Animal advocate Carlyn Montes De Oca embarked on a journey of self-discovery when she took a commercial DNA test in 2019. Expecting to uncover her Jewish heritage within her Hispanic bloodline, Carlyn was stunned to learn that she had been adopted at birth. This revelation shattered her sense of identity, as she discovered that her entire extended family, including 63 first cousins, were aware of her adoption but had kept it a secret from her. Determined to piece together her origin story, Carlyn began a relentless mission to uncover the truth about her past and find out who she truly was. Combining two stories in her new book, Junkyard Girl - her search for her biological family and the story of growing up with loving, overprotective parents, who also happened to be hoarders - Carlyn embarked on a profound journey of self-discovery.
CARLYN MONTES DE OCA is a multi-award winning author of Dog as My Doctor, Cat as My Nurse and Paws for the Good Stuff. She is an international speaker, animal-human health expert, and passionate animal advocate. Ten percent of every purchase of her book Junkyard Girl benefits Animal Protection New Mexico.
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Animal advocate Carlyn Montes De Oca embarked on a journey of self-discovery when she took a commercial DNA test in 2019. Expecting to uncover her Jewish heritage within her Hispanic bloodline, Carlyn was stunned to learn that she had been adopted at birth. This revelation shattered her sense of identity, as she discovered that her entire extended family, including 63 first cousins, were aware of her adoption but had kept it a secret from her. Determined to piece together her origin story, Carlyn began a relentless mission to uncover the truth about her past and find out who she truly was. Combining two stories in her new book, Junkyard Girl - her search for her biological family and the story of growing up with loving, overprotective parents, who also happened to be hoarders - Carlyn embarked on a profound journey of self-discovery.
CARLYN MONTES DE OCA is a multi-award winning author of Dog as My Doctor, Cat as My Nurse and Paws for the Good Stuff. She is an international speaker, animal-human health expert, and passionate animal advocate. Ten percent of every purchase of her book Junkyard Girl benefits Animal Protection New Mexico.
Key Topics:
Don't forget to go to my website and leave me YOUR story of belonging to feature on a future episode!
Buy Me a Coffee!
Follow Carlyn:
Follow Me:
● Art Heals All Wounds Website
● Art Heals All Wounds Instagram
● Art Heals All Wounds Facebook
[00:00:00] Pam Uzzell: Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam
[00:00:27] Uzzell.
[00:00:47] It's November! which means that it's National Adoption Awareness Month. I've waited until now to share this story with you because as an adoptee myself, my feelings about adoption [00:01:00] are complicated. Rather than say that I support adoption, I'd rather say that I support adoptive families and adoptees. And a huge part of that is hearing from more adoptees about their experiences.
[00:01:15] And educating adoptive parents about what to expect when they adopt, with greater awareness of their . own feelings and an understanding of what their adopted child might be feeling. The story I'm going to share today has everything to do with identity, who we believe ourselves to be, and where we think we belong.
[00:01:39] It also has to do with that little nagging feeling that maybe we don't belong anywhere. I'm glad you're listening to this special season dedicated to the idea of belonging. If you have a story about belonging that you'd like to share, please go to my website and leave me a voicemail. I'll share [00:02:00] your story about belonging on my show.
[00:02:03] The guest on today's show is Carlyn Montes De
[00:02:07] Oca. We'll be talking about her book, Junkyard Girl, a memoir where she describes her story of finding out she was adopted in her 50s. Imagine everything you've been told and everything you've told yourself about who you are just suddenly being ripped away.
[00:02:26] Wondering if you still belong in the family you've known and loved your entire life. Remembering feelings you had growing up that you didn't quite fit with that family. And suddenly, finding biological family that present a new reckoning of who you are and where you fit in. These are some of the things that Carlyn explores.
[00:02:49] Told in a riveting narrative. Filled with secrets and dysfunction and love. One of the ways that Carlyn found belonging growing up was with [00:03:00] her beloved dogs, and she published the award-winning book, Dog as My Doctor, Cat as My Nurse about the human animal health connection. I met Carlyn before she discovered this secret of her adoption and knew her as an animal advocate.
[00:03:15] I'm so glad that she's on the show today to share this story behind this book and also how writing this book helped her to heal. Hi, Carlyn!. Thank you so much for being on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you start by telling us who you are and what you do?
[00:03:34] Carlyn Montes De Oca: Sure. My name is Carlyn Montes De Oca. I'm an author living in Santa Fe.
[00:03:39] I'm also an international speaker and an animal human health expert. And by that, I mean that I do a lot of writing and education around helping people understand the power of the animal human bond or how animals can help us live healthier, happier, and more [00:04:00] extraordinary lives.
[00:04:01] Pam Uzzell: I love that about you.
[00:04:03] And I am a firm believer in that as well. But the reason I wanted to have you on the podcast is because of your most recent book called
[00:04:13] Junkyard Girl. Can you say a little bit about
[00:04:16] that book?
[00:04:17] Carlyn Montes De Oca: In 2019, I took one of those commercial DNA tests totally for fun. And I also took it because I thought I would discover how much Jewish blood was in my Hispanic bloodline.
[00:04:31] My mother had always said that there, there was a Jewish thread running through our heritage there. But when I got the results back, it wasn't what I expected. What I learned was that I had been adopted at birth. And, that my entire extended family, which consisted of 63 first cousins, almost everybody knew, but nobody had ever told me.
[00:04:59] So Junkyard [00:05:00] Girl pretty much is the discovery of learning I was not who I thought I was, and I was on this relentless mission to find out who that was. I needed to know every piece of my origin story because my identity had been shattered. So I combined two stories. One is that journey. And secondly, it's a second story weaving throughout the first, which is growing up as a first generation Latina to Mexican immigrants in Southern California.
[00:05:31] Pam Uzzell: I love this book. I tore through it, and I wanted to ask you to take us back to that moment when you got the results from your DNA test. Did you know from that test right away of like, Oh my gosh, I must be adopted? What did that test tell you at first? Or what did you think of it?
[00:05:51] Carlyn Montes De Oca: I'm always pretty busy with my life, and usually that's to a fault.
[00:05:56] In this case, maybe it saved me a little, because I was so [00:06:00] busy, I didn't really look at the results that clearly. I just thought, hmm, I thought it was going to be, you know, I had Jewish blood running through my family, and I should have known, because most of my cousins had 40%, I only had 3%. So I remember being sort of disappointed, like, why is it that I am not more Jewish?
[00:06:18] And I then set it aside because I was just really busy with my life at that time. If I had paid more attention, I would have seen where a woman's name had popped up, in capital letters, and it said, this is a potential half sibling.
[00:06:35] Pam Uzzell: That's an amazing result. And at what point did you start going back and thinking, hmm, I don't know, how did you piece it together?
[00:06:44] What happened?
[00:06:45] Carlyn Montes De Oca: Well, the next thing was after I set it aside and got back to my busy work, about a week later, I got a Facebook message from somebody who had friended me about a week before. And [00:07:00] he wrote, Gosh, you look an awful lot like my wife. And I thought to myself, gosh, what a flirt. And I ignored him. I just ignored him, but he kept sending me these messages saying, Don't you think you look like her?
[00:07:14] You could be cousins, you could be this, you could be that. And he sent me a picture and I looked at her and I remember my husband Ken walking in at that moment and I said, do you think I look like this woman? And he said, no. And I'm kind of a sarcastic person. So this, one of the messages he sent to me, I responded, you know what?
[00:07:33] I don't think your wife and I look at all alike. Maybe we shop for glasses at the same store. And he said, well, ancestry DNA says different. And at that moment, that's when my jaw dropped and I went, what? How does he know I even took an ancestry DNA test and then I asked him, who is your wife? And then I remembered when I saw her name, it's the same woman that was on my test, but I didn't remember that it [00:08:00] had said, this is a potential half sibling.
[00:08:02] I completely, it was gone from my mind. So this woman and I connected because she had been looking for family and she was very respectful. She sent me a very nice email and said, I don't want to bother you, but I am looking for family. I'm estranged from my mother and brother. And I was just wondering now that I have my own family, maybe there's somebody you might know because we came up so close in the DNA match that I might be related to.
[00:08:30] And when I saw all the information she sent me, I, I thought, well, I don't know anybody she's related to because I have 63 first cousins. I have a huge family. I know where I come from. But at that point, I decided that I would ask my siblings because I felt for her. She, I have a ton of family. She has no one.
[00:08:49] And I asked my siblings. I called them. And my siblings are usually very funny people, we're always laughing about everything. And I could tell they [00:09:00] were being very serious. And both of them, or my sister and my other brother, both said to me when I said, Do you know anybody she could potentially be related to?
[00:09:09] She's searching for family. They both said, I don't know anything. And I thought, what a strange response, it's just not like them. Well then three weeks later, my sister, who I had grown up with, Lily, who I was very close to, flew out to Santa Fe, and at that point, that's when the news was revealed.
[00:09:30] Pam Uzzell: It's so
[00:09:31] shocking, and do you mind saying how old you were when you found this out?
[00:09:36] Carlyn Montes De Oca: I was
[00:09:37] 57.
[00:09:38] Pam Uzzell: Yeah, that's, it's sort of mind blowing. And how did you receive this news from your sister? And what was the subsequent ripple result in your family? And for you?
[00:09:54] Carlyn Montes De Oca: Well, how I received it was that I thought my sister was just coming for a visit. [00:10:00] Again, I'm not a very, obviously there are a lot of clues around me I don't pay attention to.
[00:10:05] You should never hire me as a private detective. I'm obviously not good at that. But my sister shows up on one of these Santa Fe days where it's snowing so much and it's It's so windy that the snow is blowing in a horizontal direction, not vertical. And she shows up with her husband and I think, okay, well she's coming to visit and she had never seen our house before.
[00:10:28] I started showing it to her and within five minutes she just said to me. Something big has happened in our family, and I have to talk to you about it. And I was kind of blown away, because in that moment, I'm thinking, What? Did somebody die? Is somebody sick? Is somebody divorcing? What's happening? And she made us all a cup of tea, because she's very nurturing.
[00:10:48] then went and sat down, looked at me, and burst out crying. And we're all sitting around her, and she said, I'm sorry, I knew this would happen, and I wrote this over and over on the [00:11:00] plane because I knew I couldn't tell you. And then that's when she pulled out these pages, and she explained pretty much at the beginning, she said, Carlyn, you know, you were adopted at birth, and this woman who has been looking for you is your half sister.
[00:11:17] So, as you could imagine, it really was a movie moment. It was a movie moment when the earth stood still, and I realized later how my body had gone into shock. This has happened to me before when I was in a car accident, and this happened again sitting there in front of my sister hearing this news. I wasn't able to hear clearly.
[00:11:41] I was seeing her lips moving, but I could barely hear her, and I remember straining to look at her and get closer. It felt like my ears were filled with cotton balls. So that's how it began. And you asked me about the ripple effect. The ripple effect [00:12:00] was. Well, my family pretty much, I know there's a term for it where they, they gather around you and they support you and they all kind of hold hands and they hold on to the net as you're falling and they surround you with love and I'm there for you.
[00:12:18] And this not only happened with my immediate family, but with my 63 first cousins and other family. I had never felt so closed in, the ranks closed in, in that way. I believe that is one of the big pieces that helped me heal. But initially, it was tough going, Pam. That first year was tough.
[00:12:40] Pam Uzzell: I can imagine.
[00:12:41] And when you sort of paint that scene with your sister in your house, in the living room, drinking your tea, And you talk about your body going into shock and her bursting into tears. One thing that really strikes me is [00:13:00] how powerful this secret was, its effect on you, and then its effect on her carrying that secret for so many years.
[00:13:11] It's really remarkable families have secrets all the time, but that was a really big one. And you know, your siblings from a very young age were charged with keeping that secret, which I just think must have been kind of, there's a whole other book in there from their perspectives of keeping that secret.
[00:13:34] But you know what I love about your book? Is the way that it's structured and you go back and forth between two aspects of your story, finding out that you were adopted, which eventually takes you on a path to meeting this half sister and then your birth mother. But then what's really intriguing is that you go back to your childhood growing up in this [00:14:00] family.
[00:14:00] And I love that because I think an adopted person story, both of those sides of the story have to be told. And I'm wondering if you could give more details about the family you grew up with and what your life was like with them. It's very complex. You know, that's what I love about it. It's such a true to life family portrait.
[00:14:29] So I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit.
[00:14:32] Carlyn Montes De Oca: There are several phases of growing up in my family. And I look very fondly at the, at the very, very early days, probably around age six, because then my heart was so open. I was in love with my father and my mother and my siblings, and I thought they just were amazing.
[00:14:55] The thing is that I also grew up in a home where my parents were [00:15:00] hoarders. There was stuff, my mother's domain was on the inside, so there was stuff all over the inside. My father's domain was a half acre on the outside, where there was, oh my god, there was stuff everywhere, from old cars, to toilets, to sheet metal.
[00:15:20] Old furniture resting out there, but when you're six years old, at least when I was six years old, that was my empire of playthings and my dogs and I would be out there pretending, you know, we were fighting and we're fighting monsters and soldiers and we'd collect things and use them for our forts and so there was a lot for my imagination at that time.
[00:15:47] And my siblings, to me, walked on water. They were much older than I was. My sister after me is nine years older than me. And then my brothers are 13 and 14 years older. And they were awesome [00:16:00] siblings. My sister was always very protective. They were all very funny. They teased me to death, which I didn't like at six years old, but later I got good at it.
[00:16:09] And, uh, so, and my parents, you know, I just, I loved them very much. Now, things changed, certainly when I got to be a teenager, and at that point I had a lot more self awareness, and suddenly I started to see how other people did not see the junkyard and the hoarding as something that was wonderful to the imagination.
[00:16:37] I could see the criticism in their eyes, and that criticism for me, when those eyes were turned on me, suddenly became shame. In my teenage years, I suffered a lot from loneliness and from shame. Loneliness because my mother in particular was so overprotective of me. Now I realize a little bit why. She never wanted that secret [00:17:00] to come out, and she was always concerned that somebody would tell me, and she didn't want that to happen.
[00:17:08] She believed she was protecting me from other people by not telling me, but also by keeping me very trapped in that home. So those years were very hard also because being Hispanic in a world where I was watching The Partridge Family on TV and wishing I could be Laurie Partridge and the all American girl and instead I'd look in the mirror and I wasn't, I was Hispanic.
[00:17:31] My parents were very proud of that culture, of our Mexican culture. I was not. I wanted to get as far away from that and them as I possibly could. So teenagehood was very difficult. There was a lot of conflict. Our relationship was extremely fraught between my parents and I. And one of the happiest days and on some level, maybe a little bit of the saddest days was when I was able to get away and go to college.
[00:17:58] Pam Uzzell: It is interesting [00:18:00] because you could look at your conflicts with your parents, particularly your mother around how protective she was really overly protective. I mean, you really had almost no freedom at all. And as a consequence, you had no social life. And you could just say, Oh, that was particular to them as a parent.
[00:18:20] But it did seem like you were treated differently from your siblings. Did I read or did I feel that? I mean, you don't talk about that so much, but I don't know if your other siblings were also kind of confined to being within the family, within the home, in the same way that you were.
[00:18:39] Carlyn Montes De Oca: I think that my three siblings are very different than I was to begin with.
[00:18:44] My two brothers, they were boys. So that was a whole other thing in our family, perhaps because of the Hispanic, Latino growing up, boys were treated differently. They had a lot more freedom and they were much older than I [00:19:00] was, so I couldn't, I don't remember exactly, almost some of my first memories of them were almost that they were in college, that they were older, older.
[00:19:10] And I believe that my father was mostly the one rearing the boys. My mother was mostly rearing the girls. My sister, Lily is a beautiful, beautiful, gentle soul who was a very dutiful daughter. She did everything my parents told her to do. She was a bit my mother's right hand. She was very responsible.
[00:19:32] She was in charge. Therefore I believe that my sister was also the peacekeeper a bit in the family. She often found herself in the mediating position. Therefore I believe that they treated her more as an adult. And she was treated differently. Now, here I come. I'm a rebel. I want to do what I want to do. I have ideas.
[00:19:55] I want to explore. I'm adventurous. I want to break the [00:20:00] mold, and that was not sitting well, certainly, with my mother. She loved her children, and I will give you that. She was... And she wanted to protect her children in general, but when she saw that behavior, she pretty much wanted to quell that. And she ruled with an iron hand.
[00:20:18] And the more she did that, the more I was rebelling. And in addition to that, whereas my sister would do what my mother said. I didn't want to be more Hispanic, I didn't want to be part of that culture, I didn't want to go to church, I didn't want to do anything that I was told to do. Therefore, I believe that my mother felt that she had to really rule with a harder fist, you know, rule with a greater will to keep me intact.
[00:20:47] So there were a lot of pieces coming into play with that. And the truth was, I was different than they were. I was also the youngest, and I think I wore her down. I wore her down a lot, whereas the others [00:21:00] did not.
[00:21:00] Pam Uzzell: Right. Right. Right. Well, it's interesting. In reading your book, you have a scene where you're fantasizing about a different family, and it almost seems like a part of you knew, but is, did you feel like you know, knew on any conscious level?
[00:21:19] Or was it an instinctive level of like, something is not right. I don't fit in here. Or was this just fantasizing as a child?
[00:21:28] Carlyn Montes De Oca: I am not sure, but I certainly have thought about that quite a bit and wondered what the truth is. I talk about the unexplainable known at the beginning of my book, which is exactly what you're saying, that there are things that all of us know in our unconscious that we don't know in our waking life.
[00:21:52] And that sometimes those things are just waiting to be revealed, waiting for the right button to be pushed, for the right event, for [00:22:00] something to spark it. When I was growing up, we grew up in a 900 square foot house. It was very tiny. My bedroom was right next to the kitchen, where I believe a lot of secrets were being spoken about in hushed tones.
[00:22:13] And if you think about it, and I often remember this, waking up from a deep sleep and hearing things being said and then straining to hear them. And then my parents suddenly being quiet when they realized I was listening or I was awake. I think that maybe something was spoken about during those times.
[00:22:33] And if you think about the way the brain works during those moments of awakening or falling asleep, that is when your brain, we're in different brain waves at that time using different brain waves that absorb information. So perhaps things were said, and that just went right into my psyche back here. So I think for one, I didn't want to live in a house where that was that hoarding was going on.
[00:22:55] And I got to that age that I thought, God, get me out of here. And then look [00:23:00] at these people. They're so different than me. And I just wanted to be free. I remember freedom being the thing I wanted more than anything. Therefore, I would sit there. I had my. In the middle of this yard, where everything was hoarded, was a big dog kennel and inside were dog, dog houses and they were all kind of falling apart and, you know, the paint was peeling off of them and I would sit on top of that, those dog houses with my dogs, reading a book, but often I remember looking up at the sky, at the clouds and thinking, when are my real parents going to come for me, when are they going to come and take me away?
[00:23:37] And therefore I had those dreams and maybe a lot of kids wonder the same thing as a fantasy, but it was very strong for me, though I didn't truly believe it was true on some level, but maybe I did. I don't know.
[00:23:53] Pam Uzzell: Yeah. Reading became a big escape for you on how to be in a different place than [00:24:00] where you actually were.
[00:24:02] So I do want to go to the other section of the book, or the other part of the story, which is this connection with your birth family. When, how did it come about? You first connected with your half sister, is
[00:24:17] that true?
[00:24:18] Carlyn Montes De Oca: That is, I first connected with her about a week after discovering that I was adopted.
[00:24:27] And this is why, I don't recommend necessarily anybody else do this, I was pretty traumatized. I was pretty destabilized. I'm not much of a crier, but boy, was I crying at every drop of the hat. I'd wash the dishes, I'd start crying. I'd tie my shoes, I'd start crying. I remember Ken saying to me, God, I've never seen you cry like this.
[00:24:47] And I'd say, I don't even know what I'm crying about. But I was going through a lot of different emotional reactions. And I knew that this woman, her name was Martha, was on the other side of the [00:25:00] country, waiting to see if I had any information about anybody she might be related to, because I had said I would speak to my family about it.
[00:25:10] And despite whatever I was going through, I just felt for her, I thought she's waited her whole life to find out who she might be related to. I'm her half sister, so a week later after finding out, I was still pretty wobbly, but I called her and told her what I discovered. And she, wow, it was, she was so excited and so happy and suddenly all these memories started rollercoastering through her mind of remembering thoughts she had not remembered of her family when I was born and being out in the Carpentaria area where it was that I was raised.
[00:25:52] And after we connected for a while there, then I thought, okay, and we exchanged a few pictures. [00:26:00] I thought, okay, that's all done. That's all done. I need to move on to my life now. Well, about two weeks later, she calls me. And I remember her text very clearly saying, I don't know what's going on in the universe, but a lawyer just contacted me and her brother, my half brother, who I also knew was around, but I didn't know where he was
[00:26:25] she said just died and this lawyer is looking for his family. And I had asked her in the past, well, do you think our birth mother is still alive? And she said, no, uh, she, I'm sure she's not. She was mentally ill and having a pretty tough life there. I don't believe she's alive. Well, this lawyer says, yep, she's alive.
[00:26:48] She's in a state hospital in Chicago and she's on hospice. And I thought hospice, that means she could die at any time. And I said to Martha, do you think you'll see her? And she [00:27:00] says, I'm thinking of flying out there. Do you want to come with me? And of course I said, Oh, well, I said to myself, be mature.
[00:27:07] Just take a moment to breathe. And I said, let me get back to you. About 15 minutes later. I said, yeah, I'm in. I'll go.
[00:27:13] Pam Uzzell: Wow.
[00:27:13] Carlyn Montes De Oca: And so, yeah, about, so now we're talking maybe two to three weeks after finding out I'm adopted I find out my birth mother's still alive. So I fly to Chicago. To meet this woman three days later, three days later.
[00:27:29] And that was a pretty wild ride there as well.
[00:27:34] Pam Uzzell: Right. And I told you before we talked that I'm adopted. And I think when you are adopted, if there's any friction with your adoptive family, you do really fantasize that you're going to find your biological family and you're going to fit in. Like a pea in a pod, and I don't want to give everything away in your book, but was that your experience of like, oh, this is the [00:28:00] family I fantasized about coming to take me away.
[00:28:04] Carlyn Montes De Oca: I actually had the opposite experience. Here I fantasized my whole childhood. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait. The moment the hatchet came down and I was severed in a sense from my adoptive family. I couldn't have been reaching out more for them. I, I thought that that was it. I, somehow in my mind, even though it doesn't make any sense, I thought, Oh my God, they're giving me away now.
[00:28:31] And I have to go be with this new family who I don't even know. And now I have to spend my Christmas there, my Thanksgiving there. And that's what they are saying to me. And they could not have been saying more of the opposite. In fact, they were really afraid we're going to lose her. This is what's going to happen.
[00:28:49] When I met my birth mother, first of all, the setting is a state hospital in Chicago. There's a lot of people milling around you with [00:29:00] dementia and other issues. People were grabbing my hand and saying, gosh, thank you for coming to visit me. I'm glad you came again. And I could hear a man over there shouting, help me, help me, help me.
[00:29:12] And I'd be like, wow, this is pretty intense. And then I saw an orderly pushing a big wheelchair towards us. And I saw my birth mother sitting there and she was this very tiny elfin looking woman. And the first thing I thought was, that cannot be my birth mother. That cannot be my birth mother. That, she doesn't look anything like me.
[00:29:38] And I had obviously for my whole life thought this other woman, Mary, was my birth mother.
[00:29:44] Pam Uzzell: Your adoptive mother.
[00:29:45] Carlyn Montes De Oca: My adoptive mother who walked through life very elegantly in a sense. She was very beautiful and she was very proud and really strong. And instead I saw this very small little, even after my, when my adoptive mother [00:30:00] was dying, she was still all those things.
[00:30:02] But now here I saw this other woman and she was mentally ill. She had dementia. So there was no real way for us to make a connection, except at one point, it may be an hour and a half into it, I was seated next to her at a table and she kept pushing people away, almost like, don't touch me, don't touch me, don't touch me.
[00:30:23] And when she wasn't looking, I thought to myself, okay, this is my opportunity. I had been an acupuncturist for almost 20 years. So we are very focused on touch and what that feels like. Beyond just the physical pressure and I thought okay, I will now touch my birth mother very very gently and we will feel a connection.
[00:30:45] I will now feel this incredible just something and I remember reaching over and just very very gently touching her and she didn't realize it until a few seconds later. Then she kind of flicked me away and I [00:31:00] thought to myself. Wow, I felt absolutely nothing nothing in this connection. And so it was a real strange thing, I know, I wasn't seeking connection, I was more curious what this would be, but I didn't find that connection.
[00:31:16] What was interesting though, is I met her sister who was with us at the state hospital, and as we were leaving and standing near my birth mother, and I was looking at my birth mother, this woman who was, boy, tough as nails, she, she had worked hard her whole life, she was tough, and I could see her eyes brimming with tears, and she looked at me and she said, Can you ever forgive her?
[00:31:38] And I said, what? And she said, can you ever forgive her for what she did to you? And that was the moment I flashed back, like in an instant on my whole life and thought, whatever our tough times were with my parents, whatever that was, God, I was so lucky. I was lucky to have escaped [00:32:00] this life because I knew that the kids who she did keep did not have an easy life.
[00:32:05] I knew that it would have been tough to be raised by a woman who was mentally ill. I would never have had the life I have had and I feel so fortunate, so in that moment I said to her, There is nothing to forgive. Nothing to forgive here.
[00:32:20] Pam Uzzell: Wow.
[00:32:21] It is such a remarkable story and I'll just say it one more time. The structure of the book of putting both of these families side by side is really, really amazing. The question I wonder, how did writing this book help you process this information? Cause really it has not been that long since you found out.
[00:32:49] So I'm, I'm so curious. Do you think anything has shifted for you in writing this book? What do you feel about that?
[00:32:59] Carlyn Montes De Oca: I'm [00:33:00] not sure if you know this, but art heals all wounds.
[00:33:05] Pam Uzzell: I've heard
[00:33:05] that.
[00:33:08] Carlyn Montes De Oca: My gosh, if I did not know the power that writing would have on my healing process. As a writer, I have to put everything down on words, but because this was probably one of the biggest, most life altering events I've ever experienced, after a year's time of finding the truth behind my origin story, going through the process of collecting information and talking to every single person I knew who knew anything about this, because apparently a lot of people did, I then felt at the end of a year, I needed to put this information down in some way.
[00:33:47] I never knew that it was going to be as powerful as it was, and I believe this is what helped me move through this as quickly as I did. Some people who have not experienced maybe [00:34:00] adoption or an especially late discovery adoption. say to me, gosh, well that four years ago, that was a while ago. and
[00:34:10] the people who have and get it and have been through it say to me, oh my gosh, that wasn't that long ago. I know quite a few people who've experienced this sudden fracturing of your identity with these kinds of secrets unveiled. And it's been decades that they still are traumatized by it. And I feel so fortunate that my, my art, which is my writing, helped me understand me, help me put things in perspective.
[00:34:39] From my point of view, as you said earlier, anybody else writing this memoir would have written it differently, but this is my story. And that's partially what was really helpful about my family. My sister immediately, when I told, when she told me the news, and I said to her, you know, I cannot keep this a secret.
[00:34:57] That's the other thing. I'm not a secret keeper. Everybody else in my [00:35:00] family appears to be. I am not. And she said, you do what you need to do with your story. This is your story. So therefore, I feel that the writing process was extremely helpful, and it was eye opening, and it allowed me to see pieces I hadn't
[00:35:19] at that point put together. It also, more importantly than anything, it allowed me to come away with wisdom, the wisdom of this whole experience. And to me, the wisdom and expansion of our consciousness and who we are is pretty much the pearl of being
[00:35:36] alive.
[00:35:37] Pam Uzzell: Right. Wow. That's so beautifully put. One thing I really appreciated about your book is that you could have written a book that was just like, uh, my adoptive parents were terrible and I think you painted them so generously. It was a [00:36:00] really really rich and nuanced portrait of your parents, which I just so greatly appreciated and which I completely get how this whole experience has enabled you to look at your childhood through a different lens.
[00:36:18] Carlyn Montes De Oca: I think you're bringing up something that's so, I think that these experiences are in everyone's life that things look like they're very bad. And yes, on paper, they look bad and they, and. We get angry and we blame and but over time, you know, I am 62 And I've had enough life experience to know that no matter what things seem bad
[00:36:47] there are such opportunities for growth and I'm not saying you have to jump into like, oh, I'm so happy now this happened to me no, there's a process and I think that in some ways this discovery [00:37:00] of my adoption happened at the right time because I am a more mature human and I understand that nobody's really truly a villain in the sense that there are things that maybe have blossomed in their life to create those paths and that in the end, no matter what happens to me, I can control my own reaction, my own process.
[00:37:25] My willingness to go somewhere that may seem scary and frightening, and I believe in some ways, I don't want to say that necessarily my parents did the best they could. They did a lot. They did a lot. And I think they did what they had to do, maybe in the sense with what they knew to do. So it was new territory for them as well.
[00:37:51] Pam Uzzell: I want to tie this in to your great love, which is animals and animal welfare. And also, [00:38:00] you know, you do your own sort of adoption towards the end of this story as well of a new family member. So I wanted to hear more about that.
[00:38:10] Carlyn Montes De Oca: So dogs
[00:38:11] were my absolute faithful companions growing up. They were my best friends.
[00:38:16] As I said, my mother was overprotective. She didn't really let me go anywhere. I felt very trapped in this hoarding situation. But I had my dogs and I wasn't as lonely when they were in my life and I thought to myself as I grew older, wow, I have this very special connection with animals and also because there were some not so happy things that happened with them.
[00:38:44] But again, someone might read that and say, gosh, you know, this is terrible what happened to you. And yes. It wasn't a happy situation. On the other hand, I believe this is what made me the animal advocate I am today and wanting to improve [00:39:00] animals lives in various ways, through my writing, through my speaking, through my advocacy work.
[00:39:06] And because my mother was part of the situation that was not so happy with my animals, in some ways, I do have to thank her, even though it was terrible. I do have to say, gosh, that situation in particular made me who I am today. Ten months after I discovered that I was adopted it was a really bad situation here in northern New Mexico where there were over a hundred hoarded dogs and the woman who had done this and had, they had put her in jail because the situation was abysmal.
[00:39:38] It was all over the press. There was neglect, abuse, cruelty, all sorts of things. At that time, it had been 10 months since my whole adoption and it was the longest I had gone without having an animal in my life. And I turned to my husband and I said, it's time, I have to have a dog. So I went out there and [00:40:00] this dog was the only one of those dogs who would come up and barely touch my hand and then she would run away.
[00:40:06] So I adopted Grace, I called her. She was traumatized. She had been attacked by a mountain lion out there. So she still has those scars She was scared of everything me, Ken, men in general, everything, it was almost like me who had lost my identity and was trying to figure it out. She had sort of lost her identity too. She forgot how to be a dog.
[00:40:32] She didn't wag her tail. She didn't want to eat. She would just go lay in her crate. She was depressed. She didn't use her nose to smell anything. I was determined I was gonna help her and that she would come out of this and because now she had the second chance. We both had a second chance. So, I spent the next six months just knowing like, okay, we need to hike every day.
[00:40:54] This is how a pack forms. You hike every day. You allow her to come [00:41:00] out of this. As slowly or as quickly as she wants to, you provide her safety, you provide her food, you provide her love, comfort, everything. And six months later, I remember people would say to me, God, that's the same dog, I can't even believe it.
[00:41:15] Look at her. And she'd be running around the dog park and playing with other dogs. And that's when I took a good look at myself and I thought, whoa, I'm a different person too. Because I'm no longer thinking 24 7 about that story that happened to me or crying or any of those things. I'm much stronger. So again, it taught me again that when you're of service, especially to a, an animal in need, that comes right back to you.
[00:41:43] Pam Uzzell: Right.
[00:41:46] Hmmm. Yeah. Well, I could talk to you about this all day, and I hope that we will have other conversations about it, but I would love for you to let people know where they can find out more about you, and especially more about this [00:42:00] book, Junkyard Girl and your other books too.
[00:42:04] Carlyn Montes De Oca: Sure.
[00:42:05] I'd love for any animal lovers out there to join me at animalhumanhealth.com. AnimalHumanHealth. com. Because I have this awesome newsletter and blog that focuses on the animal human bond, and again, how animals can help us live these healthier, happier, and more extraordinary lives. All my books are listed on there, but you can also find or order my book at any bookstore and of course on Amazon.
[00:42:33] Pam Uzzell: And you're doing something very special with some of the proceeds from this book. Is that correct?
[00:42:39] Carlyn Montes De Oca: That is correct. Every book that I write, a portion of my proceeds goes to benefit an animal welfare organization or, or shelter. This time, 10 percent of my proceeds are going to benefit Animal Protection of New Mexico, which is a phenomenal [00:43:00] organization that helps to change legislation in this state to make humane the new normal.
[00:43:06] Pam Uzzell: Mm. That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much for that great conversation and for this amazing book. I really loved reading it and you proved that art does heal all wounds and I'm so glad to talk to you about
[00:43:22] this.
[00:43:23] Carlyn Montes De Oca: Thank you, Pam. What a pleasure it was.
[00:43:28] Pam Uzzell: You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds.
[00:43:55] Thank you to Carlyn Montes De Oca for coming on the show to talk about her new book, [00:44:00] Junkyard Girl. You don't need to be adopted to fall into this story. I'll leave links to Carlyn's website in the show notes. where you can find information about how to find this book, as well as her previous work, Dog as My Doctor, Cat as My Nurse, and PAWS, spelled P A W S, so that's PAWS For the Good Stuff.
[00:44:20] Please, share your story of belonging with me in a voicemail. All you have to do is go to my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast. com, and click on the voicemail link. I'll share your story on a future episode. While you're at my website, if you'd like to support the making of this podcast, you can click on the "buy me a coffee" link and leave a little something.
[00:44:42] Every little bit helps. As always, thanks for listening. The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova. As always, this show was [00:45:00] recorded using Squadcast FM. Art Heals All Wounds comes to you from Oakland, California, on unceded territory of the Chochenyo Ohlone people.