Without My Brother

When I first saw this image, I thought of my Aunt Daisy. I don’t think she knew about my dad until after her mother had died. Her older sister did. My cousin, who is the daughter of that older sister is how I came by pictures of my grandmother holding my dad and one of him when he was a toddler.

When my Aunt Daisy’s daughter discovered me thanks to 23 and Me, her first question was – is your dad still alive ? Sadly I had to tell her no. In fact my Aunt Daisy was living only 90 miles away from my dad in the very same state at the time he died. Such a pity. I see him in her photos.

I am told my paternal grandmother never really got over “losing” my dad to adoption. It certainly wasn’t her intention to give him up. His father was a married man, still un-naturalized as a citizen at the time my dad was conceived, having immigrated from Denmark. I would guess my grandmother never told him – IF she even was still in contact with him at the time. But without a doubt, she did know who his father was and it is thanks to her own effort to leave us breadcrumbs that I know who my dad’s father was. She quietly handled her pregnancy through the Salvation Army home for unwed mothers at Ocean Beach CA. It was such an appropriate birth. My dad, a Pisces, the son of a Danish fisherman, who himself was in love with fishing and the ocean. Their resemblance to one another makes it unmistakable and lately, my reconnecting with Danish relatives still living in Denmark due to our shared genes is the proof, that didn’t exist back in the day. She obtained employment with the Salvation Army and migrated with my dad in tow to El Paso Texas, where she was pressured to give him up for adoption at 8 months old.

My slightly increased risk of breast cancer probably comes from my paternal grandmother. The day she was due to be released from the hospital after surgery for breast cancer, she suffered a fatal heart attack. I have a smidgeon of Ashkenazi Jew which I suspect comes from my paternal side – if not my grandmother, then my Danish grandfather.

It still amazes me that after over 60 years totally clueless in the dark, I know so much about my family origins. Never would I have predicted that such a possibility would actually become real.

The Lies That Bind

I finished reading this book yesterday evening. On Saturday, it absorbed my entire 4 hour writing session because I simply could not stop reading. That was the first time a book truly did that to me. It is a page turner, at least it was for me, because having been on my own journey to discover my family roots – I understood empathically the disappointments and the excitement of being on the hunt.

There are differences in our experiences. Laureen is an adoptee and she definitely offers a clear-eyed and honest expression of the issues that most adoptees face. It was easy for me to recognize the truth in these descriptions.

I am not an adoptee but what I have discovered is that as the child of two adoptees (and neither of my parents knew much at all about their origins or heritage when they died after 8 decades of life) I am almost as impacted by the issues adoptees face as the one who is adopted is. My situation has only been slightly better because I do know who my parents were but nothing beyond them until very recently.

There is a bittersweet aspect that I won’t give away but I do highly recommend the book – even if adoption has not impacted you. Why ? Because it is written so very clearly about why reform is needed in adoptionland – from the practice of placing children to the unsealing of adoption records in all 50 states. This is a situation with societal impacts which all people should care about.

In Memoriam

I am now reading a book titled – Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption From a Place of Empowerment and Peace. I read an essay yesterday by Susan Perry and felt such a connection with her that I was seeking to reach out to her and discovered sadly that she had died some years ago.

She is quoted as saying –

“Sealed record laws afford more rights to the dead than they do to the
living and they bind the adopted person to a lifetime restraining order.”
~ Susan Perry

Just like my paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather, she was the product of a married man and a woman not his wife. They were both of Danish ancestry, just as my paternal grandfather was. An immigrant, not yet a citizen, married to a woman 20+ years his senior.

Susan’s adoptive mother had no idea how often her interior thoughts had turned to her ancestors. Who were they, and what was her story ? My own mom had similar questions.

Mrs Perry did know that her adoptive parents truly loved her, and that love
and support helped to make her the person she was in life. I believe I can say the same about all of the adoptive parents in my own family’s lives.

Yet, our genes are some part of what makes us the person we each are as well.

It is only natural that any adoptee that reaches adulthood (if not sooner) will want to know who passed those genes down to them.

I have bumped up against sealed records in three states – Virginia, Arizona and California. I realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have uncovered ALL of my original grandparents. I have the DNA tests that no one saw the inexpensive cost and prevalence of even 20 years ago as well as the matching sites Ancestry.com and 23 and Me to thank for most of my own success.

So many adoptees are never that fortunate. Sealed records are unjust and damaging to so many people. They encourage unhealthy thinking, repression, and denial as the means for coping with life.

I wonder if, because of adoption, my own mom did not feel empowered to take charge of her own story, just as Susan wrote in her essay.

Even so, every adopted person’s journey is unique.

It is difficult for me, as the child of two adoptees, to understand why as a culture we continue to shackle adopted people to an institution that is governed by such archaic and repressive laws, when the data clearly shows that most original mothers are open to contact. Those who are not, can simply say “no”.

Once an adoptee becomes an adult – they do not need outside agents supervising their own, very personal business.

Repressive laws set the tone – either/or thinking. There is a belief that adoptees who search are expressing disloyalty to their adoptive parents, or that the adoptee should just “be grateful” and move on. Attitudes of this kind are hurtful and dismissive.

Here’s the TRUTH, adoptees have two sets of parents – and a unique mix of DNA and upbringing. It is belittling and unfair to tell adoptees that they are not entitled by law to access their own original birth certificates. Every other American citizen has no such restriction.

This is institutional discrimination and there is no really good reason it exists. Adoptee rights bills have accumulated plenty of evidence that they are beneficial for the majority of persons for whom adoption is some part of their personal story.

Understanding

I believe one of the most surprising aspects, of finally knowing my family’s origins (both of my parents were adopted), is fully realizing the suffering and/or sacrifices my grandparents experienced that enable my own existence. That may seem like a self-evident conclusion but it actually was not.

Not only did I finally feel whole but I was compelled to understand the realities of adoption for ALL sides of the equation. While I may never personally know how it feels to be adopted, I have 4 adoptees to inform my perspectives for not only were my parents adopted but each of my sisters surrendered a child to adoption.

So I have two birth mothers who are very close to me as siblings and a niece and nephew who have reunited with our family, so I’ve seen that aspect as well. I also had two pairs of adoptive parents (the grandparents I knew as such my entire childhood into early adulthood) to inform me.

Due to an adoptee group I have joined at Facebook, due to TONS of reading from all sides of the adoption triad, I am much more fully informed than I was my entire life and that has been the side effect of learning my origins.

Origin information is very important to any person who has been impacted by adoption and that is something that those not impacted seem to struggle to fully understand. If you’ve always known where you came from, even if you were not all that interested, you can be forgiven for not knowing how truly important that is.

Azaleas

Bernice Dittmer 1989

It was my maternal adoptive grandmother who first made a big fuss over our Azaelas when she visited me in Missouri in 1989. She wanted her picture taken with some. She grew up in this state a bit further to the west. When my oldest son was born, I began a tradition of Mother’s Day photos with my sons among the Wild Azaelas. Yesterday, I saw my first blooming bush so there should be some still in bloom come Mother’s Day later this month.

As you can see, even in old age, my grandmother was a stylish woman. She adopted my mom and her brother from Georgia Tann, who became embroiled in a state investigation shortly before her death. Initially, it was simply that she was overcharging adoptive families and pocketing the extra money but as time went on, it became clear there were much worse accusations of exploitation of the adoptees original parents.

I received my mom’s adoption file from the state of Tennessee in October of 2017. My mom had tried and was denied in the early 1990s before the laws changed but no one told her when that happened and so she died knowing nothing about her origins. She had said to me that as a mother herself, she would have wanted to know what happened to her child but when she was trying to get her file, she was told that her mother had already died. The end of her hopes for a reunion were the reality.

Georgia Tann lied to my adoptive grandmother about my mother’s origins. That is plain in the record (which thankfully is mostly accurate except for some fudging about my mom’s original parents that was decidedly not true). It also seems that my adoptive grandmother got her children according to her exact specifications and I think it is likely that she paid for them in some manner.

Like many adoptive parents, she was very happy to have children and become a family. When she visited me in 1989, the story she told me was still not accurate. My mom was already 52 years old by that time.

Fulfilling My Destiny

Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died,

even if his or her story lies submerged in years of silence,

fragments of life experience, memory and body sensation can live on,

reaching out from the past to resolution in

the minds and bodies of those living in the present.

~ It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn

My grandmothers . . . both lost their own mothers at a young age. Both lost their firstborn children.

When I was growing up with both of my parents known to me as having been adopted, I didn’t know they had another family except for their adoptive parents. I thought they were orphans. I don’t know when they knew they weren’t orphans but they never knew their original families either.

For my mom, it probably started when the baby stealing and selling scandal of Georgia Tann, who was at the head of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis, broke while my mom was a teenager. Her adoptive mother did her best to reassure my mom that she wasn’t one of those children who had been stolen.

Yet, she could not reconcile how she could have been born in Virginia but adopted from Memphis only a few months later.

My dad seems not to have wanted to know the truth of his origins. I believe he was afraid to find out. He would dissuade my mother’s yearning with “it might open up a can of worms”. Even so, she tried to find out. The state of Tennessee rejected all of her efforts in the early 1990s.

Finally, in 2017, I was able to receive her full adoption file, including her own letters and rejections from the 1990s. Her mother never intended to lose her and suffered the remainder of her life from having been exploited the way she was.

Motivated by success, I started trying to discover my dad’s origins. His mother was unwed, so I thought it unlikely I would ever know who his father was. But in less than a year, I discovered that as well – thanks to a newly discovered cousin on his mother’s side.

Now I know why I was born. Living in me were my grandmother’s desires to have the true stories known. What a fulfilling outcome to my life (not that I am ready to die yet).