By Kristen SteinhilberI had just moved, with only a couple weeks in my new apartment under my belt. I had very recently begun to emerge from the fog, so as you might imagine, this particular moving process was my most hectic yet. Reunion with my biological mother had fallen through about five years prior, and she hadn’t spoken to me since. But I knew, with the new insight I’d gained about the impact adoption has had on me, that I had to write her a letter.

First, with every muscle in my body clenched so hard it hurt, I wrote to push her away; to tell her every horrible thing that had ever happened to me, and to vehemently convey that it was all her fault. I finished a few interpretations of that letter, each time with my finger hovering above the send button, unable to press down. I didn’t understand; I’d thought about the closure sending it would bring me for a while. But then I remembered the time The Dixie Chicks’ Wide Open Spaces came on the radio and we sang along together and how her embrace felt like home. And I realized I didn’t want to push her away. I finally admitted to myself that not only did I need her, but I also wanted her in my life. I finally admitted to myself that she is my mother.

I went back to the drawing board; this time with hope and a sense of relaxation in my shoulders. I started to write the letter that I just knew would fix everything and get me my mother back.

Dear Ava,*

I don’t know how to let you know about a lifetime’s worth of feelings without bombarding you. So I’m resorting to doing just that. Please try to keep in mind that I only intend to help you hear, acknowledge, and understand me, and that I entirely lack the intention to attack, shame, or berate you.

I don’t know if you think that I’m the same as a peer or another family member with whom you have a more conventional and grounded relationship. Or that disagreements followed by years of radio silence is fine. But I’m not a peer or a family member who always knew you. I’m the daughter who was raised in a family that wasn’t my own because of bad timing and circumstance.

I acknowledge all of what you had to weigh and that the decision you made was pure, out of love, and made in order to give me the best chance at the best life possible. I’ve had admiration and respect in multitudes for it. But I had no choice other than to accept and forgive since the day I was born. As I got old enough to decide for myself, I still chose to accept and forgive. The moment I was given a chance to meet you, I chose to accept your presence in my life. Eventually, I chose to give you pieces of myself, and finally, I even chose to give you my trust. Acceptance and forgiveness regenerate with ease, but when your life starts the way mine did with a broken bond and no choice in the matter, it also starts with a massive deficit of trust. I actually never got out of the negative space; something always happens to keep me there. The amount I gave you, I got it on loan.

I have given more to you throughout the course of my life than I realized until all I got was your disregarding absence. That absence continues to further break something in me, and I don’t deserve it. Candidly, I’m running out of tape and glue.

I know you suffered an unimaginable loss when I was born and that a part of you died when you couldn’t take me home to raise in your family. I know that the very subject of me causes you pain and grief. I also know the world doesn’t make room for the particular kind of pain you’ve felt and that opportunities to talk about it freely and without filtering are rare. I know that causes the pain and grief to turn into anger, guilt, shame, and numbness.

I don’t know the lay of the landmine on your end, but I do understand that’s what it is. A landmine of 33 years’ worth of explosive affliction underfoot.

I know this because unimaginable loss was my birthright.

Again, I respect it. You were mature and capable beyond your years. You didn’t leave me on a doorstep with a note and an extra bottle. You placed me responsibly into the hands of professionals whom you knew had found me a home and fit parents. I think I remember hearing that I was physically healthy, so at some point you must even have started intaking more nutrients than the average teenager. You left your friends, your pom poms, the boyfriend who knocked you up, your home, your family, and everything else about your adolescent life behind to take care of me. You were up north at your aunt’s house preparing to give birth to a child you knew you might never meet while you should have been having senioritis.

You did good, Ava. Maybe it’s weird to say that I am proud of you, but I can’t think of a better way to say it. You did everything you could have. You didn’t just become a mother that day; you outdid yourself in your role as my mother.

The moment your role was to relinquish regimentation and have faith, I inherited a massive role and responsibility—to adapt. The world’s lack of acknowledgement that I experienced that unimaginable loss as well was what dismally became my inheritance.

Science shows that infants have instinctual awareness and memory. The loss of you was a trauma my brain doesn’t recall, but my body does. Apparently, I wasn’t knitting a sweater in there; I was bonding with you.

Fighting my biological awareness and memory of that broken bond as if it were natural was expected of me from the start. I was told losing everything with my first breath was something to be grateful for. I was saved. That never clicked with me as quite right, because it wasn’t. Now I know that attachment disruption is acknowledged as relinquishment trauma, and not being given a chance to grieve is acknowledged as adoption trauma. How well I adapted to surroundings that didn’t reflect me became how I understood my value and place in the world.

When I was in 3rd grade, my best friend who lived down the street was at my house and we were playing with sidewalk chalk. We were arguing about who gets to choose what game to draw and play. I went with the typical nine-year old’s stance: My house, my sidewalk chalk, my choice. Keep in mind that she was a sweet kid, just thoughtless in the moment (yet impressively calculated) with her rebuttal, “Yeah but your parents aren’t really your parents, so it’s not really your house or your sidewalk chalk.”

“What a relief, thank you for saying that out loud,” I remember thinking. “Now please do me a solid and go ask my mom to explain like, all of it and then come back and tell me what she said. Word for word. Do. Not. Paraphrase.”

Instead, I stormed away angry on behalf of my mother. On behalf of myself, I felt nothing but numb and confused. I knew that I was supposed to be mad, so I was. I stayed fake mad because it made my mom happy, and I thought maybe I would be mad mad if I tried hard enough. I couldn’t, which I felt guilty for. So much that I almost confessed to my mom so she could punish me appropriately. But I didn’t think telling her how I really felt was worth hurting her feelings, so I just made myself sick with shame. And to punish myself, I didn’t talk to my best friend for almost the entire school year. I caved on the last day of school. Self-sacrifice is a very strange instinct for a third-grader.

My whole life I’ve been consumed by trying and failing to maintain a sense of self because I’ve been trying to exist in two worlds; one that doesn’t accommodate my longing for the other, which is filled with mystery and ghosts. It’s relentless discomfort, anxiety, phantom pain, and hiding.

I was listening to a TED Talk by a social worker whose work focuses on adoption. It was about the unnecessary obstacle course along the path to reuniting with birth family and the need for change in this process. She said something that seemed to stop my heart for more than a few beats: my original birth certificate is state property, and I have no legal access to it. But if I were able to see it, I would see on the side of the document that it had been stamped with one of those ink stamps used to save time. Like the original birth certificates of adoptees in many states in the country, the document was stamped with the word “Void.”

What I have instead is an “amended birth certificate.”

I have always relied on the language of symbolic comparison as a way to explain and relate, and a stamp that invalidates my original identity is the most perfect symbol to explain why. I rely on anecdotal relatability because my access to a real sense of belonging is void. It’s never been tangible.

I am an amended version of myself, and that’s a very hard way to live. I am defined by the loss of you I didn’t grieve for, and the rest of me is made up of dissonance.

I have lived my whole life in fear of the fact that I could lose my seat at the table in an instant. I come by it honestly. I know you feel many of the things I feel and that the very subject of me causes you pain. But I finally am able to have compassion for myself after 33 years of thinking I’m not worth the trouble. Only now can I definitively say that your pain is not a good enough reason for you to treat me as if I’m unlovable. Your fears are not a good enough reason for me to let them amplify mine.

I thought reunion was supposed to fix me, but I’ve learned that isn’t how it works. I always enjoyed spending time with you all, but I think I just went through the motions and ended up feeling more alone. I know now reunion could never be that simple. Meeting you would not have repaired my traumatized brain, and it wouldn’t fix yours either. There’s absolutely no way you don’t have PTSD in some form as well. Giving up control over everything that will happen to a child that you gave birth to is unnatural and goes against every instinct a mother has. It’s not something you just move on from with only faith to hold you up.

As for me, I’ve blamed everyone and no one at the same time for the wreckage. I’ve gone down the list and been angry with pretty much everyone I know for at least a little while. Doctors who throughout my childhood attributed clear cut signs of manifested trauma to stress, but shrugged them off and said I was “just a little tightly wound.” The therapists and psychiatrists who misdiagnosed me after I spent countless hours on their couches. My parents, of course, for not helping me find my own truth, which would have helped me obtain a proper diagnosis a long time ago. I landed on “everything” for the most amount of time. The ignorant, narrow, and damaging speak surrounding the whole topic of adoption. A reductive narrative that takes a process where most everyone involved is either nobly intended or an innocent newborn, all of whom have lost something so significant that they will never be the same, and wrings it out until it’s a shitty, low-budget Hallmark film. I blamed the fucking thing it’s called. “Adopted.” If that was intended as some form of shorthand, they should not have been in charge of naming things. It’s too fucking short. It’s a denial of enormous grief, and erases everything except what goes on some legal documents that end up sitting in a file cabinet. It takes away the story and, more importantly, the voice of everyone involved in one way another.

As I said before, I don’t know the lay of the landmine on your end. But in the midst of all the anger I felt when trying to figure out who was to blame, it occurred to me that whoever named it the thing it’s called—“adopted”— it seems like it had to be a birth mother.

The whole thing about the adopted child being chosen by the loving adoptive family and saved by them to go live a happily ever after life—it sounds like a hopeful birth mother who felt she should keep herself out of it just in case it would cause her child pain. Or she was made to go away because of stigma, but requested that her child be told they are the main character in a real-life fairytale.

That got me thinking about what happened to you. The fact that you were expected to leave your home and move to a strange place to endure one of the most traumatic experiences a person could have, at 18 years old, because others might shame and stigmatize you instead of supporting you. I always recognized that as a load of fucking horseshit, but you had told me about those circumstances so casually that it never sunk in how horrible that really was. There is nothing about that you deserved, and it never should have happened. You never should have had to go through that. You never should have been burdened with shame and rejection on top of loss. You were a child.

I’m not convinced that the situation would be a whole lot different today. Definitely not as different as it should be. So that’s my answer. The only thing to blame is “the way things are.” I have never had goals or very much direction in life until now, but I know I want to help change this garbage version of “the way things are” for as many adoption triads as I can. I don’t know what that means yet, and I have a lot of work to do on myself before I can start to figure it out.

I don’t know who I am, but I do know what I stand for. I wholeheartedly believe everyone deserves to heal and that they should. Especially from the things they went through as kids. And I know there is no way that you have. Adoption-competent mental health professionals are like unicorns even today, so there is no way in your situation that you got the support you needed. The fact that we don’t speak is proof of that. And you have to stop pretending that the problem is me. I don’t deserve it at all.

I’m a good kid. I have a larger than life capacity to provide a safe space for people to feel their pain, especially the kind the world does not make room for. I have been through enough. I lost you before I could ever know you at the beginning of my life. I lost my mom before I could ever know her at the beginning of my coming of age story. All of that was so hard on me that I tried to die. Then immediately after that, as I was trying to want to live, I lost you again. Give me a damn break, man. Stop treating me as if I am the problem. I can help, and you can have some time, but this is the last time I will be reaching out.

I don’t trust easily, but I sure as shit don’t scare easily either. We are not a conventional mother and daughter. Our shit is very extra by nature. Trust me, I had a much different letter written just last week. I had a right to every teenage angst-influenced word, too. It’s natural to idealize your mother and be disappointed and furious and crushed by her when she doesn’t live up to that ideal. I have gone through a lifetime of emotions, naturally childlike, when it comes to you on a very strange and inconvenient timeline, and I have had to parent myself through every bit of it. I have reached an adult resolve without even writing emo song lyrics on my Converse with a Sharpie. I am a proud-ass mama.

You have a right to all your feelings too. I am hurt by open-ended silence, but I don’t think there’s anything you could say that I wouldn’t understand to some degree. I’m a subject that’s caused you 33 years’ worth of pain. You don’t need to slap a pink bow on that shit. You could have wished I was never born, and I would understand that.

Try me. I will absolutely surprise you. Just don’t deflect and avoid and leave me alone in the process. I can’t even act tough and stand up to it. I have never had the luxury of not knowing exactly how fragile I am every moment of my life. So, please. I deserve persistent acceptance and kindness.

Anyway, about everything else, I am a bit of a psychological breakdown junkie, and I have read a ton lately about the adoption triad in general. I am happy to send links and resources. And to listen.

Btw, seeking community has helped me a lot. There are plenty of online adoptee support groups, and I would imagine that there are also birth mother support groups out there. Hearing other people’s stories is healing, even if you don’t have the desire to interact with the group.

Xoxo, Kristen

It’s been 9 months, and she hasn’t sent any sort of response. I imagine this is still sitting there, swarming in on her, perceived at a glance to be the indictment of the ages. Misunderstood and avoided like bad news. My unsung apocalyptic longing weighing down her inbox.

*Name changed for privacy reasons Steinhilber is a private domestic adoptee with a passion for adoptee rights and mental health advocacy. You can follow me her on Instagram and Twitter: @girlxadapted 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: @sandrafckingdee

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should I answer the letter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 Candace CahillFor years I kept his blue baby blanket in the bottom right-hand drawer of my dresser.

I stole it from the hospital.

I remember lifting it to my face and noting the sharp odor of sour milk mingled with the intoxicating scent of baby. Without a thought, I slipped the soft, waffle-like material into my brown paper sack.

When I got home, alone and hollowed out, I curled into a fetal position with the blanket bunched up like a pillow and cried.

I refused to wash it, hoping to hold on to what little remained.

In fragile moments, those times I couldn’t pretend anymore, I’d pull it out to hide my face and collect my tears. When the storm passed, I’d fold and tuck it away, careful to nestle his first pacifier and hospital identification bracelet, the one with the name I gave him on it, into the center, like eggs in a nest.

Now, thirty years later, that blanket cradles the other keepsakes I have of him. Pages of handwritten updates from his early life. A collection of school pictures and snapshots from vacations and holiday parties with his adopted family. A construction paper daisy chain. And now, his funeral program and a favorite stuffed animal, Scrappy, handed over by his adopted dad as an offering of solidarity.

Over the years, the blanket faded from baby-blue to the color of glacial ice, and my tears washed away his scent.

All that remains is the stale smell of sadness.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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• 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.