Tag: Sealed Birth Records

Breaking Into The Sealed Record

During my own roots journey, I bumped up against this in Virginia (I actually had a copy of my mom’s original birth certificate, her footprints, her mom’s fingerprints) when all I really wanted to know is whether she was born in a hospital or at home. Given the “prints”, probably it was a hospital but Virginia would not allow me her birth records without an attorney and judge, as they were sealed with her adoption. Same with Arizona’s records of her adoption or my dad’s records in California. Even so, I do know now what my parents never knew – who their original parents were and something of their stories.

Therefore, this story in the Huffington Post caught my attention – LINK>I Could Have Gone To Prison For What I Did To Find My Birth Parents by Jillian Barnet. The article notes – “The vast majority of the now 5 million adoptees in the United States have no right to our original birth certificates, our medical histories or to any information regarding our identities.”

She writes – “Late at night, in my childhood room, questions haunted me: Where did I come from? Why was I adopted? Who was my original family? Though my parents informed me of my adoption at a young age, beyond that the subject of adoption was taboo in our home.”

“When I gathered the courage to pose those questions, I got vague answers: In a hospital. Because we wanted you. People who couldn’t keep you. Because my parents treated the details of my adoption as secret, I desperately wanted to locate my birth family. It was an almost cellular urgency that surged when I became a mother myself.”

“In 1986, there was little information available to adoptees. Searching was something well-adjusted people didn’t do or even talk about. But on a follow-up visit to my obstetrician after the birth of my twins, I found a waiting-room magazine featuring the title of an article on the front cover that read, Adoptees Find Birth Parents With Help of ALMA.”

“I dove into reading about an adopted woman who had found her birth family with help from the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association (ALMA). After my doctor’s appointment, I slipped the magazine into my purse and brought it home. ALMA would end up shepherding me through a frustrating, emotional decade of searching for my birth family until, at last, I found them.”

If you have experienced the same frustrations that I have or that Jillian did, you might want to read the rest of the linked article.

Mary Ellen Gambutti

Thanks to my friend Ande Stanley, a late discovery adoptee, who’s own effort in the cause she has titled LINK> The Adoption Files, I learned about this author, LINK> Mary Ellen Gambutti, today. In looking more closely at Ms Gambutti, I discovered this site LINK> Memoir Magazine, which I may look into submitting to some time in the near future. She has written several books and has a few blogs available on her author page at Amazon.

I Must Have Wandered is described as a memoir told through prose, and the letters, fragments, and photos of her infant relinquishment at birth in post-World War II South Carolina. Her adoptive parents were native New Yorkers, who happened to be stationed in the state at the time. Common in that time period – hers was a closed adoption. She reflects on the primal loss experienced by many adoptees. In her case, there were also the separations caused by a transient military lifestyle. The book includes her coming of age in the turbulent ’60s and the barriers to truth that many adoptees find, due to their sealed birth records. Add into the mix a culture of secrecy, which is often the adoption experience. Just as often, adoption includes a hefty dose of religious fervor. It is sadly a common enough story but universal in adoptionland and yet always highlighted by individual details. Like many adoptees, this woman’s genetic heritage was obliterated by her adoption, and then similarly to my own roots discovery journey, her quest for identity includes some degree of reunion. 

Gambutti also wrote a book of essays titled Permanent Home. One reviewer wrote that this book blends early childhood memories into what reads like a vision or a dream. Detailed is the trauma and loss many adoptees realize when they learn the circumstances that surrounded their birth. Her search is not supported by her adoptive family and trigger warning – there is abuse. Never-the-less a reviewer says the book is not a downer but reality. Common to the experience of many adoptees is missing health history and not looking like anyone else in their family.