Ron Reigns:
Welcome and thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption with Kelly Rourke-Scarry and me, Ron Reigns, where we delve into the issues of adoption from every angle of the adoption triad.

Speaker 2:
Do what’s best for your kid and for yourself because if you didn’t take care of yourself, you’re definitely not going to be able to take care of that kid and that’s not fair.

Speaker 3:
And I know that my daughter will be well taken care of with them.

Speaker 4:
Don’t have an abortion, give this child a chance.

Lindsey:
All I could think about was needing to save my son.

Kelly R.-S.:
My name is Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I am the executive director, president, and co-founder of Building Arizona Families Adoption Agency, the Donna K. Evans Foundation, and creator of the You Before Me campaign. I have a bachelor’s degree in family studies and human development, and a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in school counseling. I was adopted at the age of three days, born to a teen birth mother, raised in a closed adoption, and reunited with my birth mother in 2007. I have worked in the adoption field for over 15 years.

Ron Reigns:
And I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the cohost of two successful morning shows in Prescott, Arizona. Now I work for my wife, who’s an adoption attorney, and I’m able to combine these two great passions and share them on this podcast.

Kelly R.-S.:
A little self-esteem can go a long way.

Ron Reigns:
That’s for sure.

Kelly R.-S.:
Self-esteem is the stairway out of the basement.

Ron Reigns:
Really?

Kelly R.-S.:
Really. Many of our birth moms find themselves in negative life cycles, and one reason for their adoption choice is to break the familial negative life cycle.

Ron Reigns:
Okay.

Kelly R.-S.:
That is what I have said in previous podcasts my mom did when she placed me for adoption. There is a common thread among many women who wear the moniker of low self-esteem. They’ve been raised by parents with one or more of the following traits. These can all contribute to low self-esteem. Parents that are incarcerated, either one or both of them, they’re in foster care, their parents are perpetually unemployed, they’re drug using, they’ve been on welfare, food stamps, EBT, are considered lower class, we used to say back in the day in parentheticals, living on the wrong side of the tracks, the parents have little to no formal education, and it can go on and on.

Kelly R.-S.:
What I have seen is these lifestyles are what is modeled, and so when these children are raised underneath these circumstances, and it’s not that one of these is negative or, if you don’t have enough money, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to have low self-esteem. It’s when you combine these and you raise a child in these circumstances, and this is considered normal for the child. So every child looks up to their parents, and they want to strive to be like them, so if you have a parent living in a home that is not working, let’s say it’s the dad, the dad’s laying on the couch drinking a beer, not working, collecting his unemployment check, and he is physically abusing his wife, and she’s using drugs, and you watch this behavior growing up, then as you get older they say that you look for a partner that is similar to the traits of your parents. Again, that can normalize some of the behavior. That can also damage your self-esteem because when you get out in the real world and you see these things, you can start to internalize them. When you’re stuck in negative life cycles and you do have low self-esteem, it’s very hard to take steps to climb out of it.

Ron Reigns:
Oh, absolutely.

Kelly R.-S.:
Change is hard. It’s doable, but change is hard. Self-esteem and the lack thereof is really a huge contributor to decisions that people make. In other words, somebody that has very low self-esteem and sees an option, a job opening let’s say, and they would love to work that job. That’s the dream job. They qualify on paper for it, but if their self-esteem is so low, the chances of them actually applying for that job for fear of rejection, it’s probably not going to happen.

Ron Reigns:
So they’re sabotaging themselves by the choices they make.

Kelly R.-S.:
Right, because they don’t want to … they’re already in such a low place that they don’t want to try to reach out and possibly face rejection, which will then, again, in turn affect their self-esteem. It’s already low. They don’t want to bring themselves any lower.

Ron Reigns:
Certainly. Okay.

Kelly R.-S.:
When a birth mom comes into our adoption agency, one of the first things that we as an agency collectively try to do is work on their self-esteem because empowering a birth mother and trying to help her see what an amazing thing that she’s doing is not only going to help her for the rest of her life, but it will help her to see what a beautiful choice adoption is. If you have somebody with very low self-esteem, the chances of them feeling guilty about their adoption choice are higher because they’re going to look at it like, “Well, see, I can’t even raise my own baby,” whereas if you have higher self-esteem, you can look at it like, “I know I’m not in a place that I want to be to raise a baby, so I’m going to place my baby for adoption because it’s going to help the baby, and it’s going to give me an opportunity to be able to parent in the future another child.”

Kelly R.-S.:
When birth parents are stuck in these negative life cycles, they don’t often know how to find a way out of this labyrinth lifestyle, so when they get pregnant and they come to us, they may be living on the streets. They may be in a domestic violent relationship. When they’re in these situations, again, it flattens self-esteem. Nobody wants to be sitting, and I spoke with the birth mom last week about this, nobody wants to be sitting with their back up against the outside of a grocery store with nothing, with nowhere to go, with nobody to call, with nobody calling them to say, “Hey, how are you? What are you doing?” with no place to put their things but a grocery cart. That’s a really hard place to be. When we have them come into the agency and we’re able to help them with their living situation and stabilize them and help them raise their self-esteem, the goal is to have them leave better than when they came in.

Ron Reigns:
Definitely.

Kelly R.-S.:
And I think that that piece is often missed in some agencies because they don’t realize that the long-term effects, without counseling birth mothers and birth fathers and working with them and helping them with their self-esteem, is actually going to help them feel good about their decision. It’s going to help promote the adoption. They’re going to feel strong. Strong people do good things.

Ron Reigns:
Right, and so they’re going to start making more right decisions from that progression, you know? Just like the downward spiral is self-perpetuating-

Kelly R.-S.:
Correct.

Ron Reigns:
… so is the upward climb.

Kelly R.-S.:
Correct. Absolutely. And when you look at it, if you have a woman who is in a domestic violent relationship and she has low self-esteem, so she thinks very little of herself, when she’s being verbally abused and she’s being told that she’s nothing and that she’s lucky to have him-

Ron Reigns:
And she’s believing it.

Kelly R.-S.:
… she’s believing him. When he’s physically abusive with her, she may feel like she deserves it. I have had women come into the agency that they are with somebody that is very abusive to them, and what they tell me is, “One day a month, though, he’s amazing. He’s amazing. So I just hang on for that one day, because that one day is better than not having anything. It’s worth the 29 days that I have to go through to get to that one day, because I don’t have anybody else. He’s stuck with me for all these months when everybody else has walked away,” and they don’t see the value in themselves. They don’t see their worth.

Kelly R.-S.:
When we’re working with women, and I very much do believe that women can help women in a certain way, just like men can help men in a certain way, there’s a connection. And when a woman can help another woman and let her know that she matters, that she’s worth more than she’s giving herself credit for, it can change her life. And again, it helps the adoption process because when you have a woman that has no self-esteem and goes into a hospital, and she’s in a very dire life situation, she goes into the hospital and she has the baby, this baby is new and precious, and in her mind, that’s the best thing that she’s ever done. When she looks at placing that baby for adoption with her low self-esteem, that’s hard to do because then she is letting go of the one piece of her that means something.

Ron Reigns:
Right, that she’s taking pride in.

Kelly R.-S.:
Right.

Ron Reigns:
Okay.

Kelly R.-S.:
Whereas if you have higher self-esteem and you’re building it up, she can look at the baby and look at the adoptive family and look at herself in the mirror and say, “This is the right thing to do. This is what needs to happen, and yes, it’s going to be hard, but I’ve got an agency standing behind me that is going to help support me through this.”

Kelly R.-S.:
Self-esteem is the key. It’s the key to helping women leave domestic violent relationships. It is the key to employment. It is the key to higher education. It is the key to so many vital things that we need in society to better humanity as a whole, and it’s underrated. It’s not given the attention that it deserves.

Ron Reigns:
Oh, absolutely. So how do you develop somebody else … I mean, it’s hard enough just to try and develop your own self-esteem, especially if yours is low. How do you help to encourage somebody else to value themselves?

Kelly R.-S.:
One of the things that we do is we empower the women through choice. So when they come into the program, we talk to them about adoption options and explain each one of them. When you start giving somebody the power of choice, because they have little to none, they start to see that what they’re saying matters. When women have no self-esteem, they don’t think that anybody’s listening to them, and when you spend time and you focus on what they have done, what their hobbies are, when you show interest in somebody and they start to realize, “Somebody cares about me,” they start to feel like they matter, and everybody deserves to feel like they matter.

Kelly R.-S.:
We’ve talked about homeless people on the streets. When you drive by and you see somebody homeless on the street, that’s somebody’s mother, that’s somebody’s sister, that’s somebody’s friend, that somebody’s daughter, that’s somebody’s aunt, and it’s so hard to think, “Do they feel themselves that they matter?” And those are the women that we see a lot that come into the agency. They have been standing on a street corner, or like I said, in dire situations. But by giving them support, not just financial, but emotional support, and showing them, “Not only are you going to go to the doctor because we’re going to make sure that you and your baby are okay, but we’re going to go with you because we care. We care about you. This isn’t just about the baby. We care about you too.”

Kelly R.-S.:
When we talk to them about what they want in the adoption, what type of communication they want during the adoption process, what type of adoptive family, when they choose an adoptive family and they see profiles that these families have chosen to be presented to this birth mother, it’s a slow start. We have a one of our workers in our after-care program meet with them prior to delivery to find out what they want to do. Do they have a GED? And if they don’t, is that something they want to pursue? The thought of being able to do something, with somebody holding your hand who believes in you, is much easier than trying to do it alone. Climbing out of the basement with little to no help, never having done it, is daunting.

Ron Reigns:
It’s almost impossible.

Kelly R.-S.:
Sure. But step over step is how you can start to raise somebody’s self-esteem. Without emotional support, without somebody that believes in you, how are you to believe in yourself? When a woman comes in and says, “I need to place my baby for adoption. I’m not in a place that I can raise a child,” we commend her on her bravery. We commend her on her choice, and she starts to see what a good person she really is.

Kelly R.-S.:
When women are trapped in negative life cycles, like prostitution, domestic violence, homelessness, they’ve lost children to the state, they have felonies, they feel very beaten down. They’ve been told by either somebody in society or society as a whole that they are less than, that they don’t matter as much as the next person and-

Ron Reigns:
They’re marginalized.

Kelly R.-S.:
They are. They are. And their voice is a lot of times taken away. By, again, encouraging women that they don’t have to live underneath that moniker, that they don’t have to have this stigma over their head, there’s no scarlet A on their forehead, again, it’s a way to start empowering them towards building their self-esteem.

Kelly R.-S.:
I have had woman after woman that has come to the agency that is pregnant as a result of prostitution, and in speaking with them, I will often ask them to tell me about it, what it looks like, why they chose to do that, is this the lifestyle they want to live?

Ron Reigns:
What in their life … You know. I’m sure they were just regular kids in kindergarten like all of us, and then was it their example from their parents or friends or … Yeah.

Kelly R.-S.:
The answers that I get are often astounding. What I want to share with our listeners is the women that are in prostitution and have a “pimp” will tell me, “The reason I do it is because I can make a couple thousand dollars in a night,” and when my question is then, “So financial is not an issue for you? I mean, finances are fine.” And she said, “No, I give it all to the pimp.” And when I ask her why, she says … most of the time I hear, “I love him,” “He will beat me up if I don’t,” “He gives me my drugs and he takes care of me,” and she doesn’t see her own worth. She doesn’t see herself. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see the value of her as a human being.

Kelly R.-S.:
In relation to adoption, again, a successful adoption can hinge on self-esteem because if you have somebody who doesn’t believe in themselves, it’s hard to believe that they will make the right choice. I think it’s very important for us to realize the value of self-esteem, of what we think of ourselves, because you can’t love somebody else if you can’t love yourself. It’s like the airplane analogy. When you’re on an airplane, they say make sure you put your mask on if there’s an emergency before you put your child’s on.

Ron Reigns:
Because if you can’t breathe and you pass out, how are you supposed to-

Kelly R.-S.:
Who’s going to help your child?

Ron Reigns:
Right.

Kelly R.-S.:
It’s the same with self-esteem. If you have no self-esteem, then how can you help somebody else?

Ron Reigns:
You got to get yourself in that position first.

Kelly R.-S.:
Right. And as a society, we need to make sure that we are encouraging humanity as a whole to take the step and really work on our own self-esteem. Being hungry, being alone, being homeless, being addicted, and being pregnant, only to have your money taken away by your pimp if you’re a prostitute, is literally adding insult to injury. There’s no other explanation.

Kelly R.-S.:
It takes such a brave woman to walk into an adoption agency and say, “Hey, I really do need to place my baby for adoption. I can’t bring a baby into my world.” That is an inner strength that so many people can’t fathom. Women who believe in adoption and who believe in themselves will climb, claw, and fight their way up those basement stairs to make sure that their baby is not in a place that they are themselves in. Raising a woman’s self-esteem will help them believe in themselves. It will help them leave an abusive partner if that’s necessary. It will help them trust sobriety, giving them the desire to want to be clean, to not use drugs, because a lot of women use drugs to self-medicate.

Ron Reigns:
Definitely.

Kelly R.-S.:
It will give them the strength and the belief in going back to school and completing their education, and lastly, it will give them the wherewithal to listen to others without fear of being judged. Nobody wants to be judged.

Ron Reigns:
No.

Kelly R.-S.:
So adoption is definitely breaking the cycle and climbing out of the basement.

Ron Reigns:
And you can attest to that from your side of the adoption triad as well.

Kelly R.-S.:
I can.

Ron Reigns:
In that your birth mother wasn’t ready to raise a child. It was so beneficial for her to have made that choice for your entire life. You wouldn’t be the same person you are without that choice have been made, you know?

Kelly R.-S.:
Agreed.

Ron Reigns:
Does that make sense?

Kelly R.-S.:
It makes perfect sense. And not only have I thought about that probably hundreds of times, but I’ve looked at it almost like a Rubik’s cube from all angles, and I’ve thought, “Well, would I have had the inner strength to be the one to make it out?” And I’ve looked at the situation, and no, I don’t believe that I would have. I think that her choice saved mine.

Ron Reigns:
Right. Not to mention, I mean, I just love how your story really illustrates how one person’s choice several years ago-

Kelly R.-S.:
Thank you for that.

Ron Reigns:
Absolutely … can affect so many different lives in so many different ways, because obviously chances aren’t good that you would have started an adoption agency.

Kelly R.-S.:
Correct.

Ron Reigns:
Chances are even less that you would have started the Donna K. Evans Foundation and the You Before Me campaign. These things probably never would have happened, so all these birth mothers now that you’re affecting the lives of was because a choice made several years ago.

Kelly R.-S.:
Right.

Ron Reigns:
So there you go.

Kelly R.-S.:
Yeah. Thank you for that.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah, certainly.

Kelly R.-S.:
I agree.

Lindsey:
My name is Lindsey. When I found out I was pregnant, I was homeless, on drugs, and I was trying to escape a domestic violence situation with my baby’s father. I came to Building Arizona Families as kind of just to explore my options. From the moment I walked in, they were super supportive. They were great. They did an interview and kind of asked me what my plans were, what I was thinking. I let them know that I was interested in adoption, and from there I received a case manager, and I was really terrified. This was my first child. All I could think about was needing to save my son.

Lindsey:
I couldn’t even get off drugs at the time, and I just had all these horror stories of, “Would I go back to my ex-boyfriend?” Who he had a son my age, and he started doing meth with his son when his son was 13. I mean, I was totally alone. My family was not in the picture. They told me that I needed to get an abortion. So, my case manager became like my mom.

Lindsey:
I would call her crying in the middle of the night, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so scared about … I’m having this pain or this feeling,” and she’d walk me through the process of just kind of being there, because I’d never been pregnant before. Everything was brand new to me. She just loved me through everything.

Lindsey:
I mean, I went to all my doctor’s appointments because of Building Arizona Families, transportation, just everything, anything and everything to make sure that my son received the best care possible. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to do that for him had it not been for Building Arizona Families.

Lindsey:
It was definitely the hardest decision I’ve ever made, and it still is something that is very hard, but it was the right thing, and it’s still every day I’m so thankful for Building Arizona Families, I’m so thankful for the couple that adopted him, and I’m just so thankful for just this whole situation. I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own, and I just, I know that he has a better life now and he has a chance to be great. I know that he would have that chance no matter what, but he’s growing up in a good family and he’s growing up surrounded by love. I couldn’t be happier with all this. The care I received from Building Arizona Families and the whole process was just a dream come true. I wasn’t alone.

Ron Reigns:
Thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption, written and produced by Kelly Rourke-Scarry and edited by me, Ron Reigns. We also want to thank Building Arizona Families, the Donna K. Evans Foundation, and the You Before Me campaign. A special thanks goes out to Grapes for letting us use their song I Don’t Know as our theme song. You can check out our blogs on our website at azpregnancyhelp.com, and you can call us 24 hours a day with questions or comments about the podcast or adoption in general at 623-695-4112. That’s 623-695-4112. Make sure to join us next time on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption for Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I’m Ron Reigns. We’ll see you then.