A Golden Ticket With Gareth James

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Gareth, Gareth James. Hey, looking forward to this Gareth. Great to have a Brit on the show, finally. It seems like ages since we had a Brit on the show, right? Well, thank you for inviting me. This is a video, you're nodding. This is a podcast, you're nodding, right? Thank you for inviting me.

[00:00:27] Thank you. You're so welcome. Right, so listeners, I don't know if you know this, but Gareth is a Welsh name, isn't he? Yeah, yeah. And I was actually born in Wales, not too far away from Gareth, where Gareth lives. Where were you born? He's an adoptee, listeners. Where were you born, Gareth?

[00:00:49] I was born in the south-east of England. I was born in Bexley Heath, but my adoptive parents are both from Newport, South Wales, so all four of my grandparents are from Wales. So Wales has always been very much part of my upbringing. I'm very familiar with Wales. So when I moved back to Wales, I'm not sure it felt like coming home, because, you know, I've always grown up in England, but it embraced me.

[00:01:17] And I was, I was, I feel, I've been here nearly 20 years now, and I feel extremely comfortable. Right. That's sometimes unusual for adoptees, right? To feel comfortable. No, it really is. I mean, I've, I've highlighted to people here, I mean, I've lived in Manchester, Newcastle, London, Maidenhead, Los Angeles.

[00:01:42] When I moved to Aberystwyth, I have, you know, 20 years in and around Aberystwyth, I have never, ever felt anywhere like I belong, like I belong in West Wales. Yeah. Which is weird. Yeah. So I was going to ask, I was going to jump in there and ask, you know, ask you to rationalise that. But like, why, why do we think, like, it's a feeling, right? Yeah, it is a feeling.

[00:02:10] Why do we feel that it's got something to do with what's going on in our head? Why do we, why do we ask, ask questions about rationale? It's like, what, you know, I remember early thinking, early in the days of going out with my, with Lynn, who's now my wife, you know, like, so this is back in 93. Why, why do I love Lynn? Right. And it didn't really occur to me that I was looking in the wrong filing cabinet. Right.

[00:02:38] But the best I could come up with was, she does what she says she's going to do. In terms of a rationale, right? She does what she says she's going to do. And that's actually a big value of mine, is doing what I say I'm going to do. I'd add to that.

[00:03:00] I think, and I'm going to speculate on your marriage here, but I think one of the reasons that we find someone or somebody or somewhere easy or easier to love is because they love us. And that's a massive tick box. You know, you know, I'm a transracial adoptee. I'm, I'm, I'm black.

[00:03:25] And so my experience of growing up in 1970s and 1980s England is not a feeling that the company, that the country loves me or the area loves me. It's either too big. You know, if you live in London, London can't love you because it's vast.

[00:03:43] But you move to a little place like Aberystwyth and, and you sort of get on with life and you contribute to the community and you can feel and, and know. And so it's beyond feeling. It's knowing, and maybe it's, you know, it's the same with a good wife, shall I say, is that, you know, they love you.

[00:04:08] And, and all of a sudden that, that can allow you to really sink in and get comfortable. And, and what I mean in an adoptee context, in an adoptee context, they love you and they don't have to. There's no obligation to love you. They just love you because of who you are. And I have felt, and of course it's not universal. There's, I'm sure there's plenty of people around here that I get right up the nose of.

[00:04:34] But overwhelmingly, I feel appreciated and loved, you know, in and around this area. In a way, because the population is so small that you, you feel that like you're a real part of the community. You're contributing and you're taking. Yeah. Do they have to love us first then?

[00:04:59] From an adoptee perspective, I mean, I can only speak from my perspective, which is. Yeah. Did they have to love you first? I think perhaps it's a, he's sort of going along together. You know, love grows and maybe we were attracted to them in the first place and then we liked them and then we liked them a lot.

[00:05:26] You know, I'm not going to dig into the philosophy of what, or the ideology of what love is. You know, I'm using it in a very broad brush sense. That it reaches a stage where I was, I've been writing for the local newspaper. I've, I've, I've worked in, I've worked in a bar. I've built community events. And you, over 20 years, you cannot not hear people go, actually, that Gareth, he's all right, you know.

[00:05:57] And it's like, I can, I can live with this. You know, this is, this is comfortable, comfortable in the way that England never was. Cool. So, when we, before I hit record, I said, how are you doing? And you said that, that I, that I'd given you a lot of food for thought. And I said, did it, did I say, did it make you sick? I mean, like overeating, right? You did.

[00:06:27] So, I'm, the metaphor here, right, is overeating and overthinking. And as you were saying that you, you like to, you like to think, you like to, to, to think deeply. I was thinking, I have a tendency to overthink. So, for the, but for the last five minutes, since we hit record, I've just been thinking about 70s, 80s song lyrics, right? You should have been listening to, you should have been listening to me.

[00:06:56] Well, was I listening? Yeah. Could I do both? And I was thinking, I don't, it's not Prefab Sprouts, something, talk, talk. I'll, I'll, I'll get over you. I'm sure I will. I know this sink, this ship's not sinking. I'll get over you. I'm the king of wishful thinking. King of wishful thinking.

[00:07:26] And I, I, they think, well, I'm, I'm the king of overthinking, right? King of wishful thinking. So, that was the first lyric that came to her mind. And then the next one was, was it foreigner? I want to know what love is. I want you to show me, right? That's a very good one. I want to, I want to show, show me. So, so let's, let's dive into this thinking thing.

[00:07:52] Because you, you say that you like doing it and you've, you're talking about, you know, an opportunity to, a disagreement is an opportunity to check our, check our thinking. Yeah. Yeah. So take it away from that. Right. Well, I mean, you seem really quite resistant to overthinking and I can understand that overthinking, I mean, it very much is a double-edged sword.

[00:08:22] Most things are, most tools are. And the propensity to overthink often, I mean, maybe we should not use the word overthink because that's to give it a pejorative in the first instance. Yeah, sure. So to think deeply, I think it gives us a chance to connect with reality.

[00:08:49] It allows us to pursue mental wellbeing from a rational point of view, not from a, not from a wishful thinking point of view. I'm, I'm, I might suggest that wishful thinking is, is not deep thinking. It's, it's, it's shallow thinking. It's, it's, it's thinking, this is the problem. I wish this outcome.

[00:09:14] Uh, therefore insert your own narrative to fit those two things rather than, than deep thinking is to check, check where you are now and then piece together in, this is how I do it, logical and rational and question every sort of aspect of that thinking as you go

[00:09:35] along, not with a, um, not with a, not with a destination in mind, but an exploration to see where you end up as. And so there's, there's no resistance to changing your ideology, changing your philosophy, new information to deep think is to appreciate that if new information comes in that, that, that

[00:10:05] it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's to be absorbed, uh, however complicated that might be, uh, and have your thinking adjusted. It, it, it, it's never a done deal. Um, you know, I, I've never reached any point of thought where I go, right. Okay. I never need to think about that again. Cause you know, that's, that's all sorted out. Um, the, the, I think the two big things are deep thinking must involve your personal or

[00:10:35] one's personal experience and perspective, uh, that can't be sort of washed away by other people's, uh, experience and perspective. Uh, but also other people's experience and perspective can inform why you may think a certain way or why thinking a certain way. Um, I don't want to say isn't correct, but it is, is, is, can be adjusted because new information

[00:11:04] that you didn't have before go, you know, that aha moment. Oh, oh, oh, I've not thought of that. Um, off you go in a new train of thought, never ending, of course. Yeah. Does that answer that? Uh, kind of. Yeah. Um, you, uh, you, you said, uh, resistance to overthinking, uh, and as I was thinking about that, I think resisting.

[00:11:29] And then I thought of another, I thought of another song lyric as I happened to do. Right. Um, uh, and this was faith, faithless. I can't get no sleep. Right. So the song's insomnia and it's faithless. I can't get no sleep. So I can't get no sleep. I can't get no peace. Right.

[00:11:49] So my aversion to, uh, to overthinking, uh, is, is, is actually coming from the place. I can't get no sleep. I can't get no sleep. Often. It used to be like that because I would be lying awake at night or in, usually in the morning, trying to think my way out of a, uh, uh, uh, think my way out of a problem and

[00:12:19] overthinking. So solutions came to me usually through an insight after a bout of overthinking, not right. So when I put the thing on the back burner, when I put the problem on the back burner, then the solution came to me, not actually at the end of, uh, at the end of the overthinking train. Right. Right. The solution is found in the solution.

[00:12:48] It comes to us out, out of the blue, right. The, the, uh, solutions for me are more about insights from the back burner. So, uh, like I'm, I'm going to guess you're not a Jack Reacher fan, Lee Child. Uh, no, I'm, I'm a bit more, I like to think I'm a little bit more literary. I mean, you run, you know, you've written your own book, you, you, you run a publishing company.

[00:13:16] I, I wouldn't imagine that you are a Lee Child, Jack Reacher fan. Um, but Jack, Jack Reacher has, if Jack Reacher's got a problem, he just says, I'm going to put it on the back burner and he goes to sleep. And then he wakes up usually with, usually with the answer.

[00:13:36] So the answer comes from the, the, the answer is a bolt out of the blue rather than something that comes from the, from the, from, from the overthinking. That's kind of my take on it. I think my, I mean, I mean, my take, I've got a couple of things to add to this. First off, I think deep thinking should be split up into, uh, deep thinking when you're in a good mood and deep thinking when you're, when you're struggling. Cause they, they're two very, very different activities.

[00:14:06] Um, you know, if I, if you and I are going to Barbados tomorrow and we can't sleep because we're, we're, we're just lying in bed planning, you know, how we're going to be on the beach and what drinks we're going to have. And this is going to be great. That's not a problem. Run punch. Absolutely. It's not a problem. You know, this is not problematic. Deep thinking.

[00:14:26] If you got divorced and it was 10 years ago and you wake up in the middle of the night trying to work out why this is still bothering you, for example, um, I would argue that hasn't come out of the blue. You know, if everything's, you know, if you're in a positive phase, those thoughts aren't going to come into your head.

[00:14:45] If, if you're in a little, you know, the black dog has walked into the room, all these unhelpful, uh, thoughts come in, which we then, um, start to overthink. So I do think the, the two should be split. The second, the second thing is, is you've mentioned, um, Jack Reacher and you've mentioned yourself and both times you mentioned, you use the word solution.

[00:15:14] These are not maths problems. You know, I would argue the subjects like your own adoption, there is no solution. Um, you know, I mean, I'm, I will talk for myself, but I'd be very surprised if, if, if, if anyone else went, oh, oh, I had this thought or somebody said something and everything was solved.

[00:15:36] You know, what it is, is a, a, I mean, deep thinking about adoption is probably more often than not in the negative side. Uh, because, uh, I mean, the only difference is when you and I were talking last week, when we're, we're, we're looking at it more, less emotionally, more rationally.

[00:16:03] Um, because I have not spent a lot of time in my 61 years talking to other adult adoptees, uh, about what they think about how they think. Um, I mean, I, I, I, I've, I've, I've read articles and I've, I've, I've, I've on social media more recently, I've looked at, uh, what other people have to say.

[00:16:28] And it appears to me that there are as many adoption experiences as there are adoptees. Um, I mentioned earlier that I'm black. Um, you know, there are, if, if, if I was adopted because my parents got killed in a car crash, um, I'm not saying that's all butterflies and roses, but anyone as a youngster or as an adult can get their head around.

[00:16:56] You know, I would expect them to be able to get their head around that. Uh, you know, it is just, you don't have parents anymore. Um, therefore somebody needed to look after you. Therefore, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you are a, um, like yourself, you're adopted out at, I think you said five or six weeks old.

[00:17:18] Um, you, you can look at the circumstances, uh, of, of, of, I, I couldn't, you know, my parents, my birth parents couldn't look after me or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:28] If you're black and adopted, there is, it's different again, because you can't untangle the, the sense of shame, the racism, the racist, the casual racist attitudes of, or the casual, not attitudes, but the casual racism and entrenched racism of the sixties, the seventies.

[00:17:53] Uh, and that's a, uh, that adds a, um, a context to adoption that is not the same for, you know, white children, um, white adoptees, black adoptees. And I will speak from my own personal experience. It doesn't matter what anyone says. I, you know, I know the landscape of, of, of, of 1964.

[00:18:18] And there would have been a sense of shame about their, their, their, their beautiful daughter having this black or brown child and the context of, and the, the, the thought of having to push that round and the inevitable backlash and the, the inevitable loss of status, whether these things are true or not. Uh, and in a lot of cases they would have been true. Uh, you know, it's not difficult for me to imagine the scenario where, no, we're just not doing this.

[00:18:48] So there was, you know, there was forced adoption for, uh, and there was a sense of shame for white, uh, mothers, uh, having white children, but you can add several zeros to that. You know, if the child is, is black or brown, um, I mean, your adoption experience is as private as you want it to be. You know, if you're, if you're with your parents, um, nobody's going to look at your little unit and start asking questions about it.

[00:19:18] If you're two white parents with a black child in a pram, it's, it's not a private situation. It is a, it is a global, anybody who looks upon this knows that a question, how's this, how's this happened? Uh, and adoption. So your, your adoption is never private.

[00:19:39] I mean, I've looked at so many posts in social media and listened to you that I, I watched your YouTube video yesterday, your introductory one, uh, where you said it was, it was never kept a secret. I was told that I was adopted since before I can remember. Now that's my experience, but for a different reason, um, you know, you, they, it wouldn't have taken me long to, if they had thought that they would, right, we're going to keep this. We're going to keep this a secret until he's 16.

[00:20:08] You know, that's never going to work. Uh, so I was very aware that I was adopted like yourself right from the get go. And of course, I mean, this, this leads me into the, the, the questions that you have around trauma is, is that, um, I mean, we should be careful and we should define our terms with regard of, you know, actually what, what do we mean when we say trauma?

[00:20:34] Uh, and you know, I'm going to look at, obviously you can have physical trauma and you can have, you know, you can have emotional trauma or psychological trauma. And I think we're talking about psychological trauma. You, we talk about wounds. We talk about this. We talk about that. I'm, I'm, I, I, again, I think they need splitting up into two different categories. I do not know, and I can never know, uh, what I, who I would have been if I would have been raised by my birth family.

[00:21:04] Um, you know, I think research shows that if you take any mammal away from its, its mother, however young it is, there's a, there are effects. You know, that is not a neutral act. Uh, we cannot know. I don't think as individuals, what the effect was of being removed from our birth mother. For me, it was 10 days.

[00:21:29] Uh, you know, I've got the, I've got those little notes saying, you know, I was fed this on this day and I weighed this much on this day and then boom, you know, I'm, I'm gone. Um, so the trauma of that, I, I can't put my finger on, you know, it would be, it would be very easy for me to sit here and say, well, uh, you know, I'm doing okay. Um, you know, I've had a, you know, I, I, I, I, I'm, um, you know, life's okay. Therefore no trauma.

[00:21:59] Um, I can't say that, you know, I, I, I don't know. Then there's the, and, and, and that sort of cycle, and then there's a different sort of psychic trauma that, that this isn't, you know, if we'd have been bereaved of a wife. Um, or a child. Um, there's a psychological impact upon us immediately as an adult, uh, that this somehow is going to be processed, you know, uh, in a negative way or in a positive way.

[00:22:28] Uh, you know, if we'd have lost our leg, you know, in a, in a terrible accident, if we'd have been involved in a war as a, you know, these are psychological traumas that are inflicted upon an adult that they can look and professionals can look at and say, well, before this, this event, um, you know, and then after this event.

[00:22:51] With adoption, especially of being adopted as babies, as, as you and I were, it was completely normal. Um, you know, for you, you, you only know what you know. So when you're, you know, when I'm three years old or four years old and my parents say, you know, and you're adopted and your parents loved you and they're this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah. You kind of just sit there and not and go, of course, you know, my parents are telling me this, this is how it is.

[00:23:18] So I, my experience is as I've grown older, as I've had my own relationships, as I've had my own children, you get to sort of reprise the, these conversations. Uh, and my experience is that, that, you know, this isn't a sudden shock, you know, like a, like a trauma.

[00:23:44] This is a, a growing understanding or, or a growing realization or a growing suspicion that this is, this is not normal. This is not, and I'll put my fingers up because I, you know, how it should be.

[00:24:03] Uh, you know, this is not a 100% positive, um, that's, that can be neatly tied up to a three, four or five year old. You, you, you, you have your own relationships, you have your own children and you, and you assess these by perhaps putting yourself in the shoes of the, you know, the protagonists here.

[00:24:27] And, and, and, and this is where the problems I think start to, start to grow is that I can put myself in the shoes of the family that I came from. And just very easy for me to say there are under no circumstances in which I would have given that children away. None. Um, you know, if my daughter couldn't cope, we'd, we'd help.

[00:24:47] Um, you know, if daddy, daddy, that we, you know, we, we chip in with, we, um, so if I put myself in those shoes, I, you know, I, I get, um, what's the word? I feel a little let down, you know, you know, you know, this is not like losing a leg, you know, all of a sudden. It's a growing realization that it doesn't, you know, it, you know, to put it in childish terms, it's not fair.

[00:25:17] Uh, it's, you know, it's not how I would have acted. It's not how I would have acted. Uh, and that, and, and, and I've missed out, you know, I feel that, you know, I've missed out on my, my Caribbean culture. Uh, I've missed out on, uh, siblings. Uh, birth parents. Um, it's a, it's a big miss.

[00:25:45] So, so the trauma is a, and I'm using that, that term really without defining it. And, um, is, is a growing, you know, starts tiny, you know, in my consciousness, I'm talking about, um, and compounds itself, uh, over time.

[00:26:06] Um, as you think deeply about it, uh, you know, in, in, in a more adult way with your own experiences. So, you, I think what you're doing is you're breaking it down into two things, right? The event at 10 days old, uh, and you're thinking about it over the following six decades. Six, six decades. Yeah.

[00:26:36] So, and the thinking and the meaning that you're, uh, inferring from it, from your thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. They are, in my experience, they're two, you know, one I can define, which is my adult thinking about it. Uh, and I can, I can, um, I can articulate why I, why I feel a certain way.

[00:27:04] Uh, the other is just completely unknown and it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, I, one of the things I think we as adoptees, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing can be absolutely certain of is we, we will never know who we would have been. Yeah. And, and, and that's, that's more thinking. That's part of the thinking thing. Absolutely. You're not, you're not coming up with that as a three year old. Yeah.

[00:27:30] So, um, so I, I'm, I'm fascinated by the contrast here, Gareth, because what, one of the things that you shared with me last time is that you, you, you felt that you've, you felt for, for most of your life, I think that you got the golden ticket.

[00:27:51] So that to me, that, that feels like, um, yeah, that feels, that feels positive. Yeah, absolutely. That, that, that, that feels positive, but that, that seems to clash with the stuff that you've been talking about for the last 10 minutes. And that's allowed. Yeah. But I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated by that, by that contrast and I want to explore.

[00:28:18] Well, well, my life has been fascinating and it's, it's gone very, very well, uh, in many, many areas. Um, that's not the same for all adoptees and that's, that's what I'm aware of. Uh, it absolutely isn't this. And I can look at the slippery slopes mentally. I could have got on and have been on.

[00:28:39] I mean, um, I, I, uh, I, I, and adoptees and, and adoptees from black and brown backgrounds in the UK are going to do very well. Not to tie that up with abandonment in the way. And this is what I was saying. If, if your parents are killed in a car crash, I doubt you're going to have abandonment, abandonment issues.

[00:29:08] You know, if you were given up for reasons that you suspect may be racial, you are going to, you know, if you think about that, that you are going to be tying that up with abandonment. Now that's all well and good. Well, it's not all well and good. It, it, it, that is what it is. If then later in life you get divorced or when one of your friends, um, decides that they, they don't want to be your friend anymore.

[00:29:37] These things then get wrapped up. Uh, and you know, I, I don't, um, begrudge adoptees having abandonment. Um, and, and what I would say is, is to use the phrase from that, from that book, abandonment wounds, uh, and abandonment trauma.

[00:29:59] Uh, and because it, for it not to, for you not to have those, we would go back to that wishful thinking you were, you know, I want to imagine that I wasn't abandoned because I would feel better about myself and dah, dah, dah, dah. Simplistic thinking that's happy, you know, great. You know, that's going to work. If you're a deep thinker, that's never going to wash. Um, and so. But, but we want to feel good.

[00:30:28] We want to feel good, don't we? We don't want to, we don't want to think good. No, our, our, our, our aims in life are about feeling good, not about thinking good. Well, it's, it's, it's, I mean, the, what I've always said to my children is if you're smiling more than you're frowning, you're winning. Uh, and when I looked at your questions earlier about, you know, what do you consider thriving? Well, if you're smiling more than you're frowning, you're thriving. Um, and, but, but nobody wants to go through.

[00:30:58] Well, I don't want to go through life like a grinning idiot. Uh, you know, everything's okay at all times. Everything's positive. You know, I, you know, life and complex thought is, is nuanced. You know, it's, it's, you know, I look at my life and I have spent an awful lot more time smiling than frowning.

[00:31:22] Um, if I'd gone through life a hundred percent smiling, I would worry about my sanity. Um, so I, I can look at life or a period of time and go, it's been a golden ticket. This has been brilliant. This has been great. But that doesn't make it all butterflies and rainbows. Um, on the other hand, there are complexities. I've been divorced. I found that complicated. Uh, yeah.

[00:31:49] Um, adoption doesn't define, um, my existence. Uh, but it's a reality. Uh, and there is, in my mind, there's very little doubt that that hasn't played into, uh, good times and bad times, uh, in a positive and a negative way. Uh, you know, one of the, one of the, I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent here.

[00:32:14] You can edit it out if you like, but the, the, I think one of the, um, now I've totally forgotten what I was going to say. Um, I'll, I'll come back to that in a minute, but the, the idea, uh, of, of going through life forever smiling or adoption being an entirely positive thing or an entirely negative thing. I've remembered what I was going to say.

[00:32:39] The, the, I think one of the most positive aspects of my adoption was the freedom it has given me. Uh, I am aware as an adult.

[00:32:54] And again, these are, these are thought processes that I've had as an adult rather than sort of, um, had when I was a child and the experiences were going on is that there's not a day in my life that I felt an obligation to follow a certain route, follow a certain pathways. I've always been, been, the whole world's been open to me to, for me to do exactly what I want.

[00:33:17] Whereas I know a lot of my non, non adopted friends feel, well, I, I, you know, I, I felt that I had to go to uni or I felt that I, you know, I had to go into the family business or I felt that I had to, you know, I, I was following in somebody's footsteps. Whereas an adoptee, I think my parents, I think one of the first things they realized is, well, we can't really guide this one. I mean, we can sort of keep them out of trouble and, and, and love them and this, that, and the other, but we can't put obligations on this child about what we want them to do and be.

[00:33:47] Uh, so I've always made, you know, as you know, since the day I stepped out of school, made my own decisions without question from my adopted parents. Uh, and that's a friend, that's a freedom that, that, that a lot of natural, natural children don't get. Um, and so there are upsides and there's downsides.

[00:34:10] I, I would argue that the downsides are way, way outweigh, uh, the upsides. Uh, but that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you're going to make a, uh, you know, a life out of, out of the negatives. Yeah. I'm, I'm still, I'm still kind of, uh, wrestling with this, with, with this, uh, this idea, um, because the,

[00:34:40] there's, there's, uh, the contract, there's a contrast there. And one of my, uh, adoptee friends, uh, a lady called Jean Widner that I interviewed a while ago, and she's from the States, from Las Vegas, but she actually came over to Leeds for, uh, an adoption conference last month. And the book is called The Adoption Paradox. So, kind of, you know, paradox is at the centre here.

[00:35:10] Yeah. Um, and, and yet the, the, the overall, the overall take, the, the overall, the overall position, your overall position seems to be the, you, you said you've been, you've smiled more than you've frowned. Right? Yep. So, on, on hand, there's that.

[00:35:37] And then the other hand, you say, uh, but the, the, uh, the, the, the, the negatives outweigh the positives. Of, of adoption. But, but adoption isn't my whole life. If adoption was my whole life. Okay. Okay. Right. If, if. I'm getting, I'm getting the algorithm, Gareth. I'm a little bit slow on the uptake. Perhaps I'm trying to oversimplify into black, black and white.

[00:36:04] Um, sorry for the, for the pun, right? Um, here, here's one. Right. And I, I, oh, you asked about editing. I, I never edit. Right. So listeners and most, most listeners will probably realise before that. I, that I never read it. Never edit. Um, is there a, how can I, how can I ask this? Because it's tricky for a white guy to ask these stuff, right? Without me coming across as a, a fascist, which I hope I'm not. Right.

[00:36:34] I'll tell you if you come across as a fascist. Don't worry about that. Um, yeah. Oh yeah. So, um, before I do, right. Cause I, I was talking about this the other day and I, and I didn't know the difference. What is the difference between a racist and a fascist is the one. Oh yeah, I would think so. I mean, I'm, I, I, I mean, I would have to go and have a look at my terms, but a fascist is somebody who likes authoritarianism, uh, nationalism, you know, and it encompasses

[00:37:02] a whole, a whole, you know, militarism encompasses a whole thing. A racist is somebody who's just scared of, is scared of black and brown people. Yeah. Oh, and have a misplaced, uh, sense of superiority. So is there a difference between being placed for adoption because of who you are? Sorry, because it's the difference between, um, personal reasons and racial reasons.

[00:37:32] Do they, they seem kind of separate to me? Yeah, they're totally separate. I mean, you know, I've grown up in the UK, um, somebody would have to go an awfully long way to, to, to, to try and persuade me that, that I haven't grown up in a racist country with, with, from top to bottom. Um, if you are adopted because, and, and I think, I mean, what, what makes it interesting

[00:38:01] is you're, you know, I, as a transracial adoptee, I was given the immediate contrast. Uh, in, and, and, and what I mean by that is that if you, if, if I suspect that I was given up because I was black and the family didn't want to go through that, I was adopted into a white family who were prepared to do that. And, and I've, you know, I've heard stories from my adoptive mother where, you know, she's been abused in the street because I'm in the pram and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:38:29] So, you know, to put it really simplistically, you know, it would be easy for me, uh, to, to look at it as, as going, I was adopted. I was born into like the worst family in the world who were willing to give up a black baby because, and then immediately moved into the best family in the world who were totally prepared to, to, to, to deal with those, um, those, those societal, uh, interventions.

[00:38:59] Uh, so, you know, I mean, my existence, I've never spent any, any amount of time, uh, wondering who my birth mother is. Uh, I get a little bit irritated and maybe irrationally that, that, I mean, even my adoptive mother spends time empathizing with my birth mother and their family. And I have to sort of go, well, hang on, you know, you know, I'm in here as well.

[00:39:26] It, it, it, it's, it's, it's like the, that recent apology, you know, that recent apology seems very addressed to birth mothers and not very addressed to adoptees. And that got up my nose. Um, it, it's, we spend an awful lot of time normalizing. And again, I'm not talking about they died in a crash that, you know, I'm, I'm talking

[00:39:53] about abandonment adoption, um, which is a subset of adoption. So this does not cover all adoptions. I don't want adoptees ring me up and go, hang on a minute. My mom really loved me in the circumstances were A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the suspicion or the reality that a family was horrified that their daughter, um, gave birth to a black or brown child.

[00:40:18] And the sooner they could get it out, uh, move away, um, you know, and, and, and, and, and sweep this under the rug, the better. Now that feeds into, now I don't, you know, I, I have a grossly overinflated self, self opinion of myself, but that kind of abandonment does not feed into your sense of self-worth.

[00:40:44] Um, luckily, or, you know, I'd say luckily, I'm going to put my inverted commas up there because I live in, I've grown up in the UK. I'm aware of that. This is not a massive shock, uh, that white, that white families are going, no, no, I'm not having a brown child around here because it's going to be a daily reminder, you know. Um, so it's a, it's a, um, transracial adoption is not the same as, as adoption for personal

[00:41:14] family, uh, or catastrophic, uh, reasons, uh, because, um, because of the reality of the 1960s in the UK and the numbers involved, you know, this is, you know, this is, this is not the occasional brown baby who is shipped out of a white family. This is a, this is an industrial process by the National Children's Health.

[00:41:42] So I heard the guy, so there's, I can't remember his surname, but the, the, the guy who did all the research or most of the research for those birth mothers and to, to get their apology from, um, from the government. I heard him speak at that conference in Leeds. I don't know if I shared this with you when we spoke last, but he, he identified the institutional

[00:42:12] reason for, uh, for, for the focus of, for the focus on adopting the kids of single mothers. Right. And it was an institutional reason for it. Yeah. And the institution in the institutional reasons, it's the institutional reason was they wanted

[00:42:38] single women to be available for making munitions in the second world war. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, I said that that's a 20 years before our time, but it, it makes it, and yet it, yeah. So, but that, that, that's the reason it was introduced. Right. And once the ball started rolling. And, and systems are, systems are not meant to change. You know, one, you know, the, uh, we have, so you were talking about working in a, in a, in a pub, right.

[00:43:07] The, the, we, we used to have licensing hours, didn't we? And we still do to some extent, right. You couldn't, so you couldn't drink between two and two and five on a Sunday or something like that. Yeah. Um, but the licensing laws, they were put in place. Yeah. So that the munitions workers weren't ready to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was going to say piss, but piss means angry in the States. Right.

[00:43:32] So the, the reason they said that, and so what, what the, uh, the, the, the, uh, Americans call pissed, we call pissed off. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don't, did you come across that in LA? You say, yeah. No, of course. I was there for a few years. Yeah. So that, that was the institutional reason. And once that institutional change had happened, then that was kind of set in stone. And until the, until the government changed, changed the law and loosened a line.

[00:44:01] So that, and what, at the center of this apology was an admission that the government had been complicit and aware of the, the instigators of the habit because they, they instigated that. Yeah. But they then outsourced it. To the national children's homes. To the children's homes and to the churches and stuff like that.

[00:44:30] So their hands weren't dirty. Yeah. But they, they started, they, they, they initiated the, the, the change. And so I asked the guy, uh, I asked a fascinating discussion, a fascinating interest in, uh, information from this Michael who, who, who described the run up into it.

[00:44:52] I asked him, so what, what was, was this the bureaucracy of government saying, uh, we're not going to, we're not going to apologize. Or was it the, was it the, uh, the, the, uh, the social, the social workers, right? So was it government? Was it social workers? And he said it was, he said it was both.

[00:45:18] And I was going, well, why can't they just say they're sorry, right? So what's the big deal? And the, the big deal was they were concerned about, uh, legal cases and money. No, I, I, I, I, I would be very surprised if we didn't have a claim. Well, as they have set aside some money, um, and a, uh, an adoption professional who

[00:45:47] is also an adoptee that I know worked out the sums and it's 21 quid each, 21 pounds each. And, and I'm guessing that's going to adopt. Can I have my 21 quid? I'm guessing that's going to adopted mothers rather than adoptees. Well, I, I, I don't know. I mean. But 21 quid anyway, right? So the price of, you know, just dreams these days. You know, I, I, we were at the airport, uh, went to Greece and, uh, one, a bottle, a bottle

[00:46:17] of, uh, bottle of beer and a pint of beer and a, and a glass of wine at Newcastle airport was more than 21 quid, right? Yeah. So that's just too rich. It's, it's, uh, it's, it's a nothing, right? It's a nothing. But the, but the admission of guilt, um, is, is, uh, far more significant than the, uh, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, than, but let, let, let me, let me jump in on this.

[00:46:43] Um, as an adoptee, I think, you know, that would be comforting because all of a sudden, again, we, you know, we talked about wishful thinking that's not based on anything. Uh, and I was saying, well, that's, you know, that's, that's, that's not, not, that's not very bright. Well, with that information, the fact that there's a, that there was a structure, uh, to,

[00:47:08] take, take, um, children away from, uh, single mothers, uh, allows an adoptee to go, well, it's not, it's not, it's, it's not my birth family's fault in any way, shape or form. And you've got that, you've got that comforting blanket that, that you can blame the government. And so, and, you know, you, and that, that sort of more fits into the car accident scenario.

[00:47:32] These were circumstances outside my birth family's control, outside my control that ended up with the necessity or the reality of me being adopted. You throw, you throw the transracial aspect into that. And of course that doesn't really help very much. Uh, you know, it's, it's, and this is why the, you know, I'm, I'm focused on the transracial

[00:47:56] aspects of adoption as very separate to the rest of adoption. Um, because to dismiss the racial aspect of that is, is wishful thinking of the highest order. So, so though it, it, it, the apologies may be, um, comforting for a lot of adoptees in, in so much, I'll put this harshly.

[00:48:23] It sort of lets the birth family off the hook, um, with transracial adoptees. You can't then just take them off the hook because you're still sitting there thinking, uh, um, and what, what was all this about really?

[00:48:40] And, and, and yet what you would seem to be saying a bit ago was, uh, so I, I left a racist family and joined a non-racist family or like. Yeah. Or, you know, yeah, yeah. That's very absolute terms. I, I, I think a better word would be bigoted. Yeah. Okay. Um, you know, I left, I left a more bigoted family.

[00:49:10] And, uh, and grew up in a less bigoted family. Absolutely. I don't think anybody's clear of anything. So, so absolutely. That's for me. I'm a joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. But no, I, I think, I think that's, um, you know, that's an important sustenance for me is that I didn't go out of the frying pan into the fire.

[00:49:37] Um, I mentioned to you previously, it would have been very easy for me to have been brought up in a children's home. Uh, and the children's homes of the sixties and seventies were not a place that I imagine I would have thrived in at all. Um, the amount of abuse. Um, I mean, the fact that, I mean, I, I, I, I'm sure you remember, I mean, almost every

[00:50:05] town had a children's home and you kept the hell away from the children's home kids. You know, you know, uh, um, you know, that could, that so easily could have been me. I mean, the, the, it, it would, it would have been almost certain that that would have been me. Uh, have you read Lam Cisset's book? I haven't. And I should do cause I've, cause I, I, I came across a review for it from some written by somebody I know.

[00:50:32] So, so at some, some, the problem about being a publisher is that you in two years, I've not read a book that I haven't needed to read from a, from a work perspective. Uh, so at some point, hopefully I can, I can establish this publishing company to a point where I can actually go back to my ever growing book, uh, shelf of books that I need to read at some point. Uh, and that one is certainly on the list, but so is the, the, the wound one you mentioned.

[00:51:01] Uh, I can't, I can't remember its full title. Uh, but I, I, I almost bought that yesterday, actually. I put an order in for it yesterday, but it's on my list of things. Don't. Oh, okay. Okay. The thing is, I, I, I, it's not true, but I'm never going to read a book and go, well, this is all, all correct. You know, this is my new mental. Um, you know, I'm never going to listen to anyone and go, this is my, this is the fountain of all knowledge.

[00:51:30] Uh, there are, as I said, I'm, I'm absolutely in agreement that there are wounds from trauma. Um, whether we make, whether we're equipped to deal with them, you know, maybe that's the role of the dice. Uh, and I would argue for me that I have been very well equipped to deal with them.

[00:51:57] Uh, and even though I explained to you before, I would say the negatives of adoption growth, greatly outweigh the positive of adoption. My whole life isn't based on my adoption. You know, there, there, you know, it's a, it's a small chunk. So that negativity isn't, it doesn't overwhelm onto everything else. If life's not going great. And in 60 years I've had a, you know, a couple of episodes when life hasn't been going brilliantly. No, absolutely.

[00:52:25] Then it can become, you know, it can become a real, those wounds open up and, you know, to use that example, you get, you know, your wife leaves you all of a sudden there is very few people who aren't going to tie those two abandonments into the same what's wrong with me narrative. Hmm. Gareth, we're coming up on time. Is there anything that you'd like to share that I've not asked you about? No, I don't think so.

[00:52:54] I mean, we could go on for the rest of days, but, uh, no, I, I, it's, it's very interesting for me because as I said, I haven't spent a great deal of time talking to adoptees and I need to, I need to gen up on that, um, and involve myself a little bit more. Um, I, I, I don't think there's a solution to adoption. I don't think there's a cure-all. I don't think there's a route for one that will suit everyone.

[00:53:21] Um, as I said, my experience or, or, or my notes suggest that there are as many different adoption experiences as there are adoptees. Uh, and I think the, the, the real therapy is, is common cause, uh, amongst adoptees. The, the feeling of, uh, isolation can be, you know, this has only ever happened to me. This is the worst thing in the world. Well, obviously if you're immersed with a group of other people who have been through

[00:53:49] the same thing, some have dealt with it better. Some have dealt with it worse. Everybody's different. At least, you know, what you haven't got, however bad, you know, have a bad feeling about something at a certain time. It's not, you know, you're not the first, you're not the last, then you're not the only one. Uh, and I think that always, always helps because when trauma comes along, we, we look inside and we, we go, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to a human being in the world.

[00:54:16] Uh, and that sense said, there's no point in talking to anybody. There's no point. Nobody will understand. Uh, and that sense of isolation is where overthinking becomes an absolute catastrophe. So to be able to, uh, communicate with people who have been through the same or similar, uh, I, I think is without looking for a solution. It's just looking at how, you know, how, how do we deal with it? And how has that varied through certain parts of our lives? I mean, sometimes I deal with it.

[00:54:44] It's not an issue at all. And other times it's a massive, great, big issue. Yeah. Wow. Thank you, Gareth. And thank you listeners. Uh, I, as always, right. Remember to check out the show notes. Um, you can see a link to, to Gareth's book there. Um, and yeah, we'll speak to you again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. And thank you, Simon.