Busting Beliefs With Angie White

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Angie, Dr. Angie White. Looking forward to our conversation today, Angie.

Okay, yep, sure am.

Yeah, cool. So you could be forgiven, listener, for thinking that Angie is in the, in the UK. She is from the UK, but she's, uh, you, you're in Texas, you're in San Antonio. How long have you been on the wrong side of the pond?

Oh, ouch. 2007, first into Houston and then 2012 into San Antonio. It's a beautiful place to live, it must be said. But, you know, I travel home every 2 to 3 years, so I don't, you know, don't miss it too much.

No.

Cool.

And I looked— I was having another look at your bio. You used to work at Chosen with Jenny, right?

I did. Yeah.

Yeah. So we interviewed Jenny a while ago for the podcast. Great lady.

Okay, yeah, awesome. And Chosen do great work.

Yeah. So, um, uh, Angie in San Antonio, she, she leads CASA in, in San Antonio. She is, uh, she— you were, you were fostered and then, uh, adopted, so this clearly has a big place in your heart, right?

Yeah, like, I love what I do. So we are Child Advocates San Antonio, um, CASA, and, you know, support children with advocates when the kids come into the foster system, that we provide them with volunteer advocates to help them navigate through that and make sure the children are supported. So yeah, it means the world to me. Yeah.

So what does thriving adoptees mean to you?

I think, you know, it's— I'm very interested in self-actualization of people. You know, how do we be all the things we can be regardless of what's happened to us? So, and I do, I really believe that's a choice we make. So as you mentioned, I was a foster kid. I was legally adopted at 7, but my adoptive mother was not particularly a nice lady either. And I've recently, in the last few years, found out some things that changed my entire outlook really on my early childhood. And my adoptive mother particularly made sure to feel that, you know, make me feel that I was less than. And You can't, you gotta make a choice. You either accept that that is who you are, or you can make choices in life that change your belief. And I really think to be a thriving adopted person, being adopted or fostered is not a definition of who we are as humans. It's a definition of what other adults around us were put in a situation they had to do, or in some cases wanted to do. But that doesn't define who we are.

Yeah. Hear, hear. Hear, hear. So what do you mean by self-actualization? That's the Maslow thing, right?

At the top of the pyramid. The big words, right? What I mean by that, and I wrote about it when I was doing my doctorate. So what I mean by that is, you know, what is it as every individual, what is it that means that you feel that you've, you know, when you come to the end of your life, you've kind of skidded into your grave sideways kind of thing, you know? What is it that would light you up? And so, you know, you have the self-belief and faith in yourself to do anything you would choose to do. And what people choose to do is nothing to do with me. But how do we get people into a, you know, and people who've had hard backgrounds particularly, into a state of mind where they have deep and fundamental self-belief? And when you have that, you can do anything.

Yeah.

That's what I mean.

Deep and fundamental self-belief.

Yeah, it's a rock.

It's a rock.

It cannot be swayed. People can stand on it and know that they are worth every bit as much as anybody else. What happened to them as children does not make them less than.

Yeah. That's a seeing thing, right? Is it a seeing thing?

Uh, not sure what you mean by that, I don't think.

Well, seeing that we are.

Oh, that's what you mean.

Not wrong.

Yeah, yeah. Accepting that we as individuals, when you look, are not less than because, because your mother didn't want you, you know, is the phrase I hear a lot from people I talk to, you know, and that was my belief until I actually met my biological mother recently again. Yeah, it doesn't frame— where you start doesn't define where you finish. It's all in that. So how do we get to a point as, you know, children with hard backgrounds, hard stories, that we know we're okay. And by being okay, then we don't, we don't get stuck and doubt that we can't do the next thing. We just have to believe we can.

Yeah.

And that, and that really is a choice to make. It's a hard choice. It's not easy. You know, we don't want to live as victims. We want to live as like cool people who are everything we can be.

Yeah. And yet trauma can be a pair of glasses that we wear, right?

Yeah, it can. And if you can take those glasses off or start to really think about the decisions you make are always framed through that bias of a trauma lens, in, in all, in all the ways that we know make sense, but that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

Yeah. Was there a time that you realized you had glasses on?

Yeah, I think, yeah, um, coming into my, I guess, early 30s— no, mid-30s, early 40s— I got divorced, remarried, we moved to the States, um, all those things happened. And I didn't know if I could survive the move. I didn't know, you know, I was running a business in the UK. I had My friend group were there. Everybody was there. My parents, my adoptive parents were both deceased at that time. And the move here really made me for the first time kind of evaluate what I was capable of. And then I did some. I have lots of mentors along the way. Lean into people who will help you. Ask for help. I mean, that's the other thing we're not good at as humans generally. So, so I did a lot of that and then some leadership and coaching work and therapy work and started bit by bit to peel all that away. But I think really it was as recently as 2016. There's a lady called Tracy Goss. She's passed away now. She wrote a book on transformational leadership, and I was on a course with her in New York. And she said, so tell me your story. And there's like 20 people in the room who I don't really know. And, you know, I go in and say, well, you know, my mother gave me up and I was all over the place when I was little, which I now know is not true, but we'll get to that later. Um, and she looked at me and was just like, so what? I'm sorry, did you just write my entire life off, you evil woman? You know, and, um, and the thing was, so what, what does that say about you? What does that say about what's next for you? Why does their opinion stop you being who you can be? So that was December 2016. In January 2017, I went back to school and did my master's. And then a year later did my PhD. And I think for me it was like, you know what, she's bloody right. Why am I living defined by these people, any other people really, but, you know, particularly fundamental people in your formative years? And I'm living in this belief system of definition about myself. I don't have to do that.

Was, was the belief borrowed from your adoptive mother then?

It was borrowed from the stories that my adopted mother had told me about my biological family and about when I was little, like pre-4, what happened to me. Um, and as it turns out, those stories were not true either. And I literally only found that out in September 2025.

Yeah.

So recently.

Yeah. So I, when I get around this area, I think about, um, validation and invalidation, right? So coach validation feels nice. Invalidation can be a bit of a shocker. So when Tracy Goss said, so what, she, she was kind of invalidating where you were at, right?

Yeah, I was like, you Class A beep beep beep, what the hell did you just say to me? No, you've been in this like vulnerable state with these people you don't know, you know, pouring out your heart kind of thing. And she was like, and? Like literally shrug of the shoulders. So what? And? Difference does that make to you?

Yeah.

Like, well then. But you know what? She was right. She was right. And I think sometimes we need, you know, a person outside of our, you know, close remit life that doesn't wanna hurt us or, you know, to say something that You need to hear.

Yeah.

So for everybody out there, I'm gonna be the Class A beep beep. So what? So what? It doesn't define who you are. It doesn't make you what's inside of you. And it doesn't, it, it doesn't have to limit you. And that's all the way back to self-actualization. There's, there's no limits to who we can be. Yeah.

So, um, self-actualization, self-realization, are they the same thing?

Slightly different. I think you have to realize it before you can actualize it. I think there's internal, right, reflection and things, which almost sounds counterindicative to what I just said. I think you have to understand it to put it in one side. It happened, it's real. How do you feel about it? It is real. What it means is you don't have to let all that emotional feeling and belief system you have remain that way. You can choose to move away from it and know it exists and accept it, and that's fine. You can't change the past. Somebody once said to me, peace is the ability to realize the past will not change, which I quite like. Um, so I think there's a self-realization piece of, right, okay, I understand who I am, how I'm showing up, and the why. And then the actualization piece is going, so what? Now I want to try this new stuff, and if I fail, I fail.

Yeah, it's like, I, I think of the, you know, to put a couple of things together, I, I think of realize as in real eyes, our eyes, right? Yeah. And, um, uh, and the rather than the trauma lens, right?

Yeah.

The trauma, taking the trauma lens, taking the trauma glasses off allows us to see the world in real, uh, with our real Eyes rather than—

makes sense.

Yeah. Um, but I— we don't hear a lot about beliefs in the trauma world.

No. And, and I think it might be missing, you know.

Yeah, I know it's missing. I know it's missing, which is— I, I agree with you. That's why I'm drawing attention to it, because I don't think enough Is talked about beliefs in the trauma world. I think we should be talking about it more.

And, and I think, yeah, the, the trauma world, like, you know, things happen to us all the time, right? PTSD in veterans, foster care, adoption. The kids I deal with every day, my team deal with every day, are in this, this awful never-never land sometimes of I can't go home, but I don't know where I'm going yet and things. And there is no doubt that trauma happens to everybody in different ways, and trauma's not comparable. But you, at some point, do you cling to that or do you just think, you know what, I'm choosing to believe what I want to believe about who I am? And then start to choose what you believe. And from there, then you can make the moves forward and, and have faith in yourself. You know, the last year, and it takes a while, I'm 57, so it takes, you know, I want people to get there quicker than I got there. 'Cause I think it will be a lot easier. Make a difference. Last year, for the first time ever, I changed. I turned down the new big job offer, right? So more money, bigger role, all the things. And I turned it down because I didn't want to do it. I wanted to stay where I was and do other things. And all through my life, when that next big things come up or the next, you know, what, what you should do. because people think you should because it's more money or this and the other. I've always done it, and for the first time in my life, I was like, I'm not doing that, I don't want to. And I was fine with it. And it was like, oh, that's fundamental shifting from where I was to here. And I love what I do for a living. It was all still in the foster care business, all the things, right? But I love, I love the business I have. But it was really just super empowering to stand up and go, you know what, no. I'm okay. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Very grateful to be asked, but no.

Was that freedom about not having to prove yourself anymore?

Yeah. I am worthy regardless of what the outside world says.

Yeah.

The internal sense. That's, that was a rock I was talking about. You know, if we can internally center on that rock of we are, we are okay and fine regardless of what happened to us previously and what the outside world says, we're okay, then it gets to be quite a peaceful place to be.

Yeah, I, I was clicking away because I saw some quote that was relevant to what we're saying, um, over the weekend, right? So have you heard of this woman Mel Robbins? Have you heard of her?

I do. I've been listening to her podcast like a crazy woman lately.

Is she?

She's great.

Is she the guy? Is she the guy? Is she the coach? Is she for for Adam Peaty, the swimmer? Is that her?

Not sure.

Okay. No.

Not sure.

So you know Adam Adam Peaty's a British swimmer, but I I'm I believe her. It might be a coach or not, but but so this was a quote by a fellow adoptee Vin. uh, Finjarrod down in, down in Oz. Um, and it says, after a certain age— this is a quote from Mel Robbins— after a certain age, right, that's highlighted, you are no longer, you are no longer the product of your environment or how you were raised. It becomes a personal choice to live the way you do.

100%.

Yeah. At some point, blaming your past becomes a distraction from the future. Healing is your responsibility. Growth is your decision. You either take ownership of your life or become a prisoner to excuses. The truth is no one is coming to save you. It's on you to become the person you were never shown to be.

There you go. And I hadn't heard that before, but I'll go and find it and listen to it now. But 100%. And I think, you know, my change and all that, Tracy Garst was the first person that was kind of like, oi, Knock it off, basically. You know, you can't. And then, you know, I've done lots of work about leadership and growth. I've been leading teams since I was about 23 years old, you know, and if, if I am emotionally reactive to certain things as a leader, you know, if you get to a professional sense as a leader, that's not good. It's not good for the people who come to me and then suddenly get a reaction that's inconsistent with how I normally am because it's triggering for me.

Yeah.

So you've got to get out the drama triangle of victim and persecutor and rescuer and just be an adult. I mean, you're absolutely right. I'm going to look for that podcast now. I've not heard that one.

Yeah. Um, this is a quote and I don't know where it came from, but, um, but it starts at the top. It says, after a certain age. And I just thought, well, like, I don't think it's an age thing. At all. I think it's, I think it's a choice thing. And most of us aren't choosing what we think, feel, do most of the time, right? It's our conditioning.

Yes.

That's choosing. But I didn't hear that till I was 40.

Right.

So I've got a couple of years, I've got a couple of years on you, like at 59. I, I, I didn't realize, I didn't hear that till I was 40. Um, but until we hear it, We don't have a— we don't have a choice. But the— but the idea that it's a choice, it's an age thing. Well, what age is that? Yeah, it's not— it's not a choice. It's not an age thing.

It's a knowledge thing.

It's a knowledge thing. It's a seeing thing. It's an in-the-moment thing.

And, and it's almost like when Tracy did that to me, I was really upset. I went drinking at lunchtime with the boys. I was like, um, but it was that moment of, you know what, screw this, she's right, she's right. So why am I falling back into default mindsets? And unless you can unpick the default mindset, it's almost like that is your go-to. You're not even considering why you're responding the way you are, you're just doing it.

Yes.

And you've got to— that's, that's the seeing, I think, for me. Like, I'm, I'm now seeing almost quite an out-of-body experience, but I'm, I'm seeing how I'm showing up and I'm understanding why I'm showing up that way. And I'm going to choose to be different.

In, in a way it is an out-of-body experience because we're looking at ourselves with new eyes. Right?

Right. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I didn't mean it like, you know, the out-of-body I'm dying experience. No. But to take a step away and examine this person, there's a book, um, The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer.

Yeah.

Um, and he writes this one, I mean, I've read it several times, which is unusual for me. I mean, I really like, like it, but there's a piece in it where he says when somebody is real, and I found this so useful as, as a human and as a leader, but when somebody is reacting in a certain way in front of you, you just need to step back and like literally sit in the rocking chair. He describes it in your mind and just watch what, I don't know why that came up. Just watch what's going on. Um, and then you will, you'll just see it more clearly. You don't have to emotionally engage in what people are bringing you. You can just take a step back and just sit in the rocking chair and kind of watch it. And there's almost a way you can do that with yourself and just watch how you're responding and watch how you're showing up. And if you don't like it, then you have a choice to change it.

Yeah.

And it's not easy. I'm not, I'm not saying don't do it without help or anything else, you know. I'm not— you don't wake up one day and go, oh, I've changed. It's, it's a, it's work and it's a process.

Yeah. I mean, how do you— you talked about therapy and, and, and coaching as well a little while ago, and most, most of the time what we talk— we've been talking about in the first 20 minutes or so of this call is coaching stuff rather than therapy stuff. So How do those two, how do those two things sit together or differentiate from one another?

Okay, so, so I used to have a life coaching practice back in the day, right, in the UK. So when I left, that was the job I left. Um, and what I realized in that, if people were not, if people were still being very informed by their past, you almost couldn't move forward. So then I went back to school and did counseling training because I think there's a counseling bit to now I'm okay. And then there's a coaching bit to how you can move past it. However, it's, I think it's more complicated than that. I think you can be okay at this and be coached in that and not okay at, not okay here. So that prevents the coaching. So it's almost a storied impact. So if you're a runner, for instance, you know, somebody might have told you you can't run fast, and coaching and physical coaching and mental coaching will get you past that. But that doesn't necessarily— then you're, then you're a great runner, but that doesn't necessarily solve the fact I still believe I'm stupid, for instance. You know, that then that's another piece of work to do. It's not the whole person gets to level set and then the whole person can move on. It's very storied, I think.

Yeah, I mean, that's my experience. I, I had a business coach and she got me to the point where, not that I was running fast, but that I had it, I, I had a good year in business and that, that didn't do it, do it for me. And therefore there was something else worth kind of digging, uh, yeah, digging around.

Yeah, the onion layers they talk about and everything. But I think what happens sometimes with therapy, and I think There's a generational thing. This, I was talking about it with a really good friend yesterday. Um, you can't navel gaze forever, right? I think, I think there's a lot of, you know, everybody's a bloody therapist, aren't they? Like TikTok and all these things, you know, and they're not trained therapists and they're encouraging what we're seeing is in the generation of kind of between 20 and 35-ish, you know, an encouragement of, well, if you've had trauma with somebody, you never need to speak to that person again. And yet, no, no, no, that you, we need to back up a bit from that. And there seems to be this only break it and you go kind of thing. And that's not healing. It's not necessarily the best thing and it's breaking familial relationships. And we're seeing quite, there's a lot of that here in the States. I mean, we are the land of therapy, right? So there's a lot of that here in the States.

Even in Texas. It's not quite as loopy as California.

We're not quite as loopy as California now in that regard, but we do—

Sorry, Californians.

Yeah, I know, Josh, um, but we do have, you know, a lot of therapeutic interventions, which is good and healthy, but sometimes I think, you know, they want to keep people stuck. And therapy is meant to help us learn and move forward. It's not meant to keep us in therapy for 27 years. We're meant to learn from it, grow, and move, not Continually, I said navel-gazing. You know, we have to have to live.

Yeah, they don't want to keep us stuck though. They think we are stuck because they think they're stuck, surely.

Well, I don't know. And sometimes I really question that because you know this. You know, there's some excellent therapists around. I've got one that I still call on a basis when I need her. I'm like, "Hey, this happened. Can we have a chat?" And she's. Awesome, but she's very much like, so we're going to do this, this, this, and here's your actions. And I'm like, all right, she's very directional as opposed to kind of just circling and circling and circling. And you know, I know we have to get down and deep, but sometimes you can do that over years in spits and spots and still be running a life. It doesn't hold you. And what I'm seeing by especially here that that kind of age you could have just been held in almost this cycle and not being able to break through and have. their self-actualized life, the life that they can believe in themselves with. And I think that's really sad.

Yeah, me too. What, um, you talked about kind of breaking off relationships and, uh, and that, and you talked about that, that not being very healing, I think, is what you said. What strikes me is that the idea of breaking off things is in itself disempowering because you're, you're reiterating or reinforcing the idea that somebody outside you can make you feel a certain way. And that, that is just totally, totally and utterly disempowering, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you, you solve the problem, you know, agree to disagree or whatever that needs to be, or realizing that regardless of how that human is, you're okay. It's— and running away doesn't— it doesn't solve that. It doesn't solve anything. It's, it's conflict avoidant. You know, we don't get to a true solution, a true growth. And I do think sometimes people need breaks from each other. That's, that's not my suggestion. I think if you're in a relationship that's violent, you need to stop that. You know, there's certain caveats. But if we look at the generalization of You know, familial breakups, things like that. It's, it's often not the right thing to do because, to your point, then you've not fixed that. You've not learned anything. The person who was, you believe, has been, you know, the wrong person, they've not learned anything to change their behaviors either. And then you should be in a point where, you know what, your behaviors, and there's that, that's fine. I'm okay anyway, to your point, because that for me is really Then that's the rock you stand on.

Yeah.

I know. It's hard though.

It's hard. I'm thinking back of a recent conversation with some friends, and they— it wasn't a trauma conversation, it was an exam conversation. But this person hadn't done as well as they thought. Was gonna— they were gonna do in the exams. And we, we were told when we arrived at the house that it, it would— that, that we— it wasn't to be talked about. And, and I just thought— she's rolling her eyes listening.

I was about to say.

I just like— I, I just thought, you, you're, you're making this— you're giving this thing more power by, by saying that it's not to be talked about. And I just— and it, it went— it got to me about shame and—

Right.

Not talking about adoption. But, but this was, this was shame at exam results, not shame at being, um, adopted. But the, the idea that, well, we're not going to talk about the thing because, um, that's brushing it under the brush it under the carpet. And actually, 18 months on after this, these, these exam, this exam result happened, I can still see how it's not resolved within the—

So, and for me, it's kind of like, yes, we wanted to do better, but it's kind of, so what have you, they've just escalated that whole issue and made it into something that May create a lifelong barrier to learning because you didn't do as well, so therefore you're failing, so therefore you're not gonna do it again. I mean, that's just crazy. Yeah, why is— I, I, I suppose I don't keep tissues and things in my office at work.

Yeah.

So when people come in, they're upset or they're angry or they're crying, they don't get tissues from me because— and they all know this, this is not a hidden thing— so I don't want to signal to you that you cannot be upset and let your feelings out. Do you. I'm okay. You do you. And let's work through this together. And that situation to me is like, oh, we can't talk about it because they'll be upset and they're very sad. Oh, they're very— so what? Like, let them. You know, as the new book is, right? The new trendy book that's out at the moment.

That's the— what's it? Book by Mel Robbins. Is that Let Them?

Yeah. Yes. And, and, you know, but why, why are we so averse to being in deep emotion with people that need to have that, that conversation, let that out, and then put it in, give it the importance it deserves, which most of the time, frankly, is not that important. You know, but yeah, you're right. I mean, you just, you've just raised the shame level of You know, of somebody. You've just raised it in that particular instance, that this is now shameful and awful and it must not be discussed. You are a bad person because it happened. I mean, it's just silly. It's— knock it off.

Yeah.

So what— Am I allowed to say things like that on your nice podcast? I'm sorry. Come on.

Yeah, you can say whatever you want. Yeah. And I don't edit it either. Listeners, if you ever wondered, does Simon edit the podcast? No, he doesn't. No.

Um, the—

it's pretty obvious actually to most people listening, I hope so. Uh, what, what, you know, I talked about the trauma glasses on, uh, having our trauma glasses on earlier on, right?

Yeah.

Um, but we don't see it. What is it that stops us seeing That we've got our trauma lens on?

Because we want to avoid it. And my belief is, okay, my personal belief is that we don't want to face it because to face it will cause us hurt and harm. And they can't— people can't see through the other side of it, or they simply don't know they're wearing them anyway. And people, a lot of people just don't. They don't realize how they're showing up or why they're showing up, you know, or why they're showing up in certain ways. And it takes people in your life to either point it out to you and say, so what? Or, you know, some therapeutic work that says, okay, so, you know, perhaps you have a violent reaction to something that it was minimized and you're like, why on earth? So you're either going to think about that yourself or somebody in your life is going to say, What is going on with that? But I think a lot of people, they just don't want to do the self-examination work. It's hard. And you don't know what you can, what's going to come next. You don't know what's going to come out of the closet. People have got things buttoned down in tight, locked up, padlocked boxes in their brains, you know, and feelings that they just, I think they're scared sometimes of what it's going to release. And on the flip side, some people don't need to examine it and they're doing just fine. Yeah. But it, again though, where are you with, with that in your head? So I, I think pe— I think overall it's, it's what stops most people doing most things and that's fear.

Yeah. Something I'm seeing recently, I'm, I'm thinking about, there's the Jung quote, isn't there? I use, I go to all the time, you know, until we, until we make the subconscious conscious, it will rule our life and we'll call it fate.

Yeah.

Um, Absolutely. That, that's kind of where we're at here.

Yeah, it's the ice— all the iceberg stuff, isn't it?

All the iceberg stuff.

Yeah.

So I've got this idea that subconscious trauma is actually one and actually the same as pre-verbal. Pre-verbal and subconscious Okay. Are, are the same thing. That's why we haven't got, we haven't got words for it. Yeah, it's subconscious because we haven't got words for it. And, and it, and it, and it's pre— and so it's pre-verbal.

That's why we haven't got words for it.

By default. By, by, by default.

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I think Yeah, that's, that's interesting. And, and it takes, it takes time to unpick it. So Tracy Garth, she's, as I say, passed away now. She wrote a book called The Last Word on Power, which is a fascinating read and interesting in and of itself. But she, she talks about just unpicking, like, who, who are we as a general rule, right? So For instance, in a professional and life context, actually, my go-to was I solve problems. My value comes from my ability to solve problems. Okay. So what happens if there's not a problem to solve? And the answer to that is you create one. But when you can see my default, and it's because I don't feel worthy, it's, you know, all the things that drive humans, right? I'm not worthy enough if I'm not solving problems. Nobody's going to want me if I'm not solving problems. Where's my value? All that. And it takes a while to get to that. So, I mean, but if you can see that and then say, okay, by solving all the problems, I'm not allowing other people to learn how to solve problems, I'm creating codependency, you know, you're creating a lot of other things around that. So what would happen if a problem arises and I go, I'm not doing it? I, I am. And you have to say that out loud, but I am choosing not to be The meat in the sandwich of a relationship with, you know, probably I'm remarried. So with stepchildren and new husbands, I'm choosing not to be the negotiator. I'm not going to solve the problem. Y'all get to solve it. Or at work, you know, I can see what the answer should be, but I'm not going to solve it. Like, on you go. And then in that time, I can choose to do something else. You know, look to the future, value added of whatever it happens to be. But I stopped defaulting to, that's the issue, that's who I am. And if you can get to the point when you can see that and how you show up consistently, it doesn't— and, you know, the underneath of it is normally with, with women, there's a, there's a lot of, I'm not worthy, I'm, you know, don't have a value add, this is all I'm fit for, blah, blah, blah. And I know that, I know that afflicts men as well, but speaking— I've spoken to lots of groups of women about this. You know, we have to put that down. And there's the self-actualization piece. I am worthy to stand on this planet today if I never solved another problem in my life. So what? You know, it's kind of back, back to that really. And if I chose to do something different, but I'm still okay. So I don't know if that helps kind of explain how you get there because it's, it's It's a bit cerebral until you kind of can give a proper example. Now, some people want to be unique the whole time. That was another one that came up, you know, if they're not special, unique, and different, they're not worthy. Yeah.

When I realized that this business success thing hadn't made me happy, I went looking to find, okay, so what will? What will? What will? And, uh, we spent a, a week looking at the fact— looking for our worth, right? And these weren't— these weren't other— I wasn't with other adoptees. And it seems to me— so none of them thought they were good enough either, right?

Right.

So clearly adoptees, adopted people, we, we don't have the monopoly on low self-worth.

We certainly don't. We perhaps have arguably, um, a better reason, if, if that's a good— you know, I say trauma's not comparable, but there's, you know, there's a solid reason there we can blame, right, on why we feel this way, which is— which almost is not— is, is even worse, right? Because it's like, well, you know, my parents didn't want me and I was passed around in foster Okay, so therefore this is how— this is what happens. And it's like, no, but it doesn't have to. But we almost have a really good excuse for doing it.

Yeah, I, I say we've got incontrovertible evidence.

There you go, exactly right. Much better words. Yes, incontrovertible evidence. We do.

Or metaphorically, you know, I think, you know, our, our beliefs, our beliefs have got The they're reinforced. It's reinforced concrete. It's not just run of the mill concrete.

Yeah, now we own this.

Yeah, we yeah, we own this.

Yeah, yeah.

Until we don't.

Up until we make a choice.

This is a fascinating one, right? Don't we have to see there is a choice first before we make it?

All day, every day. But and and I think the other thing for me is if if people start getting a bit like twitchy, you know, like I thought being a big businessman I'd be all happy then, right? Got this external. Yeah. I thought being in a great marriage to a wonderful person I'd be happy. Not their problem to make you happy, you know. So there's bits of that. So if you start feeling like it's almost unresolved, it it can lead to depression, which is heartbreaking. You know those things. Then if you start seeking, okay, what, what can I change about me? If you start getting curious about, about change and steps to change and what is holding me back and start to really have grace with yourself and forgive yourself for feeling that way all those years, that's fine. But then get curious about the person you really are. Without anybody else around, without anybody else being obligated to be the people that make you happy or the thing that makes you happy. Because things and people can enrich and all those things, but I, I really believe that only that's that core self-belief. Not to sound arrogant or braggy or look, I'm fucking awesome, none of that, right? But just to really be centered and And you're okay, and you deserve to be here. You know, and that's super important to me because of the depression that we have. I mean, I'm going to go back to my husband's a vet, a veteran. And so, you know, the suicide rates in veterans that come off missions and don't have a goal anymore and a mission anymore, and then think, you know, PTSD, what's happened, but then think, well, what have I got left to give now? Where, where I've got nothing now. You do. They had them. But unless you can do that, and it's always been external, that's how it breaks my heart. And the veterans break my heart a lot. We live in San Antonio's Military City, USA, by the way. Um, but it's just, it's just so sad because everything has been from external and being driven externally, and then their own value dissipates. Sorry, slightly off topic from the question there, but it's—

No. So what's the difference that makes the difference then? What makes the difference in, in seeing stuff or not seeing it?

Because then you get a choice. Because then you can, if you see it, you can decide. And people might make a choice to say, you know, I'm quite happy being like in this state and I don't want to be anymore and I just want to get through life. If that's what you want, that, that's okay.

But there's a lot of people telling us that we haven't got a choice, right?

Like loads of people.

I, I know it's not up to them. Very, very serious, very leading, uh, very leading therapists within the adoption space who say there, there is no such thing as wholeness. All we've got is All we've got is coping measures. All we've got is coping measures. And I just think, I don't know, that's insulting.

Yeah, that's insulting, frankly.

But that's—

sorry to all the literate people out there, but that's, that's insulting.

But we're bowing to their knowledge though, because they're the ones that are supposedly with us. What if they don't? Like, it's a herd. The metaphor that's coming to me is a herd. I've been thinking about this a lot recently.

Okay, herd.

There's a herd of people, like there's a herd of sheep, right? But there's always a leader. So we're all— well, we're, we're sheep or we're lemmings.

Yeah, sheep.

Yeah, following, following the wrong person, right? Following, following a leader who says the best that we can do is cope. That we can't.

I mean, that's bloody miserable, right? I mean, and, you know, I, I, and I don't believe it. So, so there's that. I think, I think it depends where you are. We've got to go back to this spectrum. If you can be life coached, if everything's kind of okay, but you need counseling to get to the rest. So there's, there's people that suffer really sadly from like clinical depression, you know, mental health illnesses. That that kind of thing, which which I'm I'm not talking about people that need that kind of help. I mean, keep getting the help for heaven's sake. Don't you know? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the the people that fall into the middle, right? The general category of populace, adoptees, general people, whichever. I mean, what right has anybody else got to say to me? I'm sorry, Angela. All you'll be able to do through your life is cope. I mean, good God, how sad is that? You know, and, and I say the general populace, not people with, you know, diagnosed mental health issues and everything. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about our general group of, of sheeple who believe like, well, they've got, they've got a PhD, so therefore they know shit, right? You know, having a PhD doesn't mean that what I think about leadership is the be-all and end-all in the universe. And it doesn't mean that counselors always know. And I'm just— God, I'm going to say this out loud. I think some counselors are on a bit of a power trip, and they quite like the fact that they are superior to these poor people who all they can ever do in life is cope. I think that's awful.

Yeah.

Probably get in trouble for that, but I think that's awful.

Me too. That's why I brought it up, right? We've got to question— like, you've got to be open. You've got to— you said curious, you know.

Curious. Yeah. Yeah, be curious. There's a lot, there's a lot out there that, you know, the reading choices you make, the podcasts you listen to, the, well, doom scrolling. It's about doom scrolling. I mean, I won't do it. I'm just like, I, I need to know what's going on in the world, and I do at a level that I have some say and control and, and thoughts about, but I'm not gonna doom scroll my life away because it's, it's, it's horrible and it puts you in frames of mindsets that then, you know, what is the point kind of deal. Um, and, and that's a choice to make. That's an easy choice. You either keep doing it or you don't.

I want to take you back to the insight moment where, where Tracy Goss says, so what, right? You say she says, so what, to you, but your Your reaction to that initially was to go drinking with the boys.

I was devastated.

You, you were devastated. So when, when did the devastation end and the, the shift to the more empowered approach?

Okay, I, I think I went through a grief cycle basically, because like, because in my mind, so I was already a CEO of another nonprofit. Right? I haven't gone back to school, but you know, I've moved countries. I'm successful. And so there was a kind of dismantling of not just my childhood, but also up to that point. So there was that. So in the moment, and we're in the basement of a hotel in New York, I'm telling you, and in tears, lunchtime, like some of the guys in class are so— they're not drinking. And in the moments directly after that, I went back to my hotel room and thought, I've got 3 choices. I can either jump off the bloody building, literally, And get on a plane and go home or and get back in that room. And where, and the curiosity drove me to go back to the room. There's something desire to really try and understand what that was about. 'Cause I knew the woman and she's, you know, so why would she say that? And what am I missing? Drove me back to the room. So I think, so that was, we did that. It would've been the week before Thanksgiving. So mid-November actually. Oh no, week after, first week in December. So we did a week there. We were going back for a week in January, and I literally hit a grief cycle in the middle of accepting that actually there's truth in what she says. And there was more to that week. That was like 2 days into a 5-day week, work week. There's truth in what she says and all the things. And then go through, well, I'm really sad and I feel very sorry for myself, and now I'm angry. And I'm thinking, okay, why am I angry? Because I believed in this and it is stopping me. What am I gonna do about it? And by the time I went back in January, I'd signed up for a master's. So probably, probably about 4 weeks. This grief cycle is generally 6 to 8, initial phase, but probably about 4 weeks. And I just thought, you know what, she's right. And if I fail, so what? If I fail my master's, which I did at the University of Cumbria, by the way, but online and all that, so what? But people told me growing up I was stupid. My adopted mother told me growing up I was stupid and I would never amount to anything and I was stupid. And that was the voice in my head. Who, who do I think I am to show off by going back to school to get this and do that and be this or be that, whichever? Because I was stupid and my own mother didn't fucking want me. So, you know, you got nothing down for you. You should be so grateful we adopted you. You know, all those things. And you will stay in this box that my adopted mother determined that somebody of my standing, where I came from, should remain in this box.

Yeah.

And Tracy ripped the lid off the box. And there'd been steps towards it. You know, I had a good job. I had, you know, a highly functioning second marriage. The kids are great. You know, there'd all been steps that way, but I still didn't believe it. Despite the evidence.

Yeah. So it, it was, to a certain extent, it was anger that broke you out of the box.

Yeah. There's curiosity to go back in the room and then the grief cycle of being angry she could say that to me and then being angry about all these other people have said this to me too. Like, forgive me, but like, it's like, screw the lot of you. I'm gonna do it anyway. And I'm very stubborn. I am very stubborn. And once I get my, like, eyes fixed on something, it's generally gonna happen because come hell or high water, I'm stubborn. And it's a survival mechanism, and I know that. Okay, so, but it can be helpful in other ways. And that's, so I think that's what drove me to be like, and then it was a release of, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. The last piece of it was, So if I fail and it costs me X amount of dollars, pounds to do this work and I fail it, well, I've paid for it. It is what it is. And, and the release of being able to be like, I'm gonna do it anyway, was huge for me. It's like turning that big job down and then like starting the PhD. I didn't think I could do a PhD. I had no bloody idea what I was doing. Then you write a 300-page dissertation on the back end of it. It's like, yeah, no, I don't think this is going to go well. And I passed the highest GPA level there is and all the rest of it, but I didn't think I could, but I did it anyway. And there's something in that, there's something in that attitude that shifted. Even if you don't actually think, you know, I'm going to try this, what if I fail? What if you fail? So what? Do something else. Yeah.

And how, how did the— or did, did do it?

My accent's got more British through this podcast, you know that, right? I can feel the Americans growing out.

She's on, she's on the wrong side of the pond, listeners.

I've been swimming across while we've been on the podcast.

But in the, in the UK, she's even— she's on the wrong side of the Pennines, right? She's northwest, I'm nor— I'm northeast. Um, To, to what, to what extent did, uh, doing it anyway play into your, to your search for your birth mum?

I think it gave me freedom and the belief in myself to know if I didn't find out the truth, that I'd still be okay. I think, I think that's the biggest thing about it. So, and, and actually, so let's talk about that a little bit. So my son, who is now 31, In January 2023, said to me, "Mom, have we really got no medical records?" That's how it all started again. And so we don't because I've traced my mom before, and they told me there were no birth records. And da da da da da. So he said, "All right." I said, "Look, I'll try again." So I tried again, and lo and behold, through all the legal systems and all the things, and I had to have somebody here that would help me. So you know, I wasn't going to go schizo on somebody in the UK. So I had to have a middle person. The records did exist and all of them existed. And I was told at 21 they did not. And that's, I'm gonna use a legal, that's cruel and unusual torture. Why on earth did somebody in their infinite wisdom in a little office in social services think I should not be the recipient of my own story? I mean, that's awful. So you grow up, I grew up, continued to age and, you know, married, all the things, believing still what my adopted mother had told me. Um, so I got the records in December 2023. I found out my father's name for the first time. I had those letters there from my grandmother, maternal grandmother, to social services, my mother to social services, um, all kinds of things, right? So, and, but that only took me to when I was 2 months old. So again, different— too long, too long to go into, but I've been told a whole different story at 2 months old. My mother handed me to social services out of a mother and baby's home because she couldn't— I mean, poverty is a thing, right? She couldn't look after me. And her mother, her mother, my grandmother, was like, I'm not having another child in this home. And she had all her reasons for doing that. She'd had brothers, she's had kids, and one of her children was severely mentally, um, ill, you know. And my mother already had my half-sister in the house who was only 18 months old. So a totally different— view of a totally different lens.

Yeah.

And then I went into a children's home, a group children's home at 3. So then I had this 2-month to 3-year gap. Oh, and I did find out medical information as well. So I got that for my son. My children are both very blessed where there's a genetic disorder in the family. They don't have it. And if they did have it, my son would not have lived past 30. So, okay, you know, things that you should have known and didn't know. And then the other thing then was like, Where was I between two months and three? And my adopted mother always told me, "Oh, you bounced around everywhere. You were so naughty. Nobody knew what to do with you." Blah blah blah blah blah. Not true. As it turns out, was in the same foster placement between two months old and three years old, and taken from there to the children's home, which explains some of why I'm not now. Those first three years of a child's life in utero now the same, and first three years of a child's life are so fundamental. You know, but but when you believe a story you've been told versus what happened, then then it's it's that push pull, right? And and this is that's been wonderful. I should never have been able to find out who these foster family were, by the way. Place in Manchester and that helped me with that, which is called I think it's called caring adoption or something. I have to find out. I'm so sorry for the people there because they were they were so helpful. But I found my foster sister. I met her in October in the UK, and she's coming to San Antonio in February. And I lived with her for the first 3 years of my life. She's now— I'm, I'm 57 now, she's 60. Um, so 54 years later for me, 57 years later for her. And it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. I just— I feel bad for my husband because she's quite like me, and he's gonna have to put up with 2 of us while she's here.

Yeah.

But they— but people, other people decided that I shouldn't know my story, and that's not right. It's not. I fundamentally believe that's not right, because if we don't know really what happened, how can we take trauma lens glasses off? How do we understand who we truly are without the facts of our lives behind us?

Indeed.

Indeed.

That feels like a good place to bring it in, Angie.

I think so. And right on time too. Look at you go.

Yeah, good on you. Thanks, Angie, and thank you, listeners. We'll speak to you again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.