Are you curious about adoption? Are you an adoptee who struggles to feel like you belong and are worthy of love? Are you unsure about how to talk about it? In this episode I have a conversation with Joi Fisher-Griffin about her personal experiences growing up as a child who was adopted.

 

Joi is a recently retired school assistant principal, published author, and in recent years, adoption community advocate. She wants to help remove the shame, embarrassment, and fear about adoptoin and normalize open, repsectful conversations about it. Join us to hear Joi's story, what she's learned along the way, and how you can help.

Joi's website: https://www.findingjoi.us/

Joi's books: Finding Joi, Choosing Joi, and Singing with Joi

 

TRANSCRIPT

Podcast Intro

Karin: This is love is us exploring relationships and how we connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love is Us.

 

Episode Intro

Hello, everyone. My conversation today is with Joi Fisher Griffin, who was adopted as a baby and now volunteers for time to support those in the adoption community. So we're going to hear about Joi's story, the challenges that many adoptees face growing up, and how we can all help them feel more loved and connected. And then toward the end of the conversation, we'll talk a bit about the book she's written about adoption. So this episode is for those who have experienced adoption in one form or another, as well as for anyone who wants a better understanding of it.

 

So this is like, take ten of this intro for me. And this is because I'm an adoptive parent, and so this is an important subject to me, and I just really want to make sure that I'm honoring all the players here. Because adoption is a controversial subject, and many people find it problematic, and I understand where they're coming from. I thought about going into the issues with adoption here, but ultimately decided that I really can't do the topic justice in a two-minute podcast introduction, and I'm not sure if it serves the episode well to do that. I'm also just not really an expert, even though I do have a lot of experience with adoption. But if you want to learn more, it's easy to find more information online.

 

So today's episode is focused on the adoptees experience. So that's the focus. The reality is that there are kids who need parents and might not have other family who can care for them. And I don't think adoption is going anywhere, at least not for the foreseeable future. And there are plenty of beautiful adoption stories in my experience.

 

Those who have had open relationships between birth and adoptive families, where the lines of communication are open and the process is transparent and they have lots of support, they seem to have better experiences, and yet that's not possible for everybody. This isn't to say that people can't necessarily have good adoption experiences when they don't have all of those things, but it's really important that we give our love, support and respect to birth parents, to those who have been adopted, and to the families who have adopted kids. Their stories are complicated and personal. So for those of you who don't know much about adoption, I hope you walk away from this conversation with some new helpful information. For those of you who are a part of the adoption community, I hope you find some validation and perhaps some ideas for how you might make your situation better. If it's less than ideal. Thanks for joining us. Here we go.

 

Episode Transcript

Karin: Welcome, Joi. How are you today?

Joi: Good, how are you?

Karin: I'm doing really well, thanks. It's great to have you.

Joi: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Karin: Great. So tell us where you are in the world.

Joi: I am in New Jersey. People always say, well, you have this Southern accent. I don't know how I am a Jersey girl. I'm a Jersey girl. My mother's from the south, my father's from Pennsylvania, but I do somehow have this Southern accent.

Karin: That's great. What keeps you in New Jersey?

Joi: I think it's central to everything when you think about Philadelphia's next door, and then you have New York City, so Jersey kind of gives you the grass and the fields, and if I want to go and run around in the city, everything is really just a train ride away. And I love that. It's a very diverse where we live is a very diverse community. So everybody's here, everything is close by, although I think it's a little expensive, and we were talking about other states, but that's really what keeps us in New Jersey, is we have a lot of family here.

Karin: Yeah, that's important too. Absolutely. And I know that the conversation today isn't really focused around your day job, which is maybe you can tell people a little bit about that.

Joi: My day job as an assistant principal at a high school and this is the first time it's really come down out of my mouth is that tomorrow will be my first day of retirement. I'm moving from 27 years in the field of education into my retirement.

Karin: But there are some other type of work that you also do and that you're excited to do more of in retirement, is that right?

Joi: Yeah. As an educator and actually being a student as well. I'm a doctoral candidate at a university focusing on education, but also my other side passion, which is adoption. And as an adult adoptee I won't even say always in the past four or five years, it's become really important to me to figure out how to help young people who struggled in silence like I did when I was younger and where I just didn't even talk about my adoption experiences. And now that I've had some opportunities to be around other adoptees, adopted parents, and birth parents, and I've learned the benefits of that, and I've learned in many a-ha moments that I wasn't crazy, I wasn't weird. The things that I felt and experienced once I talked to other adoptees were normal and that when I struggled with abandonment, and I struggled with those fears and feeling embarrassed to even say that I was adopted. Four or five years ago, I finally was around people who echoed the same things that I've thought and felt for years, but never actually said to anybody.

Karin: And what was the catalyst? What got you to that place where you were willing to talk about it and share?

Joi: Yeah, the catalyst was the laws changing in the state of New Jersey. Our previously sealed adoption records from 1940 to 2015. Anyone born in between those years who was adopted, your adoption records were sealed. And there were some grassroots organizations in New Jersey fighting for the laws to change so that we could have access. So finally meeting the people who were behind the grassroots efforts that had been going on for 34 years. And I had no knowledge of any of this stuff, any of the resources for adoptees. But here I was, about to be the recipient of my original birth certificate based on their work. And one of the women Pam Hasagawa and she was from NJ care, she said, joy, as I got to know them over the few months after that she said, joy, we're getting a little older and we need to pass this baton on to somebody who can go and share the word about adoption, about the change in this legislation, and about the availability of your birth certificates in New Jersey. She said, I don't know how you can do this. Everything was fresh and new for me. She said, in your small circles, start there. Start talking to just people that you're around on a regular basis. Talk to people in your church, the people in your family, people, any organizations you're connected to. Use those opportunities to let them know, because there's other adoptees out there and adoptive parents and birth parents who may want their children to have access to their original birth certificates. And I looked at Pam and I looked around the room, and the others echoed the same thing. We're ready to pass the torch. We've been doing this for 34 years. And at that time, I didn't say to them, okay, sure, I'll do it. But I felt kind of convicted. I felt convicted to say, Here I am. And that's all I kept saying, here I am, about to have access to my records, things that I've longed for quietly and silently for years. And it kind of is my responsibility to pick up the torch and help others find out what I'm about to have access to based on the work that they did for free, just in their passion. And some of the advocates in New Jersey were not even born in New Jersey, but because of their work, I was about to be a recipient of my original birth certificate. So I looked around the room and also realized there were not many people of color in the room. And I know that adoption is a tough conversation in families of color. And so I said, I felt again compelled to let this be a part of my mission moving forward. I knew I had to get myself together with my own story and my own feelings. Because one of the things many of them kept saying is that if you're still crying about it, then you might not be ready to go and have.

Karin: Those conversations that's so important.

Joi: Because you want your message to get out, but you don't want your emotions to get in the way. So that was a goal for me to be like them one day because they were telling their adoption stories. Some of them were tragic, some of them were late discovery adoptees. And they told it just like it was a normal conversation. And here I am receiving the benefits of that feeling. I felt like, wow, this is a normal conversation and we're talking about a tough topic. What would that be like if I tried to do that with other people? As an educator, I never told my students who I knew were adopted or in foster care that I was adopted as well. And so at that point I realized you can't hide anymore. You're receiving this benefit and this gift right here on this day. What are you going to do, Joy? To help other people be able to feel the way you feel in this moment so that other people, especially our young people, will be able to hear from you, hear your story, hear how you've come through, hear you talk about other people who are successful and have found joy in their own lives. And what can that do for them as they go through their teens and their twenty s and your thirty s into adulthood? I felt that it was more once I got myself together. It was a responsibility of mine to do that.

Karin: And why is adoption such a tough conversation? And you said in particular in families of color, why is that?

Joi: Yeah, we don't want to talk about with adoption comes the adoptive parent story. It comes the birth parent story. You're talking about conversations about infertility. You're talking about conversations of relinquishing your rights to your child and nobody wants to have those conversations. It's embarrassing. It comes with a sense of shame. Being pregnant in the, even the early eighty s and being unmarried, that brought shame onto families. And when you have religious households, they didn't want to hear that you were pregnant and you were unwed and didn't know what you were going to do. So it was very difficult in those times for many of the birth mothers. And I think that shame then continues on to the next family, even sometimes to the adoptive family, because now they have to are we going to keep this a secret or are we going to tell what our experience was. And so through all of that, I think shame is just unfortunately connected to the word adoption. And it's interesting, though, that as you think about children being raised by their relatives, for some reason, it doesn't always come with the same stigma that being adopted does, in my opinion.

Karin: Yeah. And how do you think that people can deal with that shame? Do you think that people can heal from that?

Joi: I think they can. And part of it, again, for me was having being at the table with other adoptees and hearing how they struggled, feeling like they didn't look like certain people in their family, they didn't act like some of the people in their family. They just always felt different but could never wrap their brains around it. I would always say I felt different from my family, but in my mind, I had this feeling that if I say that, they're going to think that I'm saying that I'm better than them. And it wasn't that I just felt different. There was something that just was not I just felt different. And I couldn't articulate that when I was younger to say what made me feel different. But for me, having met my biological parents and cousins who love to sing, who love to dance, who move like I do, who their mannerisms are like mine, whose facial features it began to make sense for me once I met my biological family. Some of the things that I always felt were quirky because they were different from my adopted family.

Karin: Yeah. And it's so fortunate that you were able to do that and connect with at least some members of your birth family. And I suspect that not everyone is as lucky as you have been to be able to do that. There are, of course, plenty of people who've never been able to find their birth family, or maybe they were adopted internationally, and they just don't have those ties. What can they do to feel more.

Joi: Connected, especially when you spoke about folks who were adopted internationally or transracial adoption situations. I think it helps people when they begin to learn a little bit about their culture, whatever that culture is, and learn about the countries that they've come from, making sure that that's inclusive and represented in the house that they live in. If you're raising a child of a different race, make sure you have art of that child's race. Make sure you have books. Make sure that their classrooms have some books and some artifacts that represent your child's culture within the classroom. There's so many things that it's difficult when you don't know. But I think when you do make some effort to find out and help that child find a community where they can learn more about their culture, it's definitely going to be beneficial to the child and something that they will appreciate when they get a little older versus keeping them in a culture or an environment that has really nothing to do with their background. So being aware of it, finding other adopted organizations where you have adopted children and families that can relate to, be able to help and support, is also very important. And if you have the opportunity to find an organization where there's other adoptees, adult adoptees like myself and others who are willing to share their story and their struggles with young people, I think that's a perfect avenue as well.

Karin: Yeah, that representation really is so important, isn't it?

Joi: Yes, it is.

Karin: It is very important because it can feel so alone.

Joi: And I think in finding community, and even if it's difficult to find a community of that child's particular race, whatever that is, or culture or background, finding some other adoptive families who may have a child that comes from either that same country so that they can find people who look like them, who may have had their families, may have had some similar experiences, to open up communication that way. Finding people that they can connect to and families that they can connect to.

Karin: Yeah, and I want to come back to that because I want to be able to point people in a direction where they can find those types of resources. But before we go to that, what are some of the challenges that adoptive parents face?

Joi: I think in the beginning, it could be trying to figure out how to respond to people's questions. Bringing home a child, if it's a toddler or if it's an older child versus a baby, sometimes a baby, you can, I want to say, sneak or slide into the family a little bit easier than it is to bring in an older child. And I think that's a challenge that adoptive parents face. And then what do you say? How do you introduce family? How do you introduce friends? What do you say when questions come up? If it's a transracial adoption, where it's a child of a different race, what do you say in the presence of that child? If they're asking about you adopting a child from another country or another place, what do you say in front of your child? What do you say privately to that person about your child? Do you have those discussions with your child in terms of what they're okay with you saying and what they're not okay with you saying? Because people have questions. People have questions, and before you know it, it could be in the middle of an event, it could be in the middle of a public place, and you have a decision to make. And actually, there's a couple of great books that this is one of the ones I share. It says. What do I say now? And I have it all tabbed up because it takes you through answers for awkward questions and comments about adoption. This is by Carol Bicken, MC Baker. Anytime you're being asked questions as an adoptive parent, you have to make the decision, okay, my child is standing right there. How do I want to answer this person's question? First of all, are they sensitive about the question that they've even asked? Or is it just a nosy kind of question? And the book kind of tells you there's a really quick fix, there's a raising awareness. Do you want to take a little bit more time with this person and give them some information? Or do you just want to just move on and not answer the question and try to wiggle your way out of it? So at that time, you can either have that real quick fix answer, or you can raise awareness about the child, about adoption, or in terms of answering their question, or you can choose not to. Sometimes people ask questions just to be nosy, and they ask obvious questions that they know they shouldn't answer, and they wouldn't ask a mother of a child that's had that child by birth. So what makes it right for you to ask an adoptive parent that question? And some people sometimes think because certain situations may be more obvious, that they have a right to, because it's inquiring minds want to know, right.

Karin: That's curiosity, but it might not really be their business.

Joi: Yes.

Karin: So what are some things that for people who are not in the adoption community who might want to know more and might want to be more sensitive, what are some things not to say.

Joi: If you find out? And this is a big one for kids. And it came up with actually my stepson when he was beginning to learn that I was adopted and he knew my father, my adopted father, and he was getting ready to meet my biological father. And so he asked me something, and he says, so what about your real dad? That's a touchy one. And he was maybe nine, and I was ready to explode. I'm like, Joy, he's a kid, he's a kid, he's a kid. And so I said, what does real actually mean? And he just kind of looked at me, I said, My real dad. I said, Maybe you meant my birth father or my adoptive father. And then he just kind of looked at me, and then he realized, oh, maybe I shouldn't. I said, because who determines what a real dad is? Sometimes you have a stepfather who does a lot more for a child than their biological father, but that's the father that they know. I said, So if you mean where's my adopted dad versus my biological father or my birth father, he's like, oh, okay. And so then I made sure his dad did a little follow up with him to help him along the way. But yeah, saying to someone, well, what about your real dad or your real mom? Well, what actually would make them my real? Do you mean birth or biological? And so that's one thing.

Karin: I just wanted to interject a little bit, because when you say that, then it makes the kid feel like, well, they're not really my parents, right?

Joi: Yeah.

Karin: And I'm not really their child. And so that can feel very alienating.

Joi: To work with a volunteer with Miriam's Heart, an organization in New Jersey, and we work with adoptive families, and we have what's called respite nights, where we invite in adoptive parents to drop off their children. We're all certified and cleared to work with children, and we have fun nights for kids while their parents get a chance to go out on a date or just go home and do whatever they like to do in our respite events. And so for this one particular event, my granddaughter came with us. And so we're at the table, they're doing arts and crafts, and she says something, and the young man mentions his foster mother, and she said, oh, your mom didn't want you. There's another one. Somebody didn't want you or you were given up. And those are words that normally even as adoptees, well, yeah, I was given up. And then so you realize, okay, what I've learned over time is we say that we were relinquished, our parents relinquished their rights to us. It's little things like that or the jokes when somebody in the family doesn't look like everybody else, oh, she must be adopted, those little things. And you never know who in the room is adopted and who you just offended. So as adoptees, we have to figure out sometimes, do we jump in and say something to that person? Or do we just kind of sit back and be like, oh, well, we knew it was just a joke. So those are some things that we battle with silently over time.

Karin: Yeah. And some of the things, a couple of things my listeners might not know that I'm an adoptive parent. And a couple of the things that I experienced was people wanting to know how my daughter came to me. And that's a really personal story and really a story for my daughter to tell, and it's not really mine to share. That's her story. So I'm really careful with the people that I would share that with, and I try to get her permission to do that. The other thing that people would say to me is when they found out I had an adopted child, oh, do you also have other kids of your own? She's my own. She's my own, too. And of course, they mean, have I also given birth to other to other kids, too? But yeah, they're all my own.

Joi: Yeah. And that goes back to the quick fix answer or whether you want to elaborate and give them any more information. And just by the way that you answered those, it gave them some awareness into maybe that wasn't the best question to ask and how to rephrase some things sometimes, right, yeah.

Karin: And of course, you want to help people learn without shaming them.

Joi: Right.

Karin: And that can be the trick.

Joi: Absolutely. And because that's the piece and that's one of the things through my going out and talking with families, I say that I'm an advocate for family and I'm an advocate for belonging. Sometimes adoptees and adoptive parents are looking for a space where they feel that they belong. And if you're asking such pointed questions that maybe really you shouldn't ask, that doesn't make us feel like we belong in that particular space. You're making us feel different from other people. So I think it's key for people to understand, yes, you can ask questions. There's a time and a place and appropriateness for certain questions, but it's my goal that we begin to allow people space to even ask those questions, so that then it gives me an opportunity to say, no. Well, we wouldn't use the words real mom or real dad, because this is what it kind of makes us feel like. Or you wouldn't say, Were you giving up? And how do you feel about giving up? Or my daughters were younger when they found out that I was adopted, and they wanted to know how much I cost. So those kind of things, even with my granddaughter saying, well, oh, your mother didn't want you, and she was six, and so she's trying to figure out why he's talking about a foster mom. And I realized just as we're educating adults, we have to educate children. And that was one of the reasons that I started writing, taking my memoir and chopping it up into little stories for children as well, because children can talk about everything. So if we start with them and making them more comfortable with conversations about adoption because they're seeing different family dynamics all across the world and all different types of makeup of families, a definition has evolved. If we can start with them and teach them as they grow and develop and also help the adults around them, sometimes it'll soften the conversation so that people can have those conversations more openly to normalize the conversation.

Karin: Right, so that's what your books really aim to do?

Joi: Yes, it is. And it's to share the perspective of an adoptee, someone who just never spoke about her adoption. It's the silent things that we struggle with that people are like, oh, well, I never thought you looked around the world and wondered. You were always looking for people that looked like you. Oh. I never realized that when you were looking through magazines, because I was tall and thin and was a model at the time, that I was always looking to see if one of those other models on the pages looked like me or that if someone sounded like me or moved like me, that that could be a relative. Oh, you know, well, the family was so welcoming to you that I never thought that you even thought about being adopted. Come on. Yeah, but again, I never talked about it, so what would make them think any differently? It's going to take some time, but I think creating those opportunities to talk about the good, the bad, and the challenges that come with being adopted and begin to open up and work on it. And I really believe that through the pandemic, you'll see so many more people using their voice and using their stories, whether it's on social media, websites, TV shows. I mean, every show you turn on now, there's an adoption or foster child storyline or foster parent or adoptive parent storyline embedded in almost every show that's out there. Some of them do it much better than others. But I think because it's now becoming more commonplace, that it's opening up conversations.

Karin: And normalizing it, I bet normalizing guests.

Joi: That's one thing I'm hopeful for.

Karin: Yeah. All of this, the silence around it, the comments about isn't your real parents, all those seemingly innocent comments, they really have a big impact. And before we hit record, we were talking about how it can really contribute to an adoptee's feeling like they don't belong and these feelings of shame, but also just this unworthiness and then that can lead to them getting into relationships that maybe don't serve them because they don't feel worthy.

Joi: Absolutely. One of the things you mentioned to start there was about the little comments, and one of the phrases I've learned over time is about secondary wounding. And those little comments they do, they dig at the person who's hearing them. And although we may not respond as adoptees, when you made a joke about somebody being adopted and it's digging away at us in ways that people don't even understand the other comment. There was a guy that I was dating at the time and when I was preparing to search for my birth parents, he said, well, you're going to hurt your adopted parents and why would you do that to them? And again, it's a phrase where I know what he meant. He really liked my parents and he just couldn't imagine why I would do that because he was thinking of it from his shoes as a parent and how upset he would be if his daughter did that. And I said, when people have parents and they're a single parent, I said, nobody tells them. Don't get to know the relatives on the other side of your family. If you have an absent father, nobody tells. You just completely disregard everybody on that side of the family. You're always trying to find ways to connect them with the people on that side of the family as well. And so I explained him, that is no different for me. I said, you're thinking of this for yourself personally. I said, Think about me as a person or as the adoptee. I'm not out to hurt my adoptive parents. I think they did a. Wonderful job. I'm very thankful. I said, but there's some things about me that I don't know your comment. And it took me months before I would even say anything, because each day that he told me that I would be hurting my adoptive parents, I just kind of took it and took it and took it and eventually said, look, I need you to think of it from my perspective as well. And then his light bulb finally went off, like, oh, I didn't think that that was A, really bothering you every time I said it, and B, I really didn't think about it from your perspective. I was thinking about it from my perspective as a parent and how upset I would be and how that would make me feel. And I'm like, well, I'm glad I finally said something. But secondary wounding and little comments hurt, and they're hurting us silently because we don't talk about it.

Karin: Yeah, that boyfriend reminds me of a conversation that I had when my daughter was small, or maybe we hadn't even brought her home yet. I'm not sure. But I remember talking about how important it was for me to establish this relationship with her birth mom, and I was hoping I would have that opportunity. And I remember this other parent was saying, oh, I would never do that. I'd never want to have that relationship. And I think that comes from the scarcity mindset around love, that there's only so much love that your child can give. And that's exactly it. I don't think that's true at all. We have room in our hearts for.

Joi: Many people, and that's what I also share with this person as well. I said, I'm a mother of three. I said, you never questioned me on whether I love all three of my children, but now you're questioning whether or not I can love two sets of parents. How much sense does that make? And he said again, oh, I didn't think about it that way. And just because I always say it's not a subtraction problem, I'm not subtracting anyone from my life. By trying to find my birth family, I am adding people to my life. And those that choose to stay and stick, we'll see. But it's not a subtraction problem. But fear is a big part of that. And when you talked about how this experience has impacted me in relationships, it's because I never felt that I was worthy. I never felt that I was good enough. I never felt that I was enough. And I went with that same mindset into the relationships that I found myself in, not feeling that I was enough in those relationships. And eventually you find yourself staying in relationships that may not be healthy for you because you're afraid to leave. And I was afraid to leave. Fears of abandonment. I had fears of being unworthy, and number one was being unlovable. And the thing that surfaced in my mind that I've never said was that I felt that if my mother didn't love me, who else will? And I think I even opened my book with that quote because I struggled with that. I struggled with that through my teen years. And then therefore, I felt that I had to stay in relationships for fear that nobody else would come after that, and that if they were with me, they really must want to be with me because I wasn't lovable. So I had to stick with what I had, to deal with what I had, because in my mind, that's it for me. But over time, I've learned that that definitely was not. And as I've learned and spoken more with birth mothers, that definitely was not the case. Many of them struggled over times making those decisions on what to do with their children. As in the those time periods, it was not popular, and it brought shame to the family for an unwed woman to be pregnant. And so a lot of that carried over into my relationships. And it wasn't until I met that group of adoptees who had open conversation about how they felt, they felt unloved, they felt ashamed, they had fears of abandonment. And when I heard that in my 40s, I'm like, if I would have known these were normal feelings and things that we struggle with, and if I would have had a group like you all to talk through over these years, maybe I wouldn't have been in some of the relationships that I was in over time. But that's when I really felt convicted to begin to share my story with my students, with the parents of the students at our school. Because here I am, I have access. I pretty much know who a lot of our adoptive families are. And I had never had the courage to share my story with them. And it wasn't until meeting a community of adoptees, adopted parents and birth parents that I was convicted. I said, Joy, you can't sit back anymore. You're benefiting from this. Imagine what you can do for somebody else who's having those same struggles that you've had for years and sat in silence about it's time to speak up.

Karin: It really speaks to the value of community, doesn't it?

Joi: Yes, it does. It has played a huge part in my healing. And I think that that's so important. When people ask, what would you say to someone who's preparing to who's thinking about doing a search and all those things? Find a community, find a support group. Find some people who either have been through this experience already or who are going through this experience so that you can share what you're feeling, what you're thinking, and you'll find that it's all normal. It's normal along with the process. It's a part of the process and that it gets better. Whether the outcome is positive or negative, you will then know your adoption story yeah.

Karin: And it sounds like that's been really meaningful for you.

Joi: It has been. I think finding community and learning the value and importance of counseling has been a big piece. I always say, I wish we would stop saying that counseling is for crazy people and say, I think counseling is for everyone. I think counseling and having a non judgmental person who's been trained and has an area of expertise to help talk you through things that you're thinking, they're not going to tell you what to do. They're not going to tell you how to think, but they'll help you talk through some of your experiences and maybe get to why you probably made some of the decisions that you made over time. But to have that non judgmental person where you can I went into my first counseling session, and I said, I'm here. I have questions. I don't know. I need your help, and whatever we have to do, let's get it done. He said, Nobody's ever coming here like that. I know there's something going on in my mind or the way that I think things that just isn't right. I said, But I don't know how to retrain or retool my thinking. And he just laughed. And again, we began to start putting the pieces together, and the big piece of that was finding a good counselor. And when I say good, part of your job going into that is being honest. I have people who've gone to counseling for years, but if you're not telling the truth, how are they really going to help you? You got to go in and tell the truth. And if you don't gel or vibe with the person who you've been paired with as your counselor, don't blame that on counseling. Doesn't work. You need to find a new counselor.

Karin: Absolutely.

Joi: If you're being honest and it's still not working, your needs aren't being met. Find another counselor.

Karin: Yeah, I agree 100%. It can take some time to find a match, and that's okay.

Joi: Yes, it can.

Karin: It's hard, but it's really worth it.

Joi: Yeah.

Karin: So for those who are not in the adoption world, what advice can you offer for them? And in particular, what would you tell people? How can they be supportive?

Joi: One of the things I talk about is that everybody's not meant to be a foster or an adoptive parent. And people say, Joy, I want to help, but I don't know what to do. Find a local organization in your community who works with adopted and foster families. Our particular organization allows we have volunteers, and they'll say, Well, Joy, I don't have time to volunteer. You can make donations. You can make donations towards like, for us, we have the respite events and being able to we take kids to the baseball field, the local baseball field, games and things of that nature. We go to different parks and do different sponsor a family, sponsor a child, sponsor. We have activities where you can sponsor an event for an adoptive mother to have a night out and go for nails, hair and massage and things of that nature so that we're honoring the families and the work that a lot of our families are actually doing. The other thing is that if you know somebody is bringing in a foster child, it's not quite the same as somebody coming home from the hospital with the baby. It's not usually okay for you to go over the next day that the child comes home to join that family. They're going to have to deal with some things, with the child getting adjusted, with the family getting adjusted, and it's going to look different. So how can you support in that way? Drop off dinner. Don't let food and dinner and making dinner be something they have to worry about as they're bringing a new child home to get adjusted. And that could be over a period of a couple of weeks. Do your day. Get a few other friends and neighbors to help that family as they come in. If you're a barber or a beautician, offer to do some hair for free. Anything that you can do, it doesn't have to be that you become an adoptive parent or a foster parent or you don't have time to volunteer. There's other ways that you can support the families in your community. Everybody can do something.

Karin: And we've mentioned this, but you've written some books. So what are the names of those books? Yeah.

Joi: Finding Joy a true story of faith, family and love. That's my memoir. It touches on adoption is a part of it. It touches on relationships and how that has spilled into relationships and finding your way in and out of an unhealthy relationship, and that is possible. I really touch on counseling and the support that I receive from counseling and finding support groups, being a parent. And the other two books are singing with Joy and Choosing Joy. Choosing Joy talks about how young people in schools might not be sure what it means to be adopted or being in a foster family. So how do we kind of define that and help them begin to understand that all families really matter and all families are going to look different? And it's okay. It's okay to have a family that looks different from yours. You might be raised by your grandmother. This 1 may be raised by an aunt or uncle. This one might have two moms. You never know. But does that make it any less of a family? And I think, again, having those conversations and introducing the word adoption and what that means will help young people have that one, that experience. I'm sorry. Singing with Joy is just about actually my experience. I learned that my biological mother sang when I went and met her at her church, and she sang a solo before she actually introduced me to herself. And to her church. And my dad leaned in and he said, now I see where your voice comes from. But my adoptive father also sings. But growing up, it goes back to looks. People would always say, oh, you don't look like your dad, or, you must look like your mom, or making little comments like that. And so I struggled with that. And singing with Joy talks about going to school and then him not looking like me, and children, other students making comments about that, and then how do you deal with that?

Karin: Yeah. And I think that's a really important message for kids, too, to understand that not all families match and it doesn't make them any less of a family.

Joi: Exactly.

Karin: It's the love that matters.

Joi: Yes.

Karin: And what does love have to do with the work that you do?

Joi: I think it's central. It's key to all of that. A friend of mine asked me oh, I shared with her that sometimes people who didn't really know the book as a whole would present it as if it's just about the reunion, because the reunion again happened in the church, and there was singing and African drums and all this other stuff. And so the grand part of all that story is really what has been shocking, and it was really like a Lifetime movie, is how we kind of but that wasn't the part that I wanted people to remember. I wanted people to remember the other things that happened along the journey as well.

Karin: Yeah. The whole journey is important, isn't it?

Joi: Yeah. So really just trying to remind people that the story is about relationships. But the key part of the story is about finding community and finding community and making those connections to counseling and support groups. That's been a huge part of my healing process along this journey.

Karin: Yeah. What's so beautiful about adoptive families is they just want to have more love in their lives. I think that's what, for most people, it boils down to.

Joi: Yeah.

Karin: So how can people find out more about your books?

Joi: Yeah, all of my books are on Amazon, and they're under Joy Fisher because that was prior to getting married during the pandemic. And my website is findingjoy. And that's joywithani us. And on social media, you can find me on at findingjoyrene.

Karin: Wonderful. And is there anything else you'd like to leave our audience with before we end today?

Joi: I just think that finding joy is possible. And I think my goal really is about getting people to understand that talking about adoption doesn't have to be difficult. And that if we can normalize the conversation, we really can help young people and others find their community and their safe space while while educating others along the way. Finding joy truly is possible. And if we take a little bit of it one step at a time.

Karin: Wonderful. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I really enjoyed the conversation and really appreciate it.

Joi: Thank you.

 

OUTRO

Karin: Thanks for joining us. Today on Love Is US. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the Love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.