Disclaimer 1: This blog is about adoption through the eyes of an adoptee. The adoption narrative usually portrays adoption as all rainbows and unicorns with the adoptive parents hailed as saviors. I do not discount that there are good things that come from adoption stories but rarely is the adoptee voice heard in the narrative. I hope to show you the good, the bad, and the ugly. Please keep an open mind while reading.
Disclaimer 2: I truly appreciate my adoptive family. I love them. I mean no harm to either my adoptive or biological family with my story portrayed in this blog. I want to be as honest as I can with my feelings and my experiences. Therefore, you can get an accurate picture of an adoptee’s life and how we see the world. Some names have been changed.
“I am not a writer, but I have a lot to say.”
“When I speak up and say my perspective is valid, that is not me saying other perspectives aren’t. People need to recognize that key people in the adoption process (adoptees) continue to be silenced because our realities don’t match the fairytale narrative. Someone sharing about their experiences, story, and trauma isn’t a call to action to do anything except listen. When I am met with responses like ‘You are silencing non-adopted people by speaking up’ my first question is, ‘Why is my story being seen as a threat.’” -Lilly Fei
As I mentioned before, I had never put much thought about my paternal side while I was growing up. I have heard from other adoptees that they did the same thing. Reflecting on this, I believe it was because I always heard “your birth mother loved you so much she wanted the best for you”. The emphasis was always on the birth mother. After I read more on adoption, I came to realize that the bond between mother and baby began during pregnancy. Until I got my original birth certificate (OBC), I allowed myself to think about my biological father only hand full of times.
My thoughts of my biological father only went as far as just him - not to any extended family or siblings. I would always secretly hope for siblings, but it was a very abstract thought. It never seemed like reality. My childhood thoughts led me to conjure up a story that he went off to the Vietnam War and never returned. Why did I do this? I have no idea. What did this story do for me? I believe it created a coping mechanism for me. Why does death create a coping mechanism? First, I believe it gave me reason to believe that he was not physically real anymore. Second, it kept me from thinking about both my bio mother and father. I would not have to conceptualize their lives after I was born and relinquished. I thought about my birth mother and her getting married and having children. My mind could only deal with the storyline for one of them.
Once I received my OBC, I set out looking for my biological mother. I was upset that my bio father’s name was not on it. I wanted that information, but the name of my biological mother kept me busy. It took my mind off looking for him for the time. I had hopes of finding her, having a great reunion, and then her telling me “my story”. I had everything planned out, but my plans did not go in a way I thought they would. Also, I never anticipated that my paternal side of the family would play the biggest role in my reunion.
When I got the message through Ancestry from my cousin (Ancestry members can use usernames instead of real names), I still did not know the name of the cousin. The whole time I had been reaching out to him, I did not realize that his surname was part of the name he was using in his username. It would have been so much easier had I figured this out. I had my fathers’ surname in front of me for months and I did not even realize it. When the message came through from this cousin, I stared at it for what seemed like hours. I was shocked. Many people on the search groups and DNA sites of Facebook say, “someday it will be your day”. My someday had come but now what was I supposed to do? I had already tried this reunion thing with my biological mother and that did not go well.
My daughter, Brayden, and my friend, Angie, were with me. They were gently encouraging me to call the number. I was so afraid. I was trembling. I made up excuses of why I should not call. Rejection was on my mind. I was afraid that I was going to be told he died. I felt deep down that he had died because that was the story my mind had made up when I was a little girl. I always felt a pull towards my biological mother, but as for my biological father…I just did not feel that link.
With all the excuses of why I should not call, Brayden and Angie debunked every one of them. I knew I had to make the call, but I cannot express how hard it was to do. Once I did this, my life as I knew it was going to change drastically.
It was early in the day, but I picked up the phone and called. My cousin answered and once again (as with my maternal uncle) he was accepting and kind. He talked so fast, there was just so much information coming at me and I was trying to take it all in. First, the cousin match on Ancestry (the son of who I was messaging) was my second cousin and he was only 16 at the time. I felt terrible that I had reached out to him with my life story and such adult issues. He and his grandfather (my uncle) had a love for genealogy, so he bought the DNA test. I am forever thankful for this.
I was listening intently. I was trying to catch on, but he kept saying names of people who I did not know. He began to tell me that he had a great relationship with my father and talked to him frequently. He had just spoken with him the day before on my bio fathers’ birthday. Wow… now I knew my father’s birthday. I remember interjecting at one point and saying, “he’s alive?”. I was shocked. My mind had me believing that my search would end with him being gone.
This is what I learned in that call…
When my cousin had called to wish him a happy birthday, my bio father opened up to him about having a daughter that was put up for adoption 47 years ago. My cousin said that this bit of information reminded him of a message that his son had received on Ancestry. All the information I had sent in these messages were being corroborated by my biological father. My cousin was talking so fast, and I was trying to keep up. I was in a state of confusion, but nonetheless, a very happy state of confusion.
My cousin told me that my father had been unwell over the past year. He said at one point he was in hospice and they believed he would die from liver failure. Just a few months before this phone call, he had rallied and became better. He was taken out of hospice. Hearing that my father was extremely ill was a hard pill swallow. I mean… what if he had died? I know I had always thought of him deceased. But what if I had learned that I missed out on talking to him by just a few months?
My biological father wanted to talk to me, and my cousin asked for my permission to share my contact information with him. He said he would call him as soon as we got off the phone and that I would probably hear from him soon. During this conversation, I was told that I had a brother and a sister. I was reeling from so much information. Excitement, trepidation, and sadness are just a few of the emotions I was going through. I had the name of my biological father, my sister, and my brother. Now, I knew who my paternal side of the family was and where they lived. I had no idea how many layers of an onion I was about to peel. I thought knowing this information would be the end of my journey. Was I wrong! This was just the beginning.
A half hour later, the phone started ringing. I had paper and a pen ready just in case this was the one and only time I was to talk to him. Rejection was still very present in my mind. I wanted to record as much information as I could. My hands were shaking. I was not sure if I could go through with it. My mind and my body did not seem to be working in tandem. My mind was trying to protect me, but my body reacted by answering the call.
I left my daughter and friend with the names of my half siblings. They were already on the hunt and doing some sleuthing to find out more information on them and the family. I particularly wanted to see pictures of all this new family. I had such a strong desire to see if I look like any of these people. I was so grateful that Brayden and Angie were there supporting me. I do not know what I would have done without them.
While they were sleuthing, I was having a three-hour conversation with my biological father. He was another fast talker…it must run in the family. Here I was some outsider listening to him talking about this family member and that family member as if I knew who everyone was. I was trying to keep up, Although, I was so excited to hear about everyone, it did make me extremely sad that I had missed out on so much. I think he was just as nervous about this conversation as I was. I drank up all the information I could from him. It was difficult to hear most of what he had to say but I believe this first conversation was probably the most raw and truthful conversation we had.
He told me about my biological mother, how they met, and how they dated for about two years. He said he saw her on a Ferris Wheel, and he told his friend, “See that girl. I am going to marry her”. So, this information matched what I got from the non-identifying information. I was worried that some of the information was not correct because adoption agencies have been known to falsify information. They would do this in cases where the biological families would not give them much information. So far, the information was coming out truthful. The hardest part was hearing about her getting pregnant and their family’s response to it. From the story I was told, her father went to his house and was demanding answers. The next thing he knew, my biological mother was taken away and brought to the maternity home. It was interesting to hear his prospective on how he secretly was talking to her while she was away. According to him, there was a list of people that were authorized to call her. He was not one of those people. He would get her friend to call and hand him the phone when my mother got on. There was a list of people that were able to visit her, too. And you guessed it, he was not on the list. He told me the story of how he drove up to the home with her friend and her friend signed her out for a few hours. My mother got in the car and they left and were together for a few days until her parents found her and brought her back. He said he continued to beg her not to put me up for adoption.
This was all so difficult to hear. I had so many questions. I was unable to formulate what I wanted to say. I was hearing “my story” and I was no not fully prepared for it. I mean… how do you ever prepare yourself for this conversation? No matter how many times I thought about how this conversation would go, I had no idea the emotions that would take over. One story he told me was how his older sister had offered to pay my maternal family money to not put me up for adoption. What I got from the story was she was going to raise me until my biological parents could take over and do it, but my maternal side refused this offer. I did not know what to make of this. I was hearing that I could have stayed with my family but that it was turned down. He got to the day of my birth and how he found out. He said her friend called and told him. His story was he got in the car and drove several hours to the hospital and snuck in. He said he held me for like 30 seconds until he was found and escorted out. He said, “you had so much black hair on your head”. This went against everything I had conjured up in my mind about my birth.
In one of my grad classes for my master’s in human relations, we had to write about our birth. I found this to be such a weird assignment. I mean how do we know what your birth was like when you do not remember it? If you had never heard anything about your birth story, how do you even come up with your own story? I was starting to feel the same way as I did after being asked to do my family tree in sixth grade. This professor was convinced that we subconsciously remember this day. Anyways, mine was a sad story and really brought a lot of emotions out for me. At the time, I had never really thought about the actual birth itself. Over the years, I had thought about how sad it would have been for my mother on that day. Especially after having my own children, I would look at them and think how did she ever get through it?
I wish I could find the paper I wrote for this assignment. I do remember some main points from it. I used some of my non-identifying information to help me write it. I found out from my non-identifying information that I was born 2 weeks early and was a low forceps delivery. A few years before finding my biological family, I was being followed over several years by an ophthalmologist. I have worn glasses since kindergarten for a lazy eye. At the time of seeing the ophthalmologist, they were watching me for glaucoma. On my first visit, my doctor asked me “were you a forceps delivery?” I did have this information now due to getting my non-identifying information, so I answered yes. She said, “I can tell”. Now I was intrigued. Receiving this small amount of information from my birth seemed inconsequential to me at the time. Now, she was putting some pieces together. She explained that I did not have a genetic condition that caused the lazy eye, it was due to my cornea being damaged by the forceps. She was so excited to have someone with this condition because they do not see it all that often and called all the interns and residents in to view it. She said most people only see it in textbooks. She told me that back in the time of my birth, they would not have given much thought to this damage because they would have been just happy to get me out alive. She asked if I had been told that my eye was cloudy for several weeks after my birth. Unfortunately, this would have been overlooked since I was in foster care and I would have been placed with my adoptive family after it cleared up. So, I figured my birth must have been very traumatic both physically and mentally for my biological mother.
I was confused listening to him because it did not match my own thoughts that I had created. Also, it did not seem to go along with all the research I had done on these homes. The fathers of the babies were not part of the birth or even after. He said he waited outside the hospital and watched my mother leave with her parents. He felt convinced that she was not giving me up and was taking me home with her. He was surprised when she left without me. He tried several times to see her after she got home. I believe they secretly met up twice after and he still said he asked her to reconsider but she had said it was done. He never saw her again and heard she moved away.
I cried several times during this conversation. I wanted to take in as much as I could. I wanted to stay on the phone until I got all the answers, but my mind was on overload. I had to process all this information I had heard. I needed to put meaning to it all. I had to make sure I was going to be okay. I was elated but sad. I felt so alone.
We ended the call with the promise that we would talk the next day. I was so overwhelmed. I kept a journal through this time. I am so glad I did. It captured a lot of my feelings as they were happening. Journaling was a positive way for me to write my feelings down and to try to make sense of the roller coaster ride I was on.
That conversation was difficult to process. He was saying over and over how much he loved me, that he never forgot about me, and that he never wanted to place me for adoption. I do not know why these things were so hard to hear. I had such disbelief in his words. I was feeling very guarded. I did not have a father figure in my life so maybe this was why I did not know how to accept this type of sentiment. I felt broken. It was as if I wanted to feel this overpowering love for him and I felt so guilty that I did not know how to reciprocate. He was a stranger to me that kept calling himself my dad. I never really had a dad, so these words were so foreign to me. He did ask if I had a good life, but I found it strange he never dug deeper. I spent thirty days listening to his stories and I tried to interject with my stories of what I had been through. Although I did tell him some aspects of my life, I never felt as if he wanted to hear it all. Maybe all these people I met were nervous or felt that maybe I was looking for information about them, but I thought there would be so many more questions about what I went through, and those questions were never asked.
He did not have any social media or even an email. This made it difficult to send and receive pictures. A friend of his offered him the use of her iPad so I could send pictures to him. I sent a few that day with the promise that he would call the next day. It was a flurry of phone calls after this. I talked to my cousin again. He had spoken to my biological father after I did, and he reported that he was so excited to have finally spoken with me. Later in the day, I got a call from my biological fathers’ brother (my uncle) to say welcome to the family. It was exciting but overwhelming. This uncle had email access and was really into genealogy was well, so he gave me access to their family tree on Ancestry. It was quite impressive to see because it went back several generations and they had added my information to the tree. I had been looking for this for so long. Now that my name was in the tree of my roots, my name just did not look right amongst these people. Once again, I felt like I just did not fit.
Brayden and Angie were busy looking for my sister and brother on any social media. While I was on the phone, they found them. I still did not know enough about the family. My emotions were so high. Several times I had asked my biological father if he would tell them. All he kept saying was he had not had any contact with them in years. I decided that I needed time to process this relationship first. I would give him thirty days to set a concrete relationship together and for him to contact my siblings. I wanted him to tell them. But if he would not do it, then I would in a month. I studied the pictures of my siblings over the next month. Honestly, I had no idea how this was going to go. I knew I was going to have to contact them, and I knew it was going to disrupt their lives. I just felt deep down they would not accept me.
On that first phone call, he told me he had several pictures of my biological mother and him. He promised to send them to me right away. I hated that I had to wait for them to come through slow mail, but I had waited this long, what’s another few days, right? During this phone call, I learned his love of photos. My next step was to create a photo album for him and mail it out. This photo album consisted of baby pictures all the way up to the present day.
After all the phone calls to my husband, kids, and my new family members, I needed to take a minute to breath. Angie, Brayden, and I packed our beach chairs and just went to the beach to try to digest everything that had happened. I needed to get my thoughts together. The pieces were coming together but there were still so many pieces missing. We sat on the beach for several hours trying to make sense of what just happened.
Over the next thirty days, I spoke with him every day and some days multiple times. Still, I was not closer to getting him to tell my siblings. I learned a lot about him in these conversations. He was quite the storyteller. His stories confused me; some were very strange which caused me to have so many more questions. I felt like I was not getting the full story about my siblings. I just had to get through this month. During this time, I felt like it was even more important to get my biological mothers’ side of the story. I needed to put the stories together to make it complete. It was now time to reach out to my half siblings. I had come this far, I needed to keep on this journey. At the time, I had no idea how this stress was affecting my body.
This last month began with so much uncertainty. When I got that email, I knew it could go one of two ways. Luckily, my new family was accepting and for that I am forever grateful to my cousins that helped me out. They gave a part of me back; a part I did not know I was even missing. It was a roller coaster ride of emotions. I had my ups, downs, and twists. I think I am still feeling that month’s emotions four years later. I had 47 years of wondering who my biological parents were, what they were like, and if I would ever be accepted by them. There were even times when I thought “Oh what if they are famous?”. I am not kidding. There were times when I thought they must have done something wonderful with their lives because they gave me up when they were so young. Giving me up was their second chance. I want my readers to realize that for me this “reunion” month was not all rainbows and unicorns. I learned things that truly made me question if I wanted to continue my contact. I will share more in my coming blog posts. What I found out so far on this search, is that we are all human beings with our own thoughts, values, regrets, hopes, and desires. I believe adoption has touched us all differently, but it has been a core element in who we have become.
Resources:
Side note: The day I was contacted by my biological father, I contacted the adoption agency. Since they had not started searching and never cashed my check… I am now $500 richer!!!
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