Ken Huey 0:00

Welcome to The Voice of Hope, where bold leaders and healers share how they're building hope, not just talking about it. I'm Dr. Ken Huey. Let's meet the changemakers transforming lives from the therapy room to the boardroom. Welcome to The Voice of Hope. Today's guest is Linda Monk, author of The Adoptee's Guide to Healing, Wholeness, and Growth. She's a registered social worker, the director of the International Association for Journal Writing. She has spent decades helping people heal through reflection, resilience, and personal growth. Linda, we're very glad to have you. Thank you.

Lynda Monk 0:35

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here and thanks for your amazing show that you do, Ken.

Ken Huey 0:40

Oh, I appreciate that very much. Yeah. So it's always fun to talk to a fellow adoptee. I don't know how it is for you, but the very first time I'd entered the field, and you work with so many adoptees with trauma, and so that becomes kind of a subset of the population. And I went to a conference where it was just tons of adoptees, and it was like, holy cow, I'm with my people. And there was just a different level that you could go to about certain things relative to identity and stuff like that. I'm wondering if you had an assembly experience ever.

Lynda Monk 1:09

Yeah, definitely. In fact, it's been happening more since this book coming out. I realize I haven't really talked a lot about my experience as an adoptee until writing this book. So now I'm in all of these different conversations and really touched by the diversity of our experiences. And also how we've often held our stories quietly inside of ourselves without really maybe being met with a lot of understanding or compassion. So I definitely had that experience. I'm having more and more of them. And it's helping me actually come into more understanding of my own experience, which is really interesting after all these years. I'm 56 and was adopted as an infant. So new insights are coming, which is amazing.

Ken Huey 1:51

Absolutely. I'm 59 and same thing, adopted as an infant. Personal search 30 years ago or so, and uh become friends with my biological parents, even though I'm very close with well, my dad passed away here a while ago. But yeah, it's been quite a journey. Well, okay. So as an adoptee yourself, was there a moment that you realized your personal story could be part of the healing of others?

Lynda Monk 2:13

Yeah, I think it came early when I was going through my training as a social worker, and I knew as a teenager I wanted to be a social worker and kind of stayed that course. And I would work with lots of families who were broken families, young people who were in foster care, was meeting fellow adoptees. And I realized that, especially when I started writing more about my story, that if we tell our own story honestly and deeply enough, we stand a chance at maybe touching something in the universal story that can foster things like hope and understanding, compassion. I've used journaling a lot as my own healing tool, not just as an adoptee, but to prevent burnout as a social worker and so forth. That private story in the pages of my journal that if I took a little bit of a leap of faith and started communicating it through writing and speaking elsewhere, that it could stand a chance of helping other people. I would get that feedback, how people could relate, how they felt inspired. And it really encouraged me to be a little more earnest with trying to tell my own story.

Ken Huey 3:20

Absolutely. Many adoptees kind of carry silent questions about identity, about belonging. What do you think people misunderstand or don't know about that journey?

Lynda Monk 3:31

Mm-hmm. I think no, it's universal. I think it's human to care about our identity, to care about things like belonging, lovability, being enough. That's not unique to being an adopte D. I think it's part of the human experience. But there's extra layers as an adopte D because quite often we don't know the answer to those questions. We might not know where we come from or what our ancestry is or anything about why we were given up for adoption in the first place. So there's a lot of missing pieces to the story, and therefore that deep hunger to maybe want to fill in with some answers. So our whole sense of being a whole self isn't just what's happening in the moment, but it's linked to where we come from, what we've experienced, and wanting more information about that, I think, is a uh understandable and very primal instinct.

Ken Huey 4:24

You spent years helping people heal through journaling. You've made an emphasis there. Why is it that writing unlocks emotions that talking might not?

Lynda Monk 4:36

Well, it accesses different parts of the brain, for one. We can access different emotional centers in the brain through writing. It's also something that can be very instinctive. We can get what's on the inside out. We can use language and story. We can really work at telling the truth of our experiences without having to censor or be judged. When we're talking, there's an active listener or there's someone present. We're talking to somebody. When we're journaling, we're really talking to and with ourselves. We're having a conversation with ourselves about our life, about our questions, our vulnerabilities, our hopes, our dreams. And that's a very powerful conversation to have. And when we do it often enough, we come into new insights. We're not just journaling about what I know, we're journaling about what we wonder about. And we can find new insights, new answers, lots of aha moments. We're using language to help process emotions, we're processing memories. We're really authoring our own lives. We're not just passive observers of it, but we are intentionally going to the page to develop ourselves. And that decision really influences a lot of other outcomes. I think we get more empowered, more confident. We can come into, I'm trained in narrative therapy as well as journal therapy and other expressive arts. And we can come into what's known as a thicker version of our story. And that matters. There's a term called restoring, and I'm sure, you know, it's very popular in the trauma field where we can't change what's happened to us, but we can change how we tell the story about what's happened, including our experiences as an adoptee. So, for example, this idea of thicker or thinner story, a thin story might be I was abandoned. That can be a common thing we might say or feel as an adoptee, or I wasn't wanted, or I was given away, I was relinquished, this language that can really have a very heavy feel to it and also be very painful and wounding. It might be things like I'm damaged or I don't belong, or just these quiet scripts that might be running as an adoptee. And when we start to use our journal, we can come into thicker stories that are more supportive of our strength, of our resilience. So instead of being something like I'm abandoned, we can talk about I experienced abandonment or I experienced being separated from, let's say, my mother at birth. But we can come into our strengths as well. Who am I because of that? What have I experienced? What's strengthened me? And begin to see who we are in a more full lens. We're not adopte isn't the only thing we are. It's one experience we've had, and we're lots of other things too. That identity comes with us through our life, but so do many other things. So it just helps us really see the wholeness of our experience, and that strengthens us from within.

Ken Huey 7:36

If I can say a centeredness to the way that you present, Linda, some of the angst that can come from many adoptees doesn't seem present. Is that a change for you? Was it different when you were younger?

Lynda Monk 7:50

I think the less I knew about my experience when I was younger, the more angst there was because it feels destabilizing. Like, where does this part of me come from, or why was I given up? Or when I was told I was adopted, we were young. My brother and I are both adoptees, separate birth families. And we were like six and four when we were told we were adopted. And it was a very simple story. We were told that we had other mothers that couldn't keep us, and now our parents got to be our parents. And then we were told not to tell anybody. So, right away, there was an element of secrecy. And anytime there's secrecy, there can be a lot of unanswered questions, there can be shame, there can be a lot of confusion. And I think that's true for many adoptees experiences. There can be this silence, this shame, this missing piece, and all of that can feel just destabilizing. And so when I was younger, I think I felt a bit more of that angst. Like when my birthday would come, I always wondered: where is this other mother? Is she thinking about me the way I'm thinking about her? As I moved into my early education and career as a social worker, I started learning a lot more about early trauma wounds. I learned more about how adoption can be a trauma wound. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I just thought of it as part of my experience, but I started to gain a bigger understanding of what that really meant and just became more and more curious about it. So I've always gravitated towards just trying to see the good that can come from the difficult things in our life. And even when I met my birth mother, I was really open to learning more about what her experience had been as a young woman who was forced to give up her baby, as were many other young Catholic girls in the era. I was born in the late 60s. And I just really always tried to have a lot of compassion for myself, for her, for my adoptive parents, lots of curiosity, not come to assumptions or conclusions too quickly. When I first found my biological mom after many years of waiting for it to be my turn for a search, she didn't want to meet. And that was really painful. I was 30 by then, around there. And I'd been waiting since my early 20s for my turn for a search. And right away I could kind of felt that sense of rejection again. And that was very destabilizing and, you know, very difficult. But I thought, I don't know about her experience. I don't know what her story is. I don't know why this is something she can't or won't do. So I tried not to catastrophize it and just stay calm and centered inside to navigate it. So I think the steadiness comes from years of journaling. Instead of overreacting or catastrophizing or reactivating a lot of difficult emotions, I've gone to the page over and over again to process my feelings, to be with what is, to come back into my own center, to reassure myself. And that has companioned me through all these different experiences as an adoptee, as a mother, as someone who might have two parents, my adoptive parents who are in my heart my real parents. My dad died of Alzheimer's, my mom has late-stage Alzheimer's now. So, as for all of us in our lives, there's these losses and gains and grief and self-development over the years. And I think when we have a companion practice like journaling or anything else that helps us stay tethered, helps us stay tethered to our own capacity, our own inner resources, our own hope. We can deal with what's coming. And it's not just one moment in time. As we all know, our lives are many moments, and some of them are beautiful, and some of them toss us off into deep, painful places, and we have to keep coming back. And journaling for me is a way of coming back.

Ken Huey 11:51

I have said for many years now that a pro-adoption, and yet adoption is a trauma. There's no way around it. There's a certain respiratory rhythm and a heart rate and a voice that you've listened to for all this time in a womb, and that thing that's most comforting is gone for me from the moment that I was born. And now it's all changed. I don't remember that trauma, but it's trauma and it played out in various ways in my life. Okay, so someone carrying that kind of trauma and abandonment, those wounds, what well, whatever level they are, where does healing usually begin?

Lynda Monk 12:25

Hmm. I had a wonderful professor in my early social work education, uh, the late Ruth Silvey, and she always said that healing means to make whole. And that always stayed with me, that it's not about fixing some broken part of us. It can be seen like that. There's a reparative process that can go on physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, and so forth. But I think there's also a weaving of the different parts of ourselves, and wholeness is that weaving. I'm an adoptee, and I'm a woman, and I'm a daughter, and I'm a mother, and I'm a life partner. That there's how do we bring a sense of and not or? So I was given up for adoption and I'm lovable. You know, I was relinquished by a birth parent, and I'm worthy of love. I don't know pieces of my story, and I can have a full life. Like how we can hold the complexities. One for me was around grief and gratitude. I always felt like I had to be immensely grateful as an adoptee, grateful that I was born, grateful I wasn't aborted, grateful that someone had adopted me and I wasn't left as an orphan, you know, grateful, grateful, grateful. And it's true, I was and I am grateful. But there was also a lot of grief. Like, where was this person? Where was this other family? How come I wasn't wanted? Even when I'm with my birth mother now, who I gratefully met at the age I was around 30, I always feel both things. I'm so happy to be with her. I was just with her a week ago, and there's always this twinge of sadness. When we say goodbye, I feel that really profoundly. It's always in the undercurrent, is all we missed and what we have now. And that healing is somehow making peace with all those ands. It's not either or, it's all true, and it takes a lot to hold those complexities all at the same time. And I think that's the work we do with our healing is yes, I was abandoned at birth, and I was loved. My mother had to give me up, and that was hard for her. All the things. And I think that uh being able to be with those complexities is really at the heart of our healing and also our peace. To just come into acceptance of the truth of how things are.

Ken Huey 14:58

You know, when I started my search, I had had all kinds of fantasies about biological parents being famous and such like this. Then when it really came time, I did kind of a mental trick with myself. I just I think I was lucky it helped me, but I basically decided that she was a prostitute living on Skid Row in Los Angeles with drug addiction and just horrible, and that he was a rapist and was in prison. It like really created a horrible story. Like, anything north of that, then it's gonna be okay. And and it really it served me well. How did you prep for this reunion?

Lynda Monk 15:33

Yeah, um, well, I journaled. I was actually journaling right up to the moment that I met my birth mother. I had somehow in my mind had this fantasy that Brian Adams was my father from that song Summer of 69. And then I realized years later he's about like 12 years older than me or something like that. But I had, you know, we fill in the blanks, and there can be that fantasy world. Will they be, will they be rich? Will they be, you know, all the things we might fill in? I love how you went the other direction. I didn't think to do that. Um but I thought I'm just gonna be grateful that I get to meet her, and whatever that comes with, it's kind of a Pandora's box. You don't really know what will happen. You don't know how you'll be received, you don't know how it will feel, you don't know if you'll regret that you ever did this in the first place. You could have never looked and not done this. I've more recently met my biological father's side of the family. I just found them three years ago. He had already unfortunately passed away. I was looking for a different, different person, different name. And then, you know, pieces of the puzzle came together with the help of ancestry.com and so forth. But the preparation was just this feeling. I just kept thinking, no matter what happens, I'm going to be okay. Whatever happens, I'm just going to let love lead the way and just take it as it comes. And so I tried not to get too carried away with it. And the first time I met my birth mom, I was very fortunate that it was a very loving experience. I had my mom with me and one of my best childhood friends, her baby, who was like five weeks old at the time. So that was powerful having a baby in the room. And I was journaling at a kitchen island the moment I was waiting for the door to ring for Diane to show up at where we were. And when the doorbell rang and I went out, and I had just been writing about my hope that this would be a loving experience. I do a lot in my journal to write things the way I hope they'll be. It's called scripting. So I'll write about I'm so happy and grateful now that I've met my birth mother and everything's fine. So I write as if how I want it to be. I'll write my week like that, my goals for my year from my birthday. I always write, I'm so happy and grateful now that whatever it is I'm hoping will happen, as if it's happened. So I did that for meeting my birth mother. And when I walked out on the front porch to meet her, the first thing she did was tell me that she loves me. And I'd been writing about how I hope we can just lead with love. And she traced my ears with her fingers, counted my fingers, like you would with a baby, only I'm a 30-year-old woman standing in front of her. And I just knew in that moment that no matter what happens, it's going to be okay. Because love was sort of leading the way and the rest would come to be. So I just prepared with a great sense of optimism and hopefulness and found that's helpful.

Ken Huey 18:48

Yeah. I always try to encourage people that are going to do a search to do the work you need to so that you approach it not from a place of neediness, but openness and love. You don't have to have this relationship go perfect, that it you're not trying to fill some gaping hole in your chest. This is easier said than done, because I I had quite a hole in my chest that actually was healed within moments of meeting my biological mother. So here I say this, but it's hard to do. But try to get to that place, and there's a better chance for it to turn out well. Okay, so I don't need to tell you about this, but what I am curious about is here we start we finish this conversation and it's gone directions that maybe we didn't plan. But what's one truth about identity and healing belonging? What would you hope somebody would take from listening to this conversation?

Lynda Monk 19:40

Well at this age, one of the things I've grown to appreciate is what it means to actually belong to myself. There's a lot of parts of ourself that we give away hoping other people will do this or that, a parent, a birth parent, a partner, a child. We have a lot of hopes and intentions for all the things all the people we have expectations of will do to help our lives be full and happy and complete, all of those things. And one of the things I've learned in my own journey, and including as an adoptee, is what is it to actually belong to ourselves? What is it to not abandon myself? What is it to be open and honest about what I need, how I meet those needs? And it's courageous to be willing to take a hundred percent responsibility for ourselves and our lives, and not that doesn't require other people, but sometimes I've found the hardest person to hold a view of compassion with has been myself. And I have found that being with these themes of identity, belonging, loss, grief, it's a constant call back to, well, what does it mean to be compassionate and loving with myself? And that question has ongoing answers over time. So I would really invite people to be willing to explore their own experiences, be willing to write about them, think about them in the most compassionate, non-judgmental, self-loving ways we possibly can. And that is big work that we do. That sounds easy enough, but it's a deep commitment to ourselves and our own well-being and our own healing and growth as adoptees and as human beings. So I would say it's a worthy journey to take.

Ken Huey 21:43

Linda Mook, author of the Adoptees Guide to Healing, Wholeness and Growth. Thank you for the work that you do, the way that you approach these interactions. I really have enjoyed spending some time together. Thanks.

Lynda Monk 21:55

Thank you.

Ken Huey 21:56

Thanks for joining us on The Voice of Hope. If you were inspired, share the light. And remember, hope's not just a feeling, it's a force. We'll see you next time.