What to Know About Transracial Adoption with Angela Tucker

Jennifer Norman:

Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. My name is Jennifer Norman, founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. The Human Beauty Movement is a social lifestyle platform dedicated to inspiring radical inclusion, true holistic wellness and environmental sustainability in our world. We're a global human collective that connects to inspire diverse modalities of self expression, personal growth and individual journeys of self love. I created this podcast to have open conversations about all aspects of the human experience. When we're curious, kind and courageous, we evolve powerfully as individuals and thrive as a human race. So take a moment now to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.

Jennifer Norman:

And while you're listening, share this episode with someone who comes to mind. There's a reason why that person popped into your head. It's your intuition telling you to connect and show you care by saying, hey, I'm listening to this podcast right now and I thought of you. So share this episode with them so they feel the love and can benefit from its message. I'm so glad that you're joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:

Today we're going to talk about a subject that is near and dear to my heart. It's the emotional and highly complex topic of adoption. So many parents are viewed as saviors and saints for adopting children and for good reason. And on the flip side of the coin, so many adopted children are reminded throughout their lives of how they should be so grateful for being adopted. I'm so pleased to welcome my special guest, Angela Tucker, to join me today for this conversation. Angela is a black woman adopted from foster care to white parents. Her debut book, You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity and Transracial Adoption has received wide acclaim. Angela is the founder and executive director of the Adoptee Mentoring Society, and she is the subject of the documentary Closure, a movie that chronicles her search for her biological parents. As a film producer, author and cultural commentator, Angela has appeared on CNN Al Jazeera, The Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith, in The New Yorker, and has consulted for renowned shows like Broadway's Jagged Little Pill and NBC's This Is Us. Welcome to the show, Angela.

Angela Tucker:

Thank you so much. So glad to be here.

Jennifer Norman:

I want everyone to know what a pioneer you are in making it okay to reshape how we talk and think about adoption. You have to tell everybody what your story is.

Angela Tucker:

Let's see. Yeah, that's a big question. I was adopted from foster care out of the state of Tennessee all the way to Washington State to my parents, who adopted a total of seven others and one biologically. When I was born, there was likely substances in my body in utero exposure that made it such that the doctors gave me a diagnosis of spastic quadriplegia saying I would never walk. And that really limited the field for people who were interested in adopting me. And it is ultimately what led Tennessee to seek out my parents in Washington who had adopted all these other kids with medical needs, disabilities. So my parents had a really strong medical community that was going to be able to support my needs. However, I didn't end up actually having spastic quadriplegia.

Angela Tucker:

And this is part of many adoptees stories that there is information that is incorrect or half true for any number of reasons. But yeah, so I was adopted into a closed adoption. I didn't know who my birth parents were. I couldn't know anything about my origins until my 21st birthday, at which point I petitioned the state of Tennessee to give me my original birth certificate, which would have my birth mother's full name on it, and would allow me to then try to find her. And so through some rocky times, ups and downs, I ended up finding her and my biological father, who had no idea that I existed. And it's been about ten years that I've known them. And in that time, I've done a lot of advocacy around adoptees and us feeling a little more in control of our narrative, which has led to, ultimately, this new book.

Jennifer Norman:

Yeah. Now, I know that every adoption story is different, and I think that people listening would probably say, oh, my gosh, your parents, they adopted seven children, each with medical condition. My God, they must be angels.

Angela Tucker:

Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:

I myself, being an adopted person who also has two adopted siblings, I came from South Korea, my brother and sister came from Vietnam after my parents had three of their own kids. I know that that was the sentiment that everybody on the outside would say is like, my God, your parents are such angels. And I would pretty much go along with that too. I'd be like, yeah, they just wanted to save the world one child at a time. And so it was always seen as a benevolent act. And no question there is an amount of heart and love in order to want to take other children that are not your own in. And I know that your parents had very strong views about children and zero sum and all of those sorts of fascinating things, but people might be like, wait a minute. She wanted to open up her files? She wanted to go back and learn about her…like, why on earth would she want to rock the boat? And so I'm sure that a lot of people question that from the outside. What is the motive, and why would you do that? Why won't you just be grateful for what you have?

Angela Tucker:

Exactly. Yeah. My mom's name is Teresa. So oftentimes it was people would say.

Jennifer Norman:

She'S Mother Teresa, my middle name is Theresa. And the same thing, so easy.

Angela Tucker:

It's so tempting. I think it's important to peel that back. When you think about those statements from the adoptees’ perspective, so many of us didn't want to think this way. But really deep down, I think for many adoptees, if we have these parents who are just like out of this world, special, saintly, perfect people who just did this amazing thing, then inevitably adoptees are going to internalize a message that we are bad or unwanted or really hard or something only certain people could handle. And for many adoptees that even if it's unconscious, it lends itself to adoptees feeling the need to be perfect to please their parents in every way. Some adoptees have told me that they feel like they need to be a good return on investment for their parents work in adopting them.

Jennifer Norman:

Interesting.

Angela Tucker:

That's really concerning, right? For me, I'm thankful that my parents, they really refuted that statement. When people said like, oh my gosh, you're amazing for what you've done, they would typically just say like, we're just parents.

Jennifer Norman:

They deflected.

Angela Tucker:

I know they were very I really appreciate that. And then they also went a step further to say, and we bet our kids really want to know where they came from and who they came from. And what I love is my parents genuinely wanted to know who gave birth to me because there was a sentiment that if they love me, which they do, they must love where I came from. And that was really freeing for me. I really did. I'm grateful. It's hard to build a confident, solid life on shifting sand. And I think when adoptees don't know where we came from or why we had to be adopted or who our parents are or who our family is, that's shifting sand, that's not the picture of the rooted tree that you see when people build out their family trees.

Angela Tucker:

The reason that tree is strong is partially because of the root system. So adoptees just don't have that.

Jennifer Norman:

Now. Certainly there are situations where the parents would get very offended if the child would ever say, I really want to find my birth parents. They may think, oh my God, am I not doing enough? Am I a bad parent? Why would you even want to after all I've done for you? And there definitely could be that dynamic in a lot of placed families. It sounds like your adopted parents were very open and very much saying, we embrace the fact that you want to have this search. I don't know if they encouraged it or it was something that came after a bit of discussion, but it seems to me that they were not as put off by the topic or about your actions.

Angela Tucker:

Right, yeah, they absolutely supported me in the search so much, they traveled to Tennessee with me. They were right there when I first saw laid eyes on my birth mother and my birth father. I'm so grateful they were there. I think for them, supporting me in my search is no different than supporting me in growing up, learning to play basketball. Their duty as a parent is to support their kids to become what they want and that they remove all the obstacles in order to do that. So for me to have a sense of complete identity, it meant finally laying eyes on the person that birthed me and someone that looks like me. And they also don't have something that I see a lot in adoptive parents, which is like a sense of ownership over their kids. Like because I adopted you, you're mine.

Angela Tucker:

I am parent. My parents really have a broad definition of family. I really love it. It's kind of what I've based a lot of my book on, which is they're not particularly aligned with the nuclear family structure. Like they don't really believe that two parents alone should be responsible for all things for a child. And that's really lovely. So many adoptions involve other people and to bring them in, in a way that you can. Even for me, having a closed adoption, we didn't know my birth parents.

Angela Tucker:

It still felt like they were present in that I mentioned basketball. I love playing basketball and sports. It was really common for them to say you must have gotten your athletic skills from somebody in your birth family. But growing up there was always that kind of language, which just to me reinforced this idea that it's okay for me to talk about the fact that I came from someone else, which I think is not always true for adopted people.

Jennifer Norman:

Do you think it's more apparent being transracially adopted? It's interesting because I know with some individuals who are not transracially adopted that may look more similar to the adopted parents. Then it's almost cloaked in secrecy, like oh, I didn't even know that I was adopted until I was a teenager, or I found out that I was adopted later in life and it's kept as a secret from them almost in shame.

Angela Tucker:

So sad about that. And I don't think that my parents openness is due simply to the difference in our race and the fact that it was so obvious that I came from somewhere else. I think it was more the idea that they have a respect for birth parents. They respect that somebody else is connected to me and they adopted white kids as well. So people who wouldn't automatically assume they were adopted, but their philosophy was the same where did you come from? We wish we could know. This is as much as we know. I think it's really damaging to hide that aspect because honestly, I think the adoptee identity could be one of pride. Instead of an assumption that it's a secret, it's a bad thing, it's something we should hide and just pretend like didn't happen.

Angela Tucker:

It also makes it really hard to heal. And there is trauma with adoption. Even if you're adopted into a same race family, even if you're adopted 1 minute after you were born, there is a trauma of being separated from your first parent. If we don't bring out into the open, it's a little seed that's festering for a long time. And I think that's where a lot of adoptees struggle because they think I have these great adoptive parents who love me and have provided for me everything, but I have this little simmering feeling of like I don't fit in or something's wrong. And that I feel like is one of the greatest disservices to adoptees is that sense that if we have nice adoptive parents who care for us, then everything is perfect. Our body knows that there's been a trauma. It's really important to name it.

Jennifer Norman:

It is. It's very difficult, I know, in growing up. And certainly my being adopted was no secret because I look different from my parents. My father's Caucasian. My mother's Caucasian from England. And so it was pretty obvious there was no hiding it. But yet, even while growing, I just felt wrong. I felt like I didn't fit in and I couldn't figure out what it was, I couldn't figure out why.

Jennifer Norman:

But it was just like I had such a different innate nature that caused me to think differently, to behave differently. I'm sure I had ADD. I'm sure I had just a lot of issues and proclivities that were just not necessarily like anybody else in my family. And even to this day, I feel like I'm just very different from anybody there. And I also felt that it would have been really, really heartbreaking if I ever wanted to go back and find my birth parents. I would never even bring it up. It was just something that would go, like I said, unsaid.

Jennifer Norman:

And from their perspective, they would always say things like, oh, raising Jennifer, Jonathan, Melissa, it's just like raising other children. They would say that very overtly, probably thinking innocently that that was the case, not knowing that there are these inherent things inside that are so difficult and complex that they would not have been able to serve and I would not have been able to express the way that they could have been served.

Angela Tucker:

It's something I hear a lot, especially from older adoptees who maybe were adopted in the Baby Scoop era, which was in the 50s in America, is they will say things like, I'm just going to wait until my adoptive parents die before I search and do anything. And it's this idea that we don't want to hurt their feelings and at the same time we want to know our roots. And that is such a sad conundrum to be in the middle of.

Jennifer Norman:

And some will do it on the side and then do it in secrecy. Yes.

Angela Tucker:

Having my parents with me along the whole search was partly one of the reasons I've been able to heal from the initial trauma. That my birth mother, when we found her, she said, I don't know who you are, you need to leave.

Jennifer Norman:

I saw that part of your documentary, Closure, that was really hard.

Angela Tucker:

But having my adoptive parents there is really what helped me get through it. So it's really sad for me when adoptive parents don't realize you do want to parent your adopted children differently. Like where your parents said, all our kids are the same. We treat them all the same. That's such erasure. Your cultural background essentially asking all of you to assimilate into whiteness and into American ideals, culture, I think it's really cruel because that's a beautiful part of ourselves. It is. Unless parents are willing to kind of make drastic changes in their lives, like moving to a different area of town or getting really clear on their implicit biases that they might hold around people who look like their kids.

Angela Tucker:

Unless they're able to outsource some of the parenting duties, like asking people who look like their kids to step in and play different roles, then, yeah, I don't think it's safe for a kid to be adopted outside their race because it will inevitably lead to an erasure of self. If parents are colorblind, and typically, then adoptees are, like, 20. They go off to college, they leave their parents’ home, and then there's this identity crisis. And that's a lot of my work with adoptee mentoring society is around that time period, and it's for adoptees who are, like, had great parents, they were wonderful. But now I'm on my own, and I am just I don't know who I am. I don't know where I belong. I don't fit in over here, I don't fit in over there. Exactly that struggle, and I don't think we need to keep perpetuating this cycle.

Jennifer Norman:

It's one of the reasons why I have come to believe that it's so important for us to find ourselves. And I think that a lot of adoptees will try to chase identity because they'll latch on to the culture in which they're growing up and they'll feel not quite right. It's like shoes that don't fit quite right. And so they end up having these identity crises and not really knowing who they are. A lot of the reason why I started the human beauty movement is to help to foster this desire for us to come back to ourselves and to really know ourselves and to really feel into our own bodies, into our own souls, and recognize that we are individual from how we were raised. We're different from the society and what society tells us. And being true to yourself is not easy when you've got a lot of noise coming at you from various aspects of what you should and should not do. I always say, “don't should on yourself, girl”. “Stop shoulding on yourself”. That is a triggering word for me.

Jennifer Norman:

But you found some really interesting things going on behind the scenes of what goes on in some adoption agencies. And not to say that this is happening rampantly, but there are certain things that have occurred that you have noticed that I think are important for people to have their eyes open to. Can you share some of that?

Angela Tucker:

Adoption agencies, which in a lot of the work, there's a difference between a foster care agency, a state department, and private adoption. So starting with private adoption, I was working at a private adoption agency for quite a while and just saw the ways there were some really seemingly insignificant things that were happening. So if a social worker is not an adoptee, they might be meeting with a woman who's pregnant. And in the case notes, just write, like, a sentence that's devoid of any feeling. Just like, I met with so and so today they're eight months pregnant and deciding on adoption, that small little interaction for so many adoptees is like gold. So telling us, actually writing a case note that says, this woman came in with a bright pink dress on, had these people with her in tow, like, just filling out the story that could be such a gift to adoptees. So I started kind of advocating internally that we not take for granted those precious moments that someone may want to know down the line. And so then I ended up creating this program called the Adoption File Initiatives, where I audited essentially all the files from 1950 to 2000, which was a couple hundred files at this agency to excavate the documents within each file.

Angela Tucker:

These are files that adoptees cannot have, and many people don't even know they exist. But inside of the files were things like the hospital band for a baby. And I thought, maybe the birth mother wants that, maybe the adoptee wants that. Why is it collecting dust in our files here? Notes, cards, gifts, things that a birth mother would say, I want my child to have this picture of me when they turn 18. Please pass it along. And the agency would just file that away and not have a system to look back. And so I started with that project. It's pretty powerful, getting even just statements back to their rightful owners, much less actual objects.

Jennifer Norman:

I was blown away by what was written about your birth mother in the file and how she was described. It really took me aback.

Angela Tucker:

Yeah, my birth mother struggled with houselessness, and so there were comments about her appearance and about her clothing that she was wearing and her smell. This is actually not uncommon, sadly, is that I do not assume that the social workers were mean or had ill intent. But our deep biases that we hold, this is where they start to come through. And there's oftentimes a general sense that people who are poor or homeless, a lot of people who are black, cannot parent as well as a white person in middle class neighborhood. And I really don't believe that's true. I don't think that poverty, for example, is a good enough reason for a child to have to be adopted. But our communities perhaps could step up because there's a false equivalency and a message that's really difficult to tease out. But growing up, my belief that my birth mother didn't love me or didn't want me was perhaps not true.

Angela Tucker:

But if she worked with social workers who automatically viewed her as dirty, couldn't ever possibly parent her child, she was also then given a message. And that message, I hear it still today when I hang out with her, which is, I could never do what your parents did. Basically, the societal messaging she has gotten is like, she is completely unfit to become a mother. It really breaks my heart.

Jennifer Norman:

Yeah. And that's the language. When I was reading that in your book, I felt that the social worker was almost trying to make a point, like we're doing this child a favor by taking this child out of the hands of this woman and describing it with such derogatory terms, I would say. And instead, we're going to place this child with another family that can be so much more beneficial. And so perhaps they were doing what they felt was the right thing, but it was just so interesting and very telling, to your point about the biases coming very, very clear.

Angela Tucker:

That's what social workers are taught.

Jennifer Norman:

Yeah.

Angela Tucker:

We actually have to change that system going back a little bit because it's not an individual gripe. It's a collective and systemic belief that we all hold, unfortunately.

Jennifer Norman:

And so let's talk a bit about that in terms of adoption, whether we like it or not in our culture and society, it's kind of a business. It's kind of a business, isn't it?

Angela Tucker:

There is a supply and demand. When I was working at an adoption agency, I had a stack of 50 books. And these are these profile books that prospective, hopeful couples will create to show their life, that then we pass those books along to women who are pregnant and not knowing what to do. So I had a stack of, like 50 of these books where couples showed their beautiful homes and their golden retriever and their white picket fence and just presented this picture of perfection. And it was really strange to put a whole bunch of books in front of a woman who really wanted to keep her child but didn't have financial support to do it. And then to watch her do this process of choosing based on materialistic things and vice versa for families to advertise themselves, essentially was a really strange experience for me to really see the business of it, the commodification of unborn children. I would talk to many of these parents to say, might you consider adopting a child who's in foster care and needs a home? And their response would be, no, we really want a baby. So then we would start, like shopping.

Angela Tucker:

And they would say, we really want the birth mother to be this race, and we want her to not have done any drugs or smoked. So I was really seeing the business, and that was eye opening, really sad, difficult to know how to handle the reality that it is a supply and demand issue, as well as we often capitalize on big world events. So for you, Korean War, I remember after the Russians invaded Ukraine, I got some emails right away from people that said, I'm available to help to adopt or foster a Ukrainian kid. And there is no need. That is not our duty. But this jumping in when there is a crisis. The Haitian earthquake was another example of it, that's American exceptionalism, where we do believe that we are better than other places and that we have a right to other people's kids.

Angela Tucker:

Instead of first thinking, how can I support this community, the society, to stay together, to stay intact.

Jennifer Norman:

What would your opinion be on, say, Angelina Jolie, who goes and adopts quite a few from Africa, Madonna did the same, going to Malawi and adopting. Would you say, would it be better to actually put funds into that particular community and build up?

Angela Tucker:

The communities want their kids, so sometimes people don't know, but I've known a few black birth parents who've chosen to have their children adopted out of America because of just how racially divisive our culture is. And people are like, what? We would send American kids out of our country? That's crazy! That's terrible! And I'm like, okay, let's flip it on its head. We take kids from Ethiopia, from Haiti, from different places and call it great. So where is the disconnect? The assumption that Angelina Jolie, that Madonna, that Americans have something that other places don't is really savioristic. It's an example of saviorism. Instead of thinking, if this child needs a family, perhaps there are kin available, fictive, kinship.

Angela Tucker:

So perhaps there is an auntie, a grandma, a brother, a teacher in that community that would love to raise this child and is capable of raising the child before sending them across the world to virtual strangers.

Jennifer Norman:

Just to make this fair and balanced. I know that I have heard a lot of stories about celebrities who go and travel for either tourism. They might come across a community in some cases, perhaps they're doing some volunteerism or building churches or what have you, and people are coming with their babies and coming with their children and saying, take my child, take them because I can care. And so there certainly are those situations where they feel like, oh my gosh, I have five mouths to feed. I cannot feed a sixth. And there might not be the birth control.

Angela Tucker:

Yeah, I still don't think it's like, even if a person comes to you as you're traveling in another country and says, I need help, the answer isn't just taking the child. There are so many other options, but it's difficult because our emotions are so high, we fall in love with a baby again. That's where kind of America has a principle of thinking that we are best equipped at different things, and we're unable to see how a community can, with support, stay together. And that's really important. We see this a lot in mission trips, in voluntourism, in ways that we go and claim to be helping when perhaps it's hurting. We have evidence of this in the sense that there is a lot see, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a study that said one in four adoptees who are in therapy are attempting suicide. And this, to me, furthers this point, not that our adoptive parents are harming us, but that the deracination from our culture and our people cause us to feel so lonely, isolated, that sense of not belonging overwhelms us.

Jennifer Norman:

Yeah. And I've heard many, many an individual say the very same thing as just like they have need for community, the need for support, the hunger to reach out and understand their background, their heritage, let alone your actual birth date. I don't even know my real birth date. What your medical records are or what the family history might be in terms of medical situation unknowns that are like a hole in your heart.

Angela Tucker:

A hole in your heart is right. People don't really think about biological privilege, which means going to the doctor without any anxieties because you'll be able to call your mom and say, do we have a history of breast cancer in the family? And they'll say yes or no. But just the fact that we cannot do that, so many of us, and the anxiety that that causes the need then for us to explain our origins and our migration patterns to doctors or in school. The family tree assignment comes up feeling like, oh, my goodness, I can't fill this out. There's just a lot of reminders that we aren't quite regular.

Jennifer Norman:

For sure. Yeah. I think one of the biggest ones for me was when my son was two years old. He started to present with ataxia and spasticity, fell into a coma for three months, and was not expected to live. And it turned out that he was diagnosed with a very rare genetic disorder, which hello, is maternally inherited. And all of a sudden, I was like, I had no idea. And I felt so guilty. And I can remember saying to his father at the time, I'm so sorry, I thought that it was my fault.

Jennifer Norman:

Like, I really thought that it was my fault. And then at that point, I was like, what can I do to find my birth parents in order to figure out what's going on? Because it was very unknown, and it still is, right? At that point, it's like everything, your whole life comes before you and says, why didn't I learn more? Yeah. Oh, I was filled with so much guilt, so much guilt.

Angela Tucker:

That's the thing that the folks who are going overseas to adopt this three year old, you don't realize the generational impacts your decision is about to have uprooting. And for you, your son has this. And that all stems back to a belief that adopting across the world is not just good, it's great, it's the wonderful thing to do versus the reality of the holes in our story will rear their heads and make life really tricky, for sure.

Jennifer Norman:

So let's talk a little bit about, because I know that there's probably going to be a lot of people listening and who follow you who are like, I want to make sense of what's going on inside me. I do feel all these emotions. What can I do to help resolve? I know that you went to therapy and that definitely was a good cathartic way for you to figure a lot of things out. Are there things that you've learned along the way and from the stories that you've heard of other adoptees that have been really helpful for them to come to some sort of resolution or a sense of closure, if you will?

Angela Tucker:

I think meeting other adopted people seems to be a really huge moment for a lot of adoptees. Just being in the same room as other adopted people with that being out, like that being the focus, can feel really exciting and overwhelming for so many folks. Once you're in community with other adopted people, it's a beautiful thing to start gaining language for the things that you're experiencing that you never knew. There was a term for things like transracial adoption. There's adoptees who didn't know that was a word, or transnational or ambiguous loss, like describing what that means, which is this phenomenon where you might have ambiguous loss can be one of two things somebody that is physically present but psychologically absent, or somebody who is physically absent but psychologically present. So for a lot of adoptees, the latter is our case that in our brains, our birth people are in our heads, but they aren't physically there. And so that ambiguous loss really doesn't have a place in society to talk about it freely and openly. So with other adoptees, you can do that.

Angela Tucker:

That's like the place that I go first. Which is why I created the Adoptee Mentoring Society to be this place in between friendship and therapy. Because I don't think all adoptees need therapy per se. We don't need fixing, but actually we need like a two way relationship with another adoptee who can be there for us as we kind of excavate and try to make sense of our stories.

Jennifer Norman:

Yeah, there is great power, as we know, in the phrase “me too”, we relate, there's just like, yeah, I get it. I can empathize I can understand that thing, that feeling that you're feeling. I felt it too, I get it. And you're not crazy. You're not wrong.

Angela Tucker:

It's really beautiful when I sometimes speak at adoption camps, and sometimes they're transracial adoption camps, and there's some problematic aspects of camps, but one beautiful part is seeing a whole bunch of transracial adoptees in a room, and one of the kids could yell out to their mom and a white person would turn around and attend their child and nobody thinks twice about it. Everybody understands, yes, that's this kid's mom. And that freedom, as opposed to being out in the space where it's not just adoption, where people look at you like, wait, that's your mom. How did that happen? Why is that your mom? Where's your real mom? Just the freedom of not having anyone question it. I can see such relief in the kids’ faces and their behaviors. It's really quite beautiful. I remember those moments where I would get excited to introduce someone to my parents, but forget that I needed to let them know that the parents are white, wait for you to meet my parents, then they would come over, they'd.

Jennifer Norman:

Look around.

Angela Tucker:

Oh, yeah, you don't know that. These are just the people I call my parents. And it's normal to me.

Jennifer Norman:

So what is life like now for you? You've been able to obviously have your birth parents in your life since the documentary and the discovery and all of that. And you've got a wonderful husband who also seems like your partner in crime as well. Can you tell me how things are going?

Angela Tucker:

Oh, yeah. We are grateful for the life that we live. I love mentorship, so mentoring over 200 adoptees and trying to build out a nonprofit to equip other adoptees to become mentors. And that's been a thrilling endeavor, a wonderful project. In addition to that, doing work with my husband in filming, we've done a few short documentaries around topics of adoption. We did one last year called Lisa in Azelle, and it's about this biological father who has been searching for his daughter for 50 years and found her when he was 85. And I love it because we kind of forget about birth dads sometimes. And so to shine a light on him, this man who has been searching and just dreaming of the day when he would have his daughter back is really profound.

Angela Tucker:

And then my husband and I also are working on a film around the issue of over medication within foster care system. So that was pretty heavy and heady, but just grateful to be able to stay in this space and work for myself and have these conversations. Just to kind of hopefully flip the script a little about these well worn narratives that we've all kind of come to believe as true and think just a little more critically about them. It's hard work being in the gray, which is where I feel like I am, that, yes, adoption can be beautiful and it's also trauma at the same time.

Jennifer Norman:

Yeah, I often feel these days, in any discussion about race, particularly diversity, inclusivity, it always feels like you're going to step in it. It always feels like you're going to offend someone. It always feels like somebody's going to get angry at you for having the opinion or the feelings that you have. And so there is this sentiment that I've got to be very careful with my words, and I appreciate how honest and open you've been able to be, as well as so fact based. I mean, you've done your homework, girl. I mean, you've researched this. You know it, you've lived it, you've been in it.

Jennifer Norman:

And so you're speaking from your knowledge and from your experience and from what others have shared with you. And so it's not like you're just complaining. There's nothing like that at all. It's not like, Woe is me, I've had a terrible life, and so that's why people are like, well, you should be grateful for what you have. I mean, that's not what this is at all. I really am appreciative that my eyes have since been opened to a lot of these things that have been occurring and made me more aware and been able to put words to these feelings that I haven't necessarily been able to understand myself.

Angela Tucker:

Yeah, I mean, I am so thankful to have conversations about my work with my adoptive parents, for example. And even growing up, I could ask them, why couldn't any black families adopt me? Or why didn't any black families adopt me? And their response was not tears and feeling like I was calling them bad parents, but in fact, I think they felt like it was...

Jennifer Norman:

It's valid.

Angela Tucker:

Yeah, valid and strength, like courage to want to understand the system. My dad loves history, and so I think it was a sense of this isn't personal. It's not a personal attack. It's a desire to understand our history, our culture, and where we fit within it. So, yeah, absolutely. I think there's plenty of emotion already coming from every angle for adoption that I do try to stay fact based and nod to all the different people who are involved in these systems, which we just cannot forget. Birth parents, we're oftentimes talking as though they aren't there. So to say something like, wow, your parents are saints for what they did is actually a really hurtful comment for birth parents to hear.

Angela Tucker:

What does that make them? So just, I work really hard to try to think about all the angles, all the people who are impacted, which is a gray area that yeah, people are not it is uncomfortable.

Jennifer Norman:

I can imagine it is. And I know that sometimes it's uncomfortable for those who are really interested in having a new child and having a baby and they perhaps either can't have a baby of their own or perhaps their same sex situation and whatnot. So I welcome any adoptee, anybody who's thinking about adopting, anybody who's involved with family members or friends to certainly read Angela's book. It's called You Should Be Grateful. It's really very well written, it's very well researched. It's definitely a book that is deserving of being read. If you are interested in having another life in your family, certainly. And then once you've had the opportunity to read it and do your research, do what's right for you, ask the right questions, certainly of the folks that are involved in the entire process, feel good about the decisions that you're making and then have a closer bond with your child.

Jennifer Norman:

As your child is growing up, understand that there's going to be times and situations that are going to be very, very difficult and tenuous, as with any child, but that you might not have necessarily expected. And being able to answer those questions and having the respect of the child's birth heritage, DNA, biological family, if the biological family so decided that they wanted to be involved or not, is something to really take into consideration. It really is, because you're opening up your family to a whole other world, truly, if that is the desire here.

Angela Tucker:

Thank you so much for your compliments.

Jennifer Norman:

Angela, I want to thank you so much for the work that you have done. Like you said, it's not easy. What you've done is not easy. And I do have appreciation for your family, for the way that your birth family has been able to be part of your life now, for your adoptive family, for all of the wonder that they have been able to bring, the intelligence and the sense of care and compassion and understanding that they've showcased in you.

Angela Tucker:

So grateful for that.

Jennifer Norman:

Yeah. Now you have angels all around you, girl, and you are one.

Angela Tucker:

Thank you. Thank you.

Jennifer Norman:

Okay. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Angela Tucker:

I've loved it.

Jennifer Norman:

Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn More at thehumanbeautymovement.com thank you so much for being a beautiful human.