Heart to Heart

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose Reality Real Talks reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs and that one pill can kill.

Mike: I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: A while back we did a podcast about the challenges of raising children with mental health issues with Chrisa Hickey, who adopted children with very special needs. We wanted to follow up on that conversation today with Donna Pope, who is the director of Heart to Heart Adoptions in Utah. Welcome, Donna.

Donna: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thanks, Mike.

Mike: Well, i'm so glad you could be here and first of all, thank you for your work before I forget to say that. And, but let's start with you personally. You're an adoptive mom, right? So tell us about your family and your decision to adopt.

Donna: And then it's really interesting.

Donna: Okay first of all the, okay I'm stumbling a little bit because I started working with adoption. Ooh, it's been over 30 years ago, and I started because my sister was not able to have children. She adopted three children from one agency, and that agency actually reached out to me and said, would you be willing to house women while they are pregnant?

Donna: And they need a place to be. And so would you be willing to house them and support them through the adoption process. So I started doing that and in the process, got to know birth moms really well and feel a lot of love, compassion, respect for them. They almost all had some struggles either with mental health or with substance abuse.

Mike: Yep.

Donna: And so that became just, accepted. Now, that's not always the case with all the women that I work with now, but for the most part, the women that I worked with at that time, they had those problems. And one of these women actually she had been out on the streets of California, had lived there.

Donna: That's where she was living, is on the streets. Once in a while she'd be able to get into a hotel and stuff. I asked her one time what drugs she used and she said primarily crack cocaine. She said, but other than that, anything I could stuff in my body. She was just using anything.

Donna: And she came and stayed in my apartment. And so I got to know her really well. Now, at the time she was staying in my apartment, she didn't use hard drugs, but she of course did what she could to deal with her addictions. And I was aware that her child would be a drug child. And we couldn't find a family for him.

Donna: And so at one point she asked me if I would adopt him, and I agreed. After a lot of prayer and a lot of thought and talk with the family I said I would. Now, one of the challenges is when you choose to adopt a child, when you know that there's been every drug they could stuff in their body that he was exposed to, you just naturally know that you may have some problems.

Donna: He's 26 years old now. I love him with all my heart. All my heart. I love him. Has he had problems? Yes. This is a mother's love. He has had problems. And so learning how to cope with some of his challenges that have come about not of his own accord and still maintaining a close relationship with his biological mom, has been I would say a challenge, but it's more than a challenge.

Donna: It is a growth, development experience that if you don't grow and you don't develop, you can't meet the challenge. The challenge is beyond who you are, and so it forces you to have to become more than who you are in order to meet the challenge.

Mike: You probably learned as much about yourself as a...

Donna: Oh, for sure. For sure.

Mike: Do you have your own children?

Donna: I have three adopted children.

Mike: Three adoptive children. Holy moly. And so is this where heart to heart came from? Tell us about heart to heart.

Donna: And that, that's how it started. That's how it started.

Donna: Because in getting to know these women, there were some things I learned about them. And like I said, I felt such huge compassion and such huge respect. Think about this, just think about this. You are now a woman who has probably some struggles in your life. Either financial struggles, drug struggles, mental health issues, relationship problems.

Donna: So you're naturally a bit vulnerable. And then you get pregnant. Generally not of your own planning. But sometimes and then things maybe go bad. But you now make a decision and the decision is I'm not going to have an abortion. But I recognize I can't parent this child. And so you decide you are gonna carry this child all the way through a pregnancy and pregnancies are not easy. (laughs) They're not easy. And then you're going to deliver this child either by C-section or vaginally. You're gonna go through all that it takes to deliver this child into the world. And then the very time when most mothers feel the greatest joy.

Donna: That now they have this little baby that they went through all this to have. You give that child to someone else and now experience the loss that goes with that experience. That's tough.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Donna: That's just tough. And so I watched these women go through this and began to realize that sometimes the recognition of what they were going through was not apparent to adoptive families and certainly not apparent to the world in general. And so we started an agency with the idea that we would do all we could to try to make this experience for them, if not wonderful, at least loving. At least compassionate, at least as good as we could make it in a difficult situation. And so that's how we started the agency based upon that premise. And then trying to help adoptive families understand a little bit. Now, of course they have their own struggles and their own things that they're going through, but trying to help them feel the same respect and love. And so that's what we all started with. Now have we done a very good job? We've done the best we know. (laughs) And so we've been around and in the process have met and got to know thousands, tens of thousands of women going through this process.

Mike: You're based in Sandy, Utah.

Mike: Did I get that right? Yeah, correct. You belong to a network on your website. And by the way, you all who listen to podcasts know that I'll link Heart to Heart on the blurb. So how many adoptions have you assisted with? And you don't just isolate to Utah, you connect up with a larger network.

Donna: For sure. We have done about 2000 adoptions.

Mike: Oh my!

Donna: And we work with women not everywhere because it depends on the states and the laws of the states. Yes. And so where we can, we have learned that these women need options. That they need... A lot of times people feel like they need to work with just the person that's local to them. And sometimes that works really good and other times they need to get away, that they need to get out of the situation that they're in, or they need to work with somebody that's not local but nevertheless, they need options.

Donna: And so we work with women all throughout the United States.

Mike: For those not familiar with it, te just tell us a little bit about how the process of adoption goes. Because I think a lot of people who don't know would probably get their impressions based on a television show they saw.

Donna: Yeah. I don't know that I've seen very many television shows that represent it very well.

Mike: No. Shocking! Shocking!

Donna: (laughs) Yeah. What a surprise. No. So if we look at it from both sides. So when we think of adoption, we always think of we've, it used to be called the Triad, but now we've called the Constellation.

Donna: So there's four people involved in every adoption. There's the birth mother, there's who is responsible for the child. So first and foremost the child, and then the birth mother, and then if there's a birth father involved, then the birth father, and then the adoptive family. So we've got those four different partners and people. Now you always wanna act in the best interest of the child.

Donna: So you have to think what's in the best interest of the child. Now the person that knows what's in the best interest of the child best, is the mom. And she has to evaluate should I parent this child? Should I abort this child? Or should I place this child for adoption? And if she comes to the decision that she wants to place the child for adoption, then she has to make the decision of where, how, with whom, and almost all women needs support in that.

Donna: They need support in what options do I have? And then if I choose this option versus this option for this one, what are the consequences of that? So trying to know their options and then know what will happen if they follow any of those particular options. So the first thing we need to do is try to be really clear with them what their options are and then help them think it through.

Donna: And most of the time they're in situations that they need not only help with counseling and with making decisions, but actual housing and utilities and transportation and medical care and clothing and babysitting. One of the things that most people don't understand about birth moms is that they're on average 28 years old.

Donna: And if you would ask people, they would say about 16. No, the average age of birth moms is about 28. We have worked with far more birth moms over the age of 40, than we have worked with under the age of 18. (laughs) Women, teenage birth moms, that's a thing of the past.

Donna: And in part because most teenage birth moms will turn to their mom and get the support and help that maybe they need.

Donna: So most of these women and over 80% of them already have other children. So they 're in situations where they cannot raise another child. They're mature, they're capable. They just know that when they ask what is in the best interest of this child, my other children, my situation right now that they make the decision that an adoption plan is the best choice.

Mike: You touched on it a minute ago, but am I right that it differs depending on where you live? The rules, regulations.

Donna: Oh yeah, to some degree, but not tons. Not tons. Because so the first thing they need is just someone to help them through the options. The second thing they need is someone to help them get through the pregnancy or make a decision what to do with the child.

Donna: So sometimes that's actual physical support. And then the next thing that they mostly need is a family. And trying to find the family that they will connect with in the way that they need to connect with them to feel comfortable that this is a good decision.

Donna: Every birth mother has a dream in her head about what she wants for this child. Now, people will sometimes say that these birth moms don't care about their kids. That is so not true. They love their children deeply and in the process of trying to make good parenting decisions on the behalf of this child, a big part of it is finding the right family that they can imagine, oh, this little boy or this little girl is gonna be with this family, with this brother or sister or this dog or whatever is in the family and feel comfortable with it. So finding a good family and a family that will also have the kind of relationship with them that matters to them.

Donna: And we can get into this a little bit more but we feel that some sort of a relationship between the birth family, and the adoptive family is actually healthier for everyone. Now, that relationship needs to sometimes be moderated. It needs to be taken care of or have good boundaries associated with it.

Donna: But having some sort of a relationship is a positive thing.

Mike: I think that would be a surprising thing for a lot of people. Because the perception I think, the old perception is you hand the baby over and you don't know what happens next, and then later in life that child searches endlessly for their birth parent.

Mike: But you're talking about connecting those folks right off the get go.

Donna: For sure. My oldest son, who I cried about earlier, he was struggling and he was probably about eight years old, seven or eight years old. And I took him to a counselor and, the counselor invited me to step out and let her talk with my son.

Donna: And I had gone out into the waiting room and had sat down and I had barely sat down and she called me back in and I thought, what in the world did he say or say to her in that short amount of time that now I'm going right back in? So I went back in, you can guess what the question was. He said, why did my mom. I don't know if you said, give me up or place me for adoption. That question has to be answered. And so there's no better person to answer that question than the mom herself. Now sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes it's not even a great idea, but they need the answers.

Donna: Now, maybe she could write a letter, maybe. I have a good enough relationship with his mom that we had already talked about how to answer that question when it came up. And she of course had some emotions around it because the reason she had chosen it was drugs. It was because of her drug addiction and she felt shame around that and shame around I can't raise my child. She had an older child that she also didn't have custody of, but she was able, after she placed my son with me, she went to a drug rehab center and then she eventually ended up in jail where she made some significant changes and has since gone back, got her master's degree and is doing great, got custody of her other child back and is doing great.

Donna: But those are difficult discussions and not knowing the answers. (sigh) It's better if you know the answers and can tell them.

Mike: I've been doing this for a long time. And every adopted child that I ever worked with at some point, maybe there's an exception in here, but at some point they wanted to know.

Donna: They do.

Mike: And they wanted to know why. What's up? How do I look? A nd it doesn't reflect poorly on the adopted parents. It just is that curiosity, like what were the circumstances of it?

Donna: We all wanna know.

Mike: Yeah.

Donna: Y ou look at the commercials about people that get their DNA and find out they're from Ireland and now they're dancing around in a skirt. And we all wanna know, we all wanna know who we are, where we came from. We all wanna know these answers and that is especially true for children who maybe don't look like their adoptive family. They wanna know the answers.

Mike: I would also think that finding families who are aware of the challenges. That's part of what we wanted to talk about.

Mike: About a third of all adopted children have special healthcare needs, and then we have serious mental health concerns. We're already talking about drugs

Donna: For sure.

Mike: It takes a special family like yours to say, okay, I know what I'm gonna. I don't even know if they know what they're going to experience, but it's not going to be a smooth road necessarily.

Donna: No, it's never a smooth road. And no, when we adopt, we don't know what we're getting into. We walk in blindly and we love fully, and then we realize the challenges that are there, and then hopefully we grow up and we get better at dealing with the challenges. And so how do we grow up?

Donna: That's a big question. And your immediate response is, we'll get training. Okay. Okay. I'll go read a book and, yeah, go read books. I'll go talk to other people. Yeah, go talk to other people. I'll watch movies, I'll do whatever to try to learn how to do it. And all those things help. All those things help.

Donna: But ultimately the thing that helps the most is just loving deeply enough that you stick with it. And by sticking with it, you get a little stronger and you get a little stronger, and you get a little stronger, and then you get better.

Donna: It's like training for any sort of anything. You wanna be a marathon runner. You can read all the books you want, you can watch other marathon runners, you can watch movies. But the only way to really do it is to get out there and just do it. And then sometimes if you've got a good coach or somebody who can help you along, but more having other people who have gone through it, that will run with you and be with you, that helps the most.

Mike: I know you heard the conversation with Chrisa and her son with schizophrenia, 'cause you contacted me after that.

Donna: Yeah.

Mike: She moved from Chicago to a rural part of Wisconsin, simply to provide better environment for her son, even though there were less services. I think the thing that stuck out the most when I talked to her is she was afraid that his behavior would be viewed in a different way, and she thought his life was at risk, so she wanted to get him out of an environment where people didn't understand it.

Mike: So that community support, I would think is also important.

Donna: I just wanna hug her seriously. I just wanna hug her. And I just wanna say to every adoptive family who makes that big decision, who looks at their situation and says, I gotta do something different for this child. Or these children, and they suck it up and they just do it.

Donna: I just wanna hug them and say, yay for you! Yay for you! That's how I feel honestly about birth parents. Because that's what they do. They don't have the ability to move, they don't have the ability to do certain things, and they don't they recognize it. So they make the decision to place this child with somebody that they believe can provide the child with what they know they cannot.

Donna: And I wanna say yay for them.

Mike: Yeah. Do you do DNA testing or is any of that or if I'm an adopted adoptive parent. What do I know going in what, how much information do I get?

Donna: (laughs) Good luck. No I'm a little bit facetious because you can know there's some things we don't do DNA tests.

Donna: Though most adoptive families later on will do DNA tests for some reasons. But here are the challenges. The birth mother, if you can have conversations with her, then she can share things with her. If you can get the birth father involved, woo-hoo! And have him share things, then, but that doesn't happen a lot.

Donna: And you can see obviously why, because if there's a solid birth father there that's supporting her, then she doesn't need to do an adoption. Now that's not always the case. And sometimes you get good birth fathers that are there. So even for her sharing about herself. We then do what's called social and medical histories. Where they write about their parents and their brothers and sisters, and any drugs that they've been on or any heart diseases or anything that run through their family line.

Donna: You can get some genetics in that way. And that's really important. You can also get medical records, or at least some medical records that tell about the situation as well. But ultimately, even with all that information, you go into a blind, you go into it without a lot of knowledge of what's going to come down the road.

Donna: And so adoptive families have to be ready and able to do that. They can gather all the information they can, but ultimately there are things that you're never going to know. You just won't. And why don't you know them? Did people not gather enough information? There's only so much you can gather and some of the information may not be true.

Donna: And so you have to accept the fact that you may not be getting accurate information. You go that's not fair. No, it's not, but it is what it is. And so going into an adoption, knowing that's the case. Again, I asked my oldest sons, what drugs? And she couldn't give me an honest answer.

Donna: Not because she didn't want to. But she didn't know, she didn't know who the father was. Now, eventually we figured it out and we figured out who he was. And if I look at his genetic history, whew, that's craziness. And so going into it without a lot of knowledge is a challenge.

Mike: And I think that's just, there's some of that is normal because I've spoken to lots and lots of people over the years and on this podcast specifically, who had their own issues. Misdiagnosed forever.

Donna: Sure.

Mike: Or overlooked in some ways. And then you find out and then there's a giant aha as they're finally treated for what they've had all along.

Donna: For sure.

Mike: And that's just people who are looking, let alone people that don't know.

Donna: Yeah. And so this is a bad story. Should I tell you a bad story?

Mike: You can do it. Sure. It's a podcast.

Donna: You can tell me whatever story you want, whatever story you want. I had one adoptive family, and I to say it because how I handled it was probably not very good.

Donna: They were worried, they were super worried about. You know what's gonna happen and will this particular birth mom, will she place the baby for adoption with us? And that was her big concern. Their big concern was what if she changes her mind? What will we do? And my response was, woo-hoo!

Donna: And they go, what? I said, I don't mean that it's a wonderful thing. In fact, that's part of the problem is much of the training that we think of to try to become better, stronger people comes through heartache. And just the process of going through adoption. It can be really fun and it can be really easy, but not very often.

Donna: Most of the time it comes from several major disappointments and several really heart wrenching experiences. And so why would I say woohoo? Because what is the mom going through?

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Donna: Major disappointments, heart-wrenching experiences. And so when we've gone through some of those ourselves, we are better able to connect with others who are going through them themselves.

Donna: And we're able to be a coach running along in the marathon of adoption to try to help each other as we're going through them. And so we call it being seasoned. Families that go through real tough stuff, they become seasoned and you love those families. And foster families, whew.

Donna: They are some of the most seasoned families and you love them. They've been willing to take on heartbreak, struggles, drugs, all these kind of things and struggle with this child, loving and not giving up on them. And they become seasoned in the process.

Mike: You don't, this isn't a one off either.

Mike: You are continuing to provide help and support and services all the way through. And Donna, you blog, you're online, you have a podcast of your own. What do you hear most from adoptive parents? What are they concerned the most about?

Donna: I don't know if most that's a hard thing to do because they all are concerned.

Donna: Most adoptive parents choose to adopt a newborn. And the idea is I'm gonna take this newborn and I'm gonna raise this little girl or little boy as my own, and they're gonna just be wonderful. And sometimes that's the case. Sometimes that happens. There are families that are a little more prepared to take a two month old or a five month old or a year old, or a 2-year-old.

Donna: And immediately they know that they're taking on additional that are not just genetic or in uteral problems, but there are some parenting challenges that will come with those children and they take on those challenges and sometimes they just do amazingly well. So what are the big, as you take that child in your home?

Donna: Oftentimes without a lot of information, and now you're gonna stick with that child forever. Now, do all adoptive parents, are they successful? I would say 98% are, that those adoptions go on and their successful adoptions and those children do well and they're gonna have their struggles and every adoptee has their struggles and there's gonna be struggles.

Donna: But they get through 'em. They get through 'em. But there are some that they go, I can't do this. I can't do this. And that happens rarely, but it does happen. Those are the tragedies in my mind because the birth mother who put the hope and their trust in that family. And that's, if I were look at what one of the biggest concerns birth parents have, it's that if they place this child, that the family will not want them.

Donna: That they will at some point say, I don't want this kid anymore. They're afraid of that, and that rarely ever happens. But it does happen once in a while. And that's a big disappointment. It's a huge disappointment for the child because the child, every child needs that stability.

Donna: That unconditional love that comes in good families, and it's a disappointment for the adoptive family because then they feel like they have failed and it's a disappointment of their dream and their hopes. So we wanna go into it with our eyes as wide open as we can so that we prevent those things from happening.

Mike: You have to be, you talked about your son what'd you say? Seven or eight years old? Getting help from the counselor. You have to be willing to reach out if you're struggling. And so I'm wondering, we've talked so often about the challenges that people have finding help, finding resources in their communities, right?

Mike: So do you help bridge that as well for those communities you're working in? Hey, if you're struggling, you might wanna reach out here, there.

Donna: Yeah. Not as good as I want. And let me, so we're starting a new project. It's a new project. I'll announce it here on your thing. (laughs)

Mike: I'm honored.

Donna: I t's called Adoption Connection or Adoptions Connect.

Donna: And what it's gonna be is a platform just like Facebook or Google or it's gonna be a platform that we're creating where all people that provide services for adoptive and the primary services are for adoptive families, for birth families, and for adoptees, but also for children that come from the foster care system or from any other place. So those are the primary clients, and they're gonna be able to come on and find services. And so we're gonna invite everybody, counselors, lawyers, agencies, consultants, anybody that provides services, and we hope to have this place where they can come and then they can search and we'll, we have a connection engine where we'll try to connect the needs of people with the services that are provided.

Donna: Give me six more months. (laughs)

Mike: Awesome. When you get there, let me know and we will pump it up here for sure. That sounds really exciting.

Donna: Because there aren't enough, the services are out there, but finding them and connecting to them can be really challenging

Mike: Depending on where you live.

Donna: Exactly. Someone in Arkansas may not have the kind of services that Sandy Utah does.

Mike: Yeah.

Donna: And yet you need somebody in Arkansas, will need them. And so one of the great things about the pandemic was the increased use of online tools in order to get some of these services.

Donna: But I think the most important thing we're gonna do in this platform is create support groups. We're gonna have support groups for adoptees, support groups, for adoptive families, support groups for birth families. We're gonna have support groups because there's nobody that can give you better support than others that are or have gone through what you're going through.

Mike: That's awesome, Donna, I wanna be respectful of your time, so I'll let you go with this this little softball to end it with, talk about the joy. Because I can see it in your face.

Donna: Oh, the joy's there. You can also see it in my tears. And I think they come together.

Donna: You don't know the joy unless you know the pain. You don't know the happiness unless you know the misery. 'Cause it's the contrast that creates joy. It's the love that you have for somebody. I will admit that there was a time when I reached out to my family and I said, I'm failing.

Donna: I'm failing as a mom someone else. My children may, and I remember my brother wrote back to me and he said, I figured out where your children would be best. I thought, oh, tell me. He said with you. And I thought about it. Why with me, I'm no good. I'm not doing what I want. I am not being the mother that I want.

Donna: It's okay. Going back to our marathon. I may not be running the winning race, but I'm sticking in here. And we will stick together as a family and we will keep going and we will go to counselors and we will go to treatment facilities and we will deal with drugs and we will deal with whatever it takes, as a family and that's what matters.

Donna: Is that stick to it. Not that we're all that great, but that we stick to it and there's where the joy comes is I've done some good, if not all the good I want. I've done some good and I can find joy in that.

Mike: That's awesome. I have nothing to add to that at all. That is great. The program is Heart to Heart and their contact information is attached to the podcast.

Mike: For those of you listening, watching, we hope you find that hope, love, courage, and support wherever you are. As always, thanks for listening. Be safe, be healthy, and love the ones you're with.