by JeanWidner | Jun 20, 2022 | Adoptee Stories
The Salvation Army had made two attempts to reach my birth mother. They sent two letters, three months apart, one in April, not long after we had located my mother Barbara, and then another one in July. They, like myself, had also left two voice mails at the phone number we found for her online.
Nothing. No one had received any response. It was time for me to take matters into my own hands. Now in late October, we had waited long enough. To not draw attention, the letters were sent without any tracking – so there was no way to guarantee their delivery, and no way to be sure they hadn’t just been dumped, assuming they were junk mail or solicitations from the Salvation Army itself.
Rolling through my head were the endless unknowns – she was married, her husband also alive and presumably living with her. Had she told him what had happened all those years ago? Is she still of sound mind? She could have dementia. Her husband might be a jerk and she is afraid to tell him. Maybe he opened the letters and hid them from her. She could be dealing with another sick family member or friend and hasn’t been home in several months. Maybe they have a vacation home we didn’t find and they haven’t been at their home in Colorado? The options are endless.
The only public records we have located on my mother after my original birth certificate, was her marriage certificate to Larry C. when she wed him in 1985 when she was thirty-nine. A big gap of twenty years between me and him. But not only that, by then I was a junior in college and marry my husband in 1989. It’s ironic to me that my mother and I were only four years apart on the calendar at the time we each first married.
She gave me up in 1965, and then tragically only two years later is the death of her mother Marie, in 1967. Whatever their relationship was like that had to have been unbearable – first she has the unacknowledged loss of surrendering me. Unable to grieve that in public she would have tried to cope no doubt the best she could. But then to pile on the loss of her own mother seems cosmically cruel.
It’s also one of the reasons that I want to give my mother so much space in this process. While feeling at times now almost desperate for a connection, I know that this is a very big ask. Not only is she likely to revisit the emotional trauma surrounding my relinquishment, close to that must also be her mother’s death.
I had decided to write my own letter. As I spoke to my case manager, Diana at the Salvation Army she says something unexpected. She was reading through my case file and then almost mumbling to herself says, “Oh dear, and I see here it looks like after your mother had signed the papers, there is a letter received from her mother saying she should keep you.” WHAT!?! My heart lurches and I immediately ask what she means by this.
Diana says that Annette, one of her colleagues who for a while was the key handler of my case, and who sent both of the first two letters to my mother, had sent me additional information from the Salvation Army back in April.
Seated in our family room overlooking our sunny backyard I feel completely adrift. I explain to Diana in a shaky voice that no – no other information has come my way. WE found my mother, remember? Provided YOU at the Salvation Army her information and then you reached out to her.
I can hear Diana’s now hesitant voice ask me that she sees a letter sent by Annette to me on April 9th, but I’ve never received that? “No, no letter has come from you. Was this by email, snail mail – how was it sent?”. “Regular mail”, she says. Now this makes me doubt everything. Were the letters they say they sent, actually sent? Wobbly of mind and spirit I feel deflated by all of this. Even the people who I believe are trying to help me still don’t seem to understand the emotional triggers involved in this process.
My mind awhirl I ask if I can see this information NOW. RIGHT NOW. Sheepishly the case worker agrees she will absolutely send over the letter to me by email. “Give me a few minutes please and I’ll have it to you within the half-hour. I want to be sure what is sent is accurate and complete.”, but of course reminds me that it will not contain any identifying information, most especially about my father, as he is still un-named to us as of now. Without my mother’s permission they cannot release it, and without her returning contact, they and me, are stuck.
It’s a Friday afternoon, now nearly three o’clock. I wander back into my office grateful for the thousandth time in my life of my self-employed, work from home status. I can make appointments for personal calls such as these and control my own daily flow. I wait. Unable to concentrate on anything else I look through the last of my work-related emails, send a few replies, summarize and shut down my current open projects, and nervously await what comes.
Having no expectations or ideas of what I will see or learn I try to just remain calm. I think about the fact that Kyle isn’t home – he’s been away for the past three weeks taking a course in Los Angeles, about two hours away, which means 3-plus hours with traffic from our home-base in Temecula. I’ll have to face what comes with only the two dogs and two cats for comfort.
Sure enough, the letter attached is formally written and correctly addressed to me, dated April 9th, on Salvation Army letterhead. As I read, I see some of what is known to me, some of which I already also know to be potentially untrue. Pain, relief and a staggering sadness as to my mother’s life circumstances is revealed.
I knew she was the youngest by far of three older siblings and that by the time she was in high school they were all gone and out of the home. I knew her father had died when she was very young (or maybe before she was born…) and that her mother Marie had remarried.
Taken from my mother’s original application in 1965 I read: I can confirm that your birth mother gave birth to you at The Salvation Army Booth Memorial Hospital in Spokane, Washington. Per the record, she had applied for admission on January 20, 1965 and was later admitted to the Maternity Home on March 5th….
The record indicates her mother [Marie] had remarried five (5) years prior. Her stepfather was a chief of police and she [Barbara] did not get along with him because he had a violent temper. At first, he was not informed of the pregnancy because your birth mother thought he would take his fury out on her mother. She stated he had beat her and her mother at various times.
Regarding your biological father, the record states he was from West Virginia, and was 21 years old. His nationality was Sweden/German, and his religious affiliation was Methodist. He was a high school graduate and was an airman second class stationed in North Dakota. He was an only child and his parents were separated.
Per the record, your birth mother and birth father had met at a dance about two years prior and went together for about a year, but he was a Methodist and your birth mother was a Catholic. They loved each other very much but could not come to an agreement about religion so they stopped seeing each other. A few months later, they started seeing each other again and your birth mother became pregnant. They wanted to get married, but still felt their religious affiliations were a barrier. Months later, he was transferred to Alaska, yet he continued calling and writing. She hoped he would become a Catholic and marry her. At some point she had said she “would not mind being a Lutheran (which seemed a good compromise between Catholicism and Methodism),” however, her siblings kept telling her that “once a Catholic, one should never be anything else.”
My parents loved each other, wanted to be with each other. I was conceived in love. The relief in that showers over me and through me like salve for my soul. In all these months of staring at her photo I’d worried – what might have happened to you? She had an innocence and brightness to her high school senior photo. In her yearbook beneath each of the senior photos were the students’ favorite sayings – the sorts of things you think are cool way back when, but now strike you for the youthful ego-driven idiocy they are. Next to her photo are these nice looking young boys with the phrases, ‘I sat back and let it happen’, ‘Devil in Disguise’ and ‘Shake a Tail Feather’. Hers says, ‘That’s O.K.’. But was it?
Now I know that in fact she was dating a young man out of high school a few years older than her, by then an Airman at Minot AFB. As a ‘steady’ to an older guy she would have been somewhat above those boys and treated differently by them. My concerns for her on that front alleviated, there were instead new ones.
Her stepfather was violent – and not only that as the local Chief of Police in a small rural town in the 1960’s, he was also untouchable. She and her mother were trapped by that tragic choice Marie had made in marrying a bad man. Had she known before she married him? Was he good at hiding his violent craft as most predators are? It is crystal clear now why Barbara had to be far away to have me – beyond the family shame of her circumstance, it wasn’t safe.
Organized religion kept them apart. To my modern eyes this seems baffling – a Catholic and a Methodist. They are both Christian – really? But reflecting that the time in 1964, these differences mattered. I wonder now if also this becomes a reason for her reluctance to reply to our attempts to contact her. Does she feel foolish for those reasons now – fear that I won’t understand? A religious difference most people would barely register as a conflict – does that make her choices seem more shameful when viewed through this modern lens? I wonder, does she still pray to her God? Believe in Him after all of these losses?
I read on:
Since your mother was living in an apartment, her mother helped pay for rent and food, and your birth father helped pay for medical bills. She began coming to the Booth Home around February to attend pre-natal classes, and it was in one of these visits the doctor discovered she was malnourished and anemic. She admitted she had been living off milk and cereal as she had very little money left for food. She was told she didn’t have to struggle that she could be admitted into the Home for inpatient care. Once admitted, she adjusted well to the group living situation and was assigned kitchen duty. On Sundays she would attend chapel and then go to Catholic services.
Per the record, you were born on April 21, 1965 at 11:30 a.m. You weighed 6 lbs. 13 oz. and were 20 inches long at birth. After your birth, the record indicates she received word from her mother that she had told her stepfather, he had gone into a rage, but had asked that your mother keep you and force your birth father to marry her. After discussion, your birth mother finally agreed to release you because your birth father had stated he could not marry her until their religious differences were resolved and until he could be discharged from the Air Force and had a steady job. You were relinquished to the State Department of Public Assistance on April 30th and your birth mother went back to North Dakota.
Malnourished and living on cereal. My heart breaks open and I weep and cannot stop. That poor girl – she was trying so hard to make this work. She was strong, a survivor and just trying to fulfill what she wanted so badly, but the world just kept stacking up against her. The unfairness of it all overwhelms me. She wanted me. She wanted my father. To make a family of us. Finally, without resources, safety, or an able and willing husband to support her she relinquishes me and drags herself back to the only home she has ever known, returning to what awaited her there. I pray she stayed well.
I close my office door and head for the couch. Breaking all our house rules I allow both dogs up on the seat with me and give myself over to the vast sea of emotion.
by JeanWidner | Jun 12, 2022 | Adoptee Stories
That’s what I just might have said to you when I was about the age of three or four and just been introduced to you, “Hi, I’m abopted!”. With my smile on my skinny little frame and pixie-cut brown hair I proudly announced what I believed to be a badge of honor. And it was! My new friends if they were fellow children would look somewhat confused, or if an adult, would appear surprised at what at the time was an admission of something kept private rather than a public declaration, because of course we know back in the late 60’s we American’s didn’t talk about – well – anything deeply personal, even within our own families. And we certainly didn’t admit any ‘abnormalities’ like being adopted.
But I didn’t know those norms and didn’t care. My parents raised me with that healthy and loving indoctrination that I was special, was wanted by them, and that being adopted was something to feel good about. I don’t remember being ‘told’ I was adopted, I only remember ‘knowing’ I was. But that’s actually a funny story I’ll get to in a minute. Let me first introduce myself.
My name then was Jean Elizabeth Kelly, and I’m writing this story to share my own and encourage others to do the same. Adoption has many facets and those who are part of this experience share both similarities and differences in their emotional, physical and formative experiences with their adoptive families. The institution of adoption is hardly perfect – there are flaws – because we ourselves are all flawed. But for the most part, I believe in the goodness of its intent, and the practice of adoption when ethically done can be an amazing experience. In no way am I going to gloss over the hard stuff – my family wasn’t perfect (as if there is such a thing, which I think is a fallacy our collective cultural psyche should give up), but I think there is at least the attempt to do right by all of the parties involved: the adopted children, the parents who raise them, and the birth mothers (and fathers) who give them up.
Going back to my story now…apparently there was a day when my mother had me curled in her lap reading to me, and the book mentioned how babies are born and that they come from their mother’s tummies. I was very young here and have no memory of this at all. But apparently when I asked the very natural question of, (you all know what’s coming now…), “Mommy, did I come from your tummy?”, and my mother said in that moment of heartache, “Yes.”.
That night when my father got home from work, my mother completely fell apart in his arms crying and admitting what she had said to me, completely hysterical from the guilt of it. This was the moment my parents sat down and told me that I was in fact adopted. They gave me the full info in a simple way, and the story goes I said ‘OK’ and moved on like nothing of any consequence had occurred. Never mind my mother’s practically having PTSD on the incident, I really wasn’t concerned. After this point apparently my parents spoke often and openly about my status, reinforcing to me how much they loved and wanted me, and that was all I remembered.
I guess the lesson here for all of us is that things brought out into the open are easier to deal with than things left in the dark. Even bad news, while sometimes awful and tragic, is better when shared. Which means talking about it, whatever it is, and is frankly talking, and actually listening, is something our American culture is really not good at.
Sadly, I know of several adoptees whose parents were not open about their status, and that can be devastating when the full truth comes out. Back in 1965 when I was born, adoption was often a secretive thing, and even a source of shame among grown married adults who could not conceive. This was still considered to be deeply personal and at the time, adoption agencies were even matching hair and eye color and other heritage where they could so that the adoption would not be obvious. That seems strange to our modern-era eyes when international adoptions are in fact more common than adoptions between families in the US.
Biases were also strong in our culture at that time for many other reasons. I remember vividly in the early 2000’s an aunt on my husband’s extended family who knew I was adopted, stated clearly she would never consider adopting any child from the US or anywhere else because, “you would never know what you’re going to get.” Mind, I adore this woman and she is incredibly sweet, but this was her view and she was completely unapologetic for it. She was roughly my parents age and in her seventy’s at the time, and I simply stated that I was glad my parents didn’t share her biases. She didn’t apologize or acknowledge her comment in any way, and we moved on. So much indeed, has changed.
I’m a product of the times I was born in and thus do share many physical similarities to my parents, and most people would never know I was not biologically their offspring on a glance. However, I’m so grateful to have been adopted by good people who did their best to love me, teach me, care for me and raise me with a positive identity for who I am and where I came from. I know that others were not so lucky, and you’ll see these stories told as well. However, from my chair, I’m also still proud to be, ‘abopted’.
by JeanWidner | Jun 10, 2022 | Adoptee Stories
A paradox means that you have seemingly opposite and dual realities. Adoptees are rescued, repaired, loved, rejected, celebrated, abandoned, made to feel special, made to feel less than. We are both grateful and angry. We are different from everyone else, and yet we are the same. Regardless of the backstory or the upbringing, we usually know a reality that contradicts itself.
To understand the paradox, it is best to understand the history. Over the centuries, adoptee children have been stolen, sold, loved, wanted, abused, made into indentured servants, used as farm hands, and graced with wealth, education, and opportunities their native birth families could never have afforded them.
In the modern era, most love their families very much and feel wanted, safe, cared for, and a part of the family that raises them. But what no one who is not adopted can understand is this: no matter who raises you, you will never see your features in the people around you. And depending upon the circumstances of your specific situation, you will not know or have access to medical information and many other vital and identifying facts about yourself. Your heritage is theirs, not yours.
I know this because I’ve lived it. I was adopted from birth, born in 1965 at a Salvation Army Hospital for unwed mothers. My parents applied with an adoption agency in Yakima, Washington, and within a few months, were approved. When I was two months of age, they took me home, raised me, and loved me as their own. It may sound charming, and for the most part, it was, but there is always a gap. There is a silent undertone of living with the weight of the unknown, or what if, or how come – sometimes all of the above.
Adoption has consequences. It has joy. It can complete a family, create one from scratch or fulfill through some mystical unknown the way things are supposed to be, without the conscious knowledge of how. It can rescue, heal, and harm.
I am a fan of the practice – but it must be done ethically. Historically adoption had nothing to do with the welfare of a child. It was created to protect wealth and manage the labor of children. Throughout history, adoption has been done well and, at times, horribly.
My intentions with my upcoming book are to tell the tales of those who have lived any three sides of the triad: adoptees, parents, and birth parents. This is not sugar-coated rainbows and unicorns. It is an honest, hard look at the joys and tragedies that unfold for everyone involved. This is the baseline for the paradox of adoption.
Adoptees
“I just feel so incredibly lucky. My parents gave me so many opportunities that I would have never had from my biological mother. I used to think she didn’t want me, and that hurt. But later I learned that she hadn’t had a very stable or happy childhood, and so for that reason when she knew she was pregnant and my father wasn’t going to be in the picture, she did what she thought was best.” ~Kate
“I don’t want to say my parents are reluctant to discuss adoption, but they feel that once the adoption took place, that pretty much ended that whole chapter. Once I became adopted by them, everything was fine. There’s no need to go digging into the past. There’s no need to find out health-related things. You know you’re going to die anyway, so who cares. I remember this vividly when I told my parents that I was reunited and found by my biological sister. My dad said, “Well, it sounds like you had a better life with us.” And I think, “Okay, but we don’t know that things wouldn’t have been different had I stayed with them. Maybe my mom wouldn’t have gone down a certain path.” It didn’t hurt, but you don’t know that that was better for anybody. I remember him saying, “It sounds like your mom was messed up.” Yeah, I would be messed up too if I had to give my baby up, and my mom was considered a minor at the time; she was only 18. And I guess 21 was the age of consent in Michigan then. So, my grandmother was the one who placed me for adoption.” ~Tina
“I never really felt out of place or anything like that. Nothing like that. My mom told me I was adopted. I knew my whole life, you can just kind of see. I never really questioned it. I was like, they love me. I love them. When you’re loved, it really doesn’t matter by who.” ~Jacob
As an adoptee talking to others, it’s a common theme that there is a lingering sense of abandonment or rejection. That their birth mothers did not want them. That they are discarded, set aside, and unworthy of love. Here, you’ll not only read many personal stories from adoptees, but the book we examine the psychological impacts that adoption and its processes have on the emotional and mental health of adopted persons.
I have my own wounds. Being raised in a home with addiction colors my perspectives in ways that are so intertwined that they cannot be undone. As an adult now, I do not and cannot blame the mother who raised me for her flaws. Likewise, I never blame my birth mother for my circumstances.
Many do blame their birth mothers and are unable to move beyond what they have internalized as a physical rejection of them as human beings.
A question that needs to be asked is, ‘what is the difference between us?’. Why do some feel that profound abandonment while others do not? What forces create that? Biology, environment, or something else?
Adopting Parents
I once heard in an interview, “parents come to adoption on their knees.” Couples who cannot conceive because of biology, be they heterosexual or same-sex couples, are often in pain. They have tried multiple times to get pregnant or keep a pregnancy and have often experienced multiple losses and endless heartache. Gay and lesbian couples have faced open discrimination for centuries, which continues today. That has often been reflected in state laws on their ability to adopt and has changed over time, even though gay marriage has been legal in the U.S. since 2015.
People wishing to adopt have more options than in the past. Some contact state agencies or other non-profit organizations to help them. Others use the services of a lawyer or other for-profit organizations for private adoptions. Some try to find birth mothers via social media or other outlets.
National adoption statistics for 2021 report that approximately 1 million willing couples are actively seeking to adopt a baby. This contrasts with only eighteen thousand domestically born babies who will become available in any given year within the U.S. That level of disparity has never existed at any time since adoption records have been kept.
What is interesting in talking to adoptive parents in the modern era is that many report that when they contact an agency to apply, they are told to consider foster care first. The application and approval process is quicker for foster care than for becoming adoptive parents. Given the ongoing problems of the foster care system in the United States, that should give us all pause. Foster kids, adrift without their biological families for whatever reason, have an even higher need for specialized care both physically, emotionally, and mentally.
“I called everyone. The state was more interested in you fostering and then getting your home study for the adoption process. I wasn’t interested in adopting a seven-year-old, as we already had two children naturally, but a pregnancy was too much for me physically, and we wanted a third child.
It was extremely expensive. The first route we tried was the Mormons because they’re less expensive, but we’re not Mormon, so they wouldn’t help us. Then we went to Jewish Social Services. We are not Jewish. They did our home study, but they wouldn’t help us find a baby because we’re not Jewish, but they did all the stuff that’s required by the state for probably $20,000, which is less than Catholic Charities, the state, or anybody else. But we had to find our own baby.
Then we get a call from Jewish Social Services. Their attorney who deals with adoption has this baby that’s coming quickly, and she needs someone to adopt that doesn’t care about race, color, or whatever.
It was January. The baby was due on February 14th. The birth mom had a woman who was going to adopt the baby, but she never did the home study and approval process. If you wait, then it’s even more expensive. You’re talking $30-$40,000.00 easy because they have to rush all the paperwork. Now here’s the mother with a baby, and she has nowhere for the baby to go.
We met at an Olive Garden in town and talked to her for about four hours. She asked us, “Are you equipped and able to raise a chocolate child?” And yes, she actually used that word.
They induced her on February 12th. She called, and she had him at a local hospital. We walked into the room, and she said, “Here’s your chocolate boy!” I said, “Thank you.” That’s why he’s been Chocolate Boy ever since because his birth mom called him that. I even call him that.
My breast milk came in. I nursed him. So, I nursed him for two weeks. From the minute I held him, I loved him. He completed our family.
I would say this to anyone thinking about adopting a baby or a child – love it like it’s your own because it is. You have to go into adoption knowing that that’s yours until you die. No matter what they do, no matter their medical issues, no matter what. He is mine until I die. I never questioned that or would re-think that ever.” ~Gayle
Birth Parents
I say birth parents rather than simply birth mothers because you have birth fathers as part of this experience too. Before a family is built, one is broken and dissolved. There are coercion and pressures brought to bear on birth mothers in particular, and a staggering load of personal judgment heaped upon them by others.
Inseparable from the issues faced by birth parents is the discussion of sexual oppression, access to birth control and education, and the sexual revolution as it has evolved and continues to evolve in American culture.
Whenever and however an unplanned pregnancy comes into being, there will be consequences from that. Before the modern sexual revolution in the 1960s and ‘70s, an unmarried woman could not be a single mother – our culture would not readily allow it. The increasing sexual activities of young people between WWII and Roe v. Wade created what is known as the ‘baby scoop era.’
During this phase, at least one and a half million young American women were trapped into giving up their babies by their parents and the constraints of our society. At no time in history were there more adoptions in the U.S., before or since. These women were pushed into relinquishing their children even if they had the financial means to have raised them. Young men were either not held accountable or were equally set aside by their parents. It was tragic for all involved, and yet it was normal at the time. One wonders now if the men were not pushed aside, if the women were allowed to socially keep the baby, what our current culture might look like.
In the modern era, women do and can raise children without a husband or partner. Some unmarried women without a partner will even adopt a child independently. We have progressed, but our shaded history still has living and breathing suffering from its impact.
Currently, birth parents who relinquish a child usually do so because they, together or singly, cannot feasibly support it. Some will give up their baby, knowing that because of addiction or criminal behavior, they are unfit to parent at that time. Women who become victims of a sexual attack will sometimes carry the baby to term and place it for adoption because of their religious beliefs.
There are now open adoptions to minimize the emotional pain of relinquishing a child. In these legal arrangements, the birth parent(s) will remain present in the child’s life even though the adoptive parents are the unquestionable caregivers and are solely legally responsible for the child’s welfare. These arrangements are often complex for all involved and create their own set of unique emotional and mental health challenges. But many birth parents and adoptive parents appear to make this work.
Regardless of the circumstances, I have never spoken to a birth parent who didn’t in some way think about the child they gave up. Even if they come not to regret their decision, and most do believe it was ultimately the right choice, they remember what happened.
“You have to remember, it was 1973. Our world was changing and there was a lot of the old guard who still believed that unwed mothers were garbage. And I was treated like garbage by the women I worked with, by the nurses at the hospital, and by the doctors. I was left in the hallway screaming in pain. And when the nurse came out, she unceremoniously spread my knees, looked in, and said, “You’re not ready. We’ll come back when you are.” And I remember screaming. And she said, “This is what you get for being an unwed tramp. I’m going back in there with this proper married woman and take care of her.” That was burned into my brain. So, when that baby girl was taken from my arms, I don’t remember anything. I just remember being numb. I was numb for months.” ~ Ellen
“It was like closing the book, but the memories are still there. You don’t forget the birthdays and the “this year he would be in kindergarten, and then first grade.” You don’t forget about those, but I felt like I have to go on with life. I always knew I did the right thing because I gave somebody else life that couldn’t have life. So, I didn’t sit back and beat myself. But the thoughts of those birthdays, or I wonder what he got for Christmas. Those thoughts always came up.” ~Ann
That night after dinner at my parents’ home, like always, we sat in the TV room, and I walked in and just stood there. I said to my father, “I’ve got something to tell you.” He let me tell him the story of Candace and that she was pregnant. They were just the kind of parents you’d want because they simply said, “is there anything we can do?” We had only dated a few months and had broken up several months before I learned she was pregnant. But she and her mother had decided they wanted to have the baby and give it up for adoption.
A lawyer was hired, and they took over. After that agreement had been reached, I was told not to reach out to her. And I don’t know if that was the attorneys talking or Candy saying she didn’t want to hear from me. I didn’t even know if I’d had a boy or a girl. ~Mel
The Challenges of our Time
As our country now dismantles Roe v. Wade and nationwide access to abortion, one thing stands out. How we as a society will treat our unplanned for children will say a lot about us. All of us. We are embarking on a gigantic social experiment now in the United States, and we are all watching to see how these changes will impact our society. Rescuing at-risk children will be needed indefinitely. Sadly, there will always be parents who cannot, or should not, raise children – anyone’s children.
What is clear to me, and maybe some of you, is that all regulations and laws on adoption need to be evaluated with the greatest care. Lives are at stake. And we should be asking ourselves – are we ready? Are our safety networks, social services, and the state of our modern adoption practices up for the task ahead?
Listening to and validating the voices of this often unheard-from triad is the mission behind this work – to tell stories from each of their inspirational, hard, sad, triumphant, troubled, and grateful voices – in their words. I hope you’ll hear them.
