By David B. Bohl, MA

Being adopted is one of those complicated gifts that just keeps on giving whether you like it or not. I am calling it a “gift” because I like to put a positive spin on things and because it has enriched my life—in relationships, in personal discoveries—once I understood how to deal with all the adversity/trauma attached to it. Once I knew how to navigate my own feelings about it all, it became easier to see it as something that made my life that much bigger, now that I was no longer letting it destroy me, as when I used drinking to cope with my inability to fit in.

But recently the gift reared its head again. What happened is that I experienced something called a misattributed parentage event (MPE), which became an unexpected twist in my journey of self-discovery, one that I thought I had already come to terms with. An MPE—most often discovered as a result of DNA testing—describes a situation in which the person one believes to be one’s biological parent is not in fact biologically related. This can result from adoption, sperm donation/IVF, an affair, rape, or incest. For obvious reasons, learning about an MPE is often a traumatic experience.

As an adoptee, I’ve always known that my biological roots were a mystery waiting to be unraveled. However, I thought I knew all there was to know and nothing could have prepared me for the revelation that the man I thought was my paternal genetic grandfather was not biologically related to me or my father. My half brother and I stumbled upon this truth through genetic DNA testing, a tool we initially used out of curiosity, but one that ultimately led us down a path of unexpected revelations.

At first, the finding felt surreal, almost as if I were living in a plot twist from a novel rather than my own life. Because I had always known that I was adopted, the idea of surprises regarding my genetic lineage was not entirely foreign to me—and yet this revelation still managed to shake the foundation of my understanding of family and identity. I didn’t know this grandfather (nor will I ever know the other one) but I couldn’t help but wonder what that was like for my biological father and if he was affected in any way. Was he treated well by the man he called “father” or was he perhaps neglected? Could that explain why he was unable to show up for me? Or was it his mother who only knew the truth and was perhaps deeply affected by it? The possibilities were endless, and I’ve found myself trying to guess something that was impossible to guess as it’s been the case with most of my biological story. The one thing I did know for sure was that this was a new reality that I had to grapple with in my own time and at my own pace.

One of the most challenging aspects of this discovery was navigating the implications for my family members, particularly my father’s living sisters. As I shared this newfound truth with them, I could observe the mixture of shock and confusion they displayed. This revelation changed not just my understanding of lineage, but also theirs, highlighting the interconnectedness of our family narratives. While we were all supportive and understanding of each other, I could sense the weight of this revelation as we collectively processed what it meant for our family dynamic.

Beyond the familial implications, there were practical considerations to address as well. With this new knowledge came the realization that our family medical history was no longer as straightforward as we once believed. My half brother and I embarked on a journey of genetic sleuthing, delving into our newfound lineage to uncover potential predispositions and health risks of which we had previously been unaware. It’s a daunting task, but one that we’re approaching with a sense of determination and resilience.

As a relinquishee and adoptee, I’ve already navigated the complexities of self-discovery to a large extent. The journey toward resilience, strength, and self-confidence is one I thought I’d already traveled deeply into. However, this discovery offered yet another layer of complexity to unravel. It forced me to confront the depths of my own identity once again, challenging me to reconcile the truths of my genetic lineage with the realities of having misinformation. I won’t lie– there were moments when the old sense of betrayal made itself apparent again, when I thought again: Can I really trust anyone, ever? Except that these days I bounce back quickly, and I think I was able to handle it without letting it disturb me too much. Ultimately, while it was a challenging process, it reaffirmed the resilience I’d cultivated over the years, reminding me of my ability to adapt and thrive in the face of adversity.

Today, in reflecting on this journey, I’m reminded of the quote from The Godfather: Part III that resonates deeply with me. “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in!” Indeed, this discovery has pulled me back into a world of complexity and uncertainty, challenging me to confront uncomfortable truths and navigate the murky waters of familial relationships. And yet, therein lies the lifelong “gift” of relinquishment—a reminder that the journey of self-discovery is never truly over, but rather an ongoing process of understanding and acceptance. Reluctantly, I had to accept this new “gift.” What this requires is both radical acceptance (accepting emotions, thoughts, and circumstances that are unchangeable and out of my control ) and amor fati (a love of fate). I’ll be working on both for quite a while.

David B. Bohl, MA, Clinical Substance Abuse Counselor (CSAC), Master Addiction Counselor (MAC), is a relinquishee and adoptee, a professional independent addiction and recovery consultant at Beacon Confidential LLC, and a former consumer of substance use disorder and mental health services. He is also a writer, a speaker, and the author of Parallel Universes: The Story of Rebirth, a memoir that chronicles the intersection of adoption and addiction in his life, and RELINQUISHMENT AND ADDICTION: What Trauma Has to Do With It, a monograph that provides an overview of the complex issues involved in relinquishment and adoption, and in particular, as they relate to susceptibility of addiction. He works with individuals experiencing additions and those where relinquishment/abandonment were experienced as a trauma and/or where adoption was experienced as a developmental/ or chronic trauma or stress as well as their families, genetic and adoptive.

Bohl, who lives in southeastern Wisconsin, enjoys spending time with his wife of 40 years and adult children, and relentlessly pursues Blue Mind (that calm mind state that’s found by being in and/or around the water).

His dedication to the mission of the collective adoption community comes from the fact that, although persons in the relinquished community often lead similar lives to those of non-relinquished persons, they can experience circumstances that need to be overcome, such as loss, grief, identity development, self-esteem, lack of information about medical background (including mental health and addiction predispositions). Bohl is honored to contribute to such worthy endeavors and remains interested in allying with organizations and professionals who are both dedicated and well-positioned to address these challenges. 

Learn more at https://beaconconfidential.com and https://linktr.ee/davidbbohl.

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An excerpt from Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self, the story of the author’s search during the pre-Internet era for the son she was forced to relinquish when she was fourteen years old. 

By Tracy Mayo

1982

Northwest mountains of North Carolina                                                                    

Tracy is 27, Thomas is 12

The elderly chestnut, lone survivor of the blight, stood as a centerpiece of all that could be surveyed from the expansive front porch. Others of its kind had once covered these Blue Ridge mountains like a shawl over shoulders on a cool evening. The deeply furrowed bark belied the ease with which an exotic fungus had slipped into the cambian and felled its brothers and sisters, once giants of these forests.  

A singular sentinel—isolated, yet resilient. When weather was favorable, I would take my morning meditation in the rocking chair on the porch, facing the chestnut. In spring the flowing white catkins waved like streamers on little girls’ bike handles. Come summer the lush, saw-toothed, dark green leaves shaded the cultivated wildflowers beneath. Autumn equaled yellow blaze. But in late fall, when the burrs should have encased three chestnuts each, there were no harvests. The lone tree was sterile. Even so, it grew its canopy year by year, waiting patiently for a favorable wind to carry news of another survivor.  

Most weeks I spent my day off from our business tending to the ample vegetable garden, which lay between the chestnut and our log cabin. The ancient mountains, worn down now to lush rolling hills, grew a dark sandy loam that needed no amendments other than the occasional side dressing of composted manure. I worked in the partial shade of a four-foot diameter, ground-mounted satellite dish that provided live feeds of sports and the BBC. In early fall, with afternoon’s slanted light, the bountiful harvest brought the last of the corn, the first of the autumn squashes, more tomatoes than I could put up, and the final raspberry yield.

I loved these mountains. It was here that I learned how to hoe the soil on top of the new potatoes; how to differentiate between the fringed gentian and the purple fringed orchid; how to be at the ready with one hundred pounds of black-oil sunflower seed when the migratory flocks of evening grosbeaks arrived in the front fields every April.  

I returned the hoe and the cultivator to the shed my husband had built, next to the chicken house he’d built as well. I poured grain into the self-feeder and retrieved eggs from the six straw-appointed nest boxes, apologizing to the unhappy brooding hen who pecked at my hand as I pulled her warm egg from underneath. Normally the hens laid their eggs, then abandoned them to the morning pursuit of food. But two or three times a year each hen yielded to her instinctive need to raise a brood. If we wanted to manage the flock’s size, we had to faithfully remove their egg each morning. 

She didn’t want to give it up, but I took it from her anyway.  Heartbreaking.

                                                ________

It’s been twelve years since I gave my baby away. 

I was the lonely, only child of upwardly mobile military parents. After our eighth move in my thirteen short years, I longed for a normal adolescence—to have friends, to feel settled.  What I got was a pregnancy at fourteen and exile to the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers in Norfolk, Virginia. There, I bore not only a child but also the weight of the culture’s shame. I was told to relinquish my son at birth and never speak of him again.

It was 1970. They said it would be “best” if I could forget, which only made me more determined to remember.

                                                            _______

I remembered that boy at the bank the previous morning, about the right age—twelve, brown eyes and light brown hair. His face looked familiar. I could find him again; ask about his birthday. Then I stopped, today’s eggs in my basket, shook my head, and willed myself not to go down that unsettled path I had traveled so many times before.  

Three years before, I’d followed a blond-haired, brown-eyed boy at the spring Ramp Festival in Independence, Virginia. I pretended I was interested in the children’s games, but his mother sensed my focus, glared. Once in Durham, my college town, I thought he sat next to his parents and an older girl at my favorite restaurant, Somethyme. 

And one evening, twilight gathering, Duke Forest, I thought I heard his then four-year old voice. I stopped to listen, knew it was impossible, but with clarity beyond the finest crystal, understood he was out there.

 I had left my brown-eyed baby in Norfolk. He could be anywhere, but almost certainly not in the little mountain town of West Jefferson, North Carolina.

                                                ________

The only time I embraced a move was in 1971, a year after my son’s birth. My navy father was ordered from Norfolk back to the D.C. area.  Grateful to escape the compulsion to search for my baby in every passing stroller, I could focus on recreating my life. I could barely imagine how my Florence Crittenton friends, not from military families, lived with the very real possibility that their child might grow up in the next town, or the next block. An unthinkable torment.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

And yet looking back, I can see that I never stopped searching for my baby in every passing stroller. Unlike the chestnut, I wasn’t sterile: I was a childless mother. A mother to my core, my sense of self rooted in the soil of growing and giving birth to a child I’d been forced to give up. Everything I was doing with my life in the mountains of North Carolina—gathering up my resources both externally and internally—was to serve the eventual search for my son.

                                                ___________

That fateful move to Portsmouth in 1968. Of all of them, the one destined to change my life forever.  

The hair-tinged-green-with-chlorine lifeguard. Cartwheels and broad jumps in the park on a sultry summer night. Giggling explorations in the navy chapel. The sweatshirt around my shoulders on a surprisingly cool evening. The hard buttons on the bare blue and white striped mattress pressing into my hip as I accepted the full weight of him. The realization, the fear, the earnest need for my mother. And the pink and yellow pills on my nightstand. 

I can hear my mother’s voice:

 “This is what you get for playing with fire. Just what did you THINK was going to happen?” Mom handing me two girdles and proclaiming: “Wear these every day to school.  Make sure you only change into your gym clothes in the bathroom stall.” 

In my brown-and-yellow-striped footie pajamas, the eavesdropping at the top of the stairs. 

Mom’s voice again: “We could send her to Seattle, make up some story about my parents.” 

And Dad’s reply: “We could say she went to Seattle, but we could send her to a home for unwed mothers instead.”  

And so it was done. 

What might have happened if my mother, as a mother, had acknowledged the exorbitant price I would pay, and stood up for me? If I had been free to help with the baby when I could, while back in school, eventually to college? If Tommy and I had gotten married and reclaimed our young son? All the TM and LSD that I turned to in crisis, the ways I tried to find a unity of being, a still point of connection in the world: It was all about discovering and holding on to the connection to my son. 

                                    __________                                                   

The canning days passed. I put up my lime pickles, the spicy tomato juice, my serrano-infused corn, the mulberry jelly—and beets, green beans, okra. One day we drove down the mountain to the city below to visit museums and a truck farm, and returned with a new hen and rooster, the heirloom breed known as Plymouth Rock. We would breed and allow the hen to raise a few chicks, contribute to the genetic diversity, before the rooster would grow bold enough to challenge the resident Rhode Island Red—and therefore, be fated to chicken and dumplings. 

 I watched the chestnut drop its leaves, pulling its energy down to last another winter. This deeply rooted survivor, the landmark of my life.

On a chilly fall night when Jim taught at Appalachian State University as an adjunct, I stoked the fire, retrieved the precious photograph of my infant son, now twelve years old. Tucked into the same scalloped blue envelope from 1970, a still ocean hidden in a box of note cards, left bottom drawer, my nightstand, the same home it had occupied through all my moves. I examined his tiny face and imagined how he might look today. 

I placed the photo on my folded knees, closed my eyes and started my mantra. I would practice my TM, I would touch the peace and calm of absolute Being, and wherever I went the universe would keep us connected, through a silvery thread, with me at one endpoint and my son at the other.

Tracy Mayo lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and flat-coated retriever.  Her memoir, Childless Mother:  A Search for Son and Self will be released by Vanguard Press on March 28, 2024. 

By David Daniel

My birthmother rode into town on a Greyhound bus one icy February night. We fed her roasted hen, then sat by the fire as she unpacked her scrapbook. Tucked inside a see-through sleeve was a photo of her as an acned teen, leaning back in a hospital bed, cradling the newborn she would soon surrender. Sipping her tea, she handed me a faded certificate of birth—the original one with the original name, inked with imprints of two tiny feet. Come sunup, she ambled downstairs in a paisley robe, blond hair braided to her waist, and we sat in the kitchen eating eggs my wife had made. Outside, it was unseasonably warm, so she walked our kids around the block, and as she did, I sat alone by the blackened logs, eyeing my birth certificate once again—realizing that my real name was cleaved from me as early as can be. As I saw her off at the Greyhound that night, the penny finally dropped: I had sailed through life under a cover name and never even known it.

David Daniel is a writer and adoptee based in Virginia. 

By Sara Easterly

As an adoptee-author whose work involves explaining behaviors to people who often misunderstand us, I love a good backstory. Gregory Maguire’s Wicked enchanted me, and an interest in understanding the developmental journeys for Darth Vader, Voldemort, and The Grinch led me to watching, with great anticipation, their longer character arcs unfold in various Hollywood adaptations. Even in fantasy literature and films, it’s engaging to ask questions like those posed by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry in their bestselling book on trauma, What Happened to You?, to empathize with iconic characters’ early-in-life wounding and see them as well-rounded, hurting humans on a hero’s journey rather than one-dimensional figures used to propel the plot forward.

For these reasons, I was particularly excited to catch Warner Bros. Pictures’ Wonka and consider the mysterious chocolatier and his inner circle in new ways. Even though I enjoyed the film, I left the theater with more questions than answers and more frustration than sentimentality. That’s because, as is common in holiday stories ranging from Dickens to Hallmark creations, Wonka employed the orphan trope, along with a stereotypical happy ending with a mother-and-long-lost-child reunion—both of which lacked substance and depth.

In the movie, “Noodle” is a young orphan who befriends Willy Wonka while they’re held captive by Mrs. Scrubitt in a launderette. Within minutes of Noodle’s on-screen appearance, she’s labeled as suffering from “orphan syndrome.” Having just released Adoption Unfiltered, a book I co-authored in which I write extensively about the lifelong effects of separation trauma, I was interested in whether the movie might explore this further, beyond the insinuation that anyone separated from their parents is broken. I felt a momentary glimmer of hope when Wonka tells Noodle it’s her “orphan syndrome” making her mistrust others. Would we get to see her work through some of her natural emotional struggles? Would we get a sense of her guarded heart softening? But the opportunity to delve deeper into what might be going on for Noodle never came. Somehow, despite losing her parents as an infant, Noodle presents as perfectly adapted, the only emotional residue of orphanhood: yearning for her parents. But where was her anxiety? Her alarm? Her frustration? How could she so readily give her heart to Wonka—and others, without crippling fear that she might lose those she dared to love, as were her formative experiences as an infant? Why didn’t she feel abandoned or deeply rejected by Wonka after he left town without saying goodbye? This isn’t to pathologize Noodle or anyone else separated from their families of origin with “orphan syndrome,” but these are common emotional side effects of unbearable separation due to adoption or infant loss of a mother—left completely unaddressed in Wonka.

While Wonka is the main character, his relationship with Noodle is an important one, so the lack of depth to Noodle’s backstory is striking, making her merely an accessory—as so often happens when orphans or adoptees are presented in mainstream film and literature. That’s because orphans and adoptees are often used as caricature baddies or to serve as touching plot devices—especially when there’s a heartwarming reunion to look forward to in the end.

Wonka doesn’t disappoint in this plot promise, alluded to through the Annie-like locket Noodle wears around her neck and various clues about her origin story. But the film did disappoint by treating the mother-daughter reunification in the shallow way of most on-screen portrayals. As if decades or more time apart doesn’t create any awkwardness at all. As if mother will recognize her grown daughter, even though all the memories she’s held close are of the infant she last saw. As if daughter is comfortable with a mother she’s not seen since infancy—who, despite a genetic connection and meaningful in-utero bonding, feels like a stranger—suddenly intimately embracing and kissing her. As if they can reclaim all those lost years and pick up as if they hadn’t happened. Spoiler alert from experiencing my own reunion and listening to over a thousand adoptee stories in the Adoptee Voices writing groups I run: they can’t. Years and years of missed “firsts” and an evolution of personality unfolding separately for both mother and child can never be replicated or fully repaired. For this reason, reunion often comes with a heavy dose of disappointment and grief for all parties—made all the worse when films such as Wonka set up lofty expectations that cannot be matched.

Please, stop using those of us separated from our first families as plot devices. Just like anyone else, we’re complex humans with a nuanced life story and struggles. Unrealistic cultural stories further marginalize us and cause significant damage to our emotional health by perpetuating myths that we’re merely means to an end, that later-in-life reunion is all it takes to erase our life’s losses. Our stories deserve to be portrayed with depth and care because we’re anything but one-dimensional. We’re not the golden ticket for a movie’s happy ending. Our backstories matter, too.

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Sara Easterly is an award-winning author of essays and books that include her spiritual memoir, Searching for Mom (Heart Voices, 2019), and her forthcoming book, Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). She is the founder of Adoptee Voices and is a trained course facilitator with the Neufeld Institute. 

By Andrew Perry

In 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener published The Origin of Continents and Oceans, in which he proposed the world’s continents had once been joined in a single landmass that he named Pangaea. Wegener grounded his argument in the agreeable shape of continental coastlines, which look like puzzle pieces asking to be fit back together, and unlikely deposits in the fossil record of similar plants and animals separated by oceans too vast to swim.

Wegener’s proposal was visually intuitive and supported by a body of physical evidence, and it should have found a home among professional geologists at the time, but they rejected the idea and abandoned it for five decades. Wegener was a meteorologist, after all. Geologists didn’t consider him part of their family.

Wegener raised the single continent theory in the public mind and named it, but the idea was not his. It was the brainchild of Frank Taylor, an amateur geologist in the United States. Continental geologists might have considered Taylor a distant cousin at the time.

Neither Wegener nor Taylor could say what caused the single landmass to break apart and send the continents traveling in opposite directions. That task fell to British geologist, Arthur Holmes, who in 1944 was wise to the currents of heat and rock being exchanged underground and imaginative enough to speculate that continents move about because heated plates of rock are pushing and shoving against each other below the surface.

Today we’re accustomed to monitoring this pushing and shoving with a seismograph; the familiar instrument that diligently scrawls an uncertain pencil line through the middle of a scroll of paper until some traumatic event prompts its spidery arm to jump and scribble its alarm. The most violent pushing and shoving underground causes an earthquake, which, in movies and television, is often depicted by an equally violent seismograph line. English scientist John Milne developed the seismograph in 1893, well before we understood what caused the shaking it records. Astonishingly, the world had to wait until 1935 for American seismologists Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg to formulate their popular scale for comparing earthquake data.

The Richter Scale assigns a number to the seismograph’s movement to measure the energy released by an earthquake. That number is helpful for comparing earthquakes, but it tells us nothing about the earthquake’s effect on the people who experience it. Only the lesser-known Mercalli Intensity Scale considers the earthquake’s effect on the people involved.

Giuseppe Mercalli was an Italian volcanologist and Catholic priest who proposed his scale to measure the effects of an earthquake on its victims. Before we infer too much about a man of the cloth placing people at the center of his scale, we should know that Mercalli adopted this approach from two men of science, Michele Stefano Conte de Rossi and François-Alphonse Forel.

Adoption is a Monster with a Long Tail

Picture a seismograph and a Mercalli scale attuned to adoption; a sensitive device to monitor adoption’s traumatic consequences and a person-centered scale to quantify its effects.

I offer this image as a way to reify adoption and externalize it; to make the experience and its consequences obvious to others. Scientific instruments and graduated scales produce an observable reality and the seismograph’s shaky line makes adoption’s trajectory visible by tediously illustrating the prolonged consequences of a preverbal memory—adoption’s long tail.

The instrument’s fragile line with its record of unseen tensions, visible eruptions, and scribbled chaos, appears to recount the faults and foibles that I am condemned to live with as an adoptee. I see myself in a line that appears to hesitate before it moves forward on an uncertain path; I feel akin to a line that gushes frantic, confidently drawn peaks and valleys when a hidden tension tries to resolve itself; and I feel especially close to a line that abruptly resumes a more economical and humble posture after such outbursts, as if embarrassed by its assertiveness and now penitent.

The chronicle that materializes in the seismograph’s measured output helps me relate the reach of adoption to non-adoptees, but the handy analogy ends here. Identifying adoption’s effects is a valuable, clinical exercise, but the machine’s protracted and linear narrative fails to articulate how it feels to live with these consequences. The emotionally charged episodes that characterize my adopted life are diluted, and their significance is muted when they appear on a timeline separated by empty space. Isolation diminishes the relatedness of these events and calls their common origin into question, undermining my ability make sense of them, and consequently myself.

The seismograph’s timely march forward also requires that events be assigned to the past, fostering a mistaken belief that events are left behind, when it is more likely they will accompany the adoptee uninvited into the future, creating a cumulative present.

Even grading these experiences on a person-centered scale has a clinical air about it. It’s like explaining that force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration to someone who has just hammered their thumb.

A Dandelion Seed Aloft

The consequences of adoption are compounding and forever concurrent, and I experience them like my reflection in a mirror that has been smashed. Multiple images of me are displayed simultaneously from different and unusual perspectives. The resulting montage is intense and overwhelming, and it forces me to see unfamiliar selves. The fragments may constitute a new composite image, but like adoption, the damage has made an accurate picture of me impossible. The integrity of the mirror has been lost and cannot be restored. Shattered mirrors cannot be repaired; they must be replaced. If they cannot be replaced, they must be lived with.

The montage made from slivers and debris is normalized by necessity. The composite reflection is distorted but fixed, and this imperfect image becomes my only point of self-reference. My consolation is knowing the mirror has been smashed and the image is not accurate, but the price is persistent confusion and self-doubt. I have no confidence in this image that I know isn’t accurate, and no point of comparison to measure its inaccuracy.

Propelled forward by a fear of abandonment, a relentless need for acceptance, or perhaps a ghost in my DNA, I am unable to distinguish a spontaneous impulse from a calculated act of compliance for the sake of survival. I can’t differentiate between a genuine self and a false self. There is no test for self, no criteria to apply, no means to bring it forward from a blurred background. I’ve assumed the habits and words of my adopted family, my friends, and coworkers, uncritically and without regard to fit or comfort. Anything to help me overcome my sense of otherness has been hastily sewn into a busy patchwork self with no discernable pattern.

This peculiar consequence of adoption is experienced in perfect isolation and cannot be shared with the non-adoptees in my life. Similar to the unwelcome dreams I have at night, this is a private encounter, and I am irretrievably alone with it. My spouse sleeps inches away from me in our bed at night, but she does not experience my dreams with me. She cannot. Likewise, my splintered self-image and the uncertainty that results from it are mine alone.

Denied a complete and accurate picture of myself, I examine each fragment in the smashed mirror independently; not in isolation but separate from its siblings and away from their influence. I’m searching for something familiar, hoping it will comfort me with an affirmation, and confirm that a part of me is real. I stand perfectly still before the mirror and try to distinguish the accurate reflections from those distorted by the mirror’s fragmentation. I’m struggling to separate my authentic self from an image altered by the mirror. I stand perfectly still and try to disentangle myself from the consequences of adoption.

Unsuccessful, I begin to question that I have an innate self. Perhaps my self was stillborn or smothered at birth. Perhaps it was never there at all, like the biological child my adoptive parents failed to conceive. As a stand-in for their absent dream child, I am no more than an assortment of adoption’s consequences, with a self no more significant than a dandelion seed aloft.

Heading Title

Andrew Perry is an adoptee who was born in Jacksonville, Florida. A husband and father, he’s grateful for the fellowship of his backyard chickens.

By Sara Easterly

As an adoptee who writes and speaks in adoption spaces, I’ve encountered many adoptive parents with adult-aged adoptees who are struggling because their children have created necessary boundaries, asked for distance, or cut off ties altogether. Most of these parents entered into adoption without access to adoptee-centered information in a time that lacked much, if any, post-adoption support. They may have made it through what seemed like normal years raising their children into adulthood and have been looking forward to blissful years of parenting “retirement,” only to realize that adoption has presented new hurdles to a rewarding relationship with their adult children.

If you’re faced with a similar parenting challenge right now, there may be a way through. Insight into what could be going on underneath the situation points the way.

Three things adoptees’ boundaries or distancing might be telling you:

1. Adoptees may be experiencing an adolescence.

Adolescence is described by child developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld, PhD, as the bridge between childhood and adulthood. For adoptees, adolescence is often delayed or we undergo a second adolescence in adulthood designed to complete any unfinished business from the first. There could be a couple of reasons for this:

• Important identity tasks of adolescence can be complicated for adoptees. On a physical level and on a day to day basis, we’re without genetic mirrors that would help normalize our physical or behavioral traits and proclivities or understand our changing bodies. If we’re in a closed adoption, it can be hard to imagine ourselves 15, 30, or more years down the road when our first parents’ faces aren’t accessible to offer glimpses of our future selves. These are just some of the things that can impact the identity tasks of adolescence, when we’re meant to confidently grow into ourselves.
• The emotional impact of adoption’s inherent separation trauma can slow our adaptation and maturation. Adoption cannot take place without separation from our first attachments, and we are faced with additional separation in many forms throughout our lives, such as when others comment about how we do or don’t match our families, or when we wonder about our birth parents and whether they’re thinking of us. When we’re faced with overwhelming separation, our natural instincts move in to protect us. These serve a purpose in helping us survive and function day-to-day. But the cost is that our defenses can make it challenging to access vulnerable emotions like sadness and grief—crucial to our healing and growth. Many adoptees can take decades to start feeling the losses related to relinquishment and adoption—in the meantime living numb, or running from the pain, until we’re ready to take steps toward grieving all that we cannot change, which is how humans adapt and build resilience.

2. Adoptees may need room for their own perspectives to grow.

If we keep in mind that an adoptee who’s pulling away may be undergoing an adolescence, we can also remember that adolescence is a time when adults-in-the-making are developing their own ideas and tend to push back on those of their parents. This is often misunderstood as being contrary for contrary’s sake, but it comes from a place of discovery and growth. When novel and tender beliefs are just beginning to bud, we feel a fierce need to protect them. Perspectives that differ from ours—such as whether adoption is purely a beautiful thing, as adoptive parents often believe and express throughout our lives—can threaten the formation of our own thoughts and understanding of adoption, which may be completely different once we’re looking up-close at the losses of adoption. If our parents focus only on the positive, happy side of adoption and have a hard time accepting the sadness and loss that also exists, it can make it challenging for us to be in their presence.

3. Adoptees may need some heartfelt apologies.

In interviewing nearly two dozen adoptees for my forthcoming book, Adoption Unfiltered, and listening to thousands of adoptee stories through the Adoptee Voices writing groups that I lead, I’ve come to see that many of us have been deeply hurt by our parents—even if we’re unable to recognize the wounding until years later. As we reach the “Dissonance” stage in the Adoption Consciousness Model articulated by Susan F. Branco, et al, we may feel a sense of pain over authoritarian discipline practices employed in our childhoods that added separation to our already separation-saturated souls. We may feel hurt by ways our adoption stories had been oversimplified or overshared. Interracial adoptees may feel anger toward their parents for the cultural and racial isolation they experienced that wasn’t necessary or could have been better supported, or for racism encountered in their families. Many of us come to find out that the circumstances around our adoptions involved coercion or other questionable ethical practices. Even if our parents didn’t directly play a role in this or know better at the time, it can be hard to reconcile that these painful realities happened due to or under the watch of adults we trusted to look out for us. Additionally, there may be less obvious wounds. Due to our early experiences of relinquishment, adoptees can be especially sensitive to signs of rejection, and we can be hurt in ways that may not affect nonadoptees as deeply.

Often adoptive parents aren’t sure how to grapple with the guilt they feel over their children’s wounding. Or they may be stunned by what feels like a 180-degree shift when the children they thought they knew, who easily donned their ideas, become adults with their own interpretations around adoption. There can be a temptation to react defensively or blame the adoptees for being ungrateful or for harboring resentments. But such responses don’t lead to the closeness and connection parents likely desire—and that your child probably does, too. After all, more separation isn’t always what’s best for those of us already brimming with it.

Unless lines have been crossed making it unsafe or unreasonable to engage with our families, forgiveness and forging a new relationship together eventually may be possible. Our parents’ empathy and heartfelt apologies can first call us back toward relationship.

Rebuilding relationships takes time.

At the end of the day, adoptees are seeking safety in relationships. For a healthy parent-child relationship to work—no matter our age—we need to feel safe depending on our parents. Adoption has already complicated this, so winning our hearts requires effort and may be ongoing throughout our lives.

As our perspectives on adoption evolve over the course of our lives, we need room to express our complete range of emotions. Just as adolescents need room to express their emotions, so, too, do adult adoptees undergoing an adoption adolescence. Once we’re more solid and confident in our beliefs around adoption, apart from the influence of our parents and our wider culture, engaging with people we disagree with doesn’t feel so threatening—so long as we are fully respected and honored in the process.

Perfect parenting isn’t possible, nor expected. And even though we’re adults, we’d like to see you still trying. You likely didn’t receive stellar parenting guidance and post-adoption support in the past, but it’s never too late to seek it out. You’re in luck, because it’s a different time now and solid, adoptee-led information abounds. Making an effort goes a long way in showing that you’re committed to us, aiming to do better, and welcoming our full selves.

Parenting requires strong leadership—and adoptive parenting is no different. Good leaders don’t shirk from challenges. They rise to meet them. As you rise to meet the needs of the adoptee in your life, may they feel your caring and commitment that grows from your open mind, soft heart, and willingness to evolve with them.

Sara Easterly is an award-winning author of essays and books that include her spiritual memoir, Searching for Mom (Heart Voices, 2019), and her forthcoming book, Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies (Rowman & Littlefield, December 1, 2023). She is the founder of Adoptee Voices and is a trained course facilitator with the Neufeld Institute with a heart for helping others understand the often-misunderstood hearts of adoptees.

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On Saturday November 4, 2023, The Benevolent Society, Post Adoption Resource Centre presents the Adoption Literary Festival to showcase a range of adoption stories in an Australian context.

The presentations will amplify the voices of lived experience and highlight the lifelong nature and complexities of adoption.

The first Adoption Literary Festival took place in the United States in February 2022. This will be the first of its kind in Australia.

The online event takes place from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time (15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.) Click here for more information and to book free tickets.

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By Bruno Giles

    Many years ago, after a long wait, I received an email from the Swiss Branch of the International Social Service saying that they had important information about my adoption. They’d called earlier in the day but received my answering machine and preferred not to leave phone messages about this type of search. I was asked to call them back, which I did immediately. The woman I was transferred to introduced herself and got right to the point.

    She told me they had contacted both my birth mother and my foster mother, news I had been waiting more than 50 years to hear. It was quite shocking to actually hear those words. I took a deep breath but said nothing, still trying to process the moment.

    Before I could respond, she continued, “Your birth mother doesn’t want any contact with you at this time, but the wonderful news is that your foster mother was thrilled to hear about your search. She is 85 years old and has thought about you all these years.”

    When I heard this news I didn’t know which one to focus on, the good news or the bad news; my heart sank then quickly rose up again. What is sadness mixed with joy? What is hate mixed with love? Rejection mixed with acceptance? Is it possible to cry out of one eye?

    The woman explained that my foster mother still had pictures of me as a toddler and was waiting to share them with me. However, as great as that sounded, my thoughts returned back to my birth mother’s news. In that moment, I finally realized there would likely never be that reunion I both dreamed of and dreaded. A painful thought for that little boy who wanders aimlessly around in my adult body. She had never answered any of my letters that I had agonized over writing to her, and this seems to be the end of the fantasy of a welcoming, tearful, joyful, lost family meeting, with possible future involvement.

    But over the next few months, my foster mother and I connected both over the phone and through the mail. Since she was the cousin of my birth mother, she knew her very well.

    I peppered her with questions about my birth mother, my birth father, what happened, and why. I was focused on one thing only, getting all the information I could on my birth mother before my foster mother disappeared again. She politely answered all the questions I threw at her but unfortunately didn’t know many of the answers to them.

    Then, during the moments of silence over the phone, she would slowly tell me bits and pieces of what she did know, which was the time we spent together, none of which I remembered. Slowly, over the next few months, the missing part of my life began to emerge.

    She explained that after I was left in the maturity ward for six weeks, she and her family took me into their home, even recalling the exact date. She said I became their little sunshine and was able to spend the first period of my life with them, surrounded by lots of love. She said it was a terrible day when the time came and they had to let me go. She compared it to the death of her husband many years later. She said back then, 50 years ago, she felt it would be better for me to be raised by parents of the same color and she felt very concerned about this, and this is how and why I came to my new parents in America.

    I suddenly realized that after all these years of searching for my mother, I was looking in the wrong place and at the wrong person. Just giving birth doesn’t make you the mother.

    My foster mother was exactly the birth mother I had hoped to find. Full of love, a bit of regret that the times hadn’t changed fast enough for us, and admitting that perhaps now it would be different. She told me that I was like one of her own children.

    After all these years, I believe I have found her after all!

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Bruno Giles is a biracial international adoptee, conceived in London, born in Zurich Switzerland, and raised in America. He has only recently found his birth father after 68 years, a Nigerian, through the miracle of DNA.

By Vanessa Nolan

Welcome to Babyworld. The fun, easy way to start or grow your family, ease your infertility pain, and forget about your worries and insecurities for a while. At the start of the game, you’ll be provided with one or two children to make your own. If you want to splash the cash, you can import additional infants, available in a range of ages and colors at different price points. Or why not go for our premium product endorsed by celebrities—the rainbow family?

Will you take your chances with “potluck”? Your potluck children will be selected by the algorithm, written by our in-house team of experienced social workers. There’s no guarantee that they will pass as your natural children, and they may have additional needs of their own you are unprepared for. Or will you take time to follow the detour and visit the Build-A-Child workshop? There you will get to choose from a variety of physical, intellectual, and temperamental attributes. Your Build-A-Child will then be matched as closely as possible with a child from the pool of those available. Be aware, though, that it may not be possible to find you a match. Plan your strategy. Wait for a product that more closely meets your needs or take the first available child.

In Level 1, you have up to 18 years to play with your new family. If, during that time, you collect enough points you’ll earn bonus years of gratitude and servitude. Points are earned for giving them a “good home” and for loving them so much because you “chose” them. No need to tell them what kind of “choice” it really was; that before you “chose” them you tried for years and failed to have children. This is because you control the release of information and can use this power to your advantage.

If your children do suspect they were not your first choice, you can lie because they are dependent on you and will believe what you tell them. You can even play with their minds and suggest that they “chose” you. Or you can tell them it was “God’s will” which indicates strong game play and all but guarantees compliance and acceptance.

In Babyworld, your children will love you back, but be wary of this love. It can be from fear of losing you, rather than a child’s natural love for their parents. Because they have been torn from their mothers, they will not know that love isn’t supposed to hurt. Once you understand this, you can use it to your advantage in one of two ways. You can make them more dependent on you by telling them how special they are and letting them remain unnaturally attached into adolescence and adulthood (this works particularly well with boys). Or you can treat them badly so they never develop any self-esteem and (bonus!) don’t believe they deserve to have information about themselves.

Your first task is to name—or rather, rename your children. You can give them your surname and even a name that helps them feel part of your family so they will not show interest in their origins. If you wish, you may completely erase their identity by giving them an anglicized name if they are not from an Anglo family. This is known as the “color blind” play. An alternative strategy that’s popular these days if you have taken children from another culture is to allow them to stay connected by learning about the language and culture together. This can be superficial—who doesn’t like dumplings at Chinese New Year?—and makes you look progressive and open-minded.

Some players go all in and choose a high-risk strategy: not telling the children you are playing Babyworld. This is likely to fail sooner or later, and is not recommended, but it is within the rules of the game to do this if you so wish. Remember, the release of information is under your control.

If, during the course of the game, your children present challenging behavior, you have several options. First is the “warrior parent” card. You can go to battle with Social Services and schools in order to obtain the additional resources you need. This will remind you and those around you that both you and your child are different and special. You can also play the “victim” card which has two benefits: it allows you to remain blameless and it draws attention to the sacrifices you are making. All of these strategies keep the attention on you. If you have played these cards and are still not winning, you can play the “rehoming” death card which will take you out of the game but keep you alive. As a reward for taking part, you will be allowed to take the “victim” card with you to use outside the game. So even if you lose, you win!

Indeed, the cards are stacked in your favor. You can earn social capital from having “saved” a child and sympathy for having to deal with their behavior. If your child “thrives” and “succeeds,” then it is down to your parenting; if they “fail,” then blame can be laid at the feet of birth parents, who at this stage are not even permitted to join the game unless you invite them to. You can even invent stories about the birth parents, if you need to make yourselves look better.

Sometimes the game throws you a curveball and you discover you were fertile after all. This is hard because you have entered Babyworld and now you will get to experience what those outside Babyworld already know: that nature means something. All we can say is—good luck.

If you make it to the time your children turn 18, congratulations! You will move up to the next, more challenging level. The aim in Level 2 is to live to old age with your relationships to your children intact, so they will feel obliged to look after you when you need it. You may even want to play for grandchildren!

The obstacles in Level 2 are harder to overcome. As adults, your children may start to think for themselves and may want to know more about their origins. This is a danger point because they may discover that Babyworld is only a game. They can move away from your orbit and control and may meet other people who came from Babyworld and compare their experiences. They may stop blaming themselves for any problems they have and notice that Babyworld has given them a set of lifelong issues to tackle.

If you do have grandchildren, both the stakes and the danger level are raised. More so than for themselves, your children will want the best for their children. They may be upset that their children lack family medical history, do not know their genetic origins, or are divorced from their own culture. They may be seeing a genetic relative for the first time when they have their first child and feel the difference between that and the relationships they had with you. In other words, they are half out of Babyworld already. You may need to use different tactics to maintain their loyalty. Showing that you are, or would be, hurt by them meeting their biological family is one way to play it. The more guilt you can generate, the more you will be able to get them to neglect their own needs and service yours. The risk in this strategy is that the conflicts within them will eventually lead to a crisis. In dealing with the emotional problems they have, the truth may be revealed.

They may eventually awaken from the game, emerge from the fog, understand they were made to play the game without choosing, and know that they were both game piece and reward in this fantasy. They may even try to get play stopped altogether. Which would spoil everyone’s fun, wouldn’t it?

Vanessa Nolan is a UK-born adoptee and a founding member of Adult Adoptee Movement. She edits and publishes blogs for the AAM website. You can follow her on Twitter at @essix_girl.

By Akara Skye

My mother dropped me off at an empty public playground without a goodbye or a promise to return. I reluctantly and dutifully got out of the car. The playground and I drew a heavy sigh. We were alone together.

I shuffled over to the swing set determined to make the best of it. The hot wind kicked up, covering my face with a dusty film. For a moment, it clouded my vision, and I wondered if it might be better to not see clearly. To not see the truth of the matter; that everyone will leave me. What did I do to deserve this?

If both the mother I knew and the mother who relinquished me at birth could leave me, it would be easy for others to do the same. My birth mother didn’t come back for me, but went on to a brand new, shiny life including children, the ones she kept. Now my other mother has left me. Would she come back?

Hours passed, and the sun began to set. No other children had arrived and neither had my mother. I wondered if this would forever be my landscape. Dusty, dismal, and deserted.

I saw her car coming up the road just before dusk. I couldn’t read her face. Was it full of dread and desperation, or maybe it was full of joy and excitement?  Had she done this with her other daughter, the biological one?

Put on your game face, I told myself. Act grateful. Don’t ask questions. The car rolled up. No honk, no door swinging open. I got in, and we drove off. The forever silence between us.

On the way back home, I was already worrying when, not if, this would happen again. What if she didn’t come back the next time? 

I do remember another place. A happy place. I would ride my purple Schwinn bike with the flower basket and plastic streamers, to a neighbor’s backyard, two miles from my house. I was alone, yet it was my decision, so it didn’t feel like punishment. Their backyard was unfenced and sloped down to a creek. The surroundings were calm and peaceful, shaded and cool, nothing like the dusty dry playground. The breeze rustled through the leaves of the protective trees which bent over the water. The water lightly danced over the gray, brown, and white stones and pebbles. An occasional flower petal gently fell onto the sprays of water.

I was proud that I could sneak in without being detected. Little did I know that the neighbors were watching me, much like they might watch a stray cat who appeared at their back door.

Regardless, I was happy there. The place was the opposite of the playground; even though I was alone at both places. But perhaps I should get used to it. Everyone leaves.

By Michelle Hensley

Sometimes…

She says in her tiny voice

She whimpers, then cries and screams, searching out anyone within earshot, longing for basic human compassion.

But there is no one to hear her.

Sometimes …

She says in her bit bigger voice

The voice that is starting to feel autonomous, the one questioning her place on a much more intimate level, knowing she looks and feels different. This is the voice who suspects, but is not allowed to question, the one who ponders the randomness of it all, but has learned not to rock the boat.

This voice cracks even when she whispers, barely heard or acknowledged.

Sometimes….

She starts again.

This voice is stronger, it has knowledge, experience, willpower. Her curiosity has opened a plethora of feelings, and there is no safe set of ears to hear her words. Things are so confusing that she feels she leads two lives. She carefully weighs her responses, juggles her emotions, learns how to act the role, so as not to alarm or lose the last tangible link of normalcy, between the now and the

What if I…?

A select few listen, but she is still not heard.

SOMETIMES….

She speaks out, and her voice is steady.

The words come quickly now, randomly jumbled as she begins relating to others like her, those who know.

She types these words into her phone for later, an endless bullet point document that should be titled “and another thing!”

This time, she can speak it out loud, she can inflict tone, and add pause, for effect. There are adjectives with fervor, there are adverbs spoken so eloquently that you can almost predict the shiver of visceral effect.

There is eye contact, subtle but steady at first. It switches to more direct pointed gazes at those deemed visually offensive and judgmental.

The harshest glares are saved for those who are especially ignorant and opinionated, and love to flaunt their savior complex.

THIS IS THE VOICE SHE SPEAKS WITH NOW.

It has substance, truth, spirit, faith, and love. This voice is the loudest. It has been boosted by the words, the acts of kindness, acceptance, and genuine support from those who show up to hear her speak. She has found fellow chorus members, allies, and comrades.

The chorus has a unique sound, a melody, a song….

She has never heard such a lovely sound before. These are the voices she longed to hear, the ones who FINALLY LISTENED, the ones who met her where she was, and gave her the bass she needed. This sound, the sound of kinship, could finally drown out the demons, the gaslighters, the ones with closed minds and cold hearts.

This symphony, the music, the lyrics—as only her mother tongue could express, are the exact tone, pitch, staccato, rhythm, and diction her ears need to hear, her heart needs to feel, so she can finally speak her truth.

She soars, giddy with the lift of new flighty high notes and arias. She feels seen, validated, and acknowledged for her voice and her feelings. She is heard.

She is finally heard.

Sometimes

Even after all this time, the tiny voices of her past still try to speak up for attention.

Other times they furiously scurry and hide from delivering an opening line.

Sometimes, without warning, the voices all fall silent, carefully and deliberately choosing not a single form of expression. There is incredible power in their silence.

The voices are not scared, they are tired of speaking to those who cannot or will not hear.

She has learned that she can choose those she wants to give her words, her time, her love, and her spirit. She has found her audience and they will hold her safe, even if she still needs to cry

Sometimes.

By Louise Browne

The world suddenly made sense. Everything was as it should be. My son was born. We named him Jack. It was a strong name we agreed upon and a name that fits his strength today. All paths in life led to this exact moment. The moment he was in my arms. I could no longer hear the whirring of the machines that had been putting the necessary fluids into my body while the surgeon worked. The beeping of the monitors was silenced, and all of the excitement and conversation around us became muted. His father was crying, and I could hear his voice but not make out his words. I looked into those eyes. Chocolate pools my father had later called them. He looked into mine. He no longer cried, and I no longer had a hole in my heart. I somehow knew him before. We knew each other. It wasn’t only the months of being connected through blood, emotion, sound, and touch. It was somehow from another plane, another time, and maybe not of this world. For a brief second, I could grasp what that was but I couldn’t hold on to the thought—it wasn’t really for me to understand. It was a knowledge that will come again. In a future time. A quarter century later and in a blink of an eye, we are still connected. My heart walks around on this beautiful earth having to learn life, to negotiate the ins and outs of love, friendship, heartbreak, joy, sorrow, loss, and success. A moment ago I was doing the same. Life is as it should be. This is what matters. A river with a strong current flows between mothers and their children. The feeling of floating in that river and being gently carried is what we search for throughout our lives. 

Louise Browne is an adoptee and co-host and co-creator of Adoption: The Making of Me Podcast, along with  Sarah Reinhardt. This piece was written for her son, the first blood relative she met. She felt she knew him instantly, as if maybe from another time. It struck her years later when she found out that her birthmother, Linda, had passed when Louise was still a little girl, that maybe there was some symbolism or truth to that. Like many adoptees, she had a hole that was filled with the birth of her son in a way she could never explain at the time and a curiosity that became instantly more clear. Now, after coming out of the fog and discovering more about herself and what that longing and hole meant and means, it takes a new shape, and is more prominent than ever. It captures the feeling that all adoptees want to feel—that moment of connection that even in reunion they may never get to feel and can’t recreate—the search for that current in the river. Find her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

An essay by Shannon Quist

In their defense, all the stories they heard about adoption were fairytales. All they knew was that their bodies could not make a baby together and there was a fairytale option in front of them, a socially acceptable alternative. Adopt a baby. And so, armed with the holy love of God and the righteousness of white privilege, they bought into a story that began with a happily ever after and cost them a pretty penny. Later, they would complain that they didn’t get the benefits of a tax break when adoption tax breaks became a thing. They paid for a human. They invested in a family experience. But investments like this don’t always go as planned, do they?

In their defense, nobody told them anything that would make them question their decision. Not the other adoptive parents. Not the agency. Not the lawyers or social workers. Not the church. Nobody handed them books written specifically for their kind of family with bibliographies in the back, nobody said to them that someday their child would scream, “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL PARENTS.” And so they did as they were told and raised the baby as if she had been born to them. But she wasn’t. And they were missing important pieces of the story.

They didn’t know, until she broke down, that anything was wrong at all. How could they have known? The power dynamic was set, whether they meant to build those walls or not. But those walls get built when you buy a human, there’s no escaping it. And so, when she started screaming, they looked at each other and asked, “Is this adolescence?” But that wasn’t the whole picture.

They could have looked for literature, called a professional, asked for help. And, to an extent, they did. They bought Focus on the Family literature and signed their daughter up for therapy and asked their family doctor to diagnose her. But those fixes were only band-aids to a reaction. What was the girl reacting to that made her act this way, feel this way? They should have read the literature for themselves, called a professional for themselves, asked for help for themselves. And maybe it isn’t all their fault that they didn’t do this. What was the adoption agency doing to support them after they’d brought home their child? What literature were they sending? What resources? What support? What advice? None. So, who could the parents really call anyway? Ghostbusters?

These parents got the short end of the stick, too. They were promised a happily ever after. And when everything turned sour and they didn’t know whom to call or whom to blame, they turned on themselves (“maybe we’re bad parents”) and they turned on their daughter (“maybe there’s something wrong with her”) when they should have turned on all of civilized society that thinks adoption is such a lovely thing to do, brave and wonderful on all fronts. So their flavor of embarrassment went from the grief of being unable to conceive to the shame of being unable to parent. And there was nobody to call for help.

Their pain pales in comparison to giving birth to and relinquishing rights to a child or being taken from your mother right after birth. But it is still pain, it is still unfair, and it is the most dangerous pain of them all because out of the three of them, the adoptive parents have the power to lash out, to use their power for pride and strike down the other two characters in this story with an amplified version of the shame they carry themselves. And if they would have had help, if they would have had resources, that could have been avoidable. But that’s not how this story turned out, is it?

But it isn’t the end, not yet. As long as you’re alive, you have the power to make a change, to turn the story around. Out of all the brave things an adoptive parent could do, this is the bravest option of them all.

Shannon Quist is a Texan adoptee and the author of Rose’s Locket. Her master’s thesis on adoptee-written narratives is available on her website. She volunteers with Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, a non-profit that connects individuals, families, and professionals in their adoption journey through lifelong education and support. Follow her on Instagram @shannonrquist.

An Essay by Caitlin Jiao Alexander

Nancy Verrier, LMFT, became so deeply intrigued by her adoptive daughter’s response to having been relinquished that she earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology and wrote her thesis about what she called the primal wound—the trauma of separating a child from its mother. Her book, The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child, published in 1993, is in its 15^th printing and has been translated into seven languages. Its message resonated with filmmaker and adoptee Rebecca Autumn Sansom who, along with her biological mother, Jill Hawkins, PhD, have produced a powerful documentary starring its author and exploring the theory that the trauma of relinquishment must be acknowledged before healing can occur and examining the cultural shift the book kickstarted. Reckoning with the Primal Wound is the first feature-length documentary about relinquishment trauma that explores the perspective of both adoptee and biological mother and features, in addition to Verrier, psychologists David Brodzinsky, PhD, and Amanda Baden, PhD.  In September 2022, the film premiered at The Catalina Film Festival in Long Beach, California. It’s since been seen in dozens of screenings to enthusiastic audiences of adoptees and others, has been accepted into 20 film festivals. Here, we talk with the filmmaker about the genesis of the film, it’s creation, and its reception.

How and why did you become a filmmaker? 

I got really frustrated with my parents when they didn’t have any footage of me from early childhood. My history, however brief, was always oddly important, and I wanted to dissect it. It was due to this frustration that I got a camera and learned how to edit in high school and have been doing that ever since. I can’t seem to stop.

Do you recall your first reading of The Primal Wound, by Nancy Newton Verrier, and what your initial reaction was? 

Yes, of course. It was after years of being told by random adoptees I met (even in different countries) that I should read it. It went in one ear and out the other until I was finally ready to absorb the information. That happened to be when I was 29 years old. The outcome was immediately trying to find my biological mother. So it changed my life—for the better.

Tell us about the journey of this film. What inspired it and how widely has it been seen?

I began filming in my third trimester back in 2017 and it came out officially in October 2022. It was inspired by adoptees in my family who were struggling with addiction and I always wondered if unpacking their adoption issues would help alleviate some of their pain. They weren’t receptive to reading anything or joining support groups that I recommended, so I Googled around to see if there was another medium for the information in the book. I couldn’t find anything. I was so surprised, because at that point, the book was over 25 years old. I think I looked down at my huge belly and wondered if being a pregnant person would be an asset for such a film…then I realized Nancy Verrier lived 45 minutes away, so I emailed her, and while waiting for her to respond, I just started filming. My boss at the time told me about her childhood friend’s harrowing experience finding her birthmom that she was documenting on Facebook. She lived a couple of hours away and agreed to an interview. (That’s Doris if you’ve seen the film.) So, it just started happening, and then my mom didn’t want to come to the birth (which was fine and understandable), but Jill, my biological mother, did really want to be there. I had no idea I would be induced and have so much downtime in a labor and delivery room with my birthmother, but again, it just kind of happened. That interview ended up being so compelling. I tell people now that it must’ve been my destiny to create this documentary, because, honestly, so many things kept falling into place, and getting the input from the community over the past 18 months made it something that is beyond me and any scope I could’ve done alone. It definitely has its own life and I’m just going with it.

You noted that Nancy Verrier was initially reluctant to participate. What persuaded her?

Yes. She got misquoted in print and it scared her from doing much press and she was never going to agree to a big production or anything. But once we built up a rapport, our relationship was easy. In the interviews, it’s just me and my friend, author Sara Davis, behind the cameras. And it was my idea to let the cat, Solare, out of the back bedroom…so pretty much all of the unprofessional decisions were mine. I did add as many animals into the film as I could because they are so important to us, to relinquished people. If anyone wonders if that was intentional or not, it was.

How about your family? Were any of your family members reluctant about participating, and if so, why, and how did they come around? And at one point in the film, for example, your adoptive mother doesn’t want to appear on camera, yet she’s seen throughout the film. Did her reluctance have to do with privacy and how was she moved to be fully present?

My parents are the opposite of how I feel about being on stage or on camera. They did not want to participate. But they would drop gems all the time. I had to surreptitiously film my mom a few times. And then I couldn’t help editing the footage into my final cut. I ended up falling in love with that footage. I actually got pretty depressed upon completing the edit and knowing I had to get their permission. I was 99% sure they would veto it. But, they didn’t. I still have the text my mom sent after watching the film. “We realize it’s not about us.” That’s when I knew this project was meant to be. They still won’t come to Q&As or anything, but I will always appreciate their decision to let me use the footage. I think their roles and their story/perspectives are extremely important.

What role did filmmaker Nico Opper play in getting this film made?

Nico is an award-winning filmmaker and provided some post-production notes, but their main role here was as a participant. And of course they graciously let me use the footage from Off and Running, which I recommend everyone watch to further understand the perspective of inter-racially adopted people.

What other documentarians have influenced your work generally, and for this film specifically?

As controversial as he might be, Michael Moore’s catalog made an impact on me. I’ve seen all of his films and respect his approach to making a lasting point through documentary film. Chris Paine’s Who Killed the Electric Car? was formative as well. And of course, Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers. Then for more expressive elements, I’ve been influenced by filmmaker and performance artist Maya Deren. One of my favorite quotes I’ve gotten from a viewer is that the film is ‘poetic and raw.’ That’s a huge compliment to me. I really like organizing films into parts, so for this one the four parts come from the sections of the book: “The Preface,” “The Wound,” “The Manifestations,” and “The Healing.”

What was your goal when you began—what did you want the viewer to walk away feeling/thinking—and how, if at all, did that change as you progressed?

I simply wanted my adopted relatives to go to rehab. But then as it became kind of a thing, where 1,000+ people signed up to be in the Adoptee Army section of the credits—which means they agree that more should be done to change the current narrative of adoption—I started thinking bigger picture. Which always means policy change, right? I would absolutely love for the film to be used as a tool to alleviate pain and suffering for anyone experiencing any form of genealogical bewilderment. I say that because it’s not just adoptees, it’s donor-conceived people, people dealing with misattributed parentage because of the prevalence of DNA kits, surrogacy-born people, and of course foster and former foster youth. Let’s really think about family separation and its long-term effects. And consider if we’re doing the best we can by these invisibly marginalized groups. I say invisibly because we’re not recognized as marginalized by the majority of society. But I believe we are.

How long did the whole process take from inspiration and conception to distribution and what challenges, if any, did you encounter as you moved forward?

This April it will be six years since I first had the idea. I’ve had the normal challenges of being an independent filmmaker. So trying to cover operation costs has been nonstop work, but I can’t complain because it’s really hard for a film that didn’t get picked up to make anything. If it does turn a profit I’d love to create a mutual aid fund for adoptees who are on the struggle bus. I do give 10% of the proceeds each month to an adoptee for their personal self-care fund. And then I like to say that my lobby is to get the Department of Human Services to give us all at least $5K a year for self-care and therapy.

Another unexpected challenge has been community members who do not like the book. And I understand the criticism, but I wish people would give the film a chance before writing it off just because it’s associated with the book. That’s been kind of stressful actually.

One of the things I found fascinating, and most personally resonant, was when you said “You are not the person you were going to be…which may not be a bad thing.” In an article about my own experience, I once wrote, “I can’t help but imagine, for good or for bad, who I might have been if I’d only known who I was.” These are thoughts I don’t see articulated or acknowledged often. I imagine they may be difficult for non-adoptees to understand. Can you say more about that and what you meant?

Oh, I love the way you put it. Much more poetic. But, yes, it’s a paradox of sorts. We are, but we aren’t. I feel like the Buddha said something similar, right? Like, this is because that is, and that is not because that is not. I always think, if I were Autumn, would Jill’s children born after me—Christopher, Clare and Candace—be? They are, because I went.

Someone recently sent me a passage from a book about reincarnation that made them think of their experience as an adoptee. It was about how some souls are removed from their soul family in order to evolve for the benefit of the soul family. I think that’s a positive way to look at it. But I always welcome any attempt to make it make sense. Some people have a really hard time calling me Autumn, but for me (in certain spaces) it helps bring my two timelines together. I think this is why filmmaking and being in control of the actual timeline is cathartic for me. (In editing software, where you cut the film is called the timeline).

In the film I go on to say that “I’m trying to figure it out”—knowing that I can’t really figure it out. But maybe we’ve been given the gift of examining our lives being non-negotiable?

At one point in the film, Amanda Baden, MEd, PhD, says, “One of the challenges for adoptees is that they may be seeking people to validate their experiences all the time, and it’s hard to do that when people don’t always understand or empathize with their experiences.” Is this film an effort to validate their experiences? Or your experiences?

Did you know the film had more Baden than Verrier at one point? Talk about dropping gems! And yes, this film is validating our experiences. I hear from adoptees that their main takeaway is seeing other adoptees voice feelings they’ve had and feeling like they aren’t alone anymore. That’s the best outcome I could hope for.

There’s discussion in the film about microaggressions and at one point specifically referencing comments people make when they find out one is adopted, such as, “Have you searched for your birthparents?” Having never known my mother, people asked me all my life if I searched for her. It never struck me as negative or offensive, just a natural curiosity, a way of showing interest. It’s impossible, I think, to expect others to understand how their responses may be offensive or considered microaggressions. And saying nothing seems to show a lack of interest. What are appropriate responses when one discloses that they’re adopted? 

That’s a good point, and I totally hear you. I also never took it as offensive growing up, but looking back I think the question led me to try to find Jill before I was ready. I did attempt to get my records from the State of Tennessee when I was 21 years old, and it was unsuccessful. I think the main reason I wanted answers was to please other people. Which is not why anyone should do anything. But people can be aware that it’s unintentionally detrimental to adoptees’ psyche to call into question the realness of their nurturing or natural parents, to dismiss how personal and loaded the question is, and maybe just respond with a little more empathy.

I think Jill’s answer when I ask her how she would’ve felt if she’d been adopted and she says she would’ve been in constant turmoil is pretty astute.

But yes, I agree, being intentionally relinquished by your mother and being abandoned by her are different, but also not different at all. That’s a quandary. I just wonder if my relationships with my friends and you with your friends would’ve been deeper and more psychically beneficial if they were framed more sympathetically.

Now I think the best response to learning someone is adopted or dealing with maternal/gestational parent separation is to say something like, “I’ve heard that can be a difficult life experience. If you ever want to talk about it or need support I’m here to listen.”

What would you say to others about using their voices, their art, to express the experience of being an adoptee?

The nice thing about content creation is that there’s always something new to be gained from individual stories. I love learning about people through their own personal experiences, through words, songs, performances, films, memoirs, etc. I would personally love to amplify trans-racial adoptees’ stories in future projects. The added loss of culture seems extraordinarily unfair.

Tell me about the two songs that play over the end credits and their songwriters—”March 11, 1962,” by Liz Rose and Mary Gauthier, and “Wanna Be,” by Celeste Krishna. Why did you choose those?

My mentor, Demetria Kalodimos (true crime podcast producer of Carol’s Last Christmas), told me I needed to meet her friend who was adopted and a musician in Nashville. It was Mary Gauthier. When we finally met, she graciously offered me any track off of her exemplary album The Foundling, which chronicles her adoption journey, to use in the film. I could hardly pick one, but kept coming back to the lyrics in “March 11, 1962.” It seems to be the right choice considering the feedback. So many people can relate to making that call and the emotions surrounding reunion. Like one viewer says, “Seeing Mary Gauthier’s lyrics and hearing her voice while watching the names scroll through, I feel like I’m standing naked in a field and finally seen!”

I have a small record label and my artist, Celeste Krishna, wrote a song about trauma and depression for her album My Blue House. It’s called Wanna Be. She let me use it. Last week someone told me it’s the song they blast on the way to therapy. I got Celeste to send a voice note explaining the meaning and why she wrote it and that voice note was sent to another community member who was teaching a high school writing class and she used the 90-second voice note as a prompt that same day! I love that the songs are getting more exposure through the film. The line, “Analysis, paralysis, my own mind, tied knots that I cannot untie”—I couldn’t NOT use it!

At one point in the film your adoptive mother says of the book, “The author had a point of view…and I don’t know if that can be scientifically corroborated.” I’m not adopted, but as someone who was abandoned by her mother as an infant, I find that Verrier’s book, although not scientifically verified, and everything said in your film, rings true. Yet I know not everyone sees it that way. Your adoptive mother’s comment echoes some criticism of the Primal Wound—the suggestion that it’s merely a theory and that there’s no evidence to support the ideas it presents. Do you have any thoughts about that criticism? To your knowledge, is it something that Verrier has ever addressed?

I think Nancy and I agree that anecdotal evidence can be profound. That’s why I put out the call for the Adoptee Army. You can argue all day that the data isn’t there. But if thousands of people with similar experiences are saying “YES! That’s how I feel!” Can you really dismiss them all?

And how do you ethically collect data on gestational parental separation? And why don’t animal studies count? The fact that you can’t legally separate domesticated animals from their mothers before they are weened and ready—well we too are mammals. People know it’s true, but admitting it would be detrimental to too many structural belief systems. Until the majority of society thinks we are also a marginalized group, we won’t get any more civil rights. I do, however, believe the tension is building toward a tipping point. I would be honored to be a small part of the reckoning.

Has there been any criticism of the film, and if so, what is the nature of it? 

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The critics are people who haven’t seen the film, so do they count as critics? And like I said before, it’s been that I’m hyping the book and an adopter instead of an adoptee. Which is a fair criticism, but I’ll say that knowing Nancy has been so meaningful and she’s provided a lot of value to my life and I’ve heard from so many people that she’s added value to their lives and taken time to hear them. Unfortunately, that’s exceptional for an adoptive parent to do, to listen to adult adoptees. I wanted to pay tribute to that in some small way, and my art is film. This film does pay tribute to Verrier’s contribution while reckoning with her role as an adoptive parent. I welcome any concerns anyone has. I’m very approachable.

I’m wondering, specifically, if your empathetic view toward, and inclusion of, birthmothers’ voices has been well-accepted? 

Funny you should ask this at this particular moment, because a birthmother influencer, Ashley Mitchell @bigtoughgirl just did two stellar reaction videos of the film this week! They are amazing and no, I didn’t ask her to do them, it’s totally organic. I embedded them on the website and you can find them on her Instagram page. So far, birthmothers have appreciated the film and are recommending it. I was hoping they would. It was actually screened at the CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) retreat last year if that tells you anything!

Is the film being used in educational and therapeutic settings? 

I am really pushing for more of this to happen. I’ve been told it needs to be, but as an independent filmmaker, my network isn’t big in these spaces, so any help with recommendations to child welfare organizations, colleges and universities, or to therapists would be greatly appreciated.

According to a press release, the film is the first-ever customizable documentary. What does that mean and how does it work? 

Thank you for noticing that. Yes! One of the benefits of being independent and owning the rights is that I can change the film whenever I want. So it dawned on me that for specific screenings I could put an organization’s thought leader in the film for 30-60 seconds for the price of the licensing fee ($400) and then it would be even more inclusive and help elevate even more people in this space who want to prevent pain and suffering within the adoption constellation. There are so many people doing important work in this space and if the film can amplify that in some way, I am happy to edit until the cows come home. Ha!

Finally, featured in the film is Moses Farrow, LMFT, an adoptee and adoption trauma educator. He says, “The adoption industry has evolved over the last 400 years or so because of careful and consistent crafting of the initial statements ‘best interest of the child’ and ‘second chance at a better life.’ Once these took hold, it was very easy to stigmatize women, to stigmatize out of wedlock pregnancies. As we become more aware and more and more in touch with this level of truth, I wonder how in the world we can reconcile that we are adopted into such a legacy? How are people so desperate to ignore such truths and realities. We have to move this narrative forward.” Can you comment on your point of view about what it would mean to move the narrative forward? What needs to happen to change the narrative?

I love how Moses puts it. And I think about this a lot. I’ve watched every season available of The Handmaid’s Tale and it’s multi-million-dollar budget, fantastic writing, and acting, AND laying out why all of this is messed up hasn’t really moved the needle as far as societal thinking about adoption goes. So, what can an indie film or grassroots adoptee centric movement do if Hollywood can’t?

I just posted on Instagram about a sketch NBC’s SNL did last month where adoptees are the punchline. It seems like we haven’t made any progress sometimes, doesn’t it? But, I’ve also had a number of friends see the film and then apologize to me, unprompted. I’m like, I wasn’t fishing for an apology, but thanks? They’re like, yeah, I know I said some wrong things to you about being adopted and I’m sorry. That, to me, is how we’re going to do it, and if the film is the thing that makes something click for people who haven’t considered our point of view before, then that’s all I could hope for as a filmmaker and as an adoptee rights activist. I appreciate all of the work Severance Magazine has done in this space and hope we can collaborate in the near future, too. Thanks for helping me spread the word about the film.

If you had to narrow the film’s message to one sentence, what would it be?

Everything you think you know about adoption is dead wrong.

How can readers see the film?

They can now buy/rent/and gift the film digitally via Vimeo which is linked at the film’s website or they can buy a DVD that I will hand make and sign from the merch tab on the website. There are also screenings(with surprise guests sometimes shhh!) and we’re cooking up some in-person screenings for this year, so if readers sign up for the newsletter, they’ll be in the know.

Rebecca Autumn Sansom is guided by the promise of a consciously evolving humanity. As a filmmaker, she was invited by Oregon’s Congressman Blumenauer to screen her feature documentary about high speed rail, Trainsforming America, at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. She won a 2015 Midsouth regional Emmy for her work on Tout Your Town, a travel series produced by Genuine Human Productions, Nashville TN. As a native Nashvillian, Sansom’s life has been steeped in the sounds of Music City. For three years running, she’s been disrupting the entertainment industry through a safe space for marginalized talent with The Wavy Awards presented by The (NYC) Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.

By Hannah Andrews

My glasses weren’t rose-colored, but they were the wrong prescription. I see adoption more clearly now, and in previously overlooked places–often hiding in plain sight.

I recently rewatched “The Truman Show,” a 1998 film lauded for its artsy take on free will, privacy, and our perception of reality. It both predicted and parodied the reality TV explosion. It also was a subtle, if unintentional, jab at the closed adoption system. The lead character, Truman Burbank (Jim Carey), is an adoptee. Truman was “chosen” pre-birth from a pool of unplanned pregnancies and legally adopted by a corporation (the TV studio). His entire life was fabricated and filmed—fake parents, a fake town, and a fake world that is actually an enormous domed production studio. As cracks work their way into the facade, Truman begins to question, and quest for truth (True Man) ensues.

You see it, right? Chosen. Adopted. Fabricated. Search for truth.

Yeah, I missed all that for over two decades.

In my defense, adoption was not the focus of the movie. I suspect it was just a handy plot device. (Adoption so often is, but that’s another essay. ) Maybe the writer was typing up the tale and thought, “How could this character have zero clue about his real identity his whole life? Ooh—I will make him adopted!” The audience doesn’t learn of the adoption until well into the film. It’s a catch-all explanation.

Like Truman, I’m an adoptee. Mine was never a secret, but other truths eluded me, and I was mostly okay with that.

“I’ve always known I was adopted but never wanted to search.”

 This was my mantra, repeated with an eye roll for nearly fifty years. Mostly, I just wanted control of the narrative. Long before DNA tests were a thing, people—friends, relatives, random strangers—constantly questioned my lack of search, my ethnicity, and sometimes even my lack of questions. I accepted my false reality. The identity quest wasn’t for me, but if other adoptees felt the need to search, I didn’t criticize. At least, not out loud.

Unless you count my older brother, who found his family of origin when we were in our twenties. His green eyes sparkled as he described meeting his biological sister and how she looked like him. “Can you imagine?” he gushed.

I seethed. Imagine was all I could ever do.

“I’m your sister, not her,” I hissed, and watched him deflate. I cringe at the memory.

I’d grown up with two older brothers, also adopted––related by paper and proximity, but not blood. We were the living, breathing products of the “Baby Scoop” era, that not-so-sweet spot between WWII and Roe, when upwards of 1.5 million unwed women, some still girls, were secretly shipped off to maternity homes. Coerced, shamed, and sometimes forced by their families and society to surrender their babies to strangers that “deserved” them.

Original birth certificates (OBCs) were sealed. New records erased maternity hospitals and replaced the names of birth parents with the names of adoptive  parents. As if we’d been born to them. As if our original mothers and our original names had never existed. That secrecy was all-encompassing.

Birth mothers rarely knew where their babies ended up, and adoptive families often knew little of their children’s origins. We adoptees knew only what our new parents told us. Some weren’t even told of their adoption. Others were told “too young” and “loved you so much she gave you away” stories, equating supreme love with abandonment. Some of us internalized that message. I did.

 Adoption didn’t guarantee a better life, just a different one, and mine was pretty decent. My new brothers and I clung tightly to each other and our invented family. Our parents were loving and kind. They encouraged questions and conversation, but we three generally opted out of both. I imagine our parents sighed secret relief and told themselves all was well.

The thing is, we didn’t even speak to each other about “it.” Toddler through teen, I cannot recall one sibling chat about adoption. No one told us not to speak of it, yet somehow we’d internalized that message. Maybe we’d digested the poison directed at our first mothers. Had their maternity homes sprinkled shame salt on their dinners? Perhaps we were just afraid to rock the boat, of losing another home. In any case, not a word until my brother’s real sister materialized. I hadn’t even known he was searching. My anger at his perceived betrayal was another consequence of secrets and severance.

 I’d caught snippets of similar reunions a few years earlier. Birthmothers and adoptees had begun speaking out by my teen years, the 1980s, but I ignored them. I changed the channel when Donahue and subsequent shows dared speak of adoption, or worse, reunion.

 If Donahue and Oprah couldn’t win me over, my brother didn’t stand a chance.

 I see the parallel now. It’s as if the world was trying to clue me in, the same way random people would sneak onto the set (the set within the storyline, not the actual movie set) of the Truman show. Characters that screamed, “Truman, you’re on TV,” were whisked away by plainclothes security. My brain had its own built-in security force, ready to deflect all things adoption. Like Truman, though, I finally wised up.

(Spoiler alert for a twenty-five-year-old movie: Truman defies his unreal reality and sneaks away. The TV producer, enraged, screams, “Cue the sun!” not to show Truman the way, as the metaphor would suggest, but to find and capture him. Truman eludes everyone and sails off through a massive storm to the end of the world, but since his world is a TV studio, he crashes into a literal wall. Deflated, but not defeated, he wanders about until he finds the exit, smirks at the camera, takes a final bow, and leaves. )

In 2018, I smashed into my own sunset.

A writer’s’ convention I almost skipped and a snippet of memoir read by a 1960s-era birthmother. I couldn’t change the channel. I didn’t tune out. She was a beacon. I listened, then began furiously searching for everything I’d ignored, including my own beginnings.

I wanted every answer to every question I ever buried inside myself. After a lifetime of avoiding the truth, it is all I crave. I have some new questions too.

Why should I have to SEARCH for my own information?

Why are our birth certificates sealed and falsified with new ones? Still! Why can I now have my real record of birth, but other adoptees can’t? Why are adoptees still at the mercy of archaic laws that erase our identities? How is this legal? How is this still a thing?

I don’t know.

What I do know is:

Mother-child separation is undeniably traumatic.

NICU units have special incubators with little holes for parents to safely touch their preemie babies. I call them mommy sleeves. The babies have just spent nine months hearing their mothers’ voices, sharing nutrients. Infants recognize their mothers. I wasn’t a preemie, but I’d have benefitted from a mommy sleeve. Instead, I got a heaping dose of pre-verbal trauma.

 Identity erasure compounded that trauma. The state legally disappeared me, then created a whole new identity and origin in the form of a new, official, fake birth certificate. More than 50 years later, this is still the norm, not the exception. Open adoption is more theory than practice, and not legally enforceable.

Searching, which was my decision, both broke and healed me.

It was rife with rabbit holes and red herrings and led to painful discoveries. My biological mother died three months before Illinois changed its OBC access law. It was another decade before I knew the law changed and before I searched, but that fact still stings. I also found out she looked for me, which brings both comfort and pain. Worse, for a time, we unknowingly lived exactly two blocks from each other. This haunts me every single day.

 I met my half-brother and my mother’s long-time best friend. They’re wonderful. Despite numerous DNA tests and partial records, my birth father remains a mystery. My maternal biological grandmother will not speak of or to me. My adoptive parents are deceased, so I can’t even tell them that I finally found some answers, that I finally asked some questions, and that I finally have some peace.

I wish I’d looked years earlier when both of my mothers were still living. I long to visit the parallel universe where my birth mother never had to surrender me, or maybe one where I met her during my teens or twenties. I love the family in which I was dropped, and fate dealt me a better hand than many adoptees. Still, I long for all the scenes that adoption deleted from my life’s movie, the songs erased from my playlist. Most of all, I wish if adoption had to be, that at least my identity hadn’t been stolen.

I believe in every human’s right to their identity. Adoptees are the only Americans legally denied their original records of birth in the United States. I believe this information should be ours from breath one, and restricting access is developmentally harmful. At the very least, we should have unfettered access to the entirety of our birth and medical records as adults. This is available for adoptees in only 11 states.

I also understand that as difficult as it was for me to obtain information, it’s more complex, sometimes impossible, for others, especially transnational adoptees. I respect that some adoptees have zero interest in their origins. Were records readily available, that percentage might increase. There are many things wrong with adoption, but the loss of identity is one of the most glaring and overlooked. Identity is a basic human right.

Don’t make us beg for it.

Don’t make us hide in the dark searching for ourselves.

Cue the sun.

Hannah Andrews was relinquished and adopted as an infant during the Baby Scoop Era. She began defogging, searching, and immersing herself in the adoptee community in 2019. Her writing has been featured onstage in LaJolla, CA for the San Diego Memoir Showcase and has been selected for publication in “Shaking The Tree: Short Memoir” Anthologies. And she recently joined the board of Adoption Knowledge Affiliates. Find her on Facebook and Twitter. 

Lisa “LC” Coppola, a domestic adoptee through the department of children and family, is a mental health counselor who has years of expertise counseling adult adoptees and others touched in any way by adoption. A heartfelt advocate for those relinquished, she’s also a therapist and, in collaboration with Boston Post Adoption Resources, is the creator of the Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories speaker and writing workshop series. A writer from the Boston area, she often explores themes concerning relinquishment and addiction. Now, she’s created a resource to guide therapists and peers who work with adoptees. Voices Unheard: A Reflective Journal for Adult Adoptees is a 52-week journal with prompts based on core themes that emerge in therapy and a script to help group facilitators. The journal can be used by adult adoptees on their own or under the care of a therapist, by therapists as a tool in their practice, and by peer-led support group moderators.

How would you describe this journal and what makes it unique?

The book is a guided journal, yes, but it is so much more than this. It offers 52 guided writing prompts based on common themes in adoption that we see clinically at Boston Post Adoption Resources, a nonprofit mental health agency. But the prompts are framed with resources including a post adoption vocabulary section and suggested reading, so the individual writer has access to knowledge if they want to do a deeper dive of study. The combination of prompts and resources also assists mental health professionals who might not be well versed in adoption-related challenges or therapies. Most graduate-level programs only spend eight minutes on the topic of adoption, believe it or not. So therapists can use this journal to become more informed about adoption loss and then as an aid to guide adoptees out of the fog—meaning out of the denial of the complex trauma of their adoptee experience.

Probably the part I am most excited about is where I include detailed instructions for adoptee volunteers—peers who might want to coordinate peer-led support groups. The instructions cover how to establish a group and how to organize weekly meetings using the journal prompts as themes and assignments, and even include a script to make the idea of running a meeting less daunting and more do-able.

How did you come up with this idea?

As a mental health counselor, I’ve had more than a decade of experience in running writing support groups and workshops on the themes of identity, recovery, relationships, and other issues that both adoptees and people in recovery from addictions struggle with. As an adoptee and person in long-term recovery from addictions, I’ve been a participant and beneficiary of these types of groups and therapeutic activities myself, so I’ve seen the value from both sides. When people come together to acknowledge a similar struggle, there’s a sort of belongingness that develops that I have seen to be the most powerful kind of healing. You see this all the time in the addiction recovery world. As adoptees are going through this kind of mysterious buried pain and grief, and one that is hardly discussed in public, I knew that they really could benefit from this kind of peer-to-peer recovery. So I wanted to combine my dual experiences to offer something bigger and more impactful than a traditional prompted writing journal, something with legs and utility to empower adoptees with a tool and to enlarge the professional and volunteer post adoption support system.

How is writing for adoptees valuable and therapeutic?

As a mental health counselor, I find that journaling on one’s story, trying to sort out the truth through telling the story, sifting through fears and hopes on paper, is incredibly powerful. It’s a way to help clients work their way through disparate and confusing emotions and memories, to identify common threads throughout their lives, and ultimately to connect to the truth of their uniquely personal stories. In individual and group sessions, I guide the journaling process with carefully planned prompts that guide the writer through a revelatory and healing process over time.

How did you come to discover writing as helpful in your own experience?

I’m an adoptee who has spent a lifetime confronting a history of trauma—quite common in adoption—as well as addiction, and who ultimately has found a path to healing. I share part of my past openly in the early pages of the Voices Unheard Journal. Writing and support groups have been my lifeline. I’m working on a memoir myself, and through this process I’ve been able to really get in touch with who I am at my core. Of course, as an adopted person, who I am has always been a confusing, kind of clouded thing, and with writing a memoir I had to really get to know myself on a new level to write my character. I had to look at the pain I came up against in my life and how I got through it. I feel stronger now than ever in who I am and in my own strength and resilience. The journaling process really helped me understand my story to the extent needed in order to write the more structured linear story.

Why the focus specifically on adopted adults?

So often in our practice we meet adoptees who are not aware until adulthood of the depth or the impact of their traumas. For example, I worked in addiction recovery programs for many years and during that time found that adoptees made-up a  disproportionate number of my clients. As I worked with them, sometimes for years, and as they gained some good time in sobriety, they often discovered that a root cause of their need to self-medicate was coming from a place of unprocessed grief around their relinquishment experience. In childhood, the adoptee trauma can look like a learning disability, or anxiety, or depression, or issues with love addiction or love avoidance. But once you peel back those layers of the onion, as they say, it’s all linked to that original wound manifesting. And many counselors, adoptive parents, and teachers have never been educated that adoption trauma even exists, so kids rarely ever get to address it while they’re young. Boston Post Adoption Resources and other adoption trauma-informed organizations are starting to change this now. Also another reason I designed this book for adult adoptees is that many are beginning  to search for biological families. This is a hard, confusing, process that needs support.

Tell us more about the cover art.

The design was created by our own clinical director, Kelly Dibennedetto, and her husband, Albie. It was based on that notion of “coming out of the fog.” The fog at the bottom represents the concept of denial around the adoption trauma experience that many adult adoptees face. The ladder provides hope for progress—a path to discovery and insight—as it connects adoptees to their own stories on a journey to healing.

What kind of feedback have you had so far on the journal?

We are very excited that some highly renowned adoptee writers and adoption professionals have really embraced the journal and generously provided written endorsements. In fact, Sharon Kaplan Roszia, co-author of one of the most important pieces of literature used by therapists trained in adoption competency, validates the approach of this journal and says it’s “long overdue” in the field.

What other projects/ books are happening at Boston Post Adoption Resources?

BPAR already has an acclaimed illustrated book called Adoption Is a Lifelong Journey, written from the perspective of a child adoptee and offering tools and tips to parents. It was released five years ago. We also published a free eBook for parents/caregivers called Voices in Transracial Adoption to share the lived experiences of transracial adoptees through interviews. We’re seeking funding to build an online post adoption resources learning center to educate on a deeper level on specific topics.

Learn more on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

By Shane Bouel

Estranged Australian adoptee in reunion

By Kathleen Shea KirsteinAt the end of each Wednesday evening writing class, the instructor gives us a prompt to write on for the following week. She instructs us to write for 20 minutes and limit editing. We need to have the piece ready to read at the next class gathering. The last prompt was to write about “a lie I told.” I’ve never been good at telling a lie, so this was a hard assignment. When I was a kid, I got caught whenever I told even a little white lie. There wasn’t any point in lying, so I stopped. It took me a few days after getting the assignment to remember a lie I had told.

I needed a passport because I was planning to go to Cancun, Mexico in September 2005.  I applied and later received a letter in the mail saying my application was denied because I hadn’t submitted documentation to explain why my birth certificate was filed 14 months after my birth. The first call I made was to my mother to tell her my passport had been denied and ask if she knew why my birth certificate was filed so long after my birth. She said it must have been a clerical error and hung up. I called the town clerk’s office in the state where I’d been born. The person who took my call couldn’t help and advised me to contact the probate court. I called the court and was told to write a letter to the judge stating dates of the trip to Mexico, including the passport application denial and the reason for the denial. I was hoping the court could actually find the documentation explaining that reason. I wrote and mailed the letter the next day

After this experience, I began to wonder if I was adopted, so I left some messages on adoption reunion boards with basic information, such as the year and location of my birth, hoping to connect with someone who might have some information about me. At that point, I was willing to try anything. I just wanted an answer to this mystery. I’d mentioned to my family that I might take a day off from work and go sit at the Probate court to see if I could get an answer to my letter.

Then I had an idea. I’ve always gotten my medical care at the clinic in our town—the clinic where I’ve worked for years—so it occurred to me to go to the medical records department and review my chart. I spent my lunch break on August 22, 2005 reading my medical records. The first line of the last page in my chart—essentially the first page documenting my life with the Sheas—said “Adopted Baby, 4 lbs 4 oz.”  Finally, I had confirmation that I’d been adopted.

Armed with this new information, I called the probate court and asked them to search for my adoption records. Hopefully, with the information they contained, I’d then be allowed access to my birth certificate and could get my passport.

I scheduled a lunch meeting for two days later with our clinic psychologist to problem-solve how to approach my parents. Forty-nine years is a long time for them to keep the secret. I wondered what kind of defenses they’d built up. I wanted advice about whether I should tell them I knew I was adopted.

I was surprised when my Dad called me at work on the morning of August 24 and asked me to come over to the house right away. My intuition kicked in. Somehow, I knew my parents were going to tell me the truth about my birth. I grabbed a long stem red rose from the gift shop on my way out the door to give to my mom. Dad clearly remembered that I said that I might go to probate court to see if they would hear my case sooner. He must have realized I’d find out the truth, so he likely convinced mom they had to tell me and they had to do so that morning. They were not aware that I’d read my chart, so the timing of his call was coincidental.

I left work and arrived at my folks house a little after 9 am. Standing in the living room, Dad asked, “You know why you are here?”

“Yes, I said. “I’ve known since Monday I was adopted.”

Mom then told me that the state did home studies, even back in 1957, and that caused the delay in filing my birth certificate. She remembered that she wanted to make a good impression, and since she loved to sew, she made me a new dress for each meeting with the state worker. Once the home studies were satisfied and my placement approved, the court finalized my adoption when I was 14 months old with a little ceremony that changed my name. I can’t help but wonder if that’s similar to what happens when a person enters the Witness Protection Program. What did I witness that I needed protection from? My original mother?

My mother was upset. She told me the day I won the trip to Cancun was the worst day in her life, and that she felt like her life was over. I think in that moment our roles reversed and I became the mother, making sure she felt secure and nurtured. Nurturing was never her strong suit. She was better at keeping up appearances.

I reassured my parents and told them that nothing in our relationship was going to change, and it became my job in a way to forever prove my loyalty until they died.

And that was the lie I told. That nothing would change. Because everything changed.

I thought of them in a different light. That’s when I realized they’d kept me at arm’s length most of my life. Over the years, even my kids have observed I was treated differently than the sister I grew up—their biological child. The pedestal I kept my parents on began to crumble. When the truth came out, I kept thinking about how they lied to me on those occasions when I point blank asked if I’d been adopted. I was consumed with wondering how they could have lied for so long without giving something way, especially after I learned from my mother’s cousin that my mother had the entire town under a gag order. My friends all knew.

Looking back, I see there had been a few close calls when I was growing up. I worked in a multidisciplinary clinic as an oncology-certified RN and administered chemotherapy to patients. The time I pushed medication in to patients’ IVs was always a chance to chat and get acquainted. Talking to one patient, I mentioned that I knew her daughter-in-law. She asked what my parents’ names were, and when I told her, she said, “Oh, are you the one they adopted”? I said I didn’t know, but I didn’t think so. I called my mother that night to ask, but she insisted I wasn’t adopted. “People are always confusing us with a family in town that adopted a baby the same time you were born,” she said. I didn’t think my mother would lie to me, so I believed her. And I thought I had her hands and looked a little bit like her, so I trusted what she told me.

I wonder what would have happened if those close calls had been fully realized and if I’d pressed my mother harder. If I hadn’t blindly trusted my parents, would I have known sooner? Would knowing sooner have a made a difference? I didn’t realize it then, but I lied to myself and my parents that day in their living room when I told them nothing in our relationship would change.  Everything has changed. Nothing could be the same because the person I was changed in those moments.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 Tom Staszewski

January 15, 2022 marked the second anniversary of the enactment of New York State’s Clean Bill of Adoptee Rights law allowing adoptees over the age of 18 unrestricted access to their sealed birth certificates. With that legislation, New York State became the tenth state in the US to allow open birth records.

When I first read about this new “open records adoption law,” little did I know it would have a direct impact on me. As I read the details about the legislation, I remember thinking it was rightfully so, that adult adoptees should have the same equal access to their birth records as non-adoptees. There should be no difference between treating one class of person differently than another based solely and entirely on the circumstances and events of their birth.

I certainly realize adoption is a complicated issue. Whether or not to place a child up for adoption is a difficult decision and a situation that often has no right or wrong answers. But it’s a topic that has been on my mind ever since 1970—the year my daughter, Victoria, was born.

Ever since she was adopted, and throughout all of those years since my high school days, I thought about her regularly and hoped and prayed she was alive and well. I always wondered if she was having a good life.

New York State open records law enabled Victoria to obtain her original birth certificate (OBC) and to then find her birth mother, who then subsequently gave her information that led her to find me as well. May 15, 2020 was a very happy day for me. I was surprised to find in my mailbox a letter postmarked from New York City.  “Hello, I’m your daughter,” it said. As I read her letter, I was elated to learn that she was well, healthy, accomplished, successful and physically fit. She’d completed nine marathons, including the prestigious NYC Marathon. She also works out at a boxing gym with full contact sparring. And she’s earned a master’s degree. After I read all of the details about her life, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was a blessing that she was able to find me and for me to finally know that she’d had a good life.

I’ve long believed that a college degree is a passport to a better life and opens more doors of opportunity throughout one’s life, so I was extremely pleased to learn about Victoria’s level of higher education.

Unlike some adoption searches that lead to rejection, I was ecstatic to be identified, located and contacted.  I fully recognize and acknowledge the role of her adoptive parents, now deceased and I’m thankful for their outstanding and exemplary job in raising her. Through their hard work, she developed into a very accomplished adult and a productive contributing member of society.

On the other hand, I readily admit, that as a foolish, silly, goofy, immature kid back in 1970, there was nothing I could have provided her. I had no job skills, no talents, no credentials. An awkward teenager, I didn’t realize the importance of personal responsibility and accountability. In addition to being an irresponsible kid, I lacked empathy, social gifts, and concern for others.  I finally learned, acquired, and implemented those important empath type skills, traits, characteristics, and effective social skills when I was in my mid-20s. Therefore, I am so glad and thankful that her adoptive parents had the resources to provide a solid and stable life for her.

I was also very glad to see the letter’s origin was from Brooklyn, NY. I love NYC having visited there more than 25 times. It’s a much better location to visit rather than, say, Wyoming (with no disrespect meant toward that fine state). It’s just that I’ve always loved and am very comfortable being in large densely populated major urban cities.  And my wife, Linda, and I have a longstanding tradition of going to Manhattan during the December holiday season. So I began to think of now being able to visit Victoria in NYC in just seven months. But of course, in December 2020 we had to cast aside our tradition because of the COVID shutdown.

After I read all of the details about her life and breathed a huge sigh of relief, I couldn’t help but also notice that her letter was well crafted. She expressed a strong command of the English language and had an exceptional vocabulary. Her writing was clear, concise, and coherent.

Please don’t misinterpret my positive critique of my own daughter’s first correspondence to me. As a career academician, I’ve read and graded thousands of graduate-level term papers, research papers, portfolios, and projects. It was only natural for me to notice her proficiency and the important skills displayed in Victoria’s first letter to me.

I responded by telephone, and since then we’ve communicated by, phone, and e-mail, and we’ve exchanged dozens of photographs from various stages of our lives. But more important, we finally met in Midtown Manhattan on December 4th, 2021—a very happy, momentous, and memorable day indeed!

Throughout my academic career, I’ve always been fascinated by the ongoing debate about heredity vs environment, nature or nurture, and genetics in general. As we got to know each other, I was intrigued to find that we have many similarities and have had mutual experiences. We both were raised as Catholics, had paper routes, played the accordion, worked at McDonalds’s as young kids, and while in high school worked in delis. We’re involved in local politics and registered to vote with the same political party. In school, math was (and is) a mutual weakness.

Ever since I was fifteen years old, I’ve had a passion for being physically fit, spending long hours each day exercising and working out in health clubs and gyms. So I was very impressed when I read that Victoria was a long-distance runner and completed nine marathons. The grit, determination, mental-toughness, persistence, and hard work she exhibits as a competitive long-distance runner are qualities and traits I’ve always admired and respected in others.  I was also impressed that she practiced boxing and full contact ring sparring. So maintaining health through physical fitness is yet another interest we share. In my estimation, our many similarities lend credence to the premise that human behavior, preferences, and tendencies are genetically determined.

According to the Adoptee Rights Law Center, Minn. MN (2022), many non-adopted people do not know that an original birth certificate (OBC) is the initial birth certificate created shortly after a person’s birth. For most people, it’s their only birth certificate. For persons born and adopted in the US, a new or “amended” birth certificate replaces the OBC once the adoption is final. I strongly believe other states should follow New York’s lead and pass legislation that would equalize the fundamental right of adults to access their own pre-adoption birth certificates.  To deny that access is unfair and unwarranted. Adult-aged adoptees should have the same right as non-adoptees to obtain their own birth records.  I applaud all of the New York state elected officials who rectified the unfair treatment of adoptees. Thanks to them, it’s an inequality that’s been righted.

Other state government entities should realize that the rights of adult adoptees to be treated the same is mainly an equality issue. The core issue behind open OBC legislation is not just about searches and reunions; it’s about the removal of a discriminatory barrier to a legal document. I believe that continuing to treat one class of persons differently than another based solely on the circumstances of their birth is not right and must be corrected…the sooner the better.

I realize the controversy associated with this issue and know that not every search results in such a positive outcome as it did in my situation. But I firmly believe the benefits outweigh the risks. Without that access, adopted people are unfairly left wondering about their identities and origins. It leaves them without valuable and factual information about their very existence. The law undoes decades of discrimination. That alone is justification for such legislation to occur.

I understand there may be privacy concerns after decades of secrecy. In previous decades, adoption records were routinely sealed as there was a prevalent societal norm of shame and scorn directed toward individuals who had teenage pregnancies. And in past generations, the commonly used negative and condescending label of illegitimate birth was the norm.

But, thankfully, societal attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions about the adoption process have shifted. Judgmental negative viewpoints are changing and the stigma is lessening.

Victoria is truly wonderful! She’s remarkable, accomplished, talented and beautiful. I’m so glad that I had an opportunity to finally be with her and hug her. I can’t wait to walk back md forth across the Brooklyn Bridge with my new daughter on my next visit to New York.Tom Staszewski, EdD, lives in Erie, PA with his wife, Linda. He retired in 2014 following a 35-year career in higher education administration. His doctorate in higher-education administration is from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Total Teaching: Your Passion Makes It Happen, published by Rowman & Littlefield.” Contact him at tomstasz@neo.rr.com.