Peace With Heather G Marshall

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Thriving Adoptees podcast today. I'm delighted

[00:00:06] to be joined by Heather, Heather Marshall, looking forward to our conversation today, Heather.

[00:00:10] Thanks Simon, I am as well. It's great to be here again and chat with you again.

[00:00:16] Yeah, so Heather came on the podcast last year and now she's got a book out and the book

[00:00:27] does some diving into healing and it's a fiction, right? It's not a fiction. Yeah,

[00:00:35] Amazon has it categorized as biographical fiction. I don't know how Amazon arrives at these

[00:00:43] categories and I suppose that's not far off because it is about the protagonist is an adoptee

[00:00:51] and I'm an adoptee and she's around the same age as I am and so there are some similar threads

[00:00:56] but it is a fiction. It is a fiction. I partly say that to protect my daughter because with this book

[00:01:05] and with the previous one, the commonality is that there's a woman with a daughter and people come

[00:01:11] up to her and say how do you feel about being in your mom's books and she's sort of like I'm not in

[00:01:16] my mom's books so it is a fiction. Yeah, yeah. So healing then we're here to talk about healing. Yep.

[00:01:27] What does healing mean to you?

[00:01:32] So hard to pin that down to one sort of short bite, isn't it?

[00:01:39] And I've been thinking about that obviously as I was thinking about coming on the podcast again

[00:01:47] and maybe because I'm a writer in the light words, I was thinking about

[00:01:54] how sort of the moments when you feel healed, how they feel in the body like your whole self

[00:02:02] and the word if we're not healthy, if something needs to be healed. There's this, the word disease,

[00:02:10] right? Dis-Ease. And so for me, healing is moving in the direction of being at ease where you feel

[00:02:27] at ease at home in your in your whole self. You move through the world with a sense of

[00:02:35] ease of rightness, of trust, of self-trust, just learning to trust yourself.

[00:02:46] Yeah, and so I think where I am on my healing journey is on the path to more moments of that sense

[00:02:58] of ease and greater distance between the times and places where I feel dis-Ease, so to speak.

[00:03:10] That makes sense. Yeah.

[00:03:16] I'm just scribbling away here.

[00:03:18] Yeah.

[00:03:22] So it seems like the biggest thing here that you're talking about is a feeling, yeah?

[00:03:32] Yeah, so it's a feeling, would say not a feeling as in love or joy or that,

[00:03:41] it's as in just a feeling. It's about the whole self, like you know how you when you are somewhere

[00:03:51] or you're with someone and you feel completely relaxed, there's no anxiety there, there's no

[00:04:02] there's no worry that you're like you're with somebody that you trust completely

[00:04:06] and your whole body just feels relaxed and comfortable. There's nothing jangly anywhere,

[00:04:18] so your body and your mind is relaxed at ease, everything is just as those things have just slotted

[00:04:26] into place for you. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know what your experience has been in the past,

[00:04:36] but you know my path has included a lot of anxiety, a lot of worry, a lot of it's been a long

[00:04:47] journey for me to find moments where I felt at ease, where I trusted myself and I

[00:04:55] where I just had the sense of like I'm okay, everything's okay. We're okay.

[00:05:00] Yeah. So peace would seem to be the peace. Yeah, yeah. I'm slowing it down on purpose, you realize that?

[00:05:14] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:18] Yeah. It's the absence, it's the absence of anxiety, it's the absence of worry,

[00:05:29] it's the absence of trauma, it's the absence of disease. It is the absence of disease and I think

[00:05:40] the trauma piece it's when the trauma is no longer the driver,

[00:05:50] it's no longer the part that is running in the background,

[00:06:02] seeing things in your head and making you feel anxious and all of that. The wound obviously

[00:06:09] is the wound and it's always there. But it's, it's

[00:06:20] wait, and the shame and the grief and everything that come with that, my therapist says,

[00:06:25] well, when those come up, we're going to put them in the corner with a coloring book.

[00:06:32] We don't deny their existence, but we have some tools where when they do come up,

[00:06:38] we can do the equivalent of like, all right, darling. Here's your coloring book off,

[00:06:43] you go into the corner and you play over there, I'm going to be here doing something else.

[00:06:48] Yeah. And it's amazing that because my wife is not into anything like this at all.

[00:06:58] Right. The, the, yeah, that looking at who we are and separating who we are from the,

[00:07:08] from our trauma or anything like she won't go anyone, but somebody bought her a coloring book

[00:07:14] like a mindful coloring book and she was up for it. Oh good. Yeah. I'll show you some for it.

[00:07:21] And, yeah, it's, it's a distraction for her. Yes. And that's, you know, if we, I love the way

[00:07:36] that you were, what's the word? You characterize grief and shame and put them in there in the corner

[00:07:46] with the, with a coloring book. It works in the same way. It's, it's distracting. It's distracting.

[00:07:55] Yeah. It's distracting them. Yeah. Yeah. The word that's coming to me is, or the idea is coming

[00:08:05] to me is this is subtractive. Yeah, it's subtractive. So it's us without. Yes. Yes. You're subtractive.

[00:08:17] As in we are taking away the, the trauma, the results of the, the wound. So you mean? Well,

[00:08:27] we're taking, yeah, we are taking away. That's definitely to use this, to use the subtractive

[00:08:36] metaphor. And it's subtractive. It's, in a way, it's kind of reductive as well. It's like

[00:08:48] and I mentioned this in a podcast that did this morning with a, with a nozzee.

[00:08:56] The, this idea, and it's a good one, I think. It's the idea of, you know, some of us are looking for

[00:09:02] enlightenment. But so that, that's a kind of an additive thing. Whereas if we look at some,

[00:09:13] we'll look at the, the flip of that is, and we are the light. And that light has been

[00:09:21] and darkened. Yes. I think of it as a, as a space clearing, which I think is the same thing

[00:09:30] that you're seeing and, in saying subtractive where the, the light, the self, the,

[00:09:39] whatever you want to call that soul, if you want to use that word has been covered over by this

[00:09:49] grief, this wound, this trauma. And what I've been trying to do anyone have been doing is, is,

[00:10:00] looking at that grief and trauma and, and sort of digging it away, excavating it so that I could

[00:10:07] get back in connection with who I really am. With the, with the light if you want to use that

[00:10:17] that language, I think I, the, I just shut myself down when I was very, very young. And I,

[00:10:28] I didn't even really feel fully. I just shut myself off from that, I think it was too much.

[00:10:38] And so I had to learn, um, I had to excavate that in order to, to feel and that's not very much fun

[00:10:48] in the, in the beginning. We do it as a protective measure, right? Because pain and anger are,

[00:10:56] are hard to deal with. And then we start to excavate. And there's a part, it's like it is, it's

[00:11:04] like sort of if you've let your, if you let your wardrobe, if you let your closet get really,

[00:11:10] filled up with things and you haven't had a good clear out in 10 years or something and you decide

[00:11:15] right, this is it I'm going to organize. And there's that point in the middle of it where everything

[00:11:22] is on the floor, on the bed, on the wherever it is, on the furniture. And it looks as though

[00:11:29] it's 10 times the amount that it was when it was just all shoved into the wardrobe and you stand

[00:11:38] here in the middle of it and you think, what have I done? It wasn't really that bad in the first

[00:11:45] place. Was it? But then you have no choice out. They've got no choice but to sort through it. And

[00:11:52] then begin to put it back in the way that you want and decide what you want to keep

[00:11:58] and what you want to discard. Does that make sense as a metaphor for you?

[00:12:04] Yeah, it does certainly does. And I was thinking about where I should go next from there.

[00:12:13] I like that. So how would you, so the therapy process is game or the healing process which may

[00:12:32] not be possible therapy and may involve writing clearly if you're a writer? Yeah it could involve

[00:12:38] just getting up in the morning and that has been part of my therapeutic process is getting up

[00:12:47] in the morning. I don't have to do it in the morning, it just works for me better in the morning.

[00:12:52] And just writing all the stuff out and it's not for anybody but me.

[00:13:00] And just things make more sense to me once I've put them on a piece of paper. I don't,

[00:13:11] I draft pen and paper not on the computer because it doesn't work in my brain the same way

[00:13:18] but that's just me. Yeah. I just want to jump in there. I just want to jump in there. Maybe

[00:13:26] because to allow the audience to kind of signpost the audience, maybe try the different,

[00:13:34] try what, try try them both and see what was for you. I've heard that especially when we're talking

[00:13:39] about emotive stuff pen and paper is the best way. Yeah there is some brain science that actually

[00:13:51] supports that in terms of what's happening in the brain and the lateral movement of literal left

[00:14:00] right movement for most of us if you're writing left right in some languages go the opposite way.

[00:14:07] The direction is irrelevant. That is a different physical movement obviously than on the keyboard

[00:14:17] which doesn't have any movement and the different things happening between the hemispheres.

[00:14:25] I used to have an article now, I don't have it. I used to be a high school teacher and I had

[00:14:32] obnoxious teacher things posted on one of my bulletin boards that were

[00:14:37] I say they're obnoxious because I know a lot of the kids thought they were obnoxious because they were

[00:14:42] me using brain science to show them that I wasn't just an old grump about technology

[00:14:52] that there was actual science to support what I was trying to get them to do in terms of

[00:14:57] like taking notes by hand instead of on the computer and all of that business. So there's some

[00:15:01] brain science that supports the idea that pen, paper, left right movement does things in the hemispheres

[00:15:12] that helps us dig in and people should do whatever resonates with them. They should experiment with

[00:15:21] times of day I write in the morning first thing because the rational part of my brain

[00:15:30] wakes up much more slowly the the editor part of my brain, the critical part of my brain

[00:15:39] she needs coffee or something before she wakes up right and the more creative

[00:15:49] feeling part of my brain is there as soon as I wake up.

[00:15:56] Yeah. So that's why I do it first thing in the morning so I can get a running start on whatever

[00:16:03] I'm doing before the little naggy brain wakes up and starts trying to derail me. I know other people

[00:16:11] who find that when I'm asleep you know 11 o'clock midnight that's when their thing is. So I think

[00:16:22] for people who are listening it's all just an experiment. Try it if it works, continue if it doesn't

[00:16:32] try something else. So I think I think your metaphor of the wardrobe is great because it fits

[00:16:41] with the writing process. So you talked about how when you've got all the clothes out to the wardrobe

[00:16:55] and put them on the bed it looks far messier than it did when it was in the wardrobe and there's

[00:17:02] more of them, it looks bigger and I guess that's the people talk about unpacking don't they? We talk

[00:17:08] about unpacking. So you know like unpacking your suitcase unpacking your wardrobe it's the same

[00:17:14] same thing and so it works great great for that so I've got a fascination with metaphors.

[00:17:26] Great. I like metaphors too. So why do you think you know because we talk about coming out of the fog

[00:17:37] we talk about the primal wound and you know so if we're the primal wound and obviously the idea of

[00:17:47] healing is only it's a presupposes isn't that there is a wound. So you know but coming out to the fog

[00:18:03] what else do we do? Oh yeah we're not a blank slate you know we don't know right without

[00:18:08] pounds of the blank slate. What are the pluses and minuses for you with metaphors?

[00:18:19] Just metaphors in general. And this sort of these adoptive metaphors should we call them?

[00:18:33] I think that for for adult teas, I think they're the pluses are

[00:18:41] that for many of us the initial wounding took place before we had language

[00:18:55] which means that in it poses a challenge for traditional talk therapy, it poses a challenge for us to

[00:19:08] you know they sort of say name it to tame it. What do you do when it happened preferably? You don't

[00:19:16] have language around that. And I think that direct language is the hardest to gain access to

[00:19:27] and so we can sort of metaphor allows us a way into the felt result of the wound and it allows us

[00:19:37] to start wiggling our way in the direction of what it is we actually want to get to. So I think

[00:19:44] it's an access point that is easier than trying to directly describe what's going on or the process.

[00:20:00] The metaphors it's not direct language and that means that there's increased

[00:20:08] risk of misunderstanding.

[00:20:15] We can grasp it right up. I'll stop you from making this for somebody else the other day.

[00:20:22] Talk about grasping, we make abstract concrete.

[00:20:33] Yeah and I think that's important for us to be able to make the abstract

[00:20:36] concrete. Especially for those of us who's maybe not especially but my direct experience is as a person

[00:20:47] who internalized things and shut down. I know other adoptees who though they may have internalized

[00:20:55] some things they tend to be more outward reaching their expression of the wound tends to be more anger

[00:21:04] and my expression of the wound has been more anxious, depressive, shutting down that sort of thing.

[00:21:19] I forgot where I was going I'm sorry.

[00:21:23] So people say that in the general world it's in the general public world

[00:21:30] it's the saying that time is the greatest healer.

[00:21:38] Do you think that's true?

[00:21:46] I'm not sure that time all by itself has the capacity to heal this size of wound.

[00:21:54] I think time offers us opportunities in terms of especially if we were wounded as children

[00:22:04] obviously as time passes and we come into our own competence as adults.

[00:22:09] We just develop as naturally without necessarily doing anything

[00:22:18] we the brain is fully developed and we develop skills and we develop competencies that facilitate

[00:22:25] being able to look at it. So in that way time helps, time is a form of distance

[00:22:37] and I think in any sort of grief or wounding process

[00:22:42] distance offers us the opportunity for a broader perspective that is helpful.

[00:22:52] So time yes is an element of healing but I think work is also required.

[00:23:04] I think if there's no work then time doesn't matter a job.

[00:23:19] I guess what I'm saying is time provides us an opportunity.

[00:23:23] Does that make sense? In that you and I are both adult human beings and we've had experiences

[00:23:31] that we've had successes in our adult lives, we put roofs over our heads,

[00:23:37] we go and buy the food, we take care of ourselves.

[00:23:43] And I think for a lot of adoptees just that has been for me part of the healing.

[00:23:50] I'm not powerless anymore. You can't just take me from one place to the other.

[00:23:58] I'm in charge. Now I pay the bills, I do all the things and that's powerful.

[00:24:07] Yeah so I think time and growing give us an opportunity that then we can bring in the work

[00:24:14] and do it but I don't think that I think if I had just sat still and not

[00:24:21] not written, not being self reflective, not going to therapy, not you know the list of things

[00:24:29] that I've done. I think I would be in exactly the same place that I was which on the outside like

[00:24:39] I think for a lot of adoptees I appeared to be a competent parent, employee, worker doing good

[00:24:49] things in the world, on the inside. Oh just there was no peace, no ease or minimally so and I was sort

[00:25:03] of driven by this wound by the results of it. By I was driven by it Simon was driven by a desperate

[00:25:13] need to prove myself worthy. That's what was driving me, this constant need to prove myself worthy.

[00:25:24] And so the ease I talked about at the beginning about being at ease in yourself is a form of knowing that

[00:25:32] I'm worthy enough just sitting here breathing air. I don't have to prove it to anybody.

[00:25:43] Another Scottish lady that's been had a big impact on me talks about unconditional love and she

[00:25:53] shifts out as a daughter and she talks about her unconditional love for a daughter. And the fact

[00:26:01] that the daughter that daughter could lie in bed every day for the rest of her life and she would

[00:26:13] still love her. Yep. Yeah and I think obviously this is not a path that everybody's going to take

[00:26:22] or that I recommend but I definitely think that having my own children was part of my healing.

[00:26:31] Because I do yes this I agree with this woman. I don't want my children to be in bed because

[00:26:39] that would not be a happy life for them but it's not because I wouldn't love them if they did so.

[00:26:47] And so feeling that unconditional love

[00:26:54] for my children and living into that was sort of a practice run at doing it for myself.

[00:27:13] Does that make sense? So I'm like I have this you know this first wee baby and I'm looking down

[00:27:19] at him and of course there's all the I think adoptees who've had children will know this especially

[00:27:28] if they look like you that first of all whether they look like you or not. The first look at this

[00:27:35] human being that is the only human being the first human being you've ever known on the planet

[00:27:40] who's actually genetically related to you. Kind of you know just explodes your whole head and heart

[00:27:50] and then you have all these realizations you're looking at this infant and thinking

[00:28:00] and now somebody comes into the room and just takes him away.

[00:28:07] What horror is that right for both of you? And it for me it just opened up that whole

[00:28:16] it was sort of the first step in that I'd said I was you know completely shut down. It was the

[00:28:21] first opening up of all these wee things that I've felt and shut down as a kid about this not being

[00:28:32] all sunshine and roses, this experience. That's real you know and then the unconditional

[00:28:41] love part I had throughout my children's childhood moments where

[00:28:50] something would be happening and I would just think I would think about something

[00:29:00] take a sidestep and just say that

[00:29:03] I didn't have the most loving and this is an understatement. I didn't have the most loving adoptive

[00:29:11] mother on the planet and so look at my children and I would have a wee flashback to something that

[00:29:19] happened or something that had been said to me when I was a kid and I would just think I would never

[00:29:25] never speak to my child like that. It's not loving, it's not kind, not fruitful in any way, it's

[00:29:35] not helpful and so all of that and the so that's sort of a manifestation of the unconditional love

[00:29:43] for my children and my therapist through the years has loved to remind me that I do know how to

[00:29:54] lovingly take care of a human being and the evidence is my children and the evidence is the

[00:30:03] children that I taught in high school and so she was sort of coaching me to turn that back

[00:30:12] in the direction of myself which was one of the pieces that I needed to learn.

[00:30:17] Wow. That was wonderful, that was beautiful, that was

[00:30:30] I'm giving you lots of space so it's not long winded at all. I want to take you back to that

[00:30:37] you talked about an opening up moment. Instead of being closed down, so what was that painful,

[00:30:55] was that joyous, was that all of those, what was the opening? Talk us through the opening up.

[00:31:04] I think the opening up and I think are you referring to when I first looked at my first

[00:31:11] child and sort of realized? I'm riff, yeah. Yeah, okay. So

[00:31:23] it was all all of that, yes so I have this moment where I'm looking down at him and it's just this

[00:31:32] astounding, like I'm actually connected to another human being on the planet.

[00:31:41] That's just absolutely marvelous, right? And then I think I had what sort of a normal first and I was

[00:31:51] young, first young mother response you know where I went and I'd read all the baby books,

[00:32:00] all of them development, brain development, body development. But I have this moment in the

[00:32:07] hospital, so I have the first, this is marvelous and then I'm looking down at this child and going

[00:32:12] oh god, this beautiful little creature is completely dependent on me. I don't know that I'm

[00:32:20] competent enough for this, what I've done. And then I think actually a nurse or somebody came

[00:32:29] into the room and that's what made me think. And it was almost a not just a mental thought like

[00:32:36] a felt thing, like oh this is the moment where actually my mother didn't even get to hold me but

[00:32:43] sort of oh this is where they come for him you know and I had to sort of talk myself up no

[00:32:51] darling they don't come for him, nobody comes for us anymore. And that led me down the

[00:33:02] the path that I think was the first real opening up of the grief for me

[00:33:08] for myself and for my mother. What would my son have felt if somebody had come and take

[00:33:22] him tearing up as I'm saying this because I'm thinking literally about him like what if somebody

[00:33:28] had come and taken him, what would that be baby who had just been in his mother's arms what he

[00:33:34] would get and obviously I knew I'm feeling that because it's me that's been taken. I know exactly

[00:33:39] what that feels like. And then like what would I, what would I as the mother feel if somebody just

[00:33:46] came and took my baby unimaginable grief. So so that was the beginning of the opening up.

[00:34:00] Um can I take you back there sorry. Yep go ahead. So are you talking here about coming out of the

[00:34:10] fog? I don't think I actually came out of the fog until years after that because that grief piece

[00:34:22] was so huge and my patterning right the thing that I've been practicing possibly from birth

[00:34:33] was to shut down. So I had this huge feeling and realization

[00:34:41] and it was too much. So I shut it down, I didn't think about shutting it down. I just the reflex

[00:34:49] came in we don't do this. So you opened up and immediately shut down. Yep.

[00:34:58] So because as the way I yeah little theoretical Simon right this is Simon's theory.

[00:35:12] Okay. Yeah. I haven't got any memory if I haven't got any kids. So um and you know stereo types

[00:35:24] mother child bond, father child bond, different things. Let's just put it at that.

[00:35:33] I think so what I why I think that women have a tougher time is because they have

[00:35:50] felt this unconditional love. Mothers have felt this unconditional love, feel this unconditional love

[00:35:58] and even if they haven't had a baby yet, if they've got a maternal instinct,

[00:36:06] they've got a really deep thing for kids. And they're think so given that deep thing that deep love

[00:36:20] I

[00:36:23] that that question would be

[00:36:28] how could anything

[00:36:32] overcome. I want to use the Trump word right? How could anything trump that what could have

[00:36:42] trump that? I mean in terms of healing from it or no not in terms of healing from it. So I

[00:36:52] don't know what I'm going to I'm going to stick with it. Okay, it's just a theory right so

[00:36:57] and let me put it might let me put it a different way then put it my way right? So I thought

[00:37:03] I thought well you know what would I have done if I'd been my biological dad?

[00:37:13] And what would I have done right and how that guy wasn't bonded to me, you know he hadn't

[00:37:23] carried me the nine months. It's it's a different thing. Yep, there's a different thing. So

[00:37:33] what I'm thinking is if you're a if you're a woman and you've got the this you've got this

[00:37:40] incredible bond with your child.

[00:37:45] Uh then

[00:37:49] then the question is what on earth is powerful enough could be powerful enough to break this bond?

[00:37:58] How on earth how on earth could she do it to me? I thought that sentence that question

[00:38:11] without the to me at the end.

[00:38:17] How on earth did she do it? And perhaps my the circumstance of my first child's birth

[00:38:28] helped me in that I was 20 same age as my mother and he was an unintended pregnancy

[00:38:43] and I wasn't married.

[00:38:44] So

[00:38:51] so I went through the same journey that she went through basically.

[00:39:00] Had a boyfriend, he was the dad, Nebda, should we get married?

[00:39:06] Right all of that except I was doing this in 1987 right this you know and she'd been doing it

[00:39:17] in 1967.

[00:39:23] Very different.

[00:39:25] Where did it?

[00:39:26] Very different.

[00:39:28] And I was aware of that and I was aware of

[00:39:36] I will say that I did not consider adoption because selfishly I didn't consider adoption

[00:39:43] because I will selfishly and not selfishly but on the selfish end

[00:39:48] I could not cope with I knew I wouldn't be able to cope with having a mother somewhere in the

[00:39:55] world that I didn't know and a child somewhere in the world that I didn't know.

[00:39:59] Couldn't do it.

[00:40:01] And I didn't want him what didn't know he was a him when I was having this thought but

[00:40:05] I didn't want the baby to have to go through what I had gone through.

[00:40:11] So all of the rational things you know and my adoptive dad was just beside himself because he's

[00:40:19] thinking as a parent completely logically right you 20 you haven't finished uni,

[00:40:26] you need to have a termination or give this baby up for adoption because this is just going

[00:40:30] to make your life too hard and his life is going to be hard all the logical things right.

[00:40:36] And I just when I told him that I'd fallen pregnant but I didn't say that I said

[00:40:46] dad I'm having a baby and he looked at me and he was born in Ireland and brought up in England

[00:40:54] before we moved back to Scotland so he's got this English accent and he says

[00:40:58] should I make us a cup of tea.

[00:41:02] Yes dad think he should make us a cup of tea so it comes back in and he's going through

[00:41:08] right we can take care of this I mean good dad right.

[00:41:13] And I let him go through all and then I took a deep breath and I said dad I didn't say

[00:41:20] I'm pregnant what I said was I'm having a baby

[00:41:30] that's what I'm doing and of course he wasn't a fan of that which who would be

[00:41:39] but so I'd gone through this whole bit right we have to go home and you have to see to the

[00:41:46] parents this has happened and the parents do whatever the parents do whatever they did in a

[00:41:52] small Scottish town in 1967 which you know it's not the same response that I was going to get 20

[00:42:01] years later. And so I think that that was what enabled me to remove the two me at the end of your

[00:42:09] sentence not how could she do this to me but just I see that your range of choices was far more

[00:42:20] limited than mine and that if you if she had chosen the same thing that I chose both our paths

[00:42:35] would have been more limited than mine and my sons 20 years later.

[00:42:43] And she was aware of that.

[00:42:47] And then I was also aware and I think you and I talked in the last podcast I think we talked about

[00:42:52] beliefs and how sometimes our beliefs don't even feel like beliefs they just feel like facts

[00:43:02] and the wisdom of the day was that that adoption was the right thing to do

[00:43:14] and there are all these people around her telling her in non certain terms that she would be a

[00:43:22] bad mother if she kept me that she would cause me harm. And I was aware of all that

[00:43:29] so my feeling there in that hospital room was not how could you do it to me it was just it was

[00:43:37] it was grief for both of us. How did we survive this?

[00:43:47] This is absolutely awful how did you survive?

[00:43:51] And I just thought wherever you are I hope you've gone on and had whatever life you want.

[00:44:03] I hope you've recovered from this and I don't understand how you would have

[00:44:08] and so all of that was huge and so fairly quickly I just shut that down just put a little

[00:44:12] break back on that because I couldn't do with it.

[00:44:21] The to me thing is very significant I think

[00:44:30] one little thing that meant a lot really my adoption file is that the

[00:44:42] the adoption was planned before I was born.

[00:44:48] And so it before she'd seen me

[00:44:55] so it was a plan

[00:45:04] a plan for some things still within her rather than a rejection of something that came

[00:45:14] I was pretty big for me. Yeah I think those things are big I had

[00:45:29] similar when I got the notes that this had been the plan she'd been sent to a mothering home

[00:45:37] and mothering home they were not nice places. And so before I was a reality you know

[00:45:50] it was that

[00:45:55] and then

[00:45:59] her mother came to the hospital so she never got to hold me but her mother came to the hospital

[00:46:04] somehow she managed to get a wee look.

[00:46:10] And she went to my mother and said well she's lovely let's just take her home

[00:46:16] and it sent my mother into this sort of spiral of

[00:46:23] you know wait a minute I've had sort of tunnel vision that this is the path I'm now walking

[00:46:29] down I thought I was going to get married we were going to have this baby and I've done this

[00:46:33] horrible shift and she went home I went to foster care she's coming into you know see the person

[00:46:44] social worker whatever you want to call her. And she's she's clearly it's thrown her into this huge

[00:46:51] indecision. And then this woman says to her on one of their sessions I want you to go home

[00:47:01] and I want you to just say I've decided on adoption.

[00:47:10] And that's what she did. And when I read that in the notes Simon I was so angry at that woman.

[00:47:21] I just well you can maybe imagine I don't think people who are not adopted can imagine my

[00:47:28] anger. And if we're if we're pinpointing a moment that I came out of the fog I think it's that

[00:47:39] I think that was the final I think I'd been on the way of opening up and shutting down opening

[00:47:46] up shutting down for this was about 14 years maybe after 13 14 years 13 years after I had my son

[00:47:54] and I think that was the final right it's just open now we're out yeah the notes

[00:48:09] and that particular note just go home and see I've decided on adoption.

[00:48:19] Yeah yeah wow

[00:48:22] yeah

[00:48:29] I think that seems like a good place to bring it in otherwise we'll be into it for another hour

[00:48:35] it's true

[00:48:41] thanks Heather thank you thanks lessons we'll speak to you soon bye