My Story Related

Given up at birth in Austin TX, I was thankful to both the foster family who nurtured me and the permanent family who named and raised me.  I went home to Betty Cook Drive where my new father sold life insurance while my new mom answered phones for Walter Carrington Homes.  My brother, Keith, came a few years later.  The newly formed and completed family followed dads’ new career, now in chemical sales, moving to Belton MO and Houston TX before moving back to Austin, this time west in 1985 to the lake area onto Geronimo Trail.

Attending Lake Travis High School was a blast.  No one skipped school unless we could be on the lake - skiing, floating, knee-boarding and having fun.  I knew a few other kids who were adopted.  Tami knew some info about her birth-mom being a teenager in California.  Pat didn’t know much either but always thought it might have been a distant relative in the same type of situation.

My story was different and often stumped listeners.  My records stated a 40 year old mother who gave me up to Child and Family Services.  What was unique was that I was listed as child #7 from a family here in Austin.  How desperate a mother must be?  Growing up with this information lent itself to impossible dating situations.  Any man crazy enough to be interested in my freckled skin and big mouth would have to pass the sibling test; more than four and he was out the door.  After all, I couldn’t take any chances on alien offspring.

Into my college years, my brother, Keith’s family came searching for him.  Instigated by the death of her son, the birth grandmother wrote a letter to Lutheran Social Services seeking to know the lost son’s only child.  In his elation I secretly mourned that no one found me.  Was any one even looking? Did anyone even care?  I used to think in times of self pity and during some brief and some not so brief bouts of depression.  My mother and I made several attempts to open my records with Travis County, both times denied.  Oh well.  Maybe it was something awful that I was better off never knowing.  I had to be okay with that, I thought.

Our family was a hodge podge of personalities but we all loved UT.  Dad had been a UT glee club member and wrestler, a recognizably odd combo.  Mom had been a UT freshman cheerleader before dropping out to support dad’s education.  Attending UT on and mostly off for eighteen years, I bled orange like the rest of them.  I finally crossed the diploma finish line in May 2008.  Granted I was 35, married with two beautiful children, yet somehow realized that a new chapter could finally begin in my life.  What I didn’t realize was that this chapter would come full circle.

In the fall with the kids settled into new routines, I decided to proceed with my teaching certification affording me a position to gain the experience, schedule and financial means to move on to complete grad school and fulfill a childhood dream of becoming a writer and professor.  This decision took me to substitute teaching as a means of testing the waters.  On a break in the library during a conference period in December, while searching unrelated topics, I found a website called Adopteeconnect.com.  Already listed on every adoption registry in the nation, which had led nowhere, I almost failed to enter my information.  Something in me just said Do it this one last time and then just let it go forever.  So, I entered the basics.  I had no names, just birthdates and a sibling count.

Less than two weeks later, on Christmas Eve I received an email with two data entries.  Both started with Infant of….one name was Busby and the other Driskell.  A short message below the entries stated simply, “Match the file number of your current birth certificate to the file number of one of these records.  The matching name is your birth mother.” It was so matter of fact.  It was so real.  It was so SIMPLE.  I searched for an old copy of my birth certificate and finding none I ordered one online. I let Christmas Day pass, cooking rib roast and other comfort food for my family.  My second time ever to host Christmas and everyone came.  It was one of our most peaceful holidays ever.

Not being able to wait to know, the next morning I phoned my folks and asked them for some info for my passport renewal application.  I knew they weren’t buying my story but I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes raised.  Dad played along, calling out the number for me over the phone.  Just like that …Driskell was a match.  Now I had a name.  I notified the search angels of the hit and within six hours I had a list of previous addresses and phone numbers for a birthmother and six siblings.  The strange thing, all were within a few blocks of places I had lived and worked as a young adult in Austin TX.  They were all here the whole time.  One was on Wild Turkey Pass, blocks from my teenage home.

Reading the names to my husband, Greg said I used to work with that guy.  Does it say he lives in Apache Shores?  Yes, close to where I lived on Geronimo.  One call from my husband to an old friend led to an immediate reunion with three brothers I had never known five blocks from where I snuck out with boys and learned to drive.  The warm welcome and stories of a mother with no resources suddenly became glaringly real to me.  One son called me the lucky one, the one who got out.  Overwhelming feelings of guilt swept over me as they spoke of their hardships.  I thought of all the times I had been spoiled and spouted nasty remarks about having to have the latest Guess jeans or Polo shirts.  These kids had nothing.  I was told how each of the boys had one pair of jeans for all of high school, such a large size that the waist had to be folded over and held tight with a belt.  That same pair was worn day after day.  I cried.

Living alone in South Austin at 77 years old, my birthmother needed some time to process the news.  With plans to meet in the near future, all I want to say is   -  Thank you.  Thank you for doing for me by giving me up what you couldn’t do by keeping me.  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be loved, cherished and spoiled.  Thank you for giving parents who couldn’t have children the hope joy and pain of raising one of their own. Simply…thank you for life and for being born in Austin TX.  I love this town.

Kristie

Growing up as a young child I had no idea just how much adoption had to do with my life. Born a child to an adoptee, I only knew that ‘Mom was adopted’. Her adoptive parents were my grandparents and I knew nothing else.

It wasn’t until I entered the foster care system at age 13, did I begin to wonder about where our blood relatives might be. And it wasn’t until I lost my own daughter to adoption did the whole family tree come into full view.

My family is three generations affected by adoption. My grandparents lost their two young children because they were young and on their own. Back in the 50’s, adoption was about finding homes for orphans. There was no such thing as welfare or social programs, you either could make it on your own or you couldn’t.

Losing his children was devastating. During the closed adoption era, he could not get his children back and he never knew where they went. So it was no small miracle that my family reunited some forty years later. I believe that adoption affected my mother in many ways which directly affected my childhood. My mother could not properly bond with her children and did not always protect me. When I went into care I had no idea that i was in the middle of a damaging cycle of abdandonment and abuse by the system.

Losing my youngest daughter to adoption still colors my life deeply. It was another repetition of the system dismantling a family instead of providing support. I did not want her adopted but I didn’t want her to suffer or linger in foster care. And because I was considered unworthy to parent my child due to my background with foster care, I caved to a lot of pressure and coercion. I did not because I wanted to, but because there was no other choice.Having been recently sexually assaulted and temporarily homeless, I asked for help. Adoption was not help. But it was the only answer the social workers had for us.

It has been eight years since my daughter was adopted. The adoption was considered open because I knew the foster family she was going with. I believed that my older daughter and I would have open contact and visits. Those visits never materialized. As I’ve suffered with every heart break coming from the adoption, I’ve also learned a great deal. Too many children are being offered up like possessions. Too many young mums are losing the most precious bond in their lives. Sadly nothing has drastically changed in the last four decades. We still do not help families in their time of need.

Adoption is a heart wrenching and devastating act against a mother and her child. To have the first and most important bond tampered with and broken is a tragedy. As a society we buy into a lot of myths so that we can make it seem happy. I wish that it was.

I long to be near my daughter and think of her every day. I have gone through every stage of grief, but because there is no closure, she is out in the world, I can have no peace. I’ve learned to live with sadness and regret, the shadows that haunt me when I least expect it. It’s hard to be around babies and toddlers and I can suddenly become sad in situations that remind me of her or the past. I know that adoption should be a last resort. I only have to look at my mother and grandfather to see how forty years didn’t change anything. She still needed to know where she came from and she still needed her Dad. My family is a real life case study of how adoption can damage families through the generations. I can only hope my daughters never have to face the agony of losing their children in the same way their elders did.

Jade
anatomyofabutterfly.blogspot.com

Mirah Riben

My life was irrevocably changed in 1968 when, lacking support, I succumbed to the pressure to surrender of my first-born child, a daughter, to adoption, becoming one of an estimated four million American mothers to surrender a newborn to adoption between 1940 to 1970; two million during the 1960s alone.

Like other mothers who turned a tragic loss into improving a social condition, i.e. Maureen Kanaka who established Megan’s Law in memory of her slain daughter; the founders of MADD, and many others, my mission in life is family preservation; prevention of unnecessary, unwarranted losses; providing honest and open alternative child care as a last resort to care for orphans and children who have no family able to provide safely for them without eradicating their heritage; family reunification; and regulation and licensure of adoption providers and agencies.

After losing my firstborn I became associate editor of three magazines in New York, married and bore three children. The following decades were filled with parental activities: playgroups, scout meetings, class mother, car-pooling, PTA, and La Leche League meetings. But I never forgot, as I had been advised to do.

Instead, I began a path of self-education, reading voraciously about adoption. Learning of adoptees and parents searching and reuniting, I longed for assurance that my daughter was thriving and cared for. I became one of the early members of Concerned United Birthparents, Inc. and within ten years, along with four other women, co-founded Origins, Inc., a New Jersey-based, national organization for mothers who lost their children to adoption, helping mothers deal with ongoing loss, grief, PTSD, shame, anger, search and reunion. A “pioneer,” I was among the very first mothers to “come out,” speaking publicly in the 1980’s.

As support group facilitator, I consoled mothers who found their adopted-out children in far less than the “better homes” than had been promised. Adoptees died in infancy while their mothers dreamed of them growing up, or had become disturbed adolescents, often on drugs. Adoptive parents divorced and died leaving adoptees with a single mother or terminated adoption. Mothers found children who had been physically and sexually assaulted, abandoned, imprisoned, killed in car crashes and even murdered. Much of this was documented my first book, shedding light on…The Dark Side of Adoption (1988) giving voice to what had heretofore been called the “invisible member of the adoption triad.”

Family members separated by adoption who search in the vast majority of states in which records are sealed are forced to deal with a quasi-legal underground. I knowingly risked imprisonment believing it was an act of civil disobedience to help reunite hundreds of families and also helped mothers prevent unnecessary adoption by providing temporary shelter. One mother I assisted subsequently married the father of her child and the mother of the other relented after seeing the baby and took them both back in. After the 1987 murder by Joel Steinberg of his illegally adopted child, Lisa, I coordinated a candle light vigil for Lisa and reunited the toddler boy found illegally adopted by Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum. Travis Smeigel has remained with the family who thought they couldn’t parent him, is now in college.

I was Director-at-Large of the American Adoption Congress and in 1990 organized a speak at the first march on Washington as well as a Red Tape ceremony at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York.
In 1983 I found my daughter’s adoptive family and offered updated medical information and to open the closed adoption. I later began to develop a relationship with my daughter. In 1995, her kids grown, employed full-time and attending college, I learned that my firstborn daughter had taken her life at just 27 years of age, another tragic statistical phenomenon of adoption. I took a step back from adoption issues as I healed from the loss, which took a toll physically as well as emotionally.

Ten years later, retried and on disability, I returned to adoption work to find that domestic infant adoption became the province of the private entrepreneurial sector with lax regulation. The dwindling “supply” of babies due to changes in social mores and access to birth control, coupled with increased “demand” left adoption no longer about finding homes for babies who needed care, but about finding babies to fill a demand by those willing to pay.  Outraged at the coercion, corruption and exploitation, I began research on what was to become my second book, The Stork Market:  America’s Multi-Billion Dollar unregulated Adoption Industry (2007). Once again an advocate and activist, determined to fight the Goliath baby brokering industry, I have persevered despite opposition of my efforts to change an accepted paradigm by exposing aspects of adoption that are difficult for many to accept or even believe.

I am currently Vice President of Communications of Origins-0USA.org. My books can be found at: www.AdvocatePublications.com.

Mirah

When I was 6 or 7 years old my Mother told me that I was not biologically hers and that my sister and I were adopted. This was stunning news because as a child I didn’t know what “adopted” meant and why this happened to me. Being labeled adopted made me feel different from everyone else and it explained why I didn’t resemble any family members. As I grew older I gained an appreciation of the blessing of adoption however I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing in my life. This void became more evident with the passing of every birthday, every Mother’s Day and even with the birth of my own children.  As any curious adoptee I had a host of questions including the obvious ones of wanting to know who my birth mother and father are, what were the circumstances in my birth mother’s life that caused her to give me up for adoption, did I have any siblings? And of course who do I look like?

Since I was part of a closed adoption, my adoptive parents had no information on my biological parents. So at the age of 22 I embarked on what would be a 20 year search for my biological mother. Over the years I would gather small pieces of information along the way but my searching was difficult because of the many obstacles and challenges that were encountered. Eventually I acquired the assistance of an experienced friend and before long I was put in touch with my niece, who connected me with her Mother which was my biological sister. She connected me with another sister I didn’t know I had. My sisters had known about me for years and had wanted to search for me but didn’t know where to begin .They were both stunned and delighted to learn I had been looking for our Mother and found them along the way. Surprisingly these two sisters led me to yet another sister on my father’s side, who in turn told me about another sister and brother I have yet to meet. Shortly thereafter I came face to face with the very woman who gave me life 42 years ago, my biological Mother. After a 20 year search this experience was simply overwhelming. I later learned my biological father was living in the same city. Since my biological parents were never married he didn’t know about my birth yet he was excited to learn he had another daughter. My sisters arranged for us to meet and that was indeed a joyous experience. The interesting thing is my biological family and I lived in the same city within minutes of each other, went to the same churches and schools and even knew some of the same people but never knew we were related!

My bio Dad’s wife was not the least bit thrilled I had suddenly arrived in the family. Despite the strong family resemblance she wasn’t ready to accept me and the fact that I was her husband’s daughter. She demanded a DNA test and essentially made things very difficult. I believed the only way I was going to have a relationship with my biological father was to comply with her request.

I talked to my bio Mom about this and she mentioned she had heard Identigene’s radio commercial and suggested that I go get the test and send it in just to get the peace of mind. So I went to Rite Aid, purchased the test. I then obtained the cheek samples from my bio parents and along with my own cheek samples sent them to the lab via overnight mail. The next day I received a call from customer service confirming they received my samples and to advise me that the results would be ready within 5 days. However being anxious I checked the website daily (well hourly is more like it) and by the third day my results were ready online! Needless to say the results confirmed that I had indeed found my biological parents and siblings. I was indeed the long lost daughter and sister. More importantly the accuracy and timeliness of the DNA results put to rest any doubters in the group.

I now have a wonderful relationship with my biological family and we are looking forward to many happy years together.

I don’t understand why so many families try to avoid visiting with each other during the holidays. They allow petty feuds and misunderstandings to get in the way of spending precious time together.

There are many adoptees in the world who would gladly trade places with them — adoptees who would love to spend time with their families but can’t because of closed adoption records, closed doors and closed hearts. They may never know the family with whom they would love to share the rest of their lives.

Many New Jersey adoptees have been waiting a long time for the opportunity to know their birth families. But since bill A752, which would make original birth certificates and other related information available to adoptees, has yet to be heard by the full Assembly, they will have spent another holiday season (and quite possibly the year ahead) without them.

My siblings and I never were supposed to meet. Our birth mother wanted it that way. In fact, she did everything in her power to keep us apart. But I walked into my family’s life one day anyway, unannounced, after 35 years. I appeared out of nowhere. I felt like an intruder — like someone who had burst onto a stage in someone else’s play. I had a good reason for being there, whether I was invited or not. My son was very ill and I needed to find my birth mother. I also needed to find my siblings. If my son’s illness ran in our family, there was a good chance that one of my siblings had it, too.

When my birth mother signed the adoption papers for me and my twin sister, she hoped we would disappear forever from her life and the lives of our siblings. She was terrified we would find one another some day and expose all her secrets. And our mother had a lot of secrets.

There are seven of us altogether (that we know of). After our mother’s arrest for child neglect, some of her children were placed with family members. Others went into foster care. Our birth mother reared the youngest sister, who was told the lie that her siblings were all “living out in California.” Our sister was shocked to learn our brother was actually living within walking distance of her house. Two other sisters also were unknowingly living in a different town, a few blocks away from each other. Mere miles separated the rest of us.

I was warmly welcomed into my family. Since finding each other 17 years ago, my siblings and I have spent every holiday season together. How could we not? We’ve got to make up for a lot of time that we lost. Grateful as I am for the time that I’ve gotten to spend with my siblings — one of the greatest blessings to come out of our now-healthy son’s crisis — there are moments when I’m selfish for more. Why did our mother try so hard to keep us apart?

Shame. That’s the word that filled our mother’s heart. An alcoholic woman in the 1950s who had children fathered by numerous men, she was an embarrassment to her family. When her family disowned her, her life spiraled downward until she was virtually destitute. So she lied a lot. She moved a lot. She changed her name a lot. She suffered excruciatingly until she tragically took her own life, before I had a chance to meet her. But I miss her whenever our family is together. Even though she and I never stood in the same room together, I try to conjure her presence whenever my siblings and I trade presents and stories and smiles.

I imagine her smiling, too. I imagine her finally at peace with all of her secrets — secrets that don’t matter in the least to any of her children.

I hope she knows what does matter to us is that we’re a family again. Nothing can compare to spending time with your family, whether you’ve always known them or are just getting to know them.

www.carolbarbieri.com

Story Credit: Asbury Park Press

When I was 19, I found myself unwed and pregnant. Through my own young beliefs and self doubts, the shock, disappointment and fears of those close to me and the encouragement of an adoption agency, I came to believe that the relinquishment and adoption of my first born son would be the answer to all the possible threats that would face us both in the life as a young single mother and a small child.

And though I loved my newborn baby with a fierceness and force that I had never felt before, I was assured that I was strong and selfless and would be a bringer of great joys to others with my emotional sacrifice. Never given birth before, never being a mother before the two precious days in the hospital holding my soon to be lost son, and told that what I was feeling was expected hormones; I underestimated the power of this primal connection and I went through the surrender like a good birthmother should. I signed my rights to be a mother away, dried my tears and went home to continue on my life as expected.

Nineteen years and 111 days later, I found myself on a great adventure.  I was returning to Boston, to the place of my son’s birth and this time, I would cry tears of joy as I was going to finally see him again.

It had taken us almost 2 years to get to the point of meeting face to face.

His was a traditional closed adoption as it occurred in 1987 and at that time, open adoptions were still not the norm.  I had no knowledge of what his name was, but without ever deciding that I would search for him, I did.  Once, I began it was as if a dam had broken within me and I was determined, obsessed, convinced that I would be able to locate him. And within three days, I had.  A trail of breadcrumbs had led me right to him. The feeling I had that night, 3 am, as I finally laid down to sleep was completely overwhelming. Just the knowledge that if I decided to, I could get into my car and drive just to breathe in the same air as him, was so satisfying.

Within the next nine months, I had made direct contact with him. It went against everything that is thought to be right about adoption. I was breaking many unspoken rules that people believe to be legal truths, but when it came down to it, I was a mother and my son was one click away. He was mere months away from being 18 and something inside me knew that I had to hit send. And so I did. When he understood who I was, his message read back to me: “Holy Smokes…Mom?”

I cannot explain how I knew certain things about him, but I did. I cannot explain how, raised among people so unlike myself, in a completely different environment, I could still recognize his inner nature.  There were so many similarities, it was more than coincidence. How we had the same taste in music. How we had the same sense of style. How a mutual love of Dr. Pepper, wild thunder storms and Mohawks connected us in a way that time and distance could not break. My delight that he too, owned his own pirate flag, as did myself, and my brother and my second son, and his amazement to find that we were descendants of pirates on both sides of my family tree.

And then we met.  And it was all true but even more. By the time we had finished our 9 ½ hour marathon of non stop talking, we were not only finishing each other’s sentences and giddy with happiness, but were both aghast at the undeniable strength of our bond. Nature trumped nurture hands down.

Later that year, my husband and I finally got around to getting married and Max came. It was a huge surprise for me and not only was I marring a man I loved, not only was I surrounded by friends and family, but for the first time in my life all my four children would be together in one place. I can easily say, without a doubt, it was the best day of my life.

There was not one person there who did not remark in some way about the incredible natural way that we all fit together. It was not just a mother and son who were reunited, but we were like a tribe that had become whole again. We were his people.

They only bittersweet sadness that crept in was the knowledge that we never really had to be separated to begin with.

I loved him at 19 as I loved him at 40. I was a good mother at 23 and with some small encouragement I would have been a good mother at 20. Yes, he had a good life and yes, his parents were happy and so was he, but the surrender just didn’t need to happen.  They would not ever have known what they missed and I would have missed him forever, because even without knowing him, I knew him.

If you would like to learn more of my story and how to help prevent the needless separation of mothers and children through adoption, please visit my adoption blog: Musings of the Lame.

Claudia