MINI EPISODE: Letting the Drawbridge Down (with Lauren Passell)

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Introduction – 0:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome to another mini-episode of Relationscapes, the podcast where we map the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other in order to feel a little less alone and build a better world.

And this happens to be our 50th episode!

[Applause sfx]

Yes, thank you so much! I'm so glad you're with me as we hit this milestone together. I’m journalist Blair Hodges joining you from Salt Lake City. I thought it would be so cool to go back through some past episodes and revisit some great moments. But the truth is, I'm way too busy for that! But I did have time to throw together a few clips where guests are flattering me. Partly because it just feels nice to hear, but also because they might inspire you to get into the back catalog if you haven’t, fifty episodes strong. Ok, take it away guests! 

MARY CATHERINE STARR: Yeah, again, it’s really funny because I don’t think I put this together till you asked these very insightful questions...

RONALD LEVANT: Well that’s good question, and thank you for that Blair...

INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS: I love that question. You know, I hadn’t thought of it in that language before...

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I say you have to be thoughtful about curating space with people. I think, even this conversation with you, realistically, even what we were just talking about with the Airbnb thing, I haven't laughed about that, like, publicly, ever. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Cool.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: This is the first time I've actually laughed about it because I'm so removed from it now. And I thank you for that, because I do think you've created a space between two men for healing and growth and just being alive...

KAREN TANG: These are awesome questions by the way. Like, you’re killing it. This is one of the best podcasts I’ve done...

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: You are a great interviewer, Blair, and as people who interview people for our livelihood, it's a pleasure to be interviewed by someone who is as thoughtful and prepared and fun as you are. So thank you for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, don't forget to rate and review the show, Vanessa. [laughs]

CARA NATTERSON: Five stars!

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: I haven't rated and reviewed my own show, but I will come and rate and review your show because it's such a pleasure...

BLAIR HODGES: Wow alright haha. With that bit of self-indulgence out of the way, I'll introduce our mini episode guest. She's a hero of indie podcasters such as myself, Lauren Passell. She's founder of Tink Media and author of Podcast The Newsletter, a great newsletter that highlights the best of the podcasting world. I actually made an appearance in there when Lauren recommended her favorite Relationscapes episode, “The truth about transracial adoption, with Angela Tucker.” Angela is an expert in the subject, having been adopted as a Black child into a white family. The main reason her interview struck a chord is because Lauren is a white mother of an adopted child who is Black.

So today, Lauren opens up about the joys and challenges of raising a child in an open adoption. We explore questions about race, family, and community. So putting those two episodes together just broadens our perspective once again, and you know those perspectives and stories could just keep stacking up and weaving together. That’s what Relationscapes is about, really.

Alright, without any further ado, episode 50 with Lauren Passell.

 

Lauren Passell Loves Podcasts – 04:12

 

BLAIR HODGES: Lauren Passell, welcome to Relationscapes.

LAUREN PASSELL: Thank you for having me on one of my favorite podcasts. I wrote about it in my newsletter before you even asked me to be on it, so it's really surreal.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I love your newsletter—“Podcast the Newsletter.” Great branding. You must have jumped on that early. You basically tell people about the podcasts you love.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah, that's all it is.

BLAIR HODGES: I've picked up many good recommendations. Speaking of which, you must listen to a ton of podcasts because you find a lot of more obscure shows. It's not just the top 10 charts. You're like, oh, this episode was good, and you're finding podcasts that people aren’t hearing about.

LAUREN PASSELL: People often ask me what my favorite kind of podcast is, and I always say it's the kind that makes me think, “I didn't know that could be a podcast.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that's what I love about podcasting too. If you’re into something, there’s probably a podcast about it. One of the things that stood out to you about this show was an episode about transracial adoption. I interviewed Angela Tucker—she’s a terrific consultant with a social work background, and she herself was a transracial adoptee. She’s Black and was adopted by white parents, and she talks about her experience. That episode stood out to you because you’re on the other side of the story as a white parent who adopted a Black child.

I want to start with your adoption story—why you and your partner chose adoption to begin with.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yes, and I should say I was so excited and grateful for that episode, because going into the adoption process there weren’t a lot of resources, so I don’t think I had to unlearn a lot about adoption.

Angela has a podcast that isn’t running anymore, but I listened to every single episode multiple times. When I saw she was on your show, I thought, thank goodness—more people will hear from her. And I knew you, so I knew it was going to be good. I was really grateful you offered that conversation. It was strange because my daughter was a month old when the episode came out, and the show itself was brand new. It seemed perfect—like a gift from the gods.

 

Lauren’s Family Adopts – 05:23

 

LAUREN PASSELL: I oddly always wanted to adopt, even as a little girl. This goes back to when I was 5. I wanted my parents to adopt. I pushed for it, which is kind of strange.

BLAIR HODGES: Are you an only child?

LAUREN PASSELL: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

LAUREN PASSELL: And if you want to get a little therapeutic about it—because I think about this all the time—my mom had some miscarriages, and I might have picked up on that. Maybe I thought I wouldn’t be able to have a baby myself. Adoption has been something I’ve thought about for as long as I can remember. I told my husband before we got married, “I don’t want to do IVF, but we can try to have a baby at some point.”

BLAIR HODGES: Was he up for that too? Was he enthusiastic about having kids, or more like, okay, that’s something I can do?

LAUREN PASSELL: We weren’t sure if we wanted kids at all. We’d go back and forth. During the pandemic, when we were stuck inside, we realized how lucky we were to be safe despite living in the heart of New York City, where everything felt scary. We grew much closer and thought, we don’t need a million other things—we need each other, and maybe we could bring someone else into this. I was a little older at that point, so we tried for a while. My doctor suggested IVF, but I said no.

We waited about three years and chose an agency that really seemed to prioritize the birth mother. We had to make this little book, like “pick me and Justin.”

BLAIR HODGES: A little bit of marketing there—and you’re in marketing, so—

LAUREN PASSELL: Exactly. My husband is a designer, and the agency offered to make the book for us, but when he saw their designs, he said no way. He made our own. I don’t know what impact it had on birth mothers, but it was ours. They told us it would take about two years, so not to plan or put life on hold. This was during Covid, so we couldn’t travel anyway.

But it actually took three years. By December 2023 we were about to give up. It had been three years with nothing, and it was hard. Your life is on hold—you can’t move forward. We had our house study and everything ready, but nothing was happening.

We were at dinner with a friend—I don’t know if you’ll want to cut this out—

BLAIR HODGES: Usually when people say that, I want to leave it in.

LAUREN PASSELL: Well, we were on mushrooms, okay, at dinner. [laughter] But that night we decided we were done. We couldn’t do this to ourselves anymore. We started making a list with my friend—what are we going to do with all our love and extra time? We didn’t want to just slide back into normal life. If we weren’t going to adopt, we needed to do something else with our lives. So we made a fun list of things to do.

Then literally one week later, I went to Ohio for my dad’s birthday, December 20. We planned to break the news to my family that we were taking our name out. This was going to break everyone’s hearts—only grandchild on that side.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. They’d feel like you were giving up.

LAUREN PASSELL: I wasn’t sure if my mom would be okay with it. Honestly, I really wasn’t—and on the way to the airport, we got an email from our adoption support person saying, “Can you talk today?” Normally they only told us if our book was being shared with a birth mom, and we hadn’t even gotten that.

BLAIR HODGES: “Can you talk?” is very different. That feels much more serious than just an email.

LAUREN PASSELL: Exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: It’s like, oh, you want to talk with us live?

LAUREN PASSELL: We thought maybe she was leaving the agency and wanted to tell us personally, because we’d heard nothing. We got to the Cleveland airport, I’m like sitting on my suitcase, we’re on opposite sides of the hall talking to her, and she said, “You’ve been picked.” We had no idea our book was even being seen.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LAUREN PASSELL: I went home and we told my family we’d been picked. And everyone was like, “yay!” And I said, “But what about that list?”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you’ve got the list.

LAUREN PASSELL: The list was so fun! And it’s funny, because people kept saying, “You can still do the list.” I’m like, that’s cute. You didn’t see the list. I can do part of it, but what I’m doing now is better.

We talked to the birth mom the next day, and it was immediate. My husband and I didn’t even need to discuss it—it was a yes. I asked why she picked us, and one of her reasons was, “Because I love Disney, and you said you love Disney.” I thought, I knew this would come in handy.

BLAIR HODGES: People make fun of Disney adults, but I kind of am one too. If I didn’t live in Utah—if I lived in California or Florida—it would be different. So she had a common vibe with you around Disney.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yes. We had three weeks’ notice.

BLAIR HODGES: Three weeks!

LAUREN PASSELL: They tell you not to buy anything because it’s heartbreaking to have baby stuff around. So we had to snap into gear—get our apartment ready, buy everything. I own my own business, so I had to tell everyone I was leaving. I got to be with her in the delivery room, which is so rare. She let me in. I spent time with her in the hospital and with her other children, which was incredible.

BLAIR HODGES: By the way, it’s not uncommon for someone with kids to place a child for adoption. That’s not unusual.

LAUREN PASSELL: Right. In fact, I kind of worry about that because I know Stella will probably wonder, why me, kind of thing.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

LAUREN PASSELL: There are so many reasons that this woman just couldn’t do it at that time—so many reasons. But we got to spend a lot of time with her and we’ve maintained a great relationship. I actually took Stella down to be with her for her first birthday. The entire family came from all over—grandmothers, great-grandmothers, cousins, aunts. The only thing I could think of—because I didn’t know, I was really nervous to go down there. Not because I didn’t want to, I just didn’t know how I would feel. I couldn’t even ask anyone about it. You can’t prepare.

BLAIR HODGES: I don’t think you can truly anticipate it. It’s a completely new experience.

LAUREN PASSELL: I said to Justin, it’s like we’re going into space. Like we could get bloody noses. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LAUREN PASSELL: All I could think of was, my family is so amazing. These people are treating me like I’m in their family, and they love Stella so much. It was one of the most amazing things. I’m just really proud of my family. I know it’s not going to be easy. The adoption industry is really screwed up, and I try not to lead with thinking about that too much.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LAUREN PASSELL: I stay very aware of it without obsessing, because I don’t want to lose sight of things.

Benefits of Open Adoption – 13:27

 

BLAIR HODGES: Plus, you are a family. That’s the number one thing—regardless of the state of the system, here you are. You have a child. You and your partner are raising her, and you’re maintaining a connection. That’s a big part. Angela talks about the difference between open and closed adoptions. With closed, the kid is not supposed to know their birth family at least until the age of 18.

LAUREN PASSELL: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: Did you have a choice to do that, or are you in an area where adoptions had to be open?

LAUREN PASSELL: We wanted it open.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

LAUREN PASSELL: And it’s funny, because I do think we did a lot of research. I grew up in the 90s when every single Lifetime movie or Unsolved Mysteries was about how open adoptions are terrifying, how you should never do them because the birth mom will come back and kidnap them. Every movie. I think people are still shocked to this day that I wanted an open adoption, which surprises me. But it’s so much healthier. There’s less mystery. I can call her birth mother and ask about health stuff. It’s just more love, less mystery.

So I did have to unlearn a lot about adoption in general. It’s funny—you mentioned in that episode with Angela about “not seeing color.”

BLAIR HODGES: Colorblindness, yeah. That’s how I was raised.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah. That was popular in the 90s too. Another part of the story is my husband is Asian. So we’re confusing everyone.

BLAIR HODGES: You’re white, Asian dad, and a Black adoptee child.

LAUREN PASSELL: Right. Race has been part of our family conversation long before we wanted children. I know that Stella is Black, and that’s an important part of how I’m raising her. I’m making sure she has especially strong Black women in her life. When I told people about her, the Black women in my life came out of the woodwork to help me. I thought, I don’t know if this is for me—this is for Stella. They are coming for her. So much love and support.

But I don’t want to obsess over it too much, because at the end of the day, I forget, I don’t want to say, “I don’t see color.” But when I’m walking her around, she’s my daughter and I’m her mom. Sometimes I’ll see someone look at us funny and I remember—oh yeah, people are confused by this. I have to constantly remind myself people have questions, a lot of questions.

 

Not So Great Questions – 16:13

 

BLAIR HODGES: What kind of questions do you get? Are these from strangers, or from people you know? I imagine some of these aren’t great questions. What are the ones where you think, better not to ask that?

LAUREN PASSELL: Right off the bat, when I told people I wanted to adopt—even a long time ago, before I formally started—women would say, you don’t want to adopt, you want your own baby. Suddenly they’d become very invested, like they knew me better. They’d say things to my mother: no, she doesn’t. Or they’d push IVF—“You can try harder, I did this, I know someone.” Everyone says, I know someone who was 50 and had a baby. And I’d think, cool, I don’t, like people—

So that was the first thing that was annoying. The second thing is people saying, “oh, it’s so good of you.” I’m like, no. I had to wait. There’s a line of people who want to do this. I’m not a saint. I’m not that. That’s something I’m learning that I’m trying to help people understand. Please, please. I’m a selfish person.

Now it’s more stuff like, the doctor the other day asked if I was her grandmother. That confused me. I thought, maybe because I’m older, but also—how could I be her grandmother? Anyway.

Another time, my friend was over and my neighbors thought she was my daughter. They were looking at us like, what’s going on?

BLAIR HODGES: Are you the type of person people shouldn’t ask how old you are?

LAUREN PASSELL: No, I love it. I’m 41. I love being 41.

BLAIR HODGES: That can’t be old anyway, because I’m 43.

LAUREN PASSELL: Okay, then I’m very young. I’m a baby. But one of the things that really stuck out to me—because I re-listened to the episode this morning and had similar notes as the first time and it was interesting to see my notes twice. What stuck out this time, now that Stella is 16 months old instead of 1 month, was when Angela talked about feeling like she only made sense when she was with her mom where she grew up, because there were so many white families.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, like in Washington state.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: She was one of the only Black people around.

LAUREN PASSELL: In my case, it’s often the opposite. I live in West Philadelphia and we live in a very diverse neighborhood. My entire family stands out. But people see Stella like at the playground, when she’s on something and I’m nearby. People aren’t confused until I go up to her. Then they’re like, why is that woman with Stella? They don’t think I’m her mom. The other day someone said, “Where’s her mom?” I’m her mom.

Something strange happened the other day, and I’m still unpacking it. I’ve told a few people and everyone has a different reaction to this story, so I can't wait to hear what your reaction is. I was pushing her in the stroller to the playground. It had rained earlier, but it wasn’t raining anymore. A young kid, maybe 17, crossed the street toward us. He said, “You all good here?” I said yes. He said, “Why are you taking her out in the rain?” I said, it’s not raining anymore. He said, “Are you her mother?” I said yes. He walked around the stroller and said, “You’re her mother?” I said yes, I adopted her, and I’m her mother. He looked at me and said, “Do you know her real mother?” I said, I know her birth mother, I’m her real mother. He said, “Just wanted to make sure you all are good here.” And he turned around and walked away.

That’s the kind of confusion we’re getting. I feel like maybe he was a young Black boy looking out for his own. Maybe he thought I kidnapped her. That’s the level of confusion I’m causing in my neighborhood.

 

Keeping the Drawbridge Down – 20:57

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. What stands out to me is the deep traumas inflicted on Black communities. That’s a terrible and hard thing for you to experience, but I understand the context of why those questions get asked.

LAUREN PASSELL: I mean, yeah, I get it. And I understand coming into this, there's a lot of people that don't think that I should be Stella's mom.

BLAIR HODGES: Right. And you knew that even beforehand.

LAUREN PASSELL: Oh, yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: How did you work through that? Like, what kind of thinking got you through those questions?

LAUREN PASSELL: I still am working through it. And what I realized was—God, I've never talked about this before. This is a therapy session for me, Blair. I think at first when I… because the other thing is, I didn't say I want a Black baby, I said, let a birth mother choose us.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

LAUREN PASSELL: We said we were open to everything. Also, you know, we're already a biracial family, and they told us at the beginning that it would probably take longer to get chosen because we're a biracial family, because we didn't look like a “traditional” family. And maybe that's why it took so long. I'm glad it took so long because I have Stella.

But I feel like at first I was—I was almost not apologizing, but being very, like—well, maybe apologizing, being very much like, I know that there's people that don't think I should be your mom. I wanted people to be aware of that.

BLAIR HODGES: You wanted people to know that you knew.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah. And it didn't take long for me to realize though, you can't go in with that. And it doesn't matter. And people are gonna think what they're gonna think, and it doesn't affect my day to day. And I used to think—I heard Glennon Doyle say this once—

BLAIR HODGES: Maybe on a podcast! [laughs]

LAUREN PASSELL: Yes, yes. How when she married Abby, you know, she had to come out as gay, and she had children with a man, and her family wasn't supportive of it. And she said, Okay, I'm not letting the drawbridge down to people that aren't supportive of our love, because my children are fine with this.

So you're not allowed on my island. When you're ready, the drawbridge will go down and you can come. But until then, the drawbridge is up. And I thought about that a lot, and I told our caseworker that story. And she said, You can't keep the drawbridge up. She's going to be around in this world.

And I was like, oh, yeah, you can't keep the drawbridge up. So I just have to not let it affect the kind of mom I am. I can't do that. I just can't. I'm there for her. I can't let that affect me too much. I don't want to go in with that thinking. I want to go in with awareness and sensitivity. And that's why I love hearing from someone like Angela.

And honestly, I think I did a little too much Reddit reading before I did this, because I wanted to hear the hard adoption stories. On Instagram, you see the good ones. I wanted to hear all the hard stuff, and I think I almost did that too much.

That would be my advice: don't read too much of the bad stuff. There is a lot of trauma. It's trauma. But you can't go—I just don't think—I'm actually learning how to not lead with thinking of trauma only. I don't want to go in that way.

BLAIR HODGES: But I think you're also accounting for it. So here's what I would say about your drawbridge: in a sense, you have not pulled that drawbridge up because you're listening to stories. And some parents—I've heard stories of parents who want to ignore the race issue and raise a kid in a predominantly white community and not worry about their cultural heritage or their background or their birth family or any of those things, and don't understand the problems that can cause.

So on the one hand, yes, I think you can go overboard and let it weigh you down and let it distract you from the love of your family, from, like, just the immediacy and wonder of being a mother.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: But on the other hand, you are listening. Like, you moved to West Philadelphia. Like, you want your child to grow up in a place where they are part of that—where being Black is part of life, a bigger part of life than in other areas. And so, I don't know. That's really interesting to hear about the drawbridge analogy from you, because I get the draw toward, like, hey, drawbridge up. But when it comes to transracial adoption, I feel like you kind of… I don't know. I feel like that's not the right choice. Because of the kid.

LAUREN PASSELL: Exactly. Exactly. And it's funny because you know, we had to watch a lot of videos and do a lot of trainings leading up to this. And one of the videos that I watched that really stood out to me was a Jewish woman who decided to start taking her Black daughter to a Black church—which is awesome—but, you know, Black hair is really different. And this woman didn't know how to do her daughter's Black hair.

And that is something I am learning to do by the Black women in my life. I'm getting better at it. I'm not great at it.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it takes practice.

LAUREN PASSELL: It takes a lot of practice, especially when she just wants to rock her head all over the place. But she said she took her to the church, and some of the women in the church came up to her and said, Honey, come here. We need to help you with this. And they took her to a Black salon.

And this woman felt this sense of relief by the fact that people wanted to help her. And that is something that has stood out in my mind—that if I hadn't heard that story, I might think, ah, I don't want to annoy people. Or, like, people are going to be looking down at me and being like, That white woman doesn't know how to do her hair.

I'm like, you ask for help. It's for Stella. It is not for you. You embarrass yourself, do whatever. And also, you're not going to embarrass yourself because these women want to help Stella. They want to help Black babies. And the relief of just saying, I need help. I don't know how to do this. Can I take her to a Black salon? Yes, of course. Then it becomes this extension of the community.

And then the drawbridge—you're so right. That drawbridge thing. Can I swear on this show?

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, you can swear! But here's the thing: I bleep them out, but mostly because I think it sounds funny.

LAUREN PASSELL: I love that. Okay. I love that even more.

F*ck the drawbridge! Because the drawbridge doesn't let the people in who want to help us, too. And also, my whole story is there's not one mom, there's not one family. So I took her down to meet, be with her family. I love the drawbridge being down now, because now there's, like, tons and tons of people.

It's funny because when I brought her to the family, we were at the great-grandmother's house. And the first thing the birth mother did was she took Stella between her legs and started doing her hair. And I almost started crying.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, yeah.

LAUREN PASSELL: And it was beautiful. It was beautiful. And one of the—I think one of the grandmothers or aunts or something—said, Oh, she's with her mom. And they looked at me like, “oh…” And I said, “No, she's her mom. Yeah, she's her mom. She's her mom too. We're both her mom. That's okay. I want Stella to hear that.”

BLAIR HODGES: It reminds me of Angela's idea of the ghost kingdom, right? Which is kids that don’t get to experience that most often. They have to kind of imagine it up in this really tragic way. What you’re doing is giving your child something concrete. It’s not a ghost kingdom. These are real people that can have a place in her mind and heart.

LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah. Right now I’m working on a book, and I want to put them on her wall too—where we’re getting pictures of people in her family. My husband’s Taiwanese family, my Italian family, and Stella’s biological family. Because I want her to see all of them and know—see who she thinks she looks like and be familiar with their faces so that when we go down again, they’re not strangers.

But I don’t know. It’s screwed up, man. Adoption is a trauma. It is. So I know that, and I’m trying my best. I’m gonna screw up so many things. It’s gonna be so hard. I don’t know. It’s helpful to have someone like Angela, though. It really is.

 

The System Needs to Change – 29:36

 

BLAIR HODGES: When you mentioned that the system has real issues, what are just some basic things you’d like to see change?

LAUREN PASSELL: Well, I think Angela has it down. It’s like—could we have offered support to the birth mom? You know, she was not in a place where she could sustain her family. Could we have offered, you know, a Black woman more support? Yeah. It goes back so far.

It’s stuff that I can’t really fix. I think that’s the biggest problem with it to me—that the entire system has to change. And that’s something I can’t change.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Well, if you can’t change it, knowing how it is, then what kind of advice would you give to people who are looking at adoption?

LAUREN PASSELL: I guess just open adoption. Learn everything you can. I feel like open adoption is a really healthy way to do it. And I notice a lot of the stories that I read that are really hard… I think they’re less hard if the adoption is open. Everything’s gonna be hard.

And also, I don’t know if the birth family will want to be—they might go in and out, and I have to be okay with that. We all have to be okay with that. I’m gonna show up. I’m gonna be there.

But also just hearing—listening to the stories of people who are adopted. That’s something we can all do.

Something else Angela says, it’s okay to feel gratitude and loss. That’s an okay response and an okay feeling. I can’t get my feelings hurt if Stella is curious about her birth family. Of course not. That’s great.

So yeah, just listening to the stories of people who’ve been adopted, being as open as possible, and really respecting who she is as a person and where she comes from.

But the other thing that I think is wrong with the system is—I don’t know how to fix this—but the idea of the money exchanged feels really strange. How expensive it is. And I think Angela even talked about that a little bit.

BLAIR HODGES: And, like, where the money goes.

LAUREN PASSELL: “Where’s the money going?”

BLAIR HODGES: It costs that much? Yeah.

LAUREN PASSELL: And if it costs that much, can we give some of that money to some of these birth mothers who need help? So I feel like—and the murkiness of it, Blair. The murkiness. I understand a lot of the reasons there’s murkiness, but it’s just absolute murkiness.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I was so hungry for honest conversations, and what Angela has to say in the episode you provided on your podcast. So yeah. And that’s why I’m also glad you let me talk about it—because I just think I want people to stop calling me a hero.

BLAIR HODGES: The hero.

LAUREN PASSELL: I want people to understand that open adoption is, like, awesome. And also that it’s okay for women to be like, “Yeah, I want to do this. It’s a great thing.” It’s great.

 

Joys of Adoptive Parenting – 32:44

 

BLAIR HODGES: Well, that’s where I want to kind of wrap up. What are your favorite parts about being a mom? What this life is like? Is it like what you imagined it might be?

LAUREN PASSELL: It’s not at all. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a mom. And this is screwed up, Blair, but I remember thinking I didn’t want a girl. This is so screwed up. I didn’t realize this until afterwards. I didn’t want a girl because I was like, “I’m not going to like this, like, too much. Like, I’m going to like it, but I’m very independent. I’ve been an independent person my whole life. I was like, “I don’t need my alone time. If it’s a boy, Justin and the little boy can go do boy things—bye bye. I’m gonna get a manicure.” [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: And this is just kind of noise in your head, right? Like, you’re not writing this in a journal or something. This is sort of just the atmosphere of your thinking.

LAUREN PASSELL: I hadn’t put words to it until recently. And I realized recently it’s the exact opposite. All I want to do is spend every single second with her. I weirdly don’t even have “mom guilt” about work. It’s hard, but I’m like, I’m doing the best I can at all times.

All I want to do is be with her. She’s so much cooler than me. She’s so fun. All I wanna do is be with her.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LAUREN PASSELL: Nothing is as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t give birth to her, so there’s a lot of things I didn’t have to do. But maybe it’s because I’m an older mom and I’ve had hard things—I’ve had bad jobs, depressing things happen. So all the really hard things people warned me about—“Being a new mom is gonna be so hard”—when I actually went through it I was like, “Is that all?” Because I’ve done hard things before, and they were not rewarding.

This is incredibly rewarding. So I’m obsessed with it in a way I was not prepared for.

BLAIR HODGES: That’s Lauren Passell, founder of Tink Media, a podcast growth and discovery company. And the newsletter that Lauren does is Podcast the Newsletter. You can find it at podcastthenewsletter.com for some great podcast recommendations.

I read all of these. They’re long. You do a pretty long newsletter! But you make it skimmable. I love just popping through and saying, “Oh, is there a show in here I want to check out?” You’re great at digging out these fun shows.

LAUREN PASSELL: Thank you for reading it. It means a lot to me, because it takes a lot of time to make. And sometimes I’m like, “Why do I do this? I could be playing with Stella.” [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: Exactly, exactly! I hope people check it out too. And Lauren, thanks for joining us on Relationscapes. This has been fun.

LAUREN PASSELL: Thanks for having me, Blair.

 

Outro – 35:16

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to Relationscapes. Episode 50. Here’s to 50 more. And if you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I hope you’ll check out some of the past episodes, there is a lot of great stuff to choose from. You can also help me celebrate by rating and reviewing the show in Apple Podcasts or rating it in Spotify. It’s really easy to rate it in Spotify, but it’s really satisfying to rate and review in Apple Podcasts, you get to see your own words. Oftentimes I’ll read your review on the show, right?

Mates of State provided our theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm journalist Blair Hodges in Salt Lake City, and I'll see you again soon.