Freedom With Fiona Wells

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Fiona, Fiona Wells. Looking forward to our conversation today.

Hi everyone, nice to be here.

Lovely to see you. Um, Fiona is, uh, an adoptee, also an adoptive mum, and a, and a great advocate doing some great work. So, uh, I'd really, as always listeners, There's links in the show notes. I'd really, uh, encourage you to, uh, to check out what Fiona is doing. So I reckon it must be like 8 months we've been talking about healing, and I finally had this realization that we should go back to what the podcast is all about, right? Uh, about thriving. So let's make it a little bit bigger than, uh, just healing. And, uh, Fiona's gonna be the first one kind of going back to the roots of what we— the question— with the questions that I was asking like 3 and a half years ago, right? So, um, what— when, when you hear the name of the podcast, when you hear the phrase Thriving Adoptees, what comes to mind, Fiona?

I think I'm in a good place to answer that at the moment. I think if you'd have asked me maybe 5 years ago, it would have been very different. I think It's take— so I'm 47, I'm going to be 48 in March, and I only feel now that I'm coming to peace with some of my identity. Because I'm not getting the answers I want, and I can't get the answers I want. So it's about acceptance and realizing that I'm not going to have to wait for information anymore, because actually I've just got to get on with it.

Yeah. So what, what led you to that realization?

Therapy. Yeah. But also, uh, and I was very, very anti-therapy many years ago, um, but now I found the right therapist and, um, I started talking to her because of the difficulties I'd had with my children. And actually, it's, it's a lot about the 360 part of me that's healing, not just, you know, the adopter bit or the adoptee bit. It's, it's all of it. Um, and I don't think I'm 100% there yet. I think my— I think, what's the phrase? Survival and thriving, it, it, I'm more in the combination of those 2 words rather than it being thriving. But I'm, I'm, you know, like if you saw it as a, as 100% and surviving's at one end and thriving's at the other, I'm, I'm over 50, so I'm past the 50% and, uh, probably 7, probably 60 or 70 around. And, and I think I think it's a journey that adopters, and I can only speak from what I know, but sorry, adoptees, it's a journey we go on, but there's no, no end of the string. You know, there's the, the, how long is a piece of string? It's as long as it needs to be. Yeah. Um, and it's an interesting journey because there's a lot of imposter syndrome. For me, there's a lot of not really understanding myself, always feeling inadequate, always feeling like I've done something wrong. Um, and just recently I'm shaking a lot of that off. Um, and I'm not boxed in as much with my own self-perception of who Fiona is, who, who Fiona is, who she presents to the world. And it's quite, uh, freeing. Um, you know, even yesterday I spent the day with my family, and normally I carry a certain persona around, and I left bits of it on the floor as I walked by. And that felt quite empowering. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and healing. So, um, it's an ongoing journey. I feel like I'm still at the beginning and the end and the middle all at the same time because different entities of you, I think, as an adoptee, there's different driving forces to thrive. And you get to bits of the journey before you get to other bits of the journey. But yeah, it's very complicated, isn't it?

Yeah. Can I take you back a bit to— you said that the catalyst— was the catalyst— I think what you said was the catalyst for the therapy Was what was going on with your kids.

Yeah.

Yeah. So would you mind sharing a little bit more about that, please?

So I'll do this in a general way rather than talking about my children. Okay. Um, as we know, I, I'll talk about me first and then I'll talk about general. So I was relinquished in 1977. Um, by a 22-year-old who came from quite a religious family, who was obviously shamed for being pregnant outside of marriage, um, and that broke the family apart. So she placed me for adoption with the view that she would never hear or see me ever again, and she carried on with life. That's taken me 47, 40, 43 years to really understand that story or get that information for that story. So that's been a long process. During that time, I've suffered infertility and ended up adopting a sibling group of 3. Now, obviously, people of my generation and younger have been told that adoption is a bad idea. and older or even slightly younger, relinquished was what happened. Whereas now children are removed because of risk, because of harm, because of abuse, because of trauma. And unfortunately, the situation that we've got in the country and probably globally, um, is that children are removed after something's happened. So after an event or after a period of events, or after a really, really long time of events, a child is removed. That removal doesn't stop the trauma or the adversity or the damage. And, um, children come into care, obviously, and that whether that's adoption or fostering or SGO or kinship care, the harm is often not really considered or discussed, or, you know, we look at it for the court purposes and then we kind of do lots of care planning to say, okay, this child needs, you know, to have an education, this child needs its identity, this child needs, um, its health needs meeting, but we don't talk about the damage that trauma's done. So children who are placed for adoption, SGO, kinship care, fostering often come with tricky behaviours, tricky emotions, tricky social emotional health needs, um, the impact on their functioning throughout life. So whether it's learning or whether it's a tantrum that's longer than it should be, or anyway, I'm not going to go into all of that. So we've hit some big, big things, big holes in the road, um, since being a mum, which I can say is now 11 years. And during that time, my journey of being adopted and my journey of being an adopter, but also my journey of being a social worker who's removed children, who's children for adoption has become a really big learning journey about all the stages of, of our identity, of trauma, of, um, systems. And I'm still in a position of learning. But obviously, when going through the bumps in the road with my children, I had to look at myself and I had to Look at my own needs and how I was doing. And obviously that's all woven in together because my children were removed because of harm, risk, and adversity, and I was relinquished. So as much as I know some of their potential feelings as they get older, I don't know all of them, and they won't know all of mine because it's very, very different. It's very, very different. Um, so having therapy was a way of me making sense of the world around me. Um, and it, and it helps.

So when I, um, when, when I, when I think, when I'm talking to an adoptive parent and I'm listening to what they're saying and I'm listening to, for them, for the, to try and isolate, you know, what what's the difference that makes the difference? When I ask them that question, um, I hear phrases like, well, it, it's about unpacking our own emotional baggage as adoptive parents. Or I hear phrases like, well, it's, it's, uh, it's my ability not to take my kids trauma, um, seriously. And I hear phrases like, it's about my ability to respond rather than react. Uh, tho— those are the sorts of things that I hear from, from a, a, adoptive parents. And, and I guess that would be, that, that would be the, the same for all parents, really. It's about their, um, inner steel, inner resilience, inability to keep, you know, keep calm and carry on and, and, and that sort of stuff. How do you, how do you see that? How do you see the difference that makes the difference in parenting?

I suppose my view is possibly different from a lot of people's, um, and that's where I'm at at the moment with and why I'm campaigning for different situations, for things to be done differently within adoption. Change is needed and it's needed as soon as possible. So when you become a parent, you are not automatically equipped with the qualifications and the skills that you would need, um, within adoption. And when we don't— when, when children are placed for adoption and, and nobody considers the impact of what they've been through, there's no, there's no plan around healing that impact, around treating that impact. You know, if you, you've got a broken leg There's a treatment plan. If you've got cancer, there's a treatment plan. Well, trauma is as big a deal as a broken leg or cancer, depending on how much or how little, you know, the damage has been done. And there's no treatment plan. So as an adopted parent— adopter, sorry, my dog's barking. I'm not a healer. I can't heal trauma. And that's as simple as it is. I can be a mum. I can love and I can, I can give boundaries and I can give hugs and I can do all the normal parenting things. I also, because I'm adopted, I can see and promote their identity because that's massive for me. My children always know who they are as much as I know who they are, as much as the paperwork tells us, and as much as I can do. I will— they've always known they're adopted. They always know things about themselves in their time frame, in their need, and that's age appropriate. And I think it's about balancing all of those things together as a parent, as a, as an adoptive parent. But also, I suppose the tricky thing is I think adopters at the moment are set up to fail because you can't heal trauma, and if nobody's acknowledging the trauma, then You're very, very stuck. So that's where my answer is different to that. You, you can't come through this completely without support of external people. Yeah.

So you, you, you talked about, um, imposter syndrome, and you talked about inadequacy. Um, what, what's helped you see through that imposter syndrome?

I think it's more like what's helping me, because I don't think I've really dealt with it before a couple of years ago. Yeah.

Um, what's helping you then? What, what is it that you've seen It, it seemed to me, it sounds like the syndrome isn't as big as it used to be.

I think because I have a mission, like, you know, because I'm, I'm in a— my children have been failed by the systems around them, okay? But I've built a community of other adopters who have also been significantly— their children have been significantly failed. And I think because I can see it Really clearly as an adopter, as an adoptee, and as a social worker. I can speak that language. I can speak the language of harm, adversity, and trauma in a child's life left unhealed is going to amount to significant social-emotional health needs and learning needs for that child, and therefore we're doing everybody a disservice. So because I can see it and I can tangibly work it out and I can have a conversation about it, my imposter syndrome kind of goes to the back.

So because, because you see it systemic, you, you're realizing it's not personal.

Yeah. And, and actually because I'm working on behalf, well, volunteering, whatever you wanna call it, because I see the cause and because I can see the purpose in what I'm doing, my imposter syndrome is not important. Because actually, unless you come and tell me I'm doing something wrong, which I will reflect on if somebody does tell me I'm doing something wrong, then I have to carry on regardless. Because I am actually representing lots and lots of people who would— who are struggling, and lots and lots of children who aren't getting the support they need. So the imposter syndrome Isn't— can't be a hurdle in the road. It has to be behind me.

So the, the, the, um, you, you basically, you, you're putting that, you're putting that to one side?

No, no, I'm putting it behind me.

Okay.

And it's not that it's going to be— because it's not a barrier, and I'm putting it aside means it'll come back. I'm leaving a little bit of it and it's shrinking behind me. So, you know, look, you look back in your wing mirror and you see what's behind you. And the more confident I grow, the smaller it gets.

Yeah.

But because I'll never, ever do any of what I— I'm not an arrogant person, so whatever I do will never be with arrogance or ego. That imposter syndrome can't go because it's always there to remind me that actually I have to check in with myself. I have to check in. Am I right? Am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? Am I representing the children that need better from society?

Yeah.

So I think it's a really— I suppose that brings it back to thriving. I am thriving because I've worked out where my imposter syndrome needs to sit for me to do okay. Yeah.

Um, I, I, I was also, I was thinking of all sorts of little stories, uh, about that analogy of the, you know, where you're looking, uh, here. Um, I think probably the simplest one I have for it is, is something that I heard from a guy called, uh, a mentor of mine called, um, Richard Wilkins, like 12 years ago, maybe something like that. He said the past is a place of reference, not a place of residence.

That's it. That's exactly it. It is a reference. I, I bring myself back to earth because, because my imposter syndrome's there. You know, I said to somebody the other day, they, they emailed me and, and I built a relationship with this person. They emailed me and said, thank you for everything you're doing. And I said, I feel like I often feel like an imposter. And she said, well, I think you need to read some of the stuff people are saying and see the things that you are doing more clearly and tell the imposter syndrome to go away. But I don't— it, it's good to reflect on who we are and how important the journey that we're taking is. So I, you know, I don't want it.

Yeah.

I don't want to lose sight of it. Um, entirely because it's my, my journey to thriving. You know, I, I am doing something that's— and I'm, you know, I, I don't know, there's no, oh, amazing what you're doing. It's not, it's not about that. I've made sense of what's going wrong to my best of my abilities, and I'm sure there's higher intellectual people who could make sense of it in a completely different way. But I've made sense of what's going wrong for children who are being placed in the care system now, and I can have confidence in my journey and my message there, and therefore the imposter syndrome is smaller.

Yeah, and less important.

Yeah, less important. But then I look back over my childhood, so forgetting the adopted adopting journey in me and the social work journey in me. And I think, what was the imposter syndrome? Was it there because I was adopted, or is it there because I grew up with very, very confident parents who were very, very intelligent, and I'm dyslexic and struggled at school and therefore really had to work hard at things later on in life after I'd gone through my teenage blip? Um, or is it part of, you know, what, what is it? Which rucksack am I putting it in? Is it, is it my adopted bit? Is it, is it because I don't know my identity? Is it because I was rejected by my birth mum as an adult? You know, she doesn't want to know who I am. She doesn't want anything to do with me. What is the imposter syndrome? And the more I challenge the systems, the more I think, do you know what? This is my energy needs to be in this, and this is more important. And then in a way, it's like a little spell. It's kind of just disintegrating slightly.

Yeah. There's so much here. Um, uh, I, the same guy, Richard Wilkins, talked about something you're Your, your message becomes bigger than your fear.

Yes.

And, and, and that, that's a big shift. And, and I think that's one of the benefits of, of advocating is we kind of like it, it, especially when you're in the space that you're in where you're Pushing for real change. And so the, the imposter syndrome is, well, yeah, but my need for change is bigger than the fear that's holding me back. So advocacy becomes a way of sidestepping and then pushing and, and then putting the sidestepping the imposter syndrome and then, and as, but as you say, keeping it at the back. Yeah.

Because I don't wanna lose it.

Yeah.

It does keep me grounded, but I also don't wanna trick myself into thinking that it, it's not an issue because it is an issue.

Yeah.

I would like somebody to, to tell me whether, where it comes from because that's always peed me off? You know, what part of my core, my history, my identity— what is it? Where does it come from? Because it's always been there.

Well, I, I, I don't think, um—

I'm not asking—

I think you need to see. I mean, I think you need to see it. I think you need to see it for yourself. So, um, you know, you're talking about that email that you got from somebody Yeah. And, uh, the thing that was coming into my head, because I had a nice email today as well, right? Um, and, uh, I asked somebody to come on the podcast and they said, oh, I've listened to your podcast loads of times, I'd be really honored to come on your show. Um, brilliant, you know. Um, and I, I thought, because I don't get many of them, right? Um, uh, but what it's not about what other people say It's about what we hear.

Yeah.

It's, it's not about what they point at, it's what we see. We have to see this stuff for our— for ourselves. Um, and, and that, that, that, you know, that's when it becomes— that's when it becomes our new reality rather than somebody else's theory.

Yeah, exactly. So, so I can— yesterday, so this is where, like, I'm still on my journey of discovery, as you know. And yesterday I went and had a— I went to a family event, kind of. And it was a— it was for my dad. And he has his own campaign, should we say. And I volunteered for something that was a bit like out there confidently, publicly, which wasn't like me. I am very confident. I am very outgoing. But I often aren't. I'm not always going to volunteer for the tricky job around my parents because, I don't know, the imposter syndrome. And I just went for it. It felt good. And I, you know, I could see that by doing what I'd done, I'd made a difference. to my dad, and it, and it felt nice. Um, but I also didn't get bothered by things that I would normally get bothered by. Spending the day with my brother and my mum and my dad and their normal, normal family routines of, oh my God, we're going to be late, and oh my God, you've forgotten this, and oh my God, that's happened. I didn't get bothered. Because actually, I Don't need to. And I don't know what that bit's about, but, but I also think that's part— maybe it's not imposter syndrome, but it's, that's a, it's a part of me accepting me that I don't have to go along with the identity of. And I, I don't mean this is an anti-adoption thing. The identity of my family. I can go with my identity. Now, I love my mum and dad, and they're my real parents, and they brought me up, and they love me. unconditionally, 100%, and I love them unconditionally. It doesn't mean to say we've got everything right, but we all— we've all tried. But I think part of this thriving is me being me, learning to be me in whatever shape that comes in, not having to be you know, my mum and dad's daughter, or not having to be my brother's sister. We're not biologically related. Not having to, uh, be whatever the typecast has told me I have to be. I feel like I'm accepting myself a little bit more, and, and by accepting myself a little bit more, I can say, well, take it or leave it.

So thriving is more about being than feeling.

Yeah. So, so I was, I'm always been somebody who wants to please my parents. I sound awful, don't I, saying that? Um, and I've always struggled to say no because, and this inferiority, this imposter syndrome, whatever you call it, if it's, uh, you know, an impact of being adopted, I don't know what it is, but I've always felt like I'm a lesser person. So when my mum and dad ask me for something, or when, when they say, oh, we need this from you, or— I've always said yes. And if I've said— if I haven't, I've always felt very, oh, you know, really tense and like giving myself a hard time. And recently I've just gone no, and it feels so good. Because I'm just me.

So I think thriving, one sort of symptom of thriving, should we say, is being bothered less.

Yes, and that's, that's it. And it's taken a long time, and there's, you know, there's loads of me to, to do that in the future. But like, I don't know, something like they wanted to take my son to a football match, and, and it's just not convenient. And normally I would make an effort to, to change everything. And, and, you know, because they love my children and they— my children love them. And I would usually bend over backwards to make sure that everything was done. And I just said no. And it seems minutiae, but to me it was massive. I felt so proud of myself. Don't have to please people all the time. You don't have to say yes all the time. don't have to feel— I always feel guilty for having opinions, but, but actually you, you don't. If people don't like your opinions, they don't need to listen, you know. And I think, you know, I've still got a long way to go, and I think, I think we need more conversations about what it is to be adopted because I think we are different. It doesn't matter which side of the coin, you know. I work with people who are adopted, I work with people who Who were adopters, you know. It's it's it's you know my my mum wasn't able to have biological children. I wasn't able to have biological children, but me and my mum and my daughter we look like each other. You know there's there's many things I'm grateful in the world for, and I and part of my thriving. is coming to terms— well, not coming to terms— is celebrating the fact I didn't get raised by a woman I cannot relate to, who when I see a picture somewhat horrifies me. And I'm grateful for that because I can tell by her face I would not have liked her. And that is part of this thriving journey, is coming to terms with actually I'm okay to say that and I'm okay to feel it and And, you know, I've, I've spent a long time feeling guilty for that thing that blew up in her world. And, you know, I wanted to make my journey of identifying who I was was about me saying to her, I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I came and blew up your world and made such a mess of your life. Whereas now I'm like, well, do you know what? It's your loss because I'm okay. My mum and dad aren't perfect, and they've done some amazing mistakes that every parent pulls, but I am so glad that I was theirs and not hers.

What, what, what does your therapist say about, um, uh, you blowing up? Your birth mother's world?

She, she's— she checks why I think that. And, and we talk a lot about perception and fact. Do you know that that's what happened? No, I— well, yeah, I do, but— and, and it comes down to that, but it also comes down to me knowing me. And knowing that I would give— I'm, I'm not saying I'm a generous person, but I would give people answers and time. And, you know, with my own children who ask questions about their identity, I sit with them and I let them feel what they feel. I don't tell them what to feel. I don't tell them how to feel. I don't put parameters on it or gates on it or boundaries on it. They're allowed to feel what they want to feel. Whereas the letter I got off my birth mum in whatever year it was saying, I didn't think I'd ever have to have this conversation with you. I don't, I don't know what that did to me at the time, but I was horrified that somebody could. I mean, she said more than that, but I can't remember. It was, it was, it was very much, I didn't want to have this conversation. I didn't think you'd ever be able to find me. She never met me, so she doesn't know how savvy I am. But I, I would never have said that to somebody.

No. Um, no. Yeah. Um, well, that letter may have blown up her world, but your arrival on the planet— you sent the letter.

Right.

But you didn't cause your own birth.

No. And, and it took me a long time to shift from feeling guilty to thinking, you're a dick. Pardon my French. You, you're an ass for spending your whole life not confronting this. And I suppose that's, you know, that we go back to thriving with again. I think the facts remain. I, I absolutely adore and love my parents, right? And there's so much in my mum and dad that I am. My dad's a gobshite. I'm a gobshite. He's mischievous at 84. I'm always going to be mischievous. You know, my mum's a very caring person. I'm not quite as caring as she is, but I'm caring. You know, she's a bit ditzy. I'm a bit ditzy. There's lots and lots of things I can identify with my parents. And I, and I suppose the, the journey of self-discovery is seeking to identify the parts of you that you don't know. And, and part of my thriving is realizing that I don't want or need to identify with her because she doesn't represent me in the slightest. I don't look like her. I don't act like her. And she's been hiding away from this dirty secret that I am, you know. But, but that's her bag. That's not mine. I am nothing to be ashamed of. And if she can't confront that, that's her issue. But I also went through a journey of respect. For her in the sense of, oh, well, I've emailed her once, so I won't do it again, and I'll sit in my little corner where she wanted me to be, and, and all the rest. No, I have a right to the information. If it means I have to ask 20 times and I still don't get an answer, I'm not going to feel bad about it. And that's part of thriving, thriving, because again, it's acceptance. I don't have to feel things that I've told myself I have to feel. Because I have, and I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm in therapy. You know, the phrase, I'm in therapy. I don't see it as therapy. It's making sense of my world. And I wish we could rename it because it would take the stereotype away of therapy. You may— it's making sense of your world, of your feelings, of your identity, of how you function or how you're not functioning or You know, and I'm not, I'm not like lots of different people have lots of different types of needs around therapy. Mine is a choice. I want to make sense of the world around me because it makes me lose a bit of that imposter syndrome, makes me thrive, and it helps my children thrive. Which we've not had an easy journey, and we're never going to have an easy journey, and it's always going to have Really big bumps in the road. But you know what? I was a bump in the road too. So as long as we try and do it together and we don't try and hide from things and we confront things and we have open conversations like, yeah, I don't know, you know, like, you know, I'm very blunt. So when my daughter says, oh my God, why have I got freckles on my left arm? And I'm like, well, you didn't come out of my vagina, love, so I have no idea. You know, you've got to be honest and you've got to be transparent and you've got to not make light of things, but you've got to be open. And without that, I don't think you can thrive. And I've met lots of adopters who won't talk about being adopted. And I think that's, that's a travesty for me because we have to make sense of where we came from. We have to make sense of who we are. And you can do that privately, absolutely, but you've still got to do it because you can't make the best of yourself unless you know a lot of yourself. I'm never— I don't think anybody ever knows themselves 100%, but you've got to make a lot of yourself, got to know a lot of yourself. Sorry.

Yeah, but self is a word that's kind of banded around a lot. What, what do you mean by self?

That's what I'm making sense of. So, so I suppose there's, there's been hurdles in my life that I haven't probably made the right decisions about many of them. And because I've been on those journeys, you know, toxic relationships and Kind of running away from my lack of capacity to sit in school and learn. And I tried to run to things that weren't me because I felt that's what I had to do. So self is, is my— I am trying to make sense of myself now.

So, so the, the, the, we use it in different contexts, right? So one of the things that I was thinking about earlier on, you know, talking about intelligence, and, um, for me, uh, I saw some amazing, uh, amazing stats on How much more important emotional is emotional intelligence is? Yeah, you know what people call EQ. EQ, sorry, I hate to use this word, trumps IQ. Like it knocks it completely out of the ballpark, right? So I'm doing an American. I mean, I'm doing an American analogy there. And oh, I wanted to say that. Fiona said gobshite, which I was going to translate for our visitors from across the pond, but I couldn't come up with a word. Basically, she said opinionated. And I think, you know, in some of the things that you just said in the last couple of minutes, you've described what being a gobshite is like. And I can relate, right? Because I'm a gobshite too. So we, as gobshites, we say what we think. We can be a bit blunt. We can be a bit opinionated. We can sometimes cheese people off. I think those are kind of essential.

I think that's a really good way to describe it. Absolutely.

So, uh, EQ, emotional intelligence, is way, way, way more important than, um, than IQ, than intelligence quotient, which is more like intellect. And one of the things of one of the first kind of pillar, I think it's four pillars of emotional intelligence if I remember rightly, is is self-awareness, right? But what's but what self-awareness means is being aware of your behavior. Okay, so that that that self-awareness is is usually referred to in in that sense. You know, like when Well, he's not very— Simon isn't very self-aware because he says stuff because he's a gobshite and he upsets people and he doesn't realize that he's done it, right? So that's self-awareness, right? But then you've got the kind of the self of self-esteem, which is related to, you know, like the, you know, what, the imposter syndrome, inadequacy, insufficiency, feeling that we're less than. Uh, and I came up with something on this that I love. Uh, a, um, and somebody reminded me of this yesterday, actually. I got a, yeah, I've had a nice message yesterday and nice messages today. So good days. Um, something, uh, so insufficiency, right? It's so beyond the ache of insufficiency. Mm-hmm. Is the relief of sufficiency, right? The relief of adequacy, the relief of realizing that we are enough. And, and beyond that is the, uh, the ecstasy of infinity, right? So it's realizing that our infinite are an infinite value, right? So the, the, the diamond of thriving adoptees, that's got a market— a diamond has a market value. It is fixed by the market. It goes up and down. Whereas our value as adoptees is, is, is infinite, right? Your kids' value, your kids' value is infinite, right?

Mm-hmm.

You, you, you, you would, you'd give the world for your kids. So, so self, self-awareness is, is kind of, um, awareness of our behavior. Self-esteem is about our value. And then, um, self-critical is kind of criticizing, uh, you know, one part of ourselves criticizing the other part of ourselves. So this word self is used in so many different Uh, in so many different ways. No wonder we're confused, because it's used in different ways. It's using— so we have to kind of come to our own, um, our own definition of self. And the, the closest thing that I've got to is this diamond as a metaphor. So the diamond doesn't, um, the diamond doesn't need to go on a self-esteem course.

No.

Um, the diamond's value is inherent. I've already said that there's a limitation to the metaphor because we're talking about our infinite value rather than, uh, than a gemstone's finite value. But we've really gotta play around. We've really gotta explore what that, uh, that, that, that, that self is. And, and, and that, and, and yet that diamond is, it is hidden in the trauma. It's hidden in the feelings. Um, uh, the—

Absolutely.

It's, it's hidden in the, uh, imposter syndrome. So this is an excavation job. This is people.

Yeah, no, it is. It really is. And, and if you don't have somebody to make sense of it— so for instance, if I didn't talk to my children about their adoptee journey, and I might not have always the right answers or the right responses, but at least I'm helping them think. I'm not putting my opinions on them. I can tell them about me. And I can tell them what I know about them. And then there's this massive space for them to work out their self, for them to excavate themselves. So my daughter now is a teenager, she's got questions. I need to help her get those answers in a safe way, but she has a right to those answers. And I was thinking about it when you were saying earlier, you know, I suppose being adopted— I'm looking at a diagram because I drew it— being adopted was a weight on my life and it held me back in many ways. But now it's a balloon and it's lifting me because I'm helping other people and I'm making sense of myself. So that balloon is lifted slightly. So if you see it as like You know, this is the sea, this is the up, this is the down. The anchor is, is going up. You know, that, that I don't know myself, I don't know who I am, was always a massive anchor. Not in a, not in an anchor as in a good thing, but holding me back, not, not letting me see myself.

Yeah.

Whereas now, because I'm using it for something different, it's lifting my sense of self and it's helping me develop me.

So, um, uh, another— this is another mentor of mine, and she is an adoptee in the sense that her stepdad adopted her. at 2. Great lady called, uh, Sammy Blindell, and she's the reason I'm doing the podcast, right? Because I was— I spoke to her like 3 and a half years ago and she said, oh, so you're enjoying being a guest on the podcast? But yes. Well, it's time for you to do your own one, Simon. Um, uh, Sammy says, um, uh, our mess becomes our message.

Yeah.

And I was thinking about— absolutely, uh, I was thinking about metaphors, uh, water metaphors, like you talked about the anchor and stuff like that. I was thinking about that, um, this lunchtime as I was swimming, right? So, you know, when— if you've got, um, you've got a, a cargo ship or a container ship Right? It sits very low in the water.

Yeah.

When it's heavily loaded, right? And then they, they take the cargo off with the cranes and the containers. And as they do that, the, um, the, the boat rises and you can see more of the boat. And, and that's what I think I think that's a great metaphor for the thriving journey because we're revealing more and more of ourselves as the load gets lighter. So Holly Ann Petrie runs a— she's an adoptive mom. She's in Texas. She runs an adoption agency in Texas called Addie's Hope. And she talks— she was the one that gave me the, uh, the metaphor of unpacking our own emotion, our own emotional baggage as adoptive parents, but unpacking our own emotional baggage as human beings, right? You know, like, so as we unpack the baggage, as we unload the baggage, the boat, the, the boat, um, uh, Yeah, right. The boat rises.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm guessing boats that are rising are gonna go, they're gonna go faster. They're gonna be a bit more nimble. You know, I'm thinking, I'm mixing my metaphors here, but I learned to water ski when I was about 10. And about 10 years on, I learned to water ski on one, and you're way more nimble. Like on, on 2, on, on 2 water skis, you know, like you, you, you, you, it takes you back to turn, you know. But, you know, you're more agile. So when they're doing the slalom, I mean, I never did, I never got that, that good, but when they're doing the slalom, they do the slalom on one ski. There is no, no way on earth or on water that they would be able to do the slalom on 2 skis at, at the same speed. It just, it just wouldn't, it just, it just wouldn't happen.

Yeah.

So we're revealing, uh, thriving is revealing more and more of, of the boat, if, if that's us, if that's our metaphor for us. And, uh, and we're moving, we're moving more nimbly. We are navigating life more easily. We are learning from our mistakes quicker. We're bouncing back quicker from the moments when, uh, we realize that we put a foot, a foot, a foot, a foot wrong or 2 feet wrong. You know that?

Yeah. And I think it's also about self-forgiveness. You know, there's so many things I've got wrong, but actually that's humanity, innit? We do things wrong. Um, and I'm, and I think thriving is, is about all of that. I suppose my wish for, for the future Fionas and the future Simons and the future everybodies is that people get to make sense of it quicker so that it doesn't hold you down as that anchor. You know, if I'd have known these things at 27, where would I be now? And I don't mean financially or, you know, career-wise, but just within me.

Yeah.

within me, where would I be? I, I would have been in a different, a better place.

Um, and grace for that though, right?

Yeah.

Grace for that. Like, uh, the implica— order of things. I heard something a couple of years ago that rocked me back completely with its profundity. Um, it was, uh, what if your destiny is right where you are now?

Oh God!

And then the same now, two years' time. And what if your destiny was where you were then? Like it's now, now, now, and now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, right? It's like the ultimate, the ultimate grace thing. The ultimate grace thing for for for us about. Um, self, self-forgiveness for what we may see as, uh, you know, wasted time, you know, wasted opportunities. Like, how can I—

But I think it extends because thriving is not just about self, is it? Thriving is also about forgiving the people in your life that didn't quite get it right.

Yeah.

Thriving is about making sense of the mistakes my parents, my real parents, people who brought me up every day. Sorry, Bugbear. They are my real parents. Um, it's forgiveness for them, forgiving them for not, for not being infallible. You know, they, they made mistakes. And actually, yeah, that's okay. You know, because We're never gonna not make mistakes. And look, you know, life is an evolution for everybody, for always. So the things we make mistakes over now will be frowned upon in the future because people will have learned more. Like, yeah, neuroscience and, you know, trauma and the impact on your functioning and all that. We didn't know that when I was born.

We don't. We didn't. And, and it's unfair, right? So you were Um, I, I, I say, I don't know if I said this to you when we spoke last week, but we're, we're judging, uh, 20th century parenting with 21st century trauma knowledge.

Yeah.

You know, like you were born 5th, you were born '77, did you say?

Yeah. '77.

'77. So, um, Nancy Berrier's Primal Wound didn't come out until 1993.

Well, exactly. And, and, you know, like, when I— my mum and dad aren't very good reflectors, whereas I am. Um, and I'll say to them, what made you make that decision? But I don't say it as in, what made you make that decision? I do it in a way that, that shows love and respect. And yeah, well, shit happens. Pardon my French. You know, it's not in a way that that now holds, holds anything, you know, and we'll laugh and we'll go, oh God, what was I thinking? You know, how, how the world has changed that we know things were the— you know, they sent me to a school which, you know, education. I'm dyslexic, so I was burdened with that as well as being adopted. Um, I'm grateful now for being adopted. I'm actually grateful for being dyslexic because it helps help me learn in, in a different way. But it, but it's funny because it's like we— they didn't know that making what they thought was the right decision for my education was the very worst decision for my education. Okay, well, let's make sense of that. Let's think about it. They didn't do it on purpose. They hadn't set out to harm me. But when you're burdened with all your anchors that are holding you rigid, you don't think like that. You think, Well, they failed me. But they didn't fail me. They just didn't know. No. You know, and, and it, and thriving is coming to terms with all of that. And, and, you know, I'm 47. My mum and dad adopted me at 2 weeks old. Back in the day, that was normal. And my, I see my mum and dad every fortnight. And when my dad kisses me on the cheek as he always has, where he always— with his slightly overbearing aftershave, I know that that is love, you know. And when my mum and I are hugging and we're laughing at my dad's stupid antics because he's a pain in my ass, that's love, you know. And, and it's being grateful And I am grateful. And I don't know a lot of people would agree with this, but I am grateful that I was adopted by them because they love me imperfectly so and perfectly so. They love me.

Have you been told that you should be grateful?

Never. Never. No, never.

Me neither. Me neither.

And I get that, I get that that might have— I get that's happened to people. But no, my— I think one of the joys is that my parents are my real parents and they have treated me as their real daughter, which is what I am. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm— I have been lucky in the sense that there's a lot of things that, because my parents are in their 80s, that they're not They, they were never antiquated in some of their views that other families will have had. You know, I've got quite modern parents from, from, you know, from a generational point of view, and I was very lucky with that. They were always honest with me about being adopted. They were— my dad offered to— my dad offered to get in a plane and fly me to see my birth mum and said, come on, we'll go and do it together. You know, we, we didn't not talk about it. Um, but no, it's not. No, there's grateful for things like, you know, he bought me a car 15 times, or things, normal things, you know, bailed me out when my, you know, tire was flat, but never grateful for being adopted. That's just, that's not part of our, that's not part of us.

Because a lot of When we get onto the subject of gratitude, I always say that, or not always say, or I have learned to say, well, there's a big difference being between being told to be grateful, um, uh, or, or, or feeling grateful. Like, so forced, forced gratitude rather than innate, rather than innate gratitude.

Yes.

And one of my senses I have on this is that that kind of forced gratitude is more prevalent in the States than it is in the UK. That's my take on it. Do you have any experience of that? Do you think it's cultural like that, or? Have you not come across it?

No, I've not. I've not come across it. I, you know, obviously I've worked with people who've left the care, left care, and I've worked with people who've— foster carers who've had different lives. And I've read Lem Sissay's book, which is amazing. And obviously, you know, as with any person in the universe, all our journeys are different, aren't they? And, you know, I— for me, having to be grateful, having to, having to be grateful is toxic, but feeling grateful should be celebrated. And I, I am grateful because I can relate to my mum and dad, whereas I cannot relate to my— birth mother at all. And I have no idea who the sperm donor was, so I can't comment. But, you know, I am my mum and dad. I am, you know, the nature-nurture. It's nature and nurture. It's not either or. And, you know, there's going to be a chapter in my life where I don't have my mum and dad. And that will be horrendous.

Yeah. Has that part of what you just said there, has that changed over time?

What, the, the gratitude or the—

Yeah, or the, the, the, the feeling that they are your real parents? Is that—

I think it's changed in the sense that I, I probably felt like society or the world wanted me to feel grateful because I felt so inadequate and rejected and like the bomb that went off in my birth mum's life. So therefore I should, you know, okay, my parents are quite well off and, you know, I've had a nice life from that point of view. So I think the world made me feel like I should feel grateful. My parents never put that on me. Um, but it's— but I, in some ways, you know what, my parents need to be grateful they've got me because I've kept them entertained. You know, I'm grateful for my kids because they keep me entertained. Um, and I don't know, there's, there's, there's different levels of gratitude. There's, there's, I think the most important one is that when I hug my mum and dad and I haven't seen them for 2 weeks, I can't not be grateful for that. But when I was 14, I probably wasn't grateful for that. Yeah.

Well, I'm grateful for the time that you spent on the Zoom today and stuff, and the time last week as well. And I'm sure the listeners are going to be grateful for the truth bombs you've dropped over the last hour.

I'm good at truth bombs.

And as I said at the top, listeners, do check out what Fiona's doing on the advocacy stuff because it's really important. And, you know, I've— my opinion in terms of, you know, my support for advocates has changed, and I realized that I need to do more to support the advocates in the way that feels right.

And it has to feel right for you to want to do it. A lot of people try and sway me into different things, and I'm like, no, I have to do what feels right for me because otherwise it's not natural, is it?

So listeners, check out what Fiona's doing at Patch, and, uh, thanks again.

Thank you.