Adoptees in 3: Connecting Mind, Heart and Action – Episode 7 Greg Gentry

Episode Transcript 

Voiceover

Introduction
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The Voices Unheard Program at Boston Post Adoption Resources is designed to empower adult adoptees in expressing their personal stories and to expand public knowledge and awareness around lived adoptee experiences. Our program goals are accomplished through this Adoptees in 3 video series; through narrative writing workshops; adoptee-created blogs; the use of the Voices Unheard journal; as well as through Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories, which is our annual live speaker’s forum dedicated to educating the greater Boston community through creative expression and storytelling.

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LC: Welcome everyone! Welcome, Greg Gentry to “Adoptees in 3: Connecting Mind, Heart, and Action.” I'm LC Coppola. Hi, Greg.

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Greg Gentry: Hi! Glad to be here, LC. Thanks so much.

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LC: Yeah.  I'm LC, I'm an adoptee, the program director of Voices Unheard. And I'm really happy to have Greg here with us today. Let me introduce you to our audience, although I suspect many people might already know you from adoptee circles. Greg Gentry is a US Domestic “Baby Scoop” era adoptee. He was born in California in 1969. He's been in reunion with his maternal family members since 2006, and in 2021 he also connected with his paternal side. Greg is a facilitator and interviewer for Fireside Adoptees, which is a private Facebook group founded a few years ago in 2021. This group is committed to additional outreach through its public Facebook page and through the Fireside Adoptee Constellation private Facebook group. Greg is also a co-host of “Adoptees Connect” out of Derry, New Hampshire. So, if you're an adoptee in New Hampshire looking to connect with others, Greg is someone who you might want to connect with and Greg was also a speaker at last year's Voices Unheard where, Greg, you shared a really stunning piece that you wrote on your journey of what many of us call “out of the fog”. But into deeper, like kind of sudden consciousness of realizing all that comes with being adopted, that you may have pushed down.

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Greg Gentry: Yeah.

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LC: Yeah, that was a really memorable piece.

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Greg Gentry: Thank you so much.

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LC: And you were our first male speaker.

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Greg Gentry: That was such an honor. I could get choked up thinking about it even now. But I really appreciate that opportunity. Thank you. Very memorable. Always, always remember that.

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LC: Yeah, it was great. So how are things just to check in? How are things going in your adoptee world lately?

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Greg Gentry: They've actually been busy in the sense of engagement with—with people both in person and online, which is exciting for me. So, I really like both of those, both of those venues, I guess I'll call them. But  it's really exciting when online relationships are able to come over into real life experiences with people. So . . . including with you and other adoptees locally, but also some across the nation, coming together at different events, etc., and having a chance to—to see people. So, it's been exciting. It's been busy in—in the adoptee world. I'm very happy with some of the newer connections I've been making. I've been trying to reach out more into the constellation space and be more accessible to—to people who are not just adoptees but first parents, and also adoptive parents in terms of support I may be able to provide and zoom in for parts of their journey too.

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LC: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's so important.  I—I was thinking, like something I love is when I've been working with a client for sometimes, sometimes years, because some clients I started working with during Covid, and it's, you know, Zoom—

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Greg Gentry: Yeah.

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LC:  And then you just continue on it, ‘cause whatever. But—and then I go to like Voices Unheard, or—or I see them somewhere, you know, and it's so cool because it's like you've just developed this relationship for all these years. And then to see someone in person is like, it's like, it's not reunion, but it's like, I don't know. It's got something like you know each other so well. . . .

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Greg Gentry: Yeah.

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LC: Never been in the same place, you know.

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Greg Gentry: Yeah, I—I experience that also. With, for instance, coming to Voices Unheard, and sitting down and then looking to my left and to my right, realizing I—I knew people on both sides of me.  And I have met them in person before. But there were some people there that I hadn't met in person. I hadn't met you in person at that point, but I think there's almost like a recollection we have of—of—from the connections we make in the online space to when—when we come, there's a familiarity, I think when we meet people in person, maybe that's kind of what you're speaking of to. Just, there's a comfortableness and an easy way of being able to communicate.

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LC: Yeah, yeah, totally. So, should we jump in to these questions here?

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Greg Gentry: Sure, let's go for it. Yeah.

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LC: First one: If you were going to make a movie or title a book (your choice) about your adoption journey, what would you—what would the title be?

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Greg Gentry: I thought a lot about it. I kept throwing things around. I settled on the title, “Out of Nowhere”. So, I—I think it's—it captures some of the mysterious part. There still are things I—that are unknown to me about being an adoptee in terms of my placement as an adoptee. Meaning, I've—I've never been told key details from my—my adoptive family about how I got here. Even being in reunion didn't solve some of those questions. Because my—my parents are really old—the key to some of this, and they've never. . . I don't know if I wanna say they haven't . . . they've purposely not told me but they certainly haven't been forthcoming with things, and—and maybe they could have told me some really key things about it. It led me to feel like I sort of dropped onto the scene. Like the—this narrative of a—of a stork delivering a baby. That's really how I felt for a long time like, where—where does my history begin? Who are my people? Even after finding them biologically, I still didn't quite understand how I came to be where I was. So, “Out of Nowhere” kind of describes that for me, of just sort of appearing on the scene, feeling unrooted in a lot of ways. Still, knowing very—very basic things about myself are—are missing from—from my awareness. So, I'm—I'm trying to search for those things now.

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LC: Yeah, that—I love that title. It reminds me of like, Superman, you know. Like it reminds—like all the, there's so many like adoptee characters, and I always related. Like, am I, are we aliens? Where do we come from? And then—just like you bring up a really good point about reunion. I don't know anyone that's had all the questions solved, you know, like it's—

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Greg Gentry: Yes!

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LC: It just opens up more questions, and at some point . . . how do you let go of the mystery that's still left? You know? it's—it's hard.

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Greg Gentry: Yeah. And it's hard, for when you know of people who will never have even as many answers as each of us might have had. That’s really sad for me to know that sometimes there's just no opportunity for other people even to find out really basic things about themselves. Yeah, and actually the—the hospital where I was born in San Diego. I drove by it for almost 40 years when I lived there, and I—I would see it. I didn't know any of my information, but they actually had a stork on top of it.

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LC: Oh my god!

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Greg Gentry: So, it kind of even further now, cements. I hadn't thought about that in a long time, and that just makes me go, “I don't know where I came from.”

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LC: Well, we'll all get stork tattoos if we ever do adoptee connecting.

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Greg Gentry: Exactly!

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LC: That's—alright. . . . Well, okay. So then, the second question is, what advice would you give your younger adopt—your younger self—any age?

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Greg Gentry: Yeah, I—one thing I think for sure is, I would—I would probably seek to assure, or reassure, my younger self that it's okay to be a little bolder and to wonder more about— about myself. Not just about my—my roots but to explore things that I was good at, and—and do that with some—some boldness. It's not that I didn't do those things, but I—I think I felt like because they weren't well understood—the things I was good at were not well understood by my family. It's not that they were not nurturing. They just—they didn't know necessarily how to help me cultivate certain things and that could leave me feeling insecure and kind of off on my own. Like I was gonna have to figure a lot of things out on my own. So, I think I would encourage myself to be—to embrace the things that I—I was discovering. I—I had as aptitudes as—as talents and really feel like I could lean into those a bit. And also, of course, I think it's easier in retrospect to say that most of us feel like we needed to be aware that it was okay to be more gracious towards ourselves when we were younger. It's easy to say, “I messed up this,” “I felt this way and I didn't know why.” Maybe I could have—my advice to somebody, to myself younger, would be to—that it's okay. That I had some confusion and bewilderment and things I didn't understand. And they didn't make me a bad person in any way. They were just things that—that were not yet in my awareness, and nobody was really there to help me along, and that it was okay to—to feel what I was feeling.

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LC: What is there—can, if you feel comfortable, if you can talk a little bit about what prevented—you know? Was there a loyalty? Or was there a not wanting to hurt feelings of—of parents with asking, or . . .

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Greg Gentry: Yeah, especially, at least by—by—by late teens. I think I was not wanting to hurt feelings. I didn't get any real conversations about being adopted. I found out when I was 10. That kind of almost—I asked, and then found out “Yes, you were adopted, but we had told you at an earlier date,” which I don't have a recollection of. But then there were no other conversations about it until I would bring it up a little bit in early adulthood. So, I think by my—my later teens, I was feeling like this isn't something that my parents are comfortable, really, talking about. So, I'm gonna pull back and just assume I need to . . . I—I don't know if I was at the level of awareness of thinking I was protecting them, but I definitely didn't want to create any emotional situation for them. Not that they would be unreasonable, but there were tears and things that would happen if I ever did bring it up. So, I think that did lead to reticence about speaking up on my own behalf.

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LC: Wow! I can imagine, like, being 10 and so it was—it sounds like it was, it was kind of like a guessing game. Maybe if you were, did you have a period of time, if you remember, like around them where you were like, “I'm pretty sure I am, but maybe I'm not?” you know?

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Greg Gentry: Yeah, I remember my—my play younger than that was about having imaginary—imaginary family. Which now I know that was an adopted thing for sure.

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LC: Oh, yeah.

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Greg Gentry: That came out, I think, from some level of feeling, not, not fitting the—the same way. Not that they were not accepting. I mean, they may have been so accepting of me that they didn't recognize or acknowledge how I was legitimately different. But a really person with different groups and—and different abilities. Because of that. it seems, though, that I was definitely gaining awareness of that. So, that at age 10, I was watching TV and I saw the show with an adoptee and I thought, “I'm just gonna ask.” And other people have said, “The fact that you asked means maybe when they told you when you were younger, you weren't, weren't able to process that.” And so, it set off later on this kind of insecurity. What's going on? Maybe I should find out about this. Ask this again. It also showed, I think, that for my parents, they kind of viewed the whole thing as in the past. Something over and done with, and they weren't really, maybe I would say they were not necessarily planning on talking much about it again, but they never did. So yeah, I definitely was as I grew into awareness of that and felt like, I—I will. I needed to know those things. The information really wasn't there for me.

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LC: And this illustrates exactly why it's so important for adult adoptees to talk to adoptive parents now. You know?

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Greg Gentry: Yes. I've been asked about that specific thing. If someone said, “What, hypothetically, is it better then not to tell your child or adopt?” Oh, no, you can't withhold that from somebody.

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LC: Yes, it—it’s not.

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Greg Gentry: It's not right.

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LC: There's—it's not intentional. It's not an intentional, (usually) betrayal trauma, but it is a betrayal trauma, you know? When it's not told, it's like not even knowing what's real, you know? Who am—who am I? All these things that I sensed or felt, and—and sometimes people are denied it, you know? They kinda . . . something's off. Something's not right and the answers are provided and—and then you find out, you know, as an older kid or a teenager. And it just how do you trust your own mi-—You know? You wanted to trust your own mind to—you knew something was off, and the answers weren't provided. It's really tough to recover from that.

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Greg Gentry: And I in a lot of ways I never did. The relationship was different going forward at that point. Even at age 10, there's always some insecurity that accompanied it, and also some pulling away that never, never fully recovered from that.

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LC: Yeah, that's—I hear that a lot from adult adoptees who weren't told until later. That they don't—it—there's a thing, just a trust, like we already have trust issues because of our separation. But there's additional trust trauma on top of that, where the closest people to you weren't upfront or omitted. And so, who—who can you trust? And I don't think a lot of people are trying to do a manipulative bad thing. They're doing what they—they for the most part, what they thought was the good thing to do.

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Greg Gentry: I know for sure and—and yeah, in that era for me, for the baby scoop era, that was the case.

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LC: Yeah.

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Greg Gentry: As they would say, we were told not to really talk too much about this sort. “Bring it up,” that was what the experts told us. So, it's when you'd hear that, you know, it was across the culture. It's—it's hard to be, like, really angry. “Oh, they did this to me on purpose,” that everybody was doing, that it still hurts. And it still has effects, consequences. Not that I'm taking it out on it, but it. I realize that what I feel is—is a—a valid expression of the—the effect of what people should have been better at practicing in the culture at that time if they just weren't open to it or weren't being told about it. So, I think they did a lot of damage. As a result, you see a lot of these adoptees, around 50 years old, like I was at the time, and come out of the fog. And suddenly reality is huge. And you go, “What—what just happened to me?” What? What have I been doing this whole time, and how? How come? Nobody's been engaging me about this. . . .”

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LC: I know . . . breaks my heart. So, boldness . . . yeah.

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Greg Gentry: Boldness and—and graciousness or grace towards myself. But it was okay to feel what I was going through.

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LC: Mmhmm, yep. Alright, so let's move on to the next one. I feel like you might have a lot to say about this part. What— how you're healing—how are you healing today? I mean, this also includes all this community stuff you do. So, what works for you, and tell us about some of the stuff you're doing in the community?

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Greg Gentry: And it's hard for me to—to fully embrace healing as a subject for adoptees, just because I know that immediately your mind goes to like a medical model of a broken bone that has to be resetting it strong again. And then you realize the preverbal trauma being an adoptee and knowing that your identity wasn't—wasn't really in place before—before that. So, you don't really heal back to what that was like before, because there wasn't a before. So, we're left, I think, instead of with healing in that sense of getting strong again, getting restored, just building upon whatever foundation we have and say, “alright, now I—now I have to go forward. What is that going to be like?” and the foundation can be shaky because it—there was not a stability under it to begin with.

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LC: Right.

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Greg Gentry: And so, what that leads to is when you think you're making progress and building things on, there will be moments where it's unstable again and it topples again, and you have to—to do it all. . . . And I think I've come to realize that by talking to—to adoptees, who many years more into—into their work than I am, and they'll say things come along and hit you out of the blue. I think I'm at this level. I think I've made this progress and they have. It's just we—that underlying trauma element continues to be there. And I thought about it this morning when I was thinking about answers to the question, thought we used to play tetherball at school. I don't know people do anymore. So, you can think you're winning at tetherball. You're getting it going around and around, and then it—it a second’s notice it can come around and—and hit you in the face. And that's kind of how for me adoptee trauma is. I think I'm making strides in progress and suddenly something triggers me, activates me like—and I get—I get in this really unresourceful, dysregulated state. And I think, “I don't know anything. I'm—I'm terrible.” It—it just it resorts back to that, reverts back to that. So, I—I get more cautious about thinking healing is—is getting strong, like I used to be, because I didn't used to be anything. So—but what I do notice is, instead of it being more of a healing like a medical model is that I—I pick up skills along the way. Coping skills, skills for handling dysregulation or trying not to be reactive to the extent I—I was when I didn't even know I had trauma. So, when—when I'm able to be more aware of what the triggers are and able to create a distance between me and—and an immediate reaction or response. I can—I can then kind of de-escalate what's going on in my nervous system and approach it more—more constructively, I would say. That would have helped a lot of my relationships when I was younger. If I'd even known about the trauma and known there were, there were tools for coping with it that would have been really beneficial for me. I think I can—to answer that—the question about community that's really where I found most of this, most of what  . . .. No, I'm not coming up with these great original ideas that I—“I figured out this,I figured out that.” I—I just try to listen to people and—and find resources from people who are—who understand what it's like and who have—have come to some level of success in—in dealing with it. And I found a lot of that is in the dialogue. It's in the community where you're—you're sharing words. You're learning concepts and language. And you're offering support because you, you resonate, you empathize, you feel what people are feeling and their insights add to your own. Some of your words add to their insights, too. And you kind of—that's a strengthening that can happen. And that's a good feeling. So, even if we don't think of healing so much as, “I'm going to get over this, I'm going to get over primal wound” or something like this, we—we definitely learn, I think, to be more—more in tune with ourselves, more aware of how we're likely to act, more resourceful—again, I would take like to use that word. And also more supportive of other people. So, I—I really believe strongly in the community. I know it's not always a positive place. It's not always a positive place for everyone. But if you could do what you can within that community to make it as—as welcoming of a—of a space for everybody else and encourage them about their own stories, the value of what they have to say and share and benefit from that yourself. Then I feel like it just kind of grows and grows in that sense. So, for me. I don't know where I would have been without finding the community. A little—little less than three years ago I entered into the community. I thought, “I didn't know this existed.” I didn't really ever have interactions with other adoptees. And suddenly I was in groups with them and listening to them and learning, and it was so mind expanding, but it also allowed me to cultivate my own ability to give back to them and try to connect them where I could, too. That's—that's been really rewarding for me.

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LC: So much of it just reminds me of addiction recovery, and how it works, you know, like, just the peer support aspect is so important. And if you don't find a group like that, if—if a group feels, you know, if you if you're in addiction recovery and you go to a meeting that feels awful, it's like everyone there is in a different stage of healing than you are. Find—find the one that works, you know, like there, I mean, I think that it's starting to expand much more now, more kind of adoptee groups, and hopefully it keep—it will keep expanding. But if someone goes to one group and it's just not feeling good for them, you know, after some time they've really given it a shot. Go to another one, you know? Find your—the people that you feel, you know, connected with.

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Greg Gentry: Yeah, and I think the—the in-person part to—to the degree it's accessible and it's—I know, unfortunately not everybody can—can do that because you may not know who's around you, or know that there are other people out there. Support in person is just tremendous and also clears up potentials for misunderstanding you might have with somebody online. That's the—

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LC: Yes!

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Greg Gentry: That can happen too. And I feel like it also provides good—I know it's easy to think, “Oh, if you're in the community, all you do is talk about adoption. All you—" and you don't necessarily. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you just enjoy being in each other's company and talking about other things. So, it's not that this obsession 24 hours a day I've got to talk about adoption. It's all I think about, talk about. Those are all the people I talked . . . Sometimes you're talking to adoptees just as friends and connections—

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LC: Right

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Greg Gentry: In very everyday ways.

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LC: Yeah, it's like having a group of people that like, just get this very, you know, the—I don't know baseline thing, you—that not many other people get. And then having relationships from there.

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Greg Gentry: Yeah, definitely.

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LC: Alright well, before we wrap up, is there a specific place people might find you online, or the—information you want to give about how to get—find you?

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Greg Gentry: Oh, sure. So, Fireside Adoptees is—is a private Facebook group. So, we’d love to have adoptees in it. We also have a constellation group which is open. It's still private, but it's also open to anybody in—in the adoption constellation. We also have a—a Facebook page called Fireside Adoptees public page, so anybody can go look at that as well. We're also on Instagram, so anybody can go in and look at us there. For me personally, I'm on Instagram. I think it's @greggentry22 on any spaces, anybody would like to see me that I'm—I'm on Facebook. Hopefully I've been easy to find for anybody. But I love talking to people. I love connecting people where I can. And it's—it's a-—there is excitement in the journey. There's a lot of pain in the journey, but there's also some really rewarding things that have come out of it. So, I—I love to connect and enjoy hearing from people.

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LC: Great. Okay, well, thank you so much for coming on. It was awesome to talk to you a bit more and peop-—I'm sure you'll have some people, maybe get in touch with you from this. And as for our audience, please stay tuned for our next “Adoptees in 3.”