The Brain Has Been Rewired

Adoption trauma and ADHD can look similar or be co-existent. The explanation below comes from a trauma mitigation researcher was found helpful by some – “the brain has been rewired.”

Trauma (particularly neglect) can look close to “level 1” autism or ADHD/ADD. Their neural pathways are altered similarly, which is why the symptoms are similar. “Born” that way or chemically/head trauma caused (functioning altered from brain damage in childhood) and epigenetic/after birth alteration caused neurodiversity have slight specifics but ultimately the cause doesn’t matter in the “now”.

ADHD/ADD medication could help, even if they are only experiencing trauma responses that are causing those symptoms.

The difference tends to be that people with trauma have higher levels of BDNF – or a neuronal growth factor – and that gives them higher plasticity to regrow pathways. Medication does not reduce the BDNF level or neuroplasticity, in fact it can sometimes increase it further aiding in the process. The brain has been recently changed, instead of always being that way. So things like typical therapy (hypothetically) can rewire their brains, unlike people with “born” neurodiversity (and toxically caused/physically caused neurodiversity as brain damage that is typically permanent). People with born neurodiversity can “rewire” in their own ways but the traumatic stress from doing so, is a whole different thing. No matter the cause medication is a good choice.

More than one adoptee said things like – I do actually have ADHD and I wish I had been medicated for it as a child. I eventually turned to self-medication to try and function which developed into a full blow substance use disorder, which is not an uncommon outcome for children with untreated ADHD. Living with ADHD in a world that thinks you’re just lazy and chaotic is it’s own form of trauma. Not being able to stop yourself from acting in ways you don’t want to act is kind of terrifying, or it was for me as a child.

Another one – I wish I had been medicated as a child. I have severe ADHD (whether it’s trauma I couldn’t tell you). I was denied the medication that would have made school easier for me and the accommodations I deserved and needed to thrive. By the time I got to a four year university, I was so behind there was no chance.

And this – ADHD meds (Adderall) helped me concentrate. But I also have a diagnosis of ADHD on top of adoption trauma and CPTSD. I didn’t experience a downside aside from a bit of a crash, until I switched to extended release. A computer test at an ADHD treatment center that tested listening and reaction times helped tease out that I actually have ADHD.

And another – I didn’t figure out my ADHD / Neurodivergence until I had a toddler with traits much like my own, minus the adoption / trauma background. Turns out I’m a combo of both adoption trauma + ADHD. I recently figured out I’m also autistic. It’s quite possible many adoptees are Neurodivergent, on top of the trauma. So much of it is genetic — and who’s more likely to have an unplanned moment?? ADHD people. Meds were life changing for me. They’re short lived in the system, so if they’re not good for you, you can stop them and try something different.

Also from another adoptee – I read research recently that says adoptees are 2 to 3 times more likely to have ADHD or ASD. It fits with the damage done by maternal separation and forcing a child to pretend that strangers are their parents, when they know they’re not.

More – I have ADHD and my meds make my life significantly better I am calmer and can focus. Or this – I wish I’d been diagnosed as a child, I think a lot of us 80s and 90s babies got missed and labeled as difficult. My adoptive parents still tell me what an awful teenager I was. It is hard to say really, what was adoption trauma, ADHD, ASD or just being a teenager.

A different suggestion was this – I recommend trying the Safe and Sound Protocol before medication because it helps reset the nervous system and then, you can find out what was wired due to trauma/PTSD and what is chemical imbalances. I was over medicated for everything and it made me worse but no one realized it. The SSP is a music frequency that is designed to stimulate the vagus nerve which is in charge of your autonomic nervous system. It should be used for kids & adults with ADHD, those on the spectrum and PTSD etc! It can be LIFE CHANGING!

I found this from Janae Elisabeth, the Trauma Geek, on Medium – LINK>A Neurodivergent Review of the Safe and Sound Protocol. She writes – The original recommendation was for trauma survivors to listen to one hour of this filtered music each day for 5 days. That recommendation has been amended, as this pacing has been found to be too fast for many people. The current recommendation is to try 10–15 minute segments, and to take breaks between listening days. Even this pace can be too much for some people’s nervous system. For some people, a good pace involves listening to as little as 30 seconds of the protocol at a time. For other people, this tool may just not be a good fit in any format.

She Just Got Lost

Amanda Deza with daughter Veronica

A sad story today by way of The Guardian LINK>DNA used to identify California mother whose body was found 27 years ago. There is a clearer, better photo at The Guardian article. Her daughter, Veronica Tovar, contributed the DNA sample. Veronica was removed from her mother’s home at the age of three along with her other siblings. Her mother did want her children to stay together and the three were eventually placed in the same adoptive home.

Veronica says of her mother “She loved her kids even though she wasn’t here with us. That feeling never left me. She did the best she could with what she had. For me, for what I feel and the memories I have, it’s almost like she just got lost. I think she didn’t have the support she needed to thrive.” As she waited to hear back from police, she pored over details of the case and the reality of what her mother endured began to sink in. “I sat on pins and needles until I found out. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I couldn’t stop reading about her case,” she said. “It is so unfair, so unjust, the brutality of how she was murdered.

She remembers being able to sense her mother’s struggles. “Before I was taken I do remember feeling sadness from her,” Tovar said. “I remember my mom was really sad.” Tovar is the only one of Deza’s children involved with the case. Her brother and sister are not up to taking part, she said. They were removed from her mother’s home before her and none of them know why. “We still just don’t know. On top of the not knowing we didn’t know what happened. We didn’t know why she never contacted us.” She adds, “I remember her playing with me in the sand one time. I remember her loving me. I can feel that. She did love me. She was sweet.”

Investigators believe she disappeared at the age of 29. She was last seen in 1994 with a man she had met at a rehab facility in the city of Napa, nearly 80 miles from where her remains were eventually found. Authorities said there was never a missing person report filed for Deza, who they described as experiencing “challenging times” before she died. On a spring day in 1995, a group of recyclers scavenging along a northern California canal made a grim discovery – the remains of a woman bound and gagged inside a partly submerged refrigerator. Authorities believed the body, described as being that of a woman between 29 and 41 years old with strawberry blond hair, had been underwater for several months.

Love The Kid You’re With

I’ll admit that I’m not doing the Read God’s Word one (I’m just not conventionally religious) but otherwise nice advice. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I’ve been ready with cards and candy for a few days now as my Tuesday will likely be complicated. I’m a loving person in general.

What is sad are the mothers and their children who have been torn apart for whatever reason and so can’t experience the joys I have almost every day (okay, there are days . . . but they are few).

Be grateful if you get to be with your children (and I’ve also been there – apart from my firstborn, my beautiful sunshine daughter – I was just too young and financially unstable to parent her – maybe that is why I feel a pang of compassion at this thought. Fortunately, we can still communicate in loving ways with one another. It is a blessing I’ll never feel I’ve earned but the love I have for her has always been and always will be).

So borrowing today’s blog title from Crosby Stills Nash and Young – love the one you’re with – and given the focus of this blog, you can read into that whatever you wish – just do it !!

Disparities of Resources

In my all things adoption group, a woman wrote – “I truly hope the fosterers, adopters, hopeful adoptive parents and those planning to foster really listen to the former foster youth, adoptees and actual parents about the disparities of resources. Listen to the feelings attached to the other side (those most impacted) of the triad. Please listen to what’s being said about why children end up in adoption and the foster care system. Take that info to heart and do something. Work with family preservation. Understand that you are participating in a corrupt system that targets the poor and marginalized. Amplify their voices and vote people in that care about children’s rights.”

One adoptee writes – Lack of support and resources led to me being left. My mother had no money and no support. Extended family would not help, she was not allowed to come home with me. So much dysfunction, really screwed up people. I refer to my adoptive parents as mom/dad because “I have to.” I refer to my first mom as my mom too. I think it’s completely up to the child to decide how to refer to everyone. Nobody else gets to decide.

There was then a huge disruptive discussion over the term “actual mother.” More than one adoptee didn’t like that term, most involved in the conversation understood it. It was defined this way subsequently – “Actual mother means the child’s actual mother and not the fake parent because a signed document says they birthed them, when they didn’t.”

A former foster care youth shared – I do think a lack of resources caused my placement into the foster care system. I’m not 100% sure what could have prevented that placement though. As far as titles, my foster carers told me that I could call them whatever I wanted, their names, mom&dad, Mr&Mrs etc… I was older, about 6 or 7, and I just ended up using their names. I maintained a relationship with them after I was returned to my parents.

She is also a mom whose child was apprehended by CAS (Children’s Aid Society): What would have helped me keep my child with me would have been postpartum support. I was young (19), had just had a baby, didn’t really understand what I was doing or going through and had these people show up at my door saying they were taking my newborn son (5 days old) with them. Also, not having to battle preconceived notions about 1. Young mothers and 2. Generational involvement with CAS. Basically was told because I was a former foster care youth and my grandparents and even great grandparents had involvement, obviously I wasn’t suited to be a parent.

She is currently a step-parent (with custody order naming her)/also called a Kinship guardian/or could be an adoptive parent. (All of this gets understandably confusing these days unless one is immersed in the systems.)

What resources have I received from the placement of the 6 kids ?… nothing more than a low income person gets for biological kids, which is a tax credit… oh, and CAS gave me a $100 gift card for groceries… that’s it… as for what the kids call me, some call me mom or Mama, some call me by my name… 5 out of 6 of the kids still have an ongoing relationship with their biological parents, or at least one of them… and they call them mom/dad… it never bothered me what they called me, one way or another.

But there was more – she went from CAS apprehending her son… to their being ordered to return him to her by the courts… to closing her file by his 2nd birthday… and before he was 5, they had literally dropped 3 other kids off on her doorstep (her step children)… and then, granted her custody of her step children’s half siblings…. all within 7 years…. Obviously, I couldn’t have been that “unfit” to begin with… And the amount of anxiety the whole situation caused her… nightmares, etc… is just ridiculous….

Another adoptee tells this story – a lack of resources is what I was told prevented my birth mother from raising me my whole life. She was an older teen, in a family with five kids and her parents “couldn’t afford another mouth to feed.” The truth, I learned thirty years later, that her brother is my biological father. Both situations could be true, but what led to my relinquishment wasn’t as cut and dried as a lack of resources. As to what I called my adoptive parents, I was never given the option of what to call them. I was adopted at two months old and they were the only parents that I knew throughout my childhood, so I probably would have chosen to call them mom and dad, even though it wasn’t a great situation.

One adoptive parent who adopted from foster care notes – outside of fostering, in my personal life, every parent I know who either lost their child to Child Protective Services OR a private guardianship/custody situations where they have limited-to-no parenting rights, parental mental health was THE driving factor. Poverty, substance use, and poor physical health were often symptoms of the mental health challenges and at the same time exacerbated the mental health challenges in a vicious circle.

The answers and stories go on and on. This is just a few to add some insights. I believe in family preservation. I believe that societal resources properly deployed could prevent most (not all) adoptions that tear families apart. I have read too many of the same kinds of stories over and over to believe otherwise. The lack of extended family support and financial resources tore both of my own parents away from their mothers and it still happens every single day in America.

It Will Take A Lot

I often wonder if I will ever run out of things related to adoption to write about here but everyday I seem to find something and so, until I can’t seem to do that anymore, I suppose I’ll persist. Today’s inspiration comes from this admission from an adoptive mother –

After adopting our daughter and experiencing some pretty clear effects of her being separated from her mom, I have changed my mindset on adoption. While I know realistically that there will always be a need of some sort for a program to care for relinquished children, I don’t believe in the current system and think it needs a complete overhaul.

She admits – I did not do enough research before we went through the process and relied too heavily on the agency to provide me information. Now I realize their bias, pursuit of financial gain, etc. I did everything wrong – did a gender reveal, had a baby shower, did a GoFundMe, ick ick ick. After placement, I could just FEEL that my baby needed more than I was giving.

I also know that a woman who is struggling with fertility issues that desperately wants to start a family is going to be mighty difficult to dissuade – the flood of savior stories and toxic positivity that is shoved in hopeful adoptive parents’ faces is overwhelming. And despite all of the very valid points that have been made by those who know repeatedly, it will take a lot of education and dedication to overcome the propaganda and the emotional response a woman experiences in order to make a decision that is best for the child and not for her own desires.

So what to share with a woman who is struggling with fertility issues, who desperately wants to start a family ? I often see the very first suggestion is therapy to reconcile her infertility issues and realize that adoption is never a replacement for a natural born child.

Read The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier. I have read it myself and I still see it turn up recommended as the very best possible perspective into adoption trauma from a woman who is both an adoptive and a biological mother as well as a therapist to adoptees and their families. She has tons of insight about all of it.

It is very important to listen to adoptee voices. Here is an analogy – We would never do open heart surgery without an expert surgeon who performs that surgery every day. While a patient (adoptive parent) is part of that process, they are not the ones (adoptees) who know what it feels like to walk in those shoes. A hopeful adoptive parent is inherently biased against hearing any truth about the pitfalls of adoption. They often only listen to the voices of other adoptive parents who have benefitted from adopting. You will rarely hear these discussing the risks, only the positive aspects of adopting a child into their life.

It is important to explain what a for profit enterprise adoption is. The coercion of birth mothers, our society’s lack of focus on family preservation, the option of being a foster parent who strives for family reunification over fostering simply to adopt, explain the guardianship option, share the loss of identity and anything else that a mature adoptee knows about it all.

Remaining connected to those genetic mirrors that the child’s original family is of vital importance. There is occasionally a need for long term care, when the parents could not or would not parent their child(ren), and the extended family members were unwilling or unable to be a placement resource for those children. Adoption is much more nuanced than most people realize and many adoptees feel negatively about their adoptions. Many who choose to be foster parents are actually trying to help and actively trying to support families in crisis to reunify. That said, the training and support is abysmal.

Letting Go of Expectations is Liberating

Today I offer you a not uncommon adoptee challenge –

For so many of us, birthdays suck. And I’m realizing it doesn’t get easier with age. So many complicated emotions. For me this is the day I was born and the day I was separated from my birth mom. I‘m not resentful for the choice she made, she’s a wonderful human.

I think it has to do with expectations that birthdays are supposed to be happy. I never want to be the center of attention but if someone overlooks me, or my feelings, I get super sad. It feels like a rejection thing. I might prefer celebrating my adoption day… but that would be difficult to explain.. to people who could never comprehend.

I’m sick of crying every single birthday (and having to hide it) and faking it for the rest of the day. I’m (hopefully) going to have at least 50 more of these and I don’t want to look back hating every single one and dreading the next. Therapy is great (I’ve had awesome therapists for over 7 years) but certain topics like these don’t feel solvable in therapy. I wish I could talk to others that understand from life experience.

An inspirational message from Agape that I listened to yesterday focused on Expectations and how to make peace with them. You can watch the July 3rd 9am Service HERE (fast forward to the 37 minute point, if you want to only listen to her message).

How To Help

Question: (Background info: we live in a low income neighborhood. Neighbor is a single mom with 3 young children. Child Protective Services (CPS) has a habit of meddling in the business of poor families)

2 days ago, a CPS caseworker knocked on my door. She told me she has been trying to talk to our next door neighbor, but she hasn’t been opening the door when she knocks. She kept asking me questions about the neighbor and trying to get information (How many kids does she have? Do you ever hear yelling? Do the kids look well fed? Does she leave the kids by themselves? Do different men come and go? etc etc)

I said I have no clue to all her questions. (I just came home from college 2 weeks ago so I was telling the truth.) She then starts telling me personal information about her “investigation” that made me so uncomfortable that I cut her off and said, “I’m running late and have to leave.” She hands me her business card and asks me to call her if I see them outside or pulling into their garage, so she can “zoom over and bust them.” (Her words, not mine. Not a chance I would call her back anyway.)

Now, what to do ? I know that CPS will insert themselves into the littlest things in order to take children away from their mothers. What would you do in this situation? Would you go over and let Mom know that CPS is watching? I was thinking of going over there and explaining exactly what the case worker asked me and what kind of car she drove. I’m nervous because we don’t ever talk. I don’t want her to think I’m working for CPS or that I was the one who reported them. Maybe a letter ? But then, she could just check her ring camera and see it was me anyway. I might as well have an actual conversation. Do you think she already knows ? Should I just stay out of it entirely ?

I have no idea.

Suggestion:

Absolutely go talk to mom. Please please give her a heads up and tell her everything. Help the mom address any issues that could arise. Let her know that she can trust you. Offer to help her get her house “home inspection ready”, just in case. Make sure mom knows her rights with CPS.

Also, report the caseworker who was freely giving out private information to a complete stranger. At the very least, gossiping about your case is extremely poor ethics.

Example of a Home Inspection – Check List

Separations

An adoptee wrote – “I hate not belonging anywhere. I hate that I have multiple families, but also really zero. I hate needing to earn my place in people’s lives.” I could relate as I recently shared with my husband and he understood. We both come from small nuclear families and there is no extended family geographically close to us and honestly, few of those as well anywhere else.

Much of this feeling for me comes from the realization that those who were my extended family growing up aren’t really related to me. Those that are genetically biologically related to me don’t really know me, have no real history with me and though I am slowly without too much intrusion trying to build these new relationships . . . sigh. It isn’t easy.

My first family break-up was one I initiated. I divorced the man I had married just before I turned 18 and a month before I graduated from high school in April 1972. By November, more or less, I was pregnant with our first child. She remains the joy of my life and has gifted me with two grandchildren. However, finances separated me from my daughter when she was 3 years old and she was raised by her father and step-mother who gave her a yours-mine-and-ours family of siblings, sisters, just like I grew up with. It has left me with a weird sense of motherhood in regard to my daughter. One that I often struggle with but over the last decade or so, I have been able to bridge some of that gap- both with regard in my own sense of self-esteem and in a deepening relationship with my daughter, primarily since the passing of her step-mother (not that the woman was an impediment but understandably, my daughter’s heart remains seriously tied to that woman even today).

The trauma of mother/child separation lived by each of my adoptee parents (while skipping my relationship and my sisters’ relationship with our parents) passed over to my sisters and my own relationships with our biological genetic children. I seriously do believe it has proven to have been a factor. Both of my sisters gave up babies to adoptive parents and one lost her first born in court to his paternal grandparents. Sorrows all around but all us must go on the best we can.

Since learning the stories of my original grandparents, I have connected with several genetic relatives – cousins mostly and an aunt plus one who lives in Mexico with her daughter. Everyone is nice enough considering the absolutely un-natural situation our family histories have thrust us into. So really, now I find myself in this odd place of not really belonging to 4 discrete family lines (one set of grandparents were initially married and divorced after the surrender of their child to adoption and one set never married, in fact my paternal grandfather likely never knew he had a son). Happily, though a significant bit of geographical distance a factor foe me, my paternal grandfather was a Danish immigrant and I now have contact with one cousin in Denmark who has shared some information with me that I would not have but for him.

Regarding estrangement, I’ve had no direct contact with my youngest sister since 2016. In regard to looking out for her best interests, her own attorneys in the estate proceedings encouraged me to pursue a court appointed guardian/conservator for her – as both of our parents died 4 months apart and she was highly dependent upon them due to her mental illness of (likely) paranoid schizophrenia. The effects of that really destroyed my relationship with her (which had been close until our mother died and then, went seriously to hell, causing us to become estranged). I just learned the other day that the court has released her conservator. I guess she is on her own now. She survived 4 years of homelessness before reconciling uneasily with our parents. I guess the survivor in her will manage but she most likely also now believes the guardian/conservator proceedings were my own self being vindictive, for some unreasonable purpose. Sigh. I don’t miss contact with her – honestly – it was cruel and difficult being on the receiving end of her offensives after our mom died. I do wish her “well” in the sincerest meanings of that concept.

It could also be that without these great woundings I would be less vulnerable and available, less empathic and compassionate, with the people I encounter as I live my life each day. Maybe it is precisely my reaching out, in an effort to connect, that causes me to share my own personal circumstances. A sacrifice of the heart.

A Complicated Relationship with Love

“No one has a more complicated relationship with love than a child who was adopted.” from an article in Psychology Today titled The Complicated Calibration of Love by Carrie Goldman. Children are the only ones who simultaneously crave, reject, embrace, need, challenge, inhale, absorb, return, share, fight, accept, and question your love on a daily basis.

How does the world convince an adoptee they are loved and valued ? The same world that thrust a great injustice upon this child by separating them from their first mother and possibly siblings, the world that passed them along to a doting foster mom to whom they became attached and then separated them again, the world that dropped this child into the outstretched, naïve, and eager arms of adoptive parents, their greatest joy intricately tied to the child’s greatest sadness, the world that views this child’s story as a happily-ever-after and now expects them to be grateful, happy, well adjusted, and perfect at all times—how does such a child learn to trust the love of that world?

Carrie notes – To match the giving of love with the exact need of any recipient is a moving calibration. There is no reliable unit of measurement for something so imprecise as human affection. We try. We offer up our love in words and actions, hoping to meet the ever-changing needs of our lovers, our children, our friends, and our families – every relationship that matters takes some work.

When one person in the relationship inhales the sour breath of the beast that is insecurity, a beast whose presence twists the very air between two humans and makes greater the flaws that beckoned it in the door. Insecurity, also known as fear, feeds on the dark and scary parts of the mind, growing in strength and power as it distorts what is real and what is imagined.

Sometimes insecurity grows too large until there is almost no space left for the relationship. But the antidote to such despair is hope, and hope, fortunately, needs less fuel to stay alive. These dynamics occur in any relationship, and the intensity can be magnified by a thousand when one of the partners is an adoptee.

The choice to be an adoptive parent is built on mountains of hope, oceans of hope, forests filled with the hope that a thousand seeds planted might one day yield a mighty tree. What combination of internal resilience, good parenting, genetics, access to birth history, love, acceptance of grief, and endless empathy is needed to raise an adoptee to wholeness ?

An adoptee did not choose to be adopted at a very young age; it was foisted upon them and packaged as “you’re so lucky” by the world. An adoptive parent must allow and validate all the feelings and viewpoints, even the ones that don’t fit the happily-ever-after narrative.

An adoptee is unlucky. They are not growing up with their first family. If biological children for their adoptive parents are also in the picture, they cannot help but wonder if the adoptive parents love their biological children more. Many adoptees worry they will never be good enough. Most adoptee do battle with legitimate fears of abandonment in every relationship they enter into throughout life. Often an adoptee rages against the unfairness of being adopted and basically hates being adopted.

~ Carrie Goldman writes a parenting blog called Portrait of an Adoption.

Ukrainian Twins

Straight off – I am NOT a fan of surrogacy. There was a mom in my mom’s group who used a surrogate because she was actively undergoing treatment for cancer. I remember the two of us sharing that we were using reproductive assistance for our husbands. She did pass away about the time her boy/girl twins turned 2 years old. After years of trying, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law finally were successful in bringing a son into their lives.

My problem with surrogacy has arisen out of my gaining knowledge about the trauma of separating any baby from the mom in who’s womb the baby gestated. This is detailed in the book The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. Even though my own family has depended upon medical technology to create our sons, I am at least grateful that in our own ignorance, we did one thing right – my sons both grew in my womb and nursed at my breast. I have been able to do something with them that I wasn’t even able to do for my biological, genetic daughter – be in the boy’s lives throughout their childhood.

The Russian war against Ukraine is heartbreaking and difficult to be a witness of. So, a feel good story coming out of that country is welcome. NPR did a follow-up to this story that had more than it’s share of bumps along the way. The genetic, biological father of these twins Alex Spektor was born in Ukraine, when it was part of the Soviet Union, and his family came to the US as Jewish refugees. From experience, I do believe that boys benefit from the genetic, biological mirror of being raised by their father.

The mother was a surrogate; and therefore, was never intended to parent these babies. His twins were born prematurely to the surrogate mother in Kyiv just as Russia began its war on Ukraine. In a dramatic mission called “Operation Gemini,” the babies and the surrogate were rescued from Ukraine in March. They dodged Russian artillery fire, drove through a snowstorm, and finally arrived at a Polish hospital where Alex met his boys for the first time.

For 2 months, the family was stuck in bureaucratic limbo in Poland. Alex’s wife, Irma had flown to Poland in early March, after the twins had been evacuated. She had stayed in Chicago to get the family’s legal paperwork in order. She arrived late at night and the next morning went straight to the hospital where her twins were. Alex and Irma have spent those 2 months fighting to take their twins home to Chicago.

The hospital said they needed to prove the twin’s paternity in order to discharge the kids. The American embassy said in order for them to get passports for the boys, the parents needed to bring their twins to Warsaw. Eventually officials needed to see the birth certificates and they were still in Ukraine. So, Alex crossed from the Polish city of Rzeszow back over the border to retrieve the documents from the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Finally, the couple and their twins were able to fly home to Chicago. Alex now says his experience with his twins has made him feel closer to the place of his birth. Because of these experiences, friends of the couple in Chicago have created an organization known as the Ukraine TrustChain. They provide medical supplies, baby formula, food and other essentials to people in the war.