Put Your Shit Aside with Oliver

Meet Oliver Jennings, an African-American man, adopted at 22 months, into a same-race adoption with a single mother. He's also a new father.

"You gotta put your shit aside. It's not about how you feel, and them reaching out to their parents isn't because of something that you lack. There's a natural draw to want to know what's going on and where they come from and that's not because you've done anything wrong or because you lack as a parent or because you've done anything incorrect."

Here's some of what we talked about:

• His experience as a same-race adoptee
• Grappling with the narrative that "you were wanted"
• His journey to creating relationships with his birth siblings and birth mother
• Becoming the kind of father he wants to be
• Handling other people's assumptions about his adoptee experience

Annie's take-aways for adoptive parents:

• Take care of our shit somewhere else so we don't get our buttons pushed by our kids.
• Remind our kids they don't have to take care of us.

Katelyn's take-aways for adoptees:

• Find people who hold space for you.
• Give yourself permission to take up space.

shownotes at https://www.listeningtoadoptees.com/episodes/2