Episode 52 - Hannah Jackson Matthews: Standing in the Gap for Transracial Adoptees
Hannah is an author, educator, and champion for transracial adoptees. Today's conversation touches upon how transracial adoptees can navigate their racial identity, how adoptive parents can be aware of racial stress and that may impact the way they parent their kids, and more.
[ID: A beige background and orange semi-circle. Text reads: The Intersectional Fertility Podcast Episode 52: Hannah Jackson Matthews @hannahjacksonmatthews and Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier @intersectionalfertility.]
30 Day Self-Guided Online Course for Adoptive Parents
Reflective E-Workbook on Supporting Transracial Adoptees
Follow Hannah on Instagram, and visit her website.
Episode transcript:
Disclaimer: This is an automatically generated transcript edited to be more readable. It may not be 100% accurate.
[00:00:00] Josie: I am Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier, and this is the Intersectional Fertility Podcast, where ideas and identities intersect to deepen our understanding of fertility and ultimately our whole selves.
[00:00:32] Hi, friend. I wanted to pop in real quick before we get started today and let you know that registration is open for my five week online program called Fertile. Fertile is a queer, trans, and non-binary centered online program for folks with wombs to reclaim power over their fertility journey and conceive using my Whole Self Fertility Method.
[00:00:57] Healthcare practitioners are welcome to join us and become certified in the Whole Self Fertility Method. There's a sliding scale available for all, and scholarships are available for Black, Indigenous, and People of the Global Majority. Also, partners can join for free, and if you'd like to do a payment plan, you can email me, josie@intersectionalfertility.com and we can set one up for you.
[00:01:22] To read all the details and to register, go to my website, intersectionalfertility.com/fertile. We get started in a few weeks. April 17th is the official start date of Fertile, and our first live session will be Wednesday, April 19th. We'll have five live sessions once a week for five weeks, and as soon as you register, you get access to all of the content in Fertile, which is really cool.
[00:01:51] So you can go through the whole program starting now if you'd like, or take your time and pace yourself, whatever works best for you. And by the time we get to the live sessions, you'll be able to get all your questions answered and get everything you need to best benefit you and your fertility. So I wanted to read a couple of testimonials from the program, and I hope that you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed reading them.
[00:02:17] This is from Claire and Jem, so they took the program together. They said, "The holistic framework of Fertile made it possible to approach our overall health and readiness for the conception process from a perspective of balance rather than fear or deficit. The tools we gained resonate much more deeply with us as queer folks than anything else we have seen out there. We're walking away feeling seen and supported with a deep knowing that queer families are sacred."
[00:02:47] Yay. I love that one so much. And this one is from my mentor, teacher, friend, king yaa. "Take a look at this dope ass offering. from Josie called Fertile. Josie is someone that I trust dearly. Someone who I went to with my own uterus issues and who held me safely and with care to bring my whole body and mind to wellness.
[00:03:11] "Josie is a trusted and certified member of the Birthing Beyond the Binary alumni community, and a colleague in queer and trans reproductive health. I strongly encourage you to check out their offering. If you're currently trying to conceive or planning to conceive in your life, register and share widely. Our community needs this."
[00:03:33] Ugh. Thank you so much, king yaa for that. So, you heard them. Register and share widely. So to find out all the details and to register, go to my website, intersectionalfertility.com/fertile. And if you have any questions at all or would like to set up a payment plan, you can email me josie@intersectionalfertility.com.
[00:03:56] All right, on with the show.
[00:04:07] Hannah Jackson Matthews is an author, educator, content creator and speaker who designs and delivers educational content for transracial adoptees, people raised by families whose race and ethnicity are different than their own, and their caregivers in order to better navigate race, embrace racial identity, and combat racism and white supremacy.
[00:04:30] She's an adult transracial adoptee, a biracial woman who is domestically and privately adopted as an infant by white parent. The racial difference between herself and her parents made navigating race, racism, and culture, along with developing a positive racial identity challenging. Her experiences and passion for education informed her first career as a ninth grade English teacher in North Philadelphia.
[00:04:55] Although she's no longer teaching in the traditional sense, Hannah continues to use the transformational power of education as a means to combat racial and cultural ignorance within the context of transracial adoption.
[00:05:16] Welcome to the podcast, Hannah.
[00:05:19] Hannah: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for today's conversation.
[00:05:24] Josie: Me too. When I was reading your bio, I love that you were an English teacher. I was an English major.
[00:05:31] Hannah: I was also an English major. So there you go, yes, I was not an English ed major. I was like a through and through English major and somehow found myself in the classroom, which was like the last place I thought I was gonna end up at, thought I was gonna be an academic or something, but there I was in North Philadelphia in the classroom.
[00:05:52] Josie: Nice. I love it. Will you share your story of what led you to become a transracial adoptee champion? And I love that term.
[00:06:02] Hannah: Yes. That's totally something that I coined. That's vague, but I feel like it describes what I do really well. That is just like be a champion for people who have been transracially adopted. And what led me to that was, well, I think it really just starts with me kind of being my own champion and that journey of finding my own voice and championing my own self and worth. And it really came to fruition in college for me.
[00:06:35] I think once I discovered my interest in English and became a writer. when I took my first woman's studies class, that like totally blew my entire mind off. Cause I mean, that was the first time I had heard voices like Audre Lorde and bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins. And I've always been a very observant, I was a very observant child.
[00:07:02] Very perceptive, very sensitive, and I had a lot of experiences, but they were able to give me language. For those experiences and really just affirm a lot of things that I had known were things that I was struggling with or challenges that I was facing and really able to describe in a way that resonated with all of the feelings that I was carrying to that point.
[00:07:37] So yeah, that was like my sophomore year of college that I took that class and it was like on a random whim, like I do this one to fill in this, this like elective spot. And it was like, oh wow. I think that I've just discovered what I wanna do.
[00:07:57] And so, yeah, I think that it starts, me becoming a traditional adoptive champion starts with me being a champion of myself, and then living that out. For a while I was a community organizer and activist in school. And really was able to not only find my own voice, but then like exercise it and develop a level of confidence in my ability to champion myself and others.
[00:08:26] And then, I had a moment where I went back home to my hometown. And I started to see a lot of young, transracial adoptees. I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which is South Central County a little bit, east of Harrisburg. Most people know it for like the Amish people there, or the Mennonite people there.
[00:08:50] But it does speak to like the very fundamentalist and like Christian evangelical community there. And so there's a lot of like, influences that culture. There's a lot of adoption. Now that's not how my parents entered adoption at all. That was not their, the ideology behind their choice to adopt.
[00:09:11] But it's very common practice. And so when I went home, I saw a lot of transracial families and I saw a lot of children that reminded me of myself. And I had so far removed myself from my childhood self that I kind of wanted to be able to help them along. Cause a lot of the journey that I took to self-actualization and positive racial identity. I did alone.
[00:09:42] And I wanted to help if I could in any way. So that's what made me want to be a champion. I just want to make other people's journeys to themselves really, less right alone and less challenging, less difficult. I say less isolating and less injurous.
[00:10:03] Josie: Yes, yeah, that's so important. I love that. I never knew, you know, about the roots or the nuances about the adoption system, let alone like transracial or transnational adoption. And I remember first learning about it from Kayden Rose, who was on my podcast very early on. On episode 13 and we talked about it. Wasn't the only thing we talked about, but we talked about it, and ever since then I've wanted to do an episode dedicated to this topic.
[00:10:32] I also learned from Will Bliss Kim, who also talked about adoption, grief and loss. From the perspective of transracial, or transnational adoptees and just the problematic roots of the adoption system in general. And I'm thinking too, in the queer community, you know, adoption comes up as an option, you know, because that's definitely especially talked about in the queer community in terms of, family building.
[00:10:59] So I wanna make sure that I'm supporting folks the best I can in making the decisions that can avoid causing more harm down the road. And I wanna make sure that my listeners are equipped with the information that they need to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.
[00:11:17] The question that keeps going around in my head is I just wanna, I wanna ask this question, but I know it's like, I know it's not as simple yes or no. But the question in my mind is like, is transracial or transnational adoption ever okay? And if so, under which circumstances? So I don't know if that's even answerable, but I wonder if you have thoughts around that. Or if we should dive into, I'm sure you do.
[00:11:47] Hannah: Yes. I mean, yes, absolutely. I have thoughts on, on it. I've been asked this question a few times and it's my first response is to say like, I don't, I don't think it's an either or question. So it's hard to say, you know, yes or no. And, if someone is asking me this in the effort to be like, do you wish you weren't adopted?
[00:12:14] That's like a feat of Olympic level imagination that I can't have. That's not what I would, am saying. And I do think that is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think that there are a lot of circumstances that make it very hard to engage with adoption really in any sense. But especially transnationally, transracially.
[00:12:45] Just the systems of hierarchical power and control in this country. It's really hard to engage with it with them without doing harm. And so I always kind of tend to lean towards, if you're looking for me to be like, "yes everything is fine, and that's great, and then you can do it without participating in problematicness."
[00:13:10] I'm never gonna tell you that. Right? Yeah. I think as it's currently stands, black folks need reparations. They need to stop, you know, targeting indigenous and black children. The child welfare system needs to stop removing them from homes unjustly.
[00:13:27] There's just so many things that, like whether you want to or not, if you're engaging in the institutions and systems of adoption, be that privately or publicly, like through the child welfare system, there's just a practice and a legacy of practice that is harmful to the people at the bottom of the intersectional, you know, hierarchical systems of power control.
[00:13:57] And so I think until those systems are abolished and we treat people with humanity, it's gonna be hard to be like, yeah. I think that my hope in saying a response like that is that people who are engaging with these systems will engage with them from a place of clarity about that. I'm not saying that to elicit shame for people who have already participated or, you know, fear for people who might desire to do to participate in them.
[00:14:31] But I think that there needs to be a level of sobriety about what you're participating in. And then the level of responsibility that you hold too, cause you've benefited from a system that's harming others. So as a result of that, I think that there is a restorative justice practice that you need to be taking moving forward that should be lived out.
[00:14:57] I think that if you adopt a child transracially, you should be working tirelessly to abolish the systems and structures that make it necessary for children and families to be separated. Like I think that it's like a both and like, I think that's just how we should care about each other generally.
[00:15:19] Josie: Yes. Yeah, that's a beautiful answer to that question. And yeah, I think that's exactly right. And like you said, it's like it has a legacy of oppression. And so whenever you're participating in anything that has a legacy of oppression, I love that you used the word sobriety to do it with sobriety to know what you're engaging in.
[00:15:45] Hannah: Yeah. I think that there has been, I think that adoption has had wonderful marketing and that has made it, it seem like it is a perfect solution to a problem. Like, nobody can argue with like, this is a great solution to this problem. But I think that if you look behind the curtain, you know, it's like you're gonna see that it is maybe not as simple of a solution as we're making it out to be.
[00:16:18] Josie: Right, right, exactly.
[00:16:21] Hannah: Yeah. I think that if you're going to engage with it, it's the same as anything. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism. You're participating in a capital, if you adopt privately, you're gonna be paying money. Like it's just, it's the reality that we live within.
[00:16:42] Josie: Totally. It's so true, with anything we engage with, we're engaging in capitalism. Yeah. It's like, be aware.
[00:16:50] Hannah: Yeah. Which we all are, we all are existing in you know, capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacy, so it's like you just gotta do your best at when you know better, do better.
[00:17:02] Josie: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I love that you center transracial adoptees, or I think you've abbreviated to TRAs, which I like that, in all your work. So all of your work centers TRAs rather than centering the the parents, the adoptive parents.
[00:17:24] Will you explain the difference between fighting against transracial adoption versus fighting for transracial adoptees, and where did that stance come from?
[00:17:35] Hannah: Well, I think that when you center adoptive parents, when they hear criticism. Or even just what they perceive as negative experiences from adoptees. They see those adoptees as fighting against transracial adoption. So really, the thing that motivates me to do the work that I do is not really have anything to do with the concept of transracial adoption. It's like I've experienced traditional adoption as a transracial adoptee, and I know the unique challenges that come as a result.
[00:18:12] And so the weight of responsibility that I feel is to protect transracial adoptees. And if that hurts your feelings about your transracial adoption, sorry. But I'm like, if this is really supposed to be this child centered, practice or like this altruistic practice that is for the benefit of children, why are children suffering?
[00:18:34] And we're ignoring it because we wanna, I think that there needs to be more radical honesty about why people are pursuing adoption. I think people need to be more honest about the fact that they really just want to have family, they wanna have their own nuclear family.
[00:18:50] We talk about the impacts of individualism and paternalism and how we have to have our own stuff now, we can maybe solve that communal approaches to life. Anyway, I digress. Basically just, I'm really not that invested in debate around whether or not we should transracially adopt. I'm Invested in the lived experiences of transracial adoptees.
[00:19:14] And I think that that should be, if you're engaging with transracial adoption, that should also be your highest priority. And if it's not, why are you adopting transracially?
[00:19:25] Josie: Right, yeah. Got it. Yep, that makes a lot of sense. As a mixed person myself who was raised by a white mom in almost exclusively white communities, with no contact from my dad beyond the age of three, I feel like I can deeply emotionally relate to a lot of these stories that I hear of transracial adoptees and that feeling of lost identity and imposter syndrome. I love that you talk about that. I would love to hear your thoughts on how TRAs can establish a strong sense of racial identity.
[00:20:00] Hannah: I actually offer a service through my website called Identity Reclamation Coaching.
[00:20:06] Josie: I saw that, that's so cool.
[00:20:07] Hannah: To help support primarily adult trans racial adopters through the process of what you're talking about basically. Identity crises around their racialized experience. When I first started offering that service, I was like, we're just gonna talk about like, we're gonna intellectualize and understand the systems that we exist within and how our identities are formed.
[00:20:36] And kind of think about the ways in which us oftentimes growing up at racial isolation and these very like white centric, white supremacist institutions, the impact that has as a person of color navigating in those spaces on your identity.
[00:20:56] Talk about familial socialization and how that's, it looks differently when your parents aren't the same racial identity as you. So I entered it with a very like intellectual, like, we're just gonna work through and we're gonna understand all these concepts. And then I realized like pretty early on that I really don't think it has very much to do with people not knowing those things.
[00:21:19] I think it really is a matter of people not feeling worthy enough to belong to a particular identity group, or identity groups, or cultural groups. And so it's become more of actually a practice of teaching the radical self-acceptance and self worth with a lot of affirmations.
[00:21:52] Really just giving space for those, the complexities and understanding that positive identity is a, of course, there are ways that you can build it as a child, but it's a spectrum. And you're gonna have days where you feel secure and then you're gonna have moments where you feel a little bit less secure.
[00:22:13] I think when you realize that your worth doesn't need validation outside of yourself. It's a lot easier to validate and affirm those other aspects of yourself. And so I try and focus more on that. And so that looks like more practices of like self-compassion and regulating your nervous system and being able to find comfort in your body.
[00:22:46] So it's become a lot like more wellness minded than maybe I initially anticipated. We still intellectualize things, but I just realized that it's more than just like understanding these concepts. Being a person of color in a white supremacist centric space is gonna do a number on your self-worth.
[00:23:09] So you really just need a lot of love and care and compassion for yourself because imposter syndrome is the idea that like all these people in this group know all this stuff and you don't. And I think that's not coming from a place of like compassion for think about like how are you gonna know that stuff?
[00:23:31] If you grew up with racial isolation, how would you know things you can't know? First of all, that there are lots of people with some wide range of experiences, people have varied levels of knowledge and understanding. But also like having that sense of compassion for yourself, knowing that you're holding yourself to an expectation from an experience that you didn't have, couldn't have had.
[00:23:58] People need to experience belonging, community that cares for them, especially that makes room for them. And they need to make room for themselves, all those things as well. And so, yeah that's my biggest advice. And then I think my pause opportunity came so much from people caring, you know, like for communal care.
[00:24:24] When I went to college, I was embraced and like enveloped myself in a black community. And had a lot of wonderful friends and mentors and people who poured themselves into me and were willing to hear my questions and willing to let me say stupid stuff that I, you know, that I probably should have known or embarrassed myself. So many things. But they were just like understanding and patient and kind, and I just tried to extend that same gift I was given right to others.
[00:25:01] Josie: Yeah. I love that, that's awesome. Some of my listeners could potentially be on the parenting end of this equation. Will you talk about the racial stress that can occur with transracial parenting? What is it and what are some ways that parents can navigate it?
[00:25:19] Hannah: Yeah, so racial stress is a concept that I learned during my graduate school studies. I got my my master's in education when I was teaching in Philadelphia. And was able to study under Dr. Howard Stevenson. He actually didn't term racial stress.
[00:25:37] That was actually, I think Sally Haron from Pepperdine University, but he developed a whole, I guess maybe a pedagogy around this concept. For educators navigating racial stress in school. So interracial educational relationships, the stress that arises. And so he developed based off of the concept of racial stress, which is really just like any kind of stress that is going to come out of an encounter.
[00:26:06] That is somehow within the dynamics of racism. It's something that would, you would perceive to overwhelm or exceed your ability to cope. And he uses the scale from like a first walk to like a tsunami. Like, you know, there's like a level of how stressful you gonna feel it.
[00:26:28] And so from that mind frame, he then developed this mindfulness practice to help primarily white folks be able to cope with racial stress. Because his research showed that because of white folks live most times in such racially homogenous communities, they have very limited what he calls racial literacy.
[00:26:54] And so, and that is just like the experience that comes from having conflicts and just having differences of opinion. And that's why if you're talking to somebody, you know, bringing them your opinion and they get all red in the face and looks like they're, you know about to lose it, it's like they're, that's racial stress.
[00:27:17] He has developed a mindfulness practice in hopes that we can help work through some of the stresses. And so I do the same. I've now just taken that same practice and I just use it with adoptive parents. And then all caregivers, I've led a couple workshops with agencies.
[00:27:39] Because it's something that occurs because people just don't have enough experiences engaging with people with racial difference. And so that's racial stress. And then, yeah, the practice is just a mindfulness practice. It's just being able to identify that your experience is racial stress.
[00:28:02] And then you go for three steps or four steps. First one is calculate, which is you're gonna, on a scale of one to 10 rate how stressed you're feeling. Then you'll locate. Locate means you're gonna figure out where you're feeling it in your body. So I'm feeling stressed at a eight, and I'm feeling it in my chest, right?
[00:28:26] And then the next part is to communicate. So we'll talk about what images you might be seeing or what words you might be hearing. You know, I would be hearing like, oh, I'm under attack, or I might be seeing like a physical fight. And then you're going to, the last part is just to breathe and exhale.
[00:28:47] I think that's it. And the idea is that when you walk through those situations, especially afterwards. We're able to make better decisions for the next time that we have racial stressful encounters that aren't necessarily underreaction. Where we're like, it doesn't matter, and it's not an overreaction where we're making decisions that are dangerous or we regret afterwards.
[00:29:11] And a part of the practice that we did when I was taken into class was we would role play, so we would act all racially stressful and encounters. It would be very tense. And then we would walk through the mindfulness practice. Again, the idea was because of the level of racial literacy that white Americans have. And he said that racially stressful encounters can studies have shown in, in white Americans that they can have like phobic level responses.
[00:29:40] It's kind of a little bit of that like exposure therapy, you know, like, having that, that sense of practice facing the stressful encounter than being able to make more informed and safe, powerful decisions when stressed.
[00:29:58] Josie: Right, yeah. That's fascinating. I'm just thinking like, what if cops, for example, did this kind of training and were able to make better decisions, safer decisions.
[00:30:14] Hannah: Absolutely. I think that a lot of times when we see cops or you think about like the situations where a cop has said oh, I thought it was my taser.
[00:30:25] Josie: Yeah, totally.
[00:30:26] Hannah: And they've gotten their gun or something like that. I mean, that could, that could just be. A lie, but also if you are scared, like that stress that you're feeling it as a tsunami, it's under an unbearable level of stress. You might, like you said, practices like this coping mechanisms like this help prevent those kinds of egregious incidents.
[00:30:55] And the same thing for adoptive, you know, white adoptive parents. You have this, you might be less likely to call the police on your foster child. Or, you know, you just be able to better navigate.
[00:31:08] Josie: Yeah. It's like raising the bar of feeling uncomfortable. To just sit with that uncomfortable feeling longer, and then to calm yourself in that uncomfortable feeling. So that you can move forward, yeah.
[00:31:21] Hannah: I mean, when you think about, I think you think about watching videos of racially stressful or like a, an encounter like that, let's say like an argument between two parties, and one of them is a Black woman and one of them is a white woman. Typically there's a huge difference in level of composure being held for a number of reasons. But I think that it speaks also to the practice of the frequency of race, of navigating racially stressful encounters and having to be mindful about the decisions that you're making.
[00:31:54] And so it's, asking white folks to exercise that same level of mindfulness. So that is not all the falling, it's not all the burden of typically the people who are most harmed by racial violence.
[00:32:14] Josie: Right. So the burden doesn't fall on them to be the most mindful, right?
[00:32:20] Hannah: Yes. Yes, exactly.
[00:32:23] Josie: Yeah. Totally. That's that's brilliant. That makes so much sense. I've been reading your digital workbook called Standing In the Gap. It is such, it's absolutely beautiful. It's made me cry a few times. What an incredible offering for transracial adoptive parents that will ultimately serve transracial adoptees.
[00:32:43] Will you explain to our listeners what standing in the gap means versus shielding and sheltering? And I love the story you told in your book about this.
[00:32:52] Hannah: Yeah. So the concept of standing in the gap for me came from, again, my hope was to illustrate for adoptive parents that there are experiences that transracial adoptees will have necessarily as a result of their adoption.
[00:33:12] And so that for me was the concept of the gap. It's the separation of space between, I mean, it can represent so many things, but it's the separation of space. It's what's lost as a result of your adoption. So that could be your culture, your first language, your first family. It could be who you would've been had you stayed in your community of origin.
[00:33:39] It just represents the depth of loss, of what's lost necessarily as a result of adoption. And so I think a lot of times adoptive parents waste a lot of time and energy trying to figure out how they can prevent that gap from happening, or fill the gap in.
[00:34:05] My hope with the workbook is to just be like, it exists. And so your job as a caregiver, our job as community members who care for and about transracial adoptees is to acknowledge the fact that it exists, and then help them to navigate the journey that they need to make around and through and over that gap.
[00:34:30] In the beginning, I opened, I was talking about the difference between standing in the gap and shielding and sheltering. And I feel like a lot of times adoptive parents hope to protect their children from experiencing any pain or harm or discomfort. And I kind of thought of this imagery of, and a lot of times when they're doing that, they're shielding themselves from having to feel the pain of their children being, their child being in pain.
[00:35:07] They end up kind of using their own child as the shield. Because ultimately, regardless of if I don't know you, you're, you're trying to eliminate the sources of potential harm. They're out there, you know, you can't protect them from it.
[00:35:28] When families of color are socializing their children, they're not trying to protect them from racism. They're trying to prepare them for it. Because shielding and sheltering is about keeping you from the reality that exists because it's uncomfortable. And for me, protecting and preparing is about a level, again, of sobriety of the reality that you, which of what you exist within.
[00:36:01] And then helping you to be as prepared and as protected and as safe and secure given those circumstances. And I think when we try to protect ourselves from acknowledging that reality, the reality eventually ends up striking someone and that someone if it's not you doing the work to protect your child or you know, the child in your care, it's gonna be them having to do it on their own.
[00:36:37] I think we would be much better, First of all we would be much better off if we would just divert our energy away from trying to deny what exists or trying to, pretend like you can somehow exempt your child from it because of your experiences or your level of privilege or access or wealth. Just, acknowledge it.
[00:37:09] Josie: So I think the story that you told was it about prom, about you going to prom? I felt like that really illustrated. And I think another parent, adoptive parent asked you, how can I stop this from happening to my kid?
[00:37:24] Hannah: Yes. So I tell, in order to explain shielding and sheltering, I tell the story of prom and how I did not go to prom because I was not asked to go to prom by a date. I think I talk about how like I felt like very undesirable growing up. Because again, I was in a very predominantly white school. I was one of probably a handful of black girls at my school. And, yeah. We just, I was not sought after as a partner.
[00:38:07] And so, yeah, I didn't end up going to prom and I shared those feelings of realizing that wasn't gonna be a reality for me. And there was adoptive parent who had asked me like, how do I make sure my child isn't you? Essentially. Yeah, I just feel like that's like not the right question we should be asking. I think about like, why was I in that school? Why was I feeling like I was so undesirable and unattractive?
[00:38:49] Josie: Right. Totally. I'm gonna pull it up right now.
[00:38:53] Hannah: Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm like, blanking. I wrote that about three years ago now.
[00:38:57] Josie: Totally. I just thought the wording was like so spot on how you worded it.
[00:39:02] "She genuinely asked, how do I make sure this does not happen to my daughter? Whereas a parent who stands in the gap says, what can I do to support her if and when this does happen? And the critical questions, why doesn't my daughter have a date to the prom? How is she feeling about it? What is she telling herself as a result?"
[00:39:21] I loved that. I just thought that was such a clear example. Like understanding of, instead of being like, how can I stop this from happening to her? It's more like, what do I do when this does happen, or if this does happen, and then how do I ask her how she feels about it? Getting in there and, and standing in the gap.
[00:39:43] Hannah: Absolutely, yes. How do I walk with her alongside this experience, versus how do I make sure that she- and I think that that's the question. In essence, I feel like I get that question over and over again whenever I describe any challenging experience that I've had, it's always how do I make sure that that doesn't happen for my kid?
[00:40:05] And it's like well, I need you to be approaching with like, what will you do if this, if and when this does happen? And how are you going to walk, like I said, stand in the gap? How are you gonna walk alongside? How are you gonna prepare and protect them?
[00:40:17] How are you gonna walk alongside them in that experience? Instead of trying to prevent that experience from happening. Sometimes when I say this stuff I'm almost like, I feel like this is just generally, like how we should just parent and care for each other.
[00:40:36] Josie: I was thinking that, yeah, I was thinking that. I was like, this still applies, a lot of this applies to parenting in general, you know?
[00:40:46] Hannah: Yeah. I think that, you can't prevent your children from experiencing hard things.
[00:40:53] Josie: Right. And even if you do prevent them from experiencing hard things, it can actually be detrimental.
[00:40:59] Hannah: Yes, because then what happens when they go off to college and then they're on their own. Cause that happens to a lot. There are a lot of transracial adoptees that I speak to that they don't, they can't think of an experience of. They probably did have experiences of like racial or whatever, but they can't think of one until they were out of the home and it was like very jarring, like, oh wow, I'm not like everyone else.
[00:41:27] Josie: Right. Interesting.
[00:41:29] Hannah: And I'm like, that's weird cuz not weird, but that's like, I feel like I know I was different. There's no way, I was not aware I was different. But at the same time, like I think that you, yeah, maybe you are successful in making them feel like everyone's the same and there's no difference.
[00:41:44] But what happens when they're treated differently. What does that do to, like I said, what are they telling themselves? I don't think, rarely people are asking those questions. There's just so many things. I'm just like, also, I just feel like as parents, as people, we just need to just be kinder to one another.
[00:42:05] That also just comes from shame. People are afraid to find out answers that are unsavory cause then they blame themselves. Or they feel like, oh, my child is not happy or didn't have the best everything. So I'm a bad parent. And it's like a bad parent. I feel like in our attempts to not hear that, we kind of become bad.
[00:42:29] Josie: Right, right. Totally.
[00:42:32] So something that brought instant tears to my eyes and I'm a crier, I cry a lot. So, this is like one of the ways I, you know, express emotion, especially when I'm reading something. Was when I saw on your website you have different, like webinars available on different printable downloads and stuff.
[00:42:50] And one of them was a birthday printable for kids. For transracial adoptees. And I just started crying. I was like, wow, I never thought about birthdays being a day that could be triggering or a day that would bring about really big feelings for TRAs. But of course they are. So will you share about why that could be for our listeners?
[00:43:18] Hannah: Yeah, birthdays can be a whole myriad of emotional experiences for adoptees. Even to just be honest transracial adoptees, but adoptees, foster youth because it's a reminder of your birth. And for someone like me, someone who was adopted as an infant, like that was one of the last times I was with my mom.
[00:43:46] So there's that, there's a reminder of your birth. And sometimes there's a lot of mystery about what, what happened and where were you and you know. What were the feelings on that day? Like, were people excited? Were people sad? Were people scared? So there's that. There's also, for some adoptees, they don't know when they were born.
[00:44:08] Their birthday is a guess. Or like, it might be the day that they were, sometimes adoptive, parents will make it the day they were adopted. So then there's like this disconnect of like, this day is not what we're saying it is. Or I don't know when I was born, or I don't feel particularly connected to this day.
[00:44:30] So yeah, there's like the reality of like the reminder of your birth and the separation. There's the reminder of sometimes you not knowing when you were born. If you're not in reunion or you didn't have an open adoption, there's a reminder of that continued separation. You might wonder, does my mom think about me on my birthday? Does she remember?
[00:44:53] So yeah, birthdays can be heavy for adoptees. I don't know if it's just cause I'm just an avoidant person sometimes. I'm one of the adoptees that I love my birthday. But I also know when I was born and I know where I was born and I know what time I was born and I know a little bit about my story.
[00:45:13] And I have for a long time now. Not a ton, but enough to feel like that's my day. And so, I have an elder brother who's also adopted from Seoul, South Korea, and he shared with me that he doesn't, when I shared about birthdays, he reached out to me privately and was like, I never really realized, but like, I don't, I've always kind of not cared that much about birthdays.
[00:45:38] He said I never really thought about why, but like yeah. I think that makes sense. Cause again, for him, his birthday, it would've been an estimation. It's just a totally different experience, if it's an international adoption or if it's a, you know, my birth mother chose my parents.
[00:45:57] And like there was just a lot more, I hope, control and like consent in the situation. Sometimes with other it's just harder. I think that we carry some of that with us generationally. And so in an effort to honor that, I created a resource for kids.
[00:46:19] It's literally just like a picture of a child celebrating a birthday and I have like little faces that they can put in to kind of see all the different emotions. This one face might be a face of someone who looks sad, or confused, or surprised, or happy. Just for them to be able to see that like there are lots of ways to feel on your birthday and also inviting their caregivers into that conversation of, I think we expect children to just enjoy their birthdays be happy, you got cake woohoo.
[00:46:50] And it's like making room for, you might be feeling lots of different feelings on your birthday, and that's okay. It doesn't mean that you have to make birthdays a super somber day, but you can make room for both.
[00:47:05] Josie: Yeah. That's what I love so much about the work that you do is it's holding complexity and it's having room for all sorts of feelings, you know, at the same time where it's like, yeah it's not just binary. There's not a binary there. This is right, this is wrong. It's like there's just so much complexity and nuance to the whole thing.
[00:47:28] Hannah: Absolutely. Down with all the binaries.
[00:47:31] Josie: Yes, exactly. Same.
[00:47:36] Hannah: Oh yes.
[00:47:37] Josie: No more binaries, please.
[00:47:38] Hannah: Yes. Just throw 'em out. All of 'em.
[00:47:41] Josie: Yes. Oh, well, I have enjoyed this conversation so much. I love how reflective you are and how you do slow down and really think about things. I felt it during this conversation, and it feels so nice to just take that time and, and that peace and really reflect. So thank you for that energy that you brought to our conversation today.
[00:48:08] Hannah: Of course, of course. Yeah. I feel like, you know, this again, the system that we are in, they're gonna tell you you gotta be snap snap snap, go go go, urgent, urgent, urgent.
[00:48:20] Josie: We don't have to do that.
[00:48:21] Hannah: We don't have to do that. One of the best ways of honor humanity is literally just slow down.
[00:48:26] Josie: Yes. Ugh. Yes.
[00:48:29] So how can people find you and support you and buy all your things?
[00:48:34] Hannah: You can find me, most people find me through Instagram and my instagram is @hannahjacksonmatthews whole name. And then you can also find me at my website, which is hannahjmatthews.com. You'll also find my products and services on my site. There are several different options, like if you're interested in products you just would go to, I think it just says products.
[00:49:01] But then if you're interested in like my workbook, that would, oh, that would also be under products. If you're interested in looking like a consultation or coaching conversation, that would be underneath like coaching and mentoring. I also do speaking engagements.
[00:49:16] I also lead or host a local support group for transracial adoptees in the greater Minneapolis St. Paul area, which is where I'm located. So if anyone is interested, if anyone is a transracial adoptee of color. Right now, the group is entirely composed of women and femmes, but everyone is welcome.
[00:49:42] Josie: Yeah. I saw a picture of y'all the other day that you posted on Instagram, it looks so fun. And what a great group.
[00:49:48] Hannah: It's really great. It really is wonderful. We just try to make time for a space of shared, that affinity of shared, lived experience. And I like to again, make space for our feelings as adoptees, but I also feel like a lot of adoptee support groups can be very, like, I don't know, they can be a little bit doom and gloom for me.
[00:50:13] I also want us to like, have space for community and joy. And for that not to be all of who we are.
[00:50:23] Josie: Right.
[00:50:23] Hannah: And so we, I like to do things. We're not just always sitting around table talking. Next month we're gonna make candles together.
[00:50:31] Josie: Oh, fun.
[00:50:32] Hannah: So yeah, just like, I like to try and do different things so we can really just have that community.
[00:50:40] Josie: Yeah, that's so important. That's, I love that so much. Well, all of those links that you just mentioned will be in the show notes for people to easily access. And thank you so much, Hannah. I loved this conversation.
[00:50:53] Hannah: Oh, great. Thank you again for having me. It was great.
[00:50:57] Josie: Absolutely.
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