Posts Tagged ‘biological family’

The Dreaded Question: What Is Your Family Medical History?

Friday, June 20th, 2014

My interest in finding my roots started early. In fact, I have been trying to find information about my biological parents since I was in middle school.

I had adopted friends who’d found their birth parents and I was happy for them, but I was upset about my own missing information at the same time. When I turned 18, I called the adoption agency that I had been adopted from to ask for information on my birth parents, but I was told that they could only send me the non-identifying facts. It took 11 long years of my persistent emails and calls to receive it.

To finally know something as simple as what time of day I was born was amazing! The information also included my parent’s height and weight measurements, and the fact that my bio-mom was 16 years old when she had had me. That helped me understand why she did not keep me. Both of my parents were from religious families, but different denominations. My mom’s biological father was unknown to her, which makes me wonder if she ever felt or feels the way that I do.

Agency workers claimed they had no accompanying family medical history for me, but that they would let me know when my biological mom contacted them with any updates. I let them know that I was not going to give up.

When I asked if there was anything else that I could do to uncover my family medical history—they told me they would notify me when my biological mother died. What a cold response. I hung up the phone and cried. This felt like a personal attack and reminded me of the awful remarks people used to make to me while I was growing up. Some called me “adopted trash.” It sucks knowing that some people just don’t care. I had reached another dead end—back to square one. Still, I took in a deep breath and decided to keep trying.

I wondered why someone from the agency couldn’t just ask my mother if she wanted to meet me, or say, “Hey, the child you gave up is going through a lot of health issues right now. Any information you could give us would greatly help her. It could also potentially help her children.” After adoptions were made final, did the agency really no longer care about those babies and moms who were in their care?

I made the decision to contact some people who had stayed at the same maternity home as my mother. They described it as a horrible place—the agency had lost many records and the state of Texas had even closed it for awhile. It later reopened, but it was said to have never really improved. I hope the agency and home is better now.

The family that raised me since I was a baby had always told me I was adopted. As soon as I wanted to find out about my biological family, though — like who I might look and act like, and where I had come from — it was game over. I was told that they were probably dead. And now the only parents I’d ever known didn’t want me around; they were very hurt and mad at me.

It meant nothing to them when I explained that they were the only family I had ever considered to be my family. Eventually, they started to push me away, only to officially kick me out of the house when I was 17.

I have had some hard times since then, including two abusive marriages, being sexually assaulted, and abducted by a trucker for months. I was young, vulnerable, and had no idea who to trust in the world—I found myself in terrible situations.

I do not talk to my adoptive family anymore, though I have tried to get back in touch to offer an apology. It seems I am not good enough for them, so I have moved on. Today, God has blessed me with an amazing and extremely patient husband, and I have beautiful kids.

I now wish to give my children as much information as I can about our side of the family and me, including our medical history.

I have ongoing health issues. I see doctor after doctor trying to sort them out, and each time, I am asked the same thing: “What is your family medical history?” I answer, “I was adopted and I don’t know anything.” They look at me as though they don’t know where to start with the medical testing. Sometimes they even ask: “Is there is any way you can find your family history?” And I always reply, “I desperately want to know and hope to some day.”

Now, as I wait to have dangerous medical procedures performed, I wonder why my petition did not make it through the court system to open my adoption records and provide me with the medical answers I need. Isn’t my life and the health of my kids important and valued? Many of my conditions are genetic. I believe that the mystery illness I am struggling with now, which doctors are stumped over, is genetic as well.

Every year, I write to the congressmen and governor of Texas asking them to help the adoptees with sealed records get the answers they need. Knowing if your biological family has a history of cancer or other medical issues can save your life. Also, knowing who you are and where you come from, I believe, is everyone’s right.

Even if a biological parent never wants to meet his or her relinquished child, I think agencies should have mediators who work with families and adopted people to provide more answers for them. For those parents who do want to meet, let them. There are ways to help everyone and heal the hurt. Many agencies and states provide this basic human right – why not Texas? Why not every state?

For some of us, our lives depend on it.

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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A Michigan Adoptee Reflects on the Concept of Choice

Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

[dropcap size=dropcap]T[/dropcap]en years ago this month, the phone rang at 7 a.m. That was my first indication that it was bad news—nobody ever calls that early with good news.

“Are you sitting down? You better sit down,” said Jenifer, my sister-in-law. “There’s been an accident. Cristi is dead.”

My predominant reaction to the news was confusion. Cristi was my 36-year-old full biological sister, 14 months younger than me, and a sister I’d only known for 15 years.

I was adopted in 1966 as an infant, in a closed adoption. I met Cristi when I reunited with my birth family in 1988. A year-and-a-half after we had met, we were both surprised to learn that we were full sisters.

Apparently, my birth mother met my birth father secretly six months after my birth, and as a result of that encounter, Cristi was born. Our birth mother went on to marry another man, one her family approved of, and he raised Cristi as his own. She grew up believing he was her father, that is, until I came into the picture.

I should be really sad about losing Cristi, I thought when the news of her passing settled in. I pretended that I was. Don’t get me wrong, on one level I was sad. Christi was young, she had two small children, and this was a tragedy. I had had little history in common with her—no shared memories of growing up together—only our genes. We were not close.

Like many adoptees, I spent my life denying, repressing, and stuffing my feelings, and even medicating them when all else failed. Expressing my feelings, I thought, might destroy me.

I had received society’s message to be grateful because I was special and chosen. I was supposed to feel lucky that my parents had adopted me. Other children, in an attempt to be sympathetic, would remark that their parents were “stuck” with them. Being adopted made me special and chosen? Who wouldn’t be grateful for that?

But in my heart and in my gut, I knew that something terrible had happened to me, even though no one spoke of it. No one ever said: “I am sorry you couldn’t stay with your mother.”

If I had allowed myself to grieve that loss, it would have overwhelmed me. I believed that had I protested or expressed my feelings openly, then my adoptive parents might’ve rejected me and left too. That would have destroyed me.

In time, however, my denial mechanism became a hindrance. From the beginning, the setup was for me to fit what others needed, not for me to discover what fit me.

Therefore, I had developed no internal radar, and very little clarity on who I was or how I truly felt. When I was younger, I accepted jobs that I didn’t care for only because they were offered, and I ended up in too many relationships with men that were not right for me, simply because they had expressed an interest in me.

So there I was with a dead biological sister and great uncertainty about how to grieve.

I went to the funeral home, along with my birth family and pretended to be devastated. I cried. I hugged my family as they grieved my sister’s death. I tried to be one of them just like I had since my reunion.

I sat around a table at the funeral home with my birth mother, my brother, and Cristi’s husband, and helped with the obituary wording.

What the hell am I doing here? Why did they include me? I dont belongI hardly even knew her.

I kept those thoughts inside, ignored my feelings and tried, as always, to fit in. And part of me felt grateful to be included. I felt privileged to finally be in this family that I had been banished from decades earlier.

Three days later, after I had returned home from Cristi’s funeral, my then-husband met me at the door. “You better sit down. Your brother just called. Your father died.”

My adoptive father, whom I had been to Arizona to visit two weeks prior, had dropped dead from a stroke at the age of 79.

The feelings came fast and hard. I felt clear—no ambiguity this time, and it tore right through me. I dropped to the floor and sobbed.

The truth is though; I was not close to my adoptive father, either. He was a good person, well liked, but not a very good father. He was aloof, distant, unengaged, and often, he didn’t seem to care much about me, yet the pain I felt was real and genuine.

Ironically, one of the things I remember most about his funeral was when my adoptive mother told me not to cry.

I was about to board a plane back to Michigan and I was worried about leaving her alone, without my father. My tears would not stop. She patted me on the shoulder and said, “Oh now, don’t cry.”

I thought Jesus Christ, if Im not even allowed to cry now, when my father has died, will there ever be a time when it is okay for me to cry? But, good little adoptee that I was—I denied my feelings and I stopped crying.

That was a pivotal time in my life, and a very complicated one. Many things were changing, most of all me. I had two young daughters, my marriage was falling apart, and I was transitioning from an agency job to begin a private practice as a clinical social worker. It was a time I learned about choices.

A year later, I ended contact with my birth family. I was tired of pretending. I had already spent a lifetime doing that with my adoptive family, and that added stress had become too much to bear. The realization that I could never be privy to the memories that they shared was excruciating.

I had always felt sad after being with them for holidays and birthdays. After one visit in particular, my husband asked, “If you were not biologically related to these people, would you have anything to do with them?”

“Absolutely not,” I replied with certainty.

“Then don’t,” he said.

“That’s really an option?”  I asked.

“Of course it is.”

In my mind, choosing my family relationships was never an option. Being adopted had meant that others decide whom I call family.

I had an epiphany last year when I read someone’s post in an online adoptee support group that I participate in. It said: “I did not ask to be adopted, nor did I want to be adopted. The whole thing did not work out very well for me at all. I do not owe anybody anything.”

Wow.

It was as though my blinders had been removed. I realized that I no longer had to try to navigate my very complicated relationship with my adoptive mother. I have always felt like I owed her something because she had taken me in and raised me.

All of my life, I had desperately struggled to fit with her, despite her callousness and emotional abuse, and I beat the hell out of myself when I did not. I would’ve never chosen to have a casual friendship with a person like my adoptive mother— much less have chosen her as a parent. Given the choice, I would have remained with my birth family—my clan.

I once read a quote by the Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE that said: “Adoption is the only trauma in the world where the victim is expected by the whole of society to be grateful.”

Today, after years of grappling with that trauma, I carefully choose who is part of my family—they are a select and exclusive few. The requirements for membership are simple: you must truly love, appreciate and unconditionally accept me for exactly who I am— and not who you need me to be; authenticity and genuineness are required; and trust is a must.

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 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.

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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Sometimes a Reunion Gives an Adoptee New Secrets

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

Heather Katz, Co-founder of Secret Sons & Daughters, shares her adoption reunion journey in search of peace and equanimity.

I have never kept deep secrets of my own, and yet, I was born one. I entered the world in an outdated era, darkened with shame, dishonesty and guilt. I am, at forty-two years of age, an adoptee still longing to fill in the low-lying branches of my biological family tree.

In the winter of 1971, the unthinkable came to pass for a good, unwedded girl from a devoutly Irish Catholic family—she fell pregnant. Mortified, feeling very much alone, and carrying the firm belief that there was no one to turn to for help, my frightened mother concealed her swelling belly from the rest of the world.

She was sweet, remarkably beautiful, and sought after by many suitors. As a college sophomore with a scholarship in language arts, she had looked forward to a bright future. Despite her dashed dreams, my mother hoped to keep her growing miracle.

At seven months into her pregnancy, her mother finally uncovered the truth. The following day, her parents set events in motion that would alter the course of many lives to follow.

The family arranged for my mother to leave her home state and move into the Edna Gladney Center for unwed mothers in Fort Worth, Texas. No one in her hometown, including her siblings, was ever to know of me—and she was never to speak of my birth.

For nine months, I innocently played beneath her beating heart, and on the day I took my first breath, they pried me from her arms. As she cried, the Gladney counselors tried to comfort her, saying she’d happily marry, have more babies and possibly even enjoy a satisfying career.

Focus on the present. Move on with your life. Those were the messages of that time.

Eleven days after my mother had returned home without me, I was enrolled in an unrecognized form of the American witness protection program. The state of Texas stamped, “Classified,” (or so it feels) across my original birth certificate, replaced the old one with my new identifying information, and then placed me into the (fortunately) loving arms of another set of parents.

I had a charmed childhood. My dad was a Rabbi (now Emeritus) of a large Reform congregation in San Antonio, and both of my parents are recognized leaders in the community. My mom was the Director of Family Life Education at Jewish Family Services and a full-time, attentive mother to my adopted, younger sister and me. I was raised in a warm, well-ordered, and accepting family, as well as in a large group of caring congregants.

We did not keep secrets in our family. From the moment I was adopted, my parents spoke openly of my adoption. When I was only three months old, my great-great aunt asked my mom when she was going to tell me I was adopted. My mom responded with, “I am just going to tell her that she is a girl, Anglo, American and adopted. Being adopted will always be part of her identity.” Indeed, it was. I do not recall a moment of not knowing I was adopted.

After years of trying to conceive, and then waiting even longer to adopt, my parents got “the call” from Gladney that made me their own.

I felt special and wanted. My parents continually expressed their belief that although my original parents could not care for me, they had probably wanted me. I’m unsure I believed that latter part at the time, but my parents still found numerous ways to help me feel loved.

They declared that their adopted children were unequivocally theirs, no matter how we each had come to them, and that we were, and still are, just as much a part of them as any biological baby might have been.

Appearance wise, I thought I fit in nicely with my family and friends. When folks would say I looked just like my mom, she’d say, “Well, thank you, that is a huge compliment, but Heather is adopted.”

I would follow with, “I love looking like my mom.”

Afterwards, and when alone, we’d chuckle.

Most of the time, I forgot I was adopted. If ever I felt unlike my childhood peers, it was more because I was a Rabbi’s daughter, and not because the two people who raised me were not my original parents.

In this broad-minded setting, whenever I was curious, I would ask a multitude of questions and openly fantasize about my genetic ancestry. When my sister, Alisa and I were young, we’d play all kinds of speculative games. Repeatedly, we’d tell my parents that each of us surely had the taller natural father than the other. I’d bet Alisa the trade of a laborious home chore that my father was the tallest, and resembled our six-foot-one dad the most. Therefore, I’d eventually grow to the required five-foot-nine inches to win a modeling contract. I lost. My sister’s natural father is enormous, and she is five-foot-seven. I barely rise above five–foot-two!

This intense curiosity persists today: I still wonder which unknown family member passed on their musical abilities to both my children and me; I wonder what family folklore I might never hear; and while I met my birth father once, there is much I cannot say or know.

My parents spoke kindly of my unknown family and assured me that they would help me search some day. When I was twenty-one-years-old, they set their own fears aside, rolled up their sleeves, and joined me in my journey to find the missing pieces.

My parents hired a search specialist. The weekend of my 21st birthday, while I was on a camping trip, my mom spent hours on the phone, calling all over the country to track down my natural mother. When I returned to my college dorm, my mom called me and said, “I found her!” I was scared to death. I did not want to contact her until I was in the supportive presence of my parents and had had the opportunity to meet this supposed saint-like intermediary. So, I waited a few months until I was home from college for winter break.

I remember the intermediary’s words: “Adoption is about loss. Each member of the triad has faced some sort of loss, but hopefully some kind of gain as well.” She then asked if I was ready to face whatever I might find on the other side of that proverbial locked door. I said, “Yes!”

She turned up the volume on our phone and dialed my natural mother’s number. After several rings, she answered, “Hello?” in a soft, deep southern accent. I grabbed Mom’s arm.

The intermediary introduced herself as a social worker, then she asked: “Does October 30th mean anything to you?” There was utter silence. I felt my heart tumble in my chest.

I wondered if she was okay, or if she’d hung up. I did not want to hurt her. I only wanted to know her and tell her that I loved her. What felt like an hour, but was only thirty-seconds, passed. Finally, she asked if she could place the phone down. She needed to move to a more private location. Then, after asking the intermediary about my state of health and happiness, she whispered, “My family does not know about her. I cannot talk at this time.”

“Your daughter only wishes for you to know that she is doing well and that she’d enjoy exchanging letters when you’re ready and willing,” said the intermediary.

My natural mother took her number. Twenty-four hours later, my biological grandmother phoned our intermediary to request that I write to both of them soon—but only to my grandmother’s address.

And write we did–back and forth, for several months, before we all felt comfortable enough to meet in person. That long-awaited day finally arrived.

My mom and I drove all day until we reached my natural mother’s hometown just before dark. We checked into a hotel room and tried to relax for an hour. We thumbed through my baby book of first photos, which we had brought to share. That did not quell the sick feeling in my stomach. I could tell my mom was nervous, too. She had never heard of any mother meeting their child’s other mother before. With no handbook on reunions, she went with her gut— she wanted to help me find answers, and she wanted to thank my mother for giving her a daughter.

We heard a knock on the door, and the muffled sound of female voices. I pushed my mom in front of me—signaling her to open the door. We grabbed each other’s hands, and drew in big breaths as she unlatched the lock.

My natural mother was standing beside her mother. My mom reached out for a welcoming hug, while I stood frozen. Her eyes looked like mine, both in color and in shape, we shared the same shade of chestnut brown hair color, and the very same turned up nose. I looked over at my grandmother. Though she had bottled blond hair, she too, had huge eyes and a turned up nose. Here we were—two mothers, two daughters, all related in complicated ways.

My mom looked like me plenty, but for my turned up nose. That was my unusual trait—and now—for the first time in my life— after seeing my natural mother, I realized just how much I really looked like someone else!

We all exchanged hugs, made awkward chatter about hair highlights or something mundane like that, and then shared a light-hearted restaurant meal together. We spent close to four surreal hours with them. From that encounter, a phantom had been laid to rest and my ancestral tree had grown a few more branches. However, when I had asked questions about my birth story or my paternal family, I learned nothing more. At the time, it was too difficult for my mother to dredge up the past. Eighteen years later, the rest of my maternal biological family would learn of my existence. At almost forty-years-old, I finally met my maternal biological brother and sister. Knowing them has brought me much sought after peace.

I was thankful my mother and grandmother told me they loved me through those decades, but I withstood much pain over the missing elements in the rest of my birth story. Some years of not knowing were easier than others. Birthing my own beloved children brought about added bizarre feelings, but what’s more, they profoundly rooted me to the earth—allowing some relief from that yearning. I vacillated between anger and long periods of acceptance. I wished to respect my mother’s privacy and grant her forgiveness, but I also felt the burning “right” to know all the missing information.

Like me, many adoptees find a biological family member, and are forced to collude with the secret he or she kept—even in reunion.

As an adoptee, life feels like a mix of sharp curves and smooth corners. Today, some phantoms linger, but many do not. My natural mother did go on to marry, have two other babies, and has become a successful career woman. While it took decades to make life come full circle for the both of us, it was not too late to heal. My biological maternal family is happily reunited now. I find much joy with those whom I do know and love—both adoptive and biological relatives—and strive not to dwell on what was lost.

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 the Secret Sons & Daughters collection.