By A.D. HerzelThe return flight was most memorable. A six-month-old boy slept in my lap for 18 hours, never crying once. He was not my baby and legally no longer belonged to the woman who gave birth to him. On many papers signed by governments and agencies on opposite sides of the world, he belonged to a family in the United States. I was 19, and my thoughts and memories reeled back and forth through time. I reflected upon the experiences and challenges I had encountered as an Asian adoptee in America, and I wondered about the known and unknown possibilities his future would hold. As I thought about his journey to the other side of the world, I silently cried. Did anyone notice? No one said a word. My tears fell on and off through the course of the long night. We were flying together in limbo, he and I leaving one home on the way to another, though I felt neither place was truly ours to claim. Was this only my story? Would it be his too?

In the summer of 1987, after I completed my first year of college, my adoptive parents generously sent me on the Holt Motherland tour. Holt international was an Evangelical Christian adoption agency founded by Harry Holt and his wife, Bertha, in 1953. Harry Holt is credited with creating the logistic and legal pathway for the intercountry adoption of Korean children to families in the United States. The Motherland tour was an effort by the Holt organization to create an opportunity for adult Korean adoptees to learn about their Korean heritage and visit their “homeland.”

I did not ask to go on the tour, but when it was offered, I readily accepted. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I didn’t have much access to Korean culture. My parents were not the kind who celebrated or shared the beauty and culture of the country I and my two adopted siblings had come from. I recall meeting Bertha Holt on two occasions at large gatherings when I was very young. The evangelical church community my adoptive parents belonged to recruited new members throughout the suburbs of Long Island, New York. The church members adopted roughly 100 Korean children. I have a picture in my mind of us all posed in a hall with Bertha wearing a hanbok. Somewhere on Long Island, in a box of my now-deceased parents’ photos, it may be hidden.

Unlike most Korean adoptees dispersed into the white American population, I was raised among many other Korean adoptees and their families. When my parents’ church devolved into a conservative, Sephardic, Kabbalistic, messianic cult, I was in first grade. I was told we do not pray to Jesus anymore. Two of my brothers and I were put in its private religious school until sixth grade, where half of the children in my class were Korean adoptees.

Yet we never talked about being adopted. My best friend was a Korean adoptee, as was her sister. My adopted siblings and I talked quietly, privately, about many things, but never about our lives before adoption or our families on the other side of the world. We, according to my adoptive mother, were God’s will in her life, her mission. Thus, I was named Amy Doreen—beloved “gift of God.” Amy is a common name among Korean adoptees. When I was a child, I imagined it made me special. As a teenager, I held on to the name of “love,” hoping if I embodied it, it would come to me.

As I grew up, I came to find the name silly and ill-fitting. Amys were pretty, sweet, and bubbly. Cherished, they were something that was not me. Inside, and occasionally outside, I was mean, cutting with words, hungry, lonely, awkward, uncomfortable in my skin, angry, and always afraid. I cursed myself, as I was cursed at, and felt cursed. Being “God’s gift” was always a chain.

In a recent interview with an adoptee, she reminded me of my past self. I had forgotten the feeling of my anger, my self-hate. Though I spent my elementary school years in a religious bubble where I did not think about my race, when I was in my home, my neighborhood, and when I finally went to public school in seventh grade, I was harassed, afraid, and I hated being Asian. I cringed at the sight of another Asian in public or on tv. I was ashamed of being part of the denigrated class. I was taught at home that Asians were stupid and ugly and weak. Was I made fun of? Of course, this was the 70s.

After learning the breakdown of my DNA, I was reminded of having been taunted with “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!” I used to say, “I am Korean, stupid,” with fury and fear bubbling inside. The kids never knew what or where Korea was.  But now I know. I am Chinese and Japanese and Korean. I knew it never really mattered. The truth was always clear. I was more interested in being invisible or at least visible on my own terms. It would take me decades before I even knew what my own terms were. This was never possible within my adoptive family or within the upper-middle-class Long Island suburbs where I grew up. I escaped Long Island and my adoptive parents’ home at the end of college and returned only for major family events.

My Motherland Tour shifted many things. The American spell of my “minority self”—”ugly, powerless, and unworthy”—broke when I saw the beauty of the landscape and the masses of people and witnessed the culture. It was an awakening that some Korean adoptees have, but not all. The tour helped create a space for “Korean pride”—a long well-guarded taboo. It was also the first time I actually spoke about the nature of my adoptive family struggles with fellow adoptees. How many tears were shed? How many cheap Korean cigarettes were smoked at Il San Orphanage, sitting around Harry Holt’s gravestone? No one understood. Counselors might have been helpful. Alcohol, cigarettes, tears, and late-night confidences carried us through the two-week tour—“orphans” once more figuring things out on our own. Seven of us were close in age and created an odd “Breakfast Club.” It was a strange brief enlightenment and a respite for those of us not wanting to return to the families that sent us. We would all return to our respective states—Tennessee, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, California, Kansas, New Jersey, and New York—after sorely straining the nerves of the late Dr. David Kim, the former director of Holt International Children’s services.

The most profound stop for me on our tour was Holt’s unwed mother’s home. I do not remember the inside or anything I saw. I only remember being doubled over outside the building bawling my eyes out, finally having a complete emotional breakdown. I do not have memories of any words from the moment. A geyser of sorrow had broken free and I no longer had the will to fight it. The unwed mother’s home was considered progress—something Holt International was proud of. Dr. Kim always told us his dream was that adoptees would end up running Holt. I wonder how he interpreted all the tears and wailing sobs elicited by these annual tours.

As our tour bus obliviously rode through the South Korean peninsula, the June 1987 Democratic uprising was occurring. The demonstrations led to a democratic election and other reforms as well as the Great Workers’ Struggle, which was marked by the largest and most effective union organizing and walkouts in South Korean history. One night, our bus was stuck in the demonstration traffic, and several people were sickened by the tear gas that floated through the windows. The political struggle for Korean democracy was not on the Holt Motherland Tour cultural menu, so context was never given.

At 19 and older, had we grown up on the peninsula with or without our unknown birth parents, we likely would have been part of, or greatly invested in, the outcomes of the crowds on the streets.

Instead, we were buying tourist trinkets in Itaewon. “Eol meyeyoh? How much?” and “Kamsa hamneda, thank you,” were the pillars of our Korean language acquisition. My American freedom had already been bought by the war, by my adoption. I had not grown enough to truly protest with my fellow Koreans. In Korea, I was an “orphan” in an American wrapper, envied and looked down upon. In America, I was an American in a Korean wrapper, a dirty import.

Time has passed. The first experiments have grown up. The adoptee outcomes from the first wave of Korean adoptees and my subsequent generation resulted from prescriptions of assimilation and religious charity. Though research is scant and belated, it showed what many of us have privately known. A study by the Evan B Donaldson institute I participated in, reported by the New York Times in 2009, showed that 78% of Korean adoptees identified as white or wanting to be white. It also documented that, “as adults, nearly 61 percent said they had traveled to Korea both to learn more about the culture and to find their birth parents.” This shows us; the majority of adoptees assimilate and displace their identity with that of their foreign families, and that their innate identity is still almost equally important. Intercountry adoption and many forms of adoption demand the “erasure” of a life and identity prior to placement in the foreign environment, but identity can only be controlled by external forces for so long.

Revolution and a way to culture, identity, and citizenship reclamation is still being paved by adoptees born after me. According to data culled from US State Department reports by William Robert Johnston and the Johnston archives, only 4,400 Korean children were adopted the US in the 1960s. During the 70s, 25,247 Korean children were recorded as adopted to the US, and during the 80s, the number rose to 46,254. A small fraction of these younger and older adoptees would move back to Korea, search for birth families, and demand accountability from adoption agencies, the government, and their birth families. With the rise of the Internet and DNA technology, these numbers appear to be increasing, though they have yet to be measured.

Unceasingly, these same demands have been and will be replayed by every adoptee who understands what it means to ask for their rights as defined by the UN Rights of the Child Agreement. (The United States is one of the few countries that has not ratified, and does not subscribe to, the Rights of the Child Agreement.) Thus, our work continues: supporting Korean adoptees, making community, creating birth search and reunion resources, and sharing our stories in writing and through the arts. Today, adoptees are fortunate to find a varied handful of Korean adoptee-centered organizations, podcasts, and magazines online among them: ICAV, IKAA, AKA, KAMRA325, GOA’L, Adoptee Hub, the Adapted Podcast, and The Universal Asian.

When my return flight landed at JFK airport with the other HOLT 1987 Motherland Tour members, I was brought to meet the family waiting for the baby I carried. My service as an escort paid for my plane trip back to the US. I do not remember the name they gave him. I recall the family—white, with perhaps two older daughters. I may have intentionally not wanted to remember them. I had not wanted to give him up. I had not wanted to give him to them. I gave him up knowing, whether they were kind or not, the road could be difficult. America was uniquely hard on Asian boys. He would have questions they could not answer, desires for self-knowledge they could not fulfill, and my heart was inadequate and broken. I was still inadequate and broken.

I hope he was fine, was loved, was fairly treated, found pride, self-acceptance, friends, and self-love. He should be 34 now and still on the journey that never ends, reconciling the before and after, the with and without. My best hope is that he was one of those adoptees who was able to be proud and have an easy knowledge of his Korean cultural heritage and identity. What I could not do for him then is what I do now—share as much as I can and show what I am able.

And to him I say, “If you are out there looking for a friend on the road or the mule that carried you to America, here I am.”

미안해  Biahnay

I am sorry.

A.D.A.D. Herzel was “found” in 1968 in Hari, Yeouju eup, South Korea, and brought to the U.S. in 1970. She is a Korean American adoptee, visual artist, writer, and educator who has exhibited work nationally for the past 20 years. Trained as a painter and printmaker at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she also earned her M.Ed. in art education from the Tyler School of Art. Her current project, titled Seeds from the East: The Korean Adoptee Portrait Project, will be shown in multiple venues in 2022-2023. These exhibits are scheduled for the Philip Jaisohn Memorial House in Media, PA, and the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. She’s working with Adoptee Hub for an exhibit in Minnesota, and plans are in the works for shows in Oregon and, possibly, Boston. She is also a regular arts contributor to The Universal Asian, which describes itself as an open and safe online database platform in a magazine-style to provide inspiration to Asian adoptees (#importedAsians) and immigrated Asians (#hyphenatedAsians) around the world. Learn more about her work here. Find her on Instagram @pseudopompous.Severance is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

On Venmo: @pseudopompousBEFORE YOU GO…

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By Meredith KellerWhen a letter arrived in my mailbox saying, “I think you might be my grandma,” it dredged up shattering memories of a campus rape 52 years earlier. I threw the letter on the floor of my car and drove erratically in a state of high anxiety and angst. My body went rigid at the thought of reviving that story from my past. All would be revealed.

Would I want to go down that path? To relive scenes and open sores from episodes long buried, the chilling details of an incident that began with rape on a college campus in 1962?

How would this grandchild ever understand that repressive period I lived through after WW II and before the birth control pill? Society then held single unmarried pregnant women in their grip. Rape or unplanned sex led to blistering consequences as unplanned pregnancies made women face the scourge of what was labeled illegitimacy, undergo illegal and dangerous abortions, or carry a child to term only to sever that extraordinary bond between mother and child with separation. It’s estimated that as many as 4 million mothers in the United States surrendered newborn babies to adoption between 1940 and 1970.* I had had no choice but to carry my child to term.

At the time, thoughts of motherhood were tearing at my moral senses. After all, I’d been raised with the idea that motherhood within marriage was the shibboleth in our society. I was facing the dilemma of my life. Would I dare keep a child under these circumstances and bring shame on me and my family or allow the baby to be adopted?

Opting for adoption, I faced the deep sadness of that very moment you hand over your own child. That final act of severance between mother and child caused a quake deep in my soul. I can recall that moment with crystal clarity but mostly I keep it compartmentalized, forever afraid to revisit that devastating moment. The deep shame I felt should not have been mine but the rapist’s who drugged me and took me to his fraternity for his pleasure. After that sorrow of an unplanned pregnancy and what I had put my family through, the anger and resentment were knotted together and locked deep inside.

Returning to that letter in my hands, my emotions were jumbled thinking about the conflict of remembered pain and the promise of closure. I knew this letter was reopening wounds, but it was also exciting to think of learning what happened to my child after that sorrowful moment deeply etched in my soul.

Should I answer the letter?

How would I respond? I started to formulate a letter. What could I possibly say that would adequately explain my lifetime of secrecy and shame? They hadn’t lived through my restrictive times, that conservative era just before the bra-burning sixties and the new sexual freedoms.

What evolved from this request to be acknowledged was that I wrote a memoir. Through tear stained pages, I re-lived for my granddaughters and all young women every aspect of my journey when my self-esteem, ambition, certainty, and reputation were instantly erased and replaced by shame. I explained the hurdles I had to jump to restore my dignity.

So I well understand that not everyone wants to immediately meet their lost child. The pain of remembrance can be deep. The personal stories are wrenching. The reasons for relinquishing them can be quite complicated.

I did eventually meet my daughter and granddaughters in an awesome moment of pure joy, but it was writing the memoir and addressing that long journey that healed the pain.

Keller is reviewing her book, The Unraveling: The Price of Silence, in Zoom format conversation with her daughter Ann at the following Napa Bookmine event November 11. All are invited and it is free. Register here.

*The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative.Meredith Keller honed her writing skills in a career as food editor of a leading restaurant magazine, copy writer for top advertising agencies, and publicist and marketing executive. All helped her articulate trauma and the emotional topography of rape and the blistering consequences. The Unraveling is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Find her on Instagram @theunraveling_9162.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles and essays about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
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Sonia Derory spent the first six months of her life in a hospital in a Parisian suburb while her parents reflected on whether they could raise a child with what they perceived as a disability. She was born in 1983 with dwarfism, a medical or genetic condition characterized by short stature. Ultimately, her parents concluded it would be too great a challenge to raise her and placed her for adoption. After spending another six months in a nursery, Derory was adopted by a couple from a small town in the St. Etienne region in center of France into a family with other children, some also adopted.

Derory had always known she’d been adopted—a fact that otherwise would have been evident because her Algerian heritage set her apart in appearance from her French Caucasian adoptive parents. But she always wanted to know who she looked like and where she came from. Early on, she was afraid to discuss with her adoptive parents her desire to know about her origins. “They weren’t particularly open-minded about my search,” she says, and she felt guilty and conflicted. But in 2006, when she was 23, she searched for her birthmother—not a challenge since her birth parents’ names and identities were listed on her birth certificate.

After several months, she located her birthmother, who at first seemed pleased by her appearance in her life. They were in contact for more than a year and a half, and Derory welcomed her mother into her home. She even wore an identity bracelet engraved on one side with her original birth name and on the other with her adoption name, to demonstrate the depth of her connection. “I did everything—in fact too much—in order to be acknowledged as her daughter because I had this deep-down need to build a relationship with this mother who could help me discover my cultural origins.” After those months, she says, her mother decided to cut ties and all contact, but by that time, Derory had already become very attached to her, so it was deeply difficult to accept—another devastating rupture.

“In her mind she had given me away as a baby many years ago and so felt nothing for me emotionally as an adult woman.” She didn’t want to have any type of relationship, and and they never met again. A few years later, Derory met her birthfather, who told her he’d searched for her when she was very small but was unsuccessful because her name had been changed. He, however, was also unwilling to engage in a relationship with his daughter.

Derory had grown up near her birthplace in Saint-Etienne in east-central France, where she went to high school and developed a love of theater. She took acting and circus classes and workshops but, daunted by the difficulty of earning a living as an actress, she turned to another career. For ten years she worked as a communications and media officer in Clermont-Ferrand, a city in Massif Central, a highland region in Southern France. But in 2014, drawn back to her love of theater, she boarded a train to Paris, intent on becoming an actress. She studied in a theater school and won some small roles in a few classical plays, a television show, and many short movies. She also nurtured an interest in directing and taught herself the necessary skills, learning from trial from trial and error and by being inquisitive on set. Soon she’d use those skills to tell her own story.

Derory had seen stories about people searching for their birth parents but thought they seemed unreal, like fairy tales. “I needed to give testimony about my own life and story that was realistic and true to what had actually occurred.” She particularly needed to address an entirely overlooked topic—adoption and disability. In her short film, “Encounters” [Recontre(s)], she tells the story of what happened during her reunion with her birthmother. Not a documentary, it relies on the participation of an actor who plays the role of her birthmother, and names and documents have been changed. The truth of the story, however, she says, is communicated in the voiceover. “I was faithful to the actual words of the protagonists through the voices—a choice, like the length, partly dictated by financial limitations. Bearing the costs of the film herself, she was restricted technically and materially, which is why the film is done in voiceover rather than with the actors speaking. She also made two shorter versions. One for the Nikon Film Festival, “Almost her Mother” (Je Suis Presque Sa Mere), with a running time of a little more than two minutes, tells the story from her mother’s perspective. And the 45-second “A Tear in the Heart” (La Larme Au Coeur), is from the perspective of a psychologist who mediates the reunion of mother and daughter. The longer story, “Encounters,” is from Durory’s perspective.

Her work is evidence of the importance of storytelling, both for personal healing and to raise awareness of the lived experience of adoptees. “I think everyone can testify on their own level to show their perspective on adoption and help advance the cause of adoptees.” It’s important, she believes, to counter stereotypes that paint adoptees as spoiled, special, or difficult children. “They’re like all other children who just need to be loved and to belong to a family. Sadly, they live all their lives with this wound of abandonment that is difficult to deal with in their social, personal, and emotional lives.”

“Today,” Derory says, “I’m at peace with my story. I can relate and talk openly about my life without feeling emotional, and I think I can say that it’s made me resilient and stronger. I’ve managed to reach many people all over the world who don’t know me and who in turn have been really touched and moved by my story.”

To learn more, look for Derory on Instagram here and here.

To view the films, visit https://www.carminos-production.com; https://www.facebook.com/Je.suis.presque.sa.mere/; https://www.facebook.com/La.larme.au.coeur/; and https://vimeo.com/carminosproduction.—BKJ

By Kathleen Shea KirsteinAccording to a 2009 study published in a prominent psychology journal, it takes 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit. It also takes 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. I’ve been second-guessing every word that’s come out of my mouth for so long it’s as natural to me as breathing. I might say this obsession with doubting myself started when I first learned to talk. In school I was very quiet. In a yearbook I was described as quiet as a church mouse. I’ve always been this way—the heavy-set kid no one noticed.

One day in early February, when I was just a few days shy of my 50th birthday, I was working with the adoption coordinator of the Lund Family Center in Burlington, Vermont after only recently having learned I’d been adopted. For me it was painful to find out at 49 that I’d been adopted. And on top of the pain, there was the need to completely rebuild my identity from scratch. The foundation of my world had completely crumbled in those moments after this discovery. Rebuilding one’s identity is a never-ending roller coaster ride—exhilarating one moment and totally exhausting the next.

At the adoption coordinator’s urging, I’d received non-identifying information about my birth parents, so I knew the basics. My mother, who was of French-Canadian descent, was 32 when I was born. She was in good health, worked outside the home, and loved to knit. The file also noted that she was very helpful to the younger girls in the maternity home. I learned that my father, who was of Scottish descent, was also in good health, graduated from high school, and was an engineer.

I knew I had to ask my mother’s permission to search for biological family members. I called her and said, “ Mom, you know I always do what I am told. Leslie, the adoption coordinator, says I should ask for identifying information. I want your blessing. I want to make sure it’s okay with you that I take these next steps.” I can’t remember if I said this out loud or only thought about it: “It won’t change anything in our relationship.” Since she and my father confirmed that I’d been adopted, I’d been very careful not to give them even a hint that I was rejecting them. Mom assured me that it would be fine with her. And poor Dad. If mom said yes, he’d tag along, but he’d never actually been consulted.

I called the adoption coordinator and set the process in motion. I was required to write a letter to the probate judge for Burlington, Vermont, Chittenden County, requesting identifying information about my birthparents. Once the probate court denied my request, which is typical, Leslie would attempt to locate my birth mother. If she was successful and if my mother agreed to permit contact, then I would be asked to write her a letter. Once she responded, we would determine whether she was willing to meet me.

Talk about second-guessing! It felt as if there were so many places this could go wrong. My mother could resist being be found. She could decide that since I have been out of her life for 50 years, why let me back in now? She would be in her 80s. She could be dead. That would be so sad. What would it feel like, I wondered, to have all hope of contact gone. All hope of learning what she is like, what her family is like, who I look like? It’s an understatement to say it would feel like the rug was just pulled out from under my feet. It would be painful. It’s weird to know that I would grieve for someone I don’t know, except we were a team for almost nine full months. I decided for the moment it was best not to think about it and to go about my activities of daily living.

Leslie’s call came when I was at work. She wanted to tell me she found my mother, who lived in Florida. Then she called back to say whoops, she found the wrong mother. The first name and age were correct, but the Social Security number was off by one digit. I reminded myself to just breathe—that my job in that moment was just to take one breath after the other. A few days later on a Friday morning, Leslie called me again at work to tell me she’d found the correct birthmother. This time, everything checked out. My mother lived in Winooski, Vermont. Having never heard of it, I checked the map and found it was near Burlington. When we’d taken family trips to see my husband’s brother and his family in Rainbow Lake, New York, near Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, I loved when we’d go via Burlington. I never knew why I liked it so much, but it just drew me in and felt comfortable. After Leslie’s call, I knew why. I was born there. The roots of my ancestors grew in that Vermont soil.

Leslie advised me that it was time for me to write the letter to my birthmother, Helen. Her name is name is Helena, but everyone called her Helen. I only work a half day on Friday, so I spent all afternoon writing the letter. I sat at my computer and second-guessed every word as I typed. Should I tell my entire life story—49 years of information? Or should I just hit the highlights? What I said and how I said it would matter; this would be the first impression of me my birthmother will get. I wanted her to like me. But there was no one to guide me, to give words of support. Writing a letter doesn’t sound that hard, but for me—a champion second-guesser—it was very difficult. I wasn’t getting anywhere, erasing every word as soon as I typed it. Geez, what did you write that for? I asked myself. It sounds dumb. Don’t sound so full of yourself. Enough! I decided. I’d hit the highlights and let the rest go. But still, it took me eight hours to finish the letter. I imagine a person with less faulty thinking could have done it in two hours max.

At about the four-hour mark, my phone rang. It was my mother. “Hi Mom, sure pizza for my birthday supper sounds great,” I said. We chatted for a minute, but I have no memory of what we discussed because my brain had turned to mush. I managed to get myself back to my computer desk and into my chair. What had just happened? I could barely comprehend it. It felt surreal to be writing a letter to one mom and at the same time talking on the phone to the other mom. I thought my life could never be any stranger than it was in that moment. Wow, just wow. I had no other words. I couldn’t even think. I regained my composure, kicked my brain back into gear, and finished the letter. I took a moment to draw a red rose in a yellow vase in the Pointillist style. I hoped she’d like it. It seemed the right thing to do to personalize the computer paper.

The highlights only version of my life ended up taking three pages. Yes, Helena, your daughter is long-winded even when she’s trying to be concise. Too many words, like Mozart’s too many notes. If only I had equal talent.

Leslie called a few weeks later to say that my mother lived near her, so she actually dropped the letter off and read it to her. After time went by and no follow-up letter arrived, I asked Leslie if she could visit my mother and if I could tag along as Leslie’s associate. My mother didn’t have to know it was me. I just wanted to see what she looked like and who she was. The waiting was so hard. Leslie said I’d have to wait for the letter.

Finally, a card arrived in the mail. My mother told me my birthfather was tall and Italian. She hoped I was well, and she signed the card “Mama.” I just kept looking at the signature. I’d always called my mother Mom, so for Helen to sign it Mama seemed so right that all I could do was stare.

It was amazing for me to meet my biological mother and discover that we shared so many of the same traits. For her to cry was rare, and, similarly, I never cried. She has a great sense of humor, as do I. We share the same personality type. I am very much my biological mother’s daughter. That knowledge warms my heart.Kathleen Shea Kirstein was born in Vermont and raised in New Hampshire. She lives in Troy, New Hampshire. She’s a late-discovery adoptee, a mother of two boys, and a registered nurse.

By Laura McMillian, PhD, CPC, ACCAs a professional coach* working with donor conceived adults, parents, and donors, I’ve observed a common issue among many donor conceived clients seeking support: feelings of anger or disappointment that their parents kept the truth of their conception secret from them for so many years. Because there may be disruption in the relationship between these adults and their parents, one or both parties seek coaching to help them work out their differences and adjust to the newly challenging reality. My donor conceived clients of all ages typically discover the truth of their conception either from their parents or from having taken a DNA test. Less commonly, they find out from a person other than a parent.

Donor conceived people are often confused as to why their parents didn’t think such information was vital enough to share with them much earlier on. Indeed, many feel that knowing the identity of both biological parents is a basic human right for multiple reasons (psychological, cultural, and medical); they therefore feel violated and betrayed by their own parents for denying them this right to their complete family heritage—information that most others take for granted.

Donor conceived people sometimes point out their parents’ hypocrisy in having chosen gamete donation over adoption for the purpose of establishing a biological connection to at least one parent and later complaining when their adult child shows interest in the typically anonymous biological parent. Should biological relatedness only matter to parents but not to children? The parents may say things like, “It shouldn’t matter. Love is all you need, and you received that.” Yes, but we also need to make sense of our traits and know where we came from so we can form healthy adult identities, not to mention our need for an accurate family medical history. Equally hypocritical, some parents enjoy doing genealogical work on their own family trees but criticize their adult donor conceived children for also valuing and investigating their true and complete heritage.

Parents’ explanations for their failure to disclose the manner of their children’s conception are often confusing. For example, they may say, “We couldn’t find the right time,” or “We thought it would be better for you not to know.” They may state that they didn’t want to layer on additional challenges when their children were going through difficult life events, such as going to college, or when there was trauma, loss, or divorce in the family. These justifications may or may not be excuses to avoid the difficult “telling conversation.” Sometimes, donor conceived people recognize their parents’ good intentions, but the problematic secret, which they consider a major lie, may overshadow those good intentions. Many feel there were numerous opportunities over the years for their parents to tell the truth.

There are several psychological reasons why parents may keep such secrets. Recipients of donor sperm may experience denial, as some may have lied to themselves for years by believing that the donor sperm didn’t “take,” while theirs (or their partners’) did. (Egg donation doesn’t afford the same opportunity for denial, since in vitro fertilization is necessary.) And in the past, fertility professionals encouraged such denial by mixing the sperm of two men—donor and intended father—or by telling heterosexual couples to have sex the night of the artificial insemination. Even today, most fertility professionals aren’t well informed about secrecy’s negative effects on donor conceived people and their family lives, being only concerned with running their businesses and achieving results.

In addition, the parents may not have done their own research, also having focused solely on the desired result, or there may not have been research available when they conceived. If the donation occurred decades ago, there likely was no publicly available source of information or research studies, let alone the Internet. Other possible reasons parents may have desired secrecy include shame over male infertility and a culture of sweeping family secrets under the rug.

Yet another psychological reason for secret-keeping is the deep-seated fear that children might not love the non-biological parent as much if they knew the truth. Sadly, this understanding is backwards; a relationship characterized by honesty and respect is stronger than one characterized by secrets and lies, regardless of biological relatedness. Children don’t know what DNA is; all they know is how parental figures treat and care for them. Nothing erases those early relationship experiences. At the same time, nothing erases the biological connection to genetic relatives, but this fact doesn’t detract from the connection with those who raised them. If the donor conceived person wants a relationship with the biological parent, the parents who raised them would do well to remember that love is not a finite resource.

Relationships that weren’t strong before the “telling conversation” tend to encounter more challenges than do those that had been strong from the start. The relationship is inevitably tested, and if there are dysfunctional patterns already present, some relationships might not survive this major test. Resolving both the dysfunction and the discovery process may prove too difficult all at once, especially without significant professional help over several years. Relationships that were already strong may experience bumps along the road but eventually return to where they were before (or close to it)—a process that often takes a year or two.

I usually recommend to my donor conceived clients that they continue civil discussions with their parents, if possible, to learn the reasoning used during their reproductive decision-making. I also advise them to exercise as much empathy as possible. Empathy is not the same as sympathy; it means putting yourself in someone else’s shoes in order to better understand their experiences and actions. The parents of donor conceived people who didn’t tell the truth early in life believed they were doing the right thing at the time. Many of my recipient parent clients express regret and remorse after learning more about the subject, though some remain steadfast in their defensiveness. Donor conceived people tend to find defensive parents particularly infuriating and invalidating; this defensiveness can create a schism in the relationship and add to the psychological burden of learning that one is donor conceived. Some parents even flip flop between supporting and denying the importance of their adult children’s full genetic self-knowledge.

As the parents’ coach, I try to ease any feelings of parental inadequacy and affirm the positives of their efforts. They are then better able to humbly and honestly face their adult children and move forward collaboratively. This is a time when donor conceived people need all the support they can get. Any challenges experienced by the parents in this process don’t compare to those of the adult donor conceived people, whose very existential foundation has been shaken. The shock and difficulties won’t magically disappear, although the intensity may lessen, since these effects may reverberate for the rest of their lives.

Those parents who value the relationship with their adult children more than their own egos are more likely to listen and offer support in whatever way they can. (Loving reassurances may be necessary before this becomes possible.) They will be receptive to general information about the experience of having been donor conceived as well as to their adult child’s specific experiences, similarly cultivating empathy. They also learn to support and not take personally their adult children’s curiosity about the other half of their genetic identity and the family history attached to it since this is a healthy curiosity that mustn’t be squelched. In this manner, parent-child relationships may become strong again in less time than they otherwise would.

If parents end up feeling less significant through their adult children’s focus on the mysterious or newfound biological parent, they might benefit from remembering the importance of being a “rock” to them through it all. The biological parent and family may or may not be receptive to contact or a relationship, but the parents who raised the children are able to provide consistent love and support regardless of what happens. And that’s not insignificant at all.

Such a strong relationship can go a long way toward easing the coping process. I recommend that my clients ask their parents for the types of support they need (assuming their parents are receptive), since many parents may have no idea how to help relieve the shock, confusion, and/or pain (if applicable) of the discovery and adjustment process. Bringing parents into coaching sessions can be helpful because an outside perspective can be less threatening to them. Finally, donor conceived people can join Facebook groups devoted to them as a population to help mitigate feelings of aloneness through gaining a sense of shared experience with others in similar positions.Laura McMillian, PhD, CPC, ACC, has a master’s degree in clinical psychology with an emphasis in marriage and family therapy. She’s also a certified professional coach who provides services to donor conceived individuals, donors, and parents. She lives in Hideout, Utah with her loving spouse Kevin and their 3 small dogs. Learn more about her practice here.Editor’s note: While professional coaches may help facilitate communication and share practical coping strategies, they do not treat psychological disorders unless they are also licensed therapists. Individuals experiencing shock, trauma, or significant emotional challenges should seek the care of a qualified therapist, preferably one trained in issues related to genetic identity. BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles and essays about donor conception, NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

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