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: Alright! Welcome to Adoptees in 3: Connecting Mind, Heart, and Action. Here we get to the heart of things with one adoptee by asking them the current state of their adoptee—adoptee journey through 3 questions based on heart, mind, and action. I'm LC Coppola. Hi, Miguel.
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Miguel: Hi! Hi LC!
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LC: Glad you're here.
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Miguel: Thank you.
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LC: I'm an adoptee (you know this) and the program director of Voices Unheard through BPAR (Boston Post Adoption Resources). As well as an adoption trauma-informed therapist, and I am so happy to have Miguel Caballero here with me today.
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Miguel: Why, thank you so much, LC. It's good to be here.
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LC: Miguel, I'll just do a little introduction of you. You're an adoptee in recovery from alcoholism. You've been a guest on the “Adoptees On” podcast, and you're one of the founders of the Adoptees and Addiction Online Meeting. After a successful advertising career, you're going back to school now to get your LMFT, in order to help more adoptees, which is very exciting. I—I've always felt grateful to have you as a voice, as a fellow person in recovery and an adoptee out there, and I remember the “Adoptees On” episode where you articulated that birth-mother-size hole. And I always bring that up to my clients.
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Miguel: Yeah, yeah, thank you.
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LC: Yeah. So, welcome! You wanna just dive into these questions?
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Miguel: Sure.
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LC: Okay. So, the first question, the “Mind” question, if you were to make a movie about your adoptee journey, what would you title it? I'm sure it might be different throughout different parts. But, what do you think?
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Miguel: I was gonna joke about and say it would be called “The Hangover” and like—
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LC: Nice.
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Miguel: That's—that's an earlier version of the story. I would say it would be “From Shame to Hope.”
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LC: Nice.
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Miguel: That would be the way to—to put it and—and give it a beginning and not an endpoint, because that's—we're still on our journeys, but to give it some change and some direction, and—and a feeling of not being so alone, and of not being so damaged.
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LC: And—and in the beginning of the journey there was like a cloud of shame. It sounds like just—
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Miguel: Yeah.
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LC: Been there.
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Miguel: Yeah, I don't have contact with my birth mother, but I did find out that she hid her pregnancy from her brother and sister-in-law while she was living with them. And so, you know, she was obviously ashamed. And I like to say, that like, I was marinated in amniotic shame and—
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LC: I think you said that on the podcast, right? Marinated in shame? I have definitely used that that—
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Miguel: Yeah.
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LC: That phrase. Yeah.
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Miguel: So, you know, unfortunately, there's a lot of feelings in a mother and a mother who may or may not get to keep the child, and may have not wanted to be pregnant, may be too young to have handled what's going on. And you know, that has consequences for the baby, which was me and I had a lot of shame for a long time. I just felt like there's something unlovable and worthless and unwanted about me. And I just—I really kind of lived that way, like I lived like people are gonna find out about me and then find out that same secret once that happened like I would be given up and not wanted. And, you know, that's annihilation. So, that was—that's the “From Shame” part.
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LC: Did addiction help with the shame?
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Miguel: Addiction covered the shame up for a little while and put a Band-Aid on it. But I started drowning that Band-Aid, and eventually was able to get to recovery and find a lot of healing, and find a lot of growth, and find a place where I felt seen and heard. But I also got the opportunity to use, like my compassion and my sensitivity, and all that in a way to help other people. And that was kind of a revelation—was to be able to feel good about helping somebody else, and thus feel kind of good about myself. Like, I think that was a very important part of my whole journey. And it's kind of why I feel hopeful. It's being able to help other people. And I saw a flyer up at one of the meetings I go to, and it said something like, “Be the person you needed 20 years ago.” And that like . . . that really struck me. I'm like, “Yeah,” like, “that's—that's a good goal.” Like, how—how can I help people coming in that are adoptees that are kind of overwhelmed by the twin problems of addiction as well as all their issues around adoption. And I've been through all those things. So, I feel like I have a subject matter expertise.
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LC: Yeah. I'm thinking, like, on the line of, you know, movie title. . . . If there was like a character, was there any characters in your movie that played that role for you?
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Miguel: I think we'd probably, like, in the movie need to like cram 3 different people together into one person. You know, having a sponsor certainly helped, having the people at the rehab, and then just sort of the—the Greek chorus of people at meetings. You know, people who are suffering, but also very hopeful, and then had found ways to manage their lives a lot better in a way that was really attractive.
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LC: I wonder like, if—if you met another adoptee in a meeting that was like, you know, first month sober. Is there anything particular you'd want to say to them about like the recovery world?
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Miguel: Yeah. What I would say to somebody that was new to recovery, that was an adoptee—I would say something along the lines of, “You'll find a lot of understanding and you'll find a lot of compassion in these—these rooms. You'll also find peop—find people that have no idea about adoption” and they mean very well, but unfortunately there hasn't been a bunch of big movies or TV shows that show people how to like, relate to adoptees in like the—the best, most positive manner, you know. So, we don't—culturally we don't know what to do. We're just been told this story about how it's “So great! The adoptee gets to be placed in the family, and the family can have kids, and it's all wonderful, and everyone's happy.” And that's the image that most non-adoptees have in their heads when they're talking to an adoptee. And you can get some very random ideas about how to deal with your adoption trauma when you just talk about it in the rooms, and some people may be outright hostile to you talking about it. I—my personal opinion is that a lot of the recovery rooms don't deal well with trauma. They're not particularly trauma-informed. Nor should they be. They're not professionals, but I—I think there's-there's a lot of—a lot of missteps happen. When people are dealing with someone who's been traumatized and they don't know what to say or what to do, and the tool that they happen to have is the 12 steps. Like, “Oh, you just apply the 12 steps to it, and you're no longer to feel that trauma from your childhood. It's great.”
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LC: Right. And then, yeah, that idea of like the adoptee seeing the shame more clearly that they've experienced their whole life and like, maybe starting to talk about it, and then, it being, you know, encouraged to be put aside again. Just . . . it's tough. Alright.
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Miguel: Yeah, I would say, that's the reason that the adoptees and addiction meaning is not an official 12 step fellowship. Is that we . . . a lot of the people who come have had those bad experiences in 12 step rooms and get kind of upset about it, which is not to say you shouldn't go to 12 step like, I think you need to stop drinking if that's the problem before you can really deal with the adoptee issues on a much clear, better, healthier level. It's—if you're getting wasted all the time, you're not probably gonna experience a lot of change.
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LC: Right. Right. Yeah. You can ease the pain, but . . .
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Miguel: Yeah.
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LC: Change probably isn't gonna be substantial. So, the next question, you kind of got into it a little bit, but what advice would you give your adopted younger self?
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Miguel: You know, I'm—I'm sure that people told me this, and I don't know—I don't know how to reach that kid, but I would say, like, you know, “You really are a good person to the very core of your being. You're a lovable, worthwhile person and you don't have to act as though everyone you meet is going to abandon you. . . .”
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LC: Yeah.
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Miguel: Now, would that work to 15-year-old me? I don't know. My prefrontal cortex wasn't developed. But maybe you know, maybe if I—
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LC: Oh, okay. I’ll just—
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Miguel: Maybe yeah.
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LC: Yeah. Do you ever do any like inner child stuff like, imagine yourself at that age now, when you're when yourself at that age gets activated?
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Miguel: I try. It's what the dealing with dysregulation, I think, is one of the harder parts of our journey, and I don't think we—I think we can get much better at it. I don't think the goal is to completely stop it from happening. It's to be able to recognize it faster and then regulate faster. I think that's a big part of it. And yeah, it—it can work at times and other times I just have to say, “Alright, I'm just gonna be really deregulated for a while and tonight we're just gonna watch reruns of ‘Friends’ and kinda be a little bit neurotic and miserable, and tomorrow we'll take a deep breath and go back into the things we need to do.”
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LC: Yeah. Yes, the chill out times are so—I mean, I try to sleep 9 to 10 hours a night, and I'm just like I'm adapting, you know what. I need the rest because we're so hypervigilant and it's we're so over. . . . You know, I feel like in general, we're so like, have a million things spinning around in there because of our systems, you know. Need the rest sometimes to just zone out.
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Miguel: That's right.
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LC: Okay. So, for the “Heart.” (Oh, we did that one.) So, for the “Action” question: how are you healing today? What's working for you these days?
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Miguel: Yeah, what's helping me heal these days? I think being involved in the Adoptees and Addiction Meeting is really helpful and being able to be there for other people when they're having a hard time. And that's not necessarily just in the Adoptees and Addiction Meeting. It's not necessarily a 12 step. It's just when someone's suffering and having hard go of it to be able to listen to them in a very vulnerable, connected way like that. That always makes me feel a little better about myself, like there's I don't know. There's just something in that compassion that like. . . it feels like part of the reason we're here on the planet is to help other people. And that's just, I don't know. It's-it's nice when you get those moments of vulnerability and authenticity from somebody else.
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LC: Yeah.
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Miguel: And then you have to do that with other people and being vulnerable and authentic. And I'm still not great at it. I wanna present the perfect picture. I don't wanna tell people I spent 8 hours yesterday on my phone and knowing that it was not a worth—worthy use of my time, and knowing as a distraction dopamine mechanism. Like, keep away from my feelings. But I'm also, I'm gentler with myself, and I think that's a result of healing. Yeah, I can understand why you have these like big feelings. You want to get away from them. Like, I can understand how, looking at Instagram or looking at Twitter/X for hours is a way to regulate. I'd love to say that makes it easy to then not do it again. But you know, Elon, Steve Jobs and friends, they—they know how to get us.
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LC: It is very hard with the phone addiction. This is an area that I mean, it's affecting everyone. The Atlantic just came out with an article about the phone-based childhood and it—it really it was like an you know, you can listen to the article. So, it was like an hour long. So, it's a very long article. But it took a lot of the research and just really talks about how it's like, at a certain age they didn't even get a shot to not be addicted. You know it's—
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Miguel: Right.
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LC: It is so hard. I remember I tried to go to some technology addiction meetings and it—it was like, there's only one that I could find in Massachusetts, and it was all gamers and I'm not a gamer. I'm just can't get off my phone, you know. So, it's tough. We—we have a lot to learn, and—and I think a lot to implement in terms of recovery around that.
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Miguel: Yeah, there's a podcaster I like and he thinks that in the same way that we look back at like movies from the seventies, where people are like smoking on airplanes. We're gonna look back at this time and see kids with their phones. And we're like, “Wait. We let our kids use those all the time?” Like, “What were you thinking? That's so disruptive and so destructive.”
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LC: Absolutely! It's—I hope we get there, you know. And yeah, it's terrifying. I mean, it causes so many problems in our, you know, with our mental health and even physical health and sleep cycle. I mean, it's endless, you know. I could talk about that forever because I'm like all rubbed up about it lately. But alright. So, before we wrap up, I do wanna let people know where—if someone wants to find out about you more, is there somewhere you want me to direct them, or—
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Miguel: Yeah.
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LC: Can you tell us about this adoption and addiction meeting?
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Miguel: Sure. I think—happy to put my email address and attach to this. It's migtastic, (which is like fantastic. But M-I-G at the beginning) @gmail.com. Please just send me a note. You heard me on the podcast. And if you want the meeting links, or you just want to talk like awesome. Let's do it. We have a website that I keep meaning to update, even though I haven't in the past 4 years. But it will still get you to the right things. The—it's just adopteesandaddiction.com. And there it'll tell you how to get a hold of us and get you the zoom info. Cause we don't wanna post the zoom info, because there's still zoom bombers out there.
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LC: Yeah, I think I was in one of the meetings. And that happened. Remember that? Yeah. Okay, well, it was so—I'm so glad that you were able to do this—do this interview with me, and it was good to see you and thank you for everything that you're doing in this adopt—with adoptees and addiction world.
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Miguel: Yeah, it's my pleasure and I can't wait to—to hop on, and also be a fully licensed person someday in the future.
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LC: Yes, that will be awesome. Alright, thank you, Miguel. And we're gonna invite everyone to come watch—to continue watching these Adoptees in 3 episodes, and good day.
