TED Radio Hour - Take Care

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Original broadcast date: April 8, 2022. Giving and receiving care—it's a natural part of life. But how do we offer the best possible support for our loved ones? This hour, TED speakers share ideas on reimagining caregiving. Guests include dementia care advocate Yvonne van Amerongen, attorney Diana Adams, inclusion advocate Sara Jones, and comedian Bill Bernat.TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading.

From TED and NPR. I'm Manushe Zamorodi, and I want to give you a little tour through a very special village in the Netherlands. You enter and you come in and you're on, the center square. To your right is a theater with red curtains. and music and a place to have coffee or a glass of wine.

This is Yvonne van Amorangen. When you go to the left, you enter the shopping mall. The shopping mall has a pub with Dutch music and beer and wine and fun, and that's every evening. Then we come into a small neighborhood where several houses are for people. There are gardens. You can walk around in a building. paths. And every place has its own feel. Everywhere you can meet people, the people that work there, the people that live there, the people that visit. It's a wonderful place to live. And if you're thinking, this village sounds pretty normal. Well, that's exactly what makes it

special. It's actually a place for people with dementia to live regular lives. It's called the And the Hochweig is actually a nursing home, but it feels and looks like a nice place to live. The Holkavig started out as a typical hospital-like nursing home back in 1993. Yes, well, the Netherlands actually was one of the first countries that had nursing homes. I didn't know that. Yeah. And we were one of the first nursing homes in the country. And so we had a very old building, and it was built as a hospital and not as a home.

where you live. And at some point, we said, well, we have to do something about this because we don't want our own parents to live here should they have dementia. We don't want to live here ourselves. What was wrong with it, though? I mean, you seem like lovely people. And, you know, I'm sure the level of care you were providing was very good. Yes, but what we were offering was a hospital-like environment.

and nobody wants to live in in the hospital. It was a ward. All they had was a bed and a night table, and that was it. And these people were always looking for, how do I get home? This is not my home. And we said, for these people, it's not possible anymore to go home. So we should offer them a place where they feel at home, a place where they can have their own life.

feeling at home, feeling safe, comfortable, cozy. That's what we all hope for in our later years. And for many of us, there comes a time when we need to be looked after. And a time when our loved ones need us to look after them. But how do we know if we're truly offering what's best? Is there a right and wrong way to be a caretaker? Today on the show, we'll explore the ways that we tend to, to our parents, our children, and ourselves,

and how we can do a better job asking for support from others when we truly need it. So back to Yvonne van Amalangen and dementia care. Over the course of her career, she's seen why dementia is a particularly difficult condition, both for the people experiencing it and the people providing their care. Dementia hits the brain.

What we see with people that have to live with dementia, is that parts of their memories disappear, they forget how to do things, they forget parts of their life. Actually, I remember my grandmother who also had dementia, and she lived 40 years in that house. It was a big house, but then the phone rang, and at that time we had phones on the wall, and she couldn't find the phone. She knew that there was a phone ringing, but she couldn't find the phone. and that's what's happening with people with dementia. We see that people mostly know what was happening in the past. They go back in time.

They understand the past, and they don't understand the future and the day of today. Here's Yvonne Van Amarangen on the TED stage. These people wanted to have a life and the help, our help, to deal with that dementia. These people wanted to live in a... normal house, not an award. They wanted to have a normal household where they would smell their dinner on the stove in the kitchen or be free to go to the kitchen and grab something to eat or drink. That's what these people needed and that's what we should organize for them. And we said we should organize this like at home so they wouldn't live with a group of

15 or 20 or 30 like an award. No, a small group of people, six or seven, family-like, like living with friends. What we saw later, when we started with those small groups of people living a normal life, we saw that people at 5 o'clock would gather around the table while the professional was peeling the potatoes and cleaning the vegetables

and asking people, how should I cook this or what did you do with tomato soup, things like that. And then they would all have a drink and it was totally relaxed. We often had people from all over the world that worked in nursing homes come and visit us. And we would come in and say hello and leave again. And they would say, what's happening here? Because in our nursing home at 5 o'clock it's disaster. Everybody is confused.

And here we see people sitting around the table having a relaxed talk with others and watching what's happening and waiting for dinner to come. There's a peacefulness. A peacefulness, yes. And you talk about their living setup. You develop something that you call lifestyle groups. These are households where people who share similar interests live together. Why is that so important? Well, like my mother, cultural lifestyle, she used to travel a lot with my father.

They were interested in art, in music. Household was not important. You don't need to vacuum every day and things like that. They like to not eat very traditional Dutch food, but try Chinese and Thai and French and things like that. So that was my mother. Another group is, for instance, the homemakers group. There's people that where the household is very important. You cannot have your first cup of coffee in the morning if you didn't do the dishes.

The house isn't clean. You should vacuum every day. And when it's in order, when you have done your housekeeping and your food is on the stove, you can have coffee with the neighbors. This is just, it's interesting. The more you talk about this, the more it makes. me think that taking care of someone isn't just making them feel, as we described, peaceful, calm, understanding where you are, having your daily habits. But it's about holding onto your

identity. It's about not feeling lost in yourself. Yeah, it's respecting the person. It's total respect for the person you are. And that you have a dementia is something that needs care, but it's not important for your life. It shouldn't be important for your life. Your life is. something else. Your life is belonging to a group, having friends going to the pub or a theater is living, living the life you want. That's what people want. Recognizing yourself as well. Yes, yes. You've had people from all over the world come to see what you're trying to do at the Holgeveig. Has your model spread in some way? Well, the first one that started and it's wonderful is New Zealand. And it's in Weira Ahorah. I cannot pronounce it like you can't pronounce

Hogueweig. Weir Aroa, it's a very a touristical place. It's known for the wonderful lake. And on the lake, on the shores of the lake, they have built this small dementia village. It's wonderful. They're working on it in Australia, in Canada. In France there's, they're already worked on it and have it, Italy, all kinds of places. It's mainly Europe, Asia, Canada, United States. I mean, you're mentioning countries that have very strong social services. Healthcare is provided for all. The United States, I mean, I hear of assisted living places, but those are some of the most expensive places to stay. And my mother went to look at them and she said the wait list is five years long. Yeah. Well, that's because the United States have a very different

way of financing care. All Dutch people that have an advanced dementia have the right to go into a nursing home and it's paid for and you pay back to the state an amount according to your income. But it's affordable for everybody in the whole Dutch nursing home system. But that's politics. If it's possible to have nursing home care in your country, you can work with it, because most of what we're doing is not spending more money. It's about thinking differently. The Hogueweig has become a place where people within the very advanced dementia can live, have freedom in safety because the professionals working there and the volunteers working there know how to deal with dementia.

And that means that the management has to provide everything those people need to do their work. It needs a management that dares to do this, to do things differently than what we always have done in the traditional nursing. We see that it works. We think this can be done everywhere, because it has to do with thinking different, and looking at that person in front of you, and looking at what does this person need now. And it's about a smile. It's about how you act, and that costs nothing. And there's something else. It's about making choices. It's about making choices what you spend your money on. I always say, red curtains are as expensive as gray ones.

It's possible everywhere. Thank you. That's Yvonne van Amelangen. She's a founder of the Hokeve and worked in dementia care for almost 40 years. She's now retired herself. You can see her full talk at ted.com. On the show today, take care. I'm Anoush Zamoroti, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.

Stay with us. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anish Zomerode. On today's show, take care. When I was diagnosed with cervical cancer, I was in a stuck place in the American health insurance system. This is Diana Adams. Back then, Diana was 20-something, broke, and tried. trying to start a law practice.

I'd been duped into buying a very sort of limited freelancers' health insurance. And once they determined this is cervical cancer and you actually need surgery, that's when I was told we can't treat you anymore because your health insurance actually doesn't cover that. So while emergency counted as getting in a car accident and it didn't count as cancer. And so I couldn't buy health insurance on the open market with a cancer diagnosis and I couldn't get. on cancer services, Medicaid, and a lot of people in that situation just die. So I really felt like I was stuck and was just completely overwhelmed and terrified. And that could have been where Diana's story ended. But my chosen family really stepped up for me.

My girlfriend helped me pick apart, okay, what are the specific needs that I have right now? And organize them into a schedule. And every day for a few months, somebody showed up to bring me food and somebody else showed up to sit with me while I'm making terrible phone calls all day long about health coverage and just breathe with me and keep me focused and grounded. Friends tracked down the best oncologist. Others helped Diana win an appeal to get on Medicaid. And that's just incredible, just absolutely astonishing,

the way that people showed up for me. And Diana got better. But then they got mad. I felt somewhat outraged that the kinds of relationships I had with the people who really supported me and saved my life were not something that was legally recognized. And I couldn't have gotten on the health insurance of those friends because we weren't romantic partners. And those kinds of close friend relationships don't get the kind of priority as romantic relationships do. Right. Right.

I mean, I could marry some guy that I met on Match.com two weeks ago and he could get on my health insurance. but my best friend of 20 years can't. Why? So you decided to focus your law practice on exactly this? Absolutely. And I really wanted other people to be able to formalize those kinds of relationships. I try to make sure that there are fewer people who fall through the cracks like I could have. We can't keep divvying out the benefits that we give to people just through the institution of marriage, for example, because that doesn't account for the actual reality of the many people that, need and deserve support too.

Here's Diana Adams on the TED stage. The nuclear family has been the basis for our cultural stories and our laws. But only about half of U.S. adults are married. Fewer every year. 40% of U.S. adults don't live with a romantic partner at all. As of 2013, less than half of U.S. children had two married heterosexual parents. in their first marriage. The majority of us are not in a nuclear family with a spouse and kids.

Yet somehow, we treat this majority of people like social failures. What's worse? Our laws treat unmarried people as lesser citizens. Marriage comes with over 1,000 rights and benefits under federal law. These include the ability to get your spouse citizenship, share health insurance, get better tax rates, and inherit tax-free at death and more. Part of the winning argument for same-sex marriage

was that we shouldn't deprive gay couples of all of these essential benefits. But I ask you, why should anyone be denied benefits because they're in a romantic relationship of which some people disapprove? Or because they're single. Thank you. Or because they're basing family on something

other than a romantic relationship. like co-parenting a child. Our laws should move away from the idea that there's one ideal family form and value all families as they exist. For nearly 15 years with my law firm for LGBTQ and non-nuclear families, I've supported same-sex couples. But also the many family forms beyond marriage, like platonic partners who are raising a child together

or sharing finances without a romantic relationship, or grandparents who are raising their grandfathers, children, or a lesbian couple co-parenting with a male friend, or polyamorous partners who might be in a committed relationship of three or four. And it is my core belief that no matter how you form family, actively discussing how we intend to live together, is the best thing we can do to strengthen our own personal relationships. So, Diana, as you point out, these days families come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. But how are we at this point where the traditional marriage contract remains the gold legal standard, at least here in the U.S.

We really get an emphasis on legal marriage in the 20th century, especially as we got more toward the Industrial Revolution. In 1850, many Americans were living in extended nuclear family. And something like three quarters of people who are 65 and older lived with their adult children and grandkids and helped out with the grandkids. So this idea of the nuclear family, I think we have an idea that it's, quote, traditional and has been that way forever and it's maybe the way things ever intended. It's actually a relatively new invention. And it's really an invention of factors of capitalism, for example,

of organizing workers at the time in the 1950s was a brief blip in history when a man, even without a college degree, might be able to earn enough to support a wife and two kids and buy a house. That was also to prevent out of wedlock births because the U.S. has really resisted having the kind of robust social welfare state that's enjoyed by others in Europe where marriage is actually much less emphasized and there hasn't been as much of a same-sex marriage movement because people don't need to get married to get health insurance and don't need to get married to feel like they're going to get support for their kids if they're a single mom because the state will provide that support. But instead in the U.S., it was really partly a way to organize,

okay, who is the father of which children so that we know so that he can pay for this rather than the government. And this nuclear family was. is really only in a majority in the 1950s and 60s. But that doesn't necessarily mean that those are good bases for how we need to form family today. When we embrace the idea of chosen family, our own free will is more important than biological connection. We can choose to create family relationships

with the people who provide us with the meaningful support that we need and deserve. Same-sex parenting has also advanced the concept of family beyond biology, because in a same-sex couple, only one parent's providing the sperm or the egg. In my family building legal work with these families, I facilitate discussions to make sure that everyone's intentions are aligned

before designing that legal agreement. For example, I'll often work with a female same-sex couple who has a male friend who wants to help them become parents. So I'll facilitate discussions to make sure they're all clear on whether he's going to be a co-parent or a sperm donor and design a legal agreement either way. Without that, I've seen too many situations, of ambiguity, where mom calls him a dad when she needs child care help, but a donor when it comes

time to make a big decision she doesn't want his input on. He calls himself, dad, and the baby's adorable at the park, but feels more like a donor when the school bill comes, you know? When we're designing our own families, we need clear written agreements, especially if children are involved. It sounds like you are coaching people who are in less traditional family arrangements, to get very clear on what their legal obligations are to each other, that to be successful, you're saying they need to be clear-eyed about what the future might hold and their obligations. Absolutely. And so I would have a clear written agreement that would be just as valid if this is a platonic co-parent or if this was a guy who got you accidentally pregnant or if this is your ex-husband.

So write down an agreement that makes it clear, okay, he agrees that he's going to make a 50% contribution. to child expenses, but if our incomes change drastically, we can check in about that, and maybe he pays 70% or 30% based on our respective incomes in that calendar year, if needed. Because as a family lawyer, we've seen too many situations of words like, you know, he'll contribute in a reasonable way, or he'll provide child care as mom finds appropriate that can lead to misunderstandings. And so I try to get people to really open up about what are your real fears here and what are your real expectations?

Tell me what an average week looks like. Tell me what an average year looks like. Does mom have a hidden expectation that the sperm donor will always come to the kid's birthday party? Because we're saying he doesn't have any rights or obligations as a parent, but are you actually really kind of secretly hoping that he's going to be in a special relationship? But maybe she doesn't even know that that's what she wants. And I think you're right. People sometimes don't even know. I ask a lot of the questions that I've seen lead to agreements falling apart. I have found in my work that these kinds of discussions are much more powerful for preventing future disputes than any written contract can be. We need to have these conversations. Legal contracts are sometimes written to avoid looking eye-to-eye

and coming to agreement, but family contracts should only be written after you've done that. When I design relationships for polyamorous triads of three or quads of four, I sometimes use existing legal structures like trusts or LLCs that allow you to share property and finances without a question as to your relationship. So, for example, if I've got a polyamorous triad, Aisha, Susan, and Linda, I can set up an LLC for them so that they can co-own real estate properties, pay taxes together, purchase a common health insurance, and have clear exit strategies if they wish. Thank you. And if people trust each other enough to pull their financial fortune and want to pay taxes together,

it shouldn't matter whether they're business partners, siblings, or romantic partners. All of those families are valid. Domestic partnerships have been used for 30 years by same-sex couples, but also by best friends and siblings. Doing so, as domestic partners, allows you to share your health insurance, to visit each other in the hospital, and across borders in a pandemic. Like spouses, but unlike spouses, you don't become a social wealth for a state of which can be a good thing.

I had a client who had a severely disabled sister. By becoming domestic partners, she was able to put her sister on her excellent health insurance coverage. Why would a sister be any less worthy of that than a boyfriend? I think we cut people off from other means of support when we have an assumption

that the romantic relationship is the person who, for example, shares your health insurance. And then also there are situations of not being able to visit each other in the hospital or not being able to make medical decisions. It's been something terrifying for some people in my community who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. The idea that their parents who've ostracized them or even been abusive toward them, that that would be the person that would show up and make medical decisions if they got into an accident. Somebody that doesn't respect that they're trans or somebody who made their life miserable

is the last person they actually would want to show up and make medical decisions. but didn't feel like they had an avenue to create those other kinds of relationships. There are so many reasons why people do or don't want to be in a relationship or be, quote, unquote, family. So many different scenarios. One story that I hear regularly is about people who are married, but maybe only stay married because of their health care, health insurance. Do you have clients like that, too? So I've worked with a situation in which a man was able to stay legally married to a disabled wife so that he could keep taking care of her and providing her with benefits through his military career,

as well as his good health insurance, but in which he was able to then also make family agreements and legal agreements for his new female partner and the child they have together and sat down with all three adults to make a plan about what would feel right. for them. So that's the kind of example of the complicated families that I serve, which aren't necessarily LGBTQ families at all. I mean, it sounds like you're a chef who's being given a random batch of ingredients and you're like, hmm, what am I going to make with these ingredients? Whereas, sorry, I don't know where I'm getting this metaphor, but it sounds to me like you want to get to a point where you're not having to figure it out fresh every single time, but that

there would be laws that cover all these less traditional family units, that there would be sort of structure and tools for you to use and you wouldn't have to be quite so creative. Absolutely. You're absolutely right, Manus, that it feels like I'm on some sort of iron chef challenge where I've got a certain set of ingredients and a certain desired outcome. I have to kind of mash them together in something bizarre and hope it works out. But ultimately, I always have to tell them there's nothing that we can do that's going to get you all of those thousand benefits and rights of marriage. You're just not going to be able to have the right to cross a border in a pandemic. You're not going to have the ability to inherit tax-free. You're always going

to be disadvantaged in these large ways. And I'm just going to try to scotch tape it really well around the edges and packages together so that you feel as much security as possible. But I think as a next stage, we really need to start unbundering. these many rights from marriage and provide support for other families as they exist. In 2020, my organization helped pass the first laws for multi-partner domestic partnership, which have passed in several cities and counting.

When relationships have legal status like this, it reduces discrimination and promotes social acceptance and awareness, as we saw in the same-sex partnership movement. Still, we hope to pass family status non-discrimination, laws at city levels across the United States, which means that you can't be discriminated against, you can't be fired from your job or denied housing because of your family configuration. And if we really want to value families as they exist, rather than incentivize marriage, I also suggest that we separate out some of the legal perks of marriage so that single people

and other kinds of families get these benefits without an evaluation of whether they're in a romantic relationship that passes muster. Marriage should not be the gateway to social and economic privilege anymore. That time is done. And marriages will be stronger when we do that. Do you know anyone who got married faster than they should have for health insurance or citizenship? Because I know too many, and I'm a divorce lawyer. When we expect any one relationship in our lives to meet most of our needs, we may be putting too much pressure on that relationship.

And whether it's your romantic partner, your parent, your adult child, your relationship may be stronger if you also strengthen other connections in your lives and find other ways to get some of your own needs met. I think it's worthwhile to question, no matter what kind of family configuration you're in, whether you could be part of a movement for greater interconnectedness, beyond our romantic relationships, and beyond the walls of our home.

Your family and your community will be stronger when you do. Diana, aside from changing the law, it sounds like you also want all of us to think really hard about what it means to be a family, how we care for each other, no matter how the government defines our relationship. That's right. Breaking down the legal barriers will require a movement of all of us, but breaking down those kinds of social barriers about creating these greater connections as something we can all do. And I think it's really critically important that we have

conversations with people in our lives about how we want to be more interconnected and be able to speak out loud just how valuable a friendship might be to you. You know, taking that extra leap of boldness and vulnerability to say, hey, I'm a single person and I live alone and nobody actually knows about my diabetes medication. And would you be willing to just know about that and have a key to my house? We're comfortable saying that about, you know, would you care for my pet? My pet has diabetes and I might need some help sometimes. And here's how you inject his medication if you're the dog walker. But we don't say that about ourselves. We're more comfortable asking about care for our pets than we are about, you know, having a backup person to look out for you. So I really especially

want to be encouraging us all to take that bold step in our own lives toward greater interconnection. That's Diana Adams. They are the founder of Chosen Family Law Center. You can see their full talk at ted.com. When we come back, the dilemmas facing transracial adoptees. When I went to school. There was definitely this trying to distance myself, right? I'm not, you know, quote unquote Asian. I am American. I'm white. Just really trying to just be the same as all the other kids around me. On the show today, take care. I'm Anoush Zamorodi. And you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Before we get back to the show, I want to ask you to please consider becoming a member of TED Radio Hour Plus. You'll get extra advice, stories, and expertise from

TED speakers every other week and no ads ever. And you'll be supporting public radio. Listener support is crucial to keeping us going. Go to plus.npr.npr.org slash TED. Or give it a try right in the Apple Podcast app. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm a new. Zahmurody. Today on the show, taking care, and how what we think is right for our loved ones maybe isn't the best, most loving way to treat them after all. When I was adopted, I had a tattoo on my left forearm. This is Sarah Jones. It was quite large, actually. It was a cross or an X, and there was four dots underneath the cross shape. Sarah was born in South Korea. And at the age of two, she was put in an orphanage and quickly adopted by an American family.

No one told them the story behind little Sarah's tattoo. My parents were very aware that having such a visible mark on my arm would generate all sorts of assumptions, questions. And they didn't want to burden me with that as a young child coming into the United States. So Sarah's adoptive parents had her mysterious tattoo removed. And growing up as a member of their Mormon community in Utah, her Korean roots were rarely mentioned. She was told that her adoption was meant to be, preordained even. Some of the storytelling that was told was that we chose each other in the pre-existence. There's this special purpose.

There's a reason. There's a divine reason, and you've got to discover that. You have to kind of process the ways that. your parents are explaining your existence here in the United States. Tens of thousands of Korean children were adopted by Americans in the decades after the Korean war. For many of them like Sarah, assimilation was the goal. When I went to school, there was definitely this trying to distance myself, right? I'm not, you know, quote unquote Asian. I am American. I'm white. Just really trying to

just be the same as all the other kids around me. But there were moments of deep, deep emptiness and sadness that I couldn't explain where those came from. Here's Sarah Jones on the TED stage. Korean adoptees were the first massive wave of international adoptions almost 30 years earlier than most other countries. And so there are entire generations of Korean adoptees from children, all the way to adults in their 70s,

dealing with the impact of their assimilation. And there have only been a handful of studies that follow transracial adoptees over a lifetime. While many of us understand that adopting a child from a different race, culture, or country is never simple. We rarely acknowledge the complex emotions that children who are adopted can experience. My parents would say things to me like,

I fell in love with you the first time I saw your photo. My heart broke. They love me. I know that. And I was wanted. But I would often confuse love with gratitude, especially when other people would say things to me like, you're so lucky to be adopted to America.

Or your parents are such angels to adopt you. To a child, it felt like these comments were constant reminders to be grateful. to my parents' charity. I resented that I couldn't tell these adults, I don't like being reminded all the time that I'm adopted. I just want to be a normal kid. But I buried my feelings, and it wasn't until later in life that I realized

I'd never really grieved my own adoption. If you're taught at a young age that God brought you to America for a special purpose, and you're searching, searching, right? Yeah, it created some big questions in my mind. But you went to college, you got a law degree, you got married, had kids of your own. I mean, on paper, your life was great. So what was the moment when you decided to do something about answering those questions that you had?

Yeah, so my son started asking who his grandparents were. And I had no answer for him. I've got these children that do deserve to know as much as possible. But I did have a closed adoption experience. Lucky for me, I had this tattoo on my arm. And so I drew over a permanent marker, over the scar on my arm. And then I started posting pictures in a database for Korean adoptees who are searching for their birth families.

It's one of those memories that's seared in my brain forever. I actually am sitting in the same chair as when I happen. Same place, same place. And getting an email from Korean Adoption Services. And I just started crying. I just ran and found my husband. I said, oh my gosh, you're not going to believe the email I just got. So in 2018, you flew to South Korea to meet.

your two brothers and aunt and uncle, what went through your mind when you first saw them at the airport? You know, what's kind of fascinating is there's these things that you remember that may feel a little bit odd to folks, but I remember them hugging me and thinking, oh my gosh, we're almost the same size. You know? And just, you know, these moments where because it's biological things. family, right? And you're seeing your face reflected in them. And you're just noticing these things

and processing these things that are just so new and delightful. And what did they tell you about why you were put up for adoption? Did you finally get some answers to your questions? Yeah. So I learned a lot. And it really definitely was not what I thought. I found out that my birth mother left my family shortly after I was born. When I was two years old, my birth father became injured and could not provide for my brothers and me. When my father decided to send us to children welfare services, he was worried that we would be separated and even adopted into foreign countries. And so he took the unusual step to place a large tattoo on each of our arms and on his own. own so that we could find each other someday.

And he tried searching for me. And he was right. The tattoo did eventually lead me to find the family that I had lost. Unfortunately, he passed away nine years before he could see his children reunited. But the most important thing that I learned was that I had a loving family in Korea who remembered me, as a little baby and had never forgotten me. I wasn't abandoned, like my adoption record said. I was wanted.

Oh, Sarah, you put this all out there in your TED Talk, your personal journey, your story, your thoughts on the adoption process, your thoughts on your own adoption process. What did your adoptive family make of all of it? How did they respond to you? My parents actually were hearing these thoughts for the first time when I was presenting it on stage. Oh, wow. So there was a lot of emotion that was really underwriting that whole experience.

And so I actually wrote my talk in a way that I felt like they could receive it. And for them to hear some things that I had been really holding closely for many, many decades. Children who are adopted can still love their adoptive parents at the same time as experiencing these complex emotions. And many of us wonder if we had had safe emotional spaces to own our own stories when we were younger, would we still be struggling to come to terms with adoption as adults? It's time to reframe our views on adoption.

A healthy adoption ecosystem is one in which children, adoptive families, and birth families, each own their unique stories. When these narratives are placed side by side, it creates better empathy and policies for the lives that adoption impacts. Here are two things that adults can do to better protect adopted children's stories. First, give children safe emotional spaces to express their emotions, both positive and and negative. Phrases such as, tell me more, what do you wish for? And those feelings are normal. Are ways that parents can grant emotional oxygen to their children. Second, validate a child's

adoption story. Children may express emotions that may feel hurtful or worry an adoptive parent. As a parent, work to hold and manage your fears separately from your child. Always acknowledge your child's story as valid and important. That's natural to want to protect children from experiencing pain. But my tattoo is a point in reminder that every adoption starts with loss and every child is affected differently. Children who are adopted can live full, rich lives as we accept and build upon this unique set of cards that we were dealt.

And as you listen to our narratives with empathy, you will hear other things as well. Childlike curiosity. Grace, resilience, courage, love. And yes, even gratitude. Thank you. That's Sarah Jones. You can watch her full talk. at ted.com.

We want to wrap up our episode about taking care with some advice about how to look after your friends, particularly if they're struggling with a mental illness. Quick note, this next talk does touch on the topic of suicide, but it's not too dark, I promise. Bill Burnett is a comedian who has bipolar disorder. In 2017, he gave a talk called How to Connect with Depressed Friends, and he shared what it was like to feel at his very worst and which people managed to make him feel a bit better. The one conversation that uplifted me more than any other in my life was with a woman who told me

how a few days earlier she drove her Jeep Wrangler to the edge of the Grand Canyon and sat there revving the engine, thinking about driving over. Even though I had severe social and, anxiety in that conversation, I was totally at ease. She told me what was going on in her life in the days and months leading up what her thoughts were at that exact moment, why she wanted to die and why she didn't do it. We nodded and half smiled. And then it was my turn to talk about my journey. I took too many sleeping pills. And after they treated me for that, they were like, hey, we would love it if you would be our guest in the psych ward. She allowed me to be deeply depressed and have a genuine connection to another person simultaneously.

Depression doesn't diminish a person's desire to connect with other people, just their ability. So in spite of what you might think, talking to friends and family, living with depression, can be really easy, and maybe even fun. Here are some possible reasons why some of you may avoid depressed people. You might be afraid that if you talk to somebody while they're depressed, you're suddenly responsible for their well-being.

You may worry that you won't know what to say, and every attempt at conversation will be awkward. Maybe you've heard that depression is contagious, and you're afraid of catching it. Maybe you see depressed people differently. You think of them as flawed, or defective. Our brains aren't broken or damaged. They just work differently. I began battling depression when I was eight. So I live on both sides of this chasm, and I'm offering some guidance to help you build a bridge

across it if you want to. Okay, first up, some things you might want to avoid. One of the most off-putting things you can say is just get over it. The absence of the ability to just get over it is depression. Don't be hell-bent on fixing us. Also, things that make some people feel better may not work for us.

You can't cure clinical depression by getting ice cream, which is unfortunate because that would be living the dream. Don't let a lack of bubbly happiness freak you out. People can be sad and okay at the same time.

Talk to us in your natural voice, right? You don't need to put on a sad voice because we're depressed. You can be you. If you make an offer to be there for us, clearly state what you can and can't do. Give us a sense of control. Like get our consent. I have a friend who, a while back,

when I was having a depressive episode, reached out and said, hey, I want to check in with you. What works for you? By getting my permission, she earned my complete confidence and remains one of my best friends today. And my last suggestion is interact about not depression, aka normal stuff. I have a friend who, when people were worried about him, they would call and ask if he wanted to go shopping or help them clean out their garage, your depressed friends could be a good source of free labor. So that's a lot of do's and don'ts and maybes, and it's not by any means a definitive list.

The thing to remember is that they're all grounded in one guiding principle. It's what allowed the woman in the Jeep Wrangler to start me on the path to recovery without even trying. She talked to me, like I belong, and contributed exactly as I was at that moment. If you talk to a depressed person as if their life is just as valuable, intense, and beautiful as yours, then there's no need to build a bridge between you because you've closed the chasm.

Focus on that instead of your words, and it may be the most uplifting conversation of their life. What could that do for somebody you care about? What could it do for you? Thank you. That's comedian Bill Burnett. You can find his full talk at 10.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week about taking care. This episode was produced by Katie Montalione, James Della Hoosie, Fiona, Guren, and Sylvie Douglas.

It was edited by Katie Simon and Rachel Faulkner. Our TED Radio production staff also includes Diba Motisham, Matthew Cloutier, and Margaret Serino. Our audio engineer is Brian Jarbo. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewe. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feelin, Michelle Quint, Sammy Case, and Daniela Bella Rezzo. I'm Manus Zomerode, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.