Posts Tagged ‘Catholic Charities’

Blocked: An Adoptee’s Facebook Search Yields Much Information, But Little Comfort

Wednesday, May 21st, 2014

There’s little excitement in sitting at a computer, but on one warm weekday afternoon in June 2013 it was nail-bitingly dramatic. I was at my home office desk, out of work early from a crappy temp job, and a little scared. There she was on the screen, on Facebook—my birth mother, Diane. And there I was, staring stupidly at a blank “New Message” box trying to figure out what I wanted to say.

That wasn’t the first time I tried to contact her. It was more like the fourth. Since 2007, I’d written a letter, called her house, and even asked the case worker who had handled my adoption in 1982, to write a letter. I had hoped that communicating via a third-party might somehow do the trick. 

But each time, my efforts were met with silence. In my first letter to her, I dumped out decades of emotional baggage. “Dear Diane, I think I might be your son,” I had written. 

Years later, a therapist suggested, for a variety of reasons, that I be slightly more circumspect in my attempts; “hint at a family connection,” she had told me. “Be light, be casual, be vague—in case of inquisitive spouses.”

That’s what went wrong with the letter; I must have scared her off. And the phone call—had she received the message or had her husband heard it? But reaching out directly to her on Facebook? Maybe this could work. 

Play it cool. That was my mantra—just say that you think you might be related and that you want to talk with her, nothing too heavy, nothing too emotional.

If you could’ve seen me that day, you’d think I had dressed for playing it cool. Khaki shorts, a white button-down shirt, sandals, and the beginning of a summer tan—I looked ready for a backyard barbecue. But trust me when I say that, in that moment, no one had ever worked harder at casually dashing off a Facebook message.

“Dear Diane, I am doing some genealogy research and I think we might have a family connection…” I listed my birth date and the name of the hospital where I was born. “I’d really love to talk. Please contact me.” I clicked “Send” before I could have second thoughts, then left to meet my girlfriend for coffee. 

I’d hoped it was the last message like that I’d have to send—that this time, she’d reply, and acknowledge me in some way. 

I started searching for her in 2005, the same year that Facebook opened up its network to the non-collegiate public and the same year my home state, New Hampshire, became one of the first states to reopen access to original birth certificates, which is how I learned her name. 

The digital landscape of the early 2000s is almost unimaginable now. There were no smartphones and maybe only a half-dozen social networks. Our lives were still largely analog, and that’s how my search started, with snail mail and phone calls and copy machines. 

Up until then, all I knew, thanks to my adoptive parents Vic and Sue, was that I had been adopted through New Hampshire Catholic Charities when I was three months old, that my birth mother had been in college somewhere in the state when I was born, and that her sister may have been allergic to bees.

I remember childhood summers, the sun bright and hot, and my mother dutifully shooing me away from any spot that might attract bees. At ice cream stands, you could hear my mother through the din of customers: “Larry, get away from that garbage can. There are bees all around it! You don’t want to get stung! What if you have an allergic reaction?!” We weren’t what you’d call a very outdoorsy family.

Her warnings worked. I avoided being stung until I was 21, when I ran afoul of a bee while repainting an old barn. As a spot on the back of my right hand swelled, I sat down and calmly waited for certain death. Nothing happened, though, and after 20 minutes, satisfied that I wasn’t going into the throes of anaphylactic shock, I cracked open a can of soda and resumed painting. 

My search has been a lot like that bee sting, a string of accidental revelations. I caught a break in 2007 when I found Diane in a state university alumni directory.

On a humid Saturday morning in July of that year, I sat in the university library with Diane’s college yearbook open in front of me, looking at her picture for the first time. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone who looked like me. Her smile tipped me off. It’s my smile, too—one that unfolds from our lips to reach a crescendo in our cheeks—a smile that lingers in the eyes. 

Another lucky break and a little detective work yielded her married name and address. I learned that she still lived in New Hampshire, a two-hour drive from my home on the seacoast. 

That was when I wrote my first letter. Two carefully printed and handwritten pages on a yellow legal pad, telling Diane about my life and how I would like to get to know her. She never responded. 

In 2011, in a fit of daring, I called and left a message on her home phone. She never replied. 

While the analog portion of my search for information proved fruitless, the digital side was greatly successful. 

Thanks to the internet, I cobbled together a sketch of my birth mother’s life, and my biological family, through a series of late-night Google searches. 

I learned about Diane’s three kids, her husband, and the church they attended. I read letters she had written to the local newspaper and found articles about her kids, their victories with local sports teams and spelling bee wins. An obituary for my great-grandmother yielded the names of cousins, aunts, uncles, and a legion of relatives I’d never even considered.

The clincher was a photo from Diane’s local newspaper of her and her children posing with a representative of a local charity. For their latest birthday, her twins donated their gifts to a children’s charity. Diane and the kids looked as though they’d just returned from soccer practice, or maybe from a family hike—glowing, beaming, full of life.

By the summer of 2013, I’d found my biological aunt—the one with the apocryphal bee allergy—on Facebook. And through my aunt, I had also found Diane. Her profile indicated that she’d joined a few months earlier. 

Diane’s profile added more to my sketch: she had a dog and ran in 5Ks along with the rest of the family. There were no pictures of her, just her kids, my half-siblings. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be part of that family, running together with them— unconcerned of errant bees. 

After sending that Facebook message to Diane, thoughts of a potential reply in my inbox consumed me during the coffee date with my girlfriend. I rushed to my computer as soon as I returned home and logged in to Facebook. My wall was empty. I scanned through my messages and saw it: Blocked. Diane had blocked me.

After eight years and many attempts to contact her, Diane had finally acknowledged me. It was that first bee sting all over again. A moment of pain, followed by nothing at all.

Today, I’ve got a folder full of digital artifacts, articles, photos, and familial facts, though I still feel little comfort. 

Is it better to know something about Diane and her family—my family—than nothing at all? Is any acknowledgement, even if it’s a passive rejection over Facebook, preferable to those unanswered letters and phone calls? 

It’s been a year since I sent that Facebook message. I’m still not sure which I prefer. I think, now and then, of writing another letter, of calling her one more time. I wonder if I can face a fifth or sixth rejection, and I wonder if that’s a reasonable price to pay for potentially knowing my mother. 

Each time I log on to Facebook, I hope Diane will have returned my message. When I get my mail, I hope that mixed in with all the bills and catalogs, I will find a letter from her. Mostly, I hope that one day soon, she’ll make the next move. 

Thank you for visiting Secret Sons & Daughters. In addition to stories, you can find valuable resourcesdiscover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page. Comments are always welcome. And we’d love to hear your story. Please subscribe and join our growing community.

An Adoptee Turns to Humor to Endure Secrets and Lies

Monday, May 12th, 2014

I was born in February of 1968, a byproduct of the previous year’s notorious “Summer of Love.” There were so many relinquished babies in the late ‘60s, we were like a Pet-Smart hamster cage overrun with new litters. Any ‘God-fearing’ family with a traditional home setup and decent donation check could score one of us pinkies.

The idea of adoption first popped into my adoptive dad’s head as he strolled through the 1967 Minnesota State Fairgrounds with his four bio-kids and clinically depressed wife. There in the livestock section was a Catholic Charities adoption marketing booth decorated as – no lie – a red barn adorned with big photos of adorable, pink, healthy baby faces. BINGO, thought Dad. This will keep my emotionally crippled wife busy and add some pep to the house like a cute new puppy.

“No, I do not want to adopt a baby,” insisted adoptive mom. But Dad demanded it would be a nice Catholic thing to do, and it was a patriarchal time, so despite protests from Mom and the youngest bio-kid, they did it.

Trouble With Tribbles
Again, in those days there were gobs of babies available. Have you seen that old 1967 Star Trek episode, “The Trouble With Tribbles”? It may have been inspired by all of us little homeless waifs. So a family that already had several natural-born children and an unstable mother was still able to pass the brief home visit with flying colors. Those issues might not be approved on today’s social service checklists.

As I grew…and grew….and grew (eventually reaching 5’11” in a very petite family – women 5’1”, men around 5’6”), adoption was never discussed except for the one time I was informed about my own adoption.

I was 6-years-old and we had recently talked about the word “adopted” in my first grade class. For some reason, I had confused the word “adopted” with “baptized” so I told my teacher that I was adopted at church. She explained the definitions in more detail and cleared up my confusion.

I relayed this story to Dad when he and I were alone together, and he stated matter-of-factly that I was in that category the teacher described, I was adopted. Another woman had me, and they were raising me, and that was about it.

Mom never wanted to talk about it. The older siblings weren’t interested, either. They are strikingly similar to one another in stature and physical features, and they’re all very much alike in personality and lifestyle preferences, too—staunchly conservative, Catholic, meat-and-potatoes Republicans.

And I’m an agnostic, vegetarian, tree-hugging liberal. For years I tried to adapt and conform. Most adoptees have a strong desire to fit in and deep fear of abandonment, so up through my early 20s I attempted to change my true nature. But man, it is exhausting trying to be someone you are not.

ricardo herve
So, like bad episodes of Love Boat and Fantasy Island blaring on the TV every Saturday night, it (“it” = adoption, round peg in square hole, etc.) was plainly ‘there’ in the room but never discussed.

There were some nice times together. There was definitely no abuse, and my kid brain always reasoned, if not for this family I would’ve been left in a bag on the street or something worse! Be GRATEFUL, Tribble!

At age 18, I had to find a genetic link after a lifetime of feeling like an alien dropped from space (this Star Trek theme won’t stop, will it? I do love Shatner).

peachesnherb
Catholic Charities agreed to check my file, and saw that my mother, Terry,* had contacted them several years prior, inquiring about me. They sent her a form to fill out, which would allow me to access my information and her contact information. The completed form was never returned; however, it did not take long for the social worker intermediary to contact Terry and see if she was up for some communication (cue Peaches & Herb “Reunited”).

mork egg ship toy
Polite, friendly letters, a few phone calls, and one face-to-face meeting ensued. The honeymoon phase felt good. I was shocked at the amount of relief I felt about the fact that I had actually been born to someone, came from a real genetic family like other human beings. Not like Mork from Ork. Not even a tribble.

Terry was 24 when she had run out of money, and options, while living in San Francisco several months pregnant with me. She had not told anyone in her family about her pregnancy, but decided to tell her brother, who was a priest temporarily assigned in St. Paul, Minnesota.

He got Terry settled in at a Catholic Charities wage home while she waited out the pregnancy and relinquishment plans. She told me she blocked out a lot of that period of her life, but more than once she defended her choice, stating, “I did what was right for me at the time.”

Okay. Thanks Mama. But WHY couldn’t your brother have been stationed in Honolulu? Or anywhere else that wasn’t the COLDEST FREAKING PLACE ON THE PLANET TO GROW UP? Just kidding (kind of). There are some lovely people up there in Minnesota, even if they do all sound like the cast of Fargo.

Terry and I stayed in contact off and on for about six years. It was rocky. She had never told her kept children (or most relatives) about me, and she was clearly not comfortable having an ongoing relationship with her deep, shameful secret.

So, after dozens of her denials and disappearing acts, our quasi-relationship was kaput. My letters were not answered and the rare phone call had been met with condescension and irritation. Secondary rejection is not fun or pretty. But I decided it was a sign to look up the “other half of me,” my paternal side.

klingon
Terry had never told my father, Rick, that I existed. She had broken up with him and moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia after finding out she was prego with me. My last phone call to her, telling her about my desire to connect with him, was met with the outrage and fury of a thousand angry klingons!

With the help of a Catholic Charities intermediary again, I found my father. Although Terry had never intended to state his name anywhere in the records, apparently she let it slip during a counseling session and the note-taker at the time (bless her heart) jotted Rick’s full name in the paperwork margins. It was easy to find him because he and his family lived in the same neighborhood as Terry and her family. Some of their kids attended the same school, and the wives knew each other. Talk about a soap opera. Seriously, Aaron Spelling couldn’t make this stuff up!

No wonder she freaked out. Oh, the tangled web some weave. We have never spoken again. But I forgive her, for my own well being and for the sake of moving on.

Anyway, Rick was surprised but delighted to find out he had another child. Getting to know him and several other paternal family members has been a real treat. He is as laid-back as my mother is high-strung. He introduced me to dozens of kinfolk.

My Great Aunt Helen and I developed a close friendship for a few years, until she passed away. She used to tell me I reminded her of her mother, my great grandmother. She said our hands and gestures were identical, and Great Grandma was nearly 6 feet tall. This meant so much to me.

MilMaLuIt’s been a ridiculous ride, but fascinating to say the least. Now I have my own wonderful tribbles, I mean CHILDREN!, and have learned some valuable lessons to pass on about nature, nurture, honesty, openness, forgiveness, and love.

One of the biggest messages I’ve taken from all of this is that sometimes the universe hands you some major, in-your-face contrast so you can more clearly see what you do want in your life. Honesty, integrity, and being a loving, attentive mom are high on my list of goals, and maybe some of that has to do with seeing their opposites.
So, now with a bit of closure achieved, life goes on.

As Mr. Spock keenly advises: “Live Long and Prosper” – and of course laugh whenever you can.

*Names not changed to protect privacy. Screw that. Enough with the secrets and lies.

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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To All Adoptive Mothers, Birth Mothers, Foster Mothers and Mothers of the Heart – Happy Mother’s Day!

Sunday, May 11th, 2014

Mother’s Day is a day both blessed and fraught for many people, and for many reasons—moms we’ve lost too soon, strained relationships, and for adoptees a particular kind of challenge that is as varied among us as it is the same.

Adoption has touched my family two times. My adoptive mom’s family lost one daughter (they had named Justine) through adoption, then gained one years later when my parents adopted me. As I celebrate the day with my mom over morning coffee, I think about Justine. Her family of origin is my family of memories. They belong to us both in different ways, and I think of Ann, my own birth mother, too. 

It was on this day 27 years ago that I received the first letter from her. It was the letter that started it all. Hard as it was to navigate a post reunion landscape without a map (especially back then), one of my life’s greatest blessings was to have had Ann in it for 22 years, and for the ways my mom respected my need to know her. Today is my fifth Mother’s Day since Ann passed and I miss her still.

Beneath all that Mother’s Day is, one hopes, is love, however damn hard that might be to articulate carefully in cards and letters exchanged.

In honor of Ann’s memory, I’d like to share how she first communicated that love in her voice, with the letter that started it all, and her art. The image above is a painting she created a few years before she died and titled “Childlike Spirit.”  

May 10, 1987

Dear Christine, 

The time has finally arrived.  I have just found you. It is difficult to know just what the right way is to contact you. I am writing this letter today, on Mother’s Day, as it turns out, not knowing how I will get it to you. I have a friend, Jay, who lives very near you, he may have handed you this letter. Perhaps I will see you today and hand it to you myself.  

However you received this letter, I hope that you are not upset in any way. I don’t know if you have looked for me yet. I don’t even know if you were told that you were adopted. But I feel fairly certain that by now you must know. 

If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably guessed that I’m your birthmother. My maiden name was Ann Mary Roberts. When you were born I named you Ann Marie Roberts. 

I am going to tell you a few things now. In early February 1967, I became pregnant.  I was 16 yrs. old and “in love.” I gave birth to you at Providence Hospital in Holyoke, Mass. 

I had been living in a home for unwed mothers. A woman from the home rode with me in a cab to the hospital when my labor pains began. (Halloween night – around midnight we arrived) You were born at 5:10 pm the following day.  

In the days that followed, you were brought into my room.  I remember holding you on my lap and looking at you. Your eyes seemed to look right into my soul. What a miracle you were to me. I was overwhelmed with awe, and joy and love and sadness. I knew I couldn’t keep you and my heart was broken and still is.  

I was 17 when you were born. There was no option open to me to keep you. Times were very different in the sixties. My father would not even discuss the situation. My mother’s hands were tied. I got a lot of pressure from the agency and my local doctor to put you up for adoption. 

I did not want to surrender you. I didn’t have any choice, though—and no support from any direction. They convinced me that adoption would be the best thing for you. 

Words cannot express my sense of loss. Words cannot express how I have felt for 19½ years, not knowing anything about you. And not having you with me. 

I have not seen you since you were 4 weeks old. I visited you once at St. Catherine’s Infant Home on Main Ave. I couldn’t hold you or kiss you because you were behind a glass window.  

On Friday, May 8th, I set eyes on your picture in your high school yearbook – your sophomore picture. I am filled with joy – you are sweet and beautiful. 

You have my dark hair and brown eyes. You looked like myself when I looked at you as a baby. Forgive me for writing down my feelings and memories. 

You are a 5-10 minute drive from my house. I live in Woodscape, a two-three yr. old development off Western Ave., right past Coco’s Restaurant. 

Naturally, I am anxious to see you and share so many things with you. I have many family members – brothers & sisters. My mom is alive and well – my Dad died when I was 21. 

We are good people, nothing to be afraid of. 

As I say, I don’t know how you will react to this. I will give you my number at work. Please call me anytime. I love you!

Ann

P.S. Your father is in the area. He is married. You can meet him too. He has blue eyes and is Irish and German. I am ¼ German, ¼ Irish, and ½ English. See you soon, I HOPE!

The story of what happened from there can be found here: Portrait in Nature and Nurture. If you have a “love letter” you’d like to share, please send it to me at ck@secretsonsanddaughters.org. We’ll be sharing them here between Mother’s and Father’s Day.

Best wishes for a Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there!

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. 

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.

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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