Self-Realization For Monica Hall, Adoptee & Birth Mother Through Memoir Writing
I was the guest on the latest episode of the podcast Unraveling Adoption, an intentional space to delve into adoption's complexities together. In this 30-minute program I share about my story as an adoptee and a birth mother; and I reveal some of the things I've learned about myself through the process of writing my memoir, Practically Still a Virgin. The podcast's host, Beth Syverson, is an adoptive mom who, with her son Joey, wants to help others open their eyes about adoption. We know this conversation will resonate with anyone impacted by adoption, and we want to help enlighten the general public too! And I think this interview will provide listeners with a nice behind-the-scenes look at my writing process.
Below is the transcript from this podcast episode:
Beth: Welcome to this episode of Unraveling Adoption, an intentional space to delve into adoption's complexities together. I'm Beth Syverson, an adoptive mom of an insightful and kind 20 year old son, Joe, who is struggling to find his healing path. I'm walking beside him while working on my own personal growth and healing.
I'm also a certified coach, helping primarily adoptive parents. Joe and I are committed to helping anyone impacted by adoption and we want to help the general public understand adoption's complexities better too. In today's episode you will find out how writing one's own memoir can bring about healing.
Today's guest is in the process of publishing her memoir as we speak and by the time this comes out it will actually be out. Monica Hall is our guest. She's both an adoptee and a birth mother and her memoir that is out now is called Practically Still a Virgin, an Adoption Memoir and you can buy it wherever books are sold.
She has [00:01:00] been in reunion with both her birth family and the daughter she relinquished and Monica began writing her story out in 2016 at the urging of her kept daughter. In addition to being a writer, Monica is also a business coach, an entrepreneur with an eponymous skincare line and a public speaker.
She will share part of her healing journey with us, including the challenges and breakthroughs she's had in the last eight years, writing her memoir. So we can all learn from her experiences. I wanted to give you a heads up that this episode contains references to rape, which may be distressing or triggering to some people.
And if you find such content distressing, you may choose to skip this episode or engage with it with caution at a later time when you feel more supported. So thank you for being here on Unraveling Adoption, Monica. It's my pleasure. Thanks. Yeah. So we met at the Concerned United Birth Parents Retreat, the CUB retreat in October of 2023.
And that was an amazing event and kind of transformative for [00:02:00] me. Was it amazing for you too?
Monica: It was, uh, the first day that I was there, uh, it was overwhelming. I thought, why am I here? I got to get the hell out of here.
Beth: It was too much. Yeah. I hadn't been around that much grief. Adoption stuff. Yeah.
Monica: You know, it's not like everybody was crying or anything.
It was just the energy. Almost, you know, 90 percent of the people in there had relinquished and had that grief. And then I was connecting, sitting in a table with three young women, and they were all in open adoption, and the adoption had been slammed shut. Oh, it's crushing. Yeah, but it ended up wonderful, and I came away from a better human, with more connection, and more insight, and not feeling alone.
Beth: Yeah, I felt very similarly, although I come from a different angle, but it was very, oh god, I just learned so much. And it's not like learn, like, knowledge, really. It's a deepening of my understanding of the complexities, but it was a beautiful event and everybody was [00:03:00] so warm to me. And yeah, I enjoyed meeting you and so many others that I had only known on Facebook or whatever.
So
Monica: right. Right. The part that was most upsetting to me Was the advertising companies that are specifically for the adoption community where they geofence the Planned Parenthood with the women that are confused and then they retarget to them to, Oh, we can help, you know, come, we have therapy, someone to talk to.
And, and I sell that technology for a living. Oh, okay. Not for adoption, but
Beth: yeah, it can be used for good and for not. And, uh, right. That must have really hit, hit home on a couple of different levels for you. Ah, tough, tough. Well, let's get just a brief bio. So people know where you're coming from. You grew up in Alaska and that must've been interesting, but tell us about your adoption and whatever parts of your childhood you want to tell us.
Monica: So I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and relinquished, I believe [00:04:00] at birth, I found out from my granny and reunion that I had a full head of black hair. And when I was adopted, I was nearly four months old and I was bald and light skinned. So I didn't know that I was indigenous. And it wasn't certainly put on the papers because there's a lot of prejudice in Canada with first nations and Métis, which is a mixed blood people.
And so. That was understandable, I realized later on, but my parents were living in Alaska. They were from California, but they went up there in the 40s when it wasn't even a state yet. And then they brought me to Alaska, and so I didn't know any different. I grew up, you know, with really dark winters and light in the summer, and I can easily go to sleep with its light out.
If I'm in Alaska, yes. So I grew up and then in the seventies, we have the oil boom 68, the oil was discovered and everything changed. And I didn't know any different. I didn't realize that we had double shifts at school and we had lots of strip clubs and prostitution [00:05:00] and pimps and. All the stuff that comes with a lot of men showing up to Anchorage.
And so I was in an environment with my adoptive family were very much different from me. And I was a free spirit and I snuck out my window and all those things as a juvenile. And, you know, I think part of that was survival strategy. My adoptive parents loved me, but there was a lot of abuse in my home.
So there's a lot of stuff. I just pushed down thinking that it was normal. I guess I don't think I really thought about other kids don't have this, you know, how do you know? Thought other kids that had trauma. So my companions became lower companions in terms of, you know, social economic. Anyway, I snuck up my bedroom window when I was 15 and I got raped by a 19 year old heroin addict when I was a virgin.
And being Catholic, there was no option. You know, you hide the kid in the house until she has baby. And so that's what happened. And being an adoptee, I had issues with identity. I didn't identify it as being issues with identity [00:06:00] because I was just kind of living life.
Beth: Yeah.
Monica: You know, it's certainly, I wrote in a journal during the pregnancy that our parents were like my family.
None of us were related. I was related to my brother because he was adopted. My parents weren't related. We were just all strangers in this house that were trying to make work, and we all thought so differently, looked different, and also my family was really smart, and my brother had an eidetic memory, and he was super creative.
My mother was an artist. I mean, just, I was none of those, and I had trouble in school paying attention, and I was a very poor student. I didn't do well in school. Basically, I probably had learning disabilities and, you know, part of I want to go back to is relinquishing my baby. I think a lot of that in my internal dialogue and, you know, it's in my memoir much better than I'm articulating it right now.
But as a broad brush, I think that being adopted. Tea groomed me to relinquish my own child and I had and still do have a lot of guilt around that and super complex. [00:07:00] You know, I was reading one of my essays on my blog just now and I'm like, holy crap, my perceptions changed over the years when I started writing about all of it.
So I don't know if you can call that coming out of the fog, but. I think I did in so many ways, or at least the perception shifted. So I moved to lower 48 and wanted to find my birth family, my birth mother, specifically, I wanted to ask why, you know, That looked like me. I relinquished my only known blood relative for adoption.
They did let me see her. And then once I moved to the lower 48, I started drinking when my father passed. I had a really complex relationship with my father and there was abuse and things. And And that's when I started drinking. And eventually I stopped for a bit and then I married for a half a minute and found my biological family.
And so I searched in 1980 when I was 23. We had a Alma, Adoptee Liberty Movement Association. So it was [00:08:00] letters and it was, you know, I had an older couple that were adoptive parents, their adult daughter find her family and they helped me. I did reunite with my family and in fact, a camera crew came to the airport when my birth father came, came to my house and interviewed us, but my mother was deceased.
So I never got to meet her. I never got to ask her those questions, but still. It's in pain today, even though I love my adoptive mom with my whole heart, there's just that missing thing. And so when I was pregnant with Mary, my baby, I felt like I could feel my birth mother, my own birth mother showing me the way it's like, I couldn't keep my baby.
I'd be selfish because she was selfless. That's what I was told. You know, that my, uh, my mother was selfless and she wanted me to have a mother and a father. My brother now lives with me. After my mother died, he was displaced and had some addiction issues for sure. 15 years of addiction, he's been clean for six [00:09:00] years.
But we were talking last night and he had the same narrative in his head that we were a gift that other than the selfless thing by giving us a mother and a father. And so it worked out really well for him because he bonded to my mom. Didn't work out so well for me. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't realize that until I got to the writing and kind of unwinding, unraveling as your podcast is.
Yes,
Beth: yes, yes. Big pile of spaghetti, right?
Monica: Absolutely.
Beth: So the daughter that you kept, Becca, told you, your story is so interesting, you should write a memoir. And you said, okay, and you didn't realize what path that would take you on. Did you think it'd be like, okay, I'll just write it down and it'll be good.
Monica: I don't, I, you know, I knew that it was a big deal undertaking, but I didn't realize how big certainly, you know, I think I intuitively knew that I was going to write because I've been carrying around all these journals and appointment books. I mean, I can put dates down since I was in sixth grade. Right.
So,
Beth: okay.
Monica: Okay. So you've always loved to write. No, I have never loved to write. Oh, [00:10:00] you know, authors out there and author land. I do not like to write. Okay. And it's not an easy thing for me to do. I wrote in my journal intermittently. I certainly kept one because my mother gave me one. I was locked up for that six months, but I have always kept notes about what was going on and dates.
And I still have that today, but. I didn't do well in school and I remember when I was in Mr. Martin's class in fifth grade, and there's a girl named Karen, and she was always super smart, you know, and I remember we had to write a little essay, and he got up and read it in front of the class, and it was so good.
And I was nothing like I could never something like that. It was just, I felt so small. So when my daughter asked me to write, I knew that I had some really cool, and I've always been a storyteller. I'm an alpha six time, Leo, whatever. Okay. And I get to places by talking, not by [00:11:00] writing. And so what happened with my story is that I had a lot of trauma in my childhood and young adult years.
And how I dealt with my trauma is I pushed it down. I disassociated evidently. I repressed memories. And I pushed them down and I covered them with other events or other things, survival strategies, which even I'll delinquent behavior and those things, but that was my survival strategy. So when my daughter, Becca, you know, she said, mom, you got such an interesting story.
I mean, we're adopted. And then you gave Mary up for adoption, and then you found your family. And then you found Mary's just fascinating. People would be really interested. And it wasn't an interesting story to me because it was my life. Yeah, but I wanted to get to the other stuff. The stuff that I didn't get, you know, like why my father said certain things to me.
What was behind that? Why did I have reoccurring dreams about looking in the windows of my former homes? Why did I have a flashback 13 years after we moved here? [00:12:00] Where are these things coming from? And I think that was always the intuition because I never really thought about all those things. Obvious clues that I had some issues or looked at that.
I just moved on. Let's just another company or let's do this. Let's do that. It was just a hair on fire girl. And when I sat down to write, I'd never written before. And it was weird, weird series of events. I was looking to do another resume and my coworker have the screen up. Someone was updating her resume and I saw the picture of this woman.
And I thought something about her just caught me. And. I emailed her. Can you redo my resume? She was somebody in Wisconsin. I'm in California.
Beth: Okay.
Monica: And I mentioned in the email that I was writing a memoir and I'd only written a couple of essays. I'd written the rape.
Beth: Okay. Okay.
Monica: And I didn't even know how bad they were.
I had no clue. And she said, well, I'm in a developmental editor. I didn't know any of the terminology about writing. I [00:13:00] do now. And what's a developmental editor? For instance, I sent this essay to her and she sent back, not an annotated word or document with comments and things, she sent back a 16 page, single spaced, 12 point feedback.
And she was a former college professor. And an introvert, really, really good writer, you know, a complete polar opposite of me. And she told me what I did well. Okay. Okay. You can tell a story and she did everything and then she broke down where I needed work. And so what I would do, and if you go onto my website, I have a lot of essays there.
As I was writing, I'd write essays. Mostly just to loosen the valve. Some of those essays I sent back to her three times. She said, too many themes here. You have too many threads. You need to pare it down to one. In my manuscript, I referenced to a part where the rape and he said something really horrific to me afterwards.
And I just, I felt shame. And she said, show, not [00:14:00] tell. Why did you feel shame? And this was really something because I had never dove into why I felt shame. There was never a why to anything. It was always just, I knew it was shame, but I didn't know why. And I, I had to dissect, especially with the essays, because I did write the rape and original and as an essay form and never published it anywhere.
But I went through that for a good couple of years going through it. And all of this took so much time and it costs a lot of money. I mean, if you work with an editor, I mean, I spent my, this was the best therapy I could have ever had. Yeah. I don't know how much I've paid her over the years, but it was worth 10 times more than I got.
Absolutely. And at the end of that writing period, especially about the rape, I no longer felt guilt. For the rape. Oh. When I started writing that rape, I still had the shame and the guilt of a 15-year-old girl that I had repressed so much that I couldn't sit from an adult perspective. Wow. Even [00:15:00] though I've had a lot of experience in my life and I'm wise Mm-Hmm.
I could not see my own stuff. And so there was a huge shift and, you know, adoptees, birth parents, especially cause it's a huge, huge grief and just so much complexity around shame and doing the right thing and not doing, I mean, goodness, trying to dissect that. But even like from an adoptive parent perspective, because my mother, I love my mom so much.
I could not see her betrayal, jealousy of me until she was gone. So she died in 2019. It wasn't until about 17 months later that I could see how she didn't protect me. And, you know, my girlfriend in Alaska, I would call her and that's how I got to a lot of it. I'd sit, you know, why did I talk to her? And then I go, Oh my gosh, because I get to it by talking because that's how I process.
I don't process by writing, which is what most writers do. I process by [00:16:00] talking and then I go, that's it. Or this other crazy thing would happen when I'd walk away from the manuscript for a day or an hour or whatever, and I'd be washing the dishes. Or pulling a weed or dusting or petting my dog or something non associated with thinking about it.
There'd be things that come in and deep perspectives that I couldn't get to when I was sitting there in front of the computer. So it was like the universe, whatever, God, or just my higher self or my subconscious gave me more clarity when I stepped away. And the other thing that was told of me and that I learned in this process is that When I did put the manuscript down for a few months and came back, I could see things so much differently and so much clearer.
So distance really, really, it's quite fascinating.
Beth: That's a good tip for writers because I would think you just have to sit down there every morning at 8am and just sit there until something comes out. But you're saying the opposite for you works. [00:17:00] Yeah,
Monica: I think that's an assessment in writing memoir or even that's what my editor said.
That's what I've never people that wrote. I've told me so you just have to walk away. It's that thing that we push away from what we really need when we're trying to, you know, sort of like this thing I have tacked on my bulletin board here. God does not need me to police his universe too hard. You know, that's the thing when I'm trying, when I'm trying, I got to get out of the way so that the memories will come.
The perspective will come. My problems will get solved. I have to not be in the driver's seat. I need to let that come when it's supposed to. And if I give it space, it does. It absolutely does. So those were some of the things that happened. And then after my mom passed in 2019, and I could see her with more clarity, it was interesting.
I was on a phone call. So I was severely beaten by my dad. And my mom was there in the room. And I had a lot of repressed memories around that, particularly things [00:18:00] that I go into in the manuscript. But anyway, I would call my friend Kelly in Alaska, who was there. You know, she had a troubled childhood as well and abuse in her family.
And she said, Monica, you always made excuses for your mom. Everybody could see it because I love my mom. She was my mom, you know, and I know she loved me. It was complex. She gave me her journals a few years before she passed. And I question why because I read them particularly when I was 19 and there was some horrific things she wrote in there about me.
You know, I think she's just angry because of my attitude or it wasn't my attitude. I was never disrespectful. We just didn't do that. I was terrified of my mom. But you were kind of off the rails at that point. No, it wasn't that. It was when my dad was dying. That's when I started my alcoholism and I was never home.
So I just abandoned them. And he saw it as self centered, which it was. But it was because I couldn't deal. I couldn't deal with it. And so that's when [00:19:00] my alcoholism started. And I would come in and just eat and leave. And it was just absolutely self centered behavior. But I was trying to survive. It was really traumatic for me because I love my dad so much.
You know, he was the one when I got adopted at like four months, I was on a foster home with like 10 other babies and she took me home and I have memories of us, you know, playing the piano and I was just undivided attention. She is so, so lovely and so sweet. And then my brother came along, we went to get him in Canada and my mother tells me, and she laughs about it with my brother, I never thought it was funny that she said, when you looked up and you were walking next to me and you saw that he had replaced.
You in my arms, the look of horror and terror on your face was, and they both laugh. And I'm like, this was not funny. It was trauma. No, that was true. I was abandoned twice. And my brother couldn't help being needy. He had probably failure to thrive syndrome. He's super sensitive. He was [00:20:00] three weeks old. He was sleeping through the night and he was gangly and thin and had allergies and cried all the time.
And he needed her undivided attention. And I, uh, was a different kid. I was strong and independent and she didn't think I needed her. And man, I resented that. You look at pictures of me and my brother and either my hands over his head or I'm, you know, got my jaw out. You know, that's what I do when I get mad.
Oh, wow. This was mad at that little boy. You took away my mommy, you know, and that happens in families that are too. Sure. Adds an extra
Beth: layer though for an adoptee. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're writing the book just forced you to just uncover layer after layer of your trauma and your family relationships.
And what was the biggest challenge for you writing that book, seeing things
Monica: for the way they were
Beth: digging this up and looking at it squarely.
Monica: It was a process, you know, everybody's different though. So the other person that, you know, is listening to this, they may not. have [00:21:00] had the same, we're all different, right?
And I pushed it down. So they were so far under, I have this stick to itiveness, I guess. I've got to finish things. Dark things, I finish them. And as I started writing, and it got really dark for a while, I called my mom and I said, Mama, I can't do this anymore. I'm putting on weight. I don't go out. I'm depressed.
It's just wrecking me. And she was always supportive, like, honey, then, okay, you know, she always took my side. On the other side of this memoir, I'm super grateful that I was able to undertake this and that I had the angels, whatever, whether they be the editors or people that have stepped in and given me support.
I am so grateful because It was supposed to happen and it's obvious it was supposed to happen. And like the money showed up when I needed it, you know, for this or that. And, and I felt a lot of shame around my lack of education and cutting school and hardly even making it through school. Then I just, I bullied people to give me the answers and school and I cheated on tests and all that.
And being an entrepreneur, this is [00:22:00] so funny, Beth. So. I cut school, it wasn't there for anything, and then I start a manufacturing business in my kitchen in the 90s, manufacturing herbal soap, right? So, oh, this is fun, you know? And then, of course, because I grow things big, I can't do anything small, I end up getting Whole Foods and getting investors and building a big operation.
My gosh, if you take a soap formula that's like in a five gallon bucket and you multiply it to 500 pounds, you'd need algebra because chemistry, because it doesn't make the same formula and it doesn't work. You know, you have to know stuff. And I could have used algebra and then I'm a writer for heaven's sakes.
I could have paid attention in English for gosh, you know,
Beth: I wonder what your English teachers would think if they knew you have a book now.
Monica: Yeah. They'd say right on Monica, you know,
Beth: yeah,
Monica: but there's a book that I read that was an adoption book and it was such a beautiful book. She turned her head away, but Patricia Moffitt, and she found [00:23:00] two years before I did in kind of the same era with the limited having to do it all the hard way.
And she had a very similar experience with her birth mother that I did. And when I read that, I was just, Oh, it was horrific because then I realized my mother had written those same things in her journal. When I read them initially in 2022, I read it, but it didn't land. It's like my brain was still protecting me.
And then I read her book last June. I was just like, Oh my God, my mom said the same thing. Oh my God. It was so painful. And then I reached out to this woman because I felt such a kinship with our experience and I reviewed her and she read my manuscript and she cried through a lot of it she said that's what's thing about writing is so wonderful for the people that get to feel not alone when they read it like you relate you feel connected not the only person it's you know it's so relatable and this is an [00:24:00] adoption story.
per se, but in anybody that has trauma or difficult relationships are going to and have reached out to me and said, Oh my gosh. And just told me the things that they've never told anyone.
Beth: Yeah. I think your book is going to help a lot of people, you know, birth parents, adoptees, adoptive parents, and just like you said, anyone with trauma, anyone that's struggled with addiction, like you have, and you've been in recovery for four years, right?
Monica: Uh, four zero.
Beth: 40. You've been in recovery for 40?
Monica: 40. Years.
Beth: Wow. That's amazing. Oh, I thought you said 40. 40 years. Wow. Okay. Very good. Bravo.
Monica: That's when the healing really kicked in because I employed inventory work and looking at my part in things. And Taking accountability and reaching out to others, which I've been doing for 40 years in many forms.
Yeah. But that's why I published my manuscript on March 21st. That's my 40. Oh, you [00:25:00] know, I probably needed more time to market it beforehand, but you know what? That's the day I want. And it's gonna be, it's his birthday. . If it's supposed to get in people's hands, it will. And if people wanna tell other people about it, they will.
And if they don't, it's none of my business.
Beth: Oh.
Monica: So I read the book and connected with her, and she sent me, and this is funny, she sent me in a letter she wrote me. I'm impressed with your writing. It's clear, straightforward, striking, and always interesting. Where did you learn to write so well? As far as I can tell from your manuscript, you didn't go to school beyond high school, or did you not just include that in your book?
Did you go to writing workshops? Did you read a lot as a kid? I remember you said you wrote in journals for many years. You may just be a natural writer. You don't have to answer this question. As an old high school English teacher, I'm just being nosy. I'm like, no, I, none of those things. It's a natural. I had a badass editor.
Yeah. Like she, And by working with her, she essentially taught me how to write. That's where it came [00:26:00] from. It was like having a one on one tutor for eight years, but there's writing workshops. I mean, there's so many people that do that. And that's wonderful. You get to share, you get to meet, you get connection and community.
I couldn't do that. I had to be alone to do this.
Beth: Okay. Yeah.
Monica: That was just my thing. That makes
Beth: sense. Everybody has to find their way to do it. All right, we need to wrap up, but I wonder if you have one bit of advice for maybe an adoptee or a birth mom that wants to write their memoir, but hasn't started yet.
What would you,
Monica: what would be your advice? Oh, um, if they really want to, Just do it. Like the Nike commercial. Yeah, just do it. And the other thing that I was taught early on before I started writing my memoir, when I had rage or anger or worry, my spiritual mentor told me to hot pen. So I would get out a piece of paper and I still do it today and just scrubble, whatever comes.
And that might be a really good start because i'm a perfectionist. [00:27:00] I thought I had to spell right and have the The right formation that you know the syntax all that stuff had to be right. No, it doesn't have to be right just start Just sign it out and give yourself the grace to do it. However, it comes out Don't judge it just do it and as you do it more and if you decide you want to do writing workshops or connect with other people in these, you'll find your community
Beth: and just start.
That's very good advice. Well, I wish you all the best with your book. It's just born a few days ago when people are listening to this and I hope that it touches so many people and helps them all find their own healing path, right? That's what we all have to do, right? That's it. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming on and talking to us and sharing a bit of your story.
I look forward to reading your book and I wish you all the best. Thanks Beth. Yeah. Thank you. Wanted to let you all know we have a very special giveaway of Monica's memoir. You have a chance to [00:28:00] win an autographed copy of Or a Kindle version, which you can't really autograph, but either one that you'd like.
And all you have to do is one of two things, or you can do both actually. First thing is to write a review and rate the podcast on either Apple podcasts or Spotify. And if you do, make sure either that your name is fully in the review, or if you have some sort of pen name on your account there, make sure and just drop me an email to say that was me that did that review.
And I will put you into the drawing for the book giveaway. The other thing you can do is you can become a Patreon member for as little as 5 a month. Just come support All the activities that we're doing here at Unraveling Adoption to join Patreon, you just go to patreon. com slash unraveling adoption.
They make it super easy and it's easy to get back out of if it no longer works for you, so you're not locked in, but it would really help us out. Every little bit helps. And there's a lot of expenses that go into making this podcast that you [00:29:00] probably don't even think about a special. Thank you to our latest Patreon supporter.
Another adoptive parent and another podcaster, Sharlyn Spearing is now a Patreon supporter. So thank you so much, Sharlyn. And everyone go check out Sharlyn's podcast called Adoption Uncovered. So those are the two ways to enter the drawing. I hope you all enter and good luck. I'll be drawing the lucky winner on Friday, March 29th, 2024 at 10 p.
m. Pacific. So thank you everyone for listening. I hope you share this episode with anyone you know that might be interested in writing or maybe they're an adoptee or a birth mother and would benefit from hearing her story and go buy her book. It is called Practically Still a Virgin, an adoption memoir by Monica Hall.
Go get it and support Monica with her new book. Thank you again for listening. Monica and I want you all to stay [00:30:00] safe.
