By Bianca ButlerAs a young child, I didn’t know that my mother and her twin sister (now deceased) had been adopted in 1960. I found out in 2000, when, after nearly 40 years of silence, their biological mother wrote to the twins asking to reunite.

That year, when I was 12, we all met my biological grandmother for the first time at dinner in Old Town Sacramento—me, my mother, my aunt, my younger sister, and my adoptive grandmother. By meeting her biological mother, my mother learned her biological father’s identity and that she and her twin are of mixed-race ancestry: African American and white. Their biological mother had been a young African American college student at the University of California, Berkeley when she relinquished her twin daughters for adoption. They were born in a time in the United States when interracial unions were not only taboo but also illegal (Loving V Virginia) and when young unwed women were shamed and stigmatized—a time known as the Baby Scoop Era, from 1945 to 1973, before Roe V Wade in 1973.

My biological grandmother is a trailblazer. She was a college student and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority member at UC Berkeley from 1958 to 1962. She was the daughter of an educated Army chaplain, and her family deeply valued education. When she arrived at UC Berkeley in 1958 from Riverside, California, she was one of roughly 100 African American students on the campus. Berkeley, which she describes as having been bohemian at that time, was a different world to her than Riverside. There, she enjoyed ethnic foods along Telegraph Avenue and the poetry of the Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

On campus in her freshman year, my grandmother met an artist from the Midwest who found her attractive and wanted her to sit for a painting. (She still has this painting today). They had a casual friendship, a brief affair, and an unplanned pregnancy. A few months after giving birth, she decided it would be best to relinquish her newborn girls for adoption due to social pressures and lack of support. She went on to graduate from Berkeley in 1962, earning a bachelor of arts in political science. The twins were adopted together in a closed adoption by a loving and devoted African American family in the Bay Area.

In my late teens and college years, I became deeply curious about the origin story of my mother’s biological parents. Getting to know my grandmother, I was proud to discover we are at least three generations of college graduates. She, my mother, my younger sister, and I all have college degrees. My grandmother and my younger sister even have their master’s degrees. I’m extremely proud of that legacy. It’s one I want to pass on to the next generation.

Although I first learned about the identity of my mom’s biological father in 2000, I didn’t become interested in learning about him until I was in college and exploring my family history. To my surprise, I discovered that he’s an internationally known artist who lives near Central Park in Manhattan. He has a resume full of accolades and accomplishments in the art world spanning several decades.

I first tried to contact him in 2007, when I was in college. I wrote to him at the Manhattan studio address on his website, and when I received no response, I moved on. In 2018, I noticed he used an Instagram account to promote discounted custom portrait paintings of people and pets. I wanted him to do a painting of my mom, and I thought this would be a clever way to reach him. I sent a message on Instagram saying I was interested in a custom painting and asked how I could send him a photo. I was surprised that he responded quickly, and, as he instructed, I sent him two photos by email. But when it came time to make the $500.00 payment to him, I was hesitant to move forward, and he was upset because he’d already started the two portraits.

I finally gave in and sent him a sincere and heartfelt message revealing my identity as his biological granddaughter and the truth of why I had contacted him, and I included my phone number.  Within a couple hours, he called me back. He immediately said he’d received my first communication—the letter I sent him in 2007, when I was in college. The crazy thing is, he told me, he received an email message a week earlier from my mom with her photo and a short letter saying she wanted to meet him. I had no idea my mom had been trying to contact him too.

In our phone conversation, he said he remembered very clearly having had an affair with my grandmother during the Berkeley years but denied that he was the father of the twins. We spoke for about 30 minutes and later communicated briefly through email, during which I asked jokingly if he grew up eating lefse (a popular Norwegian flatbread) and if he liked the music of ABBA. He said lefse was a special holiday treat in his family, and he never heard of ABBA. Even though the contact was brief, it felt good to finally hear his voice and to be acknowledged. The contact ended and he sent me a letter for my mother, his artist biography, one of his essays, a photo from his 20s, and the two portraits he painted of my mom—free of charge. I decided it was finally time to do an Ancestry DNA test to help me get more facts about my racial identity and heritage. The Ancestry DNA test confirmed that I’m 31% Norwegian and, through the DNA matches, that I’m related to his cousins. I sent him the DNA results, but he’s still in denial and, sadly, not open to a relationship.

Finding biological family and taking a DNA test can bring great joy and excitement, but it can also bring rejection and disappointment. With millions of people taking DNA tests such as those offered by 23andMe and Ancestry to reveal their heritage and find long lost relatives, it can be important for people testing to consider having a support system or a therapist to help cope with the possible emotional fallout. It can be very emotional opening up old generational wounds that still haven’t been healed. It’s important to prioritize your mental health and self-care in this process. I found talking with a therapist and supportive friends as well as writing to be helpful. Also, some people don’t want to be found, especially when race and adoption are factors, and I’ve had to accept that reality. I would love to have a relationship with my grandfather and learn about his life and his lifelong passion for art. I’d love to visit art galleries and travel to NYC, but that may never happen. It may be wishful thinking.

On a positive note, through Ancestry DNA I was amazed to connect with a cousin on my mom’s paternal side who is close to my age and open to connecting. She moved to Sacramento from Minnesota last year for graduate school, and we plan to meet. From her own ancestry research, she was able to give me more information about our shared heritage and ancestral homeland in Fresvik, Norway, which, in addition to Oslo, I hope to visit.

Even though my mom doesn’t talk about her childhood or her feelings about being adopted, I know it must have affected her. It’s been a long journey, but it’s given me deeper understanding, pride, and appreciation of who I am and my unique family history. I don’t know what the future holds or whether I will ever meet my biological grandfather, but I appreciate the contact I did have with him and his custom paintings of my mom, and I remain optimistic.Bianca Butler is a SF Bay Area native raised in the suburbs of Sacramento, California. She’s a graduate of Mills College, an alumna of VONA, and a family historian. She enjoys non-fiction writing, digital storytelling, and public speaking. She plans to continue writing family stories about the legacy and lifelong impact of adoption. Butler dreams of doing ancestral homeland trips to West Africa and Norway and documenting the experience through writing and film. She lives in Sacramento, CA. Contact her at biancasoleil7@gmail.com.Severance is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

On Venmo, @iambiancasoleil

By Sara Easterly, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and Lori HoldenIf you’ve ever spent time in what is known as “Adoption Land”—various communities that exist to support people with emotions and struggles particular to adoptees, first/birth parents, and adoptive parents—you’ve likely noticed an array of fiercely held perspectives on adoption.

While Adoption Land helps normalize and heal, there can be a danger in looking at adoption dogmatically or in an echo chamber.

Adoptive parents who sing the praises of adoption tend to lead the narrative that’s most familiar in mainstream culture: adoption is a beautiful thing, children are gifts, adoptive parents are selfless, orphans and unwanted children abound, and the best way to help them is through adoption.

This perspective, which elevates adoptive parents to saint-like status, misses the profound nuances of adoption and excludes important perspectives from other key players—adoptees and first/birth families (for simplicity, from here on referenced as birth families)—whose voices are critical to serving the adoption community.

Adult adoptees who speak out often focus on the trauma of adoption. Losing a mother is one of the greatest separations imaginable, and yet adoptee mother loss is often diminished, ignored, or equated with other kinds of losses. Adoptee pain is not the happy “positive” story of adoption that mainstream culture usually takes interest in, but it is scientifically proven: from the moment of relinquishment, adoptee brains are wired to protect from further loss. This can manifest as people-pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, aggression, depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, or other self-harm. These are critical, life-saving dynamics to shed light upon, and it’s important that adoptees continue to speak up about the effects of attachment loss.

But while unpacking the emotional turmoil that goes hand-in-hand with adoption, adoptees can get stuck in darkness and hopelessness. It’s easy to lose the “forest for the trees,” straying into the “Trauma Olympics,” or forgetting about the plasticity of the human brain and our enormous capacity for resilience. What’s more, over time adoptees may disengage with, or even block, adoptive parents, together with a large swath of society, after becoming fatigued or retraumatized by constant microaggressions, gaslighting, and flawed information. But engage they must—especially if they feel a calling to support other generations of adoptees and work toward industry reform.

Birth parents’ voices are still desperately needed in Adoption Land. When birth parents remain silent, adoptees miss out on their perspectives, which can serve as a balm for the scars of relinquishment. Also, when birth parents remain quiet, adoptive parents may be prone to carry on as if first bonds don’t matter (out of sight/out of mind), when those first roots are deeply significant to most, if not all, adoptees and must be honored for everyone’s emotional health.

That said, it’s no secret that there’s a power dynamic that contributes to shaming and silencing birth parents. Adoptive parents, because they, unlike the birth parents, are actually parenting the children, naturally are in a superior position. Birth parents, observing from the shadows, are typically waiting for the moment they can join in. Some birth parents, so engulfed by the shame of their placement, are nowhere to be found. Entombed by the layers of their trauma and feelings of unworthiness, speaking out could be the last thing on their minds. Additionally, speaking out means talking about the present time as well as the past. An open adoption arrangement can be greatly affected by what birth parents choose to say. The consequences for speaking out could be dramatic: the difference between seeing your child or not, in visits or even just pictures.

This is why it’s important for birth parents to feel an invitation to enter Adoption Land—both from its participants and generally from adoptive parents—and why that invitation must be shame-free and punishment-free.

Working Together for True Change

Change happens when people work together. Although progress has been made, a greater evolution is still needed for the betterment of the 100 million families affected by adoption. We all benefit when we empathize with others and are willing to look within for what we can do.

Toward that goal, three women living in adoption share three different perspectives on working with others from within the adoption constellation. We’ll start with the adopted person for two reasons: first, this is the person in the “triad” who had no voice or choice in their relinquishment and adoption, and second, adoption practices are supposed to be about the “best interests of child”—a child who may at first seem readily adaptable, but grows to have her own independent views and voice.

Sara Easterly, Adult Adoptee

I recently met another mom, and as we talked, she learned that I was an author and adoptee. She asked about my memoir (Searching for Mom), and within minutes the conversation turned to her friends who were adoptive parents and might want to read my book. I nodded, momentarily basking in flattery … though it was rather short-lived. In the same breath, this mom started telling me about how awful these adopted children of her friends were: out-of-control, acting up, wreaking havoc on their families, and destroying their adoptive parents’ marriages.

I confess that I made an immediate, judgmental assessment of the adoptive parents without knowing them or understanding the situations further. Inside, I felt pretty irked by the double-standard: how culture loves to pretend adoption is about saving needy, powerless children, but when adoption gets hard or doesn’t add up to beautiful, it becomes about blaming the kids—no longer seen as needy and powerless. Instead, it’s their parents who are victims, overlooking the fact that they chose adoption and have benefitted from it too.

Thankfully, this mom was a long-winded talker, which gave me time for a lot of deep breaths that stopped me from speaking out of my anger. As she continued, I remembered the cultural lack of awareness when it comes to human attachment dynamics and how losses manifest, particularly for adoptees. Most people don’t even consider that adoption is rooted in loss.

I also thought about how hard parenting is when our children don’t behave as we’ve hoped and when we feel like we are failing them. As a mom, I’m aware that parenting has its pain points. I reflected on how difficult it is to admit that what we’re doing as parents isn’t working, and how much easier it is to blame our children and circumstances, rather than face ourselves or a situation we’ve had a hand in—a defense mechanism employed to protect us from pain. As an adoptee, too, I know about defense mechanisms. Noticing all of these commonalities was my path toward empathy for these adoptive parents and out of the “othering” line of thinking that could have propelled me to defend, attack, or shut down. I thought of my adoptive mom and what she might have said to her closest friends. I know I wasn’t always easy to parent either.

My adoption took place before there was much awareness or sharing of the effects of relinquishment. My parents, like so many others, were instructed to take me home and pretend as if my adoption made no difference in my life. With this as an unspoken rule, I grew up playing the same pretending game … but the long-term result was that I became an enigma to my parents. From most outward appearances, I seemed to be thriving. But my parents had no idea of the incredible grief, secret mother-fantasies, and flight from vulnerable feelings that boiled inside of me. My growth, as well as a deep attachment to my adoptive parents, was hindered by a lack of unity and information-sharing between all parties. How I wish my parents had had access to adult adoptees when I was a child and had been open to hearing perspectives from birth parents too! It may not have made parenting me a cakewalk, but I’m certain more awareness would have gone a long way for us all.

I don’t want to see other adoptees and families (both adoptive and birth families) getting unnecessarily stuck too. That’s why I continue to write and speak about my experiences now. It’s also why I listen—even when it’s hard, like it was when this mom shared about her friends’ adopted children. It can take effort, but it helps to see their perspectives as a gift. For one thing, their sharing helps me, as an adoptee advocate, see where more progress is needed. There’s a personal benefit too: an opportunity to continue my healing journey, with a less-personal window into parents’ struggles and needs. Similarly, by being in community with adoptive and birth parents, I know I am offering a gift: helping them understand the often-misunderstood hearts of adoptees.

Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, Birth Mom

Birth parents who speak about their adoption experiences are more often birth mothers than birth fathers. From this perspective, birth moms who speak out typically fall into one of two groups.

First are those who speak from the traumatizing circumstances surrounding their placement that has left an open wound. The circumstances that have deeply affected them could have been any number of events, but most often they have either been forced or coerced to place their children or they have heavy regret about their decisions. In more recent times, many birth moms are speaking out because promises that were made to uphold an open adoption were broken.

Second are the birth mothers who are relatively fresh out of their placements and aim to testify about their experience for inspirational purposes. They typically tell their stories while parroting the extremely positive rhetoric taught to them from whomever facilitated their adoption. Most often, these are women whose adoptions were open to some degree. Perhaps they are looking for some sort of redeeming value in what was an almost unbearably painful chapter in their lives. This may explain why some become adoption cheerleaders early in their post-placement journeys.

Each group of birth moms is aware of the other; they often find themselves in stark opposition one another, clinging to their rigid perspectives of how adoption has affected their lives. Both groups have more in common than they know, even in their different experiences, levels of openness, and trauma sources. It’s highly likely that both groups were told a sugar-sweet tale of how the adoption process would be. Some adoption professionals stash away critical information that would be useful to educate birth mothers on the after-effects of placing their children for adoption. This decision by adoption professionals—to conceal from birth mothers the inevitable mental and emotional outcomes of adoption—is likely made from fear of “negatively” influencing their adoption decisions, thus causing the professionals to lose thousands of dollars, damage their reputations, and erode the trust of their client: the prospective adoptive parents.

It’s no surprise that when a baby leaves the arms of one of these birth moms, all of the rah-rah rhetoric that has set the birth mom upon a high heroic pedestal vanishes and leaves her to fall a long way back down to earth. The fall from adoption glory is a hard one. I, myself, have experienced the terror of the plunge. It was as though I walked out of the hospital and into a sea of “tell us your inspiring story of redemption!” Redemption? What do I need to be redeemed of? The pressure of turning our stories of relinquishment into a flowery fairy tale is an extension of the shame placed upon single pregnant women. It took me some time to confront my faulty ideals of adoption, but with each milestone of understanding, I chipped away at the conflict within myself and parted ways with the shame surrounding my adoption and pregnancy. More important, this prepares me to one day have real and honest answers to the questions my child will ask. My imperfections and those in my story are not to be hidden away or crafted into a phony fable; facing the ugly head-on is healing in the long run.

I speak up to demystify the less familiar and often unavailable birth mom perspective. To keep our voices clear and audible, we must continuously protect our paper from presumptive pens. Every time we disappoint society’s craving for a fairy-tale ending, we dismantle the shame and free other birth mothers from the captivity of a dishonest narrative. Through listening to each other and speaking in truth, we can remove the barricades to deeper relationships with our children.

Lori Holden, Adoptive Mom

Many (not all) adoptive parents come to domestic infant adoption after enduring the indignities and grief of infertility. Like fertility treatments, the process to adopt can be invasive, uncertain, and fraught with emotion. By the time new parents finally bring home a baby, it’s no wonder they might end up thinking the whole process was “worth it,” “meant to be,” and that all their troubles are behind them. That neither they, nor their beloved babies, will ever need to worry about anything adoption-related again.

It’s a short leap to “adoption is wonderful. Just look at us as proof!”

I’m not just speaking about others. That was me. I joined the ranks of insufferable new adoptive parents back in my early days of adopting my daughter and my son. In the time before social media, when parents gathered in online bulletin boards and forums, I went in proclaiming my amazing! experience! as the truth of everyone in adoption. After all, I felt it so fully it must be The Truth!

It didn’t take long to find out just how wrong I was.

I got called out on a forum for my exuberance and audacity—rightly so. Though it hurt, I began to listen—especially to adult adoptees and birth moms who explained to me situations similar to those Sara and Kelsey have shared here. I began to understand the complexities and nuances of adoption. I began to gain a wider array of perspectives that helped me become a more attuned and empathetic mom to my children. I am grateful for the adoptees, birth parents, and other adoptive parents who have helped me to see beyond the “adoption is wonderful” narrative.

Listening to, much less engaging with, people who are less-than-positive about adoption can seem scary. You’re positive, they’re negative. What could a Negative Nancy possibly have to say worth listening to? Turns out, a lot, if we listen from a place of openness. When we can actually understand practices that have harmed the Saras and the Kelseys (and even the Loris) of Adoption Land, we can then make different and better decisions. For example, once I began hearing the common lament from adoptees that splitting their loyalty between their adoptive parents and birth parents was painful for them, I began embracing a Both/And heart set, which replaced the prevailing Either/Or mindset. My daughter and son are better off for that.

What a fortunate time to be in, to have access to varied voices through the Internet. Instead of shying away from possible conflict, we should be taking advantage of these spaces that enable us to grow beyond our comfort zones.

Yet I also want to caution that there can be too much of a good thing. You can collect all of the insight from all of the voices and still not know what to do with it—much of it may even be conflicting. In addition to listening outside you, I also encourage you to listen within, to discern what is true for you and your situation. Find a balance between letting in other voices and tuning in to your own. In this way, you can cultivate confidence in how you approach adoption both in your own life and with others online. But not just confidence; confidence with compassion.

Leaps and Strides

It’s almost funny to consider how we, as a culture, took a leap to the “adoption is beautiful” fairytale when in reality it’s built on a foundation of loss, pain, and heartache. Perhaps this is a reflection of society as a whole, showing its fear of the dark and our existential human longing for an easy, breezy, happy ending.

Ironically, we can only make strides toward a satisfying ending when we embrace the full, real, messy aspects of adoption too. When we make proper room for all that is hard, there’s more space for the light. There can certainly be a lot of light in adoption—of course! But Adoption Land has historically spent decades tucking away the darker, harder parts, and it’s time to acknowledge that it’s complicated and look beyond our perspectives.

Perhaps this is the challenge for each group in Adoption Land: to recognize that each of us is carrying pain. The adoptee has the pain of separation. Birth parents have the pain of relinquishment and shame. Adoptive parents have the pain of insecurity and sometimes grief from previous losses. Seeing each other’s pain is what gives us empathy for one another.

With empathy as the baseline, the second challenge is to listen to each other. Listening to others’ perspectives can be hard and may sometimes seem like a tall order. Until we feel solid in our own beliefs, we might find others’ views threatening or stifling. But once we find our confidence, listening is where significant growth can unfold. If we listen only to voices that come from our perspectives in the triad, or to people with whom we already agree, we won’t discover information that may help us become better versions of ourselves. We can get stuck. Being open to others’ perspectives not only can help us make better decisions at the personal level, but can also improve Adoption Land by advocating for practices and policies that more effectively serve us all.Sara Easterly is an award-winning author of books and essays. Her spiritual memoir, Searching for Mom, won a Gold Medal in the 2020 Illumination Book Awards, among many other awards and honors. Easterly’s adoption-focused articles and essays have been published by Psychology Today, Dear Adoption, Feminine Collective, Godspace, Her View From Home, and Severance Magazine, to name a few. Follow her on Facebook, on Twitter @saraeasterly, and on Instagram @saraeasterlyauthor.Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard is the director of advocacy and policy at AdoptMatch. She’s a birth mother who is passionate about greatly raising the standards in adoption to better serve the children, mothers, and families affected by family separation. Ranyard has worked at various agencies and law firms in the adoption field and can often be found fervently and frequently begging the question, “How do we fix this?” She is also a co-host of the birth mom podcast,Twisted Sisterhood. Follow her on Instagram @fromanothamotha.Lori Holden writes at LavenderLuz.com and hosts the podcast Adoption: The Long View. She’s the author of The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole, written with her daughter’s birth mom and acclaimed by people in all parts of the adoption constellation. She has keynoted and presented at adoption conferences around the US, and her work has appeared in magazines such as Parenting and Adoptive Families. Follow her on Facebook, on Instagram @Lavluz, and Twitter @Lavluz.BEFORE YOU GO…

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

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

By Lisa CollinsWhen you were but two years old, I came into being.

We were unaware of one another’s presence, but we co-existed.

Separated by a thousand miles, yet side by side on this planet, we grew.

We were born alone, no siblings with whom to form that unique bond.

We were given a name and assigned a family.

But somewhere out there, just beyond reach, the other was there.

I don’t know why we were allowed to live for more than 50 years without one another, and why we weren’t permitted the connection so many take for granted.

Were we somehow assigned the payment for sins of the fathers?

Why were we destined to miss out on the comfort, the familiarity, of another human connected by blood, intertwined for life?

We will never know. We will always wonder.

We will never get that time back.

But from this point forward, we now know.

There is another person, no longer unreachable and distant.

A person with whom we share blood, and genetics, and values.

Silly little things, like a preference for rice.

Difficulty swallowing.

And a dark, easy tan.

And big, important things,

like stubbornness and independence.

Fierce loyalty.

Refusal to follow illogical rules.

And a smartass sense of humor.

We will never again be without.

No one can ever take this away.

We have less time left to be siblings than we had to be without.

So I choose to acknowledge, honor, and place immense value on this fact:

For the rest of my time on this planet, I will be

Finally, and forever,

Your sister.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.