Monica Hall, the author of Practically Still a Virgin: This interview is about adoption, relinquishment and restoration.
I was the guest on the podcast, Claiming Your Voice with Janeice Garrard , a fellow adoptee. Over the months we’ve had a number zooms, connecting one adoptee to another. In this interview I reveal some of the things I write about in my memoir, Practically Still a Virgin. I believe this conversation… (although as usual I do most of the talking), will resonate with anyone impacted by adoption and others who have experienced family dysfunction, and difficulties in general. Adoption is part of my story but not all of my story…. Listen and you will see that it’s absolutely possible to heal no matter what the circumstances.
Below is the transcript from this podcast episode:
Janeice Garrard: This is Claiming Your Voice with Janice Garrard. In this podcast, I feature guests with passionate stories of hope, inspiring others to claim their voice in a world where we can be bold together. Tonight, my guest is Monica Hall. Monica is an aspiring author. Her book is Practically Still a Virgin, which will debut March 21st of 2024.
Welcome, Monica.
Monica Hall: Thank you. It's so good to see you again. Great to see you. Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Janeice Garrard: Go Ahead and tell us your story.
Monica Hall: Well, I was born in Canada and I was adopted by Americans that were living in Alaska and they were originally from California. So they scooped me up out of a foster home when I was about four months old.
They said there were six babies in the foster home. I just found all my research stuff and it said there were 10 babies and a little baby boy that wasn't expected to live. Maybe 11 babies. So, I'm wondering how much I got held. Probably not a lot. I was taken to Alaska and that's where I grew up.
Anchorage or Alaska wasn't even a state yet. It was that was 1957. I Grew up in Anchorage during the wild oil boom 60s and 70s, which was an insane time. It was like the wild wild west. Money flowing, strip clubs, prostitution houses on almost every corner. They were called massage parlors.
You had all this money moving up there. Tons of men, women coming up. It was crazy. And I was doing double shifts at school because they couldn't build schools fast enough, but you know, I didn't know any different. I just assumed it was fine. Summers were always light and winters were dark.
That's where I grew up. I think I was a happy child. My mom and dad said that when they brought me home, I was a happy baby. We got my brother when I was three. Well, that's when happiness stopped. I was such a jealous little thing. We got this little gangly alien child from Canada.
We're not biologically related. He was, gangly and skinny and sleeping through the night, probably failure to thrive syndrome. Tons of allergies, super high need. I was a strong and tomboyish at three and she dropped me like a hot potato to take care of my brother.
I really resented her for that. There were pictures where he’s barely walking and I've got my fist over his head. Fast forward, he's living with me today. I mean, we full circle healed this stuff. It was very dysfunctional family. My parents were older. My mom was 32 and my dad was 42 when they got me.
They had lived through the depression. With super dysfunctional backgrounds. My mother's parents were drunks. My mom and her brother had to hide the knives and she was terrified that they were going to kill themselves when they drove crazy, wild, insanely drunk on windy roads from Reno to Virginia City.
She'd steal away in the rumble seat. Because if they died, then she could die with them and she wouldn't be an orphan. She was super codependent. My father had his own issues. And so that's how I was raised. My mother was very overprotective and I'm a free spirit.
I did not fit in that family. My mother and father were super smart. Like my mom didn't finish the eighth grade because my father scooped her up when she was 15 and he was 25. He took her off to Reno to get married. They lied about her age. But she could do a New York Times crossword puzzle, with her eyes shut, practically.
She was super, super smart. And my father won the state spelling bee when he was a kid. He was a businessman, but I couldn't pay attention in school at all, and that really caused me a lot of low self-esteem. I didn't fit. The kids that were cool were latchkey kids, and my mom stayed home and had tight reins on me.
It wasn't until adolescence when I started rebelling. I didn't outwardly rebel because back then that's when you got slapped across the face if you even looked at them or didn't look at them when they were talking to you so I was really careful about all of that. There were a few incidences that happened with my father, one when I was 12 and one when I was 13 and completely changed the trajectory of my life. Thirteen is when you're just starting to figure things out. I went off the deep end. Before that I was always wanting to make them proud.
I think I worked through it in the manuscript, the memoir, but I became the baddest little juvenile delinquent, I could be, with petty crime, taking acids, jumping out of my bedroom window, vandalizing, breaking into houses, beating people up, being a bully. I think it was the only way I felt I could take back my power. For many years, I didn't know what changed to make that change in me at 13.
It took this memoir and writing to understand that. My editor would say, show me not tell me, and then she'd asked me things that I'd have to really dig to get to. I dealt with trauma by pushing it down. I'm just like, move on. Let's go on. Let's keep going.
So, I didn't deal with it. I had a lot of repressed memories. I had reoccurring dreams in the nineties when I started really working on things, you know, trying to look back and figure stuff out. So, I snuck out my bedroom window all the time just to escape. And I got raped by somebody that I had once looked up to.
He was 19 and I was 15. I was a virgin and I got pregnant. Back then in Catholic families, very strict Catholic families, you had to give your baby away. My editor suggested I show a scene of them telling me that I was going to give my baby up for adoption. But there was no scene. It was just expected. I mean, maybe because adoption was normalized in my family or because we were Catholic, that's just what you did. Pregnant girls didn't go to school. They locked me away in the house. My friends didn't really come to see me because they were doing their own thing.
And it was dark those six winter months. The shortest day is just five hours of light in the winter and it was very depressing. My mom bought me a journal. I wrote in that journal and documented all this stuff. But I didn't talk about the rape. I never mentioned him, just like the other bad things that happened that I didn't talk about.
I just talked about mostly what was going on day to day. It wasn't until I got closer to the relinquishment and the birth of my child that I started getting a little deeper in my writing. It was just really hard. I was such a people pleaser. I figured somebody might read it, like my mom.
I want to say good things about people. My mother wrote in a journal through that time as well. Between those journals and mining my memories and my brother, who has an eidetic memory, my memoir came together. It took me seven years to write it because it was just so much to go through.
At 60, when I started writing in 2016, one of the first things I tackled was the rape. And I still feel guilty for it. It took over a year of writing and talking to my friends and my mother walking me through it with adult eyes to see that it wasn't my fault. I finally got angry at the perpetrator.
I had blamed myself back then, you know, rape was where you got beat up in a dark alley. You didn't know your perpetrator. You had bruises, your clothes were ripped. That didn't happen. At 60 I was still thinking about it with my stuck child's mind, and there were so many other things that I was able to heal through the writing.
I relinquished my baby for adoption. They let me see her, it was at a Catholic hospital. I had groomed the nun who had counseled with to let me see my only known blood relative. Because I was adopted and didn't know who I was, I had no identity. And so I got to look at her and hold her.
And then they brought the papers in and at the very last minute there was a change of heart with my mother and it was really confusing and I was really, really sad for many years. I thought that she was just being kind. But she didn't even give me the information herself. She sent the nun in who basically told me I could keep my baby if I wanted to.
My mom couldn't bring herself to tell me this because she couldn't live with herself if she were to separate a mother from her child. And then the nun picked up the papers and left. She didn't you know, give me any information like how that might look, wouldn't get diapers? And so I was left all alone to, you know, to make this decision.
And I did, I relinquished my daughter. On my 16th birthday there is a picture of me. I'm cutting my 16th birthday cake. I remember writing…how that was such a pivotal depressing time for me. I had written in, in my journal, “sweet 16 and never been kissed, ha” you know, everybody knows a16 year old that's already had a baby has been kissed. I wrote in my journal, “You know, it's such a weird feeling that someone I don't even know and doesn't even know me is thinking about me. It was gray and drizzly and wet July 27th1974.
None of my friends wanted to go to a movie. It was such a depressing day. And There is this image of me cutting my cake with clear skin, shiny hair like a child. Looking at the picture of that girl just breaks my heart because you know, that inner child work. I can look at these pictures that I have all over my house of me as a young girl at three, 12 and, or at 15 and I have compassion for that girl. But when I look at it as me, it's hard.
Nine months after she was born, we moved to the lower 48, to the Sacramento area. Then in 1980 when I was 23 and, in a relationship, we have some money. We had our own business and I start searching for my biological family.
I had read the book, The search for Anna Fisher. It was written by Florence Fisher who started ALMA, Adoptee Liberty Movement Association. I went to the meetings and they showed me how to create a search binder and set up a search plan. I went to hear Florence Fisher speak and this couple helped me build the search binder. It's huge. It's got every letter, every correspondence. It took me about three months for me to find my biological family.
That's a really interesting story in itself. I found my uncle, my mother's brother but my mother had died. She, she died when I was seven. She had been gone eight years when I thought I could feel her on my 16th birthday. I wrote in my journal, I need her to show me how to do this.
I was told that she was selfless. She had given me a mommy and a daddy because she was selfless. This is the story I was told, you know, that I was so lucky that she loved me so much. And so, you know, I think for me to feel worthy, I did the same, you know, how can I keep my baby when she didn't?
I was told over and over how she was so wonderful. She was so loving. She loved me so much. It's so screwed up. I never got to meet her, but I reunited with all my family. I found out that I'm indigenous. I had always connected with the Native American stuff back in the 70s.
It was all cool, you know, with Cher, even though she's not indigenous, but you know, the half Breed song and my two girlfriends were Native American but I didn't know what I was. We all looked alike. As it turned out, I did my DNA. I'm almost a third indigenous and my friends, have none.
I was the one that was indigenous. And so up in Canada, we're called Métis because we’re not status First Nations because it's a real political thing. They, gave us a little bit of land, a little bit of money or scrip to relinquish our rights.
And so, my grandfathers did that on both sides of my family and they settled around Lac Ste. Anne. I go up there for, for family reunions. We put our hands in our paint and put our hand prints and write our names on a tipi. We eat Bannock, which is like fry bread and we eat dried meat. There's a big pilgrimage on my father's side of the lake.
The reunion are on my mother’s side of the lake. The pilgrimage draws 30, 000 indigenous people come from North America to get the healing around Lac Saint Anne with the water. Indigenous people have been coming there for millennia. The Catholics got a hold of it. Now it's a Catholic thing and it's right next to the land that my father's people took.
It's on my birthday weekend. I’m blonde now but I really have dark hair. I’m the white person in the sea of dark heads and almost all of them are related to me. One year I took them all to Canada to the pilgrimage. I took the daughter that I was reunited with when she turned 18, my daughter, the first baby I got to keep, she was probably 19 at the time and I took my son. He was about 14.
The daughter that I relinquished had her year-old daughter too. We all went into the healing water with my birth father. He introduced me to everybody and said, “this is my daughter and her offspring.” It was just such a cool feeling.
People I didn't know but they were my people, you know. So, anyway, it's been an incredible journey. My daughter and I were reunited when she turned 18. Her Alaska records were open. I called the adoption agency 6 months early because I couldn't wait. Her family sent her on her 18th birthday to see me, and we had a huge party. She looks just like me.
She walks like me. She talks like me. She's like, my spinning image. There's so many intricacies and things that happened along the way that are just fascinating and things that you can't make up, like the things I discovered, what I discovered about my baby's father was just mind blowing. I didn't discover that until I started writing and digging in and it completely changed the narrative that I'd lived with and told myself for all those years.
It's been an incredible journey. It's not for the faint of heart, you know, the trauma that I had and all that, but I don't regret a fricking minute of any of it. You know, like we were talking earlier. I'm so grateful, for everything, like every little thing, you know, taking walks, seeing nature, my grandchild, my grandchildren, my health, everything.
There's been a lot of work that I've had to do. So, you know, I struggled with addiction and I've been, in fact, on March 21st I’ll be 40 years sober. Wow. What a birthday. No, what a birthday gift.
Janeice Garrard: Well, you have a very interesting story, Monica, and I'm so glad that you're sharing it because you're coming at this from as an adoptee as a birth mother that relinquished a child.
You are in reunion with biological family. I guess my question to you would be number 1 is. Well, I want to say congratulations on the sobriety because that is, that is a huge thing to celebrate. I wanted to ask you about your relationship with your adopted family.
Monica Hall: Super interesting. So, I love my mom and it was really complex.
You know, my brother lived with her until she passed away four years ago and he was, you know, homeless. So, he came here. He never really launched because of the codependency and he's so sensitive that they just became really close and now he's doing great. You know, and he now has a job. He pays me rent. We're best friends. We’ve really healed. But when my mom died I was really angry. I was angry at her, angry at him, you know, that it was such child abuse. What she did with the co-dependency. I had a lot to work through. Before she died I couldn’t see her culpability in my trauma until she was gone because I loved her so much, you know, and I couldn't see that she was jealous of me.
I couldn't see that she gaslit me with things that I experienced. And I tried to ask her, like mom, “I just had this flashback.” She’d say, “oh I don't remember that.” There were was some really horrific things that happened that she wasn't protecting me from, you know, and I couldn't see it while she was still alive.
I think that's why it's taken so long to write because she died four years ago and I could not get through this book until I came to some understanding and some healing around the relationship with my mother and some forgiveness. Back in the 90s I went through a workbook with a therapist, Men and women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.
I worked through it with s therapist. The book said that you don't have to forgive your abuser to heal. I believe that. But I needed to, you know, my mom didn't physically abuse me. It wasn't my mom. It was my father, but for me in order to to be able to heal I need to forgive all the things that have happened.
I needed to look at and research what made them the way they were. Hurt people hurt people. And sometimes that's the best they've got. I believe that was all she had. That was the best she could do. And the best my dad could do with what he had. I have compassion for them today and yeah, I made a lot of poor choices in my life.
But every single one of those have come full circle and I'm whole and I'm. helping others., I write on a blog. I've been writing for over 6 years, letting the valve release a little bit on some of the stories. Some of them aren't in the book.
I have people write me and share very personal things that they've never told anyone. They feel they can, you know, because I'm being so honest about this stuff and wow. You know, just podcasts like this, hearing somebody else's journey and story. I don't feel alone. I'm not the only one that's had identity issues.
And, you know, I'm grateful for having this life and being me. But you know, I'm also older now and I've got a lot of wisdom. I've been in reunion with my biological family for 43 years and with my daughter for 32, and I've been sober for 40.
I've been working on myself and healing modalities and doing all these different things for years, for decades. In 2020, when we were all locked down, it took almost a year to go through 11 big T traumas with a therapist over zoom. (Eye movement reprocessing desensitization). I did it initially to have more memories. But I was able to heal those 11 big T traumas. Someone was telling me about little T traumas. I had millions of those growing up. The big ones, like the rape and the other things that are in my manuscript and the books, but it’s not awful to read.
It reads like a story. It's entertaining. There's levity. But it's got some really hard truths. It reads like a novel. I think anybody that's dealt with family dysfunction, even if they're not an adoptee will get something out of it for sure.
And who hasn't had problems? We've all had them. Nobody gets unscathed in life.
Janeice Garrard: you know. That's right. That's right. I want to ask you then you mentioned about being grateful that you've been grateful for your life, even with all of these hardships or traumas that you've lived through and people might say, well, how can you be grateful for that?
Monica Hall: I don't know, maybe because I've come out of the other side. I mean, if those things didn't happen, I wouldn't be me. I wouldn't have this open heart. I wouldn't have this compassion if I didn’t have these experiences that took me to hell and back. I mean, hell and back.
You know, I've had some rough times. I'm just wired to be strong and to just plow through. And so, I didn't really look deep at the things I just got through them. And so this last seven years has been some really tough years. I mean, I put on weight, I didn't go out, I had drinking and using dreams that I hadn't had in decades.
It was some hard stuff. My daughter wanted me to write my memoir, she thought it was fascinating that I was an adoptee and that I relinquished a child for adoption and then found my family and found my daughter. She is now 39. I refer to her as, “the first baby I got to keep.”
What I wanted to write was the other stuff, the stuff, the flashbacks and missing time and reoccurring dreams. I knew there was stuff to uncover. That's what I wanted to get to. And some of that's in this manuscript and some of it will be in my next book. But man, what a journey it's been.
Through this I've had epiphanies. I don't know what to call them other than maybe spiritual experiences. They were mind blowing experiences. And I think when you're in so much pain that you want to die, that you can't stand living any more… There was a number of situations where I could not stand being alive.
It was so painful. And at those times, it was, I guess, I surrendered and was just washed through with this, with this piece. And so I don't know. I don't know why. I don't know why this is my journey. I have no idea. I'm just here, I'm healthy. 1 day at a time, you know, and I've got this book done.
I'm going to have to probably regurgitate it for the rest of my life, talking about it on podcasts and stuff. You know, I mean, it's okay if I can help somebody else, and having the perspective of an adoptee that relinquished a child is an interesting perspective. I've been asked, “how can you being adopted yourself going through all that pain, give up your own baby?”
Well, first of all, I didn't know I was going through pain because I was an adoptee. I mean, there was a lot of other stuff that I went through that caused pain. I had no idea about that until I started writing my manuscript in 2016 and started listening to podcasts and digging more into the trauma and preverbal trauma. I think some of it, I just got here with. I was just born this way to experience this stuff.
You know, heal.
Janeice Garrard: I think at some point we realize that we do live through that pain, but it's normalized. And so we don't know any different. We have a few minutes left. So, what would you like to end with?
Monica Hall: Well, I think I pretty much said it all. I guess if you're an adoptee and you're in pain and you're going through coming out of the fog, if you believe in that, I don't know if I do or don't, I just know it's a thing that I experienced, you know, coming to clarity and like, wow! I guess I'm not so grateful it was adopted after all.
What I would say is listen to the other side, listen to the voices of the birth mothers, listen to the pain because not many of them don’t have the guts to share because it was so traumatic and it was so shameful and it was so much pain they had to push it down and they can't tap it.
They can't even tap it. And the ones that can, listen to their stories, like the book, The Girls Who Went Away, the Hidden Story of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe vs Wade, by Anne Fessler. Great book. I read that book and I experienced some of those things being a birth mother in 1972. That's how I think we're going to heal, at least it helps me.
That's what I had to do. I had to hear the other stories. I had to hear what happened to my parents and why they ended up like they did. I had to find some compassion. I had to understanding. You know, this secondary rejection is so awful. It just breaks my heart. I want to cry for the adoptees that experience that.
Yeah, I'm angry. Yeah, at the birth parents, but I also get it. They can't go back there. They can't do it. They've closed that door for self-preservation. And man, what a hard thing on both sides. So that's what I would say. Listen to the other side, listen to those other stories, you know, open your heart a little bit and, and get through the healing process.
Cause we can get there. It's not a vicious cycle. There is an end. It's not a circle. You know, I hear, you know, lots of people in this cycle of anger and they just don't get out of it because they're listening to the same people talking about hall this trauma. Get off the merry-go-round.
You got to listen to the other side a little bit. At least that's my advice, you did ask.
Janeice Garrard: I look forward to reading your memoir, and we celebrate with you your sobriety, and your launch to be an author with this book. So, what’s the name of it again? Practically still a virgin - An Adoption Memoi
Thanks so much, Monica, for sharing your story.
Monica Hall: Thank you for having me.
