A Leap Of Faith With Terri Marcroft

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Terri, Terri Markcroft. Looking forward to a second conversation for the podcast with you today, Terri.

Nice to see you, Simon. Thank you so much for having me.

You're very welcome, you're very welcome. So listeners, if you haven't heard Terri's first interview, there's a link to it in the show notes. Terri is a mum through adoption, her daughter's 26 And she's also the leader of Unplanned Good. So as you've been on the podcast before, this is— Terry and I caught up a couple of months ago and we were talking about— we came up with a little bit of a theme about keeping an eye on the prize and the threat and the prize being thriving. So what are the latest things that you're seeing about thriving? What does thriving mean to you as we come in on the end of 2025, Terry?

Right. So thriving, at least in the context of our adoption, me as an adoptive mom and my daughter having been placed with us at birth, to me, Simon, thriving means being at peace with all of the circumstances and all of the facts that we know today. Because that changes, both of them change, the circumstances and the facts that we know. Um, but to our, to our, the best of our ability, just being at peace with how things stand.

Yeah.

You know, and, and we recognize that they're going to change. I think everything ebbs and flows a bit. But being at peace.

Yeah. So we're at peace now and we're at peace with change and we're seeing change as kind of inevitable, right? Because a lot of people say that change is hard and change is scary and, oh yeah, change is hard and I don't know if I can handle this change. And, and yet That, that resistance doesn't do us a lot of good, really, does it?

No, because all of our relationships change over time. I mean, we're humans, we're growing, we're regressing, then we're growing again. And so I think that because we're— if any relationship is made up of at least 2 individual human beings, and because we change all the time, That means our relationship changes.

Yeah.

And I know that my daughter's relationship with her birth mom, it's been through a lot of ebbs and flows. And sometimes it's closer and sometimes it's more distant. And sometimes that's because of where my daughter is in life. And sometimes it's because of where her birth mother is in life. So a lot of ebbing and flowing going on. And it's challenging to be at peace with that. But the best we can is to be honest about it, because I think that honesty is a big part of thriving, you know, because you need to have all of the information and be somewhat transparent in order to be truthful, maybe, or what's the right word, straightforward in the relationship.

Yeah. Straightforward. I mean, the whole thing, right? Um, I come from a closed adoption, and, and your adoption is profoundly open, right? So, but there's— there was 30 years between that. I'm 58, your daughter's 26, so there's 32 years between it, right?

Right.

Those years saw a lot of change, and, and one, one hopes that, uh, an adoption Built-in openness, built-in trust, built in a lack of— built in a lack of secrets.

Yes.

Means, uh, is, is like an antidote to a lot of pain.

Yes, an antidote.

And it requires, it requires people to be strong right from the, from the Get-go, right?

Yes, I think so. There's a lot of, a lot of strength that you need to have in order to deal with those ebbs and flows, in order to deal with that closeness and then some distance and then some closeness. Yeah. And the, the other thing that made our relationship with our, with her birth mother ebb and flow a lot is that for the first, you know, 16 to 18 years, I was driving that relationship. Because my daughter was a child, you know, was very young. So I was driving the relationship where we saw her birth mother and we could— it was up to me how much time we spent with her, and it was up to me that we traveled to see her, and we actually stayed at her house for a few days. And all of that, I, I needed to make that happen. And then when Sydney turned 18 and graduated college, That was a big turning point for us where I just said, you know, this is, this is now your relationship. You make it what it, what you want it to be. Yeah. And they had each other's cell phone numbers in their phones and so they could communicate directly, which they could anyway, but they could, it was the responsibility shifted from me to Sydney and her birth mother.

And was that, was that scary, a scary thing for you?

For me?

Yeah.

Not at all. Part of that was preceded by her birth mother actually got angry with me about, like, kind of a battle of wills, maybe.

Right.

She wanted Sydney to do something that I didn't think was healthy for Sydney. So, I mean, it was just— she wanted to sell Sydney her car. And I said, no, we're not going to do that. And because her birth mother lived in another state, getting this 15-year-old car to Southern California. It was just like, I don't see that happening. So I said no. And she was very upset with me about that. And so that kind of precipitated or preceded this change in relationship. But I think it would have happened anyway, where it was up to Sydney as an adult to take responsibility for this relationship and to make it whatever she wanted it to be. But no, it wasn't scary for me because That's her birthright.

Yeah.

To have that relationship. That's— it's not something that I should be deciding once she became an adult. Okay.

So what, what helps you with the ebbs, your own ebbs and flows and managing ebbs and flows in your own relationships?

Well, in my relationship with this, this birth mother specifically, it was—

Go as broad as you like, Terry.

Yeah. So From the narrow part, just my ebbs and flows with this, with Sydney's birth mother, what drives me is my profound love for her and my respect for the way that she handled her pregnancy. Because I think that she— talk about strong. She was very strong and wise, which is different from strength, but she was very acutely aware of what would be a good outcome. And we worked hard together to make that happen during her pregnancy because I met her halfway through her pregnancy. So we handled as much as we could walk together through the second half. We did that. And so I was, I was so grateful to her and so much in love with her that that drove all of my feelings towards her. For the next, you know, forever. And so that's, that was just, yeah, she, I'll never feel anything different for her, I don't think, than the love that I have and the appreciation and the gratitude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are we, so we're talking unconditional love here, really?

Yeah. I mean, even, yeah, because that, that it hurt me that she got so upset with me, of course, over that, the sale of that car. But That doesn't change anything. That doesn't change the amount of love that I have for her and the way that I feel about her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it could have got in the way.

It could have.

Yeah.

If we had both allowed it to. Yeah. But ultimately, you know, as Sydney becomes an adult, that's her relationship to manage. And like any relationship in your life, You decide how much time you wanna spend with that person. And if you, if you invest a lot of time, you invest a lot of yourself, it can be a closer relationship or you can just decide to be hands, arm's length, not, uh, investing in it. And then it becomes a very minimal relationship of just really acquaintances.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So something popped into my head there. Um, when we think of, when we think of opposites, and like, if you— a traditional way of thinking of the opposite of love would be hate, but I've also heard, uh, fear being the opposite of love.

Uh-huh.

And so I asked you, were you scared at that kind of handover place, right? Sydney taking the reins on the relationship. I asked you if you were scared, and you were, no, I wasn't. scared, and then ask you, what was that about? Well, that was about— that was about love. And so the, the love is kind of insulating you against the fear, maybe?

Maybe. But they also say that, uh, the opposite of fear is faith.

Okay.

And so if you have faith in a person And you know that at their core, they want to do the right thing. And at their core, you know, she loves my daughter a huge amount. And so if I have— if I believe in her and I have faith in her, I can't also be afraid of her.

Yeah. Or the situation. Or the situation. Yeah. Causing long-term upset, right?

Yeah, I just didn't see any possibility for a long-term upset because I had faith that this woman wants to do the right thing and that it just— I just never spent any time losing sleep over that. No, no, no, no.

So you talked about faith and I know you're a Christian, right? So how does, how does your religion help you in, in ebb and flow, in, in as big or as small a space as you'd like to answer that question?

Well, so my Christian faith is a kind of a foundation for my life, and so that's a huge question that you're asking. But in general, I believe that, um, I believe that God works all things together for good and that the trials and tribulations that he put us through or that he allowed us to go through when my husband and I were facing the infertility and then ended up doing adoption. All of that was a precursor to what I'm doing today, which is running my nonprofit and advocating for open adoption through Unplanned Good. And so now I can see that that very difficult time, you know, maybe 4 years or so, was— had a reason for it and had a purpose for it. And when you start understanding the big picture of like what God wants me to do with my life and my desire to follow his will, it all, it all makes sense. Like it comes full circle and it makes sense and it brought me to where I am today. And, you know, completing the year of 2025 and all of the work that I'm doing to serve him, uh, it makes a ton of sense.

Yeah.

So it's really nice to have that perspective at this point that I didn't have 20 to 30 years ago.

Yeah. I was just talking about this very thing with a, a fellow adoptive mom, right? She, she was talking about the, the meaning, the, the meaning coming from the pain.

Uh-huh.

So the, the, the, the meaning kind of overrides the pain, or it— what does it do? It re— it helps you to a different perspective on the pain?

Yes. I think that if you have some pain in your life and some struggles in life, it gives you a better appreciation for the joy. How do you know what joy feels like if you don't know what pain feels like? So it puts both of them in perspective.

Yeah.

And it allows me to feel this, you know, Abundant joy and gratitude for my daughter.

Yeah.

Having been through the, the lack of kids and the intense struggles and all of that, it, it, it enables you to be joyful.

Yeah. And that, and you're channeling that into, into the nonprofit, right?

I, I hope so. Yeah. That's, that's, that's what gave me my passion for open adoption and it spurred me on to do a bunch of research about open adoption. And to realize that, you know, very few women facing unplanned pregnancy choose adoption, even if they're determined not to parent. Like if they're in no position to parent, let's say that a young woman doesn't have a partner, doesn't have a source of income, doesn't have a family around her for support. If she doesn't have any of that, adoption as an option. Can be a reasonable solution. And so if that's the case, you know, for those women, for them to find out about open adoption and understand what it means today. And as you said earlier, we've changed our national practices to be less traumatic, more honest, more open, more transparent. If she wants to choose that, I believe that she should have all the information about all of her options. And too often our society just says it's either abortion or often single parenting. So if those are the 2 options that she's exploring, to know that there's a 3rd option can be a bit of a relief. It can be a relief to just understand that there's another option and to understand how open adoption works today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I want to go back to, um, to, to the— your relationship with the, with the birth mum and your— with Sydney's birth mum and your, and your love for her, because that isn't really— that's a kind of a rare thing to hear somebody talking about.

I don't know. I've talked with other adoptive moms who feel the same way about their child's birth mother. And just have an appreciation for what they've been through and an appreciation for the fact that it was a very difficult year when they chose adoption and placed their baby. And then if you stay in touch through open adoption, you can actually learn that some of these women feel that it was the most— not what's the right word for it— they think that they had a lot of growth in that year. And they're very glad that they went through it the way that they did because now they have a relationship with their child.

Yeah, yeah, because it's about understanding, right? I mean, you know, I was talking before about understanding. So in, in a— for myself, I, I had no idea of the story behind Right. And I got no story till I was, I don't know, 48, maybe 48, 47, 48.

You were just left to wonder.

Well, yeah. And I didn't do a lot of wondering. Many adoptees do wonder far more than I did, shall we say.

Yeah.

But in the absence of that, in the absence of, of that truth, I didn't have an appreciation for her position.

Ah, uh-huh.

I didn't— well, I didn't know the story. I didn't appreciate where, where she was at. I didn't know, and I still don't really know, how much pressure she was put onto, because single parenting was very different in 19— The 1960s.

Yeah.

Than it is now, or even, even 30, 26 years ago when Sydney was, Sydney was born, right?

Um, yeah.

So different, huge societal shift in, yeah, in that. Yeah.

You didn't have the information and you didn't know her.

I didn't know her. I didn't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so you were, you were just without all that information.

Yeah, and but I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know the healing power that was yet to happen.

Uh-huh, right.

The, the healing power of reading that letter from my birth mum when I felt her pain.

Yeah. Very, very Intensely.

I'm— I was crying reading that. Yeah, crying reading that, reading that letter.

And it changed your life.

Yeah. Yeah, I, I felt her pain. Yes, I felt her love for me, and I felt at one with her in that moment. There was no— there was no barrier between me and her anymore. Uh-huh. We were connected, not physically, but we were connected at some level.

Yeah. And that's, that's an example of the, of the need for transparency, you know, that if, if people got all the information that there is to get and you have the opportunity to know her, and to connect with her that you didn't have, you know, it can be a world of difference. Yeah. Yeah.

So what, what have you seen as the, the barriers to protect— what have you seen as the barriers between, uh, that, that can come up in as obstacles to, uh, transparency and communication between Birth mothers and adoptive moms? What have you seen about that?

That's the fear that you were alluding to earlier that you were talking about, that there's this fear, you know, I think often from the media and how things get portrayed as being, there's sensationalism. But if there's some fear where the adoptive parents think, oh, this contact isn't a good thing, or the contact is going to be really scary, or the contact signifies risk for us. Of what does it look like if we let this birth mother into our lives? You know, is that going to be safe for us? Is that going to be a good thing for our family? And there's just a lot of— there can be a lot of fear. But I think if you get some education about how, you know, what's typical, what happens when you introduce more information, you introduce the possibility for relationship. I don't think that the fear is well-founded, to tell you the truth. I think that the fear is almost without foundation. I cannot believe that very— after going through all of the steps to find out about adoption, place your baby for adoption, go through with all of the paperwork, actually relinquish the rights to go through all of that, To me, it's almost incomprehensible that a woman would come back four or five years later and say, "I want to, I want to, I want to undo this." Yeah. Especially if she gets the care that she needs. I'm a big proponent of birth mother care. That and that's some of the legislation that we're working on: that the birth mother who's contemplating making an adoption plan. I firmly believe that she needs to have her own dedicated counselor for therapy sessions that can just help her to walk through what does all this mean, what's the long-term consequences of what's what we're discussing here, you know, so that she's clear and not coerced, because coercion is never a good, a good influencer. So just that she's clear She's making her decision out of her own free will, and if she is fully informed and she's choosing adoption, then I think they have a chance to make it into a really beautiful relationship.

Yeah, you were talking about Cindy's birth mother's strength, but there's got to be, you know, what, what you're talking about here Talks to me about your strength here.

Okay. Um, yeah, I, I think that could be, that could be, or my— I don't know, I haven't ever thought about it like that, Simon.

Well, I don't think we're very good at, as, as human beings, we're not very good at seeing our own strengths. Ah, we don't, we, we tend to be tougher on ourselves. We tend to, you know, the inner critic, our inner critic, uh, overrides the inner coach or cheerleader.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, we struggle sometimes. We struggle to see our, our, our strengths because we're living with them all the time, right? It's hard. It's hard to see the picture when we're in the frame.

Maybe so. Yeah. But our birth mother, the, the way that everything play it out. You know, she, she made this adoption plan and then she left for university. And so she started— she, she was very focused on her studies for the next 4 years, and she needed to take care of herself and her own healing, which she did by diving into her own goals, which I applaud. And I think that was really like fortunate timing That she got, um, she dove into her studies, and then after that she joined the military, so she was whisked off to some other country, and, uh, so she never had a chance to look back really, and I think that was a fortunate thing, but for her own healing, she did pay some attention to her own healing, which was great, since she had some resources in her own mother who helped her.

Yeah.

With that part.

Yeah.

And so when we got back together, it was because she was ready.

Yeah.

And that's what started our openness, I think.

So what does healing mean to you, Terry?

Uh, to me it just means like really understanding that you, you did the best that you could at the time and You made the best decisions for yourself at the time, and you give yourself some grace because none of us are perfect, right? None of us do a good job all the time because life is so messy. And so, you know, to to be just to to either forgive yourself or understand yourself. And just cut yourself some slack, you know, to, to make— to not, not have expectations that you could never have met at the time, you know, just being understanding of yourself. And then, and then saying, I did my best and I'm at peace with my decisions. Hopefully, that's what I hope and pray for her.

Yeah.

So I don't think she did a lot of looking back. Although that would be a really interesting conversation to have today.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Before we hit record, you, you were talking about the, the, the, the, you know, seeing the complexity in, in, in, in, in adoption, right? The, the, the, the, I guess the trauma and the healing or the, the tough stuff. And the great stuff? What, what, what's your perspective on, on this area?

Well, it's a huge complex topic, so I think there's a lot of both. There's a lot of trauma, there's a lot of healing, there's a lot of blessing. And for us, if we, if we want to do the healing, we need to kind of look at all of that and take it, take it in, soak it up. And see how things, you know, balance each other out. Um, but at the same time, there's a core reason inside yourself where you make these gut decisions. You know, you can't explain all of your decisions really well all the time, but I think that there's a core, um, feeling in your gut or guidance in your gut that leads you to make a certain set of decisions. And just seeing how all of that balances out. Um, the trauma, yes, is undeniable, undeniable because it's a separation. But through open adoption, you can actually, um, not minimize the separation, but you can, you can, you can, um, make up for that a little bit by creating a relationship that's going forward.

Yeah. And so it's a reduction of the separation, isn't it?

I mean, it is a reduction, definitely. And because separation, in separation, you don't get the information, like you didn't, Simon, you didn't get that information that could have helped in the healing a long time ago. And if you get the information, then you can say, okay, now I know what I'm dealing with. But if you don't even know what you're dealing with, I think then the trauma is magnified.

Yeah.

And, and that's, that's very unfortunate. So I'm glad that standard practices have changed a lot from the days of closed adoption to today's more common open adoption. I'm very grateful for that so that we know more about the circumstances and we have the opportunity now to create a relationship as we would like it to be.

You used a word before we hit record, or a phrase, I think you said something like Seeing that the trauma is not all-encompassing. Did you, does that, does that ring any bells?

The trauma doesn't have to be all-encompassing.

Right.

If you're, if you're, um, getting some healthy, uh, counseling and counsel, um, cuz the trauma's not the end of the story, right? The creating, creation of new relationships is the ongoing story. If you let it be, the trauma, if you, if you just focus on that and, and live in that, that's, uh, that's more difficult. It's sadder than, um, being able to put it in its context and then also appreciate the, the relationships that could come from it and the love that could come from it.

The, the word I love, I love the word all-encompassing, um, and the fact that it's not, um, that the trauma is not all-encompassing. The word that I sometimes think of is this, uh, is engulfing. Like, we feel that trauma has engulfed us.

Uh-huh.

So The metaphor that's coming to mind is me as a kid playing, and, you know, playing in some big waves.

Ah, right, that's exactly what I had in mind too.

Yeah, and the waves take me off my feet, right? And I'm spinning round. I mean, I'm in the wave and I'm I, I, the, the wave has engulfed me.

Uh-huh.

And, and, but at some point I pop out, right? I mean, I, I'm not talking— oh, have you, have you seen this, um, have you seen these wave, these big waves that they have in Portugal? Have you seen— there's a series.

Yeah, yeah. We had the same thing in California last month where some people, you know, get swept out to sea because the riptide grabs a hold of them, and it overwhelms them, and it brings them down, and it sucks them in, and they're gone. They're— yeah, they're gone. They're not coming back because they just got overwhelmed by the power of the ocean being so strong and so deep and consuming them.

Yeah.

And yeah, it can be. I can imagine that trauma is like that. And, uh, and so I think if you, you don't want to, you don't want to go there, you just don't want to go there. You can appreciate it, you can look at it, you can put it in its context, but hopefully not get overwhelmed and sucked in by it.

Yeah.

And that takes some coaching to do that.

Well, it takes some coaching and it takes Or it takes an insight to see that. I mean, every, every metaphor kind of eventually runs out of steam, right? You know, we're taking something that is abstract and making it concrete. You know, that's what a metaphor is all about.

Right.

But the metaphor runs out of steam, right? So the, the, um, the waves that I was talking about in, in Malta, in, in, in the in the Mediterranean, right? So it's an island in the middle of the Mediterranean. They were maybe 6-foot waves, and I'm a little kid, so it spun me, spun me around, but I, I bobbed back to the surface, right? I wasn't taking it— they weren't like these humongous waves in, in California.

Yeah.

So another metaphor is, is like another metaphor that's perhaps more Um, accurate would be a storm. Like, okay, storm— storms can come and go. The storm doesn't— the storm may rage for, for days, but at some point it ends. There is some peace at some point.

The sun comes out and the rain stops. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both of— I think both of those metaphors have meaning and have lessons in them, definitely. When I was little, my parents took us to the ocean because when you have a whole bunch of kids, that's where you go is camping at the ocean because it's cheap and it's fun. You've got a lot of children to have. But I remember my dad saying to all of us, you cannot ever turn your back on the ocean. You need to face it straight on. So that, you know, you're not going to get swept out. You see a wave coming, but if you have your back to the ocean, that's really, really dangerous. And I think that makes the metaphor even stronger now to say you have to face, face it front on, and then you can deal with it and you can avoid being swept out and dragged down. Yeah, both of them though.

I don't wish it— the, the one, the, the one for me is in terms of which is a stronger metaphor.

Yeah.

And take heading it, facing it head-on and exploring what it's made of. Like, trauma is a— it's a feeling thing.

Uh-huh.

It's a sensation thing.

It is. It's deep.

It's deep.

But it—

like, I was thinking, we have to— I, I often talk about it being pre-verbal, right? People tell me it's pre-verbal trauma.

Uh-huh.

And, and it's actually probably Even more than that, it's nonverbal. Ah.

Yeah, it is.

Big, big, big feelings are different to thoughts. They're not— it's not about the words. It's, it's about what— it's about what we're, what we're feeling. And feelings come and go. Well, what they— they are like storms, but we're the sky in which they come and go. We're the peace that passeth all understanding, the peace that's behind all the storms. The sky is always there.

Uh-huh.

Even in the blackest of storms, we can't see it.

Uh-huh.

But it, but it, it, it's always there. And, and the storm isn't saying— sorry, the sky isn't saying to the storm, get out of the way, is it? The sky is not bothered. The sky's not bothered by the storm, not upset by the storm, it's not stained by the storm, it's not worried about the storm, it's not scared of the storm, it's not affected by the storm. All it is is Hidden by the storm. Until the storm—

It's blocked by the storm. Yeah. It's blocked. Like, you can't see the beauty inside.

It's blocked.

Yeah. Yeah. In the middle of the storm. Yeah.

So the idea is that trauma hides us. It doesn't harm us.

It hides us. It doesn't harm us. Yeah. It can harm you though, right?

Well, it depends what we mean by we.

Uh-huh.

It depends what we mean by we. That's a conversation for another day, I think.

Okay. Yeah.

I'm, I'm talking about just so we, so we don't keep the, the readers hanging on there, right? Or the listeners, sorry. I, I'm talking about what, um, what, uh, Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems, refers to as the uppercase S Self.

Uh-huh.

What, uh, Richard Rohr— R-O-H-R, is a Christian mystic— would call the, the immortal diamond.

Okay. I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah.

It's who we— it, it, it's what's underneath our psychology.

Ah, uh-huh. The underlying, yeah.

Hmm. Hmm. We talked about ebbs and ebbs and flows, didn't we?

Yes, we did.

We talked about ebbs and flows, and then we got on to storms and waves.

Uh-huh.

Amazing.

Right. Interesting analogies.

Yeah. Does, does your faith, you said it's a foundation in this area for the absolute.

It's a foundation in general. Yeah.

Yeah.

Whatever. Yeah. I find it very helpful so that when you're going through a hard time, um, like I say, it's the opposite of fear, so it can help. Faith is the opposite of fear, so you can not have both of them coexisting at the same time. And so, and I find that helpful. I find that reassuring.

Yeah.

I think people who are, have a strong faith will get that. And, and sometimes people don't, don't understand that, but that's, that's my outlook.

Yeah. And has it got stronger?

Absolutely. It's gotten stronger as, as my work has changed and taken different turns. Yeah, because I've gotten into a lot of areas in promoting Unplanned Good and the idea of open adoption. I've got into areas where I had no past experience. And so it's been interesting that things are changing so much and that I could make some progress in areas that I had no, no background. So it's been, it's been helpful to just realize that Uh, God is leading me into these new areas and then equipping me to be successful in them. Yeah.

So you mean it's like empowering a leap of faith? Is that what you're saying?

Yes, it is a leap of faith to just follow direction. It is a leap of faith. Yeah.

I think we might call the I think we might call the, the interview A Leap of Faith. How about that?

Okay, that would definitely be a full circle, taking it back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool. Thank you, Terry.

Thank you, Simon. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you too. And, uh, if you haven't already done so, listeners, just a reminder that Terry's first interview There's a link in the show notes to Terry's first interview, and there'll be obviously links to Unplanned Good and her socials and stuff like that, so you can find out what's going on.

Thank you, Simon.

Thank you, Terry. Thank you, listeners. Goodbye.