#69 – Whitney Horne
Adoption & Its Connection to Addiction
Whitney grew up outside of Atlanta, GA and was adopted at birth along with her younger sister Hayden. Her struggle with an eating disorder surfaced in middle school, around the same time her sister’s struggle with substance use began. Whitney shares her sister’s painful and tumultuous path through addiction, which ultimately led to her unfair and untimely death at the young age of 19.
She shares amazing insight into taking steps forward after incredible loss and grief, and shares the truth about adoption and how families can navigate that journey successfully. Whitney is a single mom to her amazing son, and they both share a deep love for animals.
You can contact Whitney on Instagram at @the.boho.homestead
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Episode Transcript
Christiana Kimmich:
Hello, everyone. Quick update. The podcast has moved. We have a new website, which is www.lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast. Again, that’s www.lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast. And our new email address is podcast@lionrock.life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change, your recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. Today we have Whitney Horne. Whitney grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia. She was adopted at birth along with her younger sister, Hayden. Her struggle with an eating disorder surfaced in middle school, around the same time her sister’s struggle with substance use began. Whitney shares her sister’s painful and tumultuous path through addiction, which ultimately led to her unfair and untimely death at the young age of 19. She shares amazing insight into taking steps forward after incredible loss and grief and shares the truth about adoption and how families can navigate that journey successfully.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whitney is a single mom to her amazing son, and they both share a deep love for animals. It was so wonderful to have Whitney on the podcast. She is just such a light and brings authenticity and a real voice to issues around adoption and the beauty in adoption, and also the darker sides of it. I think it’s really important that we talk about all aspects of things. And so talking about all the different aspects of adoption, something that happens quite frequently in this country should be on the table as well. I know that when I went to treatment, so many of the kids that I was in rehab with had been adopted, and it was definitely a source of conflict for them. You are about to hear Whitney and Hayden’s story, and I hope it gives you a deeper look into some of the topics around adoption and substance use that we should be talking about more openly. Without further ado, I give you episode 69. Let’s do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whitney, welcome to The Courage to Change. Thank you so much for being here.
Whitney Horne:
Thank you for having me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You have made a lot of your life’s mission about bringing awareness to the difficulties that adopted kids struggle with. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Whitney Horne:
I don’t want to give off the impression that adoption is negative. I think it’s a very positive, beautiful thing, but it’s complicated. And there are definitely issues that adoptees face on a higher scale. And I think that if it was a topic that was more openly discussed and that’s something that people were afraid to bring up, especially adoptees, they were very afraid to say anything negative, especially it’s so ingrained. So many people will tell you as a child, “You’re so lucky to be adopted.” And then you kind of have these thoughts in your head that you don’t want to share because it is negative. You don’t want to put a negative side on something that is usually such a happy, beautiful story. So I do feel like it’s something that people need to discuss more. It needs to be brought up and not such a shameful topic, I guess.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It seems like there’s also a place for parents who adopt kids, because I could see adopting and thinking to myself, I chose you. I chose you and I could have chosen anyone else. But it was you because I want to give this to you. And how feeling like if you are wondering about your birth parents, am I not doing a good enough job as your adoptive parent? Or if I didn’t have the tools or the skills as the adoptive parent to navigate these questions that come up for you, I might get my feelings hurt, which would project onto you as the adopted child wanting to be careful around my feelings.
Whitney Horne:
Right. And I think it goes both ways. You have the child trying to be so careful not to hurt the parents and the parents trying to be so careful not to hurt the kids and not to take things personally, but they do take things personally. And a lot of it comes down to just not communicating and being afraid of that communication. And adoption has changed. It is constantly changing. I think 100 years ago it was very taboo to tell the child that they were adopted. That was a family secret. Nobody talked about it. The child grew up thinking that they were biological children. And then-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you think about that?
Whitney Horne:
That’s definitely not the way to go because it almost always comes out eventually. And then that’s a whole nother trauma of, okay, I’ve been lied to my entire life. It’s very, very unsettling. That never turns out well, and those people figure it out eventually. And then you had a huge period of time where it was all closed adoptions. You didn’t hear about open adoptions. And then now you have this open adoption, which it’s good to see. It’s good to see everything’s evolving and kind of changing. So I do think we’re on the right path of figuring it out and how to better go about adoption, and how to make it better for the adoptee, the adoptive parents, and the birth families. There’s three parts and it’s complicated for everybody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I also was thinking that with 23 and me these days, those types of secrets are not going so well. You have those secrets, you have the affair secrets. You have all that stuff and it’s not doable anymore.
Whitney Horne:
My poor birth family, I have found-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh no.
Whitney Horne:
… a couple of relatives they didn’t know about. So it was like, “Surprise, I’m here, and surprise, [inaudible 00:06:55].”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. I’ve also brought other family members. You could see my Mastiff in the back.
Whitney Horne:
He’s so cute.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He’s sitting comfortable, his legs are in the air.
Whitney Horne:
[crosstalk 00:07:02].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you were adopted and you had a younger or older sister.
Whitney Horne:
I had a younger sister.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Younger sister. Okay. You were adopted and then your younger sister, Hayden, but different families.
Whitney Horne:
Different families. So my family was on a waiting list for adoption, which, it still takes quite a while. So they-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Your [crosstalk 00:07:28]-
Whitney Horne:
My adoptive family.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it.
Whitney Horne:
So when I see my family or my parents, I’m always talking about my adoptive family. If I say birth family or bio family, then I’ll put that in the front. So my parents had been on a waiting list and a friend of a friend contacted them and said they were also on a waiting list for adoption. And their coworker had a daughter that was 14 and gotten pregnant, and they were going to, back then the birth mother did not get to decide at that age. She had no say whatsoever. So you were usually sent away, you have the baby-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That wasn’t that long ago.
Whitney Horne:
I know, just the ’80s.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know you were like, “Back then.” I’m like, wait a minute.
Whitney Horne:
Way back then.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Way back then, I’m like, did she even have a say? Wow. Okay.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. So they were trying to comfort her and say, “We’ll find a friend to take the baby,” because she didn’t want to give me up for adoption. She’d actually hidden the pregnancy to the very end, I think it was like three months before. So they contacted a lawyer and the lawyer said, you absolutely, like I said, back then it was only closed adoptions. And open adoptions was not like a concept. So the lawyers were like, “No, you can’t adopt out a child of somebody you know, it’ll complicate things. It’s a big mess. Don’t do it.” And she said, “Well, I have a friend that’s also looking to adopt a baby.” So they had contacted my parents, and I didn’t know any of this until I was in my 20s. My parents had said, “Oh, we don’t know anything about your birth family.”
Whitney Horne:
And lo and behold, they actually knew who they were and all these details. Yeah. So they contacted my parents and my parents adopted me. And then they got a call about my sister when her birth mother was pregnant and had decided to give her up for adoption. So we were pretty close in age. I think it’s about 19 months.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And your sister, did that happen when she was an infant as well? It was right out of-
Whitney Horne:
It’s a bit complicated. I use that word constantly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s okay. We’re here to talk complicated.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. So the adoption agency had put them in contact with my sister’s birth mother and she was in poverty. And so my grandparents had actually offered for her to come and stay with them through the pregnancy, which is, they say, “Don’t do that.” Like I said, back then it was closed adoption, and that did turn into a big mess. It was a very messy situation. She was from Florida.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did she want to keep your sister?
Whitney Horne:
No, but it’s kind of like, once you start providing for somebody, sometimes they’re going to take advantage of the situation. And then Georgia, I don’t know. It could have changed. My friends that have adopted have said that it’s the same, but Georgia has, it’s like a 10 day period where you can’t adopt the baby in case the mother changes her mind. So different states are different. So a lot of people will actually go to another state to adopt so that they don’t have to have that waiting period. So Georgia has that waiting period. And like I said, I don’t know about where my sister was in that 10 days. Back then they would send you to a home. So it was a home, kind of like a foster home for that 10 day period.
Whitney Horne:
And there’s a lot of speculation is that part of the big trauma that goes with adoption, those first days are critical to bond with your mother and to be in this like little limbo situation. You don’t know what kind of care, where you’re just kept in a bed and given a bottle when you need it and then just ignored. There are a lot of studies about babies in orphanages and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yep. [crosstalk 00:11:25]. They just stop crying.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. But they don’t have those studies on adopted babies and this little transition period, but I’m assuming it’s kind of the same results, the same kind of situation. So I’m not sure where my sister was in her transition period. I know that I was in a home for those 10 days.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So she goes to that, and now your birth mother was 14 and the choice was made for her. Was your sister’s birth mother, she had some serious mental illnesses if I’m not mistaken.
Whitney Horne:
Our parents growing up told us that the only things that they knew about our birth parents was that my birth mother was young, but she was a cheerleader and that she was tall, and she’s like 5’6″. I grew up thinking that she was this like insanely tall lady.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She’s 6’5″.
Whitney Horne:
And then my sister, they said that, I think they did tell us that they knew that she had other siblings. And then she was from Florida and that she gave her up for adoption because of poverty. That’s all we knew.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you think that the description of your birth mothers, like your mom was a cheerleader and she was young, and tall, and you get to make up. And then, your mom was in poverty. Do you think that, obviously this is serious Monday morning quarterbacking, but do you think that any of that play… did you think a lot about that, that your mom was tall and that she was… like, maybe your sister thought a lot about that too?
Whitney Horne:
Oh yeah. For sure. Especially when that’s all you have to go on, you’re just obsessive. And I did try to be a cheerleader, but I’m horrible at coordination. So I didn’t get those genes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like oh, it’s not genetic.
Whitney Horne:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And this was all in Georgia. You grew up in Georgia.
Whitney Horne:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Tell me a bit about the Cabbage Patch Kids story.
Whitney Horne:
My parents always told us that we were adopted, but I guess when I was about, I guess I was four and Hayden was three, they sat down with us and said like, “We know you know that you’re adopted, but we want to better explain it to you.” And that’s kind of when they told us those weird random facts about our birth parents, and then they explained adoption and we were just like, they were expecting us to be devastated and trying to comprehend this and there would be tears. And my sister and I were just sitting there staring at them and they get done with this big, I’m sure they spent days pulling [inaudible 00:14:09]-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh yeah.
Whitney Horne:
… how they’re going to explain it to these two little [crosstalk 00:14:11]-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Power Point.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. I’m sure my mom read books. And so they just sat there. I remember them staring at us and we both looked at each other like, we’re Cabbage Patch Kids, this is amazing. And we asked them like, “Do you remember Xavier Roberts? Did he come to the house and personally deliver us? Or did you have to go to Baby Land and get us?” And they tried to say like, “Yeah, that’s not really, like that’s kind of pretend,” but we were just so, we refused to believe any of that. That’s a lie. You all are keeping that a secret that we’re Cabbage Patch Kids.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. You just don’t want us to know. Was there any thoughts about the fact that you and Hayden weren’t biological siblings or this was probably way out of the realm of things you guys thought about?
Whitney Horne:
I’ve always felt my family is my family. I’ve never felt that I didn’t belong. And maybe I’m just really lucky. I am in some support groups with some adoptees and a lot of them don’t have that experience. Like my cousins in my adoptive family, they are like siblings. We are so close. I was telling Christiana when somebody says like, blood is thicker than water, I always think in my head, I don’t think so. And I have a beautiful relationship with my birth family and my, I guess, blood family, but I don’t think that’s any more special or any more of a connection than I have with my adoptive family. So, no, we felt like sisters. We didn’t look anything alike. I don’t look anything like my adoptive family.
Whitney Horne:
My sister kind of did. She had blonde hair and she definitely looked more like them, but I did not. I had the curiosity of wanting to see somebody that looks like me. I was very curious about, does my birth mom look like me? When you go to a store or you’re in public, you’re always looking at people going, could that be my birth mom? When I was in high school I was terrified to date anybody because I was like, what if it’s my brother?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. [crosstalk 00:16:20].
Whitney Horne:
So you do look around a lot. Like, okay, we kind of look similar. Could we be related?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Such an interesting thing that isn’t something that I thought about. My mother and I do not look alike in terms of, she’s blue eyes, blonde hair, really tall. And you know, it just never occurred to me.
Whitney Horne:
It was funny. People would try to sell stuff to my mom and I, and they would be like, “Oh, you guys look so much alike, mother and daughter?” And we would always look at each other and just laugh, okay, obviously you’re just trying to sell us something because we don’t look anything alike.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You’re like, I know you’re trying to sell us something. That’s funny. Okay. So third and fourth grade, Hayden writes a story that gets a lot of attention. Do you remember this well?
Whitney Horne:
I was a little jealous back then. I’m very much a perfectionist and always trying to be like the best at everything. So I do remember being a little jealous of all the attention she had got. But I-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 00:17:23]. I got stories.
Whitney Horne:
So she did this story and I think it was one of those contests you do where there’s a winner for the whole school and then all the schools send their winners to state, and then I think she won, I think it was a national win, so like a very big deal. I have the paper somewhere.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh man, as the older sibling, you must have been so like, “Good for you.” You ever see bridesmaids-
Whitney Horne:
Yes. I love that [crosstalk 00:17:55].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When she’s in the, she’s like, “Good for you.” I think that’s how I would be the whole time. Okay. Anyway.
Whitney Horne:
It was. Because she was always cute, funny. She was good at a lot of things and I was just good at school. So it was kind of like, why am I so [inaudible 00:18:10]. My parents were [crosstalk 00:18:12]-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Pretty sure this is my thing. Yeah.
Whitney Horne:
So I didn’t pay a lot of attention back then, but after, now I’m like, now I’m proud of her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right.
Whitney Horne:
This took a little while. I think it was called The Gift and she wrote a story about her birth mom giving her like this gift of life and how grateful she was for her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And was it, where did you think, like third or fourth grade? That’s very young. Did it reach into anything? Did it illuminate anything that was going on with her?
Whitney Horne:
I was kind of stunned, not just jealous, but like [inaudible 00:18:55] had these very negative feelings about adoption. She used to say that she didn’t want anything to do with trying to find her birth parents, that she had a lot of anger towards her birth mom and very much felt abandoned and rejected. So it was almost like, I feel like she was kind of writing the story based on what, which adoptees do, she wrote the story based on what she thought that people wanted to hear. I know what people tell you. Like I said, when you’re an adoptee, you hear it all the time. “You are so lucky you were chosen,” and it’s basically, that’s kind of the story she wrote. So I think she was trying to make everyone around her feel this warm, fuzzy feeling that she wanted to feel, but I don’t think she did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And to get so many accolades for it too.
Whitney Horne:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The reinforcement of good, this is how you should feel.
Whitney Horne:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We acknowledge this feeling. That’s pretty powerful. And then a year later you started to struggle with food. What did that look like?
Whitney Horne:
Our parents got divorced when I was in second grade and Hayden would have been in first grade. So there was a lot of chaos. And then eating disorders, just like addiction, it’s a very higher rate in adoptees. So adoptees are known for having this drive for perfection. Just trying to be perfect to prevent rejection is basically what it comes down to. And this lack of control. You couldn’t control your birth. You want to be this perfect person. So eating disorders are very common. So around that time, it just kind of, I guess, everything felt out of control. I started getting a little bit bullied in school where people would say you’re fat. And then I look back and I’m like, oh my God. I thought I was this huge child and it’s crazy. So that kind of started then.
Whitney Horne:
My mom was an aerobics instructor for Richard Simmons. He started in Georgia. So we were very like fitness, dieting kind of family. So it just kind of, just came naturally, I guess, with all the other factors in there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did the divorce, was there any thought about like, oh, I can’t stay in any family, or families just don’t work around me? Or did Hayden absorb any of that?
Whitney Horne:
I was always a momma’s girl and Hayden was a daddy’s girl. So she did not handle the divorce well at all. And she would get furious at my mom for dating. I remember her telling my stepdad to the classic. “You’ll never be my father,” and she did not take it well at all. Now that you mentioned that, yes, she probably was internalizing that feeling of being rejected again and okay, this family is not working out either.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I can imagine that a lot of those things would be, especially if you’re already struggling with it, if you’re already looking for that narrative out in the world, like who is going to reject me, that would come up. When you saw Hayden struggling with this stuff and you had, did you have private conversations with her like, “No, this is a good thing.” Or did you try to help her see your perspective ever?
Whitney Horne:
I did. I’d be like, “Are you sure you don’t want to try to find out?” I just wanted to see pictures was really what I wanted to see. I just wanted to know where my genetics came from, I guess. I never had hate towards my birth mother. I don’t remember having those emotions. I did have the feeling of rejection and issues. I still struggle with those kinds of issues, wanting to fit in. One of my friends gets mad at me, I go into this deep state of like, oh my God, they’ll never talk to me again. So I do have those issues, but she had outright anger and so much pain, feeling abandoned and rejected.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did she ever try to reach out to her, you said she wasn’t curious about her birth family, but then at some point she became curious. Right?
Whitney Horne:
Right. I do have some guilt where I had said, “Let’s snoop and look around and try to find information about our birth parents. There’s got to be something.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you?
Whitney Horne:
I was trying to figure that out. I think, it had to have been after the divorce. So it was probably around fifth grade.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So really young.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. And I, like I said, up until that point, that was all we knew about our birth parents was those little facts. And I was going in it like, I felt like a detective and I was so excited when she was like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” So we went through files and boxes, and I got to the point where I was like, “Oh, we’re never going to find anything.” But then we found a phone bill and some notes were written on it about how the birth mother had been using, back then when you had a landline and you made a long distance phone call, it was very expensive. So it was a copy of a phone bill and every phone call that she had made while she was at my grandparents’ was circled with the price of the phone call for my parents to reimburse them.
Whitney Horne:
And by going through those phone numbers, we figured out which one was her number or the one that she called the most. And I was like, “Oh, let’s call it now.” I was excited.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s some serious detective work.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:24:58].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m impressed. I am impressed.
Whitney Horne:
We were so good. We put everything back perfectly. So my parents had no idea and we didn’t tell them because obviously at that point, we were like, oh my gosh, she stayed with our grandparents. They obviously know a lot about this lady not that she was just from Florida and that she was poor. They knew her and nobody told us this. It was like, okay, our grandparents didn’t tell us. That means our aunts and uncles knew. That means everybody knew. And like I said in the beginning, adoptees, it’s always going to come out. You’re always going to find out the lie. So there was that betrayal too of like, wow, they’ve been keeping this from us. And she was like, “No, I don’t want to call the number.” And I was like, “Why?” It’s like you don’t want to call the number.
Whitney Horne:
And I wasn’t going to do it. I was very tempted to, but she just acted like she didn’t want to do it. She told me she would tell me if she did, but I would ask her periodically and she would say, “No, I still don’t want to call the number.” Well, come to find out in therapy later, she admitted that she actually called the number that night and her birth mother answered. Apparently it was the, I think the sister, her birth mother’s sister’s home, but the birth mother stayed there when she was around. Then the birth mother said that she was super excited to hear from her and just so happy that she called and she said, “I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you back another time.” And I guess Hayden waited maybe two days. And she hadn’t called. And she called the number back and it had been disconnected, which was like, okay, this number had been around, I guess at that age, she was probably 10.
Whitney Horne:
So it’s like, okay, they have this number for 10 years and then they disconnected it. And she just knew that it was because of her. Nobody knew that she had done this. Nobody knew that she was going through these feelings, but it was just this horrible feeling of rejection again. And just not being wanted and being abandoned again. So that’s-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And she didn’t bring that up until rehab.
Whitney Horne:
Right. So none of us knew about it until rehab. And my parents were, my dad was pretty mad at me. He was like, “It was your idea.” It’s like, yeah, but it’s normal. That’s what you do when you’re adopted. And if you guys hadn’t kept the secrets from us, then we wouldn’t have had to do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So my question about that is, was she visibly, or did she express any upset about the secret that was kept? Well, you said all these aunts and uncles and grandparents, and everybody knew. When you guys had this realization, was there any affect change? Did she discuss it at all saying, “How could they do this?”
Whitney Horne:
Once we knew the details, then we realized we would start catching the slip ups. So we couldn’t tell family members like, but you would kind of hear stuff about, they would just kind of slip up every once in a while. And we would be thinking in our head like, okay, that’s because this or that happened because they knew more information. And then slowly family members would start sharing stuff. Since we knew part of the real story and when they would kind of slip up, we would know to ask more questions to kind of try to be like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hmm.
Whitney Horne:
So eventually some of the family members did tell us, but I think we were both really hurt that they had lied.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you were hurt on behalf of her.
Whitney Horne:
I was mad, okay, well, obviously, and I was right. I was thinking like, there must be more to my story that I don’t know. So it definitely made me even more curious and more snooping and trying to figure it out. But I didn’t figure out my story until college.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So Hayden, do you see a downward spiral after this?
Whitney Horne:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So as a direct result.
Whitney Horne:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did that look like?
Whitney Horne:
She started acting out a lot. I think a lot of it was for attention, it’s kind of when you feel so rejected, you’re going to do anything to get people to pay attention to you, if that’s makes sense. Any attention is better than any attention.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Negative attention is better than no attention.
Whitney Horne:
Yes. Exactly. So, yeah, you could see her acting up and stuff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Can I just stop for one second and say that, first of all, thank you for being here and sharing this. I know this stuff isn’t easy. Second of all, with your snooping skills, I would have been afraid to date you.
Whitney Horne:
My friends, every time they start dating somebody, they’re like, “Here’s the name. Let us know what you find.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m so impressed. This was what? The ’80s, and you’re like, oh, well, we figured out this was the phone calls they were being reimbursed. What are you, like eight, 10?
Whitney Horne:
I was 10. She was probably nine.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I am so impressed.
Whitney Horne:
Oh, we were good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m so impressed.
Whitney Horne:
Adoptees are really good. That’s a skill. That’s one of the positives. We’re very good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m just saying, I would imagine no boyfriends got away with anything.
Whitney Horne:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Amazing. There was no Facebook, no Instagram. You were a smart ten-year-old making these connections. Did you make the connection that Hayden was really adversely affected by this information?
Whitney Horne:
I didn’t know-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Even though you didn’t know she called.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. But I’d already known that she, like we only talked about our true feelings about adoption to each other. So it was never something we discussed with our parents. It was never something we discussed with our friends, maybe later in life. But as children, we only felt safe talking to each other. And I knew that she did have a lot of anger, a lot of rejection because she didn’t even like to talk about it with me very long before she would get so, she didn’t get emotional because she didn’t want to show those emotions, but where she would get so, I knew that she was getting so upset that she couldn’t talk.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She would just shut it down.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So she starts to get in trouble, and how does this show up in her grades? Did she start to do things at school? When do you think she started using? Because that was ultimately where it headed.
Whitney Horne:
So in sixth grade, which is a struggle for everybody here, kind of thrown in to this world of-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No one comes out [crosstalk 00:31:45]-
Whitney Horne:
… trying to be popular.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No one comes out of middle school normal. It’s just not possible.
Whitney Horne:
No. So she had gotten in trouble for telling people at school that she took speed and [inaudible 00:31:57]. And the school called my parents and she got in big trouble and then it actually turned out to be caffeine pills. So that was like a whole nother deal of where she was embarrassed and got made fun of that she had gotten to, I think she got suspended. She got in all this trouble for speed and it wasn’t even speed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Could she appeal? No. Anyway. I’m just saying like, that’s hearsay.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. And it was a shock. My parents were just crazy shocked.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did they find, so she was telling everybody, “I did speed. I did speed.” And then why was there… She said, “Oh, it was these pills or something,” and they found them.
Whitney Horne:
Well, she had still had the pills and they looked up the pills or what-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What they were.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. It was caffeine pills.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And what did your parents think like, oh, she’s just… because this was sixth grade. So how old are you?
Whitney Horne:
They were furious.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They were mad. Okay.
Whitney Horne:
And at that point, yeah, she had been having a lot of trouble in school. She didn’t really care about school. She just cared about her social life, just making friends and then being with friends, she didn’t care about school at that point.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did it escalate? What did it look like as it started to escalate?
Whitney Horne:
She definitely had an issue of like, she would do anything to impress people. So if she thought it was going to impress someone, she was going to do it. And we lived in a very affluent area where drugs were aplenty. Any kind of drug you wanted, you could get within minutes. So once high school hit, that was kind of like where it’s just, our high school was basically a pharmacy where you could just get whatever you wanted. My mother had had heart surgery and had some pretty strong pain medication that she never took, and Hayden wanted to be cool and drugs were cool. So she brought the pills to school. I don’t think she’d ever taken pain medication before that. So I don’t know how many of the pills that she took and she was passing them out.
Whitney Horne:
I think it was a full bottle of pills, so she handed a lot out. She took a lot and I guess passed out in school where it was obvious that something was wrong. So I was trying to remember all the details, but I’m pretty sure the… so there was an ambulance, they took her from school to the hospital and then directly to the first day of rehab.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you go to the same high school?
Whitney Horne:
We did. Well, we did for a while. She did at some points go to an alternative high school. And then she went to Arkansas to live with an aunt where she went to school there. And then for a period of time, she went to a private school. So she went to a lot of schools. She got held back quite a few times. So there, I think there was five years of trying to get her into school.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She was held back a couple of grades. So multiple grades?
Whitney Horne:
She was held back her freshman year. And then I don’t know if they call it being held back or just not finishing high school. So she was trying to do the alternative school and she had gotten in so much trouble at that public school that I don’t think that they would allow her back.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I went to an alternative school. It was great fun.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. She had a good time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was like, wait, is this punishment? Because I like it a lot.
Whitney Horne:
She loved it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yup. They don’t exactly make it undesirable. So things started to get worse. She was stealing a lot. How did her downward spiral affect you? What were the things that you were thinking when that was happening? Did you have any idea what was coming?
Whitney Horne:
I definitely was scared. There was a few times where we actually got into fist fights because I was so angry with her and I had my own issues. So a lot of times I felt like, okay, everybody’s just focused on, since sixth grade, this drug addiction that my sister has and all these behavioral problems. The stealing was a huge thing. She started that at a pretty young age. So she would steal from family first, especially me. And she even told the therapist later in life that she was so mad at me for never getting into trouble. That was her way of punishing me. It was by like stealing. And when people say, “Oh, my sister used to steal some of my clothes.” I’m like, she used to wipe out my closet like therapy. And she would give it away.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, so like it would get stolen and gone. It wasn’t-
Whitney Horne:
Oh yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because I’m thinking, my sisters would steal my clothes and it would be in their closet.
Whitney Horne:
No. It was to the point where my mom had, so my mom had remarried and they had to put deadbolts on every single door in the house. So we all had keys to our rooms because that’s how bad the theft was. And then of course, once she got to high school, she was stealing alcohol. And so there was a liquor cabinet, that had its own lock on it. All of our bedrooms had their own locks on it. It was a big issue. She was stealing from stores. She would steal from friends. My mom constantly got phone calls from other parents like, “Hey, my daughter said that Hayden stole this or that.” And that definitely created a lot of tension with her and everybody in the family because it was this, she would say, “Nobody trusts me.” And we’d be like, “How can we trust you? You steal from us.”
Whitney Horne:
There was lots and lots of friction. Yeah. We didn’t get along very well during that time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did she respond to, clearly everybody knew it was her. How did she respond? Did she admit to it or did she say, what was the-
Whitney Horne:
She would not admit to it. I would be like, “Oh my gosh, this is gone. I know you have it.” “No, I don’t. I don’t.” And then I would get my mom to be like, “Okay, fine. We’ll look in her room.” And she would just be standing there and it’s like, “Okay, it’s right here.” She didn’t really, it was definitely a disorder. It wasn’t just the stealing. I think it was the thrill of stealing, the kind of control of people, that was kind of her way to get back at them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So like real kleptomania.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. Just legit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did she go to therapy or anything for that?
Whitney Horne:
They definitely addressed it once she started going to therapy for the drugs, she actually brought it up, but she had gotten in trouble for stealing from stores where she was stealing thousands of dollars worth of stuff. And she would stop for a little while and then she would start again. So it was definitely something that the therapist knew about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And she starts dating a drug dealer who is her, I have her boyfriend’s best friend. I think that they’re no longer friends.
Whitney Horne:
Well, so she had started dating a guy in high school, it was a very serious relationship and they got addicted to heroin and, I’m sure it was oxies first and then heroin. But so they got addicted together. And my family of course has very ill feelings towards him. I think he was genuinely in love with my sister. I think they got into this addiction together. I don’t think they did it to each other. So it was actually his best friend that once they broke up, Hayden started dating the best friend that was providing her with a lot of the drugs.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What happened in ’03?
Whitney Horne:
They left a party and they were drunk, high on multiple things and it was raining. It was pouring. And they were speeding down this very, very busy street in East Cobb. And they hydroplaned and went into oncoming traffic. It’s amazing that nobody else died. It was an older car. They didn’t have their seat belts on, but they actually said that even if they had their seat belts on, they probably wouldn’t have made it. And then also where the airbags were supposed to be had pulled out, and those compartments were full of drugs. So there was no airbags, but again, they said that the speed and the collision were so bad that they don’t think that they would have survived that way either.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you when that happened?
Whitney Horne:
I was 20 and she was 19.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Had she been living with your family?
Whitney Horne:
She ran away quite a bit. So during this time, it wasn’t like running away, living on the streets. A lot of people in our community would, she was very good at telling them a sob story and they would let her live with them until she would steal and they would kick her out, and then she would go somewhere else. So I don’t know, she lived in so many different places, just kind of couch surfing. I don’t know where she was living at that time. I was in college and my roommate and I, who I’ve known forever, she grew up with us. She was actually my sister’s friend before she was my friend. So we had planned a girls’ night and we were all in this happy, good mood. We were going to stay home, probably watch Sex in the City.
Whitney Horne:
And then the phone rings. It was, there’s been an accident, just kind of that dreaded phone call scene that you see on movies. It was, there’s been an accident and nobody telling me anything. And I just crumbled to the floor and my three roommates who were my best friends, just, I mean, they were just crowded around me. Just this kind of, I knew it was going to happen. I had just told her two weeks before that I couldn’t be close to her because I couldn’t hold her hand while she was slowly killing herself. So I knew, I knew it was going to happen, but there’s still nothing, no matter how much you think something’s going to happen, you can never be prepared for something like that.
Whitney Horne:
They took her to the hospital. My parents went and she was already dead, but they went and said their goodbyes. My roommate drove me home. Like I said, it was pouring rain. We were driving from Athens, which is about an hour and a half drive, just pouring rain, driving home. Nobody was there when I got to the house. So I just went in her, she still had a room in both of our parents’ homes and it was just a surreal feeling. My mother was completely devastated and didn’t get out of bed. My dad was angry. He was so angry, so, so angry. They did not get along at all. So basically we would sit down to plan the funeral and they’re just-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, your parents.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. They’re butting heads. My stepdad and my dad butting heads and everybody would storm out of the room. And I remember just being left with the funeral director at one point and just going, “Okay, well, I guess I’m going to plan this.” I remember going through the books and picking all the stuff out and sometimes they would come in for a minute and sometimes my mom would have to leave because she was just so upset or fighting, and it was just a mess. I remember keeping it together, just kind of barreling through trying to get through this. I don’t remember a lot about the funeral. It’s a kind of a fuzzy time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Trauma.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Super traumatic. Did you know his family or any of them, did they reach out?
Whitney Horne:
At first they said he was going to survive. He ended up dying at the hospital that night. And then, no, his family never reached out. I had a lot of friends. She had a lot of friends that were very close to him. So I have to kind of, sometimes I feel like I have to be careful because a lot of them were just as upset. And it’s like, a lot of my family looks at him like, well, he’s just a drug addict that killed our daughter, but it’s, she was a drug addict too. So she chose to get into that car. She chose that lifestyle.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s one thing that I hear a lot of people really struggle with when there’s a relationship, a person in the relationship and there’s a using relationship. It’s like, well, they’re just a horrible drug addict. And lo and behold, their loved one is in that same thought too. I’m so sorry for your loss and what you went through, and I can’t even imagine I was sitting thinking my sister when I went off to treatment, I don’t even know which time. And my sister, who’s two years younger than me stopped speaking to me. And she said, “You are killing yourself. You’re going to die. I know that. And I am not going to remain close to you so that I can be devastated while this happens.” And she did not speak to me until I was sober a couple of years, including when I overdosed and they weren’t sure whether or not I was going to make it. She did not come to the hospital.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And so years later when, we’re close now, and years later, when we have that conversation, she talks about how she just couldn’t stay up close to it because she knew how it would end and that until she knew it was going to be something different that she just emotionally, she could not withstand. And when you’re the addict and you’re the alcoholic, and you’re in that whirlwind, nobody else’s pain matters. When my experience and being your sister is, nobody else’s pain mattered. And I couldn’t fathom that anyone else had as much pain as I did. And when I came out of it, when I stepped away, one of the things I’ve realized is that I was numbing myself through all of my pain and everybody around me was not, everybody around me remembers all of it. And I do not, I do not. I had anesthesia the entire way, because that was the goal.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My family had to stand by sober and experience complete loss of control. And I just had no idea. I just had no idea. And at the time I just couldn’t, I had no ability to see outside my own feelings, none. And so I have such a soft spot for families and what families go through now, seeing that and doing, I did interventions for a while and spending time with the families because we as the addict, we don’t get it. We have no idea. We think that nobody’s pain can be as much as ours. And we’re just doing this to ourselves. Why are you so upset? I’m just hurting myself. I’m not doing anything to you. You have everything together. Isn’t life perfect for you? You just like to look down on me. But all the things that we think and we just have no idea, we just don’t, we can’t, it’s not within reach.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And having been sober a long time and having it be in reach now and having little kids of my own, what the families go through is as traumatic, if not more traumatic as what we as the substance user go through. And then having to plan the funeral. I’ve had other friends who’s, when that happens and the family is broken apart, someone has to show up. And so the amount of healing and showing up that you had to do in those moments is just huge. How did you find your way from that kind of, I’m sure numb and fuzzy and, oh my God. And why can’t the grownups, why can’t people just show up? Why? Why? Why? How did you get from there to maybe more understanding of where you are today?
Whitney Horne:
I definitely escaped for a while. I was glad to live in another city away from it all. And I went into just kind of a denial period for a little bit. I would get drunk and then all of a sudden become emotional. And from holding all this stuff in, I did start seeing a therapist about a year later. And she had diagnosed me with PTSD and had said it was kind of like just everything hit at once. And it had been a year. So it was like a year’s worth of all this stuff. Not to mention the years before the death of all the craziness and the constant, she was, what’s going on with Hayden was always our life. That was what lived around.
Speaker 1:
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hi, this is Ashley Loeb Blassingame. I am here to tell you the national online recovery day will debut this year on September 22nd. In celebration, Lion Rock Recovery is sponsoring a live sober influencer panel on getting clean and staying connected. Join me as I moderate an hour long interactive discussion with three prominent panelists live on the Lion Rock Recovery’s Facebook page, September 22nd at 2:00 PM Pacific time, 5:00 PM Eastern time, mark it down. Visit www.nationalonlinerecoveryday.com for more event details.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
One thing I’ve said to my parents and my sisters, I have two younger sisters. I’m the oldest of three girls, and curious what you think about this. I’ve said to my parents many times, which was that I had the biggest problem, but I didn’t have the only problem, I wasn’t the only one with problems. And so what happens in a family when you have someone who has the biggest problem, a life-threatening problem, well, even if it’s asthma, it doesn’t matter what that problem is, right? That person is in mortal danger on a regular basis, the parents triage, and they have, I can see it now, they have to. But what happens and what I saw, and what I see is that I had the most life-threatening problem, but my sister certainly had other problems that needed attention that they didn’t get. They couldn’t get, there wasn’t enough.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There wasn’t enough to go around. And I sucked all the energy out of everything, everyone and everything in the room. And I think it left my siblings to have to find their own way to deal with their problems. When in other families, those things would have been addressed. Those would have been considered real issues, but nothing could be considered a real issue compared to someone using heroin, someone, like nothing. And so coming out of that, we’ve had time to heal, but I look back and think, their healing was stunted as a result of my need. I got well, right? I got recovery, I got to go to rehab. I got therapists. I got treatment. I got all these things and they didn’t. And so they didn’t start their recovery till a lot later. And I always think to myself how in some ways, as a parent, it seems like an impossible decision and position to be put in, but that kids get left feel, they must feel and get left behind.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. And there’s definitely a pressure. I felt like I had to be perfect and my parents would sometimes even say it, they’d be like, “We’re dealing with all of this right now. We don’t need you to do this right now.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. We don’t have any more left.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. I was so good at hiding anything and just being this perfect child, which also would upset my sister. It’d be this division because she’s like, “Why do you have to be so perfect?” And I wasn’t, I was definitely not perfect. I was just really, really good at hiding anything that wasn’t perfect. And I put everything into school, it’s like, okay, well, she is getting honors roll and taking college courses in high school, we don’t have to worry about her. She’s perfect and fine. But in reality, it wasn’t that way. I was just very good at hiding.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you have feelings about that later on? Or did you explore them later on?
Whitney Horne:
For sure. I’m a huge proponent of therapy. I have been in therapy most of my adult life. And you have to do it, especially if you’ve had trauma, I don’t think I’ll ever not have PTSD. Obviously eating disorders are like any kind of addiction. It’s forever. I relapse, I have to stay in therapy or it just gets really easy to… I’ve done it several times in my life at this point where I’ve been like, oh, I’m fine now. I don’t need help. I don’t need to continue this. And then it’s always a mistake. So I’ve accepted the fact that I will always be in therapy. There’s nothing wrong with it. I always try to tell my friends when they’re going through something, “Go to a therapist, and go until you find the right one.” A lot of people will go and it’s like, “Oh, it sucks.”
Whitney Horne:
Well, just keep going until you find the right therapist. It can take quite a while, but I’ve got my team. I’ve got my nutritionist, I’ve got my psychiatrist, and then I’ve got my therapist.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s awesome. What has your recovery looked like through this process and your grief, and did your eating disorder show up bigger after Hayden passed?
Whitney Horne:
Of course when you have these body image issues, when I’m really in the thick of it, which is crazy, which hasn’t been in a long time, but like when I lost so much weight, I don’t really let people take photos or I don’t want to look at myself, but then every once in a while I’ll see something and it’s like, holy crap. So yes, I do, after her death, I think in August, there was a photo for my birthday party and my weight looks, just barely there. And then I look back and my mind doesn’t remember being that skinny. I assumed I was just extremely fat. But looking at photos, when I do see one from those times, it’s I think after her death, I was pretty bad about anorexia and then I’ve had issues with Bulimia, and I do end up relapsing a couple times a year, but I do stay in the therapy so that when it does come back, then I’m on it immediately.
Whitney Horne:
And I’ve learned to be very honest with my therapist and telling her everything just so that she can keep me on track and staying on top of things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Absolutely. What conversations have you had with your parents around the topic of adoption since Hayden passed away?
Whitney Horne:
It is that uncomfortable topic where-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Whitney Horne:
… you still feel guilty. I do try to tell them that it’s okay to have these feelings. I think we have such a beautiful story of how we merged the birth family and my family. I was actually in the hospital two years after my sister died. I almost died from a blood clot and I was in the hospital for about two months and they told my mom, they were like, “We need her medical history.” And my mom’s like, “Well, she’s adopted.” And the doctor is like, “We need her medical history.” So that day, my mom’s like, “Oh, I found your birth mom.” And I was like, “What?” I’ve been like, I’m a good detective. I didn’t find her. What do you mean you found her? And then that’s when the story came out of, well, it’s actually a friend of a friend’s daughter is your birth mom.
Whitney Horne:
So then the next day my birth family came to the hospital. I was still in college and they actually lived near where I was going to college. And so it was this reunion. There was always awkward things going on. And I felt so much sympathy for my mom because she had just lost her daughter two years before, she almost lost me. And then she’s having to tell me this secret that she’s been keeping. And it was, I could understand. I wasn’t mad at her. I was just kind of like, God, she’s been, that had to have taken so much for her to be like, okay, well, here’s this, I’m not even going to hesitate. Here’s this information. And so I didn’t have that angry feeling. I just felt bad that she had to feel like, she was obviously afraid for us to have a relationship, but it all went really well.
Whitney Horne:
My birth mom and I are super close. Like I said, she didn’t have a choice. They scheduled a induced labor like a week before school. So in August so she could have me and then go back to school and nobody would know because she had been sent to live with a family member and they don’t, back then she was not allowed to hold me. She wasn’t allowed to see me, nothing. I was born and they whipped me out of the room. And then she would go in and look on the glass and try to figure out which baby was hers. So it was like this, I think when my mom heard that too, it’s kind of like, well, it wasn’t necessarily her choice. I feel like they both respect and love each other. They have this very beautiful relationship. My birth family comes to all my son’s birthdays, family gatherings.
Whitney Horne:
My birth mom comes to Christmas at my dad’s house and they all get along. I try to tell people, a lot of families don’t understand, it’s not like your birth family is going to replace your adoptive family, or your adoptive family replaces your birth family. It’s two completely different roles and you have enough space in your life to, if you choose, to have both of those families in your life. It’s not a competition. There’s a big difference between a bio mom and your adoptive mom. Like my mom, it’s two different roles. There’s not a choice between the two or a competition. I have plenty of love for both of them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love that. I love that. And it’s helpful to hear because I would think, I would insert my own ideas about it of course. When you had your son, did you have any revelations, realizations, new feelings about parenthood and what your adoptive and bio families went through?
Whitney Horne:
I definitely did. It was also super special for me because I wanted my mom to be with me through delivery. I know a lot of people don’t want their mom in there. My ex husband is terrified of blood. So I knew he was not going to be any help. And my mom was like, “Are you sure you want me in there?” She was hesitant. But it was so important for me to have her there because we didn’t get to go through a birth moment when I was born… and I’m going to cry. Because we did get to go through the birth of my son. So we did get to share, we do have a birth story. We did get to share birth. It wasn’t me being born, but we shared the moment of my son being born. And it was super special and sweet and just perfect for… My ex husband wasn’t exactly perfect in this situation, but my mom was.
Whitney Horne:
It was just basically me and her in that moment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She was there for your birth into motherhood, which is a real transformation, as we all know, those of us who’ve been there. My mom was in the room as well. It was super important for me, and my husband was, I have three year old twin boys and my husband’s terrified of blood as well, and I told him, I said, “If you need one minute of medical care while they are cutting me open, I will personally kick you in the face.” And so he definitely was trying to keep it together. But at one point he was supposed to take some photos. My mom says she turns and looks at him and the camera is down at his side, he’s crying and kind of looking like he doesn’t know where he is. And I was like, oh, thank God my mom was there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s so awesome. And what a cool thing to be able to have with her. And I would imagine that particularly with your birth mother’s story, this idea that she wanted you and didn’t have the choice, and then you having your own son and really experiencing what that must have been like, in some ways I would think, again, this is serious Monday morning quarterbacking, but I would think that that would bring this level of connection and compassion between you two in the sense that she really did want you, as opposed to someone who couldn’t take care of you or didn’t, you were not an unwanted pregnancy and you got to experience all of the feelings of wanting and now had such a better understanding. I would think that that would be a useful thing to understand in terms of lack of rejection in the truest sense.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. And I know a lot of adoptees don’t feel that way, or have that kind of, like Hayden didn’t have that same magical story, but I do think for somebody to carry a child full term and give them up for adoption, there has to be some form of love, and a lot of adoptees don’t agree. But for me personally, I can’t imagine somebody doing all that work and not caring at all. And there’re stories where women were raped and it’s this traumatic thing that they don’t ever want to have anything to do with their birth child again. And I know that’s got to be very, very difficult. I know for Hayden, when that rejection happened was very difficult. And later after she had passed away, her birth family actually found me through her obituary, they had found my name and back then it was Myspace where they had contacted me and it was her sister.
Whitney Horne:
They had just found out about her, the family, again, those family secrets don’t do it. They had just found out about her and she had a brother, and they were trying to find, they were trying to be detectives and find Hayden. And instead they found out that she had died. They were heartbroken. And it was a hard moment for me to, I was still very young when that happened. It was hard for me to process because it was like, oh my God, if she had known how much they wanted to meet her and her siblings would have been so happy to welcome her into their lives, but her mother was actually schizophrenic and had apparently abandoned a couple of babies at hospitals. So Hayden was put up for adoption and she went and lived with my grandparents, but there were other babies that they don’t even know.
Whitney Horne:
She was pregnant. She would go to a hospital and then she would come back and nobody knew what had happened. So that was really hard for her other children to understand. But the brother was very angry about the death. After I spoke with him, I just couldn’t handle it. So I didn’t have a relationship with them. I didn’t speak to them again. And now I kind of regret it because now I’m in a place where I would love to show them photos and share those moments with them because I know how hard it is to not know and to feel like you’re missing something.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We have this, I hear people say it all the time. They talk about, if I can’t have, there’re so many kids that need to be adopted, talking about adoption as this really important thing that we do in society is that we take children into better situations. And with your experience, your perspective, having talked to a lot of people who’ve been adopted, what is your take on adoption? What is your take on piled hunger? Have you come to any realizations or ideas surrounding adoption and how it’s done well and how maybe it should be done differently?
Whitney Horne:
It’s definitely good to see it evolving, and it does evolve. When people say there are so many children that need to be adopted, those aren’t babies. When you’re trying to adopt a baby, you’re on a waiting list, it’s a profitable industry, which is really scary. There are other countries, and I know it happens in the US too, but it’s not as prevalent, but where women actually have babies to make money and not always by a choice, it’s definitely an industry that needs a lot of attention. It’s a subject that people do not like to talk about anything negative about adoption. It’s only supposed to be positive. And usually, when somebody is in that place where they’re choosing adoption because they can’t have biological children, it’s a painful experience. I know my mom had a lot of pain that she couldn’t have biological children.
Whitney Horne:
So it’s a topic that you don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but it needs to be discussed because it’s not going to get better unless we make it okay to talk about. At first when I heard about open adoption, I was thinking like, oh, that’s never going to work. That’s really a bad idea, but now I see it as if there’s rules and guidelines to help where that relationship can happen, I don’t think it should be a huge part of the children’s life having these bio parents and trying to process all those relationships. It’s really hard, like even at my age now to have time for all these relatives. And I love them all, I love everybody, but it’s hard to balance [crosstalk 01:09:31].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s a lot of family.
Whitney Horne:
Yeah. But I think once a year, like to have, even to do a video conference or to keep photos would be huge. If I had had photos of my birth family growing up, it would have meant so much to me. And I think that’s a lot of, there is that curiosity aspect for a lot of adoptees to have that information at the bare minimum would be huge. And then to also realize that these addiction issues and depression, eating disorders, those are all issues that they’ve done studies where in most of them you’re twice as likely to have those issues if you’re an adoptee. And I think adoptive families need to be prepared for that. It’s easier to prevent something than it is to treat it. So if they can open this dialogue and understand too that it has nothing to do with you when adoptees are asking about birth families.
Whitney Horne:
It’s totally not something that means you’re less important or your role is less than. Like I said, it’s completely two different roles, and it’s okay to ask questions. And I think the more we talk about it and the more we make it okay to talk about and more comfortable to say like, there are some negative things. There are some negative feelings that come out of adoption, but it’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to bring that up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is there any therapy process that adoptive parents have to go through in terms of how to talk about these issues? Or do they get any support or guidance on this?
Whitney Horne:
They didn’t back then. I think now some agencies probably have a process. I know to adopt overseas, you have to go through a lot more red tape, but they should, there should be groups where these families get together. If I had known an adult while I was an adoptee as a child that I could have had this relationship with where I could have been comfortable bringing up these kind of feelings and questions, it would have been extremely, extremely helpful. So I would love to see adoption agencies providing support for the families and the kids and to connect these families because a lot of it is experience based and sharing what you’ve been through and knowing what to look for in your adoptees.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If there is someone who’s adopted who’s struggling with addiction who’s listening to this, what’s something that you would like them to know?
Whitney Horne:
I feel like I’ve touched on it a little bit, but there’s just that feeling of rejection. And when you really look at that extra, I guess after being a mom and going through the nine months of pregnancy, there is some of that love. And no matter if you’re adopted or you’re not adopted, nobody’s childhood is perfect. And I think adoptees, a lot of times they think, I know my sister used to think like, okay, well, if my birth mom had me, life would be so much better. She had this fantasy of what it would be like. And in reality, her siblings did not have a good life. It wasn’t this fantasy world. My birth mom immediately got pregnant again so that she could keep a child. And I know that they struggled with poverty because she was so young and she actually had three kids right after me. So they struggled.
Whitney Horne:
We all think the grass on the other side is greener kind of situation. And it’s not like that. There’s going to be struggles no matter what your story is or how you started your life on this world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that the work you’re doing, talking about this and being out there, and of course you help rescue or have been helping rescue animals, which is awesome and probably much easier to deal with.
Whitney Horne:
Not always.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Not always. Yeah. That’s true. Okay. Fair enough. But yeah, I just think this is such an important topic, as I told you before we started, many of the treatment centers that I went to, at least half of the people there had been adopted. And I was always curious about that. Why so many kids that I went to treatment with had been adopted and why we didn’t even talk about that much in treatment, to be honest, they didn’t even talk about it that much. So I think that this is just a really important topic and thank you for sharing your story with me and my listeners and your truth. I really appreciate that. And I think a lot of people will get a lot out of this freedom to be able to talk about the good and the bad as there is with everything.
Whitney Horne:
Everything.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yup. Absolutely.
Whitney Horne:
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:
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