The Day I Grew Up: Finding Out My Cousin Was My Mother (PART 2)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Cate & Ty Break It Down

Episode: "The Day I Grew Up: Finding Out My Cousin Was My Mother (PART 2)"

Date: July 15, 2026
Hosts: Tyler & Catelynn Baltierra
Featured Guest: Da Julian ("Difficult Adoptee" - Adoptee Advocate)

Overview

This episode continues the raw, eye-opening conversation started in Part 1, centering on Da Julian’s life-changing discovery that her cousin was, in fact, her birth mother. The conversation, held with multiple members of Da’s extended biological and adoptive family, unpacks the long-term ramifications of kinship adoption, the complexities of identity, parentification, trauma, and ongoing family dynamics. The dialogue is honest, unsparing, emotional—and a crucial listen for anyone connected to the world of adoption.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Childhood, Control, and Early Responsibility

• Homeschooled in Isolation: Da shares about being raised in an insular, sheltered environment, devoid of outside connection.
• Parentification: She took over caregiving for siblings at a young age while her adoptive mother returned to work, and was expected to homeschool her sister—laying the groundwork for resentment and lost childhood.

  “I had spent the last four years of my high school education raising the children that were in our home.” (Da, 01:46)

• Education as a Battleground: Da’s pursuit of a GED or diploma became a struggle for agency, with her adoptive mother sabotaging her independence and leveraging threats over Da’s burgeoning adulthood.
• Coercion Into College: Da recounts being forced to attend a remote Christian Bible college, isolated and under financial imbalances designed by her adoptive family.

  "She said, 'If I pull you out within the first month, I get a full refund.’ … My student loans were taken out in my name, and my sister's were in my mother's name." (Da, 02:05-02:42)

2. Escalating Conflict and Escape

• Digital and Emotional Surveillance: After Da tried to maintain privacy and independence, her adoptive family hacked her devices, exposed private communications, and weaponized the "kidnapping" narrative against her birth mother.
• Reputation and Loss: Da reflects on the cascading impact—lost friends, family estrangement, and feeling utterly alone following her 'escape' at age 19.

  “Running away because of my adoptive mother's control ... I lost friends, I lost family.” (Da, 06:28)

• Rocky Family Relations: Temporary reconnection with her adoptive sister emerges much later—only after her sister undergoes her own process of 'deconstruction.'

3. Life After Reunion – Complexities and Challenges

• Turbulence in Reuniting: Da describes a difficult reunion with her birth father (abuse, abandonment), and acknowledges deep trauma with her birth mother—marked by cycles of contact and withdrawal.
• Parentified Guilt: Repeatedly, she highlights the guilt and sense of loss from missing milestones in the lives of siblings—both biological and adoptive.
• Identity and Alienation: Struggles with being "othered" in an adoptive family of different ethnic background, feelings of not belonging, and how even positive things (like piano lessons) are used to minimize her pain.

  “Growing up with private piano lessons … makes up for the fact that I lost everything?” (Da, 11:13)

4. When the Day of ‘Growing Up’ Arrived

• Life-Altering Revelation: Learning her cousin was actually her mother became the pivotal trauma of her life.

  “The day that I found out that my cousin was my mother was the day that I grew up … There’s no coming back from that.” (Da, 12:12)

5. The Nuances and Pitfalls of Kinship Adoption

• Kinship Is Not a Panacea: Both Da and her birth mother caution against idealizing kinship placements: proximity increases the risk of secrets, lies, and identity confusion, not necessarily stability or openness.
• The 'Selfishness' of Observing from Afar: Da describes the pain in being watched grow up by relatives who kept secrets for their comfort, not her benefit.

  “You kicked me out of my family … and you were perfectly fine with me being raised never knowing who you were.” (Da, 33:45)

6. Societal Narratives and Adoptee Silencing

• Adoption as ‘Happy Ending’ Myth: The episode deconstructs the narrative that adoption always results in more love and stability—foregrounding lifelong grief, trauma, and lack of choice.
• The 'Savior' Complex: Powerful moments arise when Da describes being told she was ‘rescued’—and pushes back:

  “She literally was crying, and she looked at me and said, ‘I rescued you. I saved you.’ I said, ‘From what? My mom saves lives for a living. Who are you saving me from?’” (Da, 44:24)

7. The Rejection of Secrets and Emphasis on Truth

• Advocating for Truthfulness: Da insists that all children deserve honest answers about their origins, and that secrecy is among the most damaging legacies of adoption.
• Impact on the Next Generation: She discusses how trauma and learned behavior have shaped her attempts at motherhood, grief, and conceptualization of love.

  “Every decision we made was for your benefit. … Either you are the dumbest people in the world or that’s a lie.” (Da, 47:04)

8. Grief Shared Between Birth Parents and Adoptees

• Parallel Traumas: Both Da and her birth mother discuss how loss—of a child, of an identity—haunts them through life.

  “It’s a sorrow and like this deep rooted anger that I feel like I’m going to carry with me for my lifetime.” (Birth Mother, 54:19) “I will never know life not adopted.” (Da, 56:37)

• Motherhood’s Meanings: After losing her own son, Da draws connections to her own birth mother’s grief, both recognizing and empathizing with each other's pain.

  “I am viewed as more of a mother because I was pregnant. … I lost my son in the second trimester. … And I, in society, I’m viewed as more of a mother than my birth mom.” (Da, 60:18-60:30)

9. Advocacy and the Power of Story

• Why She Shares: Da finds meaning and hope in telling her story publicly—and in influencing adoptive and birth parents to make healthier, more honest choices for their children.

  “If anything has made it the least bit better, it has been being able to share my story and … knowing that my story or my life or my voice or my TikTok can have that impact on other people.” (Da, 65:50)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “There is no coming back from that. That is the day I realized I was completely alone.” — Da (12:12)
• “The day that I found out that my cousin was my mother was the day that I grew up.” — Da (12:10)
• “You don't get to have your cake and eat it, too. You kicked me out of my family. I got to lose everything. ... while you got to just watch me grow up from a distance.” — Da (33:45)
• “How can you possibly expect the adoptee to feel like adoption is love … when the first thing you did was condition that child to lay down whatever they had left...” — Da (36:15)
• “[Adoptive parents] take a thrill in the place they have in the power dynamic.” — Da (42:29)
• “No, they have more family to heal from.” — Da (40:38)
• “We watched Annie and that had a happy ending. … You don’t have to deal with the aftermath. Adoptees don’t get to not live with that reality.” — Adoptive Sister (41:00)
• “I'm proud of her. I'm proud of her because to work through something that big like that traumatic and still finish high school… I can't imagine how difficult that was.” — Da (49:38)
• “It’s a sorrow and … anger that I feel like I’m going to carry with me this whole lifetime.” — Birth mother (54:29)
• “I will never know life not adopted.” — Da (56:37)
• “If anything has made it the least bit better, it has been being able to share my story and the adoptive parents that have come to me and the birth parents that have come to me...” — Da (65:50)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Parental Control, GED, and College Coercion: 01:25–04:30
• Surveillance, Exposure, and Escape: 04:30–07:00
• Rocky Family and Sharing Story Online/TikTok: 07:00–09:45
• The ‘Day I Grew Up’ Revelation: 12:00–12:40
• On Kinship Adoption and Family Secrets: 31:32–35:00
• Debunking Adoption as Always 'Love': 36:07–39:10
• Loss, Motherhood & Grief Echoes: 42:04–47:40 & 54:49–57:02
• The Healing—and Limits—of Advocacy: 65:02–68:50

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Tone & Language

The episode is deeply honest, unapologetic, and at times raw or confrontational, but always compassionate toward those experiencing parallel pain. Da, her birth mother, and the hosts speak candidly about adoption's most fraught realities—never sugarcoating grief, resentment, or regret, and always calling for more humility and humanity from those who participate in (or judge) adoption.

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Where to Find Da

• TikTok & Instagram: @difficultadoptee
• Facebook (advocacy): da.julian

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Final Note:
This is a searing, must-hear episode for anyone who wants to understand adoption beyond the “happy ending”—offering a voice to lived experiences and a plea for honesty, empathy, and change.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

Hey guys. Welcome back to Clean Tight. Break it down and I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode is one you will not want to miss as we dive into more of a conversation with DA like we had last week. It's honest, thought, thought provoking and full of insight. So grab a coffee, a water, some sort of drink, settle in and let's get started.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. And so I think I also at that point had because I was homeschooled my entire life, so I was kept indoors. I didn't have Internet access. I was homeschooled my entire life. We went to church a lot. And so I eventually decided to like, just stop. I became very quote unquote rebellious and I didn't do my school. And I was just like, no, I'm not doing this anymore. You can't make me. And then I said that I wanted to get my ged. And the reason why I wanted to get my GED was because I wanted to take the classes and I wanted to actually learn the things that I hadn't learned because I had spent the last four years of my high school education raising the children that were in our home. And my adoptive mother had gone back to work. She wasn't a stay at home mom anymore. As soon as her youngest biological child graduated, that was it. Like she left. That was my freshman year of high school too. And I wasn't. And my mother would always say, if you know how to read, write and the four basic math functions, you can teach yourself anything. And so, and I Was like, well, no, because if I could teach myself high school, I wouldn't need to be in high school, you know?

[Birth Mother]

Right. But.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And then at that point, she was asking me to, like, homeschool my little sister and, like, kindergarten. And so I had a lot of responsibilities that was just not my own schoolwork. And so I wanted to drop out and I wanted to get my GED for the purpose of, like, catching up. And she started sabotaging that, too. And so eventually I. I played her game. I said that I wanted to be re enrolled, that I wanted to finish high school, that I wanted to get my high school diploma. So that went on during those couple months in the summer of 2020, and I eventually finally got my high school diploma in August of 2020, and I agreed to go to a Christian college that nobody's ever heard of in upstate New York called Word of Life Bible Institute, and that my sister went there at the time. And so we were put in quarantine when we went up there in August. And I remember. I just remember, like, how awful it was to be in quarantine with my sister. And I remember fighting with her and my adoptive mother. She was texting, and they were very close at the time. My adoptive sister and my adoptive mother. And I remember her, like, texting my mom, like, during our fight. And I was like, really? Are you kidding me? Like, you're just like her little minion, aren't you? And she, my adoptive mother, like, started, like, blowing up my phone, being like, don't run this for your sister. I will, like, come up there. She was like, that's your sister's college. And I was like, I don't think you get divs on a college. I don't think that's how this works. Like, you sent us both here 1700 miles away. And she said. She said. And what really got me was like, I. I will drive up from Alabama and I will yank you out of college, you know? And she even said to, like, make her threat, like, more serious or whatever. She said, if I pull you out within the first month, like, I get a full refund. And the thing was, my student loans were taken out in my name, and my sister's student loans were taken out in my mother's name. And so I was like, why am I going into, like, all of this, you know, whatever, for something that I don't want to do? It wasn't even a real college. It's a cult. That's what it is. And if you finish that year, you get a Bible certificate. If you finish two years, you get a Bible degree. There's 600 people on that campus in the middle of nowhere, like freaking upstate New York. Nobody's there, you know what I mean? It's 30 minutes to the nearest town. And I was like, I don't want to be here anymore. And I was talking to my birth mom on private, in private, going on a backup that, you know, at that point my adoptive mother didn't know about. And my birth mom asked me if I wanted to get out of there. And I said, well, I'm not 19 yet, you know. And she was like, there's no judge in Alabama that's going to be like, sure, let's go get your 18 year old daughter. Whenever you purposefully sent her away 1700 miles two months before I turned 19. And so I said, you know, okay. And then she started threatening us all. She demanded my laptop back, that I take my laptop to my sister. And so I did. She got my brother, who's very tech savvy, to hack into my computer from Tennessee. And they were able to find all of my backup accounts, read screenshotted and posted my private DMs with my birth mother on Facebook too. Yeah, being like. And tried to paint my birth mom as this horrible person, being like, she's kidnapping her. She's, you know, like just left, right and center, like it was crazy. She even said she was like, that she was going to go to the FBI, that my birth mom was kidnapping me, that she had no right. And again, I was two months away from being 19. My birth mom came up there and my birth mom was really scared too, that something was going to happen. And I mean she even like recently she talked to me about how like she was scared up until a couple years ago because like the thing on kidnapping was like five years federally. And so she was like, well, you know, she, you can't do anything about it now. And so, but my birth mom, you know, she says that she doesn't regret it because of my mental state at that point. I mean, I was so anxious of everything. I was ridiculously sick that entire time. And so I was really just fighting to survive. And ever since then I've been off and on, no contact with my adoptive family. I left everything behind. My reputation was completely destroyed. What left I had of it. I lost friends, I lost family. Running away because of my adoptive mother's control. And it wasn't until very recently that I actually started having a relationship with my adoptive sister anymore. And that's Only because she started deconstructing herself after she got away and she got married and she's almost 30, you know, so it. I was on my own for a lot of it, and my birth mother and I, though I love her dearly,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

have a very rocky relationship. And I. I left probably a year after I went to Texas. Our relationship became so strained and rocky,

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

and her mental health started tanking. My mental health started taking that.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

I just decided up and moved to Colorado where I had no support system, just to become a living nanny. I lost that job. I decided to go to Pennsylvania because I had just located my biological father and his family. He was in prison at the time. So I stayed with his family up in 2022. And this is when I started, like, making. Telling my story on Tik Tok. And so I shared kind of a lot of my reunion journey with that. After he got out of prison, it became very abusive very quickly and I had to leave. I asked my birth mother for help, and instead of helping me get back to Texas, she called a brother that she had nothing to do with anymore. Her brother.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And the only thing I had met

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

this person twice in my life, and the only thing I knew about him was that nobody in the family really spoke to him and that he had threatened to kill my birth mom and her two kids at some point, and that's why she can't have a relationship with him anymore.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yet that was the person that she contacted and was like, hey, can you go get her? And at that point, I just felt like she didn't give a. You know what I mean? And so I went to. I went to go live with him for a year and a half, and then I moved to Oklahoma, where I lived with somebody that I met on TikTok through my advocacy and through all of those years. And now I live in Texas. But through all of those years growing my platform, I really started, like, sharing, like, my side. And I would get comments a lot where it'd be like, well, you're really bitter. Where you're clearly traumatized, where you. And I was like, that's the point. That's the point. I never, I never claim to be healed. Like, I'm not at the end of this. When I started making, when I first, like, started making tick tocks at all, I was 19. I was still following some of these adopted creators. In 2022, when I was 20, like, I started, like, actually making and sharing my story. And then at 21 and 22 and 23 and 24, like, I've just been like, I. It's been about sharing the journey and how hard it was. And I remember a couple years ago, whenever y' all started getting a lot of hate for like all what people think is like this huge controversy, which is really just trying to have communication between like, you know, you and your kids, like adoptive parents. Like, I remember I made a couple of videos about it and I was like. And one of them went viral. And I was like, you guys that have so much to say about the situation have no idea what it is like to be an adoptee that grows up with a semi open adoption, knowing your birth parents, watching them parent, your siblings, having that yanked away from you, having no voice in the situation. And if you do have a voice

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

in the situation, it is manipulated and you go along with it because it makes your life easier, right?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And then, you know, and then just. And then how hard it is to deal with that as an adult. Because I'll tell you right now, given how everything went growing up, our relationship, trying to fight for a relationship has greatly impacted my relationship with my biological mother. And I know that she loves me and I know that I love her, but we have so much trauma between the two of us that it is like I'm constantly blocking her number, you know, and it's just like, I need a break. I can't handle this right now. And it's not. And it's just because we have so much unhealed stuff that we're both desperately trying to heal for each other because we both know that we're worth it to each other. But, like, you can. All the love in the world is not enough for layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of trauma. Anyway, I made that video and people were like, well, you should have listened to your adoptive parents. Like, you should have listened to, like, you don't just get to come back. They sign the paperwork and I'm like, I'm well aware she signed the paperwork. I wouldn't be here if she didn't sign the paperwork. Like, that's not what this is about. And you think like. And it's so funny to me because, you know, from that video, people started going to my page and they would find, you know, certain videos of mine and they'd be like, wow, they gave

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

you all this stuff.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

You know, I talked about having private piano lessons.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Well, you give. They gave you private piano lessons.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And I'm like, this is where I struggle, because I feel like you want adoptees to be like the most vain people on the Face of the planet. Like, do you want me to have character at all? Like, do you? Like, like integrity?

[Birth Mother]

I don't know.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Like, it's weird to me because you actually think that growing up in a certain tax bracket or growing up going to Disneyland twice in my childhood, growing up with private piano lessons, makes up for the fact that I lost everything. Makes up for the fact that I watched my mother parent her other children. And I had to sit there as a child with no support, no love, no therapy, no anything, where I was just sitting there watching her do all

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

of this at a family reunion where I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And they were just, you know, like. And I just had, I just had

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

to deal with it. Like, you don't know how what that's.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Like, you don't know how that breaks somebody. And, and even now, like, I had

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

a lot of traumatic things happen to

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

me as a kid, and I, I hate trauma comparing, but I, I. To what to other people would be way more traumatic events than finding out my cousin was my mother. But I will tell you, when anybody

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

asks me about being a parentified kid,

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

or, you know, being a kid that

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

grows up way too early, I always

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

say that the day that I found out that my cousin was my mother was the day that I grew up, because there's. There just. There is no, like, there's no coming back from that. That is the day that I realized that I was completely alone, that I was the only one that I could rely on, that my parents, that my family, it was just. It was built on performance. It was built on the lies. It was not built on truth or trust.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

And I grew up feeling like I was living somebody else's delusion. I mean, I couldn't even.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

My adoptive mother was so, so controlling that I was. She didn't even like it when I

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

referred to my birth mother as my birth mother.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, she would be like, your cousin. She's your cousin.

[Birth Mother]

No techn. Reality. That's my birth mom.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And I mean, and then. And she got uglier. Like, she got hateful. The older I got, the more curious I got. I, you know, she'd be like, well, what have you really gone through? You know, and she'd minimize all these different things that I went through. And I looked at her after, after coming back, she was about 17. After coming back from living with my birth mom for a little over a month, I said, like, I lost my mother. And she looked at me and she said, you really didn't, though. She was like it was basically surrogacy. You were always going to be ours.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

No.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And then later in reality you did.

[Birth Mother]

And as an adapt you do, you do you lose parts of yourself and your family and everything.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. And then, you know, and as, as a parentified kid too, like to being, to be raised, raising other people's children, which I don't regret who I was to those kids, I don't regret who I am to my little sister. You know, things like that, that I just, I will always, I will always love them. But like, but then you meet all of the kids that like. Because then I, I got in contact with my biological father's ex wife that

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

had, you know, a lot of his

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

kids, not all of them. He has a lot of kids, but you know, a lot of them. And, and you know, I went down to Florida and I met them and I established a relationship with her. I still call her my stepmom. You know, I think she's great and she's all, you know, I want my

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

kids to have this.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I want my kids to have the family that are healthy and that are there for them. And so we established that relationship without ever with my biological father being there. I haven't talked to my biological father in years and don't plan to, but you know, and then it's so hard being a parentified kid that just, you know, that you had no, no say so, no ability to be in their lives before a certain point and you know, growing up with the guilt of like being so close to other kids that you weren't related to and that taking, being in charge of kids that you weren't related to and then here your siblings are going through all of the experiences that they've had positive and some very negative, you know, that I just wasn't there for. And so then, you know, I've got like the guilt of being a parentified sister that, that is not mine to carry. That shouldn't be that way, you know, because it should have never been responsibility as a sister. But that's my reality, you know, And I think that so many of these things, and even now because, because I do have two different sides of this. I have a reunion with my birth mom that came from a semi open adoption and now we're working through it and we're off again and on again, you know, and then I've got a relationship or a reunion with my biological father where it was horrible, where he's horrible, he's a horrible person and he's been horrible to my siblings, you know, and so I kind of understand this from both sides, which gives me a unique perspective.

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

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[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I don't know if you remember, but last December there was this whole, like, controversial thing happening on Tick Tock where it became a big conversation, a viral conversation about, you know, well, if I was forced to carry a pregnancy, I couldn't get an abortion, and I had that baby and I gave that baby up for adoption. I don't want them to come back.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

And if they do come back, they're violating my rights.

[Birth Mother]

I remember, I remember hearing about that.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, you know, and I was amongst the adoptees that's like, I don't give a. Because your, your rights don't get to infringe on my rights. And I can respect that. Nobody can force you to have a conversation. Nobody. I can have an opinion about whether or not you're a good person if

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

you refuse to have a conversation, but

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

nobody can force you to have a conversation. Nobody can force you to have a relationship. And all of those things are very valid. And you're right. You have every right to, to determine that for yourself. But, like, you don't have the right to keep me from my siblings. Not, not one word. You don't have the right. Keep me from my extended family. You don't have the right to dictate who I am or whether or not I know where I come from. There's just not your right. And if you don't care about me, then, then all bets are off. You know what I mean?

[Birth Mother]

And as a birth mom, too, like, when that stuff's going on, I, I have a completely different view. I don't agree with any of that. That whole stance of like. Because my whole thing is, is I owe that to her to be able to answer questions, even say at the end of it, if you didn't want a relationship, I don't give a.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

But I owe that to her.

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

I.

[Birth Mother]

She gets. She should have no questions. You know what I mean?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Right.

[Birth Mother]

And so it's like. Because there has been times where I hear stories of, you know, adoptees, my other birth parents, and they're like, I don't want to talk to you and stuff. And I'm like, you're a disgusting human. Like, yeah, I can have an opinion about you. Like, that is disgusting.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Yeah.

[Birth Mother]

Because that child that you placed for adoption didn't, didn't have a choice in any of it. Not a single choice. He deserved to have all of their questions answered and whatever they want. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Well, and all these people, too, that have absolutely no proximity to adoption, having all These opinions. But I genuinely felt like people were just making up fan fiction about like, the lives of actual people just being, you know. And I was just like, but this is far more. And it was really condescending. I mean, it was like the equivalent of mansplaining. I felt like everybody was mansplaining to me. Like, you know, just being like, but you have to keep an open mind if they don't want to talk to you. And I was like, literally no adoptee on the face of this planet has not thought about the possibility of them not wanting to have anything to do with you. In fact, I would think that that is like the only thing we think about for a long time. It's courageous. It's brave. And it's courageous to finally seek those answers out for yourselves, especially when you have no support and you have no help. Because I didn't like, my adoptive family didn't help me find my birth family. My birth mother didn't even have helped me find my birth father's family. And when I did that, you know, it's like people and I, I started sharing that part and I started sharing my story, finding him. And I was like, no, I get it. I get what it's like to find a biological, like, parent that's a horrible person. Like, I know what that's like. But the thing is, the, the answers that I got are invaluable to me. Seeing him in person, seeing his mannerisms, seeing his physical traits that weren't just on a picture that were in real life, that's invaluable to me. And you can have whatever opinion on it that you want. But what I know now is I'm not the person I was before I knew him and till now. And I think that, like, my siblings also are just something that I, I. You will never hear me say that I regret finding my biological father, if for no other reason than for the fact that I found my siblings. And that, that just will never be a regret of mine at all.

[Birth Mother]

And gotta be, it's gotta be healing in some forms, like you said, even though he was a horrible person and you guys don't have a relationship now, but healing in the sense of, oh, wow, that's, you know, I don't know, for example, that's how I laugh or, oh, my eyes look like that when I smile or my eye moves like that or whatever.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Actually, you know, one of the things that I heard a lot because I did feel really othered, even in akin to adoption, I did feel really othered for my appearances because just of like my genetic origin, for lack of a better term, versus like my adoptive families. Like, my adoptive family was Irish and German, you know, and that's not my genetic makeup, you know, and so like, I did have darker hair than them. And my. This is not my words. These are my adoptive mother's words. Talking about my olive skin and talking about how easy, easily I would tan and I didn't get sunburn, and if I did sunburn, it was slight and then it would turn into a tan and how my hair was so dark and it was thick and it would grow so quickly. And all of these things that were like, that weren't really. Weren't really praised or appreciated. They were just made into like this

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

sick, positive, twisted, like, thing where I just was made to feel different and

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

othered and it was never something that I was proud of. And. And I was told that I looked like my birth mother a lot. And I do, I do look like my birth mother. Yeah. But when I was younger, I actually looked more like my biological father. And I didn't know that. And so, you know, and it's not until like looking back now that I'm like, oh, damn, you know, and I have. He has a daughter that looks that. I think I'm 17 years older than her. And when I met her, I was like, oh my God. Because it was like literally looking like through a looking glass, like in a time machine. And being like this, she's me. And I was always told that I looked like my mom. And so that's mind blowing to me. And she has my mannerisms and she has my face and it's crazy. And so when I got to know him, I realized that all of my, like, all of the features that I hated about myself the most, like my

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

chin or my profile or my, you

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

know, whatever, were things that I shared with him. And that it's a very common thing for adoptees who, when you don't have answers or you don't have explanations, like, you just. And it's not. I don't think. I think when people think of it, they think of it as like a conscious thought, like, oh, I hate this because this makes no sense.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Or I hate this future about me because it's ugly or whatever.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And it's not like that. It's just like looking in the mirror, not recognizing yourself. And it's. This is going to sound depressing, but when I was a kid, my favorite story, like my favorite bedtime story was the Ugly Duckling because I was like, yes. Like, I get it. And it was just like this. This duck that was like, okay, this is my family. And everybody was like, you look weird. And. And then, you know, he went off, and then he found his family, and he was like, oh, how does you then. Oh, what, you don't know? You know?

[Birth Mother]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

So wasn't until I was 20 years old and I met my biological father that I was like, oh, you don't know what you don't know.

[Birth Mother]

Right.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And so I. I just like those things. Those things are invaluable. And he doesn't have to be a good person. We don't have to talk now for, you know, but it's such a personal decision for every adoptee, and I don't

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

think there's a right answer, and I

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

don't think there's a wrong answer. And I think that through all of your feelings and your fears and your anxieties or whatever the case may be, like, whatever the reason is that you

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

or do not want to meet them,

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

nobody knows you better than you.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Yeah.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And nobody knows what you can handle better than you. And so while I do encourage adoptees for multiple reasons to seek out their biological families if that's what they want to do, because I think there. There's so much, like, nuance that people just. That, again, you don't know what you don't know until, you know. I. I think that, like, I would never blame an adoptee for just being like, no, I can't. Like, I just. I don't want to.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

I can't.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I've moved on. Like, this is just not an important

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

part of my life.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I think it's completely valid, and that's just not how I felt.

[Birth Mother]

And that's okay that you didn't. And I think you're right, because, you know, I have a. A guy that I know. You know, he's. He's older than I am, and I'm 34. And he's got, you know, he's like a grandpa now and everything. But he's adopted. And I asked him, you know, I've asked him before, like, have you ever thought, you know, about meeting your birth parents or, you know, anything like that? And he. He has. He's always had, like, the kind of the outlook of just like, no, my mom was my mom. I adored my mom. I don't really have any interests, you know, and then. Then you have some that are like, I do. I want to know. I want to know all these things. So it's like, you know, and I same, I'm like, hey, whatever you want for yourself, I think you should do because you're at the way, like I always say, they are the most important in the whole story.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Well, I think it's thing too because the adoptees that I know that are the most curious and I'm not saying that it ties back in in every case, but the adoptees that I know in a lot of these scenarios, myself included, are like the adoptees that were lied to and then they find gradually like they were deceived or they were lied to like outright or something like that, that, that become, they become more and more curious and they take matters into their own hands, finding, finding answers because nobody's, they can't trust anybody else and they're the only person that they have. And so I think it's funny like with all of these, it's funny in a very sad way that whenever comes to like adoptees that seek out their biological families that like they had these adoptive parents that are still controlling and so worried and so insecure or jealous where like it, they allowed it to

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

influence all their decisions.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And had they just been honest from the get go, had they just been that fortress for their kids, had they just been the shoulder that their kid

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

could cry on, they weren't going to

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

be as, as curious thing, of course. But I just see so many adoptive parents just pushing their kid out and just, just pushing their kid to find answers themselves because you're not there for them.

[Birth Mother]

And, and I think, and I think too it is a part, like, I think it's partially too, because they're not healed themselves. It triggers them when their child is asking these questions. That triggers them when they ask all these questions, right? Oh, and it's like that should not trigger you, okay? Like, we should be answering the questions. We should be helping them look, we should be whatever it is, like, don't let it, you know, affect you or make you fearful. You know, like I always, I always said to our adoptive, you know, parents or whatever, I always said, like, I will always have your guys's back. I will, you know, if she ever comes to me or whatever and complains, like, I will be like, you know, I'm never gonna just downgrade you in front of them. Like, I will always support you all the things. And I felt like I was always, I felt like I was always trying to make them not afraid in a sense. Like you don't have to be afraid, but in turn you just always were. And I feel like that's why things just collapsed. And that's why I that's why I always go back to the they because it sounds like Eurodoc parents were unhealed too, you know, in ways and to afraid to just answer the questions truthfully and honestly.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Right?

[Birth Mother]

Which in turn affected your birth mom feeling like she couldn't be honest or answer questions because it would get back to them. Like it's I don't know.

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

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[Birth Mother]

And I think a lot of people think that kinship adoptions are the route to go. But you know, what would you, what would you tell people? You know what I mean? Because I feel like some people think like, oh da is just all about cleanship adoption. And it's like, no, actually not, you

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

know, well, and I tell people that too, because one of the most common comments that I get on my, on my lives, on my tick tock, on all of my social medias is just like, well, you're projecting. Like, sorry, you had about it before anybody even knows that I'm adopted. Anything about my story, they'll be like, well, you're just projecting. Sorry you had a bad experience. And I'm like, if I advocated based off of the experience that I have, I, I would not advocate for kinship adoption and I would not. Or kinship placements. I would not advocate for finding biological family. I would not advocate for open adoptions when like, my. What I advocate for is based solely on what is proven to be the most beneficial for the children being adopted. And, and kinship placements are beneficial for multiple reasons. And whenever I advocate for kinship placements, it's always because, you know, having things like genetic mirroring and having things that are closer to home because it's already a tragedy and people can wrap it up in a bow and they can use toxic positive language, but it doesn't matter. Like, it is always a tragedy. Adoption always starts because of something sad. And it really is that simple. And regardless of what the reason is and you know, you can look at it however you want to, but at the end of the day, like, adoption begins 100% out of the time because of tragedy. And there are at that point, point,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

at that point, because adoption is a trauma event. Your job, the job of everybody involved is damage control. The, the job of everybody involved is

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

to minimize the trauma, minimize the damage to the child.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

And so for that reason, I do think that kinship placements, when safe and possible, are preferred.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

But if they are not done correctly, like, people need to stop shoving kids

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

into homes just because they're biologically related. Like, they just does not need.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And, and that's why I was adopted,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

be by who I was adopted by,

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

because my, you know, and my birth mother's mother had always said, like, well, I wanted you to be adopted out,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

but I wanted to be able to watch you grow up. And so I made sure that it was family. And I was like, and I always thought it was incredibly selfish.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

It Is that it was selfish, because I was like, you don't get to have your cake and eat it, too. You kicked me out of my family. I got to lose everything. And then you were perfectly fine with me being raised never knowing who you were, because that was the original agreement, was that they were just never going to tell me. And I was like, you.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

You got.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

You were perfectly fine with me being raised knowing nothing while you got to just watch me grow up from a distance.

[Birth Mother]

Like that is something, while knowing nothing.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Yeah.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Right.

[Birth Mother]

Yeah.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And that's another thing about kinship placements that people don't talk about enough is because when it is kinship, it is easier to lie to the kid that they are. That they aren't adopted, because you do look so much like everybody. And if you take that kid and you run, if you alienate them from extended family, if you aren't close with aunts and uncles and cousins, then, like, it's easier to just be like, yep, you were always ours. You know, and so many kinship adoptees go, well, I just found out. You know, I met people in their 40s that were like, well, I just found out that my parents were actually my grandparents and that my brother or my sister was my biological parent. You know, and that's. It's just. There's so much to unpack in kinship placements that, like. And there's not enough regulation, and there are certain countries in which it is literally, like, you have to legally tell your adopted kid that they're adopted by a certain age. And I wish that was a thing here because. And not just that they're adopted, but, you know, the gist of their stories. And there are age appropriate ways to explain everything. You know, my parents don't have to sit me down and be like, your biological father is a domestic abuser and also a drug addict and also a horrible person. Like, they have to be like that. You know what I mean?

[Birth Mother]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

They could have been. This is not ideal. He would not have made a good father for, you know, all of these reasons or whatever.

[Birth Mother]

But.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

But denying him is denying me. And I. How that is like, he is my biological father. He will always be my biological father. I, more than anybody, wish I could magically change my DNA, but that's not how that works. You know, And. And to. I think one of the hardest things, too, is that just not like the sinking feeling that knowing that watching my family reject where I come from, watching them reject my mom or my dad or my siblings or just parts of my story, like, you know, everybody Went quiet. When I say I was born in Texas or something like that, you know, is just those things that we.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

That we scoot past that we don't talk about. Every time something like that happened, it felt like a rejection. Felt like you don't. You don't actually accept all of you.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And I say this quite often because, you know, the hashtag adoption is love is very popular. It's the whole thing. Adoption is love, adoption is this, adoption is that.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

And I just. I frame it this way so people can understand. How can you possibly expect the adoptee to feel like adoption is love or

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

that adoption was, like, the ultimate thing?

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Because people say all the time, well, you know, my parents got stuck with

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

me, but your parents chose you. And I'm like, that's not what you think it is. What they chose was the next available baby. What they chose is a dream that they wanted. They didn't choose me personally. You know, it's not how that works. And maybe in an ideal world, but. And I say, I. But I do. I say often that, like, how. How can you possibly expect that adopted child to believe that this was, like, the ultimate choice or the ultimate act of love whenever the first thing you did was condition that child to lay down whatever they had left after going through whatever they already went through to become a part of your family? Their name, their history, their heritage, their siblings, their family, their connection to anything, and then their mental and emotional health growing up as well, given, like, how much you control everything. And I've. I've talked to people a lot over the years, and some of them are just. Well, I don't think it's. I think. And I've even talked to adoptees where people are like, oh, well, it would have been better to have closed adoption. It would have been better.

[Birth Mother]

And I'm like, I know. Which I have her.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. Statistically, no. But also just because, like, you have to allow children. And again, I feel like I have a unique perspective on this personally, is that, like, you have to allow children to be able to go through all these phases, because if you don't, like. And a lot of adoptive parents I see making the same common mistake is like, if. If an adopted child gets emotional, then just. We're just cutting everything off. And I'm like, there are families in which the parents get divorced. You know what I mean? And you're just gonna be like, oh, well, they're taking it hard right now, so you can't talk to them anymore because you have, like, less custody than I have. Like, that's crazy.

[Birth Mother]

And they don't do that. We don't do that.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

We don't do that. It's not normalized. In fact, they'd be like, well, you're a horrible person where you just like talking shit about the other parent to them.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

You know what I mean?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

But that's such a common thing in adoption. And I'm like, no, they're going to feel, it's an emotional topic. They're going to feel emotional, it's going to be too big for their bodies to handle.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

But guess what?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

They're going to feel it anyway. They're going to feel it anyway whether they talk to you about it, whether they, you know, you have these conversations, whether you go about it in a healthy way or not. I will tell you right now that at seven years old, when I found out my cousin was my mother, was the biggest wave of emotions that were too big for my body at the time that were too big and too, too complicated to handle. But that doesn't mean that like that wouldn't have happened anyway. And I think that like grow up. Had I found out later that my cousin was my mother, had I figured it out myself, because I just don't buy, I never would have figured it out. I think I would have figured it out by 13, to be quite honest, especially with how much we look alike. Especially how weird everybody, my family can't keep a secret for anything. And they would have been like side eyeing. And I would have been like, wait a second, right, that like, regardless of

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

what it is, like these things are

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

going to happen anyway. And I, I tell, like, it's not

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

just about adoptive parents keeping contact with biological family.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

It is about teaching your child how to facilitate healthy boundaries and healthy relationships with their biological family and, and with them as well, you know, and so many. And that is your responsibility. Like, that's, that's one of the things that is unique to parenting an adopted kid that you signed up for. You didn't sign up to parent a biological kid when you signed up to be an adoptive parent. That's not how this works. And that's why I say like so many adoptive parents that would make great parents to biological children grow up inadvertently, like mentally and emotionally abusing and neglecting their adopted children because they just don't know what they don't know or they don't want to know. And they claim plausible deniability like my parents did at the end of it, you know, and then they're left like me. And I think one of the reasons why I've been so passionate about this, one of the reasons why I talk about what I do is because, you know, for all of the going back and forth and the. You have to call her this or you have to call her that or she's just a gestational host, like she said, like. Or, you know, all of those things. Like, now I'm 24 years old, I have partial contact with my birth mom. I have nothing to do with my adoptive mom. And that's exactly what I call them, my birth mom and my adoptive mom. And I don't have just mom. I don't just have, like, oh, I have a mother to call or whatever. So all those people that are like, adoption just gives you more family to love. No, they have more family to heal from. Like, it's.

[Birth Mother]

It's.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I. I don't want adoptive parents to continue to make the same just so unnecessarily ridiculous mistakes just over and over and over again.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Where we have the research, we have the statistics, we have the people with lived experience being like, what not to do 101. And instead we're sitting here fighting society is sitting here fighting adoptees because we watched Annie and that had a happy ending. Because when it comes to society, adoption is the happy ending. And you get to turn off the TV after a baby gets adopted, and that's it. You don't have to deal with the aftermath. And adoptees don't get to live with that reality.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And birth parents get to live with that reality. Some try. I don't know if they succeeded.

[Birth Mother]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

But it just is what it is, you know? And anyway, so I think, like, one.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Yeah. One of the things that just bothers

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

me the most is that, like, eventually you are going to push your adopted child away so far that, like, the tragedy isn't just that you have a broken relationship. The tragedy is that the adopted child is left with no one, no one and nothing. And every Mother's Day, every Father's Day, every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, every life event that happens in my life is difficult for me to go through because I have been on my own essentially in

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

some way my entire life. In other ways since I was a

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

teenager and in other ways since I

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

ran away at 18. You know, and that's just. And it just has been. I had a whole baby. I had a whole baby, and my

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

adoptive family never knew about it, and they didn't care. And I. I don't have to get into it, but, like, I. I lost my son, and they never reached out.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

They never sent a text, they never sent a voicemail. I called them. I left my adoptive father multiple voicemails because he's the only one that doesn't have me blocked.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And they don't care enough. They don't care enough because the principles they stand on are lies. The principles they stand on are secrecy. The principles they stand on is I'm

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

the parent, I make the choices and you have to live with it. And so many adoptive parents have that mindset where they, they take a thrill in the place that they have in the power dynamic.

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

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[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

side of this conversation that we could talk about, about just like how adoption marketing is like just a neon sign. It's like freaking beacon to like narcissistic

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

people with savior complexes. No, it is, it is. And it's just, you know, well, we, we say, I remember like having a knockdown dried out argument with my adoptive mother where she. She literally was crying, and she looked at me and she said, I rescued you. I saved you. I said, from what? My mom saves lives for a living. Who are you saving me from? Like, that.

[Birth Mother]

That They. A lot of them do say that, and a lot of adoptees hear that all the time. Like, oh, we saved you. And, you know, the whole, like, like, goes back to the savior complex thing. And I agree to, like, touch on a little bit about what you were saying about, you know, adopt, like, adoptees, like when you found out about your cousin, me and your mom, and you had these overwhelming feelings or like, how you said, you know, after, say, like, a visit or something, and an adopted child is very emotional, and then they just want to, like, cut it all off and stuff. And it's like, no, because even if you're parenting a biological child, they're going to go through things in life where they're going to have overwhelming feelings and emotions. And the whole thing is, is kids are smart. Talk to them, listen to them. You know what I mean? Right. Try to get on their level and kind of understand, even at whatever age it is. Try to understand what they're thinking and what they're feeling and just be honest with them and answer. Yeah, it's like, I don't understand. I do it now with the children that I'm raising. Like, we talk about so many things, you know, and I will listen and I will answer, and if I don't, can't find an answer, we're going to Google it and we're going to figure it out or whatever. Like, just talk to them.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

It quickly becomes kind of like talking about what we were talking about before. It quickly becomes like, if I show emotion, I. Emotion, I will lose everything.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And that became very.

[Birth Mother]

But you guys should. You shouldn't have to feel like that. Like, no, I be able to feel. Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And that carries over too. Like, that carries over into other areas of my life where it's like, well, if. If I show emotion, then, like, I will lose everything. If I show emotion, then this will be yanked away from me and even, like, further now, like, people think that that doesn't affect my relationship with my birth mom now. No, it absolutely does. If I. If I am vulnerable with my birth mom, if I show her how I really feel, she will leave. And because my entire life, that's what happens. And it's not just because she chooses to leave. It was also because contact got cut. But it was still. But that was still the lesson learned. And so regardless of how logical it is like when you learn something as a kid, as an adult, it takes years of therapy and years of working through things with yourself. And now there are years, there have been years where I could have spent happy with my birth mom or, you know, to some extent, involved in her life and her involved in my life, where I have spent just. Just trying desperately to convince myself that it is okay to be loved, it is okay to feel loved, you know, and it really threw me for a loop whenever I had my son because I. I had this whole other, you know, perspective on love and. And a whole other perspective as a mother where the. The very short time that I had with my son, it was nothing else mattered. And if I could have done anything, absolutely anything to protect or preserve anything about him, his life, his body, his memory, then that's what I was going to do. And I. And there's just like this great sorrow that comes with that, that. That knows that from the time I was born, from before I was born, nobody fought for me like that. They fought for what they wanted. And I heard a lot growing up, and I know a lot of adopted kids hear this growing up, where they hear, you know, every decision we made was. Was for your benefit. And it's either either you are the dumbest people in the world or that's a lie. Like there. You can't have it both ways. And what I realized when I. When I broke down and I had this conversation with my adoptive mother one time, when I broke down every decision that they made early on that they had admittedly made earlier on, whenever they first came up with this adoption agreement, and I broke down every single decision and I told them why that was harmful, why it was detrimental, why they knew why they should have known that these were just, like the dumbest choices you could possibly make. Like, the whole, you know, we're going to adopt this kid and not tell any family member that this is actually the cousin's kid.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Like, that you actually thought was going to be realistic. Like, that was actually gonna. Like nobody was gonna find out. That was dumb. Like, you were playing with fire.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And then I pointed out all the

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

ways why I know it was for their benefit. I was adopted by, who I was adopted by because it was beneficial for my birth mom's parents and for my birth mom, too.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Like, I was, you know, I didn't find out that she was my cousin until later because it was beneficial for certain people. I was adopted at the time that I was adopted by because it was beneficial for certain people. And it Wasn't because it was beneficial for my birth mom. And I think maybe they convinced themselves that they were doing her a favor, that you can get back to being a high school student, that you can get back to being whatever, you know, when the trauma of that is just. Honestly, I'm. I. I hesitate to say because I don't. I don't want to sound. I don't want to come off as, like, condescending or anything, but I'm proud of her. I'm proud of her because to. To work through something that big like

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

that traumatic and still finish high school

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

and still finish, you know, going on to become a paramedic and going on to be a mother to two other children, I can't imagine how difficult that was and how she carried that pain throughout everything. And then you, you know, you see people like my biological father that went the other way, where he was a very child already, so he, you know, before he even had me. And then he, you know, he got my birth mom pregnant at 13. I was born when he was 14. He was forced to sign abandonment papers when he was 15. He got another teenager pregnant when he was 16, and that baby died. And then he had two other children by the time he was 21 and abandoned them.

[Birth Mother]

He was.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

He became, you know, an addict and are, you know, just going back and forth and going to jail, in and out of jail and stuff. And he hasn't been a father to any one of his, like, eight or nine children, you know, not a real father. And that's just so, like, you know, while I know that, like, my birth father has chosen to be a terrible person, you know, he has beliefs, he has ideals, he has a lot of actions where he has chosen to be a horrible person. But I also can compartmentalize it and also hold space for the fact that, like, he was a very traumatized child, and then he was traumatized repeatedly by having child after child taken from him. They died. Like, dealing with that at such a young age, too, was, you know, the equivalent when I was his age and he had already lost two daughters. I was, you know, my parents were

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

still controlling whether or not I could even be on the phone with my birth mom without supervision, you know, and

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

that's another thing that I realized about Yalls story, too, that pissed me off a couple of years ago was that, you know, people were like, well, you know, their daughter's a child, she's a child, she's a child, and everybody shouldn't be talking about this. And I was like, I Mean, yes. Also. Also the age she is now is the age they were then. And you are sitting up here being like, will they sign the papers? Will they sign? And you. You can't have it both ways. That's called cognitive dissonance, my friend.

[Birth Mother]

Right?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Like, you. You can't have it both ways. And either you. You hold that space and you think everybody should shut the fuck up because she is a child now. And you also hold space for the fact that they were children then. And I will always. I don't care who it is. I will always defend to anybody that, like, y' all were exploited. Y' all were exploited, and it was used. And I. I hate that. Like, I hate that for y', all, because I just can't imagine if my birth parents had. Had. Also had those layers on top of everything, you know, and I think you're.

[Birth Mother]

I think, experienced a little bit of what I've experienced, you know, as far as feeling like you had no other option and that, you know, you're just not good enough for this baby and, you know, there's no resources for you. And, yeah, now me, you know, being 34 and. And she is 17 years old, you know, I was when I had her. And, you know, I look back on lots of things and a lot of the adults in my life and things that I was told and the brainwashing that happened to me and the. You know, just all of the things where I'm like, oh, yeah, I was. The adoption world got me and sucked me right in, you know, and that

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

goes super deep, too. I can't imagine how actually deep that goes and how that affects everything else. And I've talked to my birth mom a lot about how it was for her parenting, like, her other children and how every decision she made was affected by. By losing me.

[Birth Mother]

And, you know, and I always say, because I, you know, I. I'm glad that you can see it, you know, from her perspective, like, a little bit from her perspective, too, because it is. It's like, you know, I didn't. I didn't struggle with any of my mental health stuff until after Nova was born, you know, And I think it was re. Triggering for me in many ways. And, you know, I think. And I've asked you this, and I've asked other adoptees. Like, I've struggled with the fact of, like, you know, I know one day, or maybe not, but, you know, I have a feeling that one day she's gonna come and ask me those questions, too, of, like, you know, why wasn't I good enough or whatever, however she'll feel, you know what I mean? But then you have three others that you parented and stuff. And I try to explain it to people and they'll never understand because majority, majority of them have no, you know, no ties with adoption at all, which I'm thankful for. I don't. But, you know, I try to explain. The best way that I can explain it is like it is a, it's a sorrow and like this deep rooted anger that I feel like I'm going to carry with me for my lifetime, no matter even what the future looks like, if we have a relationship, if we don't, I just feel like there's always just going to be this sliver of sorrow and this just, just this anger, deep rooted. The anger is like, I'm angry at myself, I'm angry at the adults, I'm angry at the agencies, I'm angry at so many people. And it comes in waves, you know, it's not with me every day, but I do, I think I told Tyler, I said, I think it's something I will carry with me this whole lifetime and even in the after world, you know what I mean? Like, and it's just, it's adoption, like you said, it all stems from trauma and something sad and.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Well, and it's grief too, like, and I think, I think everybody has something to grieve, honestly, the birth parents and the adoptees too. I think one of, one of the things that I'm, because I, I'm angry at the people involved too. But again, that comes in waves and I think that I, I never really had like, I think as a teenager I was just like a, you know, why do you care, don't care about me then if you don't care, you know, type of thing with my birth mom. But I don't think I ever, like, once I got older. And as I started to understand more about the fact that she was a teenager, I never allowed myself to like, truly be angry with her until a couple years ago when I was like, you know, when I, when I let myself. And I was like, because, and that's because I was always such a logical kid, you know, and, and I was just like, well, right is right and wrong is wrong and whatever until I was like, my emotions don't have to be logical. Like my emotion can be. I feel abandoned. And I know that you didn't really abandon me, but you weren't there. And I get to, I get to have my feelings about that.

[Birth Mother]

And you Do. And you should feel 100.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. And now. And I. I see so many parallels. I see so many parallels with everything. And so while I do have, like, those angry times, too, there's another. A part of this grief, another part of this anger where, like, you know, and it's something that people don't talk about a lot, and I think because they just feel like it sounds ridiculous. I feel like it sounds ridiculous sometimes, too, but it's just like, I will never know life not adopted. And I. I will never have a moment in my life where this has not been complicated, where family has not been complicated, where my support system, where feeling loved, we're feeling adequate, we're feeling enough. Where all of these things that are impacted by adoption, inevitably so, like, weren't. Weren't just struggles.

[Birth Mother]

I will never.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I've not adopted.

[Birth Mother]

You're so right. Yeah. Like. And it's. That is, like, it's crazy to think about it, but that's, like, the reality, you know, same thing. Like, you know, same thing. Like, for me, like, when you're saying that I'm like, oh, my God, I have those thoughts too. Like, I'll never know. I'll never. My life will always be. I am missing a child and yearning for a child my whole life and all the things missed out on and all the things I wish I could get back, it's like, yeah, it's just.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Just I hate it.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. No, and I think. I think it also, like, my own life experiences have allowed me to, like, have empathy on another level for my birth mom, too. Because, you know, not. Not trauma comparing in a way, because I. I hate trauma comparing. But like, but also just allowing yourself to, like, see parallels and see, like, different perspectives where, like, since I have had my son and lost my son, like, my birth mother's grief has become so, like, even if. I don't even know if she. Because she did shove things down for so long, and she. There were things that she did not acknowledge where she and I. She told me on Mother's Day, too, whenever we had a conversation about it, that she still feels some type of way when she calls me her daughter, when she calls herself my mother, like, she still feels like, a tug or something or like a, hey, this is incorrect because of all the years of. Let's call it what it is, brainwashing and gaslighting about just a reality that you're just forced to live at that point. And I don't. I wasn't mad at it. Like, I didn't blame her for it. I was like, no, I feel the same way, like whenever I call you my mother, and that's why I call her my birth mother most of the time, or I call her by her name is just because it's something that's so, like, it feels so off. And even if it shouldn't be that way, like, let's not force it, you know, like, yeah, it doesn't feel, it feels boring. That's exactly what it feels like. And so, you know, and I think, like through my own grief, the last couple of months since I lost my son, like, I've just been like, oh, these are things that I see in like my birth mom too. And, and not only. And I think in a really, like, sad, fucked up way, I can be like, you know, low key proof that she felt something for me or, or loved me or actually did. Like she was a mother that was grieving and she just didn't have those people. And it breaks my heart knowing, knowing how she was treated, knowing how alone she must have been at such a young age, trying to figure out how to deal with her body postpartum, you know, and dealing with, you know, not having the support system that you should have had and knowing that people don't care. Like all of the things that were silenced for her, you know, and because I didn't, because I, I do scream it from the rooftops and it's easier for me. And I even made a video about this too. Is that like, you know, I, I struggle calling myself a mother because I lost my son in the second trimester, you know, and while he was born alive, it was like five minutes of being a mother and then he was gone.

[Birth Mother]

But, you know, but you still are a mom.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. And that's, you know, and I made a video about it one time where I was like, you know, you just get, you get told what a mother is as an adoptee, you get told what a mother is and it's, It's a mother who had, who, who acts it's a parent that is actively parenting. And when you're not that. You know what I mean? Like, you didn't, you didn't have the opportunity. And then people would say stuff and they'd be like, well, giving birth makes you a mother. And I'd be like, oh, all the tables have turned, you know, does it, does giving birth make you a mother? And then I made a video about a month after I lost my son and I said, I said, I find it so crazy how my birth mother is Here. I'm here.

[Birth Mother]

She.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

We've been in each other's lives since

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

I was born, off and on.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And I am viewed as more of a mother because I was pregnant. I lost my son in the second trimester. I gave birth to him, and he lived for five minutes. And I, in society, I'm viewed as

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

more of a mother than my birth mom.

[Birth Mother]

Damn, that's deep.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And why. That's enough to, like. That devastates me. That devastates me.

[Birth Mother]

And I think you have a point of, like, you know, having your son, and even though it's what's sad and horrible, what you had to go through, I feel like.

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

Yeah.

[Birth Mother]

You know, I think when adoptees do have children, you know, it does kind of, like, make your heart a little softer of, like, oh, my gosh, like, you know, she was feeling all these things and all. You know what I mean? But, yeah, that's. That's deep.

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

Da.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we talked about that, too, you know, and we talked about how. Because I. Because of my own adoption, trauma came up, too, whenever I lost my story. Because, you know, you grow up and you're just. And I know you've kind of talked about this, too, where you're just like, I will never be the parent that my parents were, you know, and. And you learn from your parents. You either learn who you want to be or you learn who you don't want to be. And everybody damn taught me, like, who I don't want to be. And I was like, I'm never going to be that. Like, these are experiences that we're never going to have. And I'm going to fight for my child. I'm going to have my child's back. And I promised myself that I would never be a mother. That. And this is the hardest pill I've had to swallow is that I would never be a mother that watched somebody take my child and walk away to a place where I could not follow. And that's exactly what happened. And it happened in the most cruel way anybody could ever experience in the form of a funeral director coming into my hospital room and taking my son and leaving. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. And it took me a while to have this conversation with my birth mom. And, you know, we started talking about it, and I was like, I can't even say this to you because I feel so guilty. Like, I feel guilty on so many levels.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

I feel guilty.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And, like, being a mother who's like, trauma, like, impacts everything. Like, I can't Just grieve my son. Like, it's got to be traumatic.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

You know what I mean?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Like, and. Or it's got to be trauma responses. And then I feel guilty because, you know, I. I feel like this is, like, it almost sounds hateful towards you or whatever. And I know that you didn't have a choice either, you know, And. And she.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

She told me. She was like, look, there are parallels,

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

and it's important to, like, gain life perspective from different things. But she was like, I will never know what you went through in the same way that you will never know what it's like to drive a thousand

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

miles, drop a baby off at, you

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

know, your aunt's house, go back, and then the next time you see that baby, you'd be forced to call yourself their cousin. Like, you know, and that's the only reality that you're allowed to acknowledge. And I was like, no, that's fair. And, like, we both have our lanes, and we both stay in them, but on a profound level, like, we both have. I grieve my firstborn in the way, like, and she grieved her firstborn. And there was the anger in me whenever she talked about it, too, because I was like, your firstborn came back, and mine never will, you know, which

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

I do have to say.

[Birth Mother]

I mean, you do have a point there. It is. It's different, you know?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

It is.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Yeah.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And it's. It's very difficult, but it's also. So, yeah, there is, because it's grief. It's grief, and there's. There's anger, and there's sadness. There's devastation. There's so many layers to it. But it's also, like, all of these perspectives of, like, just having a child, and. And I think having a child would have done this regardless of if I lost my son or not, but where it just. I was allowed to see my birth mother in. In a completely different light and to, like, you know, kind of, like, her perspective or how deeply, you know, because I can. I can talk about the power dynamic or how she was brainwashed into, you know, accepting a certain level of reality, but you never know, like, the need. The need to also be there, too. Like, you have to believe the things that she believed in order to survive. Like, that is her place. And that. And being forced to stay in that lane is traumatic and hard and difficult,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

and it should have never been.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

But also that lane becomes a safe space, right? And that comes like. Like your happy place in the place where, like, you. You stay to be able to survive. In the reality that you've been handed. And so I do, I do have a lot of empathy for both of my biological parents, especially knowing my adoptive parents, you know, and I carry a lot of anger and I carry a lot of sadness, like, given the childhood that I had, because, you know, the trade off is supposed to be you get a better childhood. And that did not happen, you know, and, and now I don't have my adoptive family. And the only person from my adoptive family that I still talk to is my sister. And we have a rocky relationship too, and we're trying to mend things, you know.

[Birth Mother]

I'm so glad you guys are though. Like, I'm glad that, you know. Yeah, I'm so, I'm so happy that, you know, she's deconstructing, which I think is amazing, and seeing things probably for the first time, you know, for the reality of what they are. And you can be that kind of, like, support person for her to kind of open her eyes to certain things and hopefully that brings you guys a lot closer, you know.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Well, after she went no contact, I was sending her certain songs because, you know, we've always, our music education was something that our parents invested a lot in. And so we've always been very music driven people. And so I started sending her songs and she was like, these are such great songs for what I'm going through right now. And I said, yeah, well, I've been down this road for six years, so my is at your disposal, friend.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

Right.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Send it to me. So, you know, we bonded over all the, all the things that we have

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

in common like that.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

But, you know, anyway, so I, I, I do deal with that a lot in, in terms of, like, having no family or real support system. But I think at the end of the day, like, if anything has given it made it a little bit better, I won't, I won't say given it meaning or given it a reason because I don't really buy into that whole thing. But if anything has made it the least bit better, it has been being able to share my story and the adoptive parents that have come to me and the birth parents that have come to me, Even people who were like, I decided to keep my baby because of, you know, you sharing your story. That has really, like, you know, it just makes me so happy getting, especially with all the hate that I get online, like, is I. My heart just sings whenever I get a dm. That is an adoptive parent being like, we chose not to tell our child,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

like, about their birth parents or Their story.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And I realize now how wrong that was. And so we are having this whole conversation.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

And I have.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I am still friends with an adoptive parent that I met in a different country, like four or five years ago. And we met because whenever she DMed me, she said, you know, we made this whole no contact thing,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

you know,

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

just that was our choice.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

And we had a closed adoption. And then I realized how wrong that was and I realized how it was affecting my kids.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

And so now they're in therapy and,

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

you know, and we're friends on Facebook. She's done my personal number, you know, and everything. And I've been friends with her for four years. And she posts things about, you know, every time her kid's birth mom comes to visit and the relationship they have,

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

there's, you know, better friends. And that comes from them having absolutely no contact with each other at all until she came across my page. And so knowing that my story or my life or my voice or my tick tock can. Can have that impact on other people, like, that's the. That's the greatest thing that I can. I can ask for in a world that, like, just does not prioritize what is best for children in adoption. You know, like, that's what it's about.

[Birth Mother]

No, and I do, and I think that's what's the most important is like, you know, like I said, like, you and a handful of like, other adoptions that I've talked to and listened to and just kind of like sometimes sit in the rooms that they're talking and sharing their experience. Experiences. I learned so much. And it's just, you know, if more people take the time to listen to the people that are affected in all of this, which is the adoptees, and if we actually listen and we do things to change, it could help a lot of future people, you know, which is awesome. And you, do you share your story and what you talk about and how people could do things differently and the things that you went through, it does. It has its impact on people and it makes people think and it helps people learn. And that's what's so important, you know, it's so important. And for people that don't know you, where can they go to find you?

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

So my TikTok and my Instagram are both difficult adoptee, and then my Facebook that I have for adoption advocacy is da. Julian.

[Birth Mother]

I feel like we can go on forever and ever and ever.

[Advertisement Voice]

We're.

[Birth Mother]

We're gonna have to bring you back for some other stuff too. But d. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for taking the time and just being. You've always been very. You've always been very vulnerable and honest and. And blunt, and I love that about you.

[Podcast Host (Kate or Ty)]

I do.

[Birth Mother]

I really.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

I get that a lot.

[Birth Mother]

I love it. I love it because you just say it how it is and it's how it is, and I love that. But thanks for just hopping on and. And taking the time to just tell your story. It means a lot.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, absolutely. I loved it.

[Adoptive Sister or Close Family Member]

So thank you for having me.

[Birth Mother]

Well, you guys make sure you guys go follow Da and we'll be talking to you guys next week.

[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Goodbye.

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[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

Shut up.

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[Da Julian (Adoptee Advocate)]

That is so effective on Pluto TV.

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[Podcast Promo Announcer]

This week on for the Haters, a podcast around the stories that we survive. The world has been watching Kale for half of her life and it never got the beginning. The cameras showed up at 16. Everything that built her happened before they ever started rolling. This is her story before anyone was watching. Part one of Kale's story is out now on for the Haters. Listen to it wherever you get your podcast.

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