A Need To Know

Today, I read this from an adoptive mother – my adoptive daughter wants to research her background with a DNA test. She wants to know her origins and research whatever comes up. We homeschool and she wants to do this as part of her schooling. She just turned 14, so the questions I have are:

(1) Which DNA company is best ?

(2) How do we handle the info she gets ? No one knows who her natural father is, including her natural mother.

I don’t know if it would name a dad. How would we handle that, since her natural mother doesn’t even know who he is ? The father certainly has no clue he created a child.

The adoption is closed. She doesn’t have contact with her natural mother but I do. Honestly, I’d let there be contact but my husband is against it.

This is something I’ve had experience with. Both of my parents were adoptees. Neither really knew anything about their origins. My mom tried to find out with Ancestry but other than some ethnicity information, it didn’t get her where I think her heart wanted to go. I didn’t even know that she had done this, until I did Ancestry simply because I never knew my ancestry. I used to joke I was an albino African because no one, including myself, could say otherwise. I thought my dad was at least half Hispanic. My mom did have a bit of Mali, probably because her ancestral line included slave owners. My dad was half Danish. Who knew their complexion could be so dark ?

I did make progress with both Ancestry and 23 and Me. It helped that I had some names to go by. I rarely pay much attention to either these days. 3rd and 4th cousins don’t mean much. Ancestry was helpful in putting together my ancestor’s family trees and looking at human migrations as well as employment history where noted. 23 and Me brought me into contact with my paternal grandmother’s family. My dad’s father doesn’t seem to have ever known about his son. There is still extensive family in Denmark. My DNA has helped me prove my legitimacy as a family member.

Today, I read this – “Your DNA matches are probably your relatives. But a DNA test only suggests a relationship exists.” That is as truthful as it gets and as informative. Without names, it is only a mystery to solve.

From another child of adoptees I read this (it also proved useful for my nephew in his own search and connected him with his true father – information my sister tried to hide from ALL of us) – We used Ancestry, 23&Me as well as Search Angels to find my grandparents. Ancestry was the best in terms of ethnicity and finding my grandmother’s side of the family. Search Angels used the Ancestry information to find grandfather’s information.

I highly recommend this tool for getting answers, but you also need to be prepared for a lot of information that will generate more questions, as well as open the door to biologically related family. This is a GOOD thing for your 14 year old but she also needs support at home while processing this information. If your husband is going to cause issues, I would bring her therapist in to be part of this journey. I’d also add some extra sessions where you can join and create a plan for how to support her.

This is such an important thing for her to do and you owe it to her to support her. Remove any barriers that will cause guilt, shame, frustration at home. It will bring you all closer. If your husband gets in the way, be ready for her to resent him (and possibly you) over time.

When Dad Is A ?

My dad never knew his genetic father which is a shame because they would have been great fishing buddies. There is an adoptee who’s writings I follow, Tony Corsentino. He wrote a piece for this day. He titled his LINK>D.N.A. You can read the entire piece there. I’ll just excerpt it a bit here.

He mentions that he had received a copy of his original birth certificate two months before he received an email from his birth mother. He learned his biological father’s name in that email. On his original birth certificate nothing appears in the blank labeled “father.” blogger’s note – my father’s birth certificate had no name for a father either.

Yet, Tony had a name. He found his father’s Facebook page. He didn’t do anything else with the information for 8 years. He had built relationships with his birth mother and her siblings. He feared upending his new and (what he feared was a) fragile relationship with his birth mother. She and his father had ended contact when she discovered she was pregnant.

Yet, he did want to learn more about his father and so he went the Ancestry route. blogger’s note – It certainly proved very useful in my own roots journey quest. His father had not submitted a DNA sample, although he had joined the site and created a rudimentary tree. At Ancestry, Tony was able to reconstruct an extensive family tree. He messaged a few DNA matches on his father’s side. It took 4 months before he got a reply from any of them. One of them was not kind.

Yet, he knew that to send that message out was to signal to his biological relatives that he was not going to hide who he is from anyone: not his biological relationships from his adoptive family, and not one half of his biological tree from the other half.

His father’s first cousin, (his second cousin once removed) conferred with her sister. They welcomed him as family. They were in contact with his father and agreed to serve as intermediaries for an eventual contact. He notes that a few weeks later, he spoke with his father for the first time. Here is how it went –

“He was most eager to share family history and lore—about his uncles who had perished in World War II, about his career, about his two sons, my half-brothers. And with evident discomfort he explained that his wife, who had known that he had possibly fathered a child, was opposed to my making contact with people in her family. He said he was “working on” this. That was the last I’ve heard about it. In the months since we have exchanged a handful of text messages on holidays and birthdays. His two cousins are Facebook friends. I am planning to meet them this summer. It might be the only branch of my father’s family—my family—that will accept me.”

This Father’s Day, he has questions – “Does it make sense to wish my biological father a happy Father’s Day? Did he feel my absence from his life in anything like the way my birth mother did, who carried me and gave birth and watched as they took me out of the room on the understanding that the absence would be forever? . . . Father’s Day gives me nothing to say to him. Not, anyway, as long as my existence remains a problem—a threat just outside the walls of the family stockade.”

blogger’s note – I like his ending – “Let this be a note pinned to the stockade door. Dad, you know where to find me.”

DNA Matters

DNA Matters. If it didn’t non-adopted people wouldn’t do genealogy. We can’t pretend that it isn’t important. My adoptee mom had to quit working on a family tree at Ancestry based on the adoptive families of my two parents (both adoptees) because she couldn’t get over the knowledge that it wasn’t “real”. I am still committed to eventually getting the actual family trees for each of my parents into Ancestry and maybe on 23 and Me as well. I just haven’t found the time.

Today, in my all things adoption group I read – “An adoptive parent was asked why does she want biological children when she has two adopted kids. Her answer ? She wants a child that has a piece of her and her husband without any outside involvement. So, DNA DOES MATTER. It matters to all of us but many try to erase the DNA of adoptees and foster children. As if their DNA doesn’t matter and they should be grateful for it.”

My youngest son was sad when he realized that he doesn’t have any of my DNA. My donor conceived sons have contact with their donor at 23 and Me, if they wish to pursue contact. They have met her on several occasions but she lives far away and we don’t make long trips of several weeks duration out west currently. Yet, I knew DNA did matter and getting their DNA tested (both boys and their father) gave us an opportunity to explain why they were conceived the way they were.

Because they gestated in my womb and have been with me most of their lives pretty much 24/7, there is a strong bond between us. I also breastfed each of them for just over a year. My husband puts slide shows of our photos of our boys on his computer. I get lost in watching and remembering what it was like to have babies in my life again after so many years. My husband and I were married for 10 years before we started trying to conceive. I had my biological, genetic daughter when I was 19 and she has given me two grandchildren. My sons add a richness to our lives (myself and my husband) that I do cherish. I love it when they interact with me from a love that we have developed over decades. Even so, I know that DNA matters.

Our DNA can also tell us about the much more recent past. If we concentrate on the most recent bits of our DNA family trees, we can learn about the history of our modern human ancestors—when, where, and with whom ordinary people lived or moved about. I learned a lot about my own origins from Ancestry and being able to track a lot of details about my parents’ relatives. If you are not an identical twin, your DNA is unique. This means that no one else in the world has the same DNA sequence as you. Because your DNA is unique, your physical appearance, or phenotype, is also unique.

Your genes play an important role in your health, but so do your behaviors and environment, such as what you eat and how physically active you are. Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence. Your epigenetics change as you age, both as part of normal development and aging and in response to your behaviors and environment.

Figuring Out Our Story

Shannon Gibney

Today’s blog is courtesy of LINK>an essay at Today.com. Shannon Gibney is the author of The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be. Her book is described as A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption. It was published by Dutton just last month, January 2023. Her book details her search and reunion with her birth families, as well as the ongoing ripple effects of adoption intergenerationally. She notes – “For adoptees, figuring out our story requires work — scouring fragments of documents, stories and phone conversations. And sometimes, we still come up short.” As the child of two adoptees that basically had to do the same thing – I can relate and so, I share.

Shannon is a mixed-Black woman who was adopted by a white family. This is commonly referred to as trans-racial adoption. She writes, “In a culture that deeply values personal and family histories that appear to be seamless — at least on the surface — those of us who have little or nothing to go on can feel alienated and alone. Which is why so many adoptees search.” Certainly, for my mom and for my own self, we quickly became aware of the priority of genetic relationship in working with the DNA matching sites – 23 and Me and with Ancestry.

Shannon compares her own search to the more difficult efforts of international adoptees from countries outside of the US. Therefore, she says – As a domestic, mixed-Black transracial adoptee, my search for my birth family and my beginnings was far easier to navigate, although I didn’t know it at the time I began searching. I could say as much myself. My own search turned out to be surprisingly easy and relatively quick (within a year I knew who all 4 of my original grandparents were, something of their stories and had connected with living genetic relatives that I had not known about before).

Her birth mother had given the adoption agency permission to share her identity with Shannon, if she should ever reach out and ask for it. She goes on to describe what happened next – Thus began a long, complicated, on-again and off-again relationship with my birth mother, which ended with her death from a rare cancer in 2014. While initially getting to know her, she told me that she had had a very brief relationship with my birth father and couldn’t give me any real information about him beyond his name. She also warned me that he was “dangerous,” that she didn’t trust him, and that they “were both lost souls” at the time they got together. And, as it turned out, I did not have any biological siblings.

A therapist who specializes in adoption issues helped her to track down information about her birth father, though sad – In 1981, he had died from injuries he had sustained from a high speed police chase in Palo Alto, California. She was 6 years old at the time. She notes his family – “held the blackness that set me a country apart from both my white adoptive and biological families. This was a kind of racial and cultural damage I hadn’t anticipated.”

Yet, also a happy outcome – I eventually tracked down my paternal grandfather, and was even able to talk to him some years before his death. Likewise, conversations and meetings with my biological aunt and uncle on my father’s side have filled in many gaps in my story, and have given me the great gift of a fuller picture of my father. I may have never met him, but I can surmise so many things about him from the little information I do have.

Similarly to Shannon, I have had to accept – Adoptees will never have fully fleshed out stories of our origins, but we do have the conviction that we deserve far more truths than we ever receive, and we have a dogged determination to seek them out. All of this can make us feel frustrated. And yet, I too have discovered “talking to other adoptees we realize that we are actually not alone in our struggles, and that there are strategies and communities we can build to help mitigate the difficulty and disappointment. We also have imaginations that we can use to explore the people and possibilities that brought us into existence and with whom we co-create our identities.”

Been There, Doing Better

Today’s story – not my own.

I am a former foster care youth who was adopted. When my biological niece (I found my family via Ancestry) was taken and placed in foster care, I had to step up and help since I’ve been there. So, I got kinship guardianship of my niece while my brother was in a recovery program. He was making good progress. Sadly, about 4 months ago, he stopped going and relapsed. The timing was bad. The case worker and attorney are looking to switch my niece’s program to a Termination of Parental Rights goal. I’m afraid if they do this, my brother may spiral downward. I definitely don’t want to see that happen. I’m not given any specific information because I am just the caregiver. Admittedly, I’m not familiar with the termination process or addiction. I don’t know what to expect or how to help my brother.

From experience, someone commented – As the current legal custodian of my niece and myself, a child raised under legal guardianship – Would you be willing/able to remain her legal custodian under kinship as a long term permanency plan? Being raised within my family was in some ways very beneficial for me. There was still a lot of trauma. But if your niece is safe with you and you can raise her long term, that may be very beneficial for her.

In response, the original commenter said – she has been with me a little over a year now. she was in foster care 5 months before she came to me. She will always be welcome here. I did not know there were long term kinship options. The only options I am aware of come from the caseworker. His perspective is if my brother does what he should, he will get her back. If I take Article 6 Custody (from termination of parental rights) that drops the case for both my brother and the baby’s mother. (I have never meet her. She checked out of the hospital early and never set anything up with Dept of Social Services to have visits or anything.) I didn’t want the final option, which I was told was my willingness to adopt her. I don’t know where this will go but I definitely don’t want to see my brother fall down the rabbit hole.

And then there was this (people can really care !!) – Addiction is a disease that can be treated. This child has a genetic risk of inheriting this gene. I want to share with you that I’ve been in recovery for over 23 years – completely clean and sober. I can share some things with you and resources, as much as you want. Please feel free to ask me ANYTHING either here or privately in private message. There IS hope and as long as your brother is still breathing, he can still clean up. There are resources for you, for the child, all sorts of things. It’s ok, and my heart goes out to you and I am sending prayers to your brother, you and all in this situation. There IS hope and he CAN recover. I think you are doing the right thing by keeping your niece with you in a kinship capacity. Please feel free to reach out, now or later, ok? xo

DNA Traveler

I feel a kinship with this man’s DNA Roots journey. In fact, my family just finished watching the original Roots series based on the book by Alex Haley. I had my own roots journey and like this man, Tim Curran, 23 and Me and Ancestry DNA did help me on my way only I didn’t leave the US in search of family – yet. I’d love to travel to Denmark – from where my paternal grandfather immigrated to the US.

Tim’s story comes to me by way of CNN Travel. LINK>I used DNA analysis to find my birth family and it sent me across three continents. California connects Tim’s story to mine and like me, he found the impenetrable walls of sealed records and tight-lipped officials in that state. Only he was born in 1961 and my dad was born there in 1935. From what I know of my own father’s story, this part of Tim’s story seems to be very similar – “On opposite sides of the world, they had both butted heads with difficult parents and left home at the first opportunity. They both wound up in one of the most free-thinking places on Earth: San Francisco.” On my paternal side, it was San Diego.

I don’t think my paternal grandfather actually butted heads in his family but opportunities in that country for siblings other than the first born were limited. My grandfather was the 5th of 10 children and several of his siblings had already migrated to the US – mostly into the Illinois and Wisconsin areas. My grandfather chose to take a train from NYC, where he landed, and on that train met a woman, much older than him and a private duty nurse, who agreed to marry him. It was mostly a marriage of convenience. When we don’t really know the accurate story, like Tim, I filled in the gaps. I suspect he may have eaten dinners, while his wife was on duty with some person, at the restaurant on the beach where my grandmother was employed by her aunt and uncle. She had a truly evil step-mother and so yes, she fled them and refused to return to Asheville North Carolina, after they traveled to visit her grandfather in California.

Like Tim, I have found my mother’s and father’s families welcoming me – even though they hardly, if even, knew I existed before I made contact. Some were vaguely aware that one or the other of my grandmothers had given a child up for adoption but really didn’t know any more than that. Sadly, it does not appear that my grandfather ever knew he had a son, being the married man having an affair with a much younger woman. But resourceful as she was, she simply handled it ending up employed by the Salvation Army after giving birth in one of their homes for unwed mothers.

Back to Tim’s story (which you can read in full at the LINK at the top of this blog) – his father worked as floor installer in the city’s North Beach neighborhood — where she was a cocktail waitress and dancer. I pictured them meeting while he installed floors in a nightclub where she was working. By all accounts, it must have been a very brief affair. My father was living with a girlfriend, and my mother’s sister says she never once heard my mother discuss my father in any way. Other than the sister and her mother, no one else in her family was told she was pregnant. (I was lucky enough that my grandmother had a photo album with a head shot and the name of my grandfather on the back.) My father’s family says they are 100% certain he was never told. (And my Danish relatives likewise, never knew my grandfather had a son.)

Tim has a large Moroccan family who own a set of neighboring summer homes just yards from the beach. The houses are built on property his grandfather bought nearly a century ago (when the land was thought to be worthless). It is a place where they go to escape the summer heat of Casablanca. In that family, he was able to recognize that many of their personality traits and quirks – how boisterous, curious and sly they are – just like he was as well. When I met a cousin on my paternal line, her appearance could have made her my youngest sister’s twin. That obvious physical appearance connection between our families seems to have mattered greatly to her.

Touring the country of Morocco, the sites he saw were beautiful and awe-inspiring, alien yet weirdly familiar. He experienced the country in a unique and very personal way thanks to his DNA journey: as a son just one generation removed from his father’s homeland. Though Alex Haley was further removed from his own African roots, it must have been deeply emotional to experience the native culture, which was so different from the modern life in the United States that he became a successful author in.

Like Tim, I bravely went looking. I was not content with the not knowing that my parents died with. I had the wherewithall to seek answers and with determination found success. Just as Tim and Alex both did. It is a journey well worth taking and many have written about similar adoptee root journeys that they have taken. Not every effort succeeds. Tim’s parents were both deceased and my grandparents were all deceased. For Alex, the stories lived on, passed down orally from one generation to the next.

Sad Christmas

From my all things adoption group –

I just asked my biological mother (who I have a non-relationship with, as she refuses one) for just the name of my biological father. She was less than kind. I have done the DNA stuff, that is how I found her. But no one on my paternal side seems to have done that. It appears that a name is too much to ask of her. If you are not an adoptee, can you even imagine that pain?

Some responses –

From an adoptee – My birth mum won’t tell me where my dad is and I know she knows because “she isn’t surprised he’s decided he wants nothing to do with me.” It hurts. Is there no way of seeing if social media platforms might have any info? It’s a long shot but it might be worth it. I know they are shite to deal with and it brings more trauma but maybe they will be able to help.

From an adoptive mother – Two of my adult adoptee kids met the same stone wall. It is infuriating.

Another adoptee – my birth mother is a grade a b*tch who lies and manipulates everyone around her – so I empathize greatly.

And when there are other children ? Mine is the same and she has even convinced the children she kept that I am the problem. The previous adoptee added – same but 3 of them are adults and 2 are low contact with her and recently in contact with me. The things she said about me were just so completely off the wall false that I’m probably going to be mad about it a long time. It was the catalyst for me though and I blocked her across all platforms including email so she’d have to really dig to even contact me now. Plus this PS – just in case you need to hear it – you are not the problem. She is the problem.

One birth mother notes – I will never understand a mother keeping that info away from their child. I’m sorry, it’s not too much to ask.

I had this thought as well – Is there a chance she might not truly know? From an adoptive mother who adopted through foster care – I fear my daughter is going to go through this in the future too, as her birth mother never identified her dad before termination took place. I pray all the time that she is going to be in a better place when my daughter turns 18 and will reveal that information to her. I hope yours does also. In our situation, there were several men who were tested before termination. I’m not sure if she was unsure or just playing games.

And sadly, this kind of thing does happen in families – As a birth mom, unless it was rape, (which she should tell you), there’s no reason for her to not tell you. I will always be honest when my son asks me and tell him who his father is. My cousin that has Ancestry found me and asked me who his father could be, I had to basically tell him that his birth mom probably was raped because this particular uncle was that kind of person. (She will not tell him who his dad was)

One suggestion from a woman who was fostered from birth and considers herself a forced adoptee at the age of 10 – Do both Ancestry & 23andme – My mother never would tell me either, but my genetic father lied & gave her a fake name, so in a way I am glad I never fixated on a name… DNA doesn’t lie.

An important piece for adoption reform is for counselors to address with any expectant mother – why she has red flags around the father. All adoptees need better family medical history information than most have had – certainly my parents had none.

One responder noted – It’s emotional immaturity. She won’t process her actions and own any of it, therefore she won’t give you the information and she doesn’t even see why that may be damaging to you because she’s so hung up on herself. The truth is that she may not know, but even that – she’s unwilling to share. It wouldn’t bring you any answers but it also wouldn’t add to the pain she’s caused by straight up caring only about herself.

And finally another adoptee who was in foster care – I found my birth mother 20 years ago. My father has been difficult to locate though I know his full name. I actually informally met my half sister on my dad’s side through 23 and Me. I have sent her a request to chat but so far nothing. It would be cool to meet the man. It’s apparent he doesn’t want to meet me. He could simply contact my mother.

Secrecy v. Privacy

I belong to a group that almost 20 years ago divided into a “tell/don’t tell” perspective. I often wonder how that has worked out for the don’t tell group. And if it has served, at what point might their offspring do a inexpensive DNA test and thereby learn the truth – that they were lied to their entire childhood. I’m glad we never thought to go in that direction.

My blog today is inspired by an article in Psychology Today LINK> Secrecy v. Privacy in Donor Conception Families, subtitled Walking the fine line between privacy and secrecy is inherent in donor families. Some of the differences – Privacy is the choice to not be seen, while secrecy is based in fear, shame, or embarrassment. Privacy involves setting comfortable and healthy boundaries. Carrying a family secret is a heavy burden. Donor families based in honesty and transparency have more meaningful and deep relationships.

In that group I mentioned, we each recognized a right to privacy for each other and honoring their right to privacy demonstrated our respect for their choice and was a foundation for trust among us. Withholding information for fear of the consequences implies a negative kind of secrecy. Secrets require a lot of emotional energy and are a heavy burden to carry. Secrecy undermines trust and is therefore harmful within relationships. Privacy, which includes creating healthy boundaries is generally beneficial. Learning when and how to create boundaries is a good lesson to teach one’s children, especially in this age where information seems to flow so readily and once out there, can’t be taken back.

The stigma of infertility is still very present in society and is often the reason why a couple may not want to be open about how they were able to conceive their children. Yet there is also a sense of social responsibility that has mattered to me from the beginning. Women are generally NOT fertile beyond a certain expiration date. When someone conceives at such an advanced age as I did (46 and 49), that could give the wrong impression to another younger woman that they have more time in which to begin their family desire fulfillment than they probably do. There are always exceptions to anything age related but that is a general rule. Much harder to conceive after the age of 40. I conceived very easily in my 20s.

Many children not told the truth about their origin – whether it was adoption, a donor facilitated conception or an illicit affair – still feel that there was something being withheld from them. When they discover the truth, they often feel anger. Even with the more modern openness, such origin stories are still not the norm. Many who are aware of their status may have little opportunity to talk about it to others who understand. Some may not have the language to speak about their experience.

I have given my children the gift of 23 and Me testing and accounts. Both their egg donor and their genetic father are there. This has led to questions from relatives of the donor to one of my sons. My advice to him as tell them to ask their donor about whatever they are curious about. When one donates genetic material, they must be aware that questions may arise in the future. It is only natural. Still, it was my perspective it is up to her as to what or how much she wishes to tell one of HER own relations about the circumstances. Having the 23 and Me channel gives my sons a method of privately communicating with their donor. I also frequently show them photos of her and her other children, so they are more aware of these persons with which they are genetically related. Distance prevents closer, in person relationships at this time, though they have met her in person more than once. I have an interestingly close, psychic and emotionally connected, relationship with my sons. My belief is that it comes from a combination of carrying them in my womb and breastfeeding them for over a year plus being in their lives pretty much 24/7 for most of their childhood (though there have been brief absences for valid reasons).

Limited

Mindy Stern

I discovered Mindy Stern today and have maxed out my “free” member-only stories on Medium for the month looking at her essays. They are definitely worth reading. She speaks truth about what it is like being an adoptee. That the experience is not better, only different. You can find links to her Medium essays at LINK>The Mindy Stern. If you want insights straight from an adoptee voice, go there.

I don’t know how much my mom tried to talk to her adoptive mother about her adoption. At most, I know that my adoptive grandmother did her best to reassure my mom that she was not one of those babies that Georgia Tann had stolen and sold after the scandal broke. That is about as much as my mom ever told me about it. I do know that my mom went to her grave believing her adoption was inappropriate. I know that the state of Tennessee refused to budge and give her the adoption file that had been closed and sealed. The one I now have completely. I now have contact with genetic relatives though it will always be problematic because I didn’t grow up with them and it leaves a gulf of experience that a late discovery that I am “one of them” never quit seems to bridge. I know my mom gave up trying to do a family tree at Ancestry because in the language of genetic connection that is what DNA is all about, the adoptive families weren’t real and she eventually resigned herself that it was pointless to continue. Just a few of the sorrows and sadness felt by one adoptee and I was fortunate as her daughter to be trusted with her truest feelings about it all but even those were only expressed in a limited way. There is no other way to say it. Adoption robs an adoptee of so much.

I was able to relate to so much in Mindy’s essay – LINK>Don’t Make Us Choose. Because my adoptee parents (both were adoptees) were never able to unravel their own origin stories, adoption limited us as their children from hearing much of anything about them or how my own parents felt. What I know now is what I had to find and reveal to my own self after they died.

The essay describes Mindy’s visit to her adoptive mother at the hospital after emergency heart surgery. The nurse asks her – where did you get your height? – because she is 5’6″ – her adoptive mother is 4’8″. All her life, her adoptive parents expected her to lie and pretend. She says, “pretending was implicit in our contract. Intended or not, their silence told me lying about my identity was acceptable, even encouraged.”

Mindy asks her readers to “Imagine what it feels like to worry if answering a basic question about your height will hurt your mother’s feelings. Consider the pain of pretending. The charade begins the moment our records are sealed, birth certificates amended, names changed. They build every closed adoption on lies, and adoptive parents who don’t proudly celebrate their child’s differences conspire with the pretense.”

Similar to my adoptee father, her dad never knew about her until she found him. Her birth mother took the secret of her to the grave. My dad’s father never knew about him. They look very much alike, just like my mom looks very much like her birth mother. Adoption robs the adoptee of genetic mirrors. They never know where this physical or innate trait (like a love of fishing in my dad) came from. The truth in my dad’s case was both nature and nurture. His original father spent his life involved with fishing, my dads’ adoptive parents loved to go fishing. Yet Mindy explains that her adoptive mother kept a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding Mindy’s original parents.

When Mindy does try to touch that place with her adoptive mother, the tears begin. So, Mindy says “I’m not a sadist so I go along with the policy. She won’t ask, I won’t tell, and our relationship will stay limited and distant and my god that is such a shame.”

I have struggled with that need to choose – my parents’ adoption and now knowing the truth they never did – has forced me to confront it, second hand. Who do I love – my adoptive relatives or the ones that came through the birth of my parents to their original parents? I have almost worked through it well enough to be able to love them all equally. Mindy describes a snippet of conversation with her adoptive mother when she touches that place.

“Mom, you get how fucked up this is, right? It’s like telling a gay child you accept them but not allowing their partner to come to dinner.”

“I’m afraid it makes you… regret your life.”

“They (her reunion with genetic family) give me something you can’t, you give me something they can’t. Neither of you replaces the other.” And I appreciate her words because they express the paradox of adoption so well. She notes that after that the server arrived and placed our food down. Her mother changed the subject. Mindy says, “We were done. That was the best she could do. At least she listened.”

Her essay ends on a decidedly happy note and I encourage you to read it for a smile today.

Losing My ?

As the child of both parents being adoptees and as the sister to my only two sisters, who both gave up babies to adoption – I’ve said “adoption” was the most natural thing in the world for me. But that isn’t quite right – it’s not natural – and all of the kids I grew up going to school with didn’t have adoptee parents (though thankfully, my parents were NOT my adoptive parents) and adoptive grandparents and adoptee uncles. So, I can’t really say it was commonplace to have adoption be so primary in our lives.

The closest I can come is that it was the reality. Not having a medical history for my parents when asked about that in doctor’s offices was just the reality.

Not knowing our racial heritage was just the reality. In fact, it may seem a bit odd but until I knew better (in 2017, when I was already 63 years old and both of my parents deceased), I honestly thought my mom was half African American and my dad was half Mexican – not kidding about that – that is how I was able to explain to myself that my parents had been given up for adoption – they must have been mixed race, which made me at least 50% mixed race along with 50% white (because I was definitely light skinned, blond haired and blue eyed). The truth was far from my creative imaginings. My mom had a lot of Scottish along with some English and thanks to slavery a smidgeon of Mali. My dad is half Danish.

My 4 adoptive grandparents were all wonderful people. My mom’s original parents were highly thought of and loved by their relations. My dad’s mother was loved and his dad, well he was a lot like my dad. Never knew he had even one child, let alone a son. More’s the pity – I think they would have made great fishing buddies.

Yet for about 5 years now, I’ve been reading the thoughts of adoptees wherever I find them and my perspective has entirely changed. I do not think adoption is a good thing in most cases. I actually thought my parents were orphans for the longest time – like until I was grown and heard from my mom that she was trying to get the state of Tennessee to release her adoption file to her because she was CONVINCED her adoption had been inappropriate (to a great extent because Georgia Tann had been involved) and she wanted to contact her original mother. Then, the state of Tennessee broke her heart because they told her that her mom had already died a few years earlier. She knew her dad was likely (and even that was not certain) older than her mom, so probably dead too. About 2 years after my mom died, I was able to do what she never could – get her entire adoption file from the state of Tennessee.

I do have Ancestry as well as 23 and Me to thank for most of my progress on my dad’s side. I now know who all 4 of my original grandparents were (something my own parents died never knowing). I have contact with some genetic, biological relations who are still living. I feel whole in a way I never even knew I did not feel before I learned all of that.

Somehow this song speaks to my feelings about all of this . . .