Parenting Different: Welcome to the Parenting Different podcast. I'm Anna. Today we have Isaac with us, our founder former CEO, I guess. I'm so used to saying that you are the CEO. You are now former CEO, but you're always going to be our founder. So welcome. We're to be chatting today about several things. Your transition, what led you to make these decisions and you're going to be doing next.
Isaac Etter: Yeah.
Parenting Different: So I'm excited to chat with you. for being with me.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. This is always a fun time. Always a fun time. Yeah.
Parenting Different: course. So you dropped a bomb on me. When was it? End of January, beginning of February. I had no clue. Like I knew that there was some internal things happening. I think anybody that was close to you could see that you were working through some things. Never guessed that this was the direction that you were going to go. But
Isaac Etter: the end. Yeah. Yeah.
Parenting Different: you were so confident in it and have even since then evolved, you know, in your direction of where you're going to take things next. So talk us through some of that, what you to this decision and what was that process like? Because you poured your heart and soul into the adoption space. I mean, you're staying in the adoption space, but you poured your heart and soul into it in this capacity for so long.
Isaac Etter: Yeah.
Parenting Different: and people love you and respect you and you've built such a name for yourself. So to then walk away from these brands that you've worked so hard to build, it's something monumental. So I'd love to hear more your journey to that decision.
Isaac Etter: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's, you know, it's, I think the first kind of basis is that like everything kind of has its time and its season. And in the beginning of this process and starting Identity before I was Parenting Different and all of these things, you know, my perspective as the 21 year old who went into building it was that I would do this forever. And I certainly brought that energy to it. And I think over time, Well, first of all, everybody has its own dreams. I'll just speak about mine. Over my journey, I found that there were parts of this process that I was having more friction with than I was enjoying. And it wasn't about the mission of the work. I think it was about my role in the work and maybe not living in entirely like my truth of like what I'm good at. And I think our
Parenting Different: Yeah. Hmm.
Isaac Etter: brands here have reached a really interesting point where had stopped being the best person to drive them forward. And that was kind of a clarity that kind of kept coming over me. ⁓ think in startups and in the business world, what I always tell the people is that like, ⁓ are willing to go to war, when you're ready to go to war for something, That's how you know you're kind of locked into it. And when you stop being willing to go to war for something, then you know that you're outside of it. And it feels as if like I was not ⁓ interested or not like moved by the next war in building this brand. in, anybody who's an entrepreneur knows that it is very similar to like a war in a battle. You're hustling things out, you're grinding things out, things are breaking and you're building them back up. And there were years that I really loved that.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: I learned a lot about this space doing that. But when it was clear that I was having a lot of resistance about going and taking that kind of next leap in the growth of this ⁓ brand and this company and what could be possible, then I think it was clear that there was nothing wrong with what we had built, but there was something wrong with me leading it. And that's hard thing to accept when you build something.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: That's a thing. It's a hard thing to accept that you're not the right person to take it forward. But there was a lot of...
Parenting Different: Especially when it's something so personal too. Like you built it around your story.
Isaac Etter: Oh yeah, oh yeah, 100%. I mean, the basis of all this work was my transracial story. Some of the most impactful work we've done has been a transracial adoption. And so, yeah, it was also letting go of that. I, know, anybody who tells their story a lot probably reaches a fatigue point in their story. And there is also like a point in the transracial adoption work to where like, regardless of if I stayed or if I went in this role, there was gonna be no more like transracial adoption content that came from my story and my life anymore. Like that had hit the ceiling of what I was going to do because we've given so much of that, like my family and me. And there's parts of the transracial journey that like I know my mom wants to, can you just speak on and I'm happy to do that work with her. But there was gonna be no more like books about our family. There was gonna be no more content about our family.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Like that season had ended and there's enough out there that I think will stay relevant for quite a while. Um, just because it's relevant to trans racial families in general. You know, there's docu-series, there's a podcast, there's tons of webinar recordings. Um, and so I knew that the trans racial thing was over that like, was not going to hyper-focus on creating any more trans racial adoption content, at least based off of our family, maybe just like the general educational side of it.
Parenting Different: for sure. Sure.
Isaac Etter: But this company was not growing, like we were not growing in a transracial direction. You know, as you see with Parenting Different, Parenting Different is, you know, a fraction transracial. It's probably 25 % transracial. You know, this business was growing in a educational foundational way for adoptive and foster parents. It was growing in a way that it could be useful for all adoptive parents, especially, but then even foster parents. And that was always the mission. And we...
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: I think over the last year become really quite successful in there being people who know this brand and don't associate it with transracial adoption, which is, I believe, a huge win. Because though that I think transracial parents probably have the most options here, ⁓ trauma-informed parenting, parenting in crisis, those are things that ⁓ are living across the spectrum of adoption and foster parenting. Whereas transracial adoption, transracial fostering is not
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: everybody's experience. But navigating trauma, navigating grief and loss in their child, are universal experiences, which is where this brand has grown in direction and where I'm excited that I'll be able to pour advice to you into, but also where I think you will be a better leader in taking it forward. And there'll be people that you bring around you that will be great at supporting that mission while keeping our transracial base.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: These are important growth things, you know what mean? To be good in the business space is to really understand growth. yeah, this was not my growth. And it was also a big lesson on me and like what role I want to have in companies going forward. And so, you know, looking at the next couple of years, you know, I'm less inclined to be like CEO because I'm not finding that. the long-term CEO role is my favorite or my highest skill. And so even in the projects that I'm looking at now, I'm looking at like, what does it look like for me to be somebody who gets things to a certain point in transitions? So really just kind of taking more account onto like the lifestyle that I wanna live, where I feel best in flow, what brings me the most joy, but also where I'm having the most impact. And so...
Parenting Different: Hmm. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, I mean, it's a tough transition, but that all led to obviously deciding that, you know, it was time to move away from this venture. And so that's, that's like kind of the in-depth thought process, I guess, behind it
Parenting Different: Yeah, that makes sense. I think it is really hard to, especially something like this, to let go of. it was hard for to think of it go and I didn't even found it. ⁓ So like that wasn't even my, ⁓ it my brainchild, but it became so a part of me because so much of a part of.
Isaac Etter: Yeah.
Parenting Different: My story is now tied into it and your story was tied into it. And I think that would tremendously difficult to walk away from and to even accept, and be able to have the bravery to take that next step of walking away making that move.
Isaac Etter: You Yeah, there's a lot of like the identity that you built. mean, for me, the transition and the hard thing was just like letting go of the identity that I built around it. You know I mean? That was probably the hardest part because I didn't really believe that it wasn't gonna continue on. I think I always knew that there was a way to keep the company alive. And so I wasn't really scared of the company going away or the work kind of being lost. ⁓ I definitely was having to let go of like,
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yeah, there.
Isaac Etter: a world and identity, a way that people knew me, a way that I associated with the world. I'm in a lifestyle that I had built around what it meant to run this company and what it meant to run a company all the time, which is a lifestyle. Like it's a lifestyle choice that I'm not necessarily living anymore, which requires a lot of transition and a lot of letting go of what I viewed as valuable, like what was making me valuable.
Parenting Different: Right. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And so there's a lot of shifts that you have to make, I think, when you're transitioning and when you're letting go. Even though I felt a lot of confidence around letting it go, I definitely had to deal with the identity part of this is who I've been my entire 20s. There's not really a day in my 20s that I haven't been this guy. And so, yeah, you have to in many ways build a new person. And that's the whole process.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yeah, and you mentioned letting go of the identity around this work. I think that, like talk to that a little bit more because I think everybody has their identity in their work, right? What's the first question when you meet somebody? What do you do? That's like the first thing we ask people. But I think when it is so personal, like being, you know, an accountant or a plumber or whatever, you're not as... personally and emotionally tied to your work? So talk about that a little bit. Like what did you see your identity being tied to this work? And where did you want that to shift?
Isaac Etter: Yeah. Well, I mean, think the identity shift for me was like more so centered around like being a young CEO, being an entrepreneur, being in that. And of course there were ties to this company. You know, I spent the last like four years, especially, you know, living an unusual middle twenties life. You know, you know, I walked into hotels where the first thing I see is my face on a poster many times. And so
Parenting Different: True. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: I've lived an unusual life. And so you're letting go of ⁓ essentially some of that. ⁓ And not that I think that I won't still speak, you know, I still speak in conferences this year, but you definitely let go of like an edge of that, you know, who I was in that context ⁓ was not just like this keynote speaker. You know, I was also building this thing behind it and that, there were a lot of people who were invested in that company. There were a lot of families who are coming because of the impact of this company. And they're still to this day, know, the last conferences I went to, people told me that they were coming because of me. And so, you know, I'm letting go, not entirely of that, because I'm sure there's still people who will support my endeavors and speaking and what I bring to the space in this season. But you're definitely letting go of something that was definitely not just there. Like all that was built. You I was begging to do speaking gigs a decade ago. ⁓
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: When you go from begging to do speaking gigs to people driving two hours, three hours to come and hear you at a conference, it's a big switch. And you also carry a different energy and responsibility in all of that. And so now I think I had to let go of probably I had to let go of the idea that that was all going away. Because it definitely hasn't all gone away. But I also just had to let go of maybe what was wrapped up behind that. Some of the ego may be in there and some of the things that weren't helpful ⁓ and not hold on to this company for the wrong reasons. know what mean? The temptation to not let go was all wrapped around like fear and ego. It wasn't wrapped around honesty. And so, you know, I had to let go of, that world that I had built that I think did serve a purpose and was great and not hold on to that identity in a fearful or ego-y way. That was who I was meant to be for that season. Who I was and who the impact that I had was very important. And how I showed up then was actually very important. And it actually, I think, would have been a disservice to hold onto it once I knew it was done. Because now I get to show up in this one in that same energy. And ⁓ yeah, what people will get from me now will be just as impactful, but it wouldn't be impactful if I was holding onto like this old, like if I was trying to do it from this old framework that I knew was done, that I knew I wasn't interested in, that I knew I wasn't excited about, the impact would keep declining. And so it's really important that I think I stand in whatever I know will be the most impactful version of myself.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Do you ever think that part of the whole, you you use the word ego or that identity or that emotional tie to being wanted and desired and sought after, do you think that any of that was impacted by adoption and the fact that you're an adoptee?
Isaac Etter: Well, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, of course, isn't it all to be honest. ⁓ I mean, that's like the. ⁓ It's finding out that, you know, a lot of the roots of where you where you resist and where you're fearful are all are all connected to the root source. And so that's I think that's a very interesting adaptive journey. ⁓ One one that's important and an awareness of that is important. And so.
Parenting Different: Well, I mean, yes, because... but... Yeah. Yep, for sure, yeah.
Isaac Etter: I don't think that didn't come up for me. ⁓ And I think that that was one dimension of it. But another dimension of it is just like, you know, I don't really know anything else. Some people build careers later in their lives. Some people have multiple careers. This has pretty much been it for me. And so, you know, as much as there was like that, definitely like kind of like abandonment stuff that came up, if anything, then more became a fear of like, I don't even know what.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: what will happen on the other side of not being in this role. Because my entire adult life I've basically been in this role. I was doing in consulting and then this and that was it. And they've all been adoption, trans-racial adoption based. ⁓ And so, yeah, if anything there was more wrapped up in just like trying to hold on to whatever success I feel like I had found.
Parenting Different: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting when we step into these spaces as adoptees and we every single person brings their stuff into what they do, right? Everybody has their stuff, their thing ⁓ that they bring into it. But I think especially because we are adoptees in the adoption space, I think it's interesting and especially important because we can shed a light on maybe what adoptive parents might see in their kids and that like constant searching. I know for me, I was constantly searching for success. I still struggle with that. And I have to remind myself, okay, why am I searching for success now? But like there's constantly that I cannot be average. Average doesn't cut it. I have to be the best because that's what's going to make me wanted and desired and worthy. And so having to really reframe that and, okay, I want success because I want to be able to support my family better. I want my family to have other things, not because I need to be here because that defines my worth. And so talk to that a little bit about how a parent can see that even in ⁓ middle high school, they're starting to see this in their adoptee it can good on the outside. It can look like, they're high achievers and they're getting straight A's and that's so great. But what is underneath that and what is the drive of that? ⁓
Isaac Etter: Yeah, and I mean, I the thing you're talking about, the first challenge is that it's in most people and most people aren't recognizing it or close to it. And so this desire to have success in an outward fashion is so tied to our society as a whole, sides our experiences as people, and so what's interesting about the first layer of this is that
Parenting Different: Mm-hmm. For sure, yeah.
Isaac Etter: for adoptive parents, think, to even really understand how to support it within their children, they would have to see it within themselves, which I think is really interesting. It's very interesting first step of this. So the awareness in which, yeah, that we all have a default in our society to perform for each other instead of perform from a place of honesty. And so that's, I mean, that's the first step is I think awareness within yourself. I think with children, what...
Parenting Different: and
Isaac Etter: The reframe that adoptive parents need to have pretty much about all their adoptive child's behavior is an awareness that the roots behind your child's behavior in any direction are undoubtedly correlated to their journey as an adopted person. And that's tough because it feels limiting. And even for adoptees who
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: don't want to ⁓ sit within the depth of the impact of adoption, actually might feel wrong. But the truth of understanding the deep impact of adoption is not the acknowledgement that adoption was bad. And I think that's usually where people fall into when they get into this, is that they think that if I acknowledge adoption has this wider impact, I have to then be on the side that adoption is wrong.
Parenting Different: Yes. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: You do not have to be on the side of the adoption is wrong. You can be very pro-adoption. You can be as pro-adoption as you want to be. ⁓ The undoubtable truth is that a childhood experience such as adoption has inevitable after effects. ⁓ It's psychologically proven now many, many times. There's been books, people try to disprove it. It is undoubtable now to people even who are outside of the adoption world.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: people who are just studying even NICU experiences of children who are separated from their mother right after they're born, to understand that this experience, regardless of timeline, has an impact. And it has a long-term psychological impact because it's a very early, oftentimes, thing that happens to you. So it happens to you before you can process things. So it's a systematic...
Parenting Different: Right, exactly. Right.
Isaac Etter: issue, especially for infant adoptions, but even as we get into those toddler years, we see it ⁓ having a really massive effect. And then especially once you're conscious, this is actually for some reason, the one that we acknowledge the most. The one we acknowledge the most is conscious separation. ⁓ Forgetting that our nervous system is being developed in the other points of separation where we seem to think that we can just add a replacement in. ⁓
Parenting Different: ⁓ yeah. Right.
Isaac Etter: And so this acknowledgement is like the first step to understanding the next set of behaviors your child will experience. again, acknowledging this does not mean that adoption was bad or is bad or is the wrong choice for you or was the wrong thing to happen to you. It can still be the best thing that has ever happened to you as an adoptee. And it can still have these ⁓ side effects that again are inevitable.
Parenting Different: Exactly. Right.
Isaac Etter: And so starting on that base is really important because then we can look at the lens that we view ourselves and life's through understanding that it might be skewed by this childhood experience because our nervous system may have been heavily disrupted in formative years. If you feel unsafe as a baby and you lose connection as a baby, you are very likely to become a person who is not very trusted. And you can look at that through the lens of, I'm just, I'm reserved, I take time. Or you can look at through the lens of, oh, I'm understanding I got separated from my mother as a child. The work that I need to do is more internal system regulation, right? And what happens to many people, and I don't wanna get too tangent here, but I think what happens to many adoptees is that because they're not unhappy with their adoption, they look at these things in their life as just who they are.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yes.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ When that is actually the wrong perspective, it's actually a harmful perspective to themselves. ⁓ Because if you just were to acknowledge that adoption had an impact on your life, you can actually move from that framework really helpfully by getting the right support. ⁓ Sherry Eldridge is a fantastic person at describing the adoptee psychology. And some of her books have made me rethink my whole childhood because I didn't realize how many little things I was doing.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: that were associated directly with adoptive behaviors. One of them that was like a really big shocker to me was that ⁓ a lot of adopted male youth have like a fire phase, that they play with fire, there's a security party towards fire. And I had a whole period of time where I would like set axe spray on fire in my room. ⁓ And I didn't think anything of it. I just thought that was just a normal young boy occurrence.
Parenting Different: same. Interesting.
Isaac Etter: But then it's like, you know, we're like in many young adolescent adoptees, we see that there is a fascination towards fire, this risk or this danger element. And so it's actually really helpful to live in this awareness that this has an experience because it actually can start to make sense of things that you were doing as a child, ways that you've been disconnected, ways that you feel, especially when it comes to more intimate relationships. So.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: best friends, relationship partner, things like that, super helpful. So if you wanna, if you, to get back to the original question, now that I've gone that super tangent. So if you wanna be the parent who's helping your child, the best thing you could do in general forever is to let your child in on the fact that adoption has an impact and not let that be a deterrent to their success.
Parenting Different: you
Isaac Etter: or let that be all who they are, but let the observable patterns that they are displaying be guided through a lens of early childhood trauma, which is separation, right? And so again, get out of the framework of good or bad, just get into the framework of experience, and then you can have an honest conversation with your child about their behavior. And even if you're not, ⁓
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: You don't have to be like, this is because you're adopted. You can be guiding them, right? You can be guiding them through, ⁓ if you're doing the right research, you understand that abandonment in different complexes are a part of how you start to justify your experience in the world as an adoptee. So if you see a child that's overperforming, you can reinforce language that ⁓ lets them know that they do not have to perform for validation.
Parenting Different: Sure. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Right and so you don't have to immediately be like because you're adopted you're trying to do this Your six-year-old doesn't need that conversation. That might be a 13 14 year old conversation where you're kind of diving into like hey, you know This might be related to it and here's how you know, you can continue to work through this as you're navigating life more towards your own But what you can do is just send the message that they are valuable within themselves Which is going to be actually a hard message for most
Parenting Different: Right?
Isaac Etter: adoptees to digest because in and of themselves was separated from their birth parents and their logical and systematic message to them, the message that their body sends to them most of the time is that they are wrong, that they are naturally wrong because their whole is messed up.
Parenting Different: Right. Or. right, or that we have to earn, which that is something like, I know that I was not told that from my parents. My parents did not tell me I had to earn, I had to perform and earn whatever. They didn't say that out loud, but let me tell you, I worked real hard to, and I became the version that I thought that they wanted me to be instead of who I really was. And so then now you have,
Isaac Etter: Yeah, or the...
Parenting Different: someone in their 30s, discovering who they really are and taking on this whole identity and everybody, mean, including my husband, he's like, you're no longer the person I married. And it's true, I'm not. I love this version of me, so much better than the old version. But not everybody does because it's not what everybody knows. And so that makes it really challenging. But if we can give the child that language, And I kind of want to get into this too next of like, it's okay to grieve. It's okay to question. It's okay, all of those things. And it doesn't make you ungrateful. And it doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you love us less. It's simply a part of your story. And that's okay. And I think allowing children to sit in that, and it's like that both and. you can both and I say this all the time, I am so thankful that my birth family didn't raise me, but I also wish that I had never needed to be adopted. And people get confused by that. I'm like, no, like in a perfect world, I wouldn't have had to be separated, but because I had to be, and now I look back at that, I'm very thankful I wasn't raised by that. So I think it's really important to be able to sit in that both. It's okay. And you have to be secure enough in yourself to sit in that with your kids.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, and one thing that I want to point out before we move too far on is that even the ability to feel like you have to earn it is connected to feeling like there's something wrong with how you are. So the root and why it's important to clarify that this root is that something is wrong is because that's a nervous system challenge. That is not a taught thing. If you have
Parenting Different: 100 % yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: if your first experience is separation and you're separated from the voice that you knew in the womb, the smells, the things that you knew in the womb, ⁓ and your first experiences in life are panic because of separation, which we know from research that's being done that even if it's a child moving to the NICU, not even adoption, not even moving to somebody different, even if it's a child moving to the NICU, that there is a nervous system, that there is panic, that there is ⁓ extreme fear that an infant is experiencing due to not being around the familiar sense, voice, smell, you know, all those things, then your experience going forward is still gonna be layered around that experience, because your first two years are so formative to these things. ⁓ And so, yeah, your brain is exploding
Parenting Different: Right. Right, your brain is exploding during those first years, yeah.
Isaac Etter: And so it's really important to maybe have this understanding that your child might intuitively just assume that their feelings and that their behaviors and their thoughts are wrong and not trust themselves. I know that was me and I was adopted at two ⁓ and be living from the sense, know, mine, and it probably is connected to adoption too, but you know, mine was just assuming that because I had to be placed for adoption, there was something wrong with me, so I had to be wrong, right? And so this narrative gets formed in many different ways. ⁓ But I think it's really important to acknowledge that your children and in their young adult years might have a serious ⁓ inability to truly trust their internal voice or trust themselves.
Parenting Different: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I still struggle to trust myself. Like I have to verbally talk myself through it to trust that no, I am capable of making a good decision. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Absolutely. Exactly. Yeah. I think there's many parts of that are lifelong kind of thing that you deal with because these also, know, anything that gets formed and set in childhood as you become an adult and you become an older and older adult gets harder and harder to break. And so another benefit of adoptive parents being really aware of these things that, you know, you have a really powerful way to disrupt inner dialogues, inner messages.
Parenting Different: For sure. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ internal beliefs that your child may unintentionally carry, not even realize they're carrying until they're older, really early on in their life.
Parenting Different: Right. And it dismantles the shame surrounding those feelings too. Because again, they may not, like knowing that it was connected to adoption for me, didn't make me angry that I was adopted, didn't make me hate being adopted. It just gave it a place to go. Like, okay, this is not something that is inherently wrong with me. It's because of what happened to me. And I think that's such an important.
Isaac Etter: 100%. 100%.
Parenting Different: question. I heard somebody say recently. instead of asking what's wrong with somebody, what happened to them? And I think that is so important for parents, especially as we are adopting kids. We won't know their full prenatal history. We won't know what happened. It's impossible to know everything. And so ⁓ things happened before you ever came into the picture, even if you're in that delivery room. Things happened to that child before. And so you will not know everything and you have to one, be okay with that and acknowledge that. And then allowing that child to express that and ⁓ will that shame those behaviors of they're just a bad kid or no, ⁓ what happened to them? that could be causing this instead. Because I mean, yeah, because sometimes your kid going to just be a little brat, yep, sure, that happens. But if we're focusing on it with the mindset of what happened to them, then we're walking into it with a better attitude and a better lens and we can see things more clearly.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, 100%.
Parenting Different: So tying into this, there's a whole grief that comes with being adopted. And that is something I think that is really hard for adopted parents to accept because they want to be enough for their child. They don't want their child to grieve because we see grief as such a negative thing. ⁓ So I think it's very, it's tough and I'm an adoptee and I struggle with it as an adoptive parent. I don't want to see my kids grieve. I don't want to see them hurt. Yet I know very much that it is a part of the process. so talk to us about grief. I know that has been ⁓ big part of even your decision making in the last six months. and where you are today is because you've really walked that grief journey and you've processed that and gone through it. What did that look like? How did you come to the point of understanding that some of this that was happening internally was because you need of unprocessed grief?
Isaac Etter: Yeah, mean, grief is, yeah, it's kind of like loss is a part of every adoption. So grief is a part of every adoption. It's all tied together. ⁓ so grief is the, is kind of like the behavioral side of loss. And we know we've talked a lot about like the internal dialogues that get sent a message. I consider, I would consider those often.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: Obviously nervous system things, but especially as we get older, they're also hand in hand with this complicated loss that we do not understand. So no adoptee. Adoptee that seems to struggle with adoptee, adoptee that doesn't seem to struggle with adoption, like everything in between. Adoption is a complicated loss and it is a complicated grief because it is not traditional in the sense
Parenting Different: Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter: Often not all the time sometimes it is but it is often not a death is also not a physical death Sometimes it is right we can acknowledge that some some people are adopted out of situations of literally losing their parents But the reason that it has a complexity to it is that often these people are still living We might not know where they are when I know who they are even but often these people are still living and They have relinquished
Parenting Different: Exactly.
Isaac Etter: the rights to raise you or their parental rights have been taken away due to whatever reason from the state, ⁓ which is usually not a great story. And so what we do understand is that there has been a separation and a loss of this ⁓ biological relationship. That is kind of like an inevitable part of adoption, obviously, and then also a very difficult and complex loss to start to understand as you get older.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: As you get older, you will grieve this loss even in ways that you don't understand because you can't understand it as a child, right? And so, you know, I think the fear that some adoptive parents are sitting in is like the grief of like maybe like wanting to go back to their birth parents or like like the ⁓ thought of like not being ⁓ and like being fearful of sitting in...
Parenting Different: Great.
Isaac Etter: conversations about loss and grief because they don't want to have to deal with those emotions. But the grief process that an adoptee goes through is another inevitability, right? Again, you can take away best adoption ever, best family ever. There is, can't, I just can't imagine that there is an adoptee ever who has never once.
Parenting Different: right.
Isaac Etter: thought about where their history comes from, never once thought about who their birth family is, never once thought about where they get their features from. And these are all after effects of complicated loss and a complicated grief, right? The grief is in not understanding where any of you is from. ⁓ And that is typically ⁓ for many adoptees, whether they search or not search, there is often parts of them that they literally never get answers to.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And so that confusion, that mystery builds actually a lifelong grief of trying to put together the pieces of yourself. And so this inevitability, ⁓ if it's feared, I think it actually compounds because your child, think especially in their kind of like adolescent years are gonna be curious because it's like a normal, like it's kind of like, have a five year old.
Parenting Different: you
Isaac Etter: five, six, seven, they are just like asking a million questions. And so curiosity about where they, why they look different, the curiosity about where they get their nose from, their ears from, why they, even if you're same race, why they don't look exactly like you. ⁓ Like all these kind of curiosities, ⁓ they are the early, they have the beginnings, usually the more innocent versions of this grief. ⁓ As they get older,
Parenting Different: Right. Yep.
Isaac Etter: these curiosity, these gaps in these questions become heavier and get more of the association of the reason I don't know these things is because I'm not with my birth family. And then there's added complication of why am I not with my birth family? And so, right, whatever reason, right? Death, taken away, relinquished, all these things all have different amounts of effects on people. But that continued curiosity and non-understanding creates a
Parenting Different: Right. Right.
Isaac Etter: a grief gap. And what happens, I think especially as adopted kids get older, is the awareness of the fact that they have a whole nother family becomes bigger. So even if they've never decided to search, your awareness that you have a whole nother family continues to rise as you get older, as you go through significant moments.
Parenting Different: Yes.
Isaac Etter: which is why we see adoptees really struggle with transitions, why we see them really struggle with situations, even sometimes with marriages, the birth of their kids can be these huge triggering moments and shutdown moments for adoptees, again, not all, but they can be these huge triggering moments for adoptees. And we don't have to sit in a mystery about why these moments are triggering for adoptees. Well, they're triggering because there is an unprocessed probably in... ⁓ a complicated grief that they are dealing with when they are getting married and they in the back of their head, they realize that like the people who gave birth to them are not here. Nobody in their birth movement is here. When they have their first children, sometimes and many times it's the first biological connection that many adopted people have. And so there's this huge, even if they haven't realized that or acknowledged that, there's this huge bodily reaction that happens.
Parenting Different: Right. Right?
Isaac Etter: ⁓ This is so significant among adoptees that their first children being like both the best and the most complicated moment of their lives So These are these are these are all grief. These are all grief navigating through life navigating to this curiosity ⁓ And I think that being fearful of grief as an adoptive parent ⁓ Means that your child will inevitably go through all these things alone
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: They will never have an outlet. They will never have you as somebody who they can come to because if they're not able to process ⁓ what really is curiosity and then grief about their story with you, then they will learn that they can't do it with you, which will only make their grief more complex and harder because now they also have to feel bad about it. ⁓ That is often why loss, for me, often why I add an extra word to loss and grief is I add loss, grief, and guilt.
Parenting Different: Great. Exactly.
Isaac Etter: is because most adoptees live with the trio. They don't live with loss and grief. They live with loss, grief, and guilt because they are also feeling guilty for their curiosity, guilty for even feeling anger and resentment towards their birth family because they feel anything at all towards their birth family. They feel like it's a betrayal to you as their adoptive parent. And then there's a guilt associated with that. And so most adoptees are actually not just dealing with loss and grief. They're dealing with loss, grief, and guilt in the
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: is usually shaped through the lack of acknowledgement of their curiosity, it's the lack of safety for them to actually process it. And then they become young adults, they become teenagers and young adults who do not, especially don't wanna talk to you, especially don't wanna talk about adoption, especially don't wanna address it in their lives because they maybe have memories of trying to figure it out in that being shut down. ⁓ Or maybe it just in general makes them feel bad. All they know is bad feelings about trying to understand their story. And you as their parents have an amazing opportunity to make them trying to understand themselves a point of safety, maybe a point of pain. It could honestly have painful experiences, but sometimes that pain is necessary. Like sometimes a lot of people are pain. Yeah.
Parenting Different: Right. I was going to say, feel like, yeah, I feel like there is inevitably going to be pain with that. It's going to, there's going to be pain for you as a parent and there's going to be pain for your child in that because one, you are going to have to come face to face with the reality that you're not enough. And that's okay, right? Like you're not enough because you don't share that biology.
Isaac Etter: particular part of their story is a is a byproduct of their experience So the only thing that we can do is walk with them through it and help them navigate and understand it. We can't change it and we can't internalize it and we can't make it about us and we can't make it about them either. We have to make it about the actual occurrence, which was adoption. And so things that I think are just like important.
Parenting Different: Yeah. That
Isaac Etter: Reframes because they're natural tendencies for us in the adoption world to fall into you know It's the same reason why I tried to frame a lot of my stuff around not thinking adoption is right or wrong Because a lot of times when we sit into when we sit in a critical place of adoption or of the adopted experience If you say that there's any negativity, then you're somehow anti adoption, which is the wrong framework, right?
Parenting Different: Right. Right.
Isaac Etter: And so we have to we have to be able to sit into these both ends. My adoption was amazing and the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I wouldn't change it for the world. I love my adoptive parents. They're my parents. And I think about my birth and I am curious about where I get my features. And I want to know more about my history. And because of all these things, I live with a layer of like grief because I at my core a whole gap. in my understanding of myself that I can't change or I don't have the methods right now to change, right? Maybe the DNA has not come up right and all these things, you know what I mean? And so these things, those two experiences lived in the same person. And that's a really important, it's really important when we talk about adoption and change in the adoptee experience that we understand that those two experiences can live in the same body.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So going to ask the question for the sake of time, we got to keep this short, but everybody's going to ask the question. This is like taking a hard left turn here, but ⁓ is, is next for Isaac Etter Like what, what are you doing next? This is the most commonly asked question that I get. And I just go, I don't know, ask him. ⁓
Isaac Etter: Yeah. No, it's okay. It's been too long. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know that that's a big question for a lot of people. a lot of people are asking me, and I will say that there is like, there's a little bit of a gap that I get to thankfully live in. And I'm blessed to live in of not exactly knowing what the 100 % next path would be for me as.
Parenting Different: So what's next?
Isaac Etter: There's a couple ideas on the horizon. I'm really, really interested in ⁓ what ⁓ advancing mental health for adoptees can look like. I'm really interested in ⁓ creating better therapy experiences for adoptees and for foster youth. And so there's like ruminating and stuff happening there and figuring out where I might go for that. Right now, what I'm really focused on is writing my book.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: which is not about transracial adoption. It is about my experience navigating grief and loss. And the real mission of the book is really to change the experience that people have with adopted people in their lives. ⁓ And so my point through it is not just to necessarily tell my story, but to give context to very common behavioral traits in young adult adoptees.
Parenting Different: Mmm, I like that.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ And even, know, middle-aged adoptees, you know what mean? If we don't change a pattern, it just stays. So to give context to people in our lives, our families, the people who love us, about how we might be viewing life and why we might have or are currently behaving the way that we do. I think many adoptees get labeled in their young adult years as like troubled or immature or, you know, acting out their age.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And really, you know, if you have this grief that you haven't processed, you have all this pain that you haven't processed in your childhood, you've become a young adult who drinks too much, parties too hard, seeks validation, and you fall into a lot of addictions. If you look into the addiction space connected to adoption, what you find is a lot more truth about the general experience of adoptees. Some of us, our addiction does not need us to go to AA or to a retreat center. It just means that we can't spend a night alone or we can't spend a night without
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ We can't spend a day without validation for people right and so Really important that we reframe some of these things and so my book is really meant to highlight how grief and loss is really showing up in the lives of adopted people to Change the way that we are in relationships and in love and in connection with people around us And so obviously that's like a big big Mission in in somebody that will take time ⁓
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And then on the side right now, I'm also doing some coaching. right now I have just like a little private coaching business that works with adoptees who have pretty much achieved everything in their life that they wanted to achieve, but are still working through the limiting beliefs connected to adoption. And so this is so common for people who have experienced childhood trauma.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yeah, is.
Isaac Etter: But you've almost operated your whole life out of an in spite. So I'm proving I'm getting successful. I'm doing these things. I'm earning this thing. I'm running away from the voices. But now you're at the top of your career. You have all the money of all the success. But you're still being controlled. You're still struggling. You're still wrestling with all these gaps in your identity.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ This unprocessed part of your experience and my goal is in my coaching is really to be the the ultimate mindset coach for these adoptees To help them, know If you're already successful imagine how much more you could achieve how much bigger of an impact you could have if you weren't guided out of like having to prove your value if you weren't guided by your mother's abandonment or your mother's death, right and so ⁓
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: really being a coach that takes people to the next level. So if you're an adoptee ⁓ or a foster youth or you're a parent of one who is at that point, they've succeeded in everything else, but they're still being guided by that voice. Those are the people who I'm working with, helping them break past that wall and into what I think can really be an unstoppable life.
Parenting Different: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing more about what's next for you. And I'm sure you'll be back on at some point eventually.
Isaac Etter: Yeah. ⁓ Absolutely. Yeah, I'll have more to say at some point.
Parenting Different: Alright, thanks.
Isaac Etter: Yes, of course.
Isaac Etter: Yeah.
Parenting Different: So I'm excited to chat with you. for being with me.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. This is always a fun time. Always a fun time. Yeah.
Parenting Different: course. So you dropped a bomb on me. When was it? End of January, beginning of February. I had no clue. Like I knew that there was some internal things happening. I think anybody that was close to you could see that you were working through some things. Never guessed that this was the direction that you were going to go. But
Isaac Etter: the end. Yeah. Yeah.
Parenting Different: you were so confident in it and have even since then evolved, you know, in your direction of where you're going to take things next. So talk us through some of that, what you to this decision and what was that process like? Because you poured your heart and soul into the adoption space. I mean, you're staying in the adoption space, but you poured your heart and soul into it in this capacity for so long.
Isaac Etter: Yeah.
Parenting Different: and people love you and respect you and you've built such a name for yourself. So to then walk away from these brands that you've worked so hard to build, it's something monumental. So I'd love to hear more your journey to that decision.
Isaac Etter: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's, you know, it's, I think the first kind of basis is that like everything kind of has its time and its season. And in the beginning of this process and starting Identity before I was Parenting Different and all of these things, you know, my perspective as the 21 year old who went into building it was that I would do this forever. And I certainly brought that energy to it. And I think over time, Well, first of all, everybody has its own dreams. I'll just speak about mine. Over my journey, I found that there were parts of this process that I was having more friction with than I was enjoying. And it wasn't about the mission of the work. I think it was about my role in the work and maybe not living in entirely like my truth of like what I'm good at. And I think our
Parenting Different: Yeah. Hmm.
Isaac Etter: brands here have reached a really interesting point where had stopped being the best person to drive them forward. And that was kind of a clarity that kind of kept coming over me. ⁓ think in startups and in the business world, what I always tell the people is that like, ⁓ are willing to go to war, when you're ready to go to war for something, That's how you know you're kind of locked into it. And when you stop being willing to go to war for something, then you know that you're outside of it. And it feels as if like I was not ⁓ interested or not like moved by the next war in building this brand. in, anybody who's an entrepreneur knows that it is very similar to like a war in a battle. You're hustling things out, you're grinding things out, things are breaking and you're building them back up. And there were years that I really loved that.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: I learned a lot about this space doing that. But when it was clear that I was having a lot of resistance about going and taking that kind of next leap in the growth of this ⁓ brand and this company and what could be possible, then I think it was clear that there was nothing wrong with what we had built, but there was something wrong with me leading it. And that's hard thing to accept when you build something.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: That's a thing. It's a hard thing to accept that you're not the right person to take it forward. But there was a lot of...
Parenting Different: Especially when it's something so personal too. Like you built it around your story.
Isaac Etter: Oh yeah, oh yeah, 100%. I mean, the basis of all this work was my transracial story. Some of the most impactful work we've done has been a transracial adoption. And so, yeah, it was also letting go of that. I, know, anybody who tells their story a lot probably reaches a fatigue point in their story. And there is also like a point in the transracial adoption work to where like, regardless of if I stayed or if I went in this role, there was gonna be no more like transracial adoption content that came from my story and my life anymore. Like that had hit the ceiling of what I was going to do because we've given so much of that, like my family and me. And there's parts of the transracial journey that like I know my mom wants to, can you just speak on and I'm happy to do that work with her. But there was gonna be no more like books about our family. There was gonna be no more content about our family.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Like that season had ended and there's enough out there that I think will stay relevant for quite a while. Um, just because it's relevant to trans racial families in general. You know, there's docu-series, there's a podcast, there's tons of webinar recordings. Um, and so I knew that the trans racial thing was over that like, was not going to hyper-focus on creating any more trans racial adoption content, at least based off of our family, maybe just like the general educational side of it.
Parenting Different: for sure. Sure.
Isaac Etter: But this company was not growing, like we were not growing in a transracial direction. You know, as you see with Parenting Different, Parenting Different is, you know, a fraction transracial. It's probably 25 % transracial. You know, this business was growing in a educational foundational way for adoptive and foster parents. It was growing in a way that it could be useful for all adoptive parents, especially, but then even foster parents. And that was always the mission. And we...
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: I think over the last year become really quite successful in there being people who know this brand and don't associate it with transracial adoption, which is, I believe, a huge win. Because though that I think transracial parents probably have the most options here, ⁓ trauma-informed parenting, parenting in crisis, those are things that ⁓ are living across the spectrum of adoption and foster parenting. Whereas transracial adoption, transracial fostering is not
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: everybody's experience. But navigating trauma, navigating grief and loss in their child, are universal experiences, which is where this brand has grown in direction and where I'm excited that I'll be able to pour advice to you into, but also where I think you will be a better leader in taking it forward. And there'll be people that you bring around you that will be great at supporting that mission while keeping our transracial base.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: These are important growth things, you know what mean? To be good in the business space is to really understand growth. yeah, this was not my growth. And it was also a big lesson on me and like what role I want to have in companies going forward. And so, you know, looking at the next couple of years, you know, I'm less inclined to be like CEO because I'm not finding that. the long-term CEO role is my favorite or my highest skill. And so even in the projects that I'm looking at now, I'm looking at like, what does it look like for me to be somebody who gets things to a certain point in transitions? So really just kind of taking more account onto like the lifestyle that I wanna live, where I feel best in flow, what brings me the most joy, but also where I'm having the most impact. And so...
Parenting Different: Hmm. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, I mean, it's a tough transition, but that all led to obviously deciding that, you know, it was time to move away from this venture. And so that's, that's like kind of the in-depth thought process, I guess, behind it
Parenting Different: Yeah, that makes sense. I think it is really hard to, especially something like this, to let go of. it was hard for to think of it go and I didn't even found it. ⁓ So like that wasn't even my, ⁓ it my brainchild, but it became so a part of me because so much of a part of.
Isaac Etter: Yeah.
Parenting Different: My story is now tied into it and your story was tied into it. And I think that would tremendously difficult to walk away from and to even accept, and be able to have the bravery to take that next step of walking away making that move.
Isaac Etter: You Yeah, there's a lot of like the identity that you built. mean, for me, the transition and the hard thing was just like letting go of the identity that I built around it. You know I mean? That was probably the hardest part because I didn't really believe that it wasn't gonna continue on. I think I always knew that there was a way to keep the company alive. And so I wasn't really scared of the company going away or the work kind of being lost. ⁓ I definitely was having to let go of like,
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yeah, there.
Isaac Etter: a world and identity, a way that people knew me, a way that I associated with the world. I'm in a lifestyle that I had built around what it meant to run this company and what it meant to run a company all the time, which is a lifestyle. Like it's a lifestyle choice that I'm not necessarily living anymore, which requires a lot of transition and a lot of letting go of what I viewed as valuable, like what was making me valuable.
Parenting Different: Right. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And so there's a lot of shifts that you have to make, I think, when you're transitioning and when you're letting go. Even though I felt a lot of confidence around letting it go, I definitely had to deal with the identity part of this is who I've been my entire 20s. There's not really a day in my 20s that I haven't been this guy. And so, yeah, you have to in many ways build a new person. And that's the whole process.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yeah, and you mentioned letting go of the identity around this work. I think that, like talk to that a little bit more because I think everybody has their identity in their work, right? What's the first question when you meet somebody? What do you do? That's like the first thing we ask people. But I think when it is so personal, like being, you know, an accountant or a plumber or whatever, you're not as... personally and emotionally tied to your work? So talk about that a little bit. Like what did you see your identity being tied to this work? And where did you want that to shift?
Isaac Etter: Yeah. Well, I mean, think the identity shift for me was like more so centered around like being a young CEO, being an entrepreneur, being in that. And of course there were ties to this company. You know, I spent the last like four years, especially, you know, living an unusual middle twenties life. You know, you know, I walked into hotels where the first thing I see is my face on a poster many times. And so
Parenting Different: True. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: I've lived an unusual life. And so you're letting go of ⁓ essentially some of that. ⁓ And not that I think that I won't still speak, you know, I still speak in conferences this year, but you definitely let go of like an edge of that, you know, who I was in that context ⁓ was not just like this keynote speaker. You know, I was also building this thing behind it and that, there were a lot of people who were invested in that company. There were a lot of families who are coming because of the impact of this company. And they're still to this day, know, the last conferences I went to, people told me that they were coming because of me. And so, you know, I'm letting go, not entirely of that, because I'm sure there's still people who will support my endeavors and speaking and what I bring to the space in this season. But you're definitely letting go of something that was definitely not just there. Like all that was built. You I was begging to do speaking gigs a decade ago. ⁓
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: When you go from begging to do speaking gigs to people driving two hours, three hours to come and hear you at a conference, it's a big switch. And you also carry a different energy and responsibility in all of that. And so now I think I had to let go of probably I had to let go of the idea that that was all going away. Because it definitely hasn't all gone away. But I also just had to let go of maybe what was wrapped up behind that. Some of the ego may be in there and some of the things that weren't helpful ⁓ and not hold on to this company for the wrong reasons. know what mean? The temptation to not let go was all wrapped around like fear and ego. It wasn't wrapped around honesty. And so, you know, I had to let go of, that world that I had built that I think did serve a purpose and was great and not hold on to that identity in a fearful or ego-y way. That was who I was meant to be for that season. Who I was and who the impact that I had was very important. And how I showed up then was actually very important. And it actually, I think, would have been a disservice to hold onto it once I knew it was done. Because now I get to show up in this one in that same energy. And ⁓ yeah, what people will get from me now will be just as impactful, but it wouldn't be impactful if I was holding onto like this old, like if I was trying to do it from this old framework that I knew was done, that I knew I wasn't interested in, that I knew I wasn't excited about, the impact would keep declining. And so it's really important that I think I stand in whatever I know will be the most impactful version of myself.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Do you ever think that part of the whole, you you use the word ego or that identity or that emotional tie to being wanted and desired and sought after, do you think that any of that was impacted by adoption and the fact that you're an adoptee?
Isaac Etter: Well, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, of course, isn't it all to be honest. ⁓ I mean, that's like the. ⁓ It's finding out that, you know, a lot of the roots of where you where you resist and where you're fearful are all are all connected to the root source. And so that's I think that's a very interesting adaptive journey. ⁓ One one that's important and an awareness of that is important. And so.
Parenting Different: Well, I mean, yes, because... but... Yeah. Yep, for sure, yeah.
Isaac Etter: I don't think that didn't come up for me. ⁓ And I think that that was one dimension of it. But another dimension of it is just like, you know, I don't really know anything else. Some people build careers later in their lives. Some people have multiple careers. This has pretty much been it for me. And so, you know, as much as there was like that, definitely like kind of like abandonment stuff that came up, if anything, then more became a fear of like, I don't even know what.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: what will happen on the other side of not being in this role. Because my entire adult life I've basically been in this role. I was doing in consulting and then this and that was it. And they've all been adoption, trans-racial adoption based. ⁓ And so, yeah, if anything there was more wrapped up in just like trying to hold on to whatever success I feel like I had found.
Parenting Different: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting when we step into these spaces as adoptees and we every single person brings their stuff into what they do, right? Everybody has their stuff, their thing ⁓ that they bring into it. But I think especially because we are adoptees in the adoption space, I think it's interesting and especially important because we can shed a light on maybe what adoptive parents might see in their kids and that like constant searching. I know for me, I was constantly searching for success. I still struggle with that. And I have to remind myself, okay, why am I searching for success now? But like there's constantly that I cannot be average. Average doesn't cut it. I have to be the best because that's what's going to make me wanted and desired and worthy. And so having to really reframe that and, okay, I want success because I want to be able to support my family better. I want my family to have other things, not because I need to be here because that defines my worth. And so talk to that a little bit about how a parent can see that even in ⁓ middle high school, they're starting to see this in their adoptee it can good on the outside. It can look like, they're high achievers and they're getting straight A's and that's so great. But what is underneath that and what is the drive of that? ⁓
Isaac Etter: Yeah, and I mean, I the thing you're talking about, the first challenge is that it's in most people and most people aren't recognizing it or close to it. And so this desire to have success in an outward fashion is so tied to our society as a whole, sides our experiences as people, and so what's interesting about the first layer of this is that
Parenting Different: Mm-hmm. For sure, yeah.
Isaac Etter: for adoptive parents, think, to even really understand how to support it within their children, they would have to see it within themselves, which I think is really interesting. It's very interesting first step of this. So the awareness in which, yeah, that we all have a default in our society to perform for each other instead of perform from a place of honesty. And so that's, I mean, that's the first step is I think awareness within yourself. I think with children, what...
Parenting Different: and
Isaac Etter: The reframe that adoptive parents need to have pretty much about all their adoptive child's behavior is an awareness that the roots behind your child's behavior in any direction are undoubtedly correlated to their journey as an adopted person. And that's tough because it feels limiting. And even for adoptees who
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: don't want to ⁓ sit within the depth of the impact of adoption, actually might feel wrong. But the truth of understanding the deep impact of adoption is not the acknowledgement that adoption was bad. And I think that's usually where people fall into when they get into this, is that they think that if I acknowledge adoption has this wider impact, I have to then be on the side that adoption is wrong.
Parenting Different: Yes. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: You do not have to be on the side of the adoption is wrong. You can be very pro-adoption. You can be as pro-adoption as you want to be. ⁓ The undoubtable truth is that a childhood experience such as adoption has inevitable after effects. ⁓ It's psychologically proven now many, many times. There's been books, people try to disprove it. It is undoubtable now to people even who are outside of the adoption world.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: people who are just studying even NICU experiences of children who are separated from their mother right after they're born, to understand that this experience, regardless of timeline, has an impact. And it has a long-term psychological impact because it's a very early, oftentimes, thing that happens to you. So it happens to you before you can process things. So it's a systematic...
Parenting Different: Right, exactly. Right.
Isaac Etter: issue, especially for infant adoptions, but even as we get into those toddler years, we see it ⁓ having a really massive effect. And then especially once you're conscious, this is actually for some reason, the one that we acknowledge the most. The one we acknowledge the most is conscious separation. ⁓ Forgetting that our nervous system is being developed in the other points of separation where we seem to think that we can just add a replacement in. ⁓
Parenting Different: ⁓ yeah. Right.
Isaac Etter: And so this acknowledgement is like the first step to understanding the next set of behaviors your child will experience. again, acknowledging this does not mean that adoption was bad or is bad or is the wrong choice for you or was the wrong thing to happen to you. It can still be the best thing that has ever happened to you as an adoptee. And it can still have these ⁓ side effects that again are inevitable.
Parenting Different: Exactly. Right.
Isaac Etter: And so starting on that base is really important because then we can look at the lens that we view ourselves and life's through understanding that it might be skewed by this childhood experience because our nervous system may have been heavily disrupted in formative years. If you feel unsafe as a baby and you lose connection as a baby, you are very likely to become a person who is not very trusted. And you can look at that through the lens of, I'm just, I'm reserved, I take time. Or you can look at through the lens of, oh, I'm understanding I got separated from my mother as a child. The work that I need to do is more internal system regulation, right? And what happens to many people, and I don't wanna get too tangent here, but I think what happens to many adoptees is that because they're not unhappy with their adoption, they look at these things in their life as just who they are.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yes.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ When that is actually the wrong perspective, it's actually a harmful perspective to themselves. ⁓ Because if you just were to acknowledge that adoption had an impact on your life, you can actually move from that framework really helpfully by getting the right support. ⁓ Sherry Eldridge is a fantastic person at describing the adoptee psychology. And some of her books have made me rethink my whole childhood because I didn't realize how many little things I was doing.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: that were associated directly with adoptive behaviors. One of them that was like a really big shocker to me was that ⁓ a lot of adopted male youth have like a fire phase, that they play with fire, there's a security party towards fire. And I had a whole period of time where I would like set axe spray on fire in my room. ⁓ And I didn't think anything of it. I just thought that was just a normal young boy occurrence.
Parenting Different: same. Interesting.
Isaac Etter: But then it's like, you know, we're like in many young adolescent adoptees, we see that there is a fascination towards fire, this risk or this danger element. And so it's actually really helpful to live in this awareness that this has an experience because it actually can start to make sense of things that you were doing as a child, ways that you've been disconnected, ways that you feel, especially when it comes to more intimate relationships. So.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: best friends, relationship partner, things like that, super helpful. So if you wanna, if you, to get back to the original question, now that I've gone that super tangent. So if you wanna be the parent who's helping your child, the best thing you could do in general forever is to let your child in on the fact that adoption has an impact and not let that be a deterrent to their success.
Parenting Different: you
Isaac Etter: or let that be all who they are, but let the observable patterns that they are displaying be guided through a lens of early childhood trauma, which is separation, right? And so again, get out of the framework of good or bad, just get into the framework of experience, and then you can have an honest conversation with your child about their behavior. And even if you're not, ⁓
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: You don't have to be like, this is because you're adopted. You can be guiding them, right? You can be guiding them through, ⁓ if you're doing the right research, you understand that abandonment in different complexes are a part of how you start to justify your experience in the world as an adoptee. So if you see a child that's overperforming, you can reinforce language that ⁓ lets them know that they do not have to perform for validation.
Parenting Different: Sure. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Right and so you don't have to immediately be like because you're adopted you're trying to do this Your six-year-old doesn't need that conversation. That might be a 13 14 year old conversation where you're kind of diving into like hey, you know This might be related to it and here's how you know, you can continue to work through this as you're navigating life more towards your own But what you can do is just send the message that they are valuable within themselves Which is going to be actually a hard message for most
Parenting Different: Right?
Isaac Etter: adoptees to digest because in and of themselves was separated from their birth parents and their logical and systematic message to them, the message that their body sends to them most of the time is that they are wrong, that they are naturally wrong because their whole is messed up.
Parenting Different: Right. Or. right, or that we have to earn, which that is something like, I know that I was not told that from my parents. My parents did not tell me I had to earn, I had to perform and earn whatever. They didn't say that out loud, but let me tell you, I worked real hard to, and I became the version that I thought that they wanted me to be instead of who I really was. And so then now you have,
Isaac Etter: Yeah, or the...
Parenting Different: someone in their 30s, discovering who they really are and taking on this whole identity and everybody, mean, including my husband, he's like, you're no longer the person I married. And it's true, I'm not. I love this version of me, so much better than the old version. But not everybody does because it's not what everybody knows. And so that makes it really challenging. But if we can give the child that language, And I kind of want to get into this too next of like, it's okay to grieve. It's okay to question. It's okay, all of those things. And it doesn't make you ungrateful. And it doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you love us less. It's simply a part of your story. And that's okay. And I think allowing children to sit in that, and it's like that both and. you can both and I say this all the time, I am so thankful that my birth family didn't raise me, but I also wish that I had never needed to be adopted. And people get confused by that. I'm like, no, like in a perfect world, I wouldn't have had to be separated, but because I had to be, and now I look back at that, I'm very thankful I wasn't raised by that. So I think it's really important to be able to sit in that both. It's okay. And you have to be secure enough in yourself to sit in that with your kids.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, and one thing that I want to point out before we move too far on is that even the ability to feel like you have to earn it is connected to feeling like there's something wrong with how you are. So the root and why it's important to clarify that this root is that something is wrong is because that's a nervous system challenge. That is not a taught thing. If you have
Parenting Different: 100 % yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: if your first experience is separation and you're separated from the voice that you knew in the womb, the smells, the things that you knew in the womb, ⁓ and your first experiences in life are panic because of separation, which we know from research that's being done that even if it's a child moving to the NICU, not even adoption, not even moving to somebody different, even if it's a child moving to the NICU, that there is a nervous system, that there is panic, that there is ⁓ extreme fear that an infant is experiencing due to not being around the familiar sense, voice, smell, you know, all those things, then your experience going forward is still gonna be layered around that experience, because your first two years are so formative to these things. ⁓ And so, yeah, your brain is exploding
Parenting Different: Right. Right, your brain is exploding during those first years, yeah.
Isaac Etter: And so it's really important to maybe have this understanding that your child might intuitively just assume that their feelings and that their behaviors and their thoughts are wrong and not trust themselves. I know that was me and I was adopted at two ⁓ and be living from the sense, know, mine, and it probably is connected to adoption too, but you know, mine was just assuming that because I had to be placed for adoption, there was something wrong with me, so I had to be wrong, right? And so this narrative gets formed in many different ways. ⁓ But I think it's really important to acknowledge that your children and in their young adult years might have a serious ⁓ inability to truly trust their internal voice or trust themselves.
Parenting Different: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I still struggle to trust myself. Like I have to verbally talk myself through it to trust that no, I am capable of making a good decision. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: Absolutely. Exactly. Yeah. I think there's many parts of that are lifelong kind of thing that you deal with because these also, know, anything that gets formed and set in childhood as you become an adult and you become an older and older adult gets harder and harder to break. And so another benefit of adoptive parents being really aware of these things that, you know, you have a really powerful way to disrupt inner dialogues, inner messages.
Parenting Different: For sure. Yeah.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ internal beliefs that your child may unintentionally carry, not even realize they're carrying until they're older, really early on in their life.
Parenting Different: Right. And it dismantles the shame surrounding those feelings too. Because again, they may not, like knowing that it was connected to adoption for me, didn't make me angry that I was adopted, didn't make me hate being adopted. It just gave it a place to go. Like, okay, this is not something that is inherently wrong with me. It's because of what happened to me. And I think that's such an important.
Isaac Etter: 100%. 100%.
Parenting Different: question. I heard somebody say recently. instead of asking what's wrong with somebody, what happened to them? And I think that is so important for parents, especially as we are adopting kids. We won't know their full prenatal history. We won't know what happened. It's impossible to know everything. And so ⁓ things happened before you ever came into the picture, even if you're in that delivery room. Things happened to that child before. And so you will not know everything and you have to one, be okay with that and acknowledge that. And then allowing that child to express that and ⁓ will that shame those behaviors of they're just a bad kid or no, ⁓ what happened to them? that could be causing this instead. Because I mean, yeah, because sometimes your kid going to just be a little brat, yep, sure, that happens. But if we're focusing on it with the mindset of what happened to them, then we're walking into it with a better attitude and a better lens and we can see things more clearly.
Isaac Etter: Yeah, 100%.
Parenting Different: So tying into this, there's a whole grief that comes with being adopted. And that is something I think that is really hard for adopted parents to accept because they want to be enough for their child. They don't want their child to grieve because we see grief as such a negative thing. ⁓ So I think it's very, it's tough and I'm an adoptee and I struggle with it as an adoptive parent. I don't want to see my kids grieve. I don't want to see them hurt. Yet I know very much that it is a part of the process. so talk to us about grief. I know that has been ⁓ big part of even your decision making in the last six months. and where you are today is because you've really walked that grief journey and you've processed that and gone through it. What did that look like? How did you come to the point of understanding that some of this that was happening internally was because you need of unprocessed grief?
Isaac Etter: Yeah, mean, grief is, yeah, it's kind of like loss is a part of every adoption. So grief is a part of every adoption. It's all tied together. ⁓ so grief is the, is kind of like the behavioral side of loss. And we know we've talked a lot about like the internal dialogues that get sent a message. I consider, I would consider those often.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: Obviously nervous system things, but especially as we get older, they're also hand in hand with this complicated loss that we do not understand. So no adoptee. Adoptee that seems to struggle with adoptee, adoptee that doesn't seem to struggle with adoption, like everything in between. Adoption is a complicated loss and it is a complicated grief because it is not traditional in the sense
Parenting Different: Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter: Often not all the time sometimes it is but it is often not a death is also not a physical death Sometimes it is right we can acknowledge that some some people are adopted out of situations of literally losing their parents But the reason that it has a complexity to it is that often these people are still living We might not know where they are when I know who they are even but often these people are still living and They have relinquished
Parenting Different: Exactly.
Isaac Etter: the rights to raise you or their parental rights have been taken away due to whatever reason from the state, ⁓ which is usually not a great story. And so what we do understand is that there has been a separation and a loss of this ⁓ biological relationship. That is kind of like an inevitable part of adoption, obviously, and then also a very difficult and complex loss to start to understand as you get older.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: As you get older, you will grieve this loss even in ways that you don't understand because you can't understand it as a child, right? And so, you know, I think the fear that some adoptive parents are sitting in is like the grief of like maybe like wanting to go back to their birth parents or like like the ⁓ thought of like not being ⁓ and like being fearful of sitting in...
Parenting Different: Great.
Isaac Etter: conversations about loss and grief because they don't want to have to deal with those emotions. But the grief process that an adoptee goes through is another inevitability, right? Again, you can take away best adoption ever, best family ever. There is, can't, I just can't imagine that there is an adoptee ever who has never once.
Parenting Different: right.
Isaac Etter: thought about where their history comes from, never once thought about who their birth family is, never once thought about where they get their features from. And these are all after effects of complicated loss and a complicated grief, right? The grief is in not understanding where any of you is from. ⁓ And that is typically ⁓ for many adoptees, whether they search or not search, there is often parts of them that they literally never get answers to.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And so that confusion, that mystery builds actually a lifelong grief of trying to put together the pieces of yourself. And so this inevitability, ⁓ if it's feared, I think it actually compounds because your child, think especially in their kind of like adolescent years are gonna be curious because it's like a normal, like it's kind of like, have a five year old.
Parenting Different: you
Isaac Etter: five, six, seven, they are just like asking a million questions. And so curiosity about where they, why they look different, the curiosity about where they get their nose from, their ears from, why they, even if you're same race, why they don't look exactly like you. ⁓ Like all these kind of curiosities, ⁓ they are the early, they have the beginnings, usually the more innocent versions of this grief. ⁓ As they get older,
Parenting Different: Right. Yep.
Isaac Etter: these curiosity, these gaps in these questions become heavier and get more of the association of the reason I don't know these things is because I'm not with my birth family. And then there's added complication of why am I not with my birth family? And so, right, whatever reason, right? Death, taken away, relinquished, all these things all have different amounts of effects on people. But that continued curiosity and non-understanding creates a
Parenting Different: Right. Right.
Isaac Etter: a grief gap. And what happens, I think especially as adopted kids get older, is the awareness of the fact that they have a whole nother family becomes bigger. So even if they've never decided to search, your awareness that you have a whole nother family continues to rise as you get older, as you go through significant moments.
Parenting Different: Yes.
Isaac Etter: which is why we see adoptees really struggle with transitions, why we see them really struggle with situations, even sometimes with marriages, the birth of their kids can be these huge triggering moments and shutdown moments for adoptees, again, not all, but they can be these huge triggering moments for adoptees. And we don't have to sit in a mystery about why these moments are triggering for adoptees. Well, they're triggering because there is an unprocessed probably in... ⁓ a complicated grief that they are dealing with when they are getting married and they in the back of their head, they realize that like the people who gave birth to them are not here. Nobody in their birth movement is here. When they have their first children, sometimes and many times it's the first biological connection that many adopted people have. And so there's this huge, even if they haven't realized that or acknowledged that, there's this huge bodily reaction that happens.
Parenting Different: Right. Right?
Isaac Etter: ⁓ This is so significant among adoptees that their first children being like both the best and the most complicated moment of their lives So These are these are these are all grief. These are all grief navigating through life navigating to this curiosity ⁓ And I think that being fearful of grief as an adoptive parent ⁓ Means that your child will inevitably go through all these things alone
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: They will never have an outlet. They will never have you as somebody who they can come to because if they're not able to process ⁓ what really is curiosity and then grief about their story with you, then they will learn that they can't do it with you, which will only make their grief more complex and harder because now they also have to feel bad about it. ⁓ That is often why loss, for me, often why I add an extra word to loss and grief is I add loss, grief, and guilt.
Parenting Different: Great. Exactly.
Isaac Etter: is because most adoptees live with the trio. They don't live with loss and grief. They live with loss, grief, and guilt because they are also feeling guilty for their curiosity, guilty for even feeling anger and resentment towards their birth family because they feel anything at all towards their birth family. They feel like it's a betrayal to you as their adoptive parent. And then there's a guilt associated with that. And so most adoptees are actually not just dealing with loss and grief. They're dealing with loss, grief, and guilt in the
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: is usually shaped through the lack of acknowledgement of their curiosity, it's the lack of safety for them to actually process it. And then they become young adults, they become teenagers and young adults who do not, especially don't wanna talk to you, especially don't wanna talk about adoption, especially don't wanna address it in their lives because they maybe have memories of trying to figure it out in that being shut down. ⁓ Or maybe it just in general makes them feel bad. All they know is bad feelings about trying to understand their story. And you as their parents have an amazing opportunity to make them trying to understand themselves a point of safety, maybe a point of pain. It could honestly have painful experiences, but sometimes that pain is necessary. Like sometimes a lot of people are pain. Yeah.
Parenting Different: Right. I was going to say, feel like, yeah, I feel like there is inevitably going to be pain with that. It's going to, there's going to be pain for you as a parent and there's going to be pain for your child in that because one, you are going to have to come face to face with the reality that you're not enough. And that's okay, right? Like you're not enough because you don't share that biology.
Isaac Etter: particular part of their story is a is a byproduct of their experience So the only thing that we can do is walk with them through it and help them navigate and understand it. We can't change it and we can't internalize it and we can't make it about us and we can't make it about them either. We have to make it about the actual occurrence, which was adoption. And so things that I think are just like important.
Parenting Different: Yeah. That
Isaac Etter: Reframes because they're natural tendencies for us in the adoption world to fall into you know It's the same reason why I tried to frame a lot of my stuff around not thinking adoption is right or wrong Because a lot of times when we sit into when we sit in a critical place of adoption or of the adopted experience If you say that there's any negativity, then you're somehow anti adoption, which is the wrong framework, right?
Parenting Different: Right. Right.
Isaac Etter: And so we have to we have to be able to sit into these both ends. My adoption was amazing and the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I wouldn't change it for the world. I love my adoptive parents. They're my parents. And I think about my birth and I am curious about where I get my features. And I want to know more about my history. And because of all these things, I live with a layer of like grief because I at my core a whole gap. in my understanding of myself that I can't change or I don't have the methods right now to change, right? Maybe the DNA has not come up right and all these things, you know what I mean? And so these things, those two experiences lived in the same person. And that's a really important, it's really important when we talk about adoption and change in the adoptee experience that we understand that those two experiences can live in the same body.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So going to ask the question for the sake of time, we got to keep this short, but everybody's going to ask the question. This is like taking a hard left turn here, but ⁓ is, is next for Isaac Etter Like what, what are you doing next? This is the most commonly asked question that I get. And I just go, I don't know, ask him. ⁓
Isaac Etter: Yeah. No, it's okay. It's been too long. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know that that's a big question for a lot of people. a lot of people are asking me, and I will say that there is like, there's a little bit of a gap that I get to thankfully live in. And I'm blessed to live in of not exactly knowing what the 100 % next path would be for me as.
Parenting Different: So what's next?
Isaac Etter: There's a couple ideas on the horizon. I'm really, really interested in ⁓ what ⁓ advancing mental health for adoptees can look like. I'm really interested in ⁓ creating better therapy experiences for adoptees and for foster youth. And so there's like ruminating and stuff happening there and figuring out where I might go for that. Right now, what I'm really focused on is writing my book.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: which is not about transracial adoption. It is about my experience navigating grief and loss. And the real mission of the book is really to change the experience that people have with adopted people in their lives. ⁓ And so my point through it is not just to necessarily tell my story, but to give context to very common behavioral traits in young adult adoptees.
Parenting Different: Mmm, I like that.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ And even, know, middle-aged adoptees, you know what mean? If we don't change a pattern, it just stays. So to give context to people in our lives, our families, the people who love us, about how we might be viewing life and why we might have or are currently behaving the way that we do. I think many adoptees get labeled in their young adult years as like troubled or immature or, you know, acting out their age.
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And really, you know, if you have this grief that you haven't processed, you have all this pain that you haven't processed in your childhood, you've become a young adult who drinks too much, parties too hard, seeks validation, and you fall into a lot of addictions. If you look into the addiction space connected to adoption, what you find is a lot more truth about the general experience of adoptees. Some of us, our addiction does not need us to go to AA or to a retreat center. It just means that we can't spend a night alone or we can't spend a night without
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ We can't spend a day without validation for people right and so Really important that we reframe some of these things and so my book is really meant to highlight how grief and loss is really showing up in the lives of adopted people to Change the way that we are in relationships and in love and in connection with people around us And so obviously that's like a big big Mission in in somebody that will take time ⁓
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: And then on the side right now, I'm also doing some coaching. right now I have just like a little private coaching business that works with adoptees who have pretty much achieved everything in their life that they wanted to achieve, but are still working through the limiting beliefs connected to adoption. And so this is so common for people who have experienced childhood trauma.
Parenting Different: Yeah. Yeah, is.
Isaac Etter: But you've almost operated your whole life out of an in spite. So I'm proving I'm getting successful. I'm doing these things. I'm earning this thing. I'm running away from the voices. But now you're at the top of your career. You have all the money of all the success. But you're still being controlled. You're still struggling. You're still wrestling with all these gaps in your identity.
Parenting Different: Right.
Isaac Etter: ⁓ This unprocessed part of your experience and my goal is in my coaching is really to be the the ultimate mindset coach for these adoptees To help them, know If you're already successful imagine how much more you could achieve how much bigger of an impact you could have if you weren't guided out of like having to prove your value if you weren't guided by your mother's abandonment or your mother's death, right and so ⁓
Parenting Different: Yeah.
Isaac Etter: really being a coach that takes people to the next level. So if you're an adoptee ⁓ or a foster youth or you're a parent of one who is at that point, they've succeeded in everything else, but they're still being guided by that voice. Those are the people who I'm working with, helping them break past that wall and into what I think can really be an unstoppable life.
Parenting Different: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing more about what's next for you. And I'm sure you'll be back on at some point eventually.
Isaac Etter: Yeah. ⁓ Absolutely. Yeah, I'll have more to say at some point.
Parenting Different: Alright, thanks.
Isaac Etter: Yes, of course.
