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

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.