom not only tell her story, like, you know, on social media, but to write about it, you know, and like because to go through all these pictures and everything that you've done, there's nothing easy about that. You know, it's one thing to see a post on TikTok, it's another thing to really feel it and like be interested.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Um, when I got my birth mother's belongings that were kept from me for seven years, thank you. Uh, it took me weeks. I was going through photos and documents and everything for for weeks. Thousands of pictures.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

And then I'm determining what's important and what's not, and like who am I to determine what's important to her life and what wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

I just had to guess.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

But I made a story.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

That's gotta be almost like information overload sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Uh yeah, that's why I take breaks. Um I have a bunch of um dramatic goodbye letters, is what I call them, um, to her friends that she wrote. And I have a series on TikTok where I'm like reading them, and there's about 25 letters. I think the last letter I read was number 16. Um, I took a break because it is it is a lot, especially when it's like one letter a day, and every letter talks about how it's all my fault. Yeah, it's heavy. So I was like, we need to take a break. I'll pick it back up soon.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Has counseling ever been part of your story? Like, did you ever see counseling for yes?

SPEAKER_01 33:52

I went to therapy off and on for my entire life. Most adopted kids are in therapy. Sometimes, but at this point, they're like, Why are you here? They're like, You know the answers. You have to do the thing. We can't do the things for you. So it's me and my executive functioning against the world.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Or lack of. She did.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

What was I'm curious, what was grief like with that for you? Like, how did how do you grieve?

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Like, that was it was I don't know. I don't think I've like fully done that yet. I I hadn't seen her or talked to her in quite some time before she died, and then when she died, I broke my back door that day and wasn't sure what I was supposed to do because you feel like you're being disloyal. Like, here's my mom in front of me, but my mom is my other mom is dead. Like, am I how do I do this in front of her? In front of my kids, in front of my brother. I don't know how to grieve my mother. Um so we just went up there, went to her house, took some stuff that we wanted. I went, we went to the morgue, we ID'd her. I said it wasn't her. My brother was like, it's her. I made them show me her uh tattoos on her boobs because I needed to see. I just, I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with me. Something. Um, and it was it was her, and that was it. They sent me her ashes when they were done. They had a little funeral service for her friends to come, and that was it. And we just like kept moving forward. I hadn't seen or talked to her, so it wasn't too terrible for me. Um, I would ask her friend every now and then if she was sure that there weren't any like documents or letters or journals or any of the things I was told she would leave for me when she did die. And this woman kept telling me no, and then one day she told me she was a liar. So now I have everything.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

I wonder how it's gonna feel for you when you like you've you've written that book and it's out. I wonder if that's gonna be like part of your grieving process.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Um, maybe. I don't know. I it's there's gonna be so many different as I've started writing, I've thought about, oh, but I left this out and I left that out. But those things can be their own stories. So I think that what I write, what I'm writing now is going to be the first of a lot of information.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

I could even see you writing like a children's book.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Yeah, maybe a children's book. I've thought about it. I have some like illustrations saved in my computer. I was playing around with it like last year or something. Um, but I'm just I don't know. I am hoping more of trying to either make a documentary or someone taking interest in me and wanting to make the documentary of my mom's story and me and my brothers, but her story on its own is amazing. Um as a completely like unbiased person that's on the outside with no emotions. Her story is cool. She's like a villain that you love to hate that's hot.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

So, you know, like she was beautiful. You posted some pictures, and she was she's very beautiful, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

She was hot, so that helps, you know. Like even her attorney that helped her back then when I talked to him now, he's like a 90-year-old man, and he kind of that she was quite the looker. So I was like, You are gross. Don't say that to me.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Like, I don't know if I would say that initially to her daughter.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

I'm like, sir, sir.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

You're the looker.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

I'm like, what are you doing? Staring off into space, watching her walk into your office again, like stop.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Don't do that. Where do you hope like where do you hope like you you'll be with all with all this, like your healing journeys like in a year, two years, three years?

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Who knows? Um hopefully I am able to somehow, some way start to make a little bit of a difference here and find a way to help women and girls that are in similar situations. I think that the best people to help people are people that went through those things.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Thank you. I think you are your story is obviously landing with people because you have what close to 60,000 followers on TikTok?

SPEAKER_01 40:00

53.8,000.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Resonating with a lot of people. You know, your story is impacting a lot of people. And not only does it take like strength to show those things, but creativity, you know, to share your story in those vulnerable ways. Is there a quote or phrase that you you like use in your daily life?

SPEAKER_01 40:23

Um, awareness creates choice. Um, once you see a pattern clearly, you get to decide whether it continues through you or ends with you. And for me, a lot of things are ending with me. The cycle of adoption. Um, first of all, in my family, and not spanking and trying to work on the yelling and not being highly critical of my kids. Um, you know, my mom is a very critical person, and even still now she's very critical.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

Like, did that ever pass on to you? Like her critiques of you?

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Um probably. Um, yeah, she yeah, I hear her voice all the time. It's in there. Um they say that you're your child's inner voice, and I think it's true.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Some serious like generational like healing here with your your book and these posts and everything. It's definitely you're definitely making a difference. You know, and I think it's beautiful what you're doing, because your mom did have an extraordinary story, and you do too. And you mentioned like when we first started talking that you were like a torch, but like you are kind of a torch. You know, there was like there was a lot of darkness around you, but you've managed to make the light to be a light, you know, not only in your kids' world, but your children's world, but you know, you're impacting people who hear your story. You're bringing a voice to adoption. You know, and that's important.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

I feel like um maybe if it c if it gets talked about more, there can start being more awareness and more things for people that were adopted. Um, because people have questions and they deserve answers.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

I really like that.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Um awareness creates choice.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

Well, but it's profound.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Um and it's just that once you see a pattern clearly, you get to decide whether it continues through you or ends with you.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

Anything else you want to say before we close it up?

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Um, thank you very much for having me. Uh follow me on TikTok if that's a thing that you do. What is your handle? You're you're gonna um it's black market baby.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Highly recommend everybody go take a look at your at your TikTok. It's a very, very powerful journey that you're on, and you share very vulnerably. And I think sometimes that gets missed on social media to see like the highlight reels. You know, and that's not what you're doing, and I think there's a lot of bravery in that, in sharing that. Um because I think we gotta remember that this is your story and it's still hard. You know, it's not just for likes or clicks, it's it's your story and you're sharing that. And I wanna thank you for taking the time to to share that with me and with us because um that's not easy, and you're doing a lot of heavy, heavy work for being a voice for those who are adopted and those who even came from just like troublesome families, you know, broken families. Um I think you're doing from what it sounds a really phenomenal job of being a very present um you know in your children's lives.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

I do my best.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

And I think that's all you can do. You know, I think that's all you can do. And thank you again for for talking with us and talking with me.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Thank you for grabbing me and inviting me. You're fantastic, you're so nice.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

Well, you're you're pretty lovely yourself. You're pretty lovely yourself, and you know, nobody told you today you're doing a good job.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

You're all right.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

You're doing a good job too.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Thank you. I appreciate you and thank you.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Thank you.