by JeanWidner | Jun 9, 2023 | Adoptee Stories, Birth Parent
From deep inside the womb, I know both love and sadness. They ripple through my blood, my bones, and intertwine to create the essence of me.
This invisible truth sits inside, certain, a spark that will not die. Like the campfire that no matter how much dirt or water you douse it with, an unseen whiff of breeze keeps the embers glowing. I tend it closely.
***
My mother lives in the bungalow. The house that is not a home where she has been sent to have me and give me up to God and the powers that swirl around her. Other girls are with her. They mirror her story. At the age of eighteen and unwed, she has been sent halfway across the country from the only place she has ever lived.
Beyond the shame of her circumstances, are other pains. Her stepfather of the past five years is not only the Chief of Police, but abusive to both her and her mother. Nothing will happen to him in that small North Dakota town. He can do as he pleases with his women.
***
I come kicking and squealing onto this earth at 11:30 in the morning on April 21st, 1965. With this first breath I already feel my mother’s love. She has spoken without words her hopes and fears of the last nine months. I have drunk from her soul, fed on the unseeable parts of her, grown and thrived despite the desperation of her world. I know only her.
My father, a young, enlisted soldier met her at a dance two years prior. They dated, broke up, but reunite. He is then transferred from the nearby air base all the way to Alaska. He says he will not marry her. Not only because he sees no way he can support them, but also because of their religious differences.
My mother is Catholic and he a serious Methodist. Organized religion has thoroughly indoctrinated these two young people into believing they are too different to build a life together.
More has been done with less, but the constraints of their society show no respite from its pressures.
***
In the bungalow, letters come and go. Phone calls provide no answers. No peace. She recovers from her labors and prays. And curses. And weeps. She holds me and feeds me, maybe even from her breast.
Social workers give advice. “Oh honey, it will all work out. You’ll see, this will all be for the best.” There is only one story allowed in this house, and it is that she must do this, give me away for both her well being and mine. No other options are considered.
***
They bring me to her daily. I know her voice from the womb, know her smell. Within my bundle I feel her fear, her sadness, and her anger. I wonder how many times she cries.
Fifty years later in her darkest nights, does she think of me?
She gives me no formal name, but many of these young women have a ‘crib name’ for their babies. I do not know mine.
***
In the bungalow, there are more words from the experts who guide her, “If you name her, it will be harder on you to let her go.” For days she continues to recover. Her youth feels heavy on her shoulders as she prays to her omnipotent God that provides no new answers.
Eventually the letters and the calls and the unfairness of it all wring her out. She is left with only her shed tears and dying hopes and finds she has no choice.
***
Nine days after I was born, she walks into a courtroom and signs the papers that leave her bereft. I am no longer hers, and she is no longer mine. By the act of a pen and the closed minds that surround her, a woman she will never see again carries me away to be raised by another mother.
But before she goes, I dream, that the last moment she sees me, she reaches out one more time. Within the blanket wrapped tightly around me, her hand brushes the air by my puffy cheeks and barely touches my hair. And that speck of flame comes to life with the tiniest breeze that no one else can feel but me.
by Guest Post | Apr 10, 2023 | Adoptee Stories
This is a guest post, written by Dirk Uphoff
Back in the Summer of 1968, my family and I went on vacation to visit my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins. This was not our typical Summer vacation of fishing up North. This particular summer vacation, we drove the entire way from Central Illinois to Nashville, Tennessee.
I was eight years old then, and my older brother was getting ready to turn thirteen. I remember thinking my brother would become a teenager, which for me was such a cool thing!
My parents told me we would be driving through Kentucky, so I made them promise that we would eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was certain I would get a chance to meet Colonel Sanders. Wow, I was so excited!
But of all the things I was looking forward to, nothing compared to the fact that once we arrived at my Uncle’s, we were going to have dinner at the Country Club!
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what that meant, but my brother said it was going to be really good and really fancy. So I was beside myself with anticipation. This would prove to be the best vacation ever!
During our drive South, I remember talking incessantly about the Country Club. I’m sure I was driving my parents up the wall and probably got my little sisters talking about it too. Once we finally arrived, I remember telling my Aunt how excited I was about going to the “Country Club.”
After spending a day or so at my uncle’s house having fun with my cousins, I remember my aunt started to talk about her famous blueberry pancakes. I liked pancakes, but I had never heard of blueberry pancakes! Every time our paths crossed, she reminded me of those blueberry pancakes.
I will never forget what happened. On the day we were going to the Country Club, my Aunt said she had a surprise for me. With bated breath, I looked up at her as she told me we weren’t going to that “busy” Country Club. We were going to stay there and have blueberry pancakes instead!
I tried to hide my disappointment, but doubt I did a good job of it. I remember looking at my Mom and seeing a combination of anger and sadness on her face, yet covered up by a weak smile.
You may have guessed by now that I’m a transracial adoptee. My first Mom was White, and my first Dad was Black. We know what that makes me in 1968 Nashville.
We never saw much of my Aunt and Uncle from Nashville after that. I didn’t know why then. I do now.
by JeanWidner | Feb 22, 2023 | Adoptee Stories
The mother who raised me was an addict. She and my father adopted me, but I’m not sure why. In 1962 when you got married, you started a family. Those were the rules. Never mind that my mother had already begun her dark slide into depression and addiction. The dual burdens that would haunt her psyche and mine for the formative years of our intertwined lives.
Now, as an adult, it is impossible for me to separate the effects of growing up adopted from the problems of being raised with addiction.
See one of Monty Python’s Flying Circus cartoons with my head in the center. The cartoon image springs to life and takes a can opener to me. Creak, creak, creak, and pops my head open like a Pez dispenser. Two hands come down into my brain and start rummaging around in the muck that is me. Two signs sit to the left and right – one says adoption, the other addiction. A hand pulls out one pile of goo and vacillates, wobbling between the two sides – which pile to put this in? Let’s go with adoption. Another scoop comes out, same routine, we’ll plop this mess onto the addiction slop. Lack of trust – glop. Abandonment – drop that over here. Fear of loss – squish. On it goes.
My brain bits now oozing all over, the only thing I can be certain of is that I’m not sure it matters. My inner being, that little girl – she just needs to heal herself now as an adult. I’m uncertain if there is value in sorting through it all to define which traits come from where. My job is to become whole again despite the trauma.
When I was little, I took ballet and gymnastics classes at the St. Claire Dance Studio. We had a practice room with bars, and in one section was a glass windowed lounge with folding chairs where our parents could watch us. I’d be dancing around, springing into the air in my best Tour Jete, and like all the other little girls, hope my mother was watching. Mine never was. She always sat there with her book, reading, not seeing. No matter what I did or how well, she never took the time to take in the scene, make eye contact, or give me that smile. She sat. Her head bowed down.
She cared more about books than she did about me. She cared more about her coping mechanisms than about anyone else.
When growing up, it was as if I had two mommies. One was the happy-faced mommy with her mask fully in place. She acted normal, engaged, smiled, and was fun to be around. Mommy number two was raging, crying, screaming at I-didn’t-know-what mommy. Or she wouldn’t get out of bed. I never knew from day to day, or even morning to night, which one would be waiting for me. She managed herself with prescription drugs and alcohol. Daily, mom swigged uppers, downers, and everything in-betweeners, capped off with drinks in the evening. But of course, as a child, I knew none of this.
By fifth grade, I was in soccer, a mixed co-ed team of gangly youngsters, and both of my parents went to the games every Saturday. My father at the sidelines cheered us on with the other parents. But my mom sat in the camp chair she would bring and read her book. After, my friends and I would pile into the back seat with my parents up front, and as we eagerly recounted the game’s events, mom wouldn’t even know what had happened – if we’d won or lost. My friends noted her odd behavior and asked why she bothered to come. I couldn’t answer because, from my seat, I couldn’t understand why she had adopted me.
Her love was missing – it wasn’t where I needed it to be. As an adopted child, you worry you are not good enough, that someone did not want you. Love, logic, or will cannot overcome that constant companion. We need our adoptive parents aware of these truths so much more than most people understand.
The universe tries to deliver gifts of love to each of us. But you must grasp those precious gems when they arrive. If you miss them, that love will skip past you like flat stones across the surface of a hard, still, lake. They ripple and disturb the surface but cannot be held onto and absorbed. Instead, those gifts will run at you across the universe and streak past. But eventually, that stone runs out of energy and sinks to the bottom. Unused, it dissolves – dead weight taking up space.
I became like that hard, still, lake. Those were my coping mechanisms.
Since no love was directed toward me from my mother, I anchored myself to others. I made friends easily and busied myself with their lives, a better substitute for mine, I was certain. For my mother, I made no room for her at all. As a typically rebellious teen, I directed nothing toward her but my pain. I couldn’t trust her with anything else.
I’ve heard it said that there are two primary emotions – anger and sadness – those are the strongest. What was coming out of me was anger, but what was lurking underneath was sadness. Grief.
Grief that I felt so completely unloved and alone inside despite looking like I was busy, popular, and fitting in well at school. Resentment that no matter what I did, I never felt safe. Not that someone would hurt me, but I could not let my pain show anywhere, ever. That did not fit the narrative that we were a happy, perfect little family.
As adoptees, we are told on one hand that our noble, suffering birth mother loved us so much that she gave us up for someone else to raise. We are also simultaneously told that we are chosen, special, and wanted by our parents. So then love gives you away, and love also wants you but, in my case, rejects you. That is just one epic head-screw if there ever was one.
When I was fifteen, my mother lifted herself up and began her journey to being clean and sober. When I was young, I hated her for her weakness, but the truth is that she was strong. I learned that she had her own mean-spirited, narcissistic alcoholic mother from whom she needed to heal.
As an adult, I know my addict mom wasn’t rejecting me and that she loved me in her own way very much. She just didn’t feel that she had anything to give. I believe this is true had I been her natural child or her adopted one. A different source, same outcome.
Reconciling those truths is one of the most important journeys we, as adoptees, need to trek. Our parents are as flawed and as messed up as anyone else’s. Our society must understand that adoption does not make a perfect family. It creates a human one. There are complexities and nuances to this that coexist while remaining contradictory. Like a crazy, misunderstood flying circus swinging away inside our heads.
by JeanWidner | Jul 18, 2022 | Adoptee Stories, Birth Parent
My story is the age-old tale of black and white, my mother being white, my father black. It goes back to the story of an older man with a younger woman. She was a teenager, got pregnant, and had me. She tried to keep me for a while, but for whatever reason, she couldn’t.
I always had this dream from when I was little, but now know it was not a dream. In it, I could hear my mom’s voice. I knew it was my mom, that she was coming to pick me up. I could never actually see her face, but I could always hear the voice, which was always the same.
In one of my only memories of her, I am sitting on a bench, she walks out, I see her back, and I call to her, but she never responds or turns around. That was the last day I ever saw my mother.
From what they say, I was just older than a toddler, probably about four or five, when my mother gave me up. I have learned I was in close to eleven different foster homes before I was adopted.
I don’t have a lot of memories of my childhood and think that it was probably very traumatic, which is why I was moved around a lot. There are reports that in one foster home, one of the children there was touching me inappropriately. There was another foster care where the daughter was jealous because I was mixed and had what they called ‘good hair.’ I don’t know exactly what that is.
But they couldn’t control me – nobody could handle me. I probably had an attachment disorder. I didn’t want anybody to hold me or even be near me. I kept calling for my brother, and kept telling everybody that I had a brother. He went to live with his father. I couldn’t understand why my father didn’t come and get me? Why didn’t my father want me? Not knowing at that time, my brother was all white, not understanding that back in the ’70s and the ’80s, you were either black or white. It was not okay to be in the middle. I never really fit in with the white kids. I didn’t fit in with my black friends either. So even having friends growing up was very difficult.
I got in trouble because they would ask us if we were black or white when we were in school, and I refused to pick one. I’m black, white, Hispanic – I’m just not going to choose. I got in trouble for that. When you get in trouble, they want to call your mom or your dad. Well, if you don’t have a mom or a dad, who do they call?
It’s not just the in and out of the foster homes that get you – it’s the parents that come and go. Because there’s always turnover, it’s hard to give your life to raising children that are not your own, that have emotional problems. You go back and forth with the foster home and have parents coming in and out. It’s a revolving door. But the only thing that’s constant, that stays, is you. That took its toll.
Back then, teachers didn’t keep stuff like that private, so everybody knew. I was a handful – I didn’t like affection, yet craved attention. You could get just arm’s length close to me, but that was it. I didn’t want you to be any closer.
As a kid, you can only be told that you’re not wanted or given back so many times before that’s what you believe. So, I developed the “I have to be the best at everything,” syndrome. I must be great in school. I was a gymnast and played basketball and volleyball. I did everything possible to be that perfect child so that somebody would want me.
In the third grade they told me they wanted to be my parents. “Sure, you can be my parents,” but I had a few requests of my own. “I want wicker furniture, and I want to take gymnastics. If you want me, these are the few things that I need in return, and my room needs to be purple.”
Here I was, haggling at a very young age. But even when you get that sense, “Okay, I have a family,” you’re different. They are white. My hair is different, my skin is different. Their kids are mostly grown and out of the house. Both older sisters are in college or married.
My new brother, David Russell, amazing human that he is, reading Bell and Grindle for a bedtime story is probably not the best idea for a kid. Hence my love of the medieval. I didn’t like bridges for the longest time because I was always worried that The Billy Goats Gruff would get me. Because those were the bedtime stories that I had. He introduced me to Star Trek because “What well-rounded child doesn’t know anything about Star Trek? We can’t have that.”
Those are the things that I hold on to because the other things are not pretty, and nobody wants to talk about them. Nobody wants to talk about going to the grocery store with my mom and somebody at the register ringing something up, her paying for it, and then, they ring up my stuff and her paying for it separately. You couldn’t tell them, “We’re all together” or “That’s my daughter”? Or when somebody says, “Oh, you’re such a pretty child. What did your mother do to get you?” And I respond, “Nothing more than your mom did to get you.” But I’m the one who had to apologize because that wasn’t ladylike behavior.
At what point do you step up and say, “That’s my daughter. I am proud to have her as my daughter.” Because if my behavior is good and my grades are good, “Oh, that’s great. That’s a reflection because she’s a teacher, and she’s done so well.” or “Y’all were so great to take this child in.”
I so often heard, “Well, maybe you would have been better off with a black family adopting you.” But my parents adopted me because if they didn’t, who was going to? What kind of life was I going to have? None of the other children at the home had been in and out as many times as I had. Back then, you could place a black child, or you could place a white child. But where were you going to place a mixed child?
Mom and I went rounds when it came to doing my hair, running through the house, her trying to get a comb through it, then me getting to a certain age and her just saying I had to do it however. Well, I didn’t know how to do my hair – didn’t know what I needed to do to take care of it. Being made fun of in school, my dad started taking me to get it braided. In my high school years, Salt-N-Pepa was popular. I went to the beauty shop and wanted the Salt-N-Pepa haircut because I thought it looked good. That’s what black kids were supposed to have. But when your dad allows you to do that, you come home, your mom freaks out, and then you go to a private school that’s predominantly white, and you’ve got that haircut, you get in trouble because then it’s a distraction.
I got put into another school with more black children and didn’t have as hard of a time. But through it all, my parents didn’t go to school when there were problems. Once again, they didn’t stick up for me.
Ultimately, they moved from that side of Tulsa to Broken Arrow, to a more up-and-coming area, and for a while there, everything was okay.
———————————
When I was nineteen, I was raped. People asked, “Well, what did she do?” Why did I have to do anything?
I remember my dad had told me if you get pregnant, we’ll just pluck it out like a grape. I didn’t believe in abortion, so I didn’t say anything until it was too late. My sister came to visit her older friend I was staying with, and she ran back home and told them I was pregnant. She doesn’t discuss it with me. She didn’t ask me about it beforehand. What do they do? Shipped me off to a home to have the baby at. Then they announce it in church – let everybody know what happened. I’m getting letters and phone calls, saying our prayers are with you, but my parents didn’t visit.
I was devastated by the whole thing that happened. They didn’t believe me until the same thing happened to somebody else, then it was okay. Then it was, “We need to get you counseling,” or “we’re so sorry this happened.” When it happened, I was asked over and over what did I do? Did I provoke the person? I was so damaged physically that I was told I probably would never be able to have kids again. So not only am I told that but to give up the one child I had.
Now I must make the same decision for my child that was made for me. Knowing how I felt and grew up, I chose an adoption that was open, or as much as one could be at that time.
I wanted to pick his parents because I wanted them to understand that the baby I’m giving you, you must love as your own, treat as your own – if you can’t do that, you can’t have him. The family I chose had two older children at the time, and they already had a mixed child. So, I knew that there wouldn’t be as many questions.
She [the adopting mother] showed me what it was to be a mother because she would call and check on me. She told me, “It doesn’t matter if you choose us or somebody else. Right now, you need a mom. You need to be loved.” She did that every day until I gave them my son. They allowed me to name him. Of course, they renamed him.
But they allowed me to name him so he would have a birth certificate from me, a letter that I wrote him, and a quilt that I made him. Shortly after that, I went into the military. They tried to keep up with my parents, but my parents didn’t even want to see him. There’s a picture of my mom holding him, but that’s the only one.
His mom was a wonderful woman. She always kept up with me to know where I was because of the deal that I made her that I wish somebody would’ve done for me – was that he was to know about me. But he was not allowed to meet me until he was eighteen because I wanted him to understand that that’s your mom and dad. I loved him more than myself – that is why I gave him to a family that could love him.
When he graduated high school, I got a message on Facebook, “Hey, this is Shaw. Is your name such and such? I’m your son.”
He said, “I am in Lubbock, and I would like you to see me graduate because I want you to know that everything you did was worth it and that I thank you for what you did.” So, my two younger boys and I went down there. They met their brother, Shaw, and we watched him graduate. His mom gave me the biggest hug – that whole family embraced me, thanked me for giving them Shaw.
I say that because that is how an adopted child is supposed to feel. Parents adopt us, and they don’t think about the thing that’s in us that is broken. That part of us needs to know we belong and are loved.
By all standards, looking from the outside, it appeared this was the perfect childhood – private schools, gymnastics, a car at the age of sixteen, parents that came to every game, and family dinners. But nobody ever once stopped to ask me did I feel loved? Did I feel wanted? Not once.
I don’t think it matters if you’re adopted as a baby or as an older child. That one feeling of why I was not good enough that my mom kept me resonates with almost all of us.
The day my parents took me to MEPS [Military Entrance Processing Station], that was it for me. I was done. I wasn’t going to college or staying with my parents, and refused to return to that house. I was not going to be a dirty little secret. I was going to be seen as a person, not the color of my skin or the situation for my being on this earth.
Twenty-eight years later, with my dad just passing, I would say that’s the one regret I have, that I didn’t get to tell him thank you for what he did. Whether his motivation was good and pure or whether it was out of what he felt was a Christian obligation, I owe him that thank you. I wouldn’t be the parent I am today without the structure I had.
I told my mom, and I hope that she relayed to my father, that I got the pick of the parents. I won the lotto when it came to my parents.
I have a lot of bad memories, but there are good ones. It’s not just a sad story of a kid that nobody wanted. I have the memory of having a beautiful white dress with ruffles and frills and a bow in the back, and my hair was picked out, and I was clean. Many people won’t understand what that feeling is. I had a bath and my hair done, and have a picture of that. Every time I see that picture, I can still remember just feeling clean.
People will never understand laying down in a bed for the first time, and you know it’s yours. Nobody else had it or is going to sleep in that bed. I don’t have to hide my toys because nobody will take them. I don’t have to eat all the food at once because I can go to the refrigerator, open the door, and there’s food. I was told I was a picky eater as a child. It wasn’t that. As a child, what I put in my mouth was the only thing I could control. I couldn’t control my living situation or whether I was accepted or not accepted. If you think about it, that was the only thing I could control.
by JeanWidner | Jul 13, 2022 | Adoptee Stories
My Mother Didn’t Want Me.
My Mother Couldn’t Keep Me.
Sit with those two sentences. Feel the differences implied by their words. In one, you are rejected and abandoned. Discarded. Given away, never to be thought of again.
The other gives a different view. Being unable to keep something means it wasn’t your choice. That you were an innocent in a set of circumstances that were beyond your mother’s control.
When adoptees, either children or adults, utter the first line above to describe their situation, “My mother didn’t want me,” I always silently cringe. Because the truth is that unless you have met your birth mother and heard her story, you cannot possibly know that. Maybe it is true. Maybe she never wanted children, never had them, and already knew at a young age she did not want ever to be a mom or parent a child. In that case, her relinquishment is not only a blessing, but it would have been a curse for you to be trapped with her.
What we want as human beings, and as women, changes during the course of our lives – this is true for all of us. Parenting is a challenge no matter what your level of maturity or financial stability. What your partner wants for their life, and the strength of that bond all influence the timing of when is the right time to become a parent. To want to be a mother. A young woman may not want to be a parent when she cannot support that child, but then want to mother later in life when her circumstances have changed.
But here’s the thing – that’s on her. It may not seem fair to an adoptee feeling the effects of that primal separation, but the point is that we don’t need to take in those words of ‘not being wanted’ and make them our identity.
This is not a judgment of birth mothers. Their circumstances and reasons for relinquishing their children are varied and complex. In my experience with the birth mothers I know, they are at least, if not more, fearful of the rejection of their adult adopted children as adoptees are of feeling the same from them.
Another hard truth with this is that no one should be forced to become a parent who does not wish to be. The job is too hard.
If you remember Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray Love, she leaves her husband because she realizes that even with their many years of marriage and plans to start a family – she does not want to be a parent. Famously in one chapter of her story, she discusses these doubts with her sister, who wisely says to her, that “having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.”
Elizabeth is not a devil for her admission. She is honest enough to recognize this should not be her path and harm another while she complies with those prior ideals and commitments. Because a parent who does not want to be one will most likely harm their child emotionally, at least in some way.
I identify with the author because I have also chosen not to become a mother. My husband of over thirty years feels the same. And while I have moments where the now-grown children of my friends make me wistful for a different path, for the overwhelming majority of the time, I’m happy with ours.
But sit with this again – why should any adopted child take on those feelings of rejection from their birth mother? Do we understand how backward that is? Especially so, if it isn’t even the truth.
When an adopted person says, their mother didn’t want them, at whatever their age they say it – they are taking on those emotions that their mother may, or may not, have about being a parent, and internalizing them as an indictment of their being born and placed for adoption.
Words matter and they have power. To my fellow adoptees, I say – keep your power. Own your words and choose them carefully – you deserve that.
by JeanWidner | Jul 12, 2022 | Adoptee Stories
My father was black. My biological mother was white. My adoptive family is all white. So, it wasn’t like they could pretend I had been born from them.
My earliest memories of being adopted are my parents talking about it and explaining that they went someplace, and they picked me out and brought me home, and now I was their daughter, and I lived with them. I don’t have any memories before that. And then we adopted my brother when I was about five, and he’s also transracially adopted. So that cemented things for me – you can go get the baby, and the baby doesn’t have to look like you.
It was something other people commented on a lot, as it was 1971. My mom would have to explain, “is she with you?” Or people would be confused because my sister would be with us. My sister’s just 13 months younger than me, and she’s my parent’s biological daughter. So, people would be confused. “Why is this brown girl with all these white people? What’s happening?” My parents would often have to explain this is our daughter too.
My parents had tried to conceive many times. After they adopted me, my mom got pregnant almost immediately. And then they kept trying and trying and trying, and they couldn’t conceive again. That’s why they adopted my brother. They wanted a boy. So, this is one way to ensure we get one, and they just did it that way.
I grew up first in Phoenix, although I’d been born in Michigan. Growing up bi-racially in the 1970s was very awkward. I had some bad situations happen to me when I was younger because my parents, I think, really didn’t understand how the world would view that situation. My parents had on rose-colored glasses. We’ve adopted this baby – things are great. And her life’s going to be great. And she’s not going to experience any of these things because we never experienced these things growing up. We never dealt with discrimination, racial slurs, or stuff like that. We’re white. We didn’t have any of that. And so, they didn’t prepare me for any of that.
I remember vividly the first time I was called the N-word, and I had no idea what it meant. I was only five, but I knew it was something terrible because of the way people reacted. And I had a friend with me, and my friend yelled at the kid. But I remember being frozen and stunned. I didn’t know what to say. And it’s only been in the last maybe ten years that I’ve even been able to tell my parents about that situation.
There weren’t a lot of black kids at my school, and it was kind of weird. You’re an outsider, but not. I don’t know how to explain it. You feel like you want to fit in, but you know that you don’t fit in. You always wonder are they being nice to me because they want to be, or are they making fun of me behind my back? There’s some insecurity there.
Things got a little bit better when my brother joined the family and shared some of the same experiences. Then they were able to see, oh, well, I guess things are different for brown people.
I remember one time we went to Disneyland and ate breakfast at a McDonald’s before we went there, and it was in Compton. It was mostly black people in the restaurant. My parents and my sister were the only white people, and my brother and I, of course, noticed that. My parents didn’t put two and two together, but when we left McDonald’s, I remember my brother saying, “That’s the first time I’ve ever been someplace where it was all black people, and you guys were the ones that were different.”
He was probably six at the time or seven. And my parents were like, Hmm, interesting. Because that was, for us, we were always in white spaces. And even when you try not to feel like you’re standing out, you’re standing out.
I think once he joined the family, my parents were a little more cognizant of these issues, and I felt like I could talk to them a little bit more about them and explain some of the things that I was feeling or struggling with, but I’m not sure that they completely understood. They tried, but I don’t think they completely understood how the world is different for people.
One of the weird things I felt – I was always concerned that if you could get a baby, you could also maybe take a baby back. If something didn’t work out, I needed to be on my best behavior because I didn’t want to be “Return to Sender.” You’re irrational when you’re a kid. I think about all the Disney movies I saw with the orphan kid and the evil stepmother, trying to get the kid out of the picture, and all these things revolve around in your head, and you start thinking, maybe that could happen to me. If I’m not good enough, then they won’t want me anymore.
For the most part, I felt loved like my sister, especially by my dad. I was a daddy’s girl until my brother came along, and he took over—my dad gravitated towards him because of sports and all that stuff. But up until then, I was a daddy’s girl.
My mom and I had a problematic relationship throughout my childhood. I never didn’t feel loved by her, but she was closer to my sister. They’re both middle children. My mom understood the whole having a big sister who kind of outshined you or out does you type of thing. And she was sympathetic towards my sister. So there were things she would allow my sister to do that I couldn’t do or something of that nature that I felt was unfair.
Now, of course, you always have that sibling rivalry. And I think it didn’t help that my sister and I were so close in age that my parents treated us as though we were the same age. So, if I got my ears pierced, then my sister got her ears pierced, and I had to wait until I was 12—stupid things like that.
But I did feel loved. It was hard for me, and it still is, to maybe reciprocate that. I am very guarded about things like that. I don’t like being vulnerable. I love my parents. They know that I love them. I tell them that I love them. I mean it when I say it. But it’s tough for me to get close to people and be able to tell them that. That’s not something I do. People can walk out of your life. They do it all the time, and I don’t want to have that, or I don’t want to be able to react to that.
Then, when I was in junior high, we moved to San Diego in the early ’80s. We kids were excited because you immediately thought of California; we’ll be at Disneyland every weekend or the beach! And that doesn’t happen. But we were excited about moving there.
It was hard, but I am glad we moved there only because it diversified the types of people we were around. California is very multicultural. So that was a benefit. There were more black people at my school. I had actual black teachers sometimes. That made a difference to me, looking back now. While it was hard on our family because we were comfortable in Phoenix, I think the move was good. We needed to go to a new place.
At this time, I started this very rebellious stage of my life. I must have been in seventh grade, I think. Every year they have you fill out these little forms with your name and your sex and your race and your date of birth and stuff like that. Well, you can only check one box for race, and that just irritated the hell out of me. Every year – I don’t want to check one box because I’m not one box.
So, I would be checking multiple boxes, and then they would have a fit. And sure enough, this lady in the office called me up there. She said, “Okay. You have white and black hair. What are you?” I said, “I’m white and black.” She says, “No, you have to be one or the other.” I say, “How’s that? Because I’m not one or the other. I’m both.” And she says, “Well, because this is how we do things here. You have to choose one.” And I said, “Well, I’m not choosing because I’m not just one thing.” And she eventually chose for me. She decided I was black. I was okay with that. But I was annoyed that I couldn’t represent my true self. I had to be one or the other. And I know she picked black because at the time, they got more money or whatever for students of color, and so it helped the school if I was black. Whatever.
So that’s when I decided, you know what? I feel like a black person now. I don’t want to say I don’t identify with white people. I do. They raised me. My mom’s white. My biological mom’s white. But my lived experience has been that of a woman of color, a child of color.
For the next several years, I don’t want to say I was militant, but I was, “I am not going to be pigeonholed. I am not going to be forced into what your perception is of me. You look at me, and I look brown. So, you assume things about me, but you know nothing about my situation, my family, how I was brought up, or anything like that.” I don’t appreciate people trying to decide what I am. I will decide what I am. I started doing a lot of soul-searching on my part, which created a lot of angst in my family. At that point, I wanted to search for my biological family.
And my adoptive family was not cool with that. They thought I was too young. They also felt I was probably not in the right mental mindset to search. I think they were concerned about what would happen if I did find my biological family. Would I want to go live with them? I think there was some concern there. They didn’t know anything about my birth family other than what they had been told. So, they didn’t know, like was my mom stable? She wasn’t. Was my dad still in the picture? He was, but he had his own family. I don’t want to say they sabotaged it. They didn’t do that, but they didn’t encourage me to seek out my birth family. I did everything I could at that age of being a minor.
You could file some paperwork saying if your biological family comes looking, here’s how to contact me. I did all those things you could do, but there was no internet back then, so it was much more limited.
Then I got pregnant at 17, which created a whole other set of problems. I didn’t get pregnant intentionally. But once I realized I was pregnant, almost instantly, I thought, “This will be the first biological relative I will know.” And my family was very much, “You’re putting this child up for adoption, and you’re not keeping it,” and blah, blah, blah. And I said, “Yeah, that’s not happening.” I don’t care if I have to live in a tunnel; I will do that. But I am not giving my child up for adoption.
I stayed in California, and my dad, who had another job opportunity in Nevada, moved there with the rest of the family. But I think almost in the back of my mind, I believed, “This is going to be good, and I’m going to make it work.” My biological mother couldn’t make it work. I’m going to show her that it can be done. I didn’t dislike my birth mother, but at the same time, as a woman – how do you have a baby and then just walk away. I don’t understand. She never communicated with the adoption agency or anything. She never followed up.
I found out later that she did try to make some attempts, but the agency doesn’t tell you that when you inquire because they don’t want problems. I just remember at the time that I was having my son. I was thinking, “This is just super cool. I’m going to be looking at this baby’s face, and it will be a face that’s connected to me.”
Those junior high and high school years were tough in dealing with my adoption. I felt very different from my peers because I only knew a few other adopted people, and most of them were not transracial. So that is just like another added, I don’t want to say it’s a burden, but it’s just an added layer that makes it difficult. I mean, it’s hard enough to be an adopted person and know that you aren’t really part of the family. You are part of the family, but you know in your mind that you’re not related to them biologically, but it’s another layer when you don’t look like anybody either. My junior high and high school years were a mess.
My mom never learned how to do my hair because Black hair is different. And while my hair isn’t wholly Black because it is mixed, she never learned. She never learned how to do my brother’s hair. My brother always had the little afro going on – when it wasn’t cool to have an afro. My mom thought it was great. I’d say, “No, it’s not. It’s not great at all.”
Nowadays, I know that they have more training for trans-racial adoptive parents. You take them to this kind of barber shop, not that kind of barbershop. You braid their hair because their hair is fragile, and it breaks easily. And you wrap it at night or do these kinds of things. When I was young, teaching me or learning about how to care for black hair wasn’t important.
Thank goodness there was a friend of my mom’s finally when I was in junior high, who took me aside and showed me these were the products that I needed to get. She taught me I should be putting this stuff on my hair and not that stuff, and I shouldn’t be washing it every day because it dries it out, and I shouldn’t be just sleeping on it with no wrap around it or anything.
And I was so grateful somebody did something because I didn’t know what to do either. I went to school every day looking awful and feeling even worse. I looked like buckwheat.
My mom never took me to the Black section of the haircare products. These are all things you learn as you go. But my hair was already so broken and damaged and falling out because she tried to treat it like my sister’s white hair. It took years before it was healthy the way black hair should be.
That experience made my son’s life different because I was more conscious of that. I took them to the Black barbershops so that they get the right haircut and don’t get the little poof afro thing going. I made sure that they felt comfortable in the clothes that they were wearing. That represents them better than maybe some little polo shirt and Dockers or whatever. For me, I was more culturally conscious because my parents weren’t.
When you have trans-racial adoptions, there’s just an extra layer of sensitivity that gets lost in the mix. People assume you will assimilate into the group that is adopting you.
What’s funny is my dad has never given that up talking about those years in high school when I rebelled. I’m fifty now, and he still brings it up. He’s like, “I don’t know what happened to you there in high school, but you went sideways.” I say, “Okay. But my son’s thirty-two now, so we can move on.” But he likes to bring it up and always asks, “What made you do that? Or what made you act like this?” And I’ll say, “Dad, I was a teenager who was confused, who was hurt, who was crying out.” Who knows what I was thinking at that age? I mean, you’re a mess. And I was even more of a mess because I was adopted, and even more, because I was checking one box.
