Who Am I Really?

Pam, from Emeryville, CA, told me her desire to search started when she was a kid, but it was Oregon’s laws that changed everything for her search. When she met her birthmother she encountered a woman who couldn’t relay the details of her past, leaving Pam with only her paternal side of the story. He says that what is alleged against him is not true, but Pam is having a hard time forgiving the man. This is Pam’s journey.

Pam (00:04):

So I thought that from the time I was 19, until I started meeting people in my mid thirties, that was part of my trying to identify what it meant to be alive. Even it's like, Oh, and then I thought, gosh, my mom might not want me to come find her because maybe I'm a traumatic thing. She wants to forget.

Damon (00:32):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Pamela. She called me from Emeryville, California. Pam told me her desire to search started when she was a kid, but it was Oregon's laws that changed everything for her. When she met her birth mother, she encountered a woman who couldn't relay the details of her past leaving Pam with only her paternal side of the story. He says that what was alleged against him is not true, but Pam is having a hard time forgiving the man. This is Pam's journey. Pam grew up in a suburb of Portland, Oregon called Milwaukee and in Redmond, Washington and Pamela's family. They didn't ask about adoption when she was four or five. Her parents took time to convey that she was loved, chosen and special in her experience. She had everything a child could want and everything that came with what she called a privileged white, upper middle class upbringing and upbringing, devoid of emotion. I asked Pam what she meant by that.

Pam (02:06):

I was discouraged from being an expressive child. They were very sort of stoic people. And so if I were to express some bright emotion, it would be tamped down somehow I would be told I was being hysterical or you know, these kinds of things. So it was just, I think we were really mismatched with each other. I'm a very warm emotive person and they were very cool unemotive. People.

Damon (02:37):

It sounded like her passion and fervor for life were not at all meant by her parents' personalities. She said, she always felt very odd and out of place. Pamela has one older brother non-biological to herself and her parents conceived one biological son as well. She's sandwiched between her brothers and they're all only about 16 months apart in age, she said in her toddler pictures, when you look at her adoptive mom, you can see she's expecting their younger brother. I was curious about how the siblings got along, especially since she and her older brother share an adoption kinship. I wondered if it drew them closer.

Pam (03:15):

Actually, not really. No. My brothers are very close with each other and I'm kind of the, the black sheep person in the family. My oldest brother was adopted at birth and I was adopted later. Um, I was five months old and kind of came to my parents as a, uh, a special case. This child has been hard to place. Can you please take her kind of a thing? And so they did, and I didn't get returned, but I think as a traumatized infant, I think my mom just didn't really know how to address my emotional needs. There was no training for parents about how traumatic it is to be separated from your, your birth mother in this sort of thing. I mean, I just know it just didn't get discussed. And that the paradigm at that time was that, Oh, these children are a blank slate and they will never know any different.

Damon (04:18):

Pam said she was a very rebellious teenager. She ran away from home. She even stole the family car and drove to Canada with her friends.

Pam (04:27):

I was pretty awful to them. I think that, uh, I had issues that I didn't have words for. So I acted out and it was hard for them or they just, they didn't know how to address my needs.

Damon (04:43):

I asked Pam what the catalyst was for her search. She said her parents sparked the flame that would burn within her when she was about eight years old.

Pam (04:52):

When my parents explained to me about adoption and that I was adopted, they told me that I had parents who couldn't take care of me because they already had five children. So I thought, what, there's five siblings out there somewhere. And I thought, gosh, maybe, maybe some of those are sisters. Cause I had brothers didn't have a sister. So that was super compelling for me as a child that I had sisters out there or maybe had sisters out there. So that was always super compelling for me. And I knew the minute I could find anything and I could look, I was going to do it.

Damon (05:35):

She remembers being inquisitive about her adoption, but she sensed her mother's unwillingness to discuss the topic further. So she didn't broach the topic very often. Pam bided, her time listening to conversations between grownups waiting for them to divulge clues that she could hold on to. She said her mother had a baby book upstairs in her closet, but she didn't make it available to Pam. She seemed to believe it truly belonged to her. And it was not to be shared with Pam, even though it was all about her,

Pam (06:07):

But I would go in there and sneak it down sometimes and look for clues, trying to figure stuff out, looking at pictures. And I remember at one point finding a letter that looked like it might've been from a previous care giver. I don't know who this person was, but I was obviously in their home. So I don't know if it was a foster home or if it was one of the placements that didn't work out. I'm not exactly sure. Um, but, um, I, I would just always be looking, looking for stuff

Damon (06:39):

That letter from the caregiver or social worker or whatever, had some juicy stuff in it. And she was glad she found it. But Pam didn't try to search until the internet began to blossom as an information resource. She didn't know enough to search before then. So her efforts like signing up on adoption reunion, registries were purely shots in the dark at an unknown target. Pam decided to go into museum studies with the goal of being trained as a researcher, knowing that skill set would be really helpful in her search for answers about herself. But she said her search really began when the state of Oregon opened its adoption records in 1998, she went online, filled out the forms and sent in the application with her $25 fee. One summer afternoon in 2000 of very plain looking envelope from the state of Oregon showed up in the mail and she knew exactly what it was her unamended birth certificate.

Pam (07:39):

And I thought, bingo, here we go. I'm going to have names now. Now I can really search. So I get this document. Oh my gosh. So I take it out and I look at it. I looked down at her name and her last name is Jones.

Damon (08:00):

As Pam got older, her adoptive mother shared more details about her adoption that weren't appropriate for her as a child. She divulged that her birth father was not her birth mother's husband. So when Pam got her birth certificate, she was really surprised to see a man's name on it and happy to see that his last name was far less common. So she keyed her search on him, on her laptop. She went to Yahoo people, search where you used to be able to get all kinds of background information on an individual that you have to pay for access to today. She didn't find the man, but she found a woman with his unique, last name, Pam figured they had to be related. So she called the woman.

Pam (08:42):

I said, I'm looking for this person. And she said, Oh, that's my cousin. Here's his number?

Damon (08:48):

The next call was to the man whose name appeared on her own birth certificate.

Pam (08:53):

And I said, I don't, I don't know if you know who I am, but you're named on my birth certificate and I'm looking for my siblings. And he says, well, honey, I'm not your father. I was married to your mom and your siblings have been looking for you.

Damon (09:13):

Whoa, what'd you think when you heard that?

Pam (09:17):

I was so happy. I was really, it hadn't occurred to me that I might be a secret, but I was really happy to know that they knew

Damon (09:29):

The man put Pam in touch with her sisters. And they had lots of multiple hour telephone conversations. In July of 2000. Her sister, Margaret closest in age to Pam flew out West from Arkansas to stay with her.

Pam (09:43):

Oh my gosh, we just, it sounds really silly, but we couldn't keep our hands off each other. We were braiding each other's hair and brushing each other's hair and hugging and holding hands. And we were just so delighted to be together. And she delighted in my kids and her son was a charming boy. And we went on little excursions together and saw the sites. And it was really fun.

Damon (10:07):

Margaret shared quite a bit about the family and the family members. Pam would meet in Arkansas. She described some family issues with drug physical and sexual abuse, sharing some horrific stories about her own childhood in the fall of 2000 Pam and her husband left their kids behind protecting them from potential harm to make the voyage to Arkansas, to suss out the situation for themselves. She and her husband flew into little rock. Then drove the hour South to star city.

Pam (10:39):

My birth mother was still living at that time, but she'd had a series of strokes and she couldn't speak. I couldn't really have a conversation with her. Um, her husband was still able to care for her at that point. And um, we went and visited with her, um, spent an afternoon there and really, I just sat next to her and held her hand and my siblings and I kind of talk to each other while she could just sit and listen to us, you know? And she understood who I was. And she was so happy and delighted. She could say, I love you. Which was a lovely thing to hear. She could say she, she could say yes. And she could say, no, you could ask her yes or no questions, but sometimes she'd say no. When she meant yes. And vice versa, it wasn't any way to have any kind of meaningful conversation or what happened or anything like that. So a lot of those questions I don't have answers for, but it was good to meet her.

Damon (11:49):

Do you look like her?

Pam (11:52):

Yes. Just like her.

Damon (11:57):

What was that like?

Pam (11:57):

I couldn't really see it when I met her. I couldn't really see how I looked like any of them when I was there. And it didn't really become clear to me that I look like them until I saw pictures of them from varying times in their lives. When we did resemble each other more, not ever growing up around people that you look like, you don't really understand how people sort of morph. And sometimes they look like their mom is sometimes they look like their dad and you know, it, they, you change a lot as you age. And so it wasn't obvious to me until I stopped pictures. So it wasn't obvious to me when I saw her. And then after you've had a stroke, sometimes your, it changes your face because you can't control your muscles. So it couldn't really see myself. I saw pictures of her as a younger woman. I thought, Oh my God, I do. I was just like her. And now that I'm older, I definitely look like her.

Damon (12:53):

So the guy on Pam's birth certificate was not her biological father, but her sisters knew who the correct person was. And they gave her his identity. He was a man who lived in the sisters area. They always knew who he was. And he was always in their lives.

Pam (13:10):

He was their father's cousin. So the man on my birth certificate, my father is his cousin.

Damon (13:20):

Oh, so she was with her husband's cousin?

Pam (13:26):

Yes.

Damon (13:29):

Oh. Are the other five siblings? All the product of their marriage?

Pam (13:36):

Yes.

Damon (13:38):

So you were an outside child.

Pam (

After the adoptive father she loved so much died, Alison learned her birth father, Tim, was looking for her and she took it as a good sign of things to come. Sadly she found herself disappointed in him, and later in her birth mother, Jean, whom he contacted without telling her. Alison had no idea her birthmother struggled with mental illness, so their contentious relationship was inexplicably challenging. After Alison took legal action to gain access to her adoption records from the agency that refused to turn over her information, she finally laid eyes on the detailed context of her past that meant so much to her, and only her.

Read Full TranscriptAlison:                         00:00:01          I am the one that had no choice in this. Right? You know, like when you realize like, you know, my, my adopted parents had a choice. They choose, they chose to adopt. My birth mother had a choice, even though in some sense she didn’t, but there was still choices made, right? That weren’t my choices. I mean, I’m the only one that, that completely had no choice. So I realized that like, and this in reunion. I can choose who I have relationships with and who I don’t, you know, I, I, you know, so I realized it’s okay. Like I don’t need to make this work with my birth mother.

Voices:                        00:00:35          Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon:                       00:00:47          This is, Who Am I Really? A podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and on today’s show is Alison. She called me from Massachusetts. After the adoptive father that she loved so much died, Alison learned her birth father was looking for her and she took it as a sign of good things to come. Sadly, she found herself disappointed in him and later in her birth mother whom he had contacted without telling her. However, after Alison took legal action to gain access to her adoption records from the agency who refused to turn over her information, she finally laid eyes on the detailed context of her past that means so much to her and only her. This is Alison’s journey. This is Alison.

Alison:                         00:01:40          I just want to tell you, but I, you know, found your podcast not that long ago.

Damon:                       00:01:45          I always like to hear how the show is impactful for people.

Alison:                         00:01:49          And um, I, I shot you an email after the first one I listened to, you interviewed your friend,

Damon:                       00:01:54          she’s talking about one of my lifelong buddies, Andre, whom I featured way back in my very first episode.

Alison:                         00:02:01          And he, he actually used this person named Sheila Frankl in his search and at some point in my journey she helped me in actually getting my unredacted adoption record.

Damon:                       00:02:13          Are you serious?

Alison:                         00:02:15          No. Small world thing. I was like, oh my gosh. Like his story was so much like mine and then I listen.

Damon:                       00:02:20          That’s so amazing.

Alison:                         00:02:21          Yeah, it was amazing. And then I’ve just been, you know, listening, I’m not done, but it’s impressive how many I’ve listened to. I would just, I’m always plugged in and I just like, just can’t believe you did this. Like it’s so good and there’s so many people like us and we need to hear each other’s stories. So, um, yeah. So I completely appreciate it. It’s really good.

Damon:                       00:02:43          No, man, I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. And to now, here we are. Alison is episode 85 crazy how time flies in this small world of ours. Anyway, Alison’s parents had tried to have children for almost 10 years before they adopted her older brother Bradley in 1961. She was born in 1963, in Boston. Two years later, their mother gave birth to their sister after 15 years of infertility. Alison said she always knew she was adopted and her parents always made it special and tried to normalize it so much so that their sister,

Alison:                         00:03:21          my sister actually had voiced, you know, like when we’re young adults, you know, a little bit of sadness that she wasn’t adopted. My parents made like such a big deal about it that she always felt like, well, who’s gonna make a big deal out of me? You know? Um, so you know, like, you know, funny cause she is important and we all love her and um, but she was just kind of like, you know, I just wish I was also picked out special. Um, which is sort of the vernacular back then, which isn’t used now in adoption. But that’s, you know, kind of how I think, you know, parents were kind of coached to, to share that with their adopted kids.

Damon:                       00:03:54          That’s interesting. You know, I never really thought about that. That, you know, there’s a lot of uh, discussion online and with folks who are, you know, considering adoption or who have adopted and how they should treat their adopted children. And you know, I, I have mixed emotions about sort of having a birthday for the child and a, I hate the word Gotcha Day, but the, the idea of bringing the child home like the day that we became a family, because if you are just trying to be normal, like constantly raising it can actually keep it at the forefront of your mind if you want to just forget and just be yourself. And I hadn’t really considered what it means for a biological child of the parents to have to endure that. That’s really interesting.

Alison:                         00:04:40          Yeah isn’t that Interesting? Yeah, it was, it was really a thing for her. I mean, she wasn’t joking. She, it really, it, it bothered her.

Damon:                       00:04:46          Yeah I could see that. Oh yeah,

Alison:                         00:04:48          yeah, yeah, yeah. Me Too. Um, and you know, and, and, and, you know, on the flip side, I was actually, you know, one of my struggles being adopted was not so much the longing for my birth parents, but I just wish that I had been born to my parents that adopted me. Do you know what I mean? Like, I just wish I was just, their’s.

Damon:                       00:05:09          Why? What did you feel to make you want that?

Alison:                         00:05:10          you know, there’s some othering I think that happens when you’re adopted. So for example, you know, like we were super open about adoption in my family and, um, so if I would share with somebody, you know, like people would always comment, so there’s three of us and people would say, oh my gosh, you guys don’t look alike. So we would, if whoever, whoever, it was in my family would say, oh, that’s because, you know, Alison and Bradley were adopted and Candace wasn’t or whatever. And people would often say like the weirdest stuff. Like, like, oh my Gosh, you know, my brother used to tease me that I was adopted and I was so upset. I was hysterical until my parents told me that I wasn’t like, you know, like it was seen as this like awful thing to be adopted. And now there’s another thing that happened to me is when, so my, my dad, my adopted father, passed away when I was 17 and it was, it was awful. And we were, we were really close. So I, you know, I had this part time job at a department store and I’d gone back to work like a week after he had died, but I was still a mess. And, um, so I had gone like to the break room into the bathroom to kind of collect myself. So I was know in the bathroom, like in a stall, like crying and wipe my eyes. And these two, two coworkers, who were also teenagers walked in and they were talking about me because they didn’t know I was in there. And one of them said, oh my gosh, you know, Alison is still upset about her father. And then the other one said, I don’t know why she’s so upset. He wasn’t even her real father.

Damon:                       00:06:34          Oh my gosh.

Alison:                         00:06:36          Yeah. So things, you know, it’s like little things like that that I just didn’t like, I didn’t like that. It, it didn’t, I didn’t feel different in my family, but I know that other people saw me differently. Um, and I, yeah, I didn’t care for that.

Damon:                       00:06:52          Yeah. Right.

Alison:                         00:06:52          You know, I didn’t like,

Damon:                       00:06:53          yeah, that’s like what I was saying. You just want to feel normal. And if you’re constantly reminded of it, it’s kind of annoying. Right?

Alison:                         00:07:01          You just want to feel normal. Right.

Damon:                       00:07:02          Alison followed up by pointing out that their two youngest children are also adoptees and they love making a big deal out of the day they were adopted too. They were older at the time of...

Andrew lives in Murphy, Oregon, near Grant’s Pass but his is an east coast story. Andrew grew up kinda feeling like an odd man out in his family, not fitting his parents ideas of who he would be. In an amazing coincidence, his pen pal relationship with an elementary school class was key to unlocking his adoption reunion search. The open road took him to meet his birth father who introduced him to his maternal grandmother.She welcomed Andrew at first, but ultimately she was unable to separate him from the memories of what his birthfather did to her daughter years before. This is Andrew’s journey.  

Jessica is a rare native, born and raised, in Las Vegas, Nevada. She shares how she found her biological relatives through DNA testing despite her best attempts to get information from the Mormon church, an entity focused on global genealogy. Jessica discovered she looks like her birth families and has similar traits to them. But Jessica also learned that for all she has in common with her birth mother, and how much she wants to meet the woman, they are barred from seeing one another. This is Jessica’s journey.

Laura called me via Skype, would you believe, from Falkirk Scotland. Laura told the story of her childhood knowledge that she might have siblings out in the world, and her quest to meet them. When she met her biological mother things started slowly as Laura tested the woman to make sure she wasn’t going to leave again — and she didn’t — then she did. Laura’s developed a great connection with her paternal sister, even though Laura never got to meet her biological father. This is Laura’s journey.

The post 095 – I Tested Her To See If She’d Give Up appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Laura (00:03):

Yeah,

Laura (00:03):

That would see her call and she would text me and I just, I couldn't, I didn't feel able to respond. I was too frightened to answer and to go into, I don't know why I was maybe texting her, maybe just to see if she would give up on me, but she doesn't.

intro (00:24):

Who am I? Who am I? Who

intro (00:27):

am I? Who am I?

Damon (00:31):

Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Laura. She called me via Skype. Would you believe from fallkirk, Scotland. Laura told me the story of her childhood knowledge that she might have siblings out in the world and her quest to meet them when she met her biological mother. Things started out slowly as Laura tested the woman to make sure she wasn't going to leave again and she didn't. Then she did. Laura developed a great connection with her paternal sister even though Laura never got to meet her biological father. This is Laura's journey. If you heard last week show with Barry, you're probably wondering what's up with all of these guests from Scotland all of a sudden, I promise you it was purely coincidence that Laura's story followed his. Laura made time to speak with me after running two races that morning, uh, 5k and a 10K. so as we settled into her recovery time, I asked Laura to take me back to the beginning of her journey, which started in Alloa Clackmannanshire. And yes, I really wanted to say Clapman Shire.

Laura (01:48):

Well, I feel like I approach my own story with caution because so much of it is only known from the social work records that I have and from the stories that my adoptive parents told me. Um, from what I know, my parents, who I was born to, were and our relationship for our own nine months. And that came to an abrupt end upon the discovery of my mom being pregnant with me. And I think she only discovered that pregnancy at around five months. Then so quietly, wow. My parents worked in the hotel trade. My mum was a training trainee chef and my dad was a waiter and when I was born, my mother was aged 20 and my dad was 33 so she was quite young. And my dad, my dad was fairly young, but he was in the middle of a, a second divorce. Um, so I think maybe my mom had been an affair or maybe I rebound following the breakdown of his marriage. Um, so I often wonder if when I was conceived and by what, by what accident of failed contraception or drunk and forgetfulness, I came to be, eh, but the, the decision to have me placed and to care seemed to send around, eh, the lack of support that my mom had from my father and from our family. And maybe I'll lack of confidence on her part and perhaps a lack of money because where she was working, she, you still have end the hotels. And when I was born she was living in homeless accommodation.

Damon (03:25):

So Laura's birth mother was living in a homeless shelter that September while she was in the hospital for eight days before moving to foster care. She stayed there for three months until she met her adoptive parents who took her home in December of that year. Laura was rattling off the facts of her chapter one backstory when she said this,

Laura (03:45):

If it feels so unpassionate, they talk to them about the story because it doesn't feel like it's about me. The fact I was born with a different name. It makes it feel like that baby is someone else.

Damon (03:54):

I know.

Laura (03:56):

it feels like recounting the story of a stranger, but for as long as I can remember, I knew that I was adopted and it felt like my family accessed it as ghosts walking around. In my mind. They weren't physically there, but it felt like they would ever present.

Damon (04:14):

Are you referring to your birth family?

Laura (04:16):

Yeah. Yeah. it felt like. it felt like my birth family, I knew, I knew that they were there, but for whatever reason I wasn't sure why I didn't ask bucket and half of them. Um, so it was a bit strange.

Damon (04:29):

Laura's adoptive parents mentioned to her one day that there was a possibility that she had biological siblings. The announcement made her really curious about what parts of herself were out there. I asked Laura about when she remembered having that ghostly feeling.

Laura (04:44):

I think one day my adoptive mom and I were having an argument. I was only maybe about seven or eight and I think I was misbehaving and I must've really upset my adoptive mum and she said to me, in anger. You know, you can go back to your birth mom, we can send you back. And my reply was when I'm at that stage, she got really, really angry and I think it was from then it seemed to validate that my family were real and that they were out there, I wonder what they looked like. I became a lot more conscious of the fact that I didn't look like anyone and I think that's when, that's when it became more prominent. I think

Damon (05:31):

Laura describes herself as having fair light, blonde hair in a family of Brown haired parents. It wasn't a stark difference enough to prevent her from passing as their child with others, but it was striking to her that she had no similarities with them. No one's mouth, eyes, nose or jawline. She said the differences weren't significant to her. Just noticeable. But it became pronounced when she noticed the joy her parents, other people took and comparing themselves to their own parents. Of course, family similarities and dissimilarities are not limited to physical traits. Did you notice any differences in your own personality traits in likes and dislikes?

Laura (06:12):

I think so. My adoptive parents were very hands on practical people. They light scalped and then they like sewing and they're like DIY and I was never into these things at all. I was into reading books and writing stories and drawing and things like that and where they were very outgoing and party animals. I was very quiet and introverted. I think. So. I don't know. I don't know if I was the child that they expected or the child that they ideally would have wanted. Maybe it would have been different if I'd been born to them. Maybe that some of that would come to me through the, through the genes.

Damon (06:50):

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a, it's a wonder that, uh, people feel like the child that they get is going to somehow be molded into the person that they want.

Laura (07:02):

Yeah.

Damon (07:03):

And I think it's only become realized by a lot of parents these days that you know, this blank slate idea is not at all valid because the giant does in fact come with a lot of heredity. They know that that was passed on to them. I was curious to know whether Laura knew any other adoptees growing up. Sometimes that can reduce the otherness that an adoptee feels and prevents them from feeling like some kind of pariah. She knew one other kid at school whose brothers and sisters were also adopted. The adoption narrative they received was positive, like the children had been saved or given a better life. So Laura bought into that mentality. She was very pleased to be with her family even though she was confused about why she couldn't know her birth family. When I asked about the catalyst for Laura's search, she said she'd always had some social worker sourced information about her birth family, but it wasn't until she was 17 years old in 2007 that she was legally allowed to view her original birth certificate. She left the social work department with a copy of her OBC, which documented the name Laura was given when she was born. Ashley, from the moment she received that document, it was pretty much a given that she was going to search. Laura and her adoptive mother went to visit a social worker who gave her the information. She told us in the beginning the relationship between her parents, et cetera. The social worker initiated a search for her birth mother and before long they were facilitating a letter exchange because they'd found her. Her name is Isabelle. The social worker shared that she had moved out of Scotland, gotten married, and had more children. That news didn't sit well with Laura

Laura (08:48):

After me. She had gotten married and she had two boys, and I remember when I found out the age of my brothers, so at the time I was 17 and I think around at one brother was five and the other one was 14 and when I found that out, I felt really angry.

Damon (09:08):

Where were you angry?

Laura (09:09):

I felt angry that she, I felt she'd moved on too quickly and had another boy, and I felt jealous and angry that he got to stay. But I didn't express that anger at all. I think I hope that I kept that under wraps because I thought if the social worker sees I'm angry or if it gets back to her I'm angry, it may sabotage things.

Damon (09:31):

In her intro letter to Isabelle, Laura tried to play things nonchalant and portrayed a positive adoption experience. She painted a happy picture for this woman to come into and tried to not to convey that she had missed this woman whom she didn't actually know her birth mother's response letter went something like this.

Laura (09:49):

The sort of tone of it was that our life had been quite difficult and she'd had to make some hard choices. She explained that she got married, had the two boys, and then the marriage broke down and she moved with the two boys to Northern Ireland. She didn't go into too much detail, but she said the marriage had been difficult. Um, she said that she hoped, she was glad to hear that my life had been good and she said that she would be coming over to Scotland quite soon with the boys so that they could see their dad and that she hoped to meet me then. So all seemed quite positive for me.

Damon (10:27):

Excellent. Yeah. At least for starters. Yeah. So were you, were you in any way comforted by just the fact that she wanted to be in touch, that you were corresponding, that you had connected with this person?

Laura (10:38):

Definitely. I had been, I think coached and counseled for the possibility of her, not wanting contact. And I think, I think, I thought I was ready to deal with that. But I think if that had been the case, I think it would have affected me hugely in ways that I could never have contemplated. Fortunately that wasn't the case. Um, but looking back now, I think our relationship could have used a lot more support than we got. As we moved on to reunion together,

Damon (11:06):

Their social worker arranged a meeting at a local restaurant for the mother and daughter to meet. Isabel caught a taxi. Laura drove herself as she had just gotten her license. Their social worker met them outside in the parking lot

Laura (11:19):

And I just don't remember her getting out of the taxi and coming up to me and I remember that she didn't look like the person that thought she was going to look in the head. I think. I think I've always had a 20 year old girl in my head and she stayed like that. And my mind, she didn't age and my mind, our face, I think in my, in my mind I had my mother who looked like someone softer when the social work helped me and got my records for me. They found some photographs of my mom and I together in the hospital when I was, so I would have seen them when I was 17 um yeah, all those before I met her and she obviously looked younger and when I met her she was 37 so not old, but you know, she looked different to have a thought and I think that was a bit of a shock. Um, I didn't know what to do with our, I thought do I cuddle her, do I shake her hand? What do I do? I'm not really sure if I remember who I had done. I just remember looking and wondering how, how do I feel about this person is there's something I should feel as there is a rope that should be between our two hearts pulling us together. I wasn't sure. I don't think we touched, I think we say hello and I think we moved quite quickly into their shrunk together. With the social worker

Damon (12:42):

That's really interesting. You don't recall shaking hands, hugging anything. You just sort of walked parallel into the restaurant?

Laura (12:49):

I think so. I think so. I remember my first physical contact with her...

Dan has barely told anyone the his whole story until this episode. He shared that he was in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as an infant. Then his son's rare medical condition and his wife’s ability to share her heredity while he could not was a catalyst for his search. Dan is thankful for the warm welcome he’s received in his paternal family, and is still hoping that his birthmother will come around to wanting to know him. This is Dan's Journey.

Dan (00:04):

I kind of find it ironic that now that I found my birth father, that my birth parents had passed away. So it's like, I hear a lot of people when you try to read to your birth parents, it's like your chapter one in the beginning. You don't know that. But now that I met them, I'm getting more about my beginning, but I don't have my parents to give me chapters one and two, you know, when you're real young and you don't remember everything,

Damon (00:30):

Who am I? Who am I?

Damon (00:35):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Daniel. He called me from Nicholasville, Kentucky. Dan has barely told anyone his whole story until this episode, he shared that his son's rare medical condition and his wife's ability to share her heredity while he could not was a catalyst for his search. Dan is thankful for the warm welcome he's received in his paternal family and is still hoping that his birth mother will come around to wanting to know him. This is Dan's journey. Daniel was born in January of 1980, adopted four months later after he spent that period of time in the neonatal intensive care unit, the NICU.

Dan (01:34):

So I was born six weeks premature, and I had some brain and lung issues. So I was in the NICU for the first four months of life. The doctor didn't think I would live to two may never walk and could be blind.

Damon (01:48):

Dan's adoptive parents had a variety of personal setbacks that prevented them from getting pregnant. But four years after Dan was born, his little brother who is biological to their parents was conceived. They grew up out in the country, outside of Morgantown, West Virginia, and the brothers got along just fine. Their father's side of the family lived nearby. So all of the kids just ran up and down from house to house, taking advantage of being outdoors.

Dan (02:15):

Two of my uncles live within a mile of me, so we could walk. I could walk house to house and run around and displaying the neighborhood.

Damon (02:22):

That's incredible. That's some of the best growing up, man, when you can just go between house to house, safe and sound. No worries.

Dan (02:31):

Go run around to the woods in the neighborhood and play, stick guns and just run around. And so, yeah,

Damon (02:37):

I love that. That's really amazing. Yeah. Dan said he never felt out of place in his family. He said he always knew he was adopted. And his adopted mother used to talk about his birth mother calling her by name. Dan said, he'd share more about that later. In his fourth grade health class, Dan learned what adoption truly meant. I asked him how felt when he learned the meaning of adoption at that age,

Dan (03:03):

I kind of cut kind of quiet about it. And what was interesting in my house, my mother was adopted around the age of eight. She was adopted, but learning later on when I became in my twenties and thirties, learning about her adoption, it's much different and darker in contrast to my own story. So I never really talked to her about it at all. Despite the commonality that we have. So, um, once I found out, I remember feeling kind of confused about why I was adopted and even though you're adopted and my family was great. It's still kind of like you fit in. You know, even though you fit in with your family, you still know there's something else. It's kind of different. If that makes sense.

Damon (03:41):

Dan kept quiet about adoption growing up, going on to graduate high school, attend the university of Kentucky for college, then earned his PhD in biomedical engineering. It was in grad school where he met his wife and they eventually had a son together the whole time Dan's own adoption. Never really came up as a topic of discussion.

Dan (04:02):

All honesty. No, I kept it to myself. I think I told my wife while we were dating. And then I really didn't bring it up hardly at all with anybody, I guess I didn't know how to talk about, so I wasn't sure how to process it. So I just never talked about it. So for me to come on this podcast to talk to you is kind of a big step.

Damon (04:22):

Wow. Well, thanks for doing it, man. You're going to, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how you feel at the other end, after having delved into everything. And then I'm sure you're going to help somebody else by sharing your own story too.

Dan (04:34):

That's a part of the reason I agreed to do it. Cause I contact you and I'll talk about it here a little bit later when we get into the search of how I found the podcast while I was searching.

Damon (04:43):

Interesting. Well, that's exactly what I was going to getting ready to turn to then is you sound like you found out what adoption truly meant when you were maybe eight years old. Fourth grade? Yeah. About eight or nine. Yeah. You kept it in the back of your mind. Never really talked about it at all. You revealed it to your wife when you, before you got married when you started dating, but that was it. So what was the catalyst for you to even begin a search? Because it sounds like you pushed it down and didn't really have any interest in, in looking. What was, what, what sparked your interest? All of a sudden

Dan (05:17):

The first one started in 2010 when my father passed away. So I started thinking, what if it's too late? I don't want to hear a second hand about my biological parents. I'd like to be able to at least meet them or talk to them hopefully and see if the name that I had initially for my birth mother was correct.

Damon (05:35):

Dan started searching in 2010 using the name his adoptive mother had for his birth mother. He said that at the time he was adopted, one of the wristbands on his tiny arm had the woman's name on it, identifying them as mother and son. So his mom secretly jotted the name down, then wrote it in Danny's baby book. For later, she also scribbled the non identifying information. She knew in the book. In 2011, he applied for his non-identifying information, receiving a huge packet in the mail from the state of West Virginia.

Dan (06:08):

So at basically gave me some information about my medical history and said I was born early and that my birth mother intended to use a private agency to facilitate the adoption. But the agency said I was too sick and that no one would probably want me. So that's why she went to the state to facilitate the adoption. You said I had some issues with my lung, an affection and a brain bleed. And again, they said they probably probably wouldn't survive. So I was born about eight weeks early.

Damon (06:38):

Let me ask you this, just on that, because you've raised your, your challenges at birth more than once. And how was it for you to read those details about yourself? I guess there's two pieces to that. One if they have manifested themselves in you throughout your life, as an adult, then you would have lived with it and it probably didn't strike you, but like just tell me, what did it feel like to learn those details about yourself as an infant?

Dan (07:07):

Well, I, oddly enough knew pretty much about them growing up. And in fact, I remember in high school having to write like a book about myself from, you know, age zero to 18 and you know, my mom helped write my first chapters in my life and telling how I was in the hospital then. So when I learned about it, when I got my down in identifying information, it just really kind of confirmed what I already knew. So it wasn't anything really shocking, I guess the most shocking part would be that she attempted to use an agency and that she's like, no, you're, he's too sick. And then she had to go to the state. So I guess that if anything would be the most shocking or eye opening part where it's like they can pick and choose the agencies kind of. So that was probably the most opening part. And from listening to your podcast and the other ones and joining some Facebook group, that's probably the most eyeopening part. It's like, no, we're going to pass you off to the state.

Damon (08:03):

Yeah, I can't help. But think of that situation almost like product quality control.

Dan (08:13):

Yes. That's, that's probably what I kind of the biggest opening eyes about adoption in a whole that I kind of, you know, after here, again, hearing your podcast and looking on the internet, just kind of realizing that the most eyeopening part. Yeah,

Damon (08:27):

No, you you're teaching me something here because I can't say that I really had ever focused in on this piece. I've, you know, I've often heard adoption referred to as, you know, a moneymaker and you know, some of the, in a, in a commercialized entity and things like that. And, and I understand it in theory, but I've never really thought truly about what you just said, that as, you know, you envision a product coming down the assembly line and you know, the mechanical arm sweeps the bad ones away. That's really, that's really fascinating. I just never really thought that that was a piece of it. Thank you for that. The non identifying information stated that his birth mother was home for Christmas. Then Dan was born. It described the relationship in which he was conceived as a summer fling.

Dan (09:24):

It did note that my birth mother contacted my birth father shortly after the birth and that a social worker also talked about him or talked about me. So it did indicate that my birth father knew I was born. So anyway, so when I get the letter, initially, it says we've deleted all names, deleted all non-identifying information. So I looked through my 30 pages information and from that information, I could find my full birth father's name in the file. So

Damon (09:53):

Somehow the man's name had been left in the case notes. He was even able to piece together his birth mother's name, even though he already had that information. Dan figured out what state his biological parents were from. And he learned his birth mother's career goals. With those clues. Dan went online.

Dan (10:11):

I took that information in 2011 and was able to find my birth mother on Facebook. And I sent her a meshes in 2011 and never heard back from her. So I kind of just dropped it. And then at the same time, I was looking for my birth father, but he had a very common name. So it was impossible for me to find him in 2011. So I kind of just dropped it. I just went, okay. I didn't hear any saying, who knows. Maybe I had the wrong person. Maybe the information was wrong. So I really didn't think about it again until 2017, when my mother, all of a sudden, a passed away. And even then I decided not to look at all. It wasn't again, till November of 2017. And my son was almost one and a half and he started walking, but he had a little bit of a gait issue.

Dan (10:59):

So our pediatrician said, Hey, why don't you go to a hospital nearby and get him checked out for his gait issue? See if it's something with his bones. So at his two year checkup, it turned out it wasn't any single bones, but he was still walking a little bit funny. So we went ahead and started physical therapy and it was in the August of 2018. The physical therapist said, he's not walking quite right. You really should go see a neurologist. So we went to a children's hospital locally nearby, and the neurologist checked him out and he ended up, they were thinking he had musclar dystrophy and ended up turning out that he didn't have muscular dystrophy, but he had a really large belly and he's had a really large belly since birth. So she poked around on his liver and stomach area and did an ultrasound and come back that he had an enlarged liver and spleen with elevated liver enzymes. So the next week we ended up going back up to that hospital and seeing the GI doctors and after meeting with the GI doctors, the doctor said, I bet he has a rare condition called glycogen storage disease or GSD. And if you type in GSD on the internet, you'll come up with German shepherd dog,

Damon (12:12):

Which is not your son. So what, tell me, tell me what is GSD and is it something, what does it mean for his future?

Dan (12:20):

Okay, well, so GSD is actually a genetic disorder. So it's basically where your liver normally stores sugar for night. So after you eat the insulin, we'll take the sugar and put it in the liver. So when you're not eating or sleeping deliverable, then release the sugar back out into the body. So it'll keep the brain active and muscles active for you. Well, with glycogen storage disease, the liver will take in the sugar, but it will not release it. So you could become hypoglycemic. And there's two forms of glycogen storage disease. There's a very severe form where you have to eat every three to four hours to keep your blood sugar up or you become hypoglycemic...

Before becoming an adoptee advocate Rich was searching for his own identity. As a child, his older adopted sister vengefully told him their mom wasn’t his real mother. It made him wonder who the other woman could be. When he was in college, his adoptive parents gave him an envelope of non-identifying information. Many years later they handed him another document that revealed his birth name. Rich found himself resenting their decision to withhold information from him that he clearly wanted. When he found his maternal aunt they discussed his birth mother enough to realize she wasn’t the only sister in the family to have relinquished a son in Denver.

Read Full TranscriptRich:                            00:00               I started reading her the description of the birth father from my non identifying records and she got really quiet and she said, oh, this changes everything she goes, I know who your birth father was and so once we sorted it all out, we were both in bed for two days because she hadn’t known that her younger sister had done this.

Voices:                        00:35               Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon:                       00:47               This is Who Am I Really? A podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and on today’s show is Rich. He called me from Denver, Colorado where he works in adoptee advocacy, but before he took on that body of work, Rich was searching for his own identity. When he was in college, his adoptive parents gave him an envelope of non identifying information. Then years later he received another document with his birth name. When he found his maternal aunt, they discussed his birth mother enough to realize she wasn’t the only sister in the family to have relinquished a son in Denver. This is Rich’s journey. Rich has an older sister who was adopted, like himself, and a younger sister who was the biological child of his parents. Like many adoptive parents, they didn’t think they could conceive a child until she was born. They were set with their daughter and son they had adopted and there was no plans for any more children. It’s amazing how often that storyline is repeated in adoption. Interestingly, since adoption was such an open topic in their family, at one point their younger sister had a bit of an identity crisis.

Rich:                            02:03               The funny thing, you know, how families show slides and baby pictures and that sort of thing. And um, my younger sister was the only one with the newborn new new newborn photos. And at one point she sort of had an existential crisis thinking that she was adopted too, but they just weren’t telling her.

Damon:                       02:23               Oh, interesting.

Rich:                            02:25               You’re, you’re the only one with the pictures in which your purple.

Damon:                       02:30               Hmm.

Rich:                            02:32               They’ve got, they’ve got the evidence.

Damon:                       02:34               Yeah. You’re new new newborn in this. Wow. That’s really fascinating. I’ve never heard anyone talk about their sibling who was biological to their parents having this alignment of their identification with you and your sister as adoptees before. That’s fascinating. Yeah. The mind of a child, you know, you want to be like those around you. And if the two out of the three children in your home are adoptees you must figure, oh, I must be adopted too.

Rich:                            03:03               Well, and it was, it was a hot topic for a while, uh, because my, uh, older sister one day was angry with me and she presented it to me in a different light when she said, rather than saying you were adopted, a lot of them wanted and chosen and all those things that we hear. She said, mom’s not your real mom. And I was five at the time. It was, it was pretty devastating to me. It shook my world. I said, I just said, what? So she just repeated it. Nope. Mom’s not your real mom and sort of gloried in the triumph of having stunned me. And so of course I went and asked my mom about it and she explained that even though they’d said that we were adopted, that was different than thinking that there was another mom out there somewhere. And I really struggled with that.

Rich:                            04:00               I moped around and was depressed and was saying, I wish I knew who my real mom was. And finally at one point she just said, well, I’m your real mom. She was your first mom. Something in my head said, okay, and we, we move forward with that. But it never, I always wanted to know. Uh, the unfortunate thing is, is she told me I would never know. And so that hung with me and there’s a part of me that was very saddened by that and the part of me that filed it away kind of like saying, well, we’ll, we’ll see. You know, we’ll see if I never know.

Damon:                       04:39               Rich said, other than that they had the quintessential suburban family. They went to church every Sunday, went on family vacations to see relatives and visit various states across the country. I asked Rich about the relative homogeneity of his family. I’m often curious about the visual clues a person might have that they are somehow different from their family members.

Rich:                            05:00               And it was kinda funny because one day someone commented, that, my dad and I looked alike and we just sort of looked at each other and said, well, that’s funny. We both have blue eyes and we both have big ears, but that’s about as far as it went.

Damon:                       05:16               It’s pretty funny. I remember I used to do that too. You know, people would say that to my dad. Oh my gosh, he looks just like you. And immediately we would look at each other like, really do I? It’s funny, I used to say, I said, you know, my father passed away. I said in his, the sort of eulogy speech that I gave that I think that people saw more of the spirit that you picked up from the person in the fact that you’re there together interacting. Then they did actually, you know, a physical resemblance in my opinion.

Rich:                            05:47               Right? I think so that you, you imitate mannerisms and gestures and even facial expressions. It’s the whole nature and nurture piece of the conversation.

Damon:                       05:58               I asked Rich to describe his personality traits as compared with those of his other family members. He said his parents were the post World War II generation, People who had a job to do and did it. They kept their commitments and they really applied themselves to their lives. He said their differences weren’t as apparent until he was old enough to be more contemplative about it all.

Rich:                            06:19               Their biological heritage was mainly English and German, which, you know, if you want to stereotype cultures, tend to be a little more still like a little less communicative. And my biological heritage is Irish and Swedish and Scottish and a little bit of northern European mud. And so in that sense, I think I was wired pretty differently from what they were. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t clear at first, but I think that as I grew up and started to think more critically about our interaction and what was happening and um, some of the dynamics, I think that we really, I don’t know if we were oil and water, it’s not like, we had fights all the time or that kind of thing. It was just my internal expectation of how the world interacted was very different than theirs and at times it left me feeling, Eh, what’s the best word? Somewhere somewhere between not normal and crazy for thinking and communicating and wanting to interact the way that I wanted to and getting the message that this didn’t make sense.

Damon:                       07:44               Interesting. Around what age do you recall feeling that way and can you give me even the highest level example of something that exemplifies that feeling?

Rich:                            07:54               Probably I would say initially maybe about age seven which interestingly enough is the age at which many adoptees and children in general start to develop the capacity to grieve, in second grade, I would have these crying jags at school and I didn’t know why. The teacher would say, what’s wrong? What’s happening? What? Did someone hit you? Did someone do something to you? And I couldn’t explain it and I said, I don’t know. I just can’t stop crying. I didn’t learn about that until years later. At Adoptees in Search here in Colorado when Ron Nydam, who is a therapist and an author mentioned that, where you just casually mentioned in passing in one of the talks he gave that eight, seven, or eight is when children develop a capacity to grieve. And that light went off right away. And so in in the midst of those feelings with my folks, I can remember feeling things. One night I walked into the living room and sort of stood at the edge. I think my mom was reading a book and my dad was reading a newspaper or something like that. And uh, my mom looked up and inside I had all these, moist emotions roiling around as she looked up and in a very pleasant tone and just said, how can I help you as if she was sort of, you know, the family waitress, but completely or seemingly unaware that anything wrong was going, was happening inside me. She was asking like, would you like a glass of milk? And so that’s probably my earliest memory of that.

Damon:                       09:43               And what, what happened when you, but you were, you were boiling inside, like the emotions were just raw. It sounds like,

Rich:                            09:50               right? It was. It was. I didn’t, I didn’t have words for what was going on, but probably probably at the time just would have helped a lot to have been hugged or held. We weren’t a particularly affectionate family, especially after a certain age. When we were little, you know, we were read to and sat on our mom’s lap, just that unite and that sort of thing. So as I said, I think pretty typical the generation, and it’s interesting because I’ve talked to people who are not adopted, men who were not adopted in particular, uh, about the dynamics in their family and how it impacted them. And it leads to an interesting conversation about what is related to adoption, what’s related to being raised by postwar parents. Many men were raised a certain way or emotionally traumatized by war and just not able to be as engaged emotionally or...

Joseph is a really outdoorsy guy who lives in Edmonds, Washington, about 30 minutes north of Seattle. He likes mountain biking, trail running, camping and skiing. Joseph grew up in a family of several children, some biological, and one other adoptee you might already know. He told me that he never could have pinpointed what it was, but he always seemed to be searching for something. Joseph started his journey searching for answers from his biological mother about his adoption. Instead he found mystery surrounding her life, unanswered questions and a connection to his brother that means the most to him out of everything. This is Joseph’s journey.

The post 099 – We Were Both Missing Something In Our Lives appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Joseph (00:03):

I'm not going to fault her. I mean I was adopted by by great parents and they've had a good family life. I've had a good life, but I was, it was hard to hear that the things behind my adoption were because of her addiction possibly. I guess the first thing that came to my mind was like I was not her priority.

Damon (00:32):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Joseph. He called me from Washington state. Joseph grew up in a family of several children, some biological and one other adoptee. You might already know. He told me that he never could have pinpointed what it was, but he always seemed to be searching for something. He started his journey searching for answers from his biological mother. Instead, he found mystery surrounding her life unanswered questions and a connection to his brother. That means the most to him out of everything. This is Joseph's journey.

Damon (01:30):

Joseph is a really outdoorsy guy who lives in Edmonds, Washington, about 30 minutes North of Seattle. He likes mountain biking trail running, camping and skiing, reflecting on his childhood. Joseph said his was pretty normal for the most part. He was adopted at almost two years old and they lived in central Washington. It was a middle class upbringing with five children in the family. His father was a civil engineer, so their family moved around occasionally for him to take jobs in public works. I asked him about his memory of being adopted at the age of two years old. I was going to ask you about whether you remembered a transition at two at all, if you had any sort of stark memory or any even general memory of just a transition of, of scenes. Like one minute you're in one place and even at two year old, two years old, you recognize like, Hey, this is a different place.

Joseph (02:28):

What I can remember I have one memory, uh, prior to living with my adopted family and, and that was confirmed by my mom when I told her. I said, you know, I would have, I started having this reoccurring dream, which was me and this other girl playing with a red ball. And we were just bouncing it back and forth to each and for some reason I don't, I don't know how it happened, but when the ball came back to me, it hit me in the face.

Damon (03:08):

(laughter) Oh no.

Joseph (03:08):

And uh, you know, I just remember crying because I think it just kinda, it wasn't anything out of malice or anything. I just remember we were applying and the ball got out of control and hit me in the face. And I remember the girl like really holding me and saying, you know, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. And my mom said, you know, that was probably your foster sister Stacy. I was in foster care leading up to my adoption and that, that is my one and only memory.

Damon (03:41):

Joseph said that it wasn't until he was four years of age when he actually remembers his life when they lived in Richland, Washington. Recall that Joseph had four siblings. The two oldest are biological to their parents. His sister, Leslie was also adopted and their parents had one more biological child after Joseph and Leslie. Joseph said his earliest pictures of himself that he had seen before reunion were from the transitional period when his adoption was being processed. He was visiting with his adoptive family meeting and playing with his new siblings and staying the night.

Joseph (04:19):

I had never seen any pictures of me as an infant, as a child, like a baby or anything like that, which was kind of significant for me. I'm someone who's really into photography. I love the medium and so, you know, like having pictures of me, were really important, you know, it, it really helps me look at, you know, my life as an adopted kid, so to speak. I don't know, I just, that's something that always resonated with me. And so I know that I was, was really curious to see, you know, pictures of me maybe with my biological mom or as me as an infant and my adopted mom and I, you know, we would talk about that a lot as well. Like it would just help me kind of complete the picture.

Damon (05:12):

Joseph said he and Leslie bonded over being the adoptees in the family.

Joseph (05:17):

Uh, knowing that we were adopted was significant for both of us. Sometimes, you know, I can't speak for my sister Leslie, but for me, I felt like when things were, I dunno, like when we are frustrated with our parents or something, you know, like, you know, being told to do something we didn't want to do or having to go to bed at night early when the rest of the family got to stay up and watch television, we were like, this is, this isn't right. You know? And we've been, you know, the bonding of like us to say like, well, it's us against them. I certainly had that feeling. I had nothing against my family at all. I love my parents and I love my brothers and sisters tremendously. But, you know, when you're a little kid and you're feeling like it's you against the world, knowing that my sister was also adopted, you know, that was something that we really connected over. And to this day I still feel that way. It's, um, my sister's experience and finding her biological family was really important to me. I watched and listened with bated breath, like as she was going through this whole process. It was a great, it was great to have another kid in my family that was adopted.

Damon (06:37):

I was glad to hear that Joseph really felt loved in his family. That's an important point for adoptees to clarify when it's applicable. I guess I should tell you that Leslie Joseph's sister is someone who story you've already heard. She was my guest on who am I really on episode 56. 'I feel whole finding him was the key.'

Leslie (06:58):

It was just surreal to me because it's like, here's this perfect stranger that all of a sudden I'm thrown into his life and he's thrown into mine. And you know, with the history of my mother, I was very cautious because I was expecting him to not be so open about it. But yeah. And when I flew down to see him, we both started crying. I mean, it was just amazing and he just would stare at me, you know, like wow.

Damon (07:24):

Turning back to Joseph. He shared that Leslie's reunion was fairly recent in his life just a few years ago and he was intrigued as a man in his forties contemplating seeking reunion. He found himself intrigued with her path and wanting to hear her story as much as possible as it unfolded. At that point he was still deciding for himself whether he wanted to pursue reunion because he was okay with being adopted to that point. his parents and siblings were open about their adoptions, but he admits when he was younger. He was a little curious about finding biological family members.

Joseph (08:00):

I was always curious. I think as a younger person I was definitely curious about finding biological family, but as you get older I just started wondering how important is it for me to do this search because I thought have a great mom and dad. You know, we weren't a perfect family. I don't think there is a really perfect family, but I just, I felt like my upbringing was very good. I was supported. I have great brothers and sisters, you know, it was this question of is this really enough for me? Does this complete me? So as I was kind of thinking about all of that, my sister lastly began her search in earnest. And so then that really got me thinking, you know, what, you know the what if like what if I did the search as well and who would I find and what would that mean to me in my life and would it complete me in some way?

Joseph (09:01):

And then I started realizing you kind of, I might've internalized having this feeling of um, a sense of not being complete. And so what I mean about that is I'm going to go back a little bit farther. When I was much younger, I always had this sense of wanting to go somewhere. I was a bit of a wonderer as a child, meaning I certainly enjoyed my environment. My parents said I was a rather well adjusted little boy, but I was constantly just walking out of the house, as a four year old toddler and walking down the block and I would go and meet other people, you know, kind of a scary situation for a parent when you realize where, you know, where's my son? And my parents would have, you know, my dad would hop in the car and start driving around the neighborhood and eventually they'd find me. You know, I'm, which I found really odd. Like people would just, you know, think like, Oh, here's this little kid and he's talking to us, but shouldn't he really be at home? I think through a little bit of therapy, um, I was starting to get in touch with this sense of loss. I wasn't sure if I had a sense of place.

Damon (10:25):

Joseph speculates that he was a bit of a melancholy child. He lacked a sense of belonging and he attributes that to his adoption. The sense of loss early in Joseph's life was rekindled when Leslie began her search. Joseph told me that he sought therapy to talk about what he was feeling. He said when he was younger, he was really open to seeing people he looked like and wanting to meet biological relatives as an older man. The family he knew and loved sort of felt like enough for him and he appreciated his adopted family for what they meant to him. When he decided to search, he admitted it was scary because the idea of opening Pandora's box and not finding the story he wanted to hear could be tough to handle.

Joseph (11:11):

I attribute the way I've thought about my adoption. It's been in my thought process to uh, my adopted mom. She was, she was very open about talking about the adoption. She was, she made me feel very good about, you know, that I was a special, kid they, they wanted me, they loved me, you know. So I did talk to my mom quite a bit about being adopted and that always felt like a good thing, you know, it was never, you know, I didn't feel bad or anything.

Damon (11:45):

Yeah. Cause if you felt like it was a secret, if there was something being hidden or kept from you, it can lead to some additional feelings like, well, what are you, what are you guys hiding from me? Like how bad is this? Right? But if someone could speak openly about it, it changes things about how you feel going into into search and reunion. I'm, I'm with you.

Joseph (12:09):

Definitely. Yeah. I had a good foundation as far as like if I wanted to search for my biological family, my parents and my family were behind me 100%

Damon (12:20):

when he was 18 a woman in his church who knew he was adopted, shared that she had learned of an organization with an online adoption registry that was trying to rematch biological families. He filled out their forms hoping for a match, but no results were ever returned. Later, his older sister, Laurie, a real supporter of Joseph finding his biological family would call from time to time to ask if he'd been searching, checking to see how it was going, and generally offering to help. In the early 1990s she noticed that in the Seattle times newspaper, people were submitting classified ads with information about their adoption in search of their biological families. Joseph did the same, adding his birth name and last initial the hospital he was born in and the fact that he was searching for his biological mother, adding her name and last initial, we'll get to how he knew that information a little bit later.

Joseph (13:14):

The day the ad ran, my sister receives a voice message and unfortunately my sister wasn't there to take the call, so it went to her answering machine or voice message. My sister calls me, she's like, are you ready for this? And I'm like, you cannot. I mean like somebody actually just called and she's like, I missed this call, but there's a message and a woman is on the other, you know, leaving this message saying, you know, I'm calling and response to this ad in Seattle times. And um, I'm really curious what the last name is, or and is in shame. And my sister said, the voice kind of pauses a little bit. She can hear children in the background and the woman said, you know I think this might be my child.

Damon (14:10):

Oh wow

Joseph (14:12):

and she just says, you know, I'll just call back later. And that was it. Like she didn't leave a phone number or anything?

Damon (14:18):

Oh no. Oh man.

Joseph (14:23):

So really up until very recently, that was like the closest I felt that I got to learning something about myself.

Damon (14:35):

Time goes by. The strength of the internet search capabilities was growing in the 1990s and Joseph sister Laurie was periodically digging online for this Susan woman. Joseph decides to cold call one of the phone numbers for a Susan lives in North Carolina. He explained to the woman who answered the phone that he was doing some genealogical research. The woman who answered the phone said, Oh, you must be looking for my mother. She gets a lot of calls about her genealogical work. The woman offers to have her mother call...

Steve, from London, Ontario, Canada shares his story of being adopted after his mother lost a child. Steve and his mother never connected, in fact, she stifled his social development and seemed to be holding him back because he didn’t look like their family, and didn’t fit in. As a teen, Steve was out on his own in the streets when he learned that he had fathered a child – that’s when he became a single father.

In reunion, he found a connection to his birth mother, but her empty promises ended with rejection that surprised him.

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Damon:                       00:00               Hey there. I just wanted to take a sec to let you know that in between producing the show, chasing my son Seth around and generally living life, I took time to write a book about my own adoption journey. It’s called Who Am I Really? Of course. If you’d like to pre order a copy, go to WhoAmIReallypodcast.com and click shop, where you will be redirected to the publishers bookstore. I hope to make it to your reading list. Okay, here’s this week’s show.

Steve:                          00:33               My birth mother tells her, look, I’m not allowed to have contact with him. The kids have his contact information. If they want to contact him, they’re welcome to. I’ve given them, you know what I mean? Everyone’s aware and man, that felt like a knife through the gut, and I don’t know why. Like I guess in that moment I just, I felt orphaned.

Voices:                        01:02               Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon:                       01:13               This is, Who Am I Really? A podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and on today’s show is Steve. He called me from London, Ontario, Canada. Steve shares his story of being adopted after his mother lost a child, but Steve and his mother never connected. In fact, she stifled his social development and seemed to be holding him back because he didn’t look like their family and didn’t fit in. As a teen, Steve was out on his own in the streets when he learned that he had fathered a child, that’s when he became a single father. In reunion, he found the connection to his birth mother, but empty promises ended with rejection and that surprised him. This is Steve’s journey. Steve doesn’t recall being told he was adopted. He just always knew it, but he doesn’t know how he knew that fact. By his description, his parents were typical adoptive parents in the 1970s who wanted the dreams of family many parents aspire to back then, but his adoption came about out of adversity.

Steve:                          02:19               They wanted their 2.3 kids in a white picket fence. They had a girl. Then they had a, a baby who was stillborn and they were told that they would never be able to conceive again. And so at that point, um, they pursued other options and, and ended up adopting me. A year and a half after that, my mom got pregnant, so my little brother was born as sort of the miracle baby. And I think that sequence of events affected me and my life in a number of ways, that I didn’t really understand until, until much later. So here I am and I’m in this family. This is a Norwegian family. Everyone in my family is over six feet tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. They get a sun burden walking under a light bulb. And I am not like that at all. You know, I am, I am on a shorter side. I’m five, seven now, fully grown. I got black curly hair. Well, it’s gray now. Yeah, just didn’t look anything like them. And it’s very obvious, you know, in the family pictures and whatnot. So I think I always felt different. Also, I have a really unique surname. Uh, you’ve never heard it before. And so when people comment on the surname, they say, oh, that’s, and I still get this often. Oh, that’s a nice name. Um, and then I have to explain that I’m Norwegian and uh, I am obviously not Norwegian.

Damon:                       03:52               Hmm. Interesting. So you have to explain something that people can see in your surname as unique and different, but they don’t know how unique and different it is because in fact, you are not even of that surname.

Steve:                          04:06               Right Yeah. And I just, uh, yeah, I mean the truth is, uh, yeah, my name is, is an anglicized version of a Norwegian name that a grandfather, I guess changed it when he came over here. Regardless of that, I don’t, I don’t bother explaining it any more, now. People say, oh, that’s a nice name. I’m like, yeah, I didn’t pick it, but thank you.

Damon:                       04:26               Steve has had time to explore his lack of connection with his adopted mother and his research has helped him understand why the creation of a family through adoption doesn’t always follow the script for parents and children to connect.

Steve:                          04:39               But I’m still sort of trying to sort this out. So I had a decent child life. I have a childhood. I don’t really have anything to complain about. My needs were looked after, but I wouldn’t say it was a, I wasn’t happy. And I always, honestly, I just felt like my mom in particular, she just didn’t like me. But I think, and so like I’ve come to some understandings much, much later after going sort of through my reunion thing and starting to read some books and do some research and I’m coming to understand that, you know, a lady who’s grieving the loss of a, of a baby was handed another baby who was 11 months old and, and told, this’ll take all your grief away. You know, and then there’s a baby that’s been ripped away from a parent handed to another lady and you know, they’re convinced that lady’s going to take all the babies grief away. And there’s two people who, you know, needed something from each other and didn’t get it. And I, and I think that kind of explains, you know, that that’s where the relationship started and it just, it never really got better. Does that makes sense?

Damon:                       05:57               Yeah, no, it absolutely does. I mean, this is one of the things that I think often is lost in the discussion of adoption and adoption trauma is these very stark facts about how the family is created. It’s that in, in your instance, your mother was suffering loss and her own grief that she had to get over. And then here you show up as basically, you know, a potential bandaid for that grief and a place to sort of dump her emotions. But at the same time you have been taken from another place, placed into her arms and there’s the separation that you feel. This is, I had a guest recently tell me that one of the big challenges in his family was his adopted mother hated his aunt and they never could, He never could figure out why. And it wasn’t until he met his biological mother that he realized his bio mom had the same exact voice as his aunt. This is the voice he would have heard, you know? So there is that separation. It’s really hard.

Steve:                          07:01               You know, I’ve now come to recognize that it’s not her fault. This is what people believed at the time. This is what social work was telling people was a, you know, a baby doesn’t know the difference between its natural mother and it’s adoptive mother.

Damon:                       07:15               Can you give me an example of, you said that you basically felt like your mom didn’t like you or you know, tell me a little bit about that tension in your family. Where did you start to see that or feel it

Steve:                          07:28               to begin with, I guess I was a, a cranky, crabby baby. So I have, you know, I’ve got some notes from a doctor, you know, that I found in my dad’s files where, you know, they say I’ve got some crankiness and crabbiness, although at other times in, uh, you know, especially in company it says I’m very active and lively and I think this crankiness and crabbiness that probably just came as, as a result of, like I said, two people adjusting to a new, was considered to be a problem. And so I was sent to doctors and to psychologists and stuff from a very young age to try to figure out why I wasn’t happy like the other two babies I guess. And they never figured that out. But you know, it’s interesting again in retrospect looking and saying like they saw that, but the doctor and the letter acknowledges that the crankiness might be attributed to adoption, but it was, it’s interesting how as a child, you know, I had what were perceived to be these behavior problems even as a baby and all they were trying to do is fix me and not recognize that, you know, does that make, you know what I’m saying?

Damon:                       08:50               That’s right. Yeah. It was, uh, there’s a problem with this child, not a systemic at all of the things that this child is enduring, that the family is inflicting or, or withholding or whatever. Right. It’s just, uh, the problem manifests itself in how agitated the child is, but it’s not a broader examination of the environment in which the child is in or has come from or what have you. I totally get you

Damon:                       09:17               that note about Steve’s adoption being a possible cause for his crankiness was just one line at the end of the doctors letter written in the 1960s. Steve’s mother stayed at home with the children while their father worked as an executive at a local community college. Steve said that as his primary caregiver, their mother had no patience for him. He said when he left home at 15 he had never been to a sleepover at a friend’s house, had never kissed a girl, nor been to a school dance. He wasn’t allowed to do anything

Steve:                          09:48               Then I was convinced I was bad. You know, and I’ve just looked back recently said, man, I wasn’t, I wasn’t that bad. I mean, I did shit like any other kid did, but you know, I wasn’t as bad as I was convinced. But it’s like my mother did not want me to leave the house. You know, they would, my brother and sister would go spend a week with grandparents in Toronto. I never once did that. Never went on a school trip, but they did. You know, and I’m not sure the, the reasoning behind it, but it was, I just felt like I was in the way, I guess I was an inconvenience.

Damon:                       10:23               Did you feel like you were being hidden? I mean, from an outsider’s perspective, the way that you’re describing your, um, your intended withdrawal, your intentional withholding from social and interactive things with family, with, with friends. It sounds like they were, they were hiding you almost.

Steve:                          10:46               Maybe I haven’t thought about it like that. So that’s something I’ll have to reflect on a little bit. But yes, quite possible. I think, I mean, I guess it did occur to me that I think they were a bit ashamed of me. They didn’t like answering the questions either. Introducing the family,

Damon:                       11:03               Steve was led to believe that he couldn’t be trusted to behave appropriately and that’s why he wasn’t allowed to participate in anything ever. It was all unfounded. Steve described himself as a witty ham it up kind of kid, versus his much more reserved siblings. He says he doesn’t have a lot of childhood memories, but he does recall two things that happened very clearly. Brace herself for these triggers.

Steve:                          

Kyle tells the story of growing up, towering over his mother and sister and looking very different from them, but being loved. Locating his birth mother he was amazed to see someone he looked like but struggled to get along with as she battled her own pain. In the end, he was able to truly connect to his Native American heritage while discovering the pain that was deep within him. His experience inspired him to write two songs.

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Kyle:                            00:03               And that’s the thing is she’s a great person. It was just very hard towards the end to have the relationship because I think she felt she wanted to be my mom. I just period and she couldn’t be. She didn’t raise me and it was a very tough thing for her. And I think it’s just the trauma, you know, it’s easy to get wrapped up in my own trauma, but you know, that can’t be easy… Giving up a baby, especially when you don’t want to.

Voices:                        00:35               Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon:                       00:47               This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and my guest on the show today is Kyle. He called me from Seattle, Washington. Kyle tells the story of growing up, towering over his mother and sister and looking very different from them, but being loved, locating his birth mother. He was amazed to see someone he looked like, but struggled to get along with as she battled her own pain. In the end, he was able to truly connect to his native American heritage and the experience inspired him to write two songs. Here’s part of one of them called the saddest song and did this is Kyle’s journey

Kyle Singing:                02:15               [Music] See all of me. I’m there before you. You’re In my dreams, but I don’t know you.

Damon:                       02:33               Kyle said that he had a good childhood, but they didn’t really talk about adoption still. He felt like everyone in the family knew he was adopted and some folks were a little nicer to him in his extended family while some folks were less so within Kyle’s nuclear family. His mother told him the story of how she had several babies to choose from, but she picked him and he liked that his dad was engaged, cracking jokes, and he was a fun Dad, but his parents separated when he was young, so the challenges of switching between houses made things a little tougher. He acknowledges that he did feel kind of different.

Kyle:                            03:10               Really good childhood. I think I always felt a little different, but when you’re a child you don’t really know why. I just thought I was very shy, so I think I attributed a feeling different. Just that I wasn’t outgoing. My sister is very outgoing and so I thought, well, it’s just because I’m really shy that people don’t notice me as much or you know, I feel different. Yeah, we’d go to my grandparents’ house. They have a farm in North Dakota and go there as children for the summer and my grandmother did the opposite. I was the youngest, so a lot of times the older kids didn’t want to play with me so she would take me under her wing and teach me things and my grandfather would take me with him and he, you know, fix farm equipment. And so that was a, that was actually some of the best memories I’ve had in my life was growing up on the farm.

Damon:                       04:05               Those were great because Kyle could just tag along as his grandmother baked and did other things around the farm. She taught him a little about how to play piano and told him stories about when his father was younger or when she first met Kyle’s mother. His grandmother knew he was shy and she needed to reach out to connect with him. She even attempted to connect him with his heritage.

Kyle:                            04:29               They always knew that I had some native American blood, but they didn’t know what tribe or anything else, but I remember when I was really young that my grandmother took me by myself all the way up into Canada to go to a powwow and at the time I didn’t really know. Yeah, I didn’t think it through. I just thought, oh, this is kind of cool. Or by herself and, but looking back he was trying to show me things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Um, my family is very scandinavian, so that was a very, a very interesting.

Damon:                       05:05               You appreciate that. She did that or like, what’s your feeling about that?

Kyle:                            05:09               I think she, she knew of my birth heritage and just thought I’m going to, I’m going to take him up there and expose him to cultures that may be like, you know, some of his ancestors. I also remember she would tell me ,well, When she was little, it was still in a lot of places to kind of the wild west, you know, so she remembers a chief that would come into town and trade for things when she was a little kid, so she told me about him all the time and how he was really tall and proud and so I think she, yes, she used her, her real experiences also to connect with me in ways that I didn’t even fully. I mean I appreciate them, but I appreciate them more now.

Damon:                       05:52               Kyle paints a picture of his grandmother as a very kind person you may have picked up on. Kyle’s mentioned of his sister. She was born after his mother had two miscarriages. After her birth, his mother’s physician told her she could not have another child naturally or it might kill her. So Kyle was adopted. Remember now he’s already said his family is very scandinavian. His sister, is blue eyed and blonde haired. I’m sure you can imagine that Kyle’s descent from native Americans gave him dark brown eyes, black hair, and to add to their differentiation, he’s six foot three, much taller than his family. Kyle and his sister battled like any sibling pair would as children, but they’re much closer now as adults. Sadly, his father passed away when he was 11 years old, making the challenge of raising two children much harder for their mother still. She was a great mother, so he didn’t feel much desire to seek out his birth. Mother, Kyle said it wasn’t until his mid twenties that he really decided he wanted to search. He said the urge just hit him one day.

Kyle:                            07:01               It comes a an awakening, I guess, where you realize that you want to just know, and I guess I had been married really young. I had a child. I got divorced so I had to kind of a new life and I think that’s when I started realizing that I, I want to know more. I wasn’t putting my energy into my marriage anymore and I think that also kind of… I was a little bit depressed, so I think that made me think more of longing and things that might make my life better or things that are kind of in the back of my mind,

Damon:                       07:36               Kyle was wondering what his birth mother looked like and what bits of the information the social worker had given his family were right. His mother found some notes from the social worker from the time prior to his adoption. The documents said that Kyle was a plump little baby with chubby cheeks and his birth mother was very young. She also noted to her social worker back then that his birth father was a truck driver and Kyle is a black crow Indian. Reading that for himself, Kyle was left to imagine whether his birth mother wanted him or if she was forced to give him up. Did she try to keep him or did she hand him over easily because he was a mistake. He had lots of unanswered questions, but I know that for many people actually reading your true heritage instead of just hearing rumors from family members can be a bit of a moment. I asked Kyle about that moment for him.

Kyle:                            08:29               That really hit me because it, it kind of reinforced the identity. I already know. You kind of identify yourself as different things. It made me realize I wasn’t know. I wouldn’t say like living a lie, but you kind of wonder. There’s a lot of family things that people say they turned out not to be true. So I always wonder, am I really, you know, I have black hair and everything, but I am more pale skin, so I’m thinking maybe I’m just, you know, what if it turns out I’m Italian and I’m tall from, you know, or whatever. So it felt good. It felt good to, to be told something for so long and then have it be real. It made me feel a little bit of a little piece to me. I was missing, you know, made me. Yeah. Made me a little bit more whole. I think

Damon:                       09:21               I can see how that’s true. If all of your life, you’re told that you’re generally native American, then you learn your true tribal identity. Anyway, the letterhead was from children’s home society. He called them and they said he could go in to have a conversation that same day,

Kyle:                            09:38               and I told him who I was, what my, what I wanted to find out, and they said, well, your birth mother sent a letter this week, which was just crazy. She sent a letter to let them know that if I contacted them that she wants them to let me contact her back and had her address. So

Damon:                       10:04               The same week that you walked in there, She sent a letter?

Kyle:                            10:07               Yeah, she’d sent it. It gotten there a couple days before I stood in the office. I mean it was still in her desk, in a file drawer that she probably just put in a couple of days before that just waiting in the off chance that eventually someone might come in and I was yet literally there within days. So

Damon:                       10:27               That’s unreal, wow. That’s incredible.

Kyle:                            10:29               Yeah, it was an amazing. It’s like we both had the same idea just like I got to make sure he can find me and I’m like, I need to find her. And then Bam, every word.

Damon:                       10:41               Kyle said he was 28 when that remarkable simultaneous search for each other started. I told him I thought that their timing was really interesting because it wasn’t like he was 18 or 21 landmark ears in a person’s life when their birth parent might say to themselves, okay, he’s legal or now he’s old enough. Twenty eight was a fairly odd year to my mind and after I said it to Kyle, he agreed, but he said it was actually a great time for her to reach out because he knew more about who he was and he was more comfortable in his skin. He was an angry guy in his early twenties, but after his divorce and the birth of his son, he had...