Summary:
In this interview with Barbara DeMers, we will discuss not only her lived experience of being an adoptive child after being removed at birth from her mother and placed into an orphanage for 6 months before her adoptive parents brought her home, but we also touch on what some of the research is showing about the effects of adoption on the adoptee.
Barbara’s passion is to provide support and healing for physical and emotional challenges through energy healing.
She is an extensive learner - always developing herself through knowledge so that she may support others on their path to healing. She is also a Certified Grief Coach through our Confident Grief Coach School where we help people become more confident in stepping out into the world as a professional support for those who grieve.
Shownotes:
Hello.It is.Pat here. I am Pat Sheveland, if you do not know me, I am the Confident Grief Coach. I'm the founder of Healing Family Grief and the Confident Grief Coach School. I wanted to give you a little heads-up on a project that I'm working on with some of my family members. Here's a little bit about the background. When I was a little girl, not even school age yet, I had first-hand experience of the joy and excitement that arises from an adoption. When I was really, really little, I was at my grandparents' house on a Sunday afternoon when my aunt and uncle came in and my aunt was carrying a baby. This baby was a girl. I was so excited. This had such a profound impact on me because I was no longer going to be the only girl in this extended family where all I had are boy cousins and my brothers. I had no sisters. This was super exciting. But to be honest, I never really thought about the fact that she was adopted until I was at her wedding when I met some of her birth family. I have to be honest, I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that she had other siblings and other parents because all I knew is that she was my cousin and my aunt and uncle's child.
Never even thought that.She was. Adopted the whole time that I knew her. Over the last several years, she and I have had a lot of conversations about her adoption story. Interestingly enough. We and my immediate family, with my husband and I have experienced a lot of adoptions and have grown our family, I guess, to be a family of many adoptees. My daughter-in-law, who's married to one of our sons, was abandoned as a premature newborn in India many, many years ago. She was adopted by a single woman in the United States after spending months in an orphanage in Calcutta. She needed to stay there because she was unviable to even get on a plane to come to her adopted mother and come to the US until they could really have 24/7 care to really get her to that place. We believe that she was held by Mother Teresa, and that's what got her here and helped her to be just like this magnificent woman that she is today. Also, my granddaughter, who was our great niece at the time, was taken at birth by Social Services because it was just felt that it would be better for her and safer for her to be placed into a foster to adopt situation, and we'll share a lot about that story.
But it spurned a passion within my other daughter-in-law to want to take this child, bring her in to foster and to formally adopt her. Our great niece is now our granddaughter. We're so happy and so thrilled that she can be raised in a loving home and be a part of our family. Then a few years ago, I gained a new brother-in-law through ancestry DNA testing. Who knew? But I'll tell you, we are so thrilled to have him as part of our family and that we were able to connect and really get to know each other and be family together. Because my passion is in the grief healing space, I kept getting this inner nudge to talk more about adoption.
What are some of the grief that shows up? What's some of that grief that shows up for the people who are being adopted and also for the adopted parents? Or for the parents who had to relinquish their child, feel that that was a necessary thing to do?
What goes on with genetics and epigenetics and all of these different things that can really play an impact? I really wanted to delve into this a little bit further, and I've asked these family members that I just spoke of to share their stories with me so that I can share them with you. Over the month of October, I will be sharing each of these interviews on the Healing Family Grief YouTube channel and on the Confident Grief Coach podcast show. I would love it if you could hop on over to either of these forums. Hit the subscribe button down so that you get notification when these are up and running. Give us a thumbs up if you like what you see and hear when you do listen to these episodes. Everyone has a little bit different story, has different beliefs about adoption, and that's the beauty of it. We're going to culminate this series on adoption with a live panel discussion with my guests, my family, on Sunday, November fifth, at seven o'clock pm Central Time. We're going to hold that over Zoom, where you can sign up and ask us questions and get more insight. My hope is that if you are adopted, this can bring some measure of, I'm not alone in this and my feelings.
If you are a parent who relinquished your child, you can hopefully gain some comfort through this series and this conversation. If you are adopted parents and you just want to hear what other people's stories are, our stories are powerful and can help not only heal ourselves, but also provide an avenue for healing for other people.
So please keep an eye out for this series, Adoption: Where Grief and Gratitude Can Co-Exist. I look forward to seeing you over the next several weeks. Oh, yeah, links to the Healy Family Grief YouTube channel will be in the comments below. I look forward to seeing all of you and hope that you can make it. Peace out.
Hello, everyone. I am just so excited because I have someone that's super near and dear to my heart that I've known since I was probably three, I guess. My dearly beloved cousin, Barbara, who is the first, kicking off the first of our conversations about adoption and what it means to the adoptee.
The Person who was chosen to be brought into a new family, but also has experienced the abandonment of not being able to be with their birth family. So this is we're kicking it off. We're going to do a whole series about this, and then we're going to have a culmination of it.
With the whole panel of all the people that I'm doing individual calls with. So I'm excited to do this, and I'm honored, my dear Barb, that you are kicking this off because you and I have had lots of conversations about this over the years for sure. So do you want to just tell everybody just a little bit more about who are and who you are today, and then we'll dive into your birth and adoption story, but just tell us a little bit more about you.
Hey, my name is Barbara Demers. I am married. I have two adult children and a grandchild, my first grandchild on the way. I have been a hairstylist for more years than I even like to say, for 43 years. I've owned a salon for 12 years. I've also been interested in energy medicine. I've studied and I've been doing energy medicine since 1998, and I've studied several modalities, and now I'm doing some teaching and collaborating with a group called Awakening Healing Access. I also doing Akashic record readings. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell as they say in a nutshell.
So yes, hairstylist, extraordinary. This energy work, I just wanted to chat a little bit about that because I'm sure a lot of that came from everything that you experienced, whether you do it or not to come into energy, healing and that type of work. And you were one of the pioneers in the area where we live. Not many people were doing that. So what was like your firststep into energy work? What that drew you to it?
What drew me to it? Well, it was after my mother passed away. I had a client, a hair client that I was seeing who she was a family therapist, and she also started doing energy work. So she started telling me about she was doing this energy work stuff where she studied Reiki. And I was like, at the time, I had never heard of anything like that. And my first thought was like, she's weird. And that doesn't even like whatever, weirdo. I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand it. I just cast it aside. But she kept mentioning it to me that it might be something that would be helpful for me through my grief. And then I started on that synchronicity thing where all of a sudden, every place I went, she was there. I went to get gas. She's pumping gas across from me. I go to the grocery store, I turn the corner and there she is. Literally, it was in one week, I think I saw her every day. Finally, I thought, fine, okay, hey, no uncle. I give up. I'll go see her. I made an appointment to see her.
Before I saw her then I had another one of our friends, another mutual friend of ours whose mother had passed away shortly after my mother had passed away. And they found, her and her sister found a medium. And at the time, I had no idea what a medium was, but she called me up. She was, We found a medium. Do you want to go with us? Because she can talk to our dead mothers. And so I'm like, Yeah. I'm like, Yeah, sign me up. Sure, let's do that. So the three of us made an appointment to go see this medium, which was literally a couple of days after I had made the appointment to go see this gal who did the Reiki. So I went and saw the gal who did the Reiki, and then we talked for a while, and I got on the table and she's doing this energy work on me. And at one point, she grabbed my hand and she held my hand. She said, just as I suspected, because you're a natural born healer. I can remember opening my eyes and going, What? What's that? I don't even know what you're talking about.
Anyway, I left and then the appointment was relaxing and it was my first experience with energy work, and I still thought it was weird. I really didn't know what was happening. Well, then a couple of days later, I went with my two friends and we went to see this medium. And of course, I went first because we were all afraid because we didn't know what it was. So we sat down and she said to me, she goes, You know your life is about to drastically change, don't you? She said, You're a natural born healer. And I was.
Like, Oh, and.
I'm like, What the heck? How come this is two people in one week that have said this to me? And I don't even know what that means. What is that? So anyway, I've continued to see both of them for quite some time. Actually, I still see the gal, the medium gal, and the other gal is a good friend of mine now. And shortly thereafter, as I started to learn more about energy work, it was like, I know this. This makes sense. I get this. It totally was something that I can relate to when I started. I actually didn't do Reiki right away. I studied and became certified healing touch practitioner. And then I did some Reiki and I studied pronic healing. And I've just done a lot have a lot of training and education and energy medicine.
It was like it unlocked. I mean, it was all there. It's just like unlock the key. The key was you are an energy worker. It was almost like that was the key that you needed that your psyche needed to hear to like, okay, and then it just unlocked. And that's so beautiful.
Right.
So we'll probably get back to this and round back. But I just think it's fascinating because you were on the forefront... I had run to this long before other people jumped on the bandwagon. A lot of people didn't jump on the bandwagon and thought it was the devil's work and that type of thing. But we all know, most of us and people who listen to me, I would think, understand that we know that we're all made of energy and we know that we can transform energy. We can't make it. We can't get rid of it. We can't create it, we can't destroy it, but we can transform it. And that's what energy work is all about. That's where healing occurs at the most basic level when you can get to those root causes. Speaking of root causes, share as much as you're comfortable with Barb, because I know this can be a sensitive topic for.
Anybody who's sharing their story, but as much as you would like about your story your birth and adoption story.
Well, I was adopted. I am an adoptee. I was adopted when I was six months old. I was in an orphanage from some time after birth until my adoption. I was adopted into a very loving, wonderful, generous, loving family. I really had a very idyllic childhood. I had parents who adored me. I had a brother who was quite a bit older than I am. By the time I was about five, he was 18, he went on to college, and then he was drafted in the Air Force. And he really did move back to my hometown until I was probably about 16 or 17, maybe even 17 or 18. So I grew up like an only child. Right before I got married, shortly before I got married, I think I got married when I was 23, 23 and a half, about a year and a half before that, some of the adoption laws changed. And I had seen the article in the newspaper, and I had written... You had to write a letter to the agency that you were adopted through that you would like to open up your records, your adoption records, your adoption file.
And I wrote the letter, and I was so scared. It was really scary because I didn't tell my parents. And what was interesting then, a couple of weeks later, I went home and I was having dinner, and my parents had also seen the article and my dad had cut the article out of the paper and showed it to me and asked me if I would... He says, here, the laws have changed. We saw this. We thought you might be interested. And I was like, Oh, my God.
Thank God.
Thank God, because I had already sent the letter out. So I was contacted by a social worker. I was adopted through Catholic Charities. And sometimes they say it takes a while for them to find. So it was probably about, I think it was about a year and a half that it took. And what was interesting that I got a phone call one day and the social worker said to me, she said, Well, this is really interesting. And she goes, I should have known. I followed lots of leads, but the names sounded so familiar that I had a girl in my graduating class with that same last name. And so I contacted her and it was your sister. And I was just like, What? I'm looking for my birth parents. I have a sister? Well, lo and behold, I have eight siblings. And so it was right before I got married. I got married in January, and this was the end of November, beginning of December is when I got the call. And it just happened to be my birth mother did not live in the state at the time, but she felt a very strong call to come back to Minnesota.
And she came back to Minnesota literally just a couple of days before the social worker called my sister.
Wow.
So I met her, and that was probably the beginning of December. We met at Perkins, and we started at breakfast, and we stayed till way after lunch. I think we were there for probably about five hours or so. During that time, one of my sisters did come and had lunch with us. She worked close by. And then it was shortly maybe about two or three weeks after that that I met the whole family. I think it was maybe shortly after Christmas or around New Year's that I met everybody else.
So you went from almost effectively being an only child to having a whole bunch of siblings and siblings. Wow.
Yes. So my birth father was deceased. My birth mother is now also passed. But my birth father actually passed away about two weeks before I was born. He was an alcoholic and a diabetic, which is not a good combination. And that is not why I was put up for adoption or the last three of these siblings that I have, or there's three of us, actually, that became wards of the state when we were born because my birth parents did not have custody. All my other siblings were in and out of foster care. So we just became wards of the state when we were born and put up for adoption. And of course, adoption back then looked a lot different than it does now. My adoptive family waited, I think, over seven years for me. They had to, of course, my family went through Catholic charities, and so my birth family and my adoptive family were both Catholic. And they used to match eye color, hair color, and also nationalities. So I have a lot of the same Irish and German, Danish, and French. And my parents were Irish and German.
Luxembourger.
Excuse me.
I'm kidding. That was what my dad, my father and her dad were siblings, and my dad used to always go, You're Luxembourger. And it's like, well, we're really right next door to each other.
Yeah, right.
Tomato, tomato.
That's right.
Anyway, so I looked a lot like... I have blue eyes and same hair color and skin tone as my adopted family did. So people would often say that, that I looked like, Oh, this must be your mom. And I would always notice that smile on her face because I'm sure that was something that really warmed her heart. But I will have to tell you that when I sat across from my birth mother and my sister, that was mind-boggling to actually really see somebody that looked like you. I remember when my sister walked in the door, I almost like... I don't know. It was just really strange.
Is she the one that...
Yeah, you two look really similar to each.
Other because...
And we've shared the story many times. But at your wedding, I remember looking up and I'm like, Because Barb came into our family at six months of age. And I remember going to our grandparents and my aunt and uncle had this little baby. And I was so excited because I was the only girl out of all the boys of the cousins and my family. And there was a little girl and I was so excited that there was another girl in the family. So I never thought about... Its like I was never thought about adoption or how you came into the family or any of that stuff. I mean, I was what, three, I suppose. I think there's three years difference or whatever, however old. And so I didn't think anything of it. And it just wasn't a thing that we thought about. And then I was at your wedding and then this woman, your sister, and I looked and I'm like, Oh, my God! She's like the spitting image of Barb. And it was like weird for me. It was almost uncanny because it's like, I just don't... Wow, that's amazing. But it just was like, nightmare was in our mind's eye. Yeah, that's so beautiful. I bet it was just like extremely weird.
Yes. So my siblings did come to my wedding. My birth mother did not. She did not feel that it was her place. She said this is the time for your mother, for your parents to embrace. And she actually left town a couple of days before the wedding. So she didn't come, but my siblings did were there. So yes, I think that was interesting for everybody.
Yeah. And so special. I mean, when you think about... I mean, I shared with you that... And I'll be interviewing my brother-in-law, but my mother-in-law had a child that is my husband's half brother. And I always thought about after I found out about that, how my mother-in-law thought about... I'm sure she thought about Tim 24/7. I'm sure that that every day she thought about Tim because, again, he was given up at birth and was in an orphanage for six months. And I didn't get acquainted with his birth family until he was in his 50s. But I just also for the adopted child, but also for that mother, because we know that you're a mom, I'm a mom, that I think that tethering never gets from them. It's like this energetic umbilical cord that never gets cut off. It's always there. And so I just, wow, what a powerful thing for your mom to do to step back when I'm sure all she wanted to do was spend time.
Right.
Yeah.
It was my birth parent, my birth mother and my adopted mother did meet. Rather point to that it always brings me to tears. They met at my father's casket, my adopted father's desk casket. It was at his wake that she came to the wake and she met my mom at the side of the casket. And it was beautiful. They embraced and they thanked each other. And it was quite a poignant moment that I'll never forget. They interacted a couple of other times after that. But my birthmother did not live in the state. Yeah, she didn't live in the state, so she wasn't around a lot. My my mom died 10, my adopted mom died 10 years later. By the time my birthmother moved back to Minnesota and her later years, my mom was already gone.
Wow. So you have had extraordinary life filled with grief. Filled with trauma, filled with abandonment, filled with extraordinary love, compassion, the both ends of all of it. I'm going to start out with first, because I always like to start out with positives and life. What are the greatest gifts. That you feel were bestowed upon you being the adopted one, the chosen one?
Well, that's a very interesting question. I was brought up by, like I said, by very loving. I had a very idyllic childhood, very loving parents who were just, I don't want to say it couldn't do any wrong, but it was a very positive experience. I wasn't spoiled with material things, but I was definitely spoiled with love and attention and affection. It's interesting to talk with, or at one point, I know some of my biological siblings used to tell me that I was the lucky one because they were in and out of foster care, which I'm sure was not easy to be taken in a foster home and they were separated in a couple of different foster homes and then brought back together. So they used to look at and tell me that I was the lucky one. I do some work and Akashic records, and I've been bringing this to my record keepers and asking them about that. And really, I had the realization that I would not be who I am today if I did not live the life I lived, right? And so coming to the understanding or the appreciation of self-love and loving where I'm at and loving the life that I have today, where would I be or who would I be if I would have a different life?
So I think I have a wonderful life and I love the life that I'm living. So I wouldn't be here right now in this space if I had not had that experience. Did it come with some trauma? Yes. Adoption cannot come without trauma. I would even say that I know that I shared some of this information with you before that adoption really isn't the trauma piece. It's the relinquishment from the birth mother where the trauma comes in. So to me, it's like almost two separate things. Because for a while I really struggled with, well, is adoption bad? Is this not a good thing? But no, it is a gift. It definitely is a gift. It's definitely necessary, especially in fostering situations where if we're looking at the safety and the wellbeing of children. But yet there is a trauma because there's so much physiology and so much cellular things that happen between a baby in utero and your mother, and you just can't expect that bond to be broken.
That's why I said that umbilical cord, it's an energetic umbilical cord that is never severed. We know with epigenetics now and all the science that's out there just how our DNA is turned off or on in the womb and the things that happen with our mother and their stress levels and their happiness and even with the external, with our fathers. I mean, we know that even that can affect the child in the womb. But certainly, yeah, that word relinquishment is really so powerful. I mean, that's a powerful way of expressing it. So a lot of good because you won't be who you are today. You won't be the extraordinary mom that you are, the wonderful wife that you are, the friend that you are to so many, the sibling that you are. I know the aunt too many, the cousin too many. That's who you are. You've touched so many souls behind the chair that sat in the chair where you were doing your energy work without even probably thinking about it for many years. It was just a natural gift of helping others in whatever trauma they might have been going through life challenges. So if you could, and I know you've done a lot of work with this, what are some of the biggest challenges over the years from this relinquishment? The everything that transpired at the time of your birth?
That's a very interesting question and a very challenging one to answer because I didn't think about the psychology of adoption until probably about seven or eight years ago. Everybody has some trauma. We all have life experiences and life incidences that make us who we are or take us down where we build patterns or behaviors. But I think for the trauma of adoption, that relinquishment is that you... Well, it's pre-verbal, so it happens before. It's like it's pre personality, before you even have personality. You don't even realize what happened. For many traumas, I think, let's say if you were... I think this is the example that one of the gentlemen I've been listening to uses in his research. He talks about if you got in a severe car accident on the highway, you've been driving down that highway for years and you got in a severe car accident, and after a while you just think you can't get in the car and drive for a while, then maybe you can start driving after a while and you can start driving just around town, close to home. But you're not going to go down that highway again.
It's going to take a little time, maybe a little more driving, maybe go down another highway. But pretty soon you have a memory that you drove down that highway for years and you were okay. So the adoption trauma happens before you even have a personality. It's like all of a sudden you were attached to this beam, you grew in this beam. You have this hormonal physiology, a cellular physiology, all these things that all of a sudden that's gone. And so I think there's a lot of issues with trust. There's a lot of issues with addiction. There's a lot of issues with making sure that you present as being whole and grounded and steady, because if you present as being really wounded, then you might get pushed or relinquished again. For many adoptes, there's more than one relinquishment. It's not only the relinquishment from birth, but then for myself, I was in an orphanage. And so what happened in the orphanage? Was I cared for? Did where my needs met? Was just my needs met? Maybe I was fed and I was changed, but was I nurtured? Was I held? Those are the things that you had that there's relinquishment number two being moved out of the orphanage and into a new home.
So here I am again being relinquished from something that became familiar for six months, which ended the life of the baby is like a lifetime, right?
Yeah.
And you think that they can't be remembered, but these are very ingrained things. So yes, we can't really recall them and say, oh, yes, I remember.
Well, it's a survival instinct. So the lack of trust, the ability to have addictions. And when you talk about addictions, we're not just talking addictions to chemicals and that type of thing. It can be a lot of different things. It could be food, it could be shopping, it could be addiction to love of another person. I mean, there's just so many different... We probably all have some pattern of addiction within us, but this is like, it's there in survival. It's survival because dang it, I wasn't taken care of. I was given up. And then even in the work page, one thing that I thought about too, is you might have had a caregiver in the orphanage that just bonded so much to you. I mean, it could be the other way, too, right?
Right.
Exactly. And then all of a sudden, boom, you're ripped out of that person, out of their arms too. So then.
Why can't Itry to think why wouldn't I be ripped out of somebody else's arms? And I think some of that addiction comes from that need to self-soothe. And yes, there's a lot of walls that could put up because why should I even get close to you? You're going to leave anyway. And so that's where that presentation of having to be that really sturdy, whole person so that the person isn't going to leave. And even my husband said that to me a couple of weeks ago when we were talking because he was listening along with me as I was listening to some YouTube video about adoption. And he goes, You think you have all this trauma. He goes, But you're the most whole person that I've ever met. He goes, That's why I married you. And I'm like, That is what I present to you so that you could marry me. It doesn't mean that I believe that or feel that on the inside.
Wow. I didn't think about that presentation of presenting as whole. But now when I'm thinking about... You and I have talked about this. I feel like I'm meant to share some of this because there is so much just within our own family, within my family, my children, my husband, my cousin, my children have adopted my great niece who was taken away, relinquished at birth not by choice of mom, but by necessity. So there's so much that I have been surrounded in. My daughter-in-law, who will be interviewing here also in India, when she did her DNA, it was like part of the Chinese, Asian, and then the Indian-Asian. So that's what messed me up. But she too, six months or five months or whatever that she was over there as a premature baby. Then all of a sudden, you're put in somewhere else. And I see that. I see that being that presentation of I'm whole I'm strong. But I've also gotten to know my family pretty well too, that I can see the glimpses, but they don't come out for very long, right? Because that's a behavior. I think it's just a survival instinct, right? That any being on this Earth would be doing the same. It's even more so when we're human beings and that attachment is just so huge from that.
So you've been doing a lot of research in this area. You work in the Akashic records, that type of thing, a lot of energy work. We were talking before we got on the phone and you said that there is no healing from this. It isn't like we heal and it's gone. I shared, yeah, that's what I talk about with grief is I say it's healing family grief, but it's a part of healing. It's not healing it in totality because grief is part of who we are. This trauma and grief and trauma are so intertwined is who we are. And so it's always there within us. And then we build the layers of resiliency around that and how we're nurtured and cared for or maybe not, depends on how that all shows up with that layering upon that grief and the resiliency from that perspective. But it doesn't go away. But the action of grieving, I had interviewed Mary Francis O'Connor, who wrote The Grieving Brain, and she really defined the difference between grief and grieving. And that's what I see here too, is it's like you said, the trauma is there. You can't erase it.
You can't change the wiring and all of that type of thing, but your response to it or you talked about acceptance?
Right. You just have to know that the blessing and the trauma have to live right next to each other. I've really likened it lately to... It's like a lean. For a while, I really leaned on the trauma, and I was studying and researching about what is it and just having the understanding. There are some things I've read and listened to that I literally gasped out loud. When I learned that it was like a pre-personality trauma, and I was just like, Oh, my God, that makes so much sense. I get it now. And then there's the times when I lean really far into the blessing and it doesn't seem like a trauma at all because I've done so much healing work and really working on that aspect of self-love and self-acceptance and self-compassion. It's trying to find that balance between that leaning where the trauma and the blessing really live right next door to each other.
They're connected and they stand together.
They 're just beautifully together, knowing that sometimes you're going to lean and things will show up. That'll go. And then other times the lean is, gosh, it really hasn't been in my mind's eye because there's so much good stuff going on. Right. The flow. Beautiful. It's like that infinity symbol, right? And it meets in the middle.
Right. And it's just trying to find a balance where you just have to stay in that middle ground. And as I increase my capacity for self-love and for that self-compassion, I can increase that some of those walls drop and allows me to let other people love me, which that is I would say my biggest hurdle has been, is that I like to exude and I like to love and caretake a lot of people. But I like to keep everybody a little bit at arms like, you can love me from right over there and not any closer. And as I'm increasing my capacity for self-love, some of those walls are really dissolving, and I'm allowing that more love to come in. And then that can get to be really scary for me. I've been married for 38 years, and even with my husband, our relationship has really grown and changed over the past, I'll even say the past year. Sometimes he almost gets gitty about it. And then that's when I'm just like, You're laughing at me, and I shut my thumb. I can see the confusion in his face, where he's just like, I'm not laughing at you I'm ecstatic that.
I- I'm joyful.
I'm joyful. And he can feel more than, I don't want to say, an even exchange because it's not what it's about, but- A deeper connection. -a deeper connection. And he gets joyous. And then I just like... That just makes me want to... But I'm learning to read. I'm like, okay, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay, Barbara.
So having children. What shifted for you having this family and these children who actually were born of your own?
I always wondered if it's as weird for everybody as it was for me. I just thought it was like I couldn't believe it was mine. I don't know. It's really hard to explain, but I just couldn't believe that they were mine. Not that you have ownership over children, but... I feel that I was bonded very well, which is I know that some mothers don't have... Some people have a hard time bonding, but I'd spend a lot of time. I slept like literally, I think both of my children were collicky and literally slept on my chest for months.
I'm so excited for you and this grandchild who you get to meet, because I told you before we got on this recording that it's inexplicable. You can't explain this type of love that you have when you have grandchildren. And I think when I'm thinking out it now as you're talking, it is such unconditional love that they give us. And we're able to flow to them because we. Really don't have responsibilities around it. It's just a pure form of... And when we're feeling lacking in love, maybe that is. Maybe there's a woman I know that I have volunteered at grief camp for 10 years with, and their son died when he was 14 and of course, absolute devastation and trauma. And then two years ago, they had a grandchild and her friend also was a bereaved parent. And they call their grandchildren little heart healers. Little heart healers have taken the broken hearts and brought them back together. I imagine that will be the same for you also with yours.
So do you work with people and help them in what you do? Is that something that you have a desire to share more?
I've been trying to figure out what that would look like, to be honest with you. And I think just the awareness about adoption or relinquishment, because I seem to have, I'm like you, literally, I think I know more adopted people or people who have adopted children than it's just they just seem to come out of the woodwork. They're all over in my circle. And I think just building awareness that these kids do have trauma, I think many of them do really struggle. I do know a few people who have adopted children from other countries, and that's been huge. They don't have the genetic mirroring, even the smells as for an infant, the smells, the sounds, and because the sense of smell is something that is one of the first, really one of the strongest senses for an infant. And so coming to a different country that sounds different, that smells different is really huge for these kids. And I think the genetic mirroring part, a lot of times they don't look like anybody else. I talked about what a big deal that was for me. And I was raised in a family where I had the same hair color and eye color and nationalities.
And so, like I said, it's so hard because it is a gift for the trauma and the blessing. And I think I'm curious as to how much information or education that adoptive parents get.
I'll have to inquire with my daughter-in-law because we haven't really talked about that. She has been working in the social services system, mainly because she was going into foster care, so she could bring our great niece to come live and ultimately be adopted. But she had a support system that probably had access to information where many don't. And so I think with a lot of what's going on.
Everywhere and the awareness that we have and so many things that this absolutely is a huge need that there probably is a pretty significant deficit because it's not something... And in schools, you probably don't talk about it a lot. As a kid, you probably didn't go around and have conversations about that you were adopted or whatever. Kids like you.
And I would like to speak to that. Yeah. That's a very interesting thing. There's something that often I find, and I'm sure you've experienced it, especially in little bit larger families who there's maybe several siblings, you also always have that sibling that's the odd duck. And what does the family say? It's my brother. We always tell him he was adopted because he's such a weirdo or he doesn't fit in. So basically, what are... And you think about that. I have heard that so many times from people. So what are you saying? They're basically saying adopted people don't fit in and don't belong. That's my brother. He's weird. He's the black sheep. He's the weird one. We tell him he was adopted because he doesn't fit in and he doesn't belong.
And you know that I've told you this story, but my brothers, because I was the youngest, the only girl came at the tail end. Your brother and my oldest brother were the same age, so there's a lot of age difference there. And they used to tell me I was adopted because I was blonde and all my brothers, my cousins, my parents were fairly dark haired and I was blonde and I was the only girl. I would dig around in my mother's papers and try to find my adoption papers because I truly believed I was adopted. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it probably until I was later grade school or so somewhere that she had written an article that I had read then finally, and it was about my birth and when she was in the hospital, she had been an editorial for the local newspaper. And that's the only time that I finally realized that I wasn't adopted truly. And yeah, you're telling them you don't fit in, you don't belong. Yeah. Well, this has been super amazing conversation. So I'll share your information and the show notes so that people can find you out there on social media. And is there one last thing that you would like to end with? Anything that you would like on your heart to share?
Actually, when you asked me to do this, I was thinking about a while back when you and I were doing some coaching, and I did the Gallup Strengths. The Gallup Strengths.
Are they the VIA strengths?
Yes. My number one strength was connection. And when I started looking into adaption because I just like to believe that... And I thought, isn't that interesting? That that's part of my wanting to be connected to everything and to everyone because I just love to see, because I just think everything is connected like this is so interesting. You're connected to me, and I'm connected to this, and that's connected with that. I just thought that that was interesting little perspective there. And anything else? The last thing I'd like to share that if anybody, yeah, I'm open to talking or visiting, chatting with anybody about adoption, about their feelings about adoption.
What's the best way for them to What is the best form for them to reach you?
Probably you could go through my website and it sends me an email, so they would drop any information there. I can reach out and connect to them.
You want to just give your website right now? Like I said, I'll put it in the show notes.
It's my name. So it's www. BarbaraDemers.Com.
I will have that in the show notes. So thank you, my dear cousin, sister, soul sister. This was amazing. So everybody else, keep an eye out. We'll be having more of these and we'll have Barbara back on when we do the panel discussion later on. Thank you.
Looking forward to that.
Contact us:
Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com
The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com