The speaker celebrates their birthday and new year while reflecting on 2020, using the oxygen-mask metaphor to explain why self-care matters before helping others. As an adoptee who moved from darkness to light, they want to guide other adoptees through their own tunnels and help adoptive parents understand their children's inner experience.
Happy New Year! Happy New Year to you and happy birthday to me. Can I wish myself happy birthday? I have just done that. So happy New Year. We're four days in. We're four days in, and I hope you are having a fantastic start to the new year. I was a little bit surprised, or maybe I wasn't. But I did, yeah, got a lot of Christmas cards talking about how difficult 2020 has been. And it's definitely seemed like that, hasn't it? 2020 seemed like a difficult year. We all had some challenges to deal with, some challenges more severe than others. Luckily, we were, we were pretty blessed. Oh, that sounds like I'm a religious guy. I'm not a religious guy. Lucky? We were pretty lucky with all that stuff. We missed the holidays, we missed going out to restaurants and stuff, but overall we were okay, and we will continue to be okay. We'll continue to thrive, I'm sure. And what got me really about this is I don't often like to let people know that everything's going just fine. Do I? I do, actually. Sometimes I've been saying this a bit conspiratorially. I've been saying People say, "How are you doing?" And I say, "Fine. Yeah, great. Yeah, I'm I'm great. I'm doing great. Thank you." Don't, but don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody because it's almost as if the fact that we are thriving is something that we want to keep quiet, that we should be ashamed of, that we should be in this big. downer mood. Now, how much, how much feeling bad about what's going on in the world makes us feel good? How much feeling bad about stuff that's going on in the world makes us feel good? None of it at all. I was talking to my mum about this and she said, well, yeah, but this is, this is part of the British way, having Having sympathy for what other people are going for, I've been saying. So those are two different things. I think I am clearly sympathetic about what's going on. I I feel for people that are struggling, but me feeling bad about how they're struggling doesn't. Make them feel good, and it doesn't make me feel good. It just makes me feel bad. Because whatever, whatever is going on in the world, what helps is if we're putting our own oxygen mask on first, isn't it? That's what they say on the— that's what they say on the— that's what they say on the planes, isn't it? We haven't been on many planes last year, and we won't be on many planes this year, I don't think, not for the foreseeable future. But yeah, put your own oxygen mask on first. So that's about your own mood, about our own mood. The higher we are, the better mood that we're in, the better mood that we're able to— the better, the more likely we are to be able to lift others. I had a fantastic metaphor for this on a podcast last week. So it's about sending the lift back down. So we've come through some adversity and we've got to, uh, we've got to a higher— we've got out the other side, we got to a higher place, um, and we send a lift back down for others because we want to help others. And that's— that just— I just thought that was beautiful. I thought that was absolutely beautiful because That's what I'm all about. This year I'm focusing totally on other adoptees. So I'm an adoptee. Some of you may know that, some of you may not. I'm an adoptee. So I'm focusing on, um, sending the lift back down, um, because I've been in the dark. My life has gone from light to dark and dark to light. And so I can see, I can see the light in the dark. I'm sure we all— I'm sure you all can, to a lesser or greater degree. But I see a lot of adoptees who are in the dark, and they are— yeah, they can't, they can't see any light. They can't see the light at the end of the The tunnel. So I'm here with a message because I know how you feel. I've been in, I've been in there. I've been in the dark, and I've come out of that dark now. And I'm in, I'm into the light, and I'm trying to help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. And this sound—I hope this doesn't sound patronizing because I really don't want it to be that. I really don't want it to be like that. Um, but yeah, this— I, I felt, I felt broken, I felt wounded, and that's, that's not the truth. That's not what adoption does to us. And, and if you're a, if you're an adoptive, um, parent, you're an adopter, and you're concerned about the damage that, um, that adoption's done to, to your child, I want to talk to you too because Until you can see the light, you can't show, you can't point your child to that light. And the better, and the better that you can see that light, the more clearly you're going to be able to point it out to your child. So the light is to do with It's here now, and that's what a happy new year is all about—happiness and lightness—and I wanted to share that with you. And as I find my voice in this area, I thank you for for for bearing with me. You see, for so long I wanted to change, uh, change the world. I thought that bringing my adoption story into my work would make— would mean that, uh, it restricted the number of people that I could help. It limited the number of people could help because by talking just about anything to do with adoption, and non-adoptive parents would say, well, this isn't, this isn't, this isn't for us. But since shifting to this, um, to this thing that I am so— that has shaped my life to, uh, to a certain extent, since shifting to that focus, I've just found it exhilarating. I found it easier to make connections with people. I found my messages more resonant because I know how adoptees feel, and I know how adoptive— um, I know how to explain how adoptive— how adoptees feel to adoptive parents. So I can give adoptive parents that inside, inside line on Kids often can't explain what's going on for them, and so you don't know. So I wish you all a happy new year, and I look forward to seeing a lot more of you in, in 2021. And all the best, take care, bye-bye. Bye.
Weathering Storms With Joanne Morales, Jennifer Hartwig and Rebecca Dominguez
