Archive for the ‘In Reunion’ Category

The Last to Know—An Australian Late Discovery Adoptee’s Story

Saturday, April 26th, 2014

I was born on Valentine’s Day, 1955, in Paddington, Sydney and grew up in country New South Wales, Australia, believing I was the third of four children, and the only daughter of Dutch immigrants. Despite being only five months younger than my older brother, I never suspected something was amiss.

I had considered myself a medical marvel to survive, but it was a lie, not only about me, but about my “almost” twin brother, too. My mother even managed to keep this secret from her family in Holland.

Decades later, when I was 43-years-old, I approached my mother to find out more information about my estranged late father. I needed to know more about our family’s medical history after my third child died from a congenital heart defect, and our next child was born with a disability.

My mother adamantly told me that the only thing I needed to know was that my father was bad (in phrases I won’t repeat). She refused to speak any further about him, so I arranged to meet with a beneficiary named in my father’s will to try to get more information.

Towards the end of the conversation with this woman, she mentioned my family’s secret adopted child, but she did not know which of the four of us it was. I knew the only way to find out if it had been me, was to write to the Department of Welfare.

In October 1998, I received a letter in response to my “Request for Confirmation of Adoption.” That moment is forever etched in my memory. I sat alone in my car and read a letter that challenged everything I had ever known or believed to be true about myself:

Our records indicate that you were adopted. Many people find it distressing to have their adoption confirmed, even when they have suspected it for many years. If you would like to discuss this with a counsellor, please do not hesitate to phone and ask to speak with a counsellor on duty.

I didn’t phone a counselor—I phoned the person whom I had known for forty-three years as my ‘mother.’ The fact that I’d discovered my adoption shocked her. She felt betrayed. Whereas our phone conversations had always ended with “I love you Diana,” after that day, she never assured me of her love again.

I cannot describe the physical and emotional pain I endured from her rejection. I found some consolation in finally understanding why it was that I had never felt a bond or deep love for her. Our relationship had always seemed to be based on what she needed from me— and I could never provide enough.

Despite this, I agonized over what to do with my newly found information. Should I let it go, or search for my true identity? I struggled with feeling responsible for her pain, though in time, I learned that this was a by-product of adoption.

Worse yet was learning my three brothers, and their wives, knew I was adopted 20 years before me. I was the last to know.

The next decade was dominated by my search. I learned that my birth mother had also moved to South Australia and lived only 40 kilometres away from me. Our relationship was respectfully distant, and I am thankful to her for that. She provided my family history, circumstances of my birth, and information about my father in the years before she passed away.

I learned that they’d decided to relinquish their parental rights prior to my birth and that my mother went home on the fourth day of her confinement. I, however, remained in the hospital for a month, then moved to another location for two more months before joining my adoptive family.

There were some gems to savor in her family history—she was the granddaughter of a knight of the realm in England— although her father, shell-shocked and dishonorably discharged from the army after serving in Gallipoli, was considered a disgrace to the family name, and eventually disowned.

As for my father, my mother told me that he was Greek. After they’d each heard their parents arguing about my impending birth, they decided it would not work to keep me. I went from being double Dutch to half Greek, which explains my dark hair, eyes, and propensity to break plates.

My birth father went on to become an orthopedic surgeon. After googling his name one night, I read his obituary in an orthopedic magazine. Apparently, he had been a wonderful doctor, husband, and father. I had written to him twice, shortly after I found out I was adopted, and again five years later. Now I knew why my letters were met with silence.

Since I discovered my adoption, the most difficult parts of my journey have been extricating the effects of adoption on my mind, body, and soul. I lacked the resilience to cope with what life had thrown at me, and my default position became one of despair, detachment, or avoidance.

As time unfolded, my preoccupation with looking after other people to the neglect of what I wanted and needed, led me to study social sciences and counseling. My post-graduate counseling theory studies gave me a scaffolding in which to understand the effects of my adoption experience, the profound effects of loss, grief, and the trauma of attachment disruption.

I am trying to reclaim my soul—my identity—and something equating to agency to live as an adult rather than reacting as an insecure child. There was no loving adult to comfort me after my birth. There was no secure adult to parent me, or teach me social skills, or how to cope well.

And I finally understand how the various forms of family abuse, separation trauma, on-going complex trauma, and neglect have caused me to react defensively to others. Often, I arm myself for a fight as if in a life or death situation, which is often out of proportion to the actual situation. It’s exhausting.

Seven years ago, when I was overwhelmed by the concurrent illnesses of my daughter and my two mothers, I began therapy. My therapist recognized my lack of essence, or presence, as I sat in his room reading my notes, unable to describe what I was feeling.

He has provided a safe space to cry years worth of pain, to speak and feel heard, and to be accepted despite my mistakes and weaknesses. It has been a place to learn the skills I need to live. Through this inner work of psychotherapy and hypnosis, I have met my demons and knit together some of the pieces of identity that were fragmented after my birth.

I continue to reclaim whom I am, but am left with the disquieting evidence that perhaps there is no way back from the life-long effects of my adoption. Every day I learn to settle my physiology and be gentle with others and myself.

Editor’s note: March 21, 2013 was a significant day in Australia’s adoption history. On that day, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a moving apology on behalf of the Australian Government to people affected by forced adoption or removal policies and practices (video below). The Australian government’s “Find & Connect” website provides links and information for Australian adoptees to search for records and connect with support services.

Thanks for visiting our online community. In addition to stories like this one, you can find valuable resources, discover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page.

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An Iowa Adoptee’s Thoughts the Night Before He Meets His Birth Mother

Thursday, April 17th, 2014

I was adopted as an infant in Webster City, Iowa in 1959, and told from a young age that I’d been adopted. It wasn’t a big deal for me. I had great parents that loved me very much and gave me a great life.

When I was two, we moved to Carmel, Indiana, where I grew up with my sister, who was also adopted. Neither of us ever thought much of looking for our birth parents. The few times we did, we agreed not to search until our parents passed, out of respect for them. Our father passed in 1984, our mother in 2010.

A few months ago, I submitted paperwork and a check to the Iowa Department of Human Services to request background and medical information on my birth parents. According to the state’s law, adoptees and their birth parents can find each other through their “Mutual Consent Voluntary Adoption Registry.” Information is only revealed if both parties have registered and there’s a match.

A package arrived in the mail a couple weeks later. It included basic information, my birth parents’ ages, nationality, height, weight, eye color, education level and religion— and my given first and middle name:  Jeffrey Todd.

The medical history portion on my birth father stated that he had died at age 40, and in parenthesis said: “birth father’s brother wrote us of his passing.” The paperwork did not provide either of their names, only that he was 21-years-old at the time of my birth, 5’10”, brown hair, blue eyes, and 160 lbs.—the same as me at that age. Those words made me weep for the man I never knew, and for the brother’s act of kindness.

And I wondered if my birth mother was still alive, and worried—more like panicked—that I’d waited too long.

My wife, Robyn, helped me immensely through the roller coaster of emotions. Knowing that the state of Iowa could help me no further, I reached out to a good friend of ours, Aly, who knows many people in the adoption industry. She put me in touch with a search angel. Search angels, I learned, are often adopted people and have a network that works together to help people like me. I was very lucky in that I had three “angels” help me in my quest— Cheryl, Denise, and Julie. There are no words to express how grateful I am for these three ladies.

On my youngest son’s birthday, Cheryl called and said, “I’m sure we found your mother. We have a phone number too. . . and guess what? She lives in Florida.”

My birth mother was living in Naples, FL, just 50 miles south of me. I was astonished. I moved to Sanibel, Florida two years ago. They discovered that my birth parents were from Kokomo, Indiana, just 30 miles north of my childhood hometown. There was an uncle and cousins in Kokomo and Michigan, too.

After a pep talk from Robyn, I called the number and hoped for the best, or at least not to be hung up on. Her husband, Jim, answered the phone. I explained that I was doing genealogy research on her first married name and asked if I could speak with Nancy to ask her a few questions.

When she came to the phone I introduced myself, and asked her to verify her maiden name so that I’d know that I was speaking to the right person. Once I was sure that she was Nancy, I asked if she recognized my father’s name. She did. Then I told her where and when I had been born.

I think she knew who I was from the first moment. She seemed so calm while I was an emotional mess. She asked, “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“My mother”

“Yes, yes— you are,” she said.

She had thought that I was still living in Iowa and that she’d probably never hear from me. We exchanged basic information and decided to let things sink in and talk again in a couple weeks. Before we hung up, she asked me to forgive her.

Forgive her?

My throat tightened. I held back my emotions, and said, “Nancy, I have had a great life and great adoptive parents and family. I understand the circumstances you must have faced back then, being unwed and from a religious family background. You don’t need me to forgive you. I understand.”

And I did. I knew she did what was best for me. Nancy told me that I have never been a secret from any of her family, including her two children. She has a 49-year-old daughter and 45-year-old son.

I told her I have three sons, two beautiful step-daughters, nieces, and a precious 1-year-old granddaughter.

Beyond the normal exchange of who, what, where, when, I learned that Nancy had been divorced prior to marrying Jim 24 years ago. It turns out that Jim was from Indianapolis and was my adopted mother’s boss for 12 years. What a small world.

We’ve talked a few times over the last few weeks. I’m going to meet her—my mother Nancy—for the first time this week. Fifty-four years is a long time, to say the least. I’m very nervous. I’m still thinking of questions I might ask, but then again, those questions will probably come naturally when we start to talk. I’m excited to see her, hug her, and let her know how happy I am to finally meet her— to fill this empty part of me.

I’m bringing my childhood pictures on through my college years to show her. Wish me luck!

Editor’s Note: For more information on Iowa’s access laws visit the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Image of Dan as a child: provided by author. 

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An Ohio Adoptee Finds Her Way Home to Herself

Saturday, April 12th, 2014

Nine months before I was born, my parents had a son who only lived for one day. They had had another son four years prior. My mother had a RH—negative blood factor. Back in the early 1960s, that usually meant that a woman couldn’t have any more “natural” children. My parents desperately wanted a second child, so they turned to adoption, and took me home when I was three-months-old.

From a young age, I knew I was adopted. My parents told me I was “special.” For a long while, I thought that was true.

I’m not sure when I began to feel differently—maybe it was when I saw my pregnant relatives, or when I had to listen to my other well-meaning ones say, “You weren’t in your mommy’s tummy like that baby is.” Maybe I felt differently when I wrote about my family tree in elementary school, or brought baby pictures to share with my classmates. Maybe it was all of the above.

I often wondered, Why was I given away? Yet, I never spoke of my adoption to anyone. I wanted to be like everyone else. I felt like I didn’t belong. Sometimes, that feeling was even reinforced. At a family reunion, one of my cousins told me that I didn’t belong in their family tree, and that they weren’t sure where they were going to “put me.” I felt like telling her to go to hell.

It didn’t help that my brother never liked me. Almost weekly he told me to go back to where I had come from. I don’t think he ever got over the death of his baby brother, and he blamed me. He was further challenged, and angry, after a severe case of measles left him mildly brain damaged.

My adoptive parents didn’t know how to effectively deal with the situation and sought counseling to help us both. As he grew older, my brother became an alcoholic and was in and out a jail several times. We reconciled shortly before he passed away in 1996.

After he died, I decided to search for my birth parents. I had had my own children by that time and was curious. My original birth certificate was inaccessible because I was born in Ohio in 1964. Nonetheless, I posted what little information I had on an adoption search website. A month after I posted, a woman contacted me by email and offered help. She charged $25 to search for records and mail them to me.

She found three possible birth mothers and I researched each one. After I ruled out the first two, I knew the third had to be connected to me. The woman who originally helped me indicated that this third woman had since had other children.

I didn’t live far from the county where I was born, so I traveled there and went to the Hall of Records where I was able to find birth certificates for two of her children. After that, I had enough information to go to the courthouse and search for information that might confirm my own identity.

The courthouse was full of temporary walls and half-constructed hallways. It felt like I was in a maze. I asked a female employee where to find marriage records. She asked if I was doing “genealogy research” and pointed me in the right direction. We joked about how long the construction might take, and I shared that my own office was going through the same process.

Using the information from the birth certificates that I’d just bought, I was delighted to find a marriage record for one of the (now grown) babies. I returned home, looked up the phone number, and chickened out when I tried to call.

My husband called instead, after I left for work, and contacted me several hours later to say he had talked to the woman, Melissa. Melissa said she didn’t think that I could be her sister, but agreed to talk to me if I called.

When we spoke, she said that my voice sounded just like her aunt. Sadly, the other baby whose certificate I had found, Melissa’s sister Melinda, had passed away when she was a child.

Before we hung up, Melissa promised to ask her mom for information and call back. The next 24 hours were agonizing. The next night she called and said: “YOU ARE MY SISTER!”

I asked Melissa to have my birth mother contact me when she was ready. I didn’t want to pressure her. Several days later, my birth mother, Janet, called. We talked, we cried, and then we agreed to meet.

I learned that she was a widow with six children at the time she met my birth father. Her first husband had died tragically in a car accident the year before. My birth father had been separated from his wife when they began their relationship, and he ended it when he learned of my birth mother’s pregnancy. He reconciled with his wife and moved to another state.

She had nowhere else to turn. Janet explained that her mother had said, “You have six kids, for heaven’s sake—you don’t need another one.” And that was that. She had given me an “M” name too: Michelle Ann.

Not long after this conversation, I was on my way to meet her and realized that I had passed her house many times before. My heart was pounding. I got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk to the front porch. Janet had been watching out the window and quickly opened the door. She took me into her arms, hugged me tightly and said, “You look just like the rest of us!” I was 39-years-old and felt like I had finally come home.

Her home was a century-old farmhouse that had been lovingly restored. I stepped inside to find the wallpaper in her front room was the same as I’d used in my foyer. I followed her into the kitchen and there at the table sat the courthouse employee, who had giving me directions a week before.

Did I break the law? What was she doing here? I thought. She looked up and said, “When I saw you at the courthouse, I thought you looked familiar.” Days later, she told Janet about “the woman who had come in to do family research.”

Life is funny— it turns out that that this woman is my birth brother’s wife.

That summer was a blur of familial meetings—I met brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews. I was my mother’s seventh child. She had three more children after me, and she had lost three husbands and two children. I was the only child she had placed for adoption.

Relinquishing a child for adoption doesn’t just hurt the child. I learned that a birth mother carries that pain with her for the rest of her life. I had been born exactly one year after my cousin, and every year on my birthday, Janet painfully remembered that I was celebrating my birthday with another family.

When I first met her, she gave me all the information needed to find my birth father. I contacted him a year later by phone. Five years after that initial contact, I received a phone call from a woman named Candi. She said that her father had told her about me, but her mother would not allow him to remain in contact. Candi and I corresponded often and she eventually helped me meet him, albeit it was only once. He looked at me and said, “Not too shabby.”

He passed away two years ago. Candi and I have kept in touch ever since. Another sister never wanted anything to do with me.

Before I began this journey, I was angry for many years. I was angry at my birth parents for giving me away. I was angry with my adoptive parents for adopting me; and I was angry with people who grew up in “normal” families.

Once I found my birth family, I moved past the anger, and am now a much happier person. I have wonderful relationships with my birth mother and siblings, albeit I think adopted children never quite fully fit into either family. I didn’t grow up with them, so we don’t share the same memories, and they can’t identify with the life that I had, since I grew up in the suburbs and they grew up on a farm.

My adoptive parents met my birth mother, too, and welcomed her into our family. In 2003, four years after my reunion, my father passed away. My mother passed in 2009.

From where I stand today, only one remaining thing angers me about my adoption—when I first searched for my birth family, I had to petition the courts to get my original birth record and I was denied.

I’m not the only one who has suffered. There are millions of us in the United States who have no access to this most basic of possessions —a birth certificate. I’m very thankful that Ohio has moved forward and will soon allow adoptees access to their pasts.

Image credit: Molly as a child with her family.

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A Texas Adoptee Comes Full Circle When He Finds His Birth Mom

Tuesday, March 25th, 2014

[dropcap size=dropcap]I[/dropcap]n July of 2012, at forty-two-years-old, I found my birth mom. It was an unbelievably awesome and life changing experience! The funny thing is, for most of my life, I never thought I’d ever want this to happen.

I grew up in Waco, Texas, and I always knew that I was adopted. I had great adoptive parents, grandparents and extended family. My adoptive family never hid anything from me, and I never thought much about being adopted. My parents were my only parents, and to tell you the truth— our friends never even knew that I was adopted.

I fit in with my family perfectly. I shared the same beliefs, values and personality traits. When anyone learned of my adoption, I’d hear something like, “C’mon, you know you are not adopted—you look just like your dad.” Our family got a kick from that because it was so true. I was treated well, and I felt very loved and spoiled. I’d say my childhood was as good as it gets.

In fact, my life was so good, that I think if my birth mom had called me on my eighteenth birthday, I would have freaked out. Without a doubt, I would have run from her. It wasn’t that I was angry with her for giving me up—I just hadn’t ever explored the idea of knowing her.

In 2000, I met my wife-to-be, Robin. It wasn’t until four years into our relationship that I told her I was adopted. I wasn’t keeping secrets from her; my adoption just wasn’t a big deal. She was shocked. Robin also thought I looked just like my dad, and she couldn’t understand my lack of curiosity or my lack of desire to search for my birth mom. Our conversation prompted me to research the subject of adoptee behavior and searching. I was surprised to learn how so many adopted people wished to reconnect with their birth families.

Nonetheless, my desire and interest to reconnect with my birth mom did not increase. When I reached my late thirties, however, I started to wonder if I might have a brother or a sister in the world. I didn’t go too far out of my way, though I did post the date and state of my birth on a few adoption registries to inquire if any siblings were searching for me.  Nothing.

Life went on, until my wife and I started to look into what it would take to adopt a child. We had endured some heartbreaking losses and adoption seemed like a good option at the time. While we did not end up choosing to adopt, the exploratory process opened another door.

When we had attended an adoption seminar, we had heard some birth moms speak about their experiences of giving up their child. I was really moved to hear all of them say that they just wanted the best for their children and that they wanted to know that their children had turned out okay.

The words of those birth moms hit me hard. Had my birth mom worried and wondered about me for all these years? Now, I felt I had to do the right thing. If she had worried, then I felt the need to bring her peace.

Boy, did things change quickly after that. In May of 2012, I began my search. I viewed many sites and registries, but all of them led to dead ends. I requested my non-identifying adoption information from the state of Texas, which took a few weeks to receive. Wow. Just getting that and reading about my birth mom and dad was amazing.

My initial motive to search for my birth mom went from wanting to help her— to having a burning desire and need to know everything about her. The search experience was all encompassing.

Ultimately, I came across something called a “search angel.” All of these search angels were helpful and each of them gave me sound advice. After interviewing several of them, I chose to work with Marianne.

On July 1st, Marianne located my birth mom and birth dad. Even with the little information I was able to provide her, she had found my birth parents within only twenty-four hours. We discovered that they had married, and that I also had two younger full birth sisters. I was blown away.

Marianne found the addresses and phone numbers for all of my immediate birth family members. I was even able to see my sisters’ pictures on Facebook. Now what? My wife and I were too scared to call my birth family. So, Aimee, an intermediary and a friend of Marianne’s, made the call on our behalf.

I was a nervous wreck. What if, after all of this, my birth mom did not want to talk to me? On July 3rd, Aimee made the call. Five minutes later, Aimee called me…

She had spoken to my birth mom! She said that she had never talked to a birth mom who was so emotional or excited to have been “found.” My birth mom told Aimee that she would need a few minutes, and that she would call right back to get my number.

Two long days passed. My birth mom had not called back. I freaked out—why wasn’t she calling? I couldn’t take it.

Finally, I remembered that I had sent her an anonymous email through Classmates.com to ask her if either my birthday or Waco, Texas had had any meaning for her. Since she should have received it on the very same night that Aimee had called her, I checked my email for a response: “You’re the son I’ve thought of every day for the last 42 years. Please call me.”

My birth mom had been waiting on me to call her. She must’ve been a nervous wreck, too. Seconds later, on July 5th, I called my birth mom and heard her voice for the first time. She cried, laughed, and cried some more, and I could tell that she had needed and wanted this every day— since the day that I was born.

I also spoke to one of my birth sisters, who had been at my birth mom’s house at the time. On July 4th, just the day before this reuniting phone call, my birth mom finally told my sisters that they had a brother. They were stunned as I was, and yet, our conversation was so good, and so natural.

On that day, I learned my full birth story. When my birth mom had gotten pregnant with me, my birth dad’s parents insisted that I be given up for adoption because my birth parents were not married at the time of conception. My birth mom’s parents were quite religious and several of her relatives were even ministers. She felt then, that under all those circumstances, she could never tell her family that she had become pregnant with me. She believed she’d bring great shame to everyone.

At that time, my birth dad was in the Army. He had asked my birth mom to marry him while she was still pregnant. She had said “yes,” and together, they moved to the Fort Hood, Texas army station. She had me there in Waco, but like many mothers who relinquished children in that era, she never saw me on the day I was born. A year later, they moved back to Minnesota without me.

She told me that she didn’t want to give me up, but that she did what she thought was best for me at the time. No one back in Minnesota could know of my birth, but it was important to her and my birth dad that I was safe and that I would go to a good home. I believe she was being a good mom even when she couldn’t keep me. My birth parents stayed married for almost 30 years, until my birth dad died in an unfortunate accident. I never got to meet him.

On August 16th, in the same year that I had found my birth mom, I traveled to Minnesota to meet her. My reunion was something out of the ordinary—and not something I can explain well to others. It was surreal—like I had entered into a world of fantasy. Hugging my birth mom for the first time, holding her hand and just being with her was so incredible. I got to meet my sisters, too. I had always thought that I shared the exact mannerisms of my adoptive family, but when I met my birth family, I couldn’t believe how many mannerisms I also shared with them.

I now know how hard my relinquishment was for my birth mom, but today—she, my sisters and I, share a nice relationship. I talk to my sisters all the time, and I talk to my birth mom almost every day.

I’ve never held one ounce of bitterness toward my birth mom. Times were different back then and my birth parents were only kids themselves. She was twenty-one-years-old, when she had to leave her baby boy in Texas and move back to Minnesota. I can only imagine that kind of pain.

On my 43rd birthday of this past year, my birth mom returned to Texas to celebrate my birthday with me for the very first time. We appreciated many special moments then, and I know I will enjoy the ones left to come.

My adoptive family is supportive of my reunion journey to this day. Although, my parents were understandably a little uneasy with my search and reunion at first, it did not take long for them to realize that I would never abandon them and that they would always be my parents. I love all of my families very much.

To think that a few years ago, I neither wanted nor envisioned all that led to this happiness, and now it’s my new normal. I feel fortunate to know my birth family— only wish I had met them sooner.

Image credit: photo provided by author.

Thanks for visiting our online community. In addition to stories like this one, you can find valuable resources, discover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page.

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An Irish Adoptee Talks Adoption over Tea with Philomena Lee

Tuesday, March 18th, 2014

An Irish adoptee who has had a secret relationship with her birth mother, finds hope through a conversation with Philomena Lee.

For the past 14 years I have been having a secret relationship with my birth mother. We meet in hotel bars across Dublin, preferring darkened corners where we can catch up in peace, avoiding conversations with strangers, and evading any questions about our physical similarities with a polite smile.

The relationship feels clandestine, almost like an affair. Our rendezvous are arranged by text message – we never speak on the phone – and I have long stopped bringing her bouquets of flowers, knowing well that she cannot explain their heady extravagance back home.

This is the story that I told Philomena Lee while we sipped tea in the fancy bar of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Washington, D.C. Philomena is in town with her daughter, Jane, as part of a publicity tour for the Oscar-nominated movie about the son she bore in a convent in Roscrea in 1952 and whom she lost to forced adoption when he was three-and-a-half-years old.

I was meant to be interviewing Philomena but before long she had turned the tables on me. My journalist’s notebook sat empty as I found myself opening up, telling Philomena the story about the woman who gave me up for adoption 41 years ago in Dublin and who every day since has lived with the festering secret of my existence, a ballast around her heart.

Philomena knows all about secrets. For 50 years she told no one about her little boy Anthony, who won over even the sternest of nuns with his dazzling smile and gentle kisses.

Having given birth to Anthony in the mother-and-baby home in Roscrea, Philomena was forced to work in the convent laundry, the price of admission for “one night of romance” with a handsome lad whom she met at a carnival in Newcastle West and never saw again.

For one hour of the day, over three and a half years, Philomena was allowed to play with Anthony and, despite this depravation, they formed an unbreakable bond. But because Philomena was a “sinner,” her child could never belong to her.

The week before Christmas 1955, Anthony was dispatched to America, Philomena unaware of his departure until she saw his tiny face searching for hers in the back window of the car that was taking him away.

My own mother – let’s call her Sarah, not her real name – made the mistake of falling in love with a swaggering man-about-town in a rural Irish outpost in 1971. The day she told him she was pregnant he pretended not to hear. That day was the last she would ever lay eyes on him.

“You just believed everything that they told you,” Philomena says when I tell her about Sarah’s pain. “I carried my secret all though my life, and even when I left Roscrea, it never left me because I thought, ‘I can’t tell this to anybody. It’s too serious. I’ve committed a grave sin.'”

“We were so ostracized and so browbeaten into thinking that we had committed a sin, a mortal sin,” she says.

Now as unofficial ambassador for the shamed women of Ireland’s past, Philomena is using her new-found celebrity to usher those such as Sarah out of the closet, urging them to liberate themselves from the time machine that has left them stuck in the backward Ireland of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

“I was in the same situation. I was so afraid to tell. I was afraid that my children would reject me,” she says. “But they are the most wonderful daughter and son. I should have known better.”

“Please, please, women my age, will you please come forward and tell your story like I did?” Philomena says in reference to the older Irish women, like her, for whom time is running out. “For my age group you need them to tell your story because for a lot of this group, it’s the siblings that are looking for them.”

Philomena’s argument is a compelling one but the plucky 80-year-old has her work cut out for her. Despite all the economic and social progress that Ireland has made in recent decades, the shame and stigma – enforced by the unhealthy relationship between church and state – still has a vice-like grip on the minds of these women.

The Irish Government last year had to be dragged kicking and screaming into an apology for the forgotten Magdalene women who washed the dirty laundry of the Irish public in penance for their “crimes.”

Philomena, as head of the newly created Philomena Project, is now advocating changes in Ireland’s arcane adoption laws to allow adoptees like me access to our original records. (Despite permission from both Sarah and my adoptive parents, I am still denied access to my records.)

The Irish State – which stood by, and in many cases profited from the imprisonment of unmarried mothers in religious institutions – has a lot for which to answer.

Sitting next to Philomena and her daughter Jane during our tea in Washington is Mari Steed, another “forgotten” Irish child born in a baby home and sent to America when she was 18-months-old. Mari, in a cruel twist, became pregnant as a teenager and was forced to relinquish her own child for adoption.

It struck me that the Ritz Carlton in downtown Washington had never had a tea party quite like it before – four Irish women, some holding hands and shedding tears, each of our lives irrevocably altered by Ireland’s messy relationship with the Catholic Church.

Back at home that night, I felt somehow altered. The interview with Philomena had felt like a benediction, her grace and forgiveness in the face of the terrible injustice she had suffered like a healing balm. I poured myself a glass of wine and paused in the kitchen to send Sarah a quick text message. It was nearly midnight in Dublin but I guessed that she would be awake.

“Just met Philomena and told her about you,” I typed in a hurry. “She had such empathy for you. Said you are not alone.”

Sarah’s reply was instantaneous: “I think it took her 50 years to open up,” she wrote. “I’m praying for a miracle for myself.”

Caitriona Palmer, Christine Koubek, and Heather Katz at a Donaldson Adoption Institute event in support of birth mothers

Caitriona Palmer, Christine Koubek, and Heather Katz at a Donaldson Adoption Institute event in support of birth mothers

Note: This piece originally appeared in the Irish Independent and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

Image: with Philomena Lee provided by Caitriona Palmer.

Thanks for visiting our online community. In addition to stories like this one, you can find valuable resources, discover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on Facebook.

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The Adoption Domino Effect

Tuesday, March 11th, 2014

Joanne Currao, A Late Discovery Adoptee, Discovers a Secret that Affects Her and Her Children

About a year and a half ago, at the age of 48, I found out that I’d been adopted as a baby in New York. My life derailed right then and there. My adoptive father died when I was 17. My mom had passed away two years prior to this discovery. All I had left was my older brother.

At the time, I’d been married for 26 years and had three beautiful children who ranged in age from 9 to 22-years-old. I had been a stay-at-home mom since my second child was born and enjoyed every moment of my family. Life was beautiful. . . or so I thought.

I was on the phone with a cousin talking about antiques that had been my mother’s, explaining that my brother had most of my mom’s things in his house, and that we needed to discuss them, but there never seemed to be a convenient time. She said, “Oh. I thought that the fact that you did not have more of her things might be because of the adoption!”

I was confused. “What? Do you mean our grandmother?” I knew my grandmother’s first born child had been born out of wedlock.

She went on to explain that my brother and I had been adopted, and that my mother was unable to bear children after her third miscarriage. “I thought you knew,” she said.

My mouth dropped open. Did I just hear that correctly—Adopted? How could that be? Sure my mom had had three miscarriages, but she had always told me that I was hers. I sat in stunned silence as the word ‘adoption’ washed over me.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I hadn’t realized that you didn’t know. I feel bad.”

“How did you find out? Who knows this? How long have you known?” I asked.

“My mother told me when I was young, maybe 12. Everyone knows, our cousins, their spouses, everyone.”

I thanked her for telling me. I told her not to feel badly because it was vital that I know. I told her I’d be okay and got off the phone. The room was silent, but the sound of a train crash rang through my ears.

That word “EVERYONE” rang in my ears. Even people who married into this family knew? But I didn’t. I felt ashamed, like I was the butt of a huge inside joke. Everyone knew, and probably talked about it in hushed whispers. I imagined that—“See that kid over there? She was adopted, but nobody is supposed to tell her that so shhhh.” My mind raced reimagining the family functions of my life.

“Honey?” I called to my husband in the other room. “You’re not going to believe this—my cousin just told me I was adopted!” He was as stunned as I was. He looked at me with an odd look on his face and asked about my brother. He told me he would have thought my brother was a natural child, because my mother had always seemed to favor him.

“Nope. He’s adopted too.” I decided right then that despite how horrible it would be for him to hear, I needed to call my brother and tell him what I’d just found out, make sure he heard it from me.

I composed myself as best I could, picked up the phone, and dialed his number. I whispered a quick prayer for God to give me strength while I waited for him to answer. It was going to hurt him.

After we exchanged hellos, I said, “I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it. I’m sorry to shock you with this. I just talked to Donna and she dropped a bomb—she said we were both adopted.”

Nothing. Nothing on the other end of the line, but a long silence followed by a heavy sigh. Did he already know? Could he have already known and not told me? In that moment, I felt certain that he knew the truth. “Wait—you know this?” I asked.

“Yes. I know. I came across our Adoption Decrees in Mom’s papers a few years before she died,” he said. “I really wanted to tell you, but the time never seemed right, and as time went on, it got harder and harder to tell you. Mom was sick and you were going through so much at the time.”

Now I was the silent one.

He apologized. He told me his name at birth, and that he had found his biological mother. I was stunned!

Not only had he not told me, he had gone on to find his mom and hadn’t thought it was important to tell me the truth. I was at a complete loss for words. He, too, was “in” on the family joke. That’s what it felt like. I imagined my brother talking in hushed whispers with his own family about me. I had never felt more shame and anger than I did on that day. My mind raced away with imagined scenarios of the people that I’d loved laughing at me behind my back for being too stupid to know this fact about myself.

I learned two things that day: nothing in my life was what it had seemed, and that betrayal runs deep.

In the months that followed, I cried so many tears I should have washed away. I had a horrible crushing chest pain and became severely depressed. I was also worried. All my life I had given my physician an incorrect health history for myself and my children.

At a routine screening during my second pregnancy, my doctor discovered I carried the genetic defect for Cystic Fibrosis, a potentially fatal disease affecting the lungs and other organs. At the time, the news had shocked me. Supposedly, that trait is rarely found in Italians.

My husband had to be screened too. We both needed to have the gene in order for it to effect our offspring. I asked my mother if anyone in our family had had Cystic Fibrosis or been tested for it. If ever there had been a perfect time for her to tell me about my adoption, that would have been it.

She simply said that there was no family history and told me to disregard the results because they were probably wrong. I wondered if it might be on my father’s side, but because he had passed away years earlier I couldn’t ask, so I reasoned that since my husband is a full-blooded Italian, and he did not carry the trait, all would be okay.

Once my adoption was revealed, my fears returned in full force and kept me awake many nights. What genes or other horrible defects might I carry that could hurt me or my children?

I contacted Catholic Charities, the organization I learned from my brother had handled our adoptions. They said our records were destroyed in a fire. I googled the said fire and learned that there had indeed been one at the Iron Mountain Storage facility in NJ. The fire destroyed Catholic Charities’ adoption records in New York City from the late fifties to the mid seventies, mine included. I contacted the church that I was baptized at. They said they had no record of me under either my first name or my adopted name.

More pain in my chest, only now it felt like an elephant was standing on me. Within a few weeks, I was at the doctor’s office for the pain, and explaining to him that I had no health history. Fifteen minutes or so later he asked: “Any family history of anything like this?” I looked at him in disbelief.

“Oh! I’m sorry.” He went on with the exam, deemed my chest pain stress related, and gave me a prescription for a sedative and antidepressants, then sent me on my way.

The last year and a half has been a roller coaster of emotions. I paid a large sum of money to find my mother, only for her to tell me that after all this time, she does not know if she can have a relationship with me. She never told anyone about me, and her shame and guilt are unbearable.

Despite a few exchanged letters, I still know very little about her, only that she is Scottish and Polish and she told me that my father was Jewish. I was raised Italian. I know Italian! I don’t know Scottish. I don’t know Jewish. How can I even begin to identify with who I really am?

My name at birth was Tracey. That is not an Italian name. What does a Tracey look like? Act like? My entire foundation, everything I’d thought I was, had fallen out from under me.

One afternoon, during all this, my oldest daughter, Veronica, sat next to me at the kitchen table with a sad look on her face. “Mom, I know you’re sad and angry. I just want you to know that I’m sad and angry too. I feel like Grandma not telling you, is the same as not telling us. I feel like I am adopted too. Like I am feeling everything you feel. All the lies. Grandma’s family history is not my history anymore. All those stories that I loved to hear were all untrue for me. I thought she loved me. I’m mad because she lied not just to you, but she lied to US.”

I hugged Veronica. It hurt to think that my adoption had to affect her too. She and my mother were very close. My adoption was like dominoes, impacting my children and perhaps their children one day too.

I still don’t even know what my birth mother looks like or the sound of her voice. Thankfully, though, I found my birth father’s family. He passed in 2002. I keep in touch with his sister, and she is wonderful. She has shared stories and photos of him. I look like him. It is surreal to see a face that really looks like you when you have never had that experience (aside from my kids).

I remember a time when I was about seven and asked my mother if I was adopted because of a feeling I had. She got angry and denied it, said I was crazy for thinking such a thing. So many memories come flooding back, and so many lies.

I have had weeks where I couldn’t even leave the house. After reading books about adoption loss, I realize that all the same feelings of loss and trauma that adoptees who knew they were adopted described, were feelings I could relate to also, even though I was not consciously aware of my adoption. Somewhere in there is knowing.

I am slowly getting my life back through individual and group therapy and building a new foundation. I am not going to allow myself to be a victim of decisions that were made for me without my knowledge, consent, or approval. I owe this to myself, my husband, and my children. I’m healing my hurts, facing my trauma, and learning about who I really am inside, the culmination of all my experiences.

I am fighting for open records for others like me, in New York, and in any state I see that needs letters and support. Most U.S. States do not allow adoptees the right to our original birth records and identities.

I need my original birth certificate. It is a need that is beyond the obvious. I already know my name, and the name of my first parents. I already have my medical history. This is something different. Sometimes it feels as if I wasn’t born at all, like I just sort of popped into existence—a daughter without a country. I want to see with my own eyes that I was born and connect my face to my past.

Thanks for visiting our online community. In addition to stories like this one, you can find valuable resources, discover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page.

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Thanksgiving Day Reunion ’95

Friday, February 21st, 2014

Adoptee, Daryn Watson’s reunion inspired a poem that evokes the initial rush of discovery.

 By Daryn Watson

Twenty-five years and three months to the day
Since you had to give me away
For the first time I heard your voice
You told me you didn’t have a choice

A great sacrifice you did make
To give me a home for my sake
A chance to give me a better life
Provided by a husband and a wife

Bob and Irene were their names
Daryn Robert Watson became my name
Along with Juanita, that made us four
Raising two kids, oh what a chore

In August ’95, I began to look
After reading an adoption book
My birth name was Lyle Richard Campion
Knowing that— I felt like a Champion

A woman named Dee put me on “The Net”
It won’t find her, I thought, at least not yet.
Roy Kading in Winnipeg picked up my name
Determined to solve the mystery game

October 8th, a message from Nancy
Roy with news liking to my fancy
I called but no one was home
Tears filled my eyes when I was alone

I prayed to God, “What should I do?”
“Wait,” he said. “It’s not up to you.”
“Okay,” I said and tried to let it go
The outcome happened, as we both know

October 9th, again I called Roy
“I found her,” he said. I felt such joy
Have patience—as she might not call back
The anticipation was more than I could hack

A half hour later, I heard the phone ring
The sound of your voice made my heart sing
“This is your real mother,” I heard you say
“OH MY GOD,” I said. This is a true Thanksgiving Day

I asked, “What is your name?”
“Valerie,” you replied
I had two brothers and I cried
Sheldon and Troy were not there
My new family truly does care

On December 21st we will first meet
I know my heart will skip a beat
A huge burden will leave your heart
Now that we have a brand new start

The rest of our lives we have to share
I feel peace, knowing you’ll be there
With thanks to God from above
I give your family all my love!

END NOTE: After a brief search, I found my birth mother in Alberta, Canada. Through the 18-plus years of my adoption reunion experience, I’ve learned more about myself, and the complexities of adoption reunions. I hope that my writings will help educate other members of the adoption triad and the general public. To see more of his writings, visit Daryn’s website.

Thanks for visiting our online community. In addition to stories like this one, you can find valuable resources, discover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page.

Subscribe to our blog to receive more adoptee tales, and consider adding your voice to our Secret Sons & Daughters collection. 

An Adoptee’s Portrait in Nature and Nurture

Tuesday, February 4th, 2014

Ann Mary Roberts was an uptown girl in the ’60s, a pretty, 16-year-old pianist attending an all-girls Catholic school in upstate New York. Her parents had seven children and her father had Hodgkin’s disease. They caught her sitting on a bench one day in a shaded park with the boy they had just learned got her pregnant. She was on a bus the next day, destined for her older sister’s house in Maryland, with a phony wedding ring and an alibi—“tell anyone who asks that your husband is in Vietnam.”

Her last trimester was spent at a home for unwed mothers in Massachusetts. She was eating a forbidden stash of chocolate on Halloween when the stomach pains struck. She thought it was indigestion. I was born the next day.

I knew none of this, not even the correct state of my birth, until the letter arrived.

“Honey, a young man dropped this off for you,” my mother said, handing me a sealed brown-linen envelope labeled “Christine.” It was Mother’s Day, 1987. I had just transferred to a college in upstate New York, and was living at home in Albany until I found campus housing.

I took the letter and headed for the family room couch, thinking it was from a friend until the pictures started falling out: a cute little girl with painted fingernails, a dark-eyed woman feeding wedding cake to a man who looked like a mob boss and that same woman with an older lady who looked just like her, both smartly dressed in crisp black-and-white suits, sipping drinks on a balcony. I was breathless as I stared at the photos of a girl, and a woman, with my own dark brown eyes and auburn-streaked hair.

Dear Christine,

The time has finally arrived. I don’t know if you even know you are adopted. I was 17 when you were born. I remember holding you on my lap; your eyes seemed to look right into my soul. I knew I couldn’t keep you and my heart was broken and still is. Words cannot express how I have felt for 19½ years, not knowing anything about you. I visited you at the infant home but I couldn’t hold you or kiss you because you were behind a glass window. You are a five to ten minute drive from my house. I named you Ann Marie. We are good people, nothing to be afraid of.

Love, Ann

While I knew I was adopted, I also understood that adoption agencies brokered two things in the sixties—babies and secrecy, but somehow she had found me.

Photos from the letter, including Ann and her mother Ann Sr.

Photos from the letter, including Ann and her mother Ann Sr.

“Honey, who’s that letter from?” Mom asked from the kitchen.

My cheeks flushed, as if I’d been caught reading someone’s diary. My mother had suffered enough, miscarriages; the deaths of a baby, her father and brother; and my father’s affair—the affair that left her with three young children to raise, with me the oldest at 7. If there was one thing I vowed as a girl, it was to make my mother’s life easier in whatever way I could. She had devoted her life to us, and unlike other adoptees I’ve known, I never felt loved any less than my younger brother and sister whom she’d given birth to.

*   *   *

I was 13 and playing the board game Sorry with a girl down the street when she got mad and spat: “I don’t care if you win, YOU’RE adopted!”

I ran home in tears to our babysitter, Vivian, who put her claw-like nails to work dialing my mother at the restaurant as I cried at the kitchen table. I was overwhelmed to think that this woman who had always been my mom might not fully belong to me.

She rushed home from the double-shift she was waitressing. We went to her room. I sat on the edge of her waterbed, across from a photo of us kids dressed in matching green-and-beige plaid. Our clothes matched, but in my family of lights, I looked darker than ever. My mother had always said I looked like my grandmother, her mom, and that I took after her too because I loved music and making things.

“Honey, I’ve got something to show you,” she said. “Wait here a minute.” I listened to her rummage through the deep part of her closet, behind her clothes, where the ceiling sloped down. My sister once told me our mother hid our Christmas presents back there, but I never peeked—I always wanted to be surprised.

My mother emerged from the closet, her hair a little askew. She held a large beige envelope and opened the tiny metal prongs that had clamped the envelope shut. I’m not sure how I knew, or what I knew, but when she pried those prongs apart, something clicked in my head, that noise, the way a padlock clicks before it opens.

She pulled out notes from my first visits to the pediatrician, and a letter, typed on white parchment paper from a caseworker at Catholic Family Services.

We sat together on the bed’s black cushioned edge. My arms goose-pimpled as I read the letter. It told me I was Irish, German and Welsh, that my birth mother was 5 feet 5, intelligent and sensitive, had taken piano lessons for years and hoped to major in music; and that my birth father was 17 when I was born, athletic and enjoyed team sports and the drums.

I’m no longer French or Dutch, I thought, as I looked at the framed picture of me and my grandmother atop the lace on my mother’s dresser. My grandma, with her chestnut hair and large brown eyes, had always been the person I thought I looked like in a family of blue-eyed blonds. In a single afternoon I had traded one ancestry for another. I felt betrayed; yet I couldn’t be mad at my mother. My father had been gone for over four years and she was the only parent I had.

“Chrissie,” my mother said, “when you’re older, I’ll help you search for your birth parents if you want to find them.” I tucked that offer away, thinking I might dig it out sometime after college.

*   *   *

“Who’s the letter from, Honey?” she asked again from the kitchen.

I walked into the room, eyes cast down at our red and cream linoleum floor, and said, “It’s from my birth mother.”

“What! Who the hell does that woman think she is sending you a letter? What if you hadn’t known you were adopted? I can’t believe she didn’t contact me first!” my mother ranted. I didn’t disagree, but I didn’t know what to say. It was a shock to me too.

My mother didn’t bring the letter up the next day, or the next, and I took that to mean she didn’t want to talk about it, or maybe I didn’t want to either. Adoption had always seemed like something you don’t discuss.

Yet a craving for answers got the better of me a few weeks later after I finished my last final exam. I called the number Ann had written down and arranged with her husband to meet the following night after I got off work from the local department store.

I scanned faces that entire evening wondering if one might be hers. I straightened and re-straightened the tie displays and paid frequent visits to the ladies’ room.

After work, I stood outside on the moonlit sidewalk in front of the store, waiting for a woman as foreign to me as the person who had just sauntered past on her way to her car. Yet the stranger I was about to meet shared a shrouded part of me. I pulled my cardigan closer to fight the spring night’s chill.

A woman with shoulder-length brown hair walked toward me. She was dressed in navy linen pants and a beautiful white blouse that was billowing in the breeze. She looked like the woman in the pictures, and she was studying me.

When she was only a few feet away, I whispered, “Ann?”

Before I could say anything more, she wrapped her arms around me and cried, “Oh, my baby.”

I put my hands lightly on her back. I felt cold. I’m hugging a stranger. I have a mother; I’m her baby, I thought.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said and pulled back. I don’t recall tearing up, or saying anything more in that moment. I felt as if someone had shot me with Novocain—nothing but numb.

She introduced me to her husband and then I followed them to an Italian restaurant down the street, where Ann and I filled each other in on 19 years of personal history. It was the first time I’d heard a true story about the night I was born. If an adoptee grows up believing one history to be true, what happens when you learn part of it was fiction? Does it change who you are? Should it change who you are? I didn’t know it that night, but it would take more than a decade to answer those questions.

What I remember most from that night were her arms. She had the exact same lightly freckled skin tone as me. And she kept saying, “I always thought you would have blue eyes, like your father.”

Ann and Christine

Ann and I

A few weeks later, I met my birth father, Gregg. Ann had contacted him in a neighboring town to tell him she’d found me. My initial lunches with Ann and evening get-togethers with Gregg were electrically charged; we had an instant rapport. I learned that Ann had a master’s in music, taught piano and was trying to have a baby after almost dying during a recent tubal pregnancy. And that Gregg was an English teacher, a poet, a music aficionado and father of a 13-year-old boy.

As the months passed, though, that initial excitement ebbed as we each struggled with the fact that I was not Ann Marie. I was Christine, a complicated composite of everyone involved. And it seemed like our reunion made them mourn the loss of Ann Marie again, or at least the Ann Marie they’d imagined all those years.

Gregg put it into words in a letter a few months after our first meeting: “I think there is such a gap between reality and the dream in this situation. Do you know what I mean? I guess I’m trying to say that I want to be everything you want me to be, but, realistically, I’m not sure I have the foggiest idea what that is—do you? I say to myself I hope we can get close—but how close?”

I didn’t have any idea. But those words and a mailbag’s worth of beautiful letters those first few years fostered a kinship and a second chance to have a father. We’d meet for coffee, go to concerts and talk frequently on the phone. But I felt guilty every time I did the same with Ann.

Though our reunion certainly answered those central questions—“Where did I come from?” for me, and “Whatever happened to Ann Marie?” for them—for every detail, every question answered, more unanswerable questions arose, such as: How do I introduce these people whose genetic makeup I share? How often should I see Ann or Gregg? Do I invite them to my graduation? Will knowing them jeopardize my relationship with my mother? My siblings? My cousins?

*   *   *

At the time I met Ann, adoptions were still whispered about, and reunions like ours occurred mostly as a result of a private investigator. It was seen as disloyal and ungrateful for an adoptee to want to know his or her birth parents. Somehow a primal desire for ancestry had been construed as a statement about adoptive parenting.

For all those reasons, I grappled with my need to know Ann and Gregg. And I found it easiest to offer people a practical excuse, such as: I’d like to know what medical conditions I could inherit. 

But the truth is, knowing them made it profoundly easier for me to feel at home in my own skin. I discovered Gregg and I both tried to figure out life through writing, and that Ann and I shared many of the same spiritual philosophies. And I realized why I was so damned introspective and curious: I got a double dose from them.

Gregg and Christine at a concert in Albany, 2013.

At a concert with Gregg in Albany, 2013.

Given all that, I didn’t want to say: Thanks for answering my questions, for letting me know where I came from. Now can you please go away and we’ll catch up again in another 19 years.

So I fumbled on, even as it became complicated having them in my life, especially around the holidays. “I haven’t seen you in a long while,” Gregg’s mother would say. Or Ann would ask, “A bunch of us will be at my brother’s house on Christmas Eve. Would you like to come?” Though it was wonderful to be included, I was trying not to lose my place in my own family gatherings.

One weekend visit home, a few years after I had moved to Boston, I divided 48 hours among my mother and beloved grandmother (my mom’s mother), who had just suffered a stroke; my brother and his new baby; my sister, who was enduring a trial; Ann, who was going through a divorce; and high school friends who just wanted to catch up over a beer.

No matter how I allocated my time, there was never enough. I was always letting someone down, and always struggling with this sense that I was being ungrateful to my mother.

Through all of this, my mother remained fairly silent, which I interpreted to mean she was stepping back to let me figure it all out. I was immensely thankful for that on my wedding day. My mother looked beautiful in her floral-pink dress as we rode in the limousine to the church. She sat in her place of honor, the front row of the church, like all mothers of the bride. Except this mom shared the day with her daughter’s birth parents as Ann played Christine’s songs from Phantom of the Opera on the piano and Gregg waited at the church entrance to escort me down the aisle.

I know my mother’s stomach was in knots that day as she endured endless questions from relatives who hadn’t met Ann and Gregg, but she handled it with grace. She gave me a gift perhaps not many parents could: She let go and loved me unconditionally, wanting nothing more than for me to be happy. And that is what makes her my mother in every sense of that word.

Me and my mom

Me and my mom.

*   *   *

For that brief time surrounding my wedding, all my relationships converged, but it didn’t last. I could quietly be a part of each individual family, but not one whole. A few months later, Gregg and I hit a reunion rough patch and took a break from one another. After that, I wasn’t sure I was capable of traversing this rocky terrain anymore, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother and Ann might have felt the same.

A few years later, when my son was born, something shifted. I now understood the anticipation my mother must have felt before picking me up from the infant home. And I began to realize the despair Ann spoke of as I breast-fed my newborn son and stroked his pudgy legs in the middle of the night. I couldn’t imagine having to relinquish him, never to touch his baby-soft skin again, or know the person he would become.

As my son grew, Gregg and I grew close, and Ann and I settled into a sisterly relationship of sorts supporting one another through the ups and downs of our lives: for me, the birth of my second son, and postpartum depression; for her, artistic endeavors as a painter, and a first bout with breast cancer. We’d meet for lunch, then stroll a park when my first son was young. She called him “a wise old soul.” He called her “Grannie Annie.”

Christine Koubek's birth mother, Ann, whom her grandson called "Grannie Annie."

*   *   *

A week before Mother’s Day in 2009, I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee before crossing the boulevard to the card store. I had learned that this annual greeting card ritual could take a while, and I needed cards for my mother, mother-in-law, a couple of grandmothers and, toughest of all, for Ann.

That particular Mother’s Day marked our 22nd anniversary. More than two decades of knowing each other, after a childhood apart. It also marked the year Ann’s cancer had spread.

I opened the door and meandered down the card aisle, hands warmed by the cardboard cup as I perused the racks of cards for mothers, step-mothers, grandmothers, godmothers and women who were “like a mother to me.”

I stopped at “grandmothers” and selected a few, then moved on to “mothers” for my husband’s mom and my own. I found one for my mom that thanked her for always being there, for teaching me to take care of myself, to persevere and be strong.

Every year I tried to find a card for Ann, but they invariably said: “the one constant in my life,” “being there when no one else could,” or “since I was a child”—none of which applied. There was no card that said: “I’m sorry for all you went through back then.” “I can’t thank you enough for giving me life and for the gift of my family and for the opportunity to know you, as well as that part of me that is Ann Marie.” Or “in a world where we all could use a parent who truly knows and loves each of us—thank you for being one of mine.”

I tossed the cards aside, and rounded the corner to the blank card aisle. I figured I’d just keep writing it myself.

*   *   *

Four months after that Mother’s Day, Ann lost her battle with cancer.

A few days before her death, Ann’s younger sister, Lisa, asked how to refer to me in the obituary. “I don’t want to offend your mother by calling you Ann’s daughter,” she said.

I thought: God, how that question sums up our 22-year journey. I told Lisa I needed to think about it. I asked my mother, who said, “Whatever you want to do is fine with me. I know you’re my daughter.”

And then I had an idea. I wrote to Lisa:

After all these years with Ann (and Gregg), one thing I’ve learned is that none of the labels (nor their associated roles and obligations) have been sufficient, and I am so happy that Ann and I were able to create our own meaningful relationship despite them. But an obituary needs a label, and you’re right: “Daughter” is true but confusing in the sense that I’m my mother’s daughter. And yet, I’m not a stepdaughter nor a goddaughter, and “birth daughter” sounds ridiculous…. I think using the name she gave me at my birth is the truest way for me to honor her and our relationship. Therefore, please use:

“Survived by a daughter, Ann Marie Roberts.”

Note: An earlier version of this essay was first published as “Finding Ann Marie” in Bethesda magazine, and “Portrait in Nature and Nurture” recently appeared on BrainChild.com.
Image: painting “Childlike Spirit” by Ann Roberts.

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Making Sense of Fantasy and Reality

Monday, February 3rd, 2014

Divided loyalties, unforeseen consequences, joy, loss—California daughter, Kendra Crookston, discovers that reunions have many seasons. 

As a child, I spent much of my time wondering about my origins. Initially, I perceived myself as quite different from my parents. My mom and dad were, and still are, disciplined, conservative, and heavily involved in local politics. On the other hand, I was an oddball—free-spirited and with a wish to never conform.

Through those years, I recall feeling badly for my mom and dad because they could not conceive a child of their own. They are both smart and generous, and I grieved because they could not create a biological person to take after them.

Perhaps my sadness had stemmed from a belief that I paled in comparison to that imagined child. I think he/she would have been a math whiz, someone who knew the value of a dollar, and a good decision maker. As I type here, the tears run down my face. I longed for them to have the child I thought they deserved.

My parents, however, always described my adoption as a blessing. They provided very few stipulations to the adoption agency, and had waited years to become my mom and dad.

All in all, I had a happy childhood. I was close to my many cousins and they accepted me for me.  My parents referred to me as “traveller”—a child who had never met a stranger.

As I matured, I talked to my parents about everything except strong feelings. They never fought, nor did they seem to share their feelings with one another, so I was unaware if they were ever ill, hurt, or sad. Therefore, I had plenty of room for fantasizing. I wondered who my birth family was, and who I really was.  My mind spun a patchwork of romantic and catastrophic possibilities.

I only knew that I had been born in California, and placed with my adoptive parents in Ohio. Why Ohio?

I remember wondering if my birth mother was a movie star (I was from California after all), and on the bad days I imagined I came from a family who couldn’t care for me. My parents always joked that I had crawled from California to Ohio as an infant. It took decades before I would uncover the truth of that trek.

The few times I mentioned searching for my birth family to my parents, they said they’d help me when the timing was right. I was twenty-one years old, living on campus, and about to graduate from an Ohio college with a useless degree in the study of people when I was finally ready. My parents and I went to a restaurant and discussed the cost of a search. They offered to split the bill.

With the help of Adoption Network Cleveland, I hired a private investigator. In three days, the investigator located my birth mother by combing through California voting records.  Being the impulsive person that I am, I immediately called the given number.

After a few rings, a woman answered. “I’m one of Karen’s high school friends.” I stuttered and lied.

“Karen doesn’t need any old friends,” the voice replied and then abruptly hung up.

I sat befuddled, staring at the receiver. A few minutes later, my roommate and longtime friend poured me a glass of champagne. I called again and nervously said, “Um, I’m Karen’s daughter.”

The woman sighed, “Oh, you must be Shannon.” Hearing the sound of my original name hit me hard. I had never heard it before. Numbness swept through my body, followed by an odd combination of excitement and panic, which was all the more heightened because of the woman—who was this woman? She didn’t sound pleased.

She rambled about some birth sister having a baby, and said she’d try to get in touch with someone. Finally, I realized I was speaking to my birth mother’s abusive ex-husband’s new wife. Maybe that’s why she was abrupt.

Hours later, my phone rang. For the remainder of the night, I spoke with my birth mother and birth sister, Chantel, who had been born three years after me.

The following day, I boarded a plane to California. My birth mother paid close to $2,500.00 for that flight. The experience was breathtakingly exciting! I arrived at the John Wayne airport in the evening and exited the jetway. I scanned the crowd and immediately spotted my birth mother who was visibly shaking as she stood beside a man I assumed was her new husband. She had my same skin tone, blond hair, and blue eyes. One of my many childhood fantasies had just come to life—that burning desire to scan a crowd of strangers and lock eyes with the woman who had created me.

Meeting her had an immediate grounding effect on me. I felt newly tethered to the plane. On that first night, I slept on the living room floor, curled right up next to my birth mother. I cannot imagine doing that with any other stranger. We have similar body types, which I later learned included feet that are shaped like hands. When I look into her eyes, I see a familiar person—a feeling that is truly difficult to describe.

Our courtship continued after I returned to Ohio. Six months later, I moved to California. It seemed natural to move across the country to get to know her better. In retrospect, my parents must have been horrified. The day I departed, my dad helped me pack my car. I remember him standing in the driveway of my childhood home and smiling. He said, “So, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll fly to California, and we’ll drive your car through Vegas on the way home. We’ll play some slots.” I laughed.

When I arrived in California for the second time, I discovered a family in transition. We spent the first three days in and out of the Pediatric ICU with my birth sister and her son. When not at the hospital, my birth mother and I studied each other. Soon after my arrival, my birth mother experienced flashbacks to the early months after I was born. She started to call me “Shannon,” the name she’d given me. My birth sister didn’t know what to make of me, and went about her routine as though I had never appeared. I spent much of my time alone.

Three weeks later, I took my father up on his offer. He drove us home, while I slept and cried, only stopping for food and to play the slots.

My birth family and I hurt after I left. For the next several years, we didn’t speak to each other. I tried to put the entire experience behind me and move on. I got married, bought a home and had a child—all without ever telling them.

It wasn’t until I reunited with my birth father seven years later, that I encountered them again. During the initial search for my birth family, I had registered with Ancestry.com. A member of my birth father’s family saw my post and connected me to him.

This time I was more cautious. My birth father and I spoke briefly on the phone. My husband and I made flight arrangements, and once again, I was en route to California.

My birth father’s daughter, Tracy, met me at our hotel. She brought me a mix tape and a beer. We bonded instantly. Had the tables been turned, I would’ve brought the same things. I think she is the funniest person that I have ever met.

Tracy, like Chantal, was born three years after me. My birth parents had both moved on to other relationships. He got married for the first time (to another woman) and together they had my brothers, Christopher and Ryan. Christopher and Ryan are half Chinese. Of all my father’s children, I resemble him the most.

I remained guarded around my birth father, but I appreciated him. He is affable, direct, introspective, and able to articulate his feelings well. He has an innate insight about other people. He had been on his own since age 15. His immediately familiar gestures upset me, though, so I focused more on my siblings.

During that first visit with my birth father, I saw my birth mother again. We went to dinner together. I hadn’t seen her in years. The meal was awkward. My birth mother made her desire to reconnect with my birth father a little too obvious. His wife was well aware of these advances. Dinner was tense, to say the least, and our estrangement continued for another eight years.

Before I returned to Ohio, my birth father told me he thought I’d inherited many of his traits. I had a hard time accepting his attributions, because if I accepted them, I thought it would in some way minimize the beautiful people that had raised me.

To this day, I visit my birth father regularly. I treasure those visits and my children have enjoyed knowing him, too.

Recently, I contacted my birth mother. She’s living in Maui with her sister after a stint in rehab for substance abuse. I try to put the past behind us and encourage her through her fragility. I also try not to read into the mystical texts that pop up on my phone from her, and instead acknowledge that while she grapples with mental health issues, she is an incredibly spiritual, perpetually optimistic, and Bohemian-like woman.

After all this time of collecting pieces of my story, I understand the circumstances better. My birth parents were minors when I was born. For six months they tried to raise me while living on friends’ couches and in their cars, until they realized they were unable to raise a baby together. As an infant, my birth mother once threw me across the room. She knew then what she had to do to save me and herself. I thanked her for making such a selfless decision.

My birth parents headed for Ohio after a few Los Angeles adoption encounters where people offered to buy me. That was one horrifying scenario I’d never imagined. Having been raised in Ohio, they returned to place me with a reputable agency. The day they signed the surrender papers they boarded a Greyhound bus back to California.

After all these years, some of my greatest blessings are my siblings. I am the oldest of five. My two brothers and two sisters share uncanny similarities with me: the same dark sense of humor, same sense of honor, and same sense of friendship. It’s better than anything I could have hoped for. They call me “sister” and it’s music to my ears.

I remain close with my mom and dad. They’ve been supportive to this day. My mom watches my kids daily. Whenever I leave my parents, I get a little sick to my stomach. Perhaps it’s some odd form of separation anxiety. I now know that they enjoy me for who I am.

A reunion’s reality is often quite different from the media’s portrayal. I have had some of the most joyous, authentic moments with my bloodline. However, I have also experienced some of the most devastating feelings of loss and disappointment, too. I strive to find a place in my head and heart for everyone. I still wrestle with divided loyalties and uncertainties at nearly every turn.

When I reflect on all we’ve been through, I see that reunions are lifelong and have many seasons.

Image: Kendra with her adoptive dad, Ken.

California Adoptee Finds His First Mother

Friday, January 31st, 2014

In this Secret Son story, Jason Clawson recounts his early years with his adoptive parents, and how he met his birth/first mother.

In 1972 my first grade teacher threatened to call my mother if I continued to tell her and my classmates that I was adopted.  She thought that I couldn’t be adopted because I couldn’t explain what “adopted” meant.  When I insisted that my mom had told me I was adopted, my teacher called her during class playtime. After several minutes, my teacher hung up, walked over, gave me a hug, and apologized for not believing me.

I don’t remember the day I grasped the full meaning of adoption. I knew I was loved, and how I arrived to my family didn’t really matter to me. I was where I was supposed to be.

My parents lived in Downey, California and had tried unsuccessfully to have children for five years. They had discussed adoption but originally neither was in favor of it. Then one evening, a friend from my parents’ church called and said there was a newborn boy in San Diego available for adoption. “Are you interested?” he asked. Perhaps if my father had taken the call I would have ended up elsewhere, but fortunately my mother answered the phone that night, and immediately replied: “We’ll take him!”  A few days later, my parents met my birth mother, Sandy, and me.

Sandy lived in Phoenix, Arizona. At age 18, she unexpectedly found herself in a family-way.  Her parents couldn’t believe their daughter had shamed their family by getting pregnant. Her father threw a chair at her. Sandy’s parents sent her to San Diego to live with her older brother and his wife. The plan was that she’d deliver me, then give me up for adoption. She didn’t hear from her parents once during her time in San Diego. She had signed an agreement with an adoption agency and the agency had selected a family.

After I was born, however, Sandy rescinded the agreement and decided to do the one motherly act remaining to her—find the right family and give me to them herself. I’ve since learned, Sandy’s decision did not ingratiate her to the hospital staff or adoption agency.  They became quite hostile and tried to coerce her to sign the adoption agreement.

Nevertheless, about two weeks after my birth, my soon-to-be parents Jim and Jeannette, drove from Downey to San Diego only days after receiving their friend’s call.  They had no crib, no diapers, no clothes, no formula—nothing.  Now that I have children of my own, it’s difficult to imagine two people less prepared to receive a baby.

As Sandy spoke with my parents, they learned that my birth father, “Milt,” had denied fathering me and wanted nothing to do with me.  After a time, and apparently pre-assured by her attorney’s vetting of my parents, Sandy handed me to my mother and told her, “I believe you’re the couple that should have my baby.”  On that day, Jim and Jeannette became my parents. They drove back to Downey, me in my new mother’s arms.

With news spreading that a third passenger was on the return trip, my grandmothers sprang into action, buying bottles, diapers, blankets and clothes. Still, not everything was in place for my arrival. I spent the first weeks sleeping in a dresser drawer.

Three baby showers later, and my parents were well stocked and learning about their new son. My mother’s pregnancy cut that time short though. My sister Courtney joined the family ten months after my birth.  Since Courtney and I were similar in size, and both had blonde hair and blue eyes, many thought we were twins. I like to think that my arrival opened the way for Courtney, and for my sister Brooke, and brother Brett.  Had Courtney’s journey into the family started two weeks earlier, I would be living somewhere else with a different life and a different name. Thank you for waiting, Court.

Sometimes I look at my ten-year-old son and know exactly what he’s thinking because in many ways he’s like me.  My parents weren’t afforded that and now that I’m a parent myself I wonder if they had an easier time connecting with my sisters and brother. Similarities or not though, I always knew that I was loved.

I had a normal childhood. I made friends, got along with my sisters and brother, and tended to be protective of them. Occasionally, I pointed out to my sisters that they shared Mom’s genes and were destined to turn out just like her.  It’s remarkable what an insult that can be to sisters.

Not knowing anything about my own genes and heritage allowed me to be the descendent of whatever my imagination could conjure. Before I met Sandy, I thought it would be nice if she knew that I’d turned out okay and that she’d made the right decision. Not surprisingly, I never had any interest in knowing Milt.

As I grew into adulthood, I was reminded that I was adopted each time someone remarked how much I looked like my father. Indeed, most people thought I looked more like my parents than my siblings. I’ve often thought that it’s amazing that an entire family can find ways to resemble the adopted child. Even my personality was often compared to my personable Grandpa Delwin, a US Congressman.

I married in my mid 30’s and my wife and I had a son 14-months later.  It was when, to my complete surprise, our marriage abruptly ended that I began to think about Sandy. When you go through a divorce that you didn’t see coming, there are a few ways you can react. I’d witnessed several unproductive reactions through the divorces of close friends. I decided I needed a positive outlet and distraction, so I began researching my adoptive family’s genealogy.  It turned out that much of it had been completed. The only way I was going to distract myself with a genealogy project was if worked on my biological family’s tree. I was ready for the journey. First step: find Sandy.

My parents were supportive. My mother gave me the name of the hospital where I was born. I knew the name I’d been given at birth, my birth date, and I knew Sandy’s maiden name.  I hired Colleen, who specializes in California adoption searches. I sent her the information. Ten days later, Colleen had located Sandy.  Sandy was married and living in Bellingham, Washington.

On March 16, 2006, I sent Sandy a letter via FedEx, which required signature confirmation.

“Dear Sandra,

 I hope you’re sitting.  Perhaps for some time you’ve wondered if you’d ever hear from me.  On September 2, 1967, I was born in a San Diego hospital and named Steven Grant Meyer. I have reason to believe that you are my birth mother.  I hope that you are, because I have so much that I’d like to share with you.

 Most importantly, know that I love you and that you made the right decision in giving me to my mother and father.  They have showered me with love and if my mom’s story is correct, that you felt that they were the couple that was meant to receive your son, know that you were absolutely right.  If this is the only communication we have, let this letter comfort you in that knowledge.

 Because part of me comes from you, I’m certain that this letter is bringing back a flood of memories.  My parents never hid from me the circumstances of your situation and I have never, ever questioned your choice.  To the contrary, I have been forever thankful…”

The letter ended with my contact information. Perhaps most adopted children are forced to face the many different ways sending a letter to a biological parent may play out. I wanted to be careful not to upset whatever life Sandy had. I knew she was married, but didn’t know if her husband knew of me. I had no fear of rejection because I viewed finding Sandy as a possible bonus to my life and perhaps comfort to hers. I’ve found that adopted girls seem to have a greater desire to understand the “whys” of having been placed for adoption than do boys.

A day later, the online FedEx confirmation read “Delivered.” Two weeks went by with no reply. I figured the letter might have gone to the wrong Sandy, or it made it to the correct Sandy and she either didn’t want contact, or she didn’t know how to reply. It turned out to be none of those reasons.

Sandy had been on vacation when the delivery person left the envelope on her porch. Sandy and her husband, David, had gone through the mail and left it on the table thinking it was from a salesperson. I’d addressed it to “Sandra,” not knowing that she went by “Sandy.”  She finally read it. She told me that she gasped when she read the letter, and David asked if she was okay. Rather than answer him, she re-read the letter and then silently handed it to David. The next day, Sandy sent me an e-mail reply: “Dear Jason, yes I am your birth mother…”

Photo provided by Jason Clawson.