Hi, welcome back to Parenting Beyond the Headlines. We're really happy to have
you with us here today. I am Amy Alamar and I'm joined by my
friend and colleague, Sarah Cody. Sarah, how's it going. It's going
good. I went to a function for the first time in a year and
a half last night and we were with people there. It was a tent,
the flaps were open, there weren't a lot of masks going on.
Everyone was hopefully vaccinated like me, and I gotta say, Amy, it
felt good to have that bit of more we'll see. Yeah, and there's
a little bit of a jumping off the ledge right, like you kind of
have to just do that one event to get get your feet wet and jump
all the way at the same time. Yeah, it felt okay. But
we're actually not talking about the pandemic today on Parenting on the Headlines because maybe
the first time we haven't had a pandemic related topic in a year and a
half. Yeah, But we have a very interesting guest that we are welcoming
on here today. His name is Oleg Loheed. How did I do Oleg?
That sound right? Correct? All right? He is an inspirational speaker
he is launching some online programs that we want to hear all about. He
was an orphan and has an interesting, interesting journey and things to share with
us about adoption and trauma and you know, the unique journeys that we're all
on. And it's sure to be a really interesting twenty minutes to a half
hour. Thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Now,
thank you, Thank you for having me on. And as I was
telling Amy before we hit record button, thank you for doing all you do
because I think, in my opinion, spaces like this are rare to find,
and in finding other individuals like yourself, it just brings joy into my
life and helps me and understand that I'm not the only one that's doing what
it is that I'm doing. Yeah, that's nice. So like, thank
you. Such a big question that I'm going to launch off with here.
But you know, tell us your history. Where does this life story begin?
It's it's overseas, correct, correct. The life story begins in a
relatively small town. I keep calling it small, but it's relatively big.
It's well over a million people, and it's the reason why I call it
small. For those that are aware with that part of the world. The
name of the town that's called Chubarkul. It is in the direction of Kazakhstan
in Russia. And the reason why I call it small is because, based
on all the memories that I can recall from my childhood days, I was
able to go from one end of town to the other in fifteen to twenty
minutes. Now, I don't know if that's a common experience or maybe that
is just a false memory that I have that it actually took me fifteen to
twenty minutes. Maybe the realities that it took me hours upon hours to get
through it. But that is the town I was born in, and as
the two of you are familiar with whereof but maybe not a lot of the
listeners, I was born into a very difficult set of circumstances from a very
young age, and that I was born to a household where my mom was
an alcoholic, my father was in prison, and my sister, who was
eighteen years older and still is actually ended up becoming my legal guardian. For
those that are listening and might be able to relate to aspects of that story
and the challenges that such circumstances present. One of the challenging challenges that I
was presented with was in living under a roof with essentially my mom and my
sister for relatively short period of time. At the beginning, the biggest thing
that I was trying to accomplish was I was trying to bring them back together.
I was trying to do everything in my control, so to speak,
to maintain that family unit as one instead of having them separate their own ways
and fall into their own paths of resentment, regret and all these other time
topics, and ultimately, what I've realized along that journey for nine years,
or at least until I was nine, that is all I was doing.
I was trying to bring them back together. I was trying to spend time
with my mom, with my sister, convinced either one of them, and
really create a space. And I don't know how I knew this at that
particular age to begin with, but I was really trying to communicate this message
and the importance of a space where you can put your problems behind you,
or whatever your problem is with that other individual is just put it aside,
because at the end of the day, you don't know how much longer you
have nor how much longer the other person has, so I think from that
very on age I was able to have that perspective, and then moving forward,
as the two of you hinted towards a little bit before we hit the
record button, was the adoption. So really my first twelve years were extremely
challenging because I had to give up the whole concept of what it meant to
be a child and learn relatively quickly what it meant to be an adult.
But at the same time, as I look at that entire journey and reflect
upon all the experiences, I wouldn't change a single thing. I wouldn't change
a single thing about it because it is all of those things that make up
who I am today. And also, like your sister, had to grow
up fast as well in becoming a guardian, yes, and that is a
journey that I'm yet to explore. I haven't fully understood what that meant for
her to become a role of a mom at that particular age. I also
don't know if she wanted to have kids in her life and what really surprise
that brought in her. So I think the more that I think about that
journey, what really stands out to me is that there's so many different stories
within that larger picture. That's why I in answering the question of what is
your story? For me, it's one of the most complexes. It's one
of the most complex questions to ever answer, because what is the story?
Is it the story about the past? Is it the story about a specific
segment? And then in a case of my experiences, there's so many different
things that happened within that and one event didn't necessarily lead to the next one.
Well, tell us, and so how did the adoption come to fruition?
Was that instigated by your mother or sister or some other factors. So
that actually started with me. And that was a decision that I made when
I was nine years old. And what I decided to do is I decided
to relinquish my parents' rights. I decided to give up my parents' rights because
I felt intuitively that the better decision for me and my life moving forward was
to go into an orphanage. I went into an orphanage as a nine year
old kid. Now you also have to understand that I didn't fully understand what
that was going to be like. I remember having a conversation with the social
worker and she was telling me everything about that life, the friends, I'm
going to have my own toys, my own bed, roof over my head,
food on the table. Essentially, it was music to my ears.
It was everything that I needed to hear at that particular moment. But what
I didn't understand, and the only way that I found this out was through
experience, was that in going into that orphanage, I didn't understand the fact
that a I would only be able to see my friends and family during visitation
hours. There was no concept of walking through the door and going to see
them on my own terms whenever I wanted to. There was only a specific
time each day where I could see them, and even those visitations, I
felt that they couldn't be authentic, they couldn't be organic. The reason why
I say that is because the room was located directly from the director's room,
so I didn't feel comfortable actually telling my mom, my, sister, whoever
else that came to visit me what was actually happening, how I was actually
treated. So that's an enormous decision to make a nine year olds. Were
things just so bad that you felt that it was the right choice, and
did your family push back on that and was it ever a choice. I
guess that you regretted. You are right, it was a big decision to
make. My family did push back on it, and my sister pushed back
on it. That's the only memory I can recall. She had asked me
multiple times whether or not that is something that I wanted to do and go
into, and I kept saying yes, and to answer your other questions.
Things were that bad. I remember and still do memory of just very graphic
scenes people getting beat up. I have this story. I don't know what
the age range of your listeners are on the show, but I have the
story of my mom losing half of a year in just a scuffle, and
I was there. I was standing in the hallway and observed the whole thing
happened. So what I realized was that it was one traumatic experience after another
and there was no end. And so I figured that, well, what
other way could I possibly disrupt the trajectory of my life? And making that
decision was the next obvious one. And once again I didn't know the consequences,
didn't know what the life at the orphanage was going to be like.
I couldn't even conceptualize what an orphanage was. I saw the surrounding. I
didn't have any friends who are orphans. All of my friends at the time
had families, and I wasn't at an age where I could open up to
some of my friends and say, Hey, this is what's happening in my
household, what's happening in yours? That you know years is a very overseas
and it's a very sort of extreme circumstance, but we hear that a lot.
It's hard when kids have difficult things going on and they feel alone,
they feel like they can't I recently interviewed a man who had escaped a domestic
abuse situation as a child with his mother and they were sent to like a
safe house shelter, and he felt so isolated at school because he couldn't tell
anyone where he lived or what he was going through. So I can understand
that. So you were in the orphanage for about three years. Was it
a terrible three years or did you learn to grow and adapt? And was
it better than being in a traumatic situation. It was a challenging three years.
I think learning to grow and adapt was my only option. There really
was no other way to do it, but that through those three years,
what actually ended up happening was that I had created an opportunity, or maybe
an opportunity was created for me, who knows, and that opportunity was to
be able to be a part of a folk singing group what it was.
And I didn't even know this was a talent of mine until I was put
in the middle of this classroom and I was asked to sing. And then
what I noticed was the music teacher at the time, what she would do
is she would actually compose music and she would accompany me in playing the piano
or some of these other instruments. So within about a year, and this
happened during my first year of living there, I had realized that not only
did I have a hidden skill of mine, but this is something that I
could actually capitalize on. And I think my music teacher had noticed the same
exact thing, and so what she started to do from that point on is
she would put us into situations where I was able to act upon that skill.
So we went to competitions amongst other schools and other orphanages. I shared
this story quite often to me. I was feeling like I was winning a
million bucks when the reality is I was winning a flip camera or a bicycle,
but those were the first realizations where I truly felt valued. Yeah,
I'm gonna say, you were winning a lot more than just a flip camera
winning. Yeah. Yeah, my sense of self worth. I realized that
in those moments was becoming drastically higher than it was before. My own concepts
of what I could be capable of in life increased, and ultimately what ended
up happening. The ultimate gift I believe of that particular experience was we were
put on the radar of an adoption agency in an urban Michigan that ended up
contacting that orphanage along with a handful of others in the area. In essentially
said, if you guys can put together a group of kids, will fly
you here. You'll perform in front of future adoptive families at some of the
local churches, and so we ended up coming here for two weeks. I
didn't speak English, I didn't know anything about this part of the world besides
the name Michael Jordan true story, and yet I was eager to learn and
possibly find a new way, possibly find a new family. Oleg shared a
recording of one of his performances as a child. But so in coming here
for the two weeks, I think about it now and I can't help but
think about how much of a culture shock it was in just an absolute blur
because it was a completely different culture. I didn't know how to speak the
language. I barely knew the parent, the people that I was staying with
which would later become my family. And then on top of that you add
school, which was a completely different concept. How schools were set up or
probably are set up in ann Arbor, at least this middle school. Compared
to my middle school, there was no similarity. Everything was an open space.
Imagine it's almost as if you were walking into a furniture store and you
know how there's just big opening couches everywhere. There's really no sense of direction.
It was like that in Russia. The schools were completely different. In
Russia, you had desks, and one desk would proceed another and another,
and if you had to go to the bathroom you had to raise your hand.
If you spoke out a turn, you often saw a ruler that went
across your desk or across your butt, whatever it was. So there was
very different way of disciplining the students within that space. And when I came
into this system during the two weeks, I didn't even know what to say.
Teachers, you were only able you were calling them by first name.
In Russia you had to say professor X, Y, and Z. So
you have such a compelling story, unique story. How are you sharing it
now? And in what way are you sharing it? And why are you
sharing it? Are you doing this to help others? It's a good question.
So about four years ago, maybe even longer than that, I had
come to a set of questions that I could only face on my own,
And that is the very first internal question that I was faced with was why
me? Why was I the one that was meant to go through all these
challenges in life? And what can I ultimately learn from them? It took
me many, many years to realize the answer to that question didn't have to
be as complex as I made it to be. See, living in the
States, I thought that that answer would have to come in this blockbuster gesture,
when the reality of it was that I think it was always as simple
as it had to be, And that is, if not you, then
who else. When I had realized that about my own journey, four years
ago. That's when I started to create a space for other people. Initially,
I wanted to create a space for people of similar experiences, so those
who are adopted have been part of the foster care system. Then I expanded
that to parents because I realized that at the end of the day, they
were much more similar than they were different. And now it's really a space
for anyone who has been through some form of adversity in their lives and is
looking for a place to be valid, to be heard, to be appreciated.
So that's what I started to do with overcoming odds. And to answer
your last question, why am I doing this and do I really want to
help other people? The answer to that question is yes, And here's why.
When I look back at my journey and a number of times where people
chose to help me, even when I wasn't even asking for help, I
realized what a difference it had made when one other person was able to see
me for who I was, and what a difference it had made when that
person chose to create a space for me to be able to better understand myself
in being adopted and going through all the adversities prior as well as after the
adoption took place, it was a difficult journey to be able to really understand
who am I and why am I here? Someone had said this, however,
long ago, I had come across this quote that I'll share with the
two of you as well as your listeners. There are two very important days
in life. First days when you were born, and a second day is
when you figure out why you were born. In figuring out why I was
born, I couldn't have done it if it wasn't for the help of other
people. So for me, choosing to go back is almost like an obligation.
And that's why I choose to help others. Oh, Like, you
talked with us before we started to record about gratitude, and we know from
other podcasts we've done the importance of gratitude in developing empathy and a sense of
belonging and connectedness. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about
what you've learned through your own gratitude. For me, gratitude shifted my life
in many different ways. Here's why for many many years I went through life
not appreciating many of the things that I experienced on a daily basis. I
think one of the reasons why is because I got used to it. When
you do something repetitively from one day to another, it loses its meaning unless
you choose to look at it in a different way. One of those groups,
or one of those people, for me that not necessarily lost her meaning,
but I definitely took them for granted, was my parents. I took
my parents for granted for many years because I was living with this concept that
because they were there yesterday and they're here today, they will probably be here
tomorrow. So therefore, whatever conversations I was wanting to have with them,
I kept putting them off till tomorrow. I kept waiting for that tomorrow to
come. The challenge of the tomorrow is that it's a never ending story.
At least that's what my experience has taught me. See for years, I
would say, I'll do it tomorrow. The problem is that after a while,
tomorrow turns into literally tomorrow, then it turns into next week, then
it turns into next year, and then it turns into something that I don't
choose to do at all because it's been so long. My parents, I
think we're in a similar position in my life. I would put off some
of these conversations, I didn't fully appreciate the gifts that they had passed on
to me. And then it was through reflection and really asking myself the question
of well, what did they give me? What did they help me see
differently than I haven't seen before, that I was able to uncover a lot
of these things. So when I think about gratitude and I think about the
impact it has had in my relationship with them, it has deepened my relationship
with them. It helped me see them with people before any particular roles,
whether it's a mother or a father, or a brother or sister or any
of these other titles. And so in seeing them as people, I've been
able to understand them even more than I was able to understand them before.
Well, you came together in a unique way at a unique time. There
were language barriers, I imagine, I mean it was it was a lot
to talk about some of the adoption issues we hit on when we had our
prediscussion. There are myths out there about people adopting, you know, a
twelve year old, of even a fourteen year old to fifteen year old thinking
that they're coming with too much and that you know, what I mean,
it's going to be difficult to bond and difficult to get over those things.
What is your take on that, first of all? And I also thought
that it was really interesting when you said, you know, being adopted by
an nice family isn't the end of your issues. It doesn't solve all trauma.
I doesn't solve all the things that you went through, So comment on
both of those things for me. For me, one of the first things
that I had to work through was the language barrier. In fact, how
I started that journey was I started with one of those phonetic alphabets. So
I don't know if the two of you have come across this, but it's
one of those alphabets where you pick up a letter and it says a apple,
B banana, and so you do that a thousand, well over a
thousand times in order to just remember the letters. Then I had to move
on to the words, and then I had to move on to them,
which I believe is the most complex part about the English language, and that's
actually forming sentences. I'll never forget the time when I was in middle school,
sixth or seventh grade. One of the first times I was asked to
write a paper two to three to four page paper. I don't remember this
subject, so please don't ask me that question. But I remember turning in
that paper, and afterwards, when I would receive it back, all I
would see was red ink, which I believe is a universal sign for there's
some work to do. So I would receive this paper and I would see
red ink everywhere in constant comments, run on sentence, incomplete, and I
didn't fully understand what those things meant. I also think that at that particular
time, in just the speed of education in the United States, very rarely
would I find opportunities to sit down with the teacher one on one and ask
them the question of what is a run on sentence? What is an incomplete
sentence? How do I restructure my current sentences to make them complete? That
time wasn't available oftentimes. In fact, the ongoing joke that I make about
my own education that I experienced was when I came here and I entered sixth
grade. I don't believe I was actually in six I believe that I was
preparing for eighth grade. When I went into high school, I was already
being asked, what college do you want to go to? When I went
into college, I was being asked the ultimate question of life, what do
you want to do for a living? So everything is accelerated, which only
added additional barriers to my own learning, because here I am not only trying
to learn a language, but I'm also trying to learn how to make friends,
how to establish my own family relationship with parents whom I've shared a household
with for weeks, maybe months leading up to that point. So all of
those things were huge complexities for me to work through on top of the accelerated
curriculum that I was being put through a lot. Yeah, so there were
those were the major barriers that I had to work through. If I were
to not necessarily go back but reflect upon that time and ask myself the question
of can everyone do what I did? I don't know, and I think
I would be lying if I were to say yes. The reason why I
say that is because I believe every one of us is wired in our own
unique ways. Some people have more resilience than others, Some people have different
level of resilience than others. So when I think about all of this and
I think about my own journey of what I've been able to accomplish to this
point, I think I was very fortunate to have had the hardships and the
challenges that I did leading up to the adoption, which probably prepared me in
the way. But at the same time, I think there's just a lot
that I don't know about why the things worked out the way that they did.
Talk a little bit about overcoming odds. You mentioned it briefly in one
of your answers a few minutes ago. But what space is that and how
does it bring people together? So how I understand this space today is Overcoming
odds is about creating a space for other people to demonstrate their strengths and uniqueness
to the world. The reason why it is titled overcoming odds is because when
I was looking at my life four to five years ago and reflecting upon all
the experiences, what I begin to realize was that the common theme within my
life was about overcoming the odds, or overcoming the obstacles ahead of me,
and I think, in my opinion to this point it still is. I
don't think the obstacles ever leave, and part of that journey. What I
also begin to realize was that it doesn't make sense for me to try and
eliminate these things out of my life. For example, in my opinion,
I don't believe it's ever possible to eliminate stress, anger, depression, whatever
it is. If anything, what is possible is to get to the next
layer of it, to have a transformed from what it used to be to
where it could be. So that's what I really tried to do with this
organization, is to create a space where people feel appreciated, feel valued,
but most importantly know that it's possible to live a different life. It's possible
to experience a different set of circumstances compared to the one that they were born
into. And how do people connect through overcoming odds? Is it a virtual
space? Is that something you sign up for? How does it work?
Primarily it's virtual, and that is people can join us through either the podcast,
the virtual seminars events that we host. We've started a weekly series called
Survived to Thrive Attitude of Gratitude, and what it is is a weekly conversation
every single Friday that people can join through LinkedIn or Facebook and we'll oftentimes explore
a topic that relates to the gratitude. So, for example, today we
did the topic of appreciation and the connection between appreciation and gratitude in one's life.
Outside of that, we host a call every Saturday called Courageous Conversations where
people can join in and do a similar thing. And that's explore a deeper
topic at hand, but that's really what it is at the core, is
being able to create the space where you can have a conversation that you might
not be able to do so, whether that's in your household, with your
friends, your colleagues, and feel that there are other people within this space
and community who you might be able to relate to and connect with. So
leave us as we're winding down here, leave us with You know, a
lot of us have been through trauma and it can be overwhelming. There can
be days that you wake up and it feels hard to wrap your arms around
it when you've had those moments, and somebody out there listening might be having
those moments. What do you do to get through? And I know that's
a huge question that you know in an answer, is it gratitude, is
it perseverance, is it hope? You know what in those dark times?
What got you to the next place? For me, one of the answers
that I'll focus on is learning from it, and what I mean by that
is creating an opportunity from that adversity. The questions that I ask myself whenever
I am faced with adverse circumstances is first, what am I here to learn?
What are these circumstances here to teach me? And what am I able
to see differently because of them? Now, once again, this is a
one sentence answer that I gave to you. That took me eight to ten
years to learn. And there are still situations where I get sucked into the
circumstances, but pulling myself out through these three questions has been truly transformational because
what it has given me the ability to do is an opportunity to look at
all of these events and circumstances as learning opportunities. And that is what I
ultimately do believe about life, is that every single one of the experiences most
likely has an equal or a greater benefit, and that is an opportunity to
learn, an opportunity to see things in a different lens and ultimately grow from
it. So those are the things that I fall back on whenever I am
experienced challenging circumstances in my life. Outside of that, there are plenty of
other topics that we can discuss, but they will be substantially length there conversations
other times just to do more podcast. I found this fascinating. Thank you
so much for your candor and your bravery. It's really an incredible story.
Thank you. Thank you for people find you online Oleg they can connect with
me personally LinkedIn or Facebook, and outside of that, organization related accounts would
be just simply searching overcoming odds across any of the platforms. Wonderful. Thank
you so much for joining us, and thank you listener for being with us
as well. We're so grateful to have you as part of our community.
We'll hope you'll find us on the interwebs. I'm at Amy Alamar and we've
got Sarah Cody Media and we would love your input and feedback on what topics
you want to talk about, Subscribe, rate and review. We are here
for you. We would love to, like Amy said, here's some topics
from you, pursue what you're interested in, and again we appreciate your time
and we will talk with you again. Take care of everyone,