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The Current Transcript for August 2, 2016

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

He says to them what they want to hear. They want some hope. Look at this place. You come out of school now, where do these kids go? They have no jobs. Now it’s at the point where it's hopeless despair.

LAURA LYNCH: The he this mayor of a struggling Pennsylvania town is referring to is Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and one of the keys to Trump’s success so far has been the support of people — especially white men — who live on the margins. Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton is now campaigning hard to win them over. Today we look at the long history of those who have a hard time believing in the American dream. Those labeled white trash. And then…

SOUNDCLIP

As a little girl, you accept what your situation is. But that sort of motherly love was missing from a very early age as a young child.

Phyllis Whitsell was brought up in a strict Catholic orphanage in the 1950s and told that her parents were dead, but she never quite believed that. Today she shares the lengths she went to to uncover the truth about her origins, and with the truth came a twist. That story in half an hour. But first, the clash of class in the United States.

'White Trash' history reveals why class is crucial in U.S. election

Guests: Nancy Isenberg

LAURA LYNCH: I'm Laura Lynch, and this is the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

WILLIE ROBERTSON: It's been a rough year for the media experts. It must be humbling to be so wrong, about so much, for so long. But, I have a theory about how they missed the Trump train. They don't hang out with regular folks like us, who like to hunt, and fish, and pray, and actually work for a living.

[crowd cheering]

LL: That was Duck Dynasty star and self-described redneck Willie Robertson at the Republican National Convention, sticking it to the so-called media elites and their contempt for what he calls regular folks. From the start, the 2016 US presidential election has been consumed with the role of class in American politics and life. From Bernie Sanders’ campaign against the one per cent, to Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” baseball caps. Standing with the powerless against the powerful has been a key message. Nancy Isenberg has studied the role of class in the United States. She's a professor of American history at Louisiana State University, and author of the new book White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America. And Nancy Isenberg joins us now from Charlottesville, Virginia. Hello.

NANCY ISENBERG: Hello, how are you?

LL: Fine, thanks. So, tell me what do you think about what Willie Robertson had to say about why the media missed Donald Trump's appeal to so many Americans?

NANCY ISENBERG: Well, we know the media often has blind spots about a lot of big complicated issues, but part of the problem is Americans in general don't like to talk about class. We have invented a myth that if we trace it all the way back to the American Revolution, that somehow we escaped the British class system. That is what has made us different and exceptional. But the truth is that at crucial moments in American history, class is moved front and centre. It was crucial to the sectional divide, it was crucial to Western migration, manifest destiny, it was central to the civil war. It also became important to the extremely disturbing, but popular eugenics movement. And then it also was important in some of the major landmark pieces of legislation that came out of the New Deal, as well as Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. So we have this conflicted notion about class, and we also at times like to imagine that there is this populist tradition, and this is what Willie Robertson is trying to play into. And as I also argue, the idea of playing the hillbilly is something that goes all the way back to vaudeville. And it's something that has been revived by reality TV, because Willie Robertson as we know was a very successful businessman, and used to belong to the country club and wore polo shirts, until his family came back and reinvented themselves for the Duck Dynasty show.

LL: So you're telling me that Willie Robertson is a fake?

NANCY ISENBERG: It's not that he's a fake. I think that from the 1970s forward, there's been a popular cultural movement about rediscovering our roots. This was captured in Alex Haley's very famous book, as well as mini-series, Roots. We also had people who wanted to rediscover their ethnic roots. And of course, that also influenced this idea of rediscovering one's redneck roots. And this was a movement that wanted to get rid of some of the negative baggage that as I show historically had been attached to poor whites and rednecks. The idea that they were people who are not only poor, but particularly from the eugenics movement were seen as degenerate, as permanently trapped in their class position. And not only that, that they passed on their status, their pedigree, to their children.

LL: OK. Let's get down to basics. What's meant by the term white trash?

NANCY ISENBERG: White trash. Now, a lot of scholars have argued that white trash and the term itself goes back. We can find its first appearance in newspaper print in the 1820s. But what I try to argue is it has a much longer history. In fact, it goes back to the period of British colonization. Richard Hakluyt who was Elizabethan, and he offered his very important proposal for why the English should settle in North America. He argued that what the colonies promised was a dumping place for the poor. And the term that he used to describe the poor, the expendables, the people in the British economy who he saw as parasites, as a drain, as a burden. Basically, he referred to them as waste people. And this is one of the consistent themes that we see over and over again to talk about the poor. Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams referred to poor whites as rubbish. And this theme reappears over and over again, because the assumption is that these people don't have a stake in our economy, that they're not productive. And they become a dangerous burden, not only because they aren't part of the economy, but they are producing a generation after generation of children, of the poor, who will never be able to be integrated into the American economy, the American society.

LL: At one point the term white trash becomes associated with the southern United States. When was that?

NANCY ISENBERG: Yeah, and this is also about politics. I mean, it never is completely associated with the South. We have to realize that it's a rural definition of the poor. So therefore in areas such as New England, the term that they used to refer to the rural poor were swamp Yankees. There also is poor whites that are associated with the northern parts of Wisconsin, Michigan. And what's really unique is throughout the 19th century, different areas would create new names for the people who were called the poor. The people who ended up in California were called pikes, because again another major theme of poverty is movement. Because the British hated vagrants. So the poor again are seen as people who are mobile, who don't put down roots. This is why today, and this actually goes to the post-World War Two period, we have poor whites identified with trailers, or are called trailer trash. Houses on wheels. These are not places that we associate with land ownership, with having a stake, with owning a real home.

LL: You've been focused on the poor whites, and I'm wondering what the relationship is like between poor whites and poor blacks in America?

NANCY ISENBERG: And that's complicated. Let me just say it becomes politicized in the 19th century as well. Because the rise of the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Free Soil party, they begin to argue that they didn't want slavery to expand into the West, because they argued that slavery undermines the idea of social mobility for poor whites. So there is this longstanding problem where slavery was seen as in competition with free labour. Then we have the problem of the way in which politics exploits that tension. And this becomes a really divisive part of American politics, particularly at the end of the 19th century, the early 20th century, where you have what become the new Democratic demagogues. People like James Vardaman of Mississippi, who exploit that tension. Who argued that he represented only poor whites. And he saw that American society, if we think of it in that old framework of a zero sum game, the idea that if you give advantages to African-Americans, somehow that is going to deprive or detract from the status and the position of poor whites. And I think one of the things that we also need to remember, is that this tension certainly has it not disappeared. But I think it is a consistent strain in American politics. And one of the things I like to emphasize is how John Adams in 1790, captured this idea of class in the same way Lyndon Johnson would. In 1790, John Adams argued that Americans not only scrambled to get ahead, they needed someone to disparage. And he wrote “there must be one, indeed, who is the last and lowest of the human species.” Lyndon Johnson came to the same conclusion in explaining the racism of poor whites. He argued “if you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best coloured man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you”. So this this idea of exploiting racial tension has been a way to divide poor whites and poor blacks, and it only bodes well for the elite as a way for the elite to stay in power.

LL: OK. Let's dig into this a little bit more. Popular culture hasn’t been very kind to southern white trash. And I'm going to play you a clip from the classic 1962 movie To Kill a Mockingbird. Here the issues of class, race, and sex, come together in an explosive courtroom scene. Just have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

I got something to say and then I ain’t going to say no more. [crying] He took advantage of me. [screaming] And if you find fancy Jim ain’t going to do nothing about it, then you’re just a bunch of lousy, yellow, stinking, cowards. The whole bunch of ya. And your fancy airs don’t come to nothing. Your ma’amin’ and your Miss Mayellerin' it don’t come to nothing, Mr. Finch.

LL: That was Mayella Ewell, a poor southern white woman who had accused in the book, in the film, a disabled black man of raping her. Nancy Isenberg you write about the portrayal of white trash in that movie. Why?

NANCY ISENBERG: This film is seen as one that celebrates the rise of the liberal Atticus Finch, who comes to the defense of a black man, Tom Robinson, who was accused of rape. But what is the other message? As in most Hollywood films, you not only have to have a victim, but you have to have villains, you not only have to have a hero. And it is clearly the Ewells who are portrayed in the most negative light, even more than Mayella, it is Bob Ewell who in the novel, his full name is Robert E. Lee Ewell, but he's not an heir of one of the aristocratic families of the Old South. Essentially, listen to how Harper Lee described the Ewell family. They basically get back to that idea of being human waste. Nothing can change their status. Even though the novel and the film are set in the Depression, that's not what caused their poverty. She wrote “no truant officer could keep their numerous offspring in school. No public health officer could free them from the congenital defects, various worms, and diseases indigenous to their filthy surroundings. They live behind a dump, which they comb through regularly. Their rundown shack, once a negro cabin looked like the playhouse of an insane child”. So part of what we forget is that southern elites saw poor whites as beneath hard working blacks. That illusion that they had moved into a negro cabin, meant that they were a status below. And the tension in that courtroom scene is really about her calling on elite whites to face their own prejudice, because Atticus Finch even though he's portrayed almost as godlike, as someone who's morally superior to everyone else in the town, he's not that sympathetic to Mayella at that moment. And I think it poses this problem of how at times in our culture, we want to sort of assume that the problem of racism is only replicated by poor whites. They’re the ones who uphold this entire system, when in fact it misses the way in which class and race get intertwined--

LL: [interposing] OK, let's--

NANCY ISENBERG: And that's something we need to pay attention to not only in understanding history, but here and now.

LL: Let's come right back around now then to more present day and back in fact to Donald Trump. In 2007, a contestant on the show The Apprentice labeled himself as white trash, and I want you to have a listen to how Donald Trump responded to the use of that term.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I would like to do it, but I'm not the lexus customer. I'm white trash, I'll eat at restaurants with deep fried appetizers. [laughter] So I know I'm not lexus--

DONALD TRUMP: What do you mean you're white trash?

VOICE 1: I’m just joking about that.

DONALD TRUMP: No, but what does that mean? You don’t joke about that. What does that mean you’re white trash?

VOICE 1: You know, I grew up in a small town, and I’m not sophisticated.

DONALD TRUMP: Does that make you white trash? Do you feel you’re white trash?

VOICE 1: No, sometimes I do--

DONALD TRUMP: That’s a pretty stinkin’ statement. Don’t you think that’s a pretty bad statement about yourself?

VOICE 1: No, not necessarily, I don’t think [crosstalk] people take it seriously.

VOICE 2: It doesn’t sound flattering.

DONALD TRUMP: Do you go around calling yourself white trash? [crosstalk]

VOICE 1: Ah--

DONALD TRUMP: Do you think I want to hire somebody that’s white trash?

VOICE 1: No. I say it as a joke sometimes--

DONALD TRUMP: [interposing] I don’t like it as a joke. You know what, Derrick, you’re fired.

LL: OK, a firing offense. What do you think of Donald Trump’s response to that man calling himself white trash?

NANCY ISENBERG: Well, I think it reflects Donald Trump because for him there's only two categories, either you're great or you're a loser. And I think it also demonstrates that he doesn't understand the broader cultural implication. The idea that this particular person on the show is sort of drawing on that tradition of saying I’m a redneck, to say I come from a poor rural background, and that he can claim the idea of being white trash, and that is a more recent phenomena, because white trash was originally used as a term of disparagement, that was used by elites and middle class to look down on the poor, but from the seventies forward, now it becomes a part of identity politics, the way people define themselves. But it also reflects the idea that he assumes that if someone says that about themselves, if someone admits their background, where they came, that knowledge, that self-knowledge somehow is to him, undermines their ability. Because the kind of people he wants to hire are the people who think they're great, who think they're wonderful, who think that their whole life is about transcending whatever limitations they faced in our society.

LL: Let's talk about another presidential aspirant who made class an explicit part of his campaign. I'm talking about Senator Bernie Sanders. He campaigned against economic inequality, and the power of America's wealthiest one per cent is a key part of his message. Why did that resonate with so many people?

NANCY ISENBERG: Bernie Sanders sort of fell into that game of making class somewhat fuzzy, but a form of self-identification. When he won in West Virginia, he called himself one of the working class of this country. But if you went to the Feel the Bern website, he described his upbringing as lower middle class. And we shouldn't forget that he graduated from the University of Chicago and that he certainly hasn't made his career being a manual worker. So I think there is a tendency of all politicians, when they want to make a bridge to the larger electorate, part of what they need to say is that I'm a common man, this is my experience. But often it isn't their experience.

LL: If class is so entrenched and it has been, as you say, for centuries, how is a conversation about it going to change anything?

NANCY ISENBERG: I'm not going to exaggerate that suddenly people's eyes are going to open, because there are powerful interests that don't want to have this discussion about class. Not just the one per cent, I would also say that some journalists, the middle class, feel very uncomfortable talking about class privilege. And I think that it is something that needs to be addressed on a regular basis. And I find that it's not enough for politicians to just make claims about who the enemy is and assume that the one per cent is the enemy. They have to have real policies to back it up. And then on top of it, you can't sort of assume that it isn't about changing the way Americans think about themselves, our national identity and the myths that we tell ourselves. And that's really difficult to dislodge, it's really hard to challenge that, but we have to start somewhere.

LL: So how are the issues of class going to play out in this election?

NANCY ISENBERG: Well, I mean it's curious to see. I think that when Trump was being identified with white trash, that was during the primary when he was running in the south. And I think that it's all a matter as far as I can tell, whether the politicians or the candidates begin to say OK this is the actual class conditions that we live in today, and here are the policies that we could actually institute that would reduce the incredible class divide and class division that defines America. But I'm not that optimistic, because that gets back to that idea that campaigns in elections are more about entertainment. They're more about making people feel good. They're more about manipulating people so that they want to believe in some promise that a candidate makes. But if it's not backed up by something real, then as we discover after the campaign and the hoopla’s over, essentially, things don't really change. So, politics has its limitations in terms of how it can really change our society. And this is something we've seen over and over again. That's why I always talk about the Great Depression. One of the incredible things about the Great Depression is you have 20 per cent of the population out of work by 1932. And this is where you have people across America, probably begin to talk about class in the most sophisticated ways. Why? Because when 20 per cent of the population is out of work, you can't blame the individual. You can't say someone's lazy. You begin to have to talk about the structural foundation of economic inequality. And then the cultural repercussions of how we as I show in my book we want to dismiss the poor, we want to label them. We want to somehow blame them for their condition, when in fact we know that it’s impossible for our economy to employ everyone. So the assumption that if you just work hard, you'll make it, really again does not show how our society, and our economy really works.

LL: Nancy Isenberg, interesting book. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about it.

NANCY ISENBERG: Well, thank you for having me.

LL: Bye bye.

NANCY ISENBERG: Bye.

LL: Nancy Isenberg is the author of White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America. She was in Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

ENCORE: Nurse tracks down birth mother, cares for her without revealing identity

Guests: Phyllis Whitsell

LAURA LYNCH: Hello, I’m Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: A Calgary woman has reconnected with her long lost brother.

VOICE 2: And to find out I got an extended family now, it’s a great feeling.

VOICE 3: Well, it was an emotional reunion for a Susquehanna Valley teen and his birth parents this weekend.

VOICE 4: I just kind of wanted them to be a part of it and then having my family come together.

VOICE 5: After 50 years of searching, Betty found her mother.

VOICE 6: [background noise] Here’s your daughter mom, here’s [unintelligible].

LL: Well, it makes for a touching story when adopted children reunite with a loving biological family. But not every adopted child gets that picture perfect ending. Phyllis Whitsell was eight months old when she was left at an orphanage in the United Kingdom. As a child she was told her parents had died, but she never stopped looking for connections to her birth mother. After years of searching, Phyllis Whitsell discovered that rooting out family secrets meant keeping a big secret of her own. Phyllis Whitsell is the author of My Secret Mother, and she spoke with Anna-Maria Tremonti in February from Birmingham, England. Here is that conversation.

AMT: Hello.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Hello.

AMT: It was 1957 when your birth mother gave you up. The orphanage system was very rigid, how were you treated as the little girl at that orphanage?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: The orphanage where my mother left me was a Catholic orphanage that was run by very strict religious nuns. It was very regimented and very based on bringing children up in a religious background. As a little girl you accept what your situation is. But it was very much a routine, you got up in the morning, you said your prayers, but that sort of motherly love was missing from a very early age as a young child.

AMT: And you were all in big rooms, right? You were all--

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: [interposing] Yes, that’s right.

AMT: Like, all the girls in one room.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: That’s right, yeah. It was like four beds in a [unintelligible] partitioned by glass panels. It wasn’t sort of a homely feel about it. I mean, don’t get me wrong I’m not criticizing that in any way, other than to say that those little homely touches didn't seem to be there.

AMT: Well no, and it's important to remember that that's what it was like in the late fifties right?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes.

AMT: And you had a friend there named Brendan. You really wanted Brendan to be your brother. Tell us about him.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes, yes. We really got a special bond between us. He always wanted to protect me and he wanted to be my big brother. And when he was adopted, he was pleading with the nuns that we could be adopted together, but obviously that wasn't going to happen. It was lovely and it was very heartbreaking when he was adopted and I had to say goodbye to him on the orphanage steps.

AMT: You make the point that you have such a vivid memory of him because you didn't have a mother, you didn't feel you belonged to something. You felt you belonged together with him.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I think everybody, obviously their first memory of having somebody very special in their life is often their mother and their father. And it's something that they take for granted, it's the normal thing that happens to a lot of children. But as an adopted child, at times you're looking for that connection with somebody. And that's what I had with Brendan. And when he was adopted, I felt that last release stayed with me for a long long time.

AMT: How old were you when you were adopted?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was four and a half.

AMT: And what was life like with your new family?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was excited obviously to have a new family, and to be finally having a mother and father, and brothers and sisters. But I never seemed to make that connection with my adopted mother, what my idea of what a mother was for somebody to put their arms around me and give me that affection. I never really got that from my adopted mother.

AMT: How did she treat you compared to her biological children? There were three siblings, right? And then you.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: There was three yes.

AMT: You made four.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes, I made the youngest one, the fourth one. I mean I was told from a very early age when I went to see Mother Superior when I very first met my potential adopted parents that their daughter wanted a sister, and I said couldn't I be their daughter too.

AMT: And so you kind of felt that right away. You felt a little bit of a little barrier almost?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes. I always said that it's almost as if the seed had been sown then, that there was a little bit of jealousy. It's sort of a natural feeling really, isn’t it? Nothing that it was recognized how an adopted child may feel, especially as they’re four and a half, and to sort of settle into an adopted family at that age. It sort of takes a bit of adjusting. And it's just recognizing their feelings really, and understanding them, and explaining things to them. Rather than there’ve been a lot of secrets around my adoption, which there certainly was.

AMT: Well, what information did you get from your adopted family about your birth parents?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: That was the thing, you see I was told that both my parents were married. It was all to do with respectability, and that both died. My father had died and six months later my mother had died. I didn't mean to be too critical about my adopted mother, she gave me security, I say in her clumsy way because she meant well in some ways. But how can I say, she was so emphasizing the fact that she was married, it made me feel that she wasn't. It's very difficult for me to say to her I don't believe what you’re telling me, because obviously as a child you can't question your parents, they tell you what they tell you and you believe them. But I felt that it was frustrating, because I don't think she understood that I just wanted to understand the reason why she had to give me up. And then maybe I wouldn't have been so curious to find out my true identity, because I would have been told that information, and I could have moved on then from that.

AMT: Your mother had you out of wedlock, we know this now. At the time, what was their view of not wanting to go there. Was that out of step with what others were thinking? They didn't want to tell you had a mother who had a child out of wedlock, I guess.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes, I suppose the Catholic religion, certainly in the 1950s and 1960s, where it was to do with respectability. Maybe they thought some of her traits would come out in me, and as I grew up I would be thinking it was OK to have a child out of wedlock. I never judged my birth mother because she had a child out of wedlock--

AMT: [interposing] And the world has changed, right?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes.

AMT: I mean people don't talk that way anymore. But there was something else though, because they really put it in your head that you couldn't tell anyone that you were adopted. Tell us a little bit about the big secret in the family.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes, I think that was very difficult. I was four and a half, it was as if I had to erase those four and a half years out of my life. And I was told quite sternly by my adopted mother that mustn’t be mentioned anymore, you’re with us now, you don't need to tell anybody you’re adopted.

AMT: Well, moving ahead a few years, you become a nurse. One of your first jobs you're working in a rough part of town, you're actually living in residence. You're walking along one day and you see a woman outside of a pub sitting with two men.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes.

AMT: Tell us about the scene, what do you see?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: They were sitting outside on stools, having a drink and obviously they were quite drunk and they were all Irish because we could tell by their accents. I was obviously only 17 at the time and just starting as a cadet nurse, and we were just breaking up for our summer holidays. We were just joking with each other, me and my friend. And then these men, they were sort of shouting quite rude things to us and we wanted to get away quickly from them, but the lady in between the two men was obviously very drunk as well, and my friend grabbed my arm and said come on Phyllis let’s go, your mom’s going to be wondering where you are. And I remembered the look on the lady’s face at the time, her facial expression stuck in my mind, she seemed in a trance almost.

AMT: That same woman that you saw at the bar.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes.

AMT: Shows up at the emergency department while you are there. What's that scene like?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was doing my placement as a student nurse, and one Sunday morning I started my shift. Often that was a lot of drunks being brought in on the Saturday evening and I was there obviously having report for a handover from the night staff, and I’d spoken about this 48-year-old lady being brought in, a well-known alcoholic that lived in the area. She was a very noisy lady, she was obviously still sort of recovering from that previous night, she’d had a deep cut. And I was told by the staff nurse, could I go and look after Bridget, and they used her name. And I was there tending to her wound, and washing her, making her comfortable. But she was very loud, she was very aggressive. I was a student nurse with little experience of dealing with drunken patients at that point. I was just a year into my training and I was only 19.

AMT: What we’re leading up to something here, we're talking about a woman you see twice, who’s clearly got issues with alcohol abuse. Who was that woman?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: It was my mother.

AMT: How long did it take you to figure that out?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I didn't actually realize this lady we've just spoke about was my mother, until I actually met her for the very first time. It was the accent and name. The fact that she was an alcoholic, the address that I'd been given by the orphanage when I went in search of my mother. It was like a jigsaw and it all fitted into place.

AMT: And so you go through a process of trying to track down your biological mother and you make the connection through the information you get that that woman that you saw is your mother. Tell us about your very first meeting with your mother.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was a district nurse and I decided to go undercover to meet my mother, because I felt it was the only way that I would form a relationship with this lady, because I've had a very dysfunctional life. I lived ten miles away from where my mother lived. So I unofficially put her on the end of my rounds as a distant nurse who visits patients in their own home. And I would visit her in the afternoon because she wasn't allowed to get up early in the morning. So, she would always be put at the end of my list and I would have time to spend with her, and build this caring and loving relationship I eventually went on to be able to do.

AMT: So when you first went as a nurse, as you say undercover. To the house that you knew she lived in and you went into that house and you met her, tell us what you saw, and what it was like to meet her.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: She walked down some stairs that were off the lounge where she lived, and she came through the door into the lounge and I waited there to see my mother for the very first time. She was in very bad state, her face was badly bruised from possibly a fall or a fight. She had a black eye, her lip was swollen, her hair was matted, she looked very neglected, shall we put it like that.

AMT: And she was living in squalor.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: She was, she was, yeah.

AMT: You had seen these kinds of conditions before because of the work you do, but this is the woman that you had longed to meet all your life. And I'm just wondering how you processed that?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Obviously as a nurse I think naturally you're a caring person, and you don't judge people. Somehow training was very important, I was able to cope with it and I suppose hide behind the role, sometimes to protect my own feelings really. And try not to think sometimes that it was my mother, because I think to have thought too much about it being my mother at times it would have been far too much for me to have coped with.

AMT: So you made several visits to her. And you’re undercover, she thinks you’re a nurse, she has no idea who you are.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yeah, I mean lots people of asked me surely she questioned your visits, but she didn't, she was vulnerable, she was lonely. She was so happy to have somebody to finally listen to her, because often she wasn't listened to, because she rambled a lot, she jumped from one subject to the other and sometimes it was very difficult to understand what she was trying to say. So, here was a person that was prepared to listen to her. She very quickly picked up that I was not judging her, and I cared about her. So we made a connection very quickly, because I don't know, I warmed to her vulnerability, and we had that connection almost immediately.

AMT: And you were giving her care.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes. The first time I met her, she just talked. She was desperately wanting somebody to talk to, and within minutes she mentioned Phyllis, the little girl she'd had to leave at the orphanage. And that broke my heart, because I knew how troubled she was by what she'd had to go through in her life. And obviously there I was in front of her, her daughter and that was one of the hardest times not to tell her and I'm fling my arms around her and say I'm here mom, I’m here to care for you now.

AMT: Why didn’t you?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I had my son who was eight weeks old. So, he needed his mother. I was torn really, I had a mother here that needed to be looked after, but I also had a little baby that also needed to be looked after. So I had to you know get my priorities right and also make sure he wasn't affected in anyway by what I’d found.

AMT: OK, you had these fears about her. I guess she was so ravaged by years of alcohol abuse and she was also an angry woman, as you described her. She was very mercurial, right? It was a fear of if she came home, you wouldn't be able to live with her, or she wouldn’t be able to live with you and your husband and your child.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Absolutely, yes. I mean, she was a very argumentative lady. Alcohol had taken its toll, it had affected her personality. So although I'd made that connection with her, I felt I couldn't bring her into my life as a mother and as a wife. It would have caused problems within my immediate family, my husband and my little baby, but obviously I went on to have three children. So, over those years I knew that the only way I could form this relationship was for me to be in control of it really. Because if I'd have told her, and it would have caused a problem with my own personal life, then I would have had to break ties, and I knew that would have broke her heart. So I know people may find it hard to understand why I could never have told her who I was, but I know if I’d told her and then she couldn't have been part of my life, that would have broke her heart more than anything.

AMT: How did you finally tell your mother who you were?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I was so desperate to see the smile on her face when I did tell her that I was Phyllis, but conscious of the fact that mentally she was deteriorating. As I said she was a very argumentative lady, but this one day I visited her she was very calm, and I realized I will tell her today, and I knew that it was literally now or never. So I sat beside her, I told her who I was, I told her I was Phyllis. I told her the orphanage where she'd left Phyllis, reminded her of my birthday. And I was hoping for triggers that her memory would come back and she would remember. And even if she hadn’t taken it in, she would remember. And I would get a smile, I would get a hug as if to say yes, I know you’re Phyllis. But sadly I had left it too late, she was unable to take this information in. As I told her I was Phyllis, there was this silence, this blank expression, and there was no response from her.

AMT: Do you regret how you sought her out and how that all unfolded?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: I mean, people have questioned that about was it ethical. But I always say that she was my mom, I was always invited into her home. I always cared for her in a loving and caring way. And we talk about protecting vulnerable adults, my mom was vulnerable, but nobody had cared for her. Everybody just turned the other way. I was the one person that was there to love her and care for her. So to me, my conscience was clear. I knew all I wanted to do was look after her, and bring her some happiness, and show love to her that she'd been denied all her life. So, ethically I have nothing to to feel guilty about in any way.

AMT: What do you want us to think about when we see vulnerable people like your mother?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Well, I think you need to look at the whole picture and not judge people, because there’s a thin dividing line between getting it all so right or all so wrong. And if something traumatic happens in your life, and you turn to alcohol or something that you’ve become addicted to to deal with the pain, addiction’s a difficult thing to deal with, and it may take the pain away, but obviously it causes other problems. When really, there's nobody there to talk to when my mom was younger. There wasn't the counseling and the support that there is today. As a nurse, obviously I suppose that's where my training came in. I was there to sort of not judge her in any way and look after her because she was vulnerable

AMT: When you first looked for your mother, you were not expecting to find a woman so hobbled by her addictions. Is your life much better because you managed to connect with her, even if it was in an unconventional way? Even if it wasn't who you thought she was?

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: Yes, I’ve said I never regretted meeting her, not for one minute. I knew as a little girl I had a sixth sense it all wasn’t well with my mother. I knew she wasn’t this ideal mother. I mean people talk about as an adopted child you have this fantasy of meeting your birth mother and had been this ideal person. I always felt she wasn’t and I as a little girl, the only thing I could ever do was light a candle to pray that her guardian angel would look after her. As I grew up and obviously qualified as a nurse, I was able to now care for her in a way that she'd been denied the chance to care for me. I felt privileged to have had that time with her. Often as mothers and daughters, we have that volatile relationship. We can argue with our mom or our daughter, and then we talk about forgiveness very quickly. And that's part of love as well, forgiving that person. You move on, and you just say don't worry I've forgiven you, would you like nice cup of tea? I forgave her. Because to me, without her I wouldn’t have been here.

AMT: Phyllis, it's really important to hear your story. Thank you for sharing it.

PHYLLIS WHITSELL: It's a pleasure, thank you.

LL: Phyllis Whitsell is the author of My Secret Mother, and she spoke with Anna-Maria Tremonti in February. I'm Laura Lynch, thank you for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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August 2, 2016 full episode transcript

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