final episode 1

This podcast, "Life of Adoption," explores the experiences of adopted individuals and how it shapes their lives. The host, Kaylin Smith, shares her own family's adoption journey, including the adoption of her two sisters, Mary and Erica. The podcast aims to understand the perspectives of adopted individuals and how their childhoods and identities are impacted. It also discusses the potential challenges and factors involved in adoption, such as loss, grief, and identity issues. Kaylin interviews her oldest sister, Mary, who is now a mother of three, to discuss how her adoption has influenced her approach to motherhood. Mary emphasizes the importance of understanding her own identity and culture and passing it on to her children. Despite occasional challenges, she is grateful for her childhood and strives to provide her children with a positive upbringing. The podcast encourages listeners to visit their website and follow their social media platforms for updates. Welcome to Life of Adoption. I'm Kaylin Smith. This is a podcast all about childhood adoption and how it shapes individuals into the adults they become. It is for anyone curious about adoption or people who want to broaden their perspective on the people around them. Anyone with an open mind can listen to this podcast. Each episode we deliver real examples and stories of adopted individuals. We will learn about how adoption shapes motherhood and just life in general. So let's get started. Two loving parents and two adopted sisters. When my parents were just married they were told they could not conceive children and that never stopped them from wanting to become parents and just give a child the best life that they possibly could. In order to still have a family and begin their journey as parents they turned to adoption and they signed up for multiple different adoption agencies and they put their faces and biographies in different catalogs where birth parents can sort through and find who they think would be best to adopt their unborn child. So in 1996 my parents first adopted my oldest sister named Mary and this was their first child so they felt so much pride and joy just being able to be parents and give this beautiful little girl an amazing life and they had a very good relationship with her birth mom in which they chose to do an open adoption which basically means that they are able to have somewhat of a relationship with their birth parents growing up and they are fully aware of who their birth parents are and the birth parents have complete access to communication with the adoptive parents which in this case were my mom and dad. Then three years later in 1999 my parents adopted my middle sister named Erica and this adoption was a little bit different because the birth mom chose to make it closed which basically means that they won't really have any communication up until the child or the mom decides to reach out but normally this happens when the child is 18 and up but this never changed my sister's view on anything it was just the way it was and the uniqueness of her adoption. Now of course because they were adopted into my family before I was even born there were so many different stories and experiences that they got to experience and unique different trials that they went through where they were stared at kind of differently in grocery stores or my mom was asked if she was their nanny and this was all brought up because we are all of different ethnicities and we all look completely different there's no similarities between me or either one of my sisters but the crazy part was that I never even really noticed until anybody brought it up I just was completely used to the fact that these are my sisters these are my parents and we were all just one completely big happy family. So with that backstory I just wanted to say my overall purpose of doing this podcast is truly just to understand my sisters more and try to see from their point of view and jump into their shoes how they truly felt growing up and what their childhood was like and how their lives as adults now could have been shaped a different way because they were adopted children. So throughout this podcast I plan on interviewing both my sisters and maybe asking my parents a couple questions but to give a little bit of backstory of my oldest sister she is now a mom of three beautiful children and my middle sister is currently a fourth grade elementary school teacher and I just found that their lives are truly beautiful and I wanted to see how the life of an elementary school teacher in today's world could have been shaped and affected by her unique life as an adopted child and I also wanted to see how my older sister how her life as a mom is impacted from being adopted and how the way she views her kids and just motherhood in general could have been shaped a different way as well. Just like any big event in one's life adoption can impact someone's trajectory of their entire life path. In doing my research I found seven different sort of things to look out for when adopting a child and those are the potential loss, rejection, shame and guilt, grief, identity, intimacy and mastery and control issues. These seven different factors of adoption play a huge role in raising an adopted child and how these seven factors can completely shape a adopted child's life in the long run. Because I'm unable to have my oldest sister Mary physically on the podcast with me I asked her a few questions and I recorded her answers and I want to share her feelings as an adopted child who is now a mother of three. I brought up these seven factors of adoption and I asked her how these seven things that she might have felt as a child have come into play and have shaped the way that she decides to mother her children. The main thing that she told me was never that she resented her adoptive parents or my mom and dad or she never resented her birth family but these feelings of shame and guilt or grief or identity issues they're all inevitable and the reason why she felt that these feelings might have applied to her at some points in her life were just because of the fact that she wasn't really sure who she was and where she truly came from. Lucky for her she was able to maintain a somewhat close relationship with her birth mom and her birth siblings. She was able to ask questions about her identity or where she came from but her biggest thing was that she never wanted any of these feelings that she felt as a child to impact her life as a mother. She tried to see how her childhood as an adopted child would make her life as a mother more beautiful in the sense that she was able to keep her children and she didn't have to resort to putting them up for adoption because she was able to take care of them and fulfill their needs. She said that when she found out she was pregnant with her first daughter she was over the moon excited because she was able to be a mom and sort of give the life to her that her birth mom wasn't able to give her and as she continued to have kids and be a better mom she just loved her life as a mom and she felt like there was no intense correlation between her childhood adoption and her adulthood as a mother but she did try to not let her childhood traumas get to her life as a mom. Additionally because she felt a lot of feelings of lost identity or just confusion in general she wanted to really understand her culture and where she came from and by doing this she asked her birth mom and her birth father a lot of questions about where her family came from and she wanted to see photos of her birth grandparents or her cousins to see where her features came from and who she looked like or who her daughters looked like and by doing this she is able to teach her children a lot about where they come from as well and a lot of the beauty of their culture and their ethnicity. She did emphasize as well that she never loses sight of her childhood and her gratefulness for it and her children absolutely love my parents and those are their grandparents and they absolutely love them and love spending time with them and we all don't see any difference and neither does my sister and she truly does believe that she had the best childhood that she could have had and likes to focus on the positives and not really let her feelings of grief or identity problems, rejection, she doesn't let that affect her life as a mother even though they may come into her mind at some points during the day during a certain week she definitely sees more of the beauty of her childhood and wants to share the wealth and give her children the childhood that she was able to have. Thank you so much for joining us this week on Life of Adoption. I'm Kaylin Smith and make sure to visit our website where every show will be posted each week so you'll never miss an episode. You can also follow us on our other social media platforms to stay fully updated with Life of Adoption. If you enjoyed the show please give us a rating or tell your friends to tune in. See you next time!