Transcript
This is the crux of the argument for me. I'm so glad you brought it up because it's the. It's the ethics and morality of how do you reconcile the rights to one's identity, the right to one's identity versus the right to privacy? Right. You've yeah, you can't have one or the other, but how do you how do you reconcile it? Because I mean, you and I. I didn't sign a contract, right? It's like I'm I'm not part of this deal, which sort of severed me from my birth, right? And in the right to know my medical history, I didn't sign up for this. And yet I'm a human. Here I am. Living, breathing, adult, taxpaying voting, you know, contributing person to society. And yet that right is taken away from me. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Living in Adoption and I'm your host, Brian Elliott. This is the podcast I wish I had before I started my journey more than 20 years ago. I explore the world of adoption, from positive stories to stories about heartbreak, trauma and sometimes even the lifetime of hidden pain. There are more than 500000 kids in the foster care system today waiting to find a home, while infertility rates are at their highest in history. Not to mention the pain of a child or parents search for biological family, only to discover they don't want to be found. We'll also talk about the DNA science that is coming for your family secrets, the complexities, controversy and casualties in the multibillion dollar unregulated business of babies. I would love to hear from you if you want to ask me a question, just go to speak popcom words, adoption land and leave me a private message. If you want to be anonymous, just don't mention your name and ask the question and I won't mention you on air. All right, let's get into it. All right. Well, I'm Tony, Tony Cox and Tino. I am a librarian, formerly a professor used to teach philosophy, and I am an adoptee from a closed adoption that was arranged in the early mid 70s. I have found my birth mother and in reunion with her and her family. So I usually ask my guests, what is it like living in adoption land? You know, I would not have been able to answer that question at all before about eight years ago when I decided to obtain my original birth certificate. But since I did that, the the the ground shifted entirely under my feet, and all of a sudden I've begun to think I started thinking a lot more about really the ethical and justice issues surrounding adoption, in particular closed adoption like the sort that that that I lived through. So what I have done, the kind of the way that I live in adoption land these days is by making connections with people online who have also experienced adoption in one form or another. And I'm beginning to try to kind of write my way through my experiences by really focusing on again, kind of the the ethical and some of the more philosophical questions about identity, about knowledge, about privacy, about rights that adoption raises. So that's kind of that's kind of that's sort of how I have dipped my toe into into the adoption ocean. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And before we move on, I want to make sure that people find some of these. You've written a Substack, right? That is what I've been using, I've been using a subset platform. Yeah, and so working people find themselves, I think they are excellent, even like critical reads, where can they find those? Oh, thanks. So the link is course sent CAIR, S.A. Dot Substack dot com. And yeah, my little project going on there I call. This is not a legal record. So if you get to that, you found it. And that title derives from the phrase that was stamped in big letters, rubber stamped all over the copy of my original birth certificate that I received when I when I petitioned to have it. So let's start there and let's unpack that a little bit. So for those who don't know and I don't really profess to know all of it, I know enough to be dangerous, probably. But this is one of the issues. When I was starting, my search was I was a teenager like in junior high and petitioning the courts from my original birth certificate here in Los Angeles. And I got denied over and over and over again ailments like every year and couldn't figure out why my identity was this state secret. Do you happen to know a little bit more about like, which states have, you know, if if you have the ability to get your original birth certificate or what's some of the logistics around that? Fill in the blanks, right? Yeah. Well, California in particular is is such a difficult because it's such a huge state and there obviously are going to be so many adoptees who want access to their original birth records and still can't get them. So the fact that California remains a closed record state is very dispiriting to me. New York is no longer in that category. You know, I may not have a lot of love in particular for Governor Andrew Cuomo, but one thing that did happen during his his tenure as governor of New York was was to oversee the change in the sealed records laws in that state to make make them available to adoptees. So as things stand in the United States, there are, I suppose, at this at this moment, I believe 11 open records states in which adoptees who were adopted in those states can, without conditions, request and acquire their hitherto sealed birth records. And in some number of other states, there are kind of limited forms of access with restrictions. Generally, those restrictions pertain to the consent. Some sort of consent has to be given by a relinquishing parent, or the information that the adoptee is entitled to receive has been redacted with names and identities stricken. And then still, a large number of states just remain closed. Record states court order only and court orders, as you know, are generally not granted to adoptees here in New England. Every state except Massachusetts is now an open records state. Some of my friends online in the state of Vermont were crucial instrumental in the passage of a bill in that state to turn Vermont into an open record state. Massachusetts is the only outlier now, but there is. There is motion here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to change, to change that there is there efforts underway. So let's let's go into why our opinion? Why do you think? And these are old laws. These are not new laws. This is like, I don't even know how old the laws on the books are about this whole sealing up of adoption or original version of this. But why do you think? This is the way it is. I mean, 11 out of 50 states open. And this is 20 22. This is kind of ridiculous. Why what's your theory on why this started in the first place? Do you know any of the history, right? Well, I think a a definitive history of the evolution of adoption law has yet to be written. There is, there are. There are some historical studies that exist, but I don't think that they tell the full story. Of course, what you will hear from advocates of keeping records sealed is that the laws are in place to protect birth parents from. To enable them to start a new life after relinquishing a child to kind of start from scratch, to reset, to reboot as it were. And and not worry that the past is going to come back to haunt them. That is that is the that's kind of the the canard, the standard story that advocates of keeping birth records closed offer. There is a lot of evidence against that. There is a law professor named Elizabeth Samuels, who has written a number of of studies of the history of adoption, law and its changes, who has argued that in fact, the the real impetus, the real motivation for progressively closing adoptees birth records in state after state was to protect adoptive parents from harassment from, you know, outside interference, from prying into and kind of undermining the sort of the nuclear family that they're that they're creating by force of law. And then there is there is another part of the history that's that's really, truly sordid, which is that in the 1930s and 40s, one of the most energetic and really, you might even really say an innovator in adoption practice. The United States was a notorious baby thief and baby seller in Tennessee named Georgia Tan, who procured children under very dubious circumstances from impoverished families, families in crisis and in some cases even gave babies as gifts to patrons, to politically powerful patrons to to help cover her tracks. And Georgia Town had a vested interest in covering those tracks, and so for that reason certainly was a known advocate of laws that sealed birth records in perpetuity. So another part of the history is going to have to, you know, involves the idea that the origin of modern adoption, as we understand the United States is in intimately bound up with trafficking and kidnapping and and basically, as I say, selling selling of babies. Yes. And sort of and I'll add to that, my two cents. Which is like in my case. Sort of done under the banner of heaven, let's say, which is this idea that because of religious pressure, I'm pretty sure because my mom came from a very fundamentalist Christian home, high demand religion where having sex before marriage and having a baby was shameful and a sin. I'm only speculating, but I'm guessing this. I'm reading into it that she was told that, you know, she should do the right thing. She was a teenager, 17 years old and was probably told, You know, Hey, you're not ready, you're not worthy. There's a, you know, a family out there that deserves using, you know, entitlement language like deserves this child and can give it a better home than you can put this behind you. Forget about it. So probably with a combination of societal pressure and shame mingled with, you know, doing the right thing, these what's that word or that phrase like the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Like they're sure they had good intentions just to convince my birth mom that she was doing the right thing. But a lot of this, you know, intentional. Making babies available for the nuclear family. Has had really bad consequences, you know, for some. So I appreciate you saying that. Can you go into more of the circumstances around your birth? Can you share that story? Sure. So I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. As I say in, well, I have no reason to conceal my age in 1974, so I'm kind of square in the middle of the so-called Generation X bracket right there. In the center of that, my I was born one year after the Roe v. Wade decision, which in adoption circles kind of adoption activist circles is taken to mark the end of the so-called Baby Scoop era, which which we understand is lasting from from the end of World War Two until until the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. But my own birth story is definitely is definitely bears all the hallmarks of the kind of the classic, you know, sort of white domestic adoption, baby. Scoop Story. My mom was in her early 20s. She was in a relationship with someone, got pregnant and. Never, although, you know, abortion may have been a choice available to her. You know, she was part of a Catholic family and I was adopted through a Catholic agency into a Catholic family. So you were talking about religious pressures, pressures there. I'm sure, you know, culturally, I'm sure that that had that had a shaping influence on how on how she experienced her pregnancy and made her decisions. Yeah, but decided that she was not going to pursue abortion, but also had it made understood to her that if that if she were going to keep her child, she was going to be doing it on her own and had to make that wrenching decision. And so again, being in a Catholic family, given that Catholic Charities and Catholic Social Services, you know, were very energetic promoters of an agents of adoption at the time that that that was the decision that she came to. And through the assistance of someone in her family, she was living in Pennsylvania at the time. That's where her parents lived with the assistance of someone in her family. She spent the greater part of her pregnancy in a farmhouse outside Birmingham, Alabama. Where she in fact, you know, a lot of the stories that you hear about about these, these kinds of these, these these sorts of baby scoop pregnancies, births and adoptions. And by the way, I just want to say in this connection mentioned before, I forget a wonderful book that I would recommend to anybody listening to this podcast who isn't familiar with it already by Ann Fessler called the girls who went away. The subtitle is The Hidden History of Those Who Surrender Their Children for adoption before Roe v. Wade. To get a real, you know, a real vivid sense of just how brutalized these women were, and let's say McKinnon is coming on the pod in two weeks. Wonderful. Yeah. One of the women, you know, noted in that book. Wow. That's that's that's that's wonderful. Wow. Yeah. I'll be definitely be looking forward to hearing her story. So, yeah, a lot of the stories in that book are stories of being sent away to maternity homes for unwed mothers, where these women were kind of treated like slave laborers mistreated in various ways, or at least at least being acutely made to feel, you know, as you say, unworthy as of, you know, just being treated with dignity because of this, this purportedly terrible mistake that they made. My mom's experience wasn't quite like that. She actually she actually I think she had a pleasant, you know, given the circumstances. You know, a much easier and humane experience while she was pregnant with me. But yeah, then gave birth. One of her siblings was present. I've had a conversation with that sibling about about the, you know, about my birth, so I am lucky as an adopted to actually have a birth story that I that I know and that I can share with my own children that I can share with my family. A lot of adoptees don't have it, you know? And yeah, and then after I was born, she terminated her parental rights. I was relinquished into the care of Catholic social services, and the timeline here for me still is not entirely clear that formal decree of adoption that I have indicates that I was formally adopted into my adoptive family about a year and three months later. But I do have baby pictures that date from prior to that date that were taken by my adoptive family, so I was at least in their household, certainly prior to the decree of adoption. I don't exactly know how old I was when I entered their household budgets. Yeah, so you may have been fostered by them for a little bit. And it it's it's possible. I don't have the details. The way I would learn more would be to ask my adoptive father, and that's not something that I feel comfortable doing right now at this point in our relationship. I could also, I suppose, try to get more information from the from Catholic social services, although they have a reputation of being very tight lipped and really giving adoptees nothing. Yeah. So yeah, so those those first few months of my life remain a little bit of a mystery to me. Related. So, yeah, relatable. I have so many questions. Feel free to decline and think my probing if you if you don't want to answer it, but OK. So. Let's fast forward a little bit and then maybe flashback, but so you were able to obtain your ABC original birth certificate. How despite the state where you live, being close, how did you get it? So here's what's interesting about the state of Alabama. It is an open records state, and I find that fascinating to reflect on because you we you know, it's easy and natural to think that, you know, politically difficult topics tend to break cleanly along, you know, sort of sort of mainstream political party lines so that maybe, you know, maybe red states would tend to be close like you might think red states might tend to be close. Record states and blue states might tend to be open, open records states. And I suppose, broadly speaking, that isn't entirely wrong, but there certainly certainly the politics of adoption. And that's something that you know that I can I can rant about forever. The politics of adoption are very much scrambled along party lines like, for example, and I'll just mention this and drop it. I don't really think that the ACLU is a friend to adoptees in their quest for civil rights at all. So, yeah, and what makes you say that? Oh well, because to the extent that the ACLU has made any public statements about it, either at the national level or in their local chapters, they tend to be along the lines of adoptions is entirely a matter of birth, mother privacy. And so that right trumps any putative claim on the part of adoptees to have a right to their identity through getting their their birth records. Yeah. And this this is the crux of the argument for me. I'm so glad you brought it up because it's the it's the ethics and morality of how do you reconcile the rights to one's identity, the right to one's identity versus the right to privacy? Right. You've. Yeah. Well, I can't have one or the other, but how do you how do you reconcile that? Because I mean, you and I, I didn't sign a contract, right? It's like I'm I'm not part of this deal, which sort of severed me from my birth rate and and the right to know my medical history. I didn't sign up for this. And yet I'm a human. Here I am living, breathing, adult, taxpaying voting, you know, contributing person to society. And yet that right is taken away from me. Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. Sure. Well, I have a pretty uncompromising attitude about this. I've talked about it a little bit on a couple of a couple of my Substack posts, and I also kind of hammer this theme in my tweeting online about about adoption issues. But I don't think that privacy privacy applies in concealing birth records from adoptees because as I as I like to put it, privacy entitles you to withhold from me a fact about you. It does not entitle you to withhold from me a fact about me and the. And this is not I mean, maybe the formulation is something that I sort of came up with, but certainly the the point. The underlying point is one that has been made by adoptee rights groups for a very long time, which is that the fact that my birth mother is my biological mother. That is a very intimate fact about her, and I can understand why she would want some control over who has access to that fact and who knows it. But it is equally a fact about me that that one, that one in the same fact that I am her child is also a fact about about about myself. It is my property too. And so if we want to think of it in a kind of a quasi, you know, property rights vein, it's not something that anyone can alienate for me because I am, I am at least a joint owner of that piece of information. So this is why adoptee rights advocates often say we have to remember to distinguish privacy and what privacy entitles you to from anonymity because privacy doesn't always entail anonymity. And you know, we have unfortunately, I know, you know, having heard your your own story, Brian, obviously, you know that we have laws and mechanisms in place to keep people away from other people. But so there are protections in place for people who don't want to be harassed or stalked or abused. But but but, you know, extending that to the claim that that a birth mother has the privacy right and never, ever to be found or known by their offspring is another is another question altogether. So for me, I don't regard it as a balancing of rights question because I don't think that that the privacy rate that birth parents are entitled to extends all the way to total anonymity. Yeah, yeah. We're not saying that. Yeah. Now saying that, of course, I understand that this still puts, you know again, I think about your own story because in in one very important respect, as similar as our stories are in this respect, they're quite different because I am in reunion with my birth mother. My birth mother tried to find me and was unable to. And so when we finally did make contact, it was an occasion for great joy and celebration and building of family relationships between myself and not just her, but her siblings and and other members of her family. I'm so happy for you. Yeah, and and you know so. It's it. Clearly, yes, it's it's as I was saying, your situation is very different because your birth mother, at least at the time that we're just having this conversation, doesn't want to be in the same kind of place that my birth mother wants to be with respect to me. Right. So clearly, adoptees and adoptees are exquisitely sensitive to this. You know, there is this this this stereotype of the of sort of the monster, the bugaboo, the angry, vengeful adoptee who wants to know who their birth parents are so that they can either extort something from them or rain, right? You know, anger and vengeance on their lives, and it doesn't work that way. We're not. I will speak for adoptees in general in saying that we're just not like that and that's not what we're after. Yeah. I even think I speculate that this was sort of a sentiment from a bygone era, right? Like so it probably was scandalous if you had a child out of wedlock with someone who may or may not have been acceptable in society. So I get it that you'd want to keep that a secret, you know, oh, you had a child with so-and-so's family. You know that that person, oh, you know, gasp, right? Like, yeah, that that era is gone. So let's go back to the how do we reconcile this? So like, is there a compromise as I have something in mind, I would love to hear like, so how do we how do we meet halfway with the people who are vehemently against this and the adoptees who want it so much like how do we find middle ground? How is there a compromise? Well, I was submission on the basis of strictly anecdotal evidence because I don't I mean, if there have been studies that get that, can, you know, gauge public opinion about these issues? I don't I don't know what they are or what they tell us. But on the basis of strictly anecdotal evidence, all that I can say is that when I decided to change kind of kind of move my online presence as a, you know, person who tweets what's on their mind more and more, you know, pushing myself more and more squarely into kind of adoption issues and then bringing and by doing that, bringing a lot of other people because, you know, I have other interests. I'm a librarian and so I'm connected with a lot of librarians on Twitter and other kinds of communities, you know, so having bringing those people along and giving them a chance to to, you know, participate in or observe these conversations that adoptees are having about adoptee rights. I have been really stunned by how many people have kind of reached out to me, generally privately to say, you know. Things like I have a cousin who's adopted or, you know, there's an adoption story in my family, and I had never thought about the these issues in the way that you're getting that you and other people online are getting me to think about these issues. Just never thought about it. Never. It never occurred to me that there was any kind of problem about adoption. It just seemed like a blessing. And and there was just no room in my in my in my sort of mental space for the idea that there that adoptees would be critical of adoption at all. So right on the basis of this kind of anecdotal evidence, my view is that people who don't already have a dog in the fight are liable to be sympathetic and persuaded that just having access to our identities in the form of at least having our birth records is not a huge ask. Now, confronting the interests of those who do go to state houses and do you know, lobby politicians and so on to keep birth records closed? Obviously. For me, I, you know, I just look at the at the success. Is that really in your face? Activist groups like Bastard Nation have actually had in just bringing people into those state houses and just, you know, raising our voices and presenting the other side. It's not. It's not, you know, like Bastard Nation doesn't have a kind of a make nice approach to to activism, certainly at the state legislature level. They're all about, you know, staying on message message discipline and really articulating all the points that we have been talking about. So. So, yeah, that's kind of that's kind of my sense again. I think that it would be interesting to have better maybe data about it, just adoption is just even though it affects so many people. It's it's just it's not like. And even though, you know, adoption stories pop up in the news every once in a while and they generally fall into two kind of categories right there the feel-good stories of people who have been waiting so long to adopt and finally got a chance to adopt. And then there are the feel-good stories of the adoptees who found their birth parents and are in reunion, right? But despite the, you know, the recurrence of those kinds of stories in the media adoption as a rights issue and as a kind of a field of, you know, sort of political conflict, it's not really reported on in that way. And so I just think that, yeah, that that there remains a lot of educating to do. Well, yeah, it could be. I'd go beyond saying it's not. It's not just not reported, it's it's also like pipe down, sit down, shut up. This is not a big issue and just roll over it. So I would offer something that I've been thinking about, which is sort of obvious, like, how do you? And I've contemplated this, too. Like some I've heard, some people make the argument which is unfounded, and there's no evidence to support this. But they say things like, you know, if women and men, if parents do not have the ability to be anonymous or have this anonymity or sealed records, then there's certainly be an increase in abortions. And wouldn't you hate to have been aborted? Aren't you just grateful that you're here to begin with? So again, quiet down, pipe down. And we know that to be false based on the evidence, right? There's not a correlation between the two. And so I'm just thinking a very simple solution could be. Listen, what if you know, until the age 18, you know you're zero to 17? Allow the parents to have anonymity, let them be off the grid. And then when the child is of age, becomes an adult, then the birth record then becomes fair game open, you know, becomes open and accessible upon request. You know, maybe the child doesn't want to see it or doesn't care. That's fine, or the parents change their mind and they do want to have it to be open. Doesn't that seem like a logical solution that could satisfy both sides? Yeah, but I'll tell you a little story about my own, my my own upbringing. So I mentioned that Alabama was an open records state. It was except for a period of 10 years between 1990 and 2000. In 1990, the Legislature passed a bill that sealed adoptees birth records, bringing it in line with almost every other state. And then that legislation was repealed. Exactly 10 years later, in 2000. So I was born in 1974. I was I turned 16. The year that the Alabama Legislature passed that law, sealing those birth records, which meant that for the first six years of my life, I was, you know, growing up on a path to being able to do that to to do exactly what you're saying to petition the state and get my OBC. I never knew that that was the case, and I never knew that was the case because nobody in my family ever mentioned it. And I am sure that nobody in my family was even aware that that Alabama was an open records state. And that's something that I harbor a lot of resentment about, and I think that I probably will continue to because, you know it just it really it it it really bespeaks the power of a certain kind of ideology of what adoption is, which is that the past, I mean, that it really is a sharp knife that severs the child from from their pre adoption history and that whatever happened prior to adoption just is historically dead and is nothing to the adoptee or to the adoptive family anymore. I just, you know, as far as my family was concerned, I was their child. Whatever the history that predated their, you know, adoption of me was just dead. History never to be revisited. It didn't make sense even to talk about or think about revisiting it. And so there was no incentive or motive to keep abreast of the law. So so that I would be prepared upon reaching the age of 18 to decide how to take action. So yeah, that's that's that's the other part of it. We can. Yes, we definitely need to remove the legal barriers so that adoptees, when they reach the age of adulthood, can can decide what to do. But I also think that in order to in order to to make that reality could kind of to bring it to fruition. I think adoptive parents need to understand that what they have is even even even when they've adopted a child in infancy, what they have is a person with a history that predates them and that history is something that they may want to revisit and that it's their right to and that there and that the parents' responsibility as part of being good stewards and caretakers for their children's futures is to be aware of this and to prepare their children for it, which my family doesn't. Well, said, I appreciate you saying that. Can you talk about the experiences of your mom finding you or are you finding your mom and how with that reunion experience? Yeah. My story is similar to a lot of other adoptees from closed adoptions who were kind of raised in this mindset that we've been talking about. I didn't. I didn't. I never kind of I was ever, given the mental space to to imagine that I could go and ask any official governing body or agency or institution for this information. Even though what we call loss of genetic mirroring or is what's sometimes called genealogical bewilderment was a very what I've I now understand it was a very powerful force kind of shaping my life. As I was growing up, I was in so many ways always conscious of being really, really different from everybody in my adoptive family. I don't look like them. I I just, you know, I my interests and my aptitudes and kind of where my mind would take me and my kind of emotional, you know, complexion was just, I just I was just an odd duck in a family of, you know, you know, whatever pigeons or whatever you want to everyone to describe it. So but despite always, you know, really being aware of my difference, I didn't really start thinking about searching until I was out of college and into grad school at this point. And it was around 1999 that I began to think about searching again. So there were some search resources online at this point. Not a lot for adoptees who were looking to reunite with their birth parents. One of one of the resources I found is the International Soundchecks Reunion Registry, which is a voluntary reunion registry. Do you know about this, Brian? Yeah, I've heard of it. I don't know very well. Yeah. Well, it's it's just really it's kind of an opt in voluntary reunion registry so that birth parents and adopt and adoptees who are seeking to reunite with each other can register with this registry and give as much identifying detail about the circumstances of their birth and the birth and adoption as possible, in the hopes that then the records will match up and then the reunion registry can put those people, you know, in contact. So I did I didn't have much information to give, but I gave that the information and I never heard anything about it. So after, I don't know, a few months of looking around, I didn't practice anything like the the the super sleuth detective skills that you have applied in your own search. I just kind of let the matter drop, and I didn't. I didn't revisit it again until 2013, by which time I had two children. My first was born in two thousand eight. My second born in 2011. And you know what prompted it? Standard story. I've got children. I don't know anything about my medical history that not only that not only harms me, it harms them. I have an obligation to them if, if even if not to myself, to to to do my due diligence and and try to find out more about more about my genealogical history. And then if you'll remember what I was saying about Alabama being an open records state, becoming a closed record state and then being open again, I discovered in 2013 to my amazement that only a few months after my initial searching, Alabama, the state of Alabama, had repealed its laws. So for the last, you know, so from so I had just missed it. If I had searched just a few months, months after I had in 1999, I might have found out right away that that the law had changed in Alabama, and I would have been able to request my birth certificate as it as it is. I didn't know about it for another 13 years. So I kind of kicking myself. I just went ahead and wrote that check for whatever it was, $35 and, you know, filled out the request form and then got the original birth certificate and an a brown Manila envelope. I still have the envelope, of course. I have all the documents and sat down with it. And. I still have a hard time understanding it was like what happened to me, but when I pulled out the birth certificate looked at, it looked at my mother's name in her youthful, neat, elegant, somewhat loopy cursive, saw her name for the first time in my life, saw her handwriting thumb through some of the other documents, including the adoption documents, and saw my adoptive parents names as well. And just all of a sudden, just realizing that all of this history was back together again that I had now the key to my pre adoption history to link my my life prior to my adoption, to everything that came after it. I realized. Well, I don't even know that I would say it, I realized I just made a very impulsive and quick decision, which we can talk about because you have you've you've already, you know, you've given some advice about how to approach, search and reunion. But I was reckless. This something just snapped in me when I saw my mother's signature. I said, I'm going to find her. I'm going to do it now. And I wasted no time. Her name was unique. So it was very easy to find her online. It was easy to find a variety of street addresses where she had lived over the years, and the most important piece of information that I found was her father's obituary, which had been published just two months before I got my original birth certificate. He had died. I just missed knowing him by a couple of months, and the obituary gave, you know, the whole family tree, all of the names of his children, the name of his, you know, his wife, his nieces and nephews. And and it was really easy. And so what I decided to do was to reactivate my long dormant Facebook account, and I found three of my my birth mother did not have a Facebook account, but but but a few of her siblings did. And so I just sent them direct messages. And and that started a conversation, and I was lucky because they were very happy to hear from me. In fact, my my uncle said that they had been waiting for that message for a long time. And some months later, yeah, I was I was getting emails. I was on the phone. And then a few months after that, I, you know, I live in eastern Massachusetts. My birth mother lives in western New York state. It's a seven hour drive direct on on Interstate 90, the New York Thruway. And and I went out and met everyone, and then it was it was it was absolutely amazing. And so, yeah, we've we formed a family relationship. I'm so happy for you, that's a dream, that's just amazing. Yeah, I was very lucky. And again, I can't emphasize enough that I was reckless and impulsive. I didn't really. When I say that, I immediately, you know, went to search to find out how to get in contact and to reach out to people. I did. I didn't even give myself a moment to pause and think about what could go wrong. And you know, that is that obviously is a critical part of the advice that you give to people is to consider the whole range, the whole spectrum of possible outcomes from the best ones to the worst. But I was driven by such a compulsion at that moment that I was kind of heedless of that. But but but I was lucky. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate you underscoring that advice, because, yeah, you just don't know what you're going to get, right? Right? But what a wonderful outcome. And so can I ask about your biological father? Yeah. So I know who he is. In fact, one of the even before I met my birth mother in person when we were corresponding via email one of the first pieces of information she gave me, I think maybe the first piece of information she gave me was the name of of my biological father. And so, yeah, so, you know, I I know who he is. He he has an online presence. I know that I have to half-brothers. I don't have any other. I don't have any full siblings, obviously. I don't have any half siblings on my mother's side. I'm my birth mothers only child, so I know that. And you know, and I've had some conversations recently with my birth mother. About. You know, reaching out. I haven't, and I have been I've been kind of dithering about that for a very long time, and you know this this part of the story is probably for me is probably going to turn out to be kind of the more difficult side of the story. Mm hmm. I I don't I don't know whether my reaching out to him. I don't know whether whether he would reject it, whether he would be angry about it. I do know that the circumstances surrounding my birth mothers getting pregnant were not, not great. And, you know, their relationship didn't didn't really survive that event. So I'm I'm sure that, you know, the fact of my existence is probably for him, definitely part of a chapter of his life that that you know, that he would probably prefer to keep to keep behind him. But right, I yeah, for me, it's I'm just kind of I, you know, I'm kind of hamlet here sort of strutting around and, you know, telling myself stories or making excuses or debating what to do. And and as a result, and then kind of a little bit of a basis, what I have done is I did decide to make use of at least one of the genealogy websites, Ancestry.com in my case and actually to do the the DNA genealogical tests, you know, submitting the split sample and and and and finding DNA matches online. So my biological father is I. He actually has used Ancestry.com in the past, but he has not submitted a DNA sample of his own. But there are other people in his family, and I've been able to plot out a little bit of the family tree who have. And so at least I have, you know, that sort of genetic proof of or at least, you know, good enough as proof of paternity, if that question should ever arise. Right. And that's really the reason why I did it was because I decided that I thought I was going to come forward with, you know, with this revelation, Hey, I'm I am your biological son. I wanted to be able to lay to rest immediately any doubts or questions or accusations about the validity of the paternity and that I have done. Can I ask the other part of it? Yeah. Can I ask you? I kind of think I know the answer to this question already about why you are vacillating between doing it or not doing it, but like maybe. Let's put it in the context of what advice would you give your very best friend if he were contemplating the same issue, what would you tell him? How would you advise him? You know what I would say to him, what I have actually said to other adoptees that I've talked to, you know, sort of privately but online who who are also in the situation, which is whatever you decide to do is not wrong. It's it's this is exquisitely difficult emotional territory to navigate. And and I just I think that if if you're I really do think that your heart has to lead you in one direction or the other. And if it's not leading you in the direction of reaching out, then that's OK. Yeah. So if you know, if I do what I what I mean is that I I never put myself in the position of telling people, you'll regret it if you do X or if you don't do X, I don't know that that's I don't know that I have the authority, the experience of the wisdom to be able to tell anybody that. So yeah, I just tell people that, yeah, whatever you decide, you're right with this because to be an adoptee is to be and what I think of as an existential predicament we have to decide for for ourselves in our own circumstances, given our own emotions, given our own personalities, what family means. You know, some adoptees are very comfortable with saying, I have two families, I have my birth family and I have my adoptive family. Other adoptees say my real family is my, my adoptive family, or some will say, my real family is my birth family. And then there are adoptees who say, I don't feel like I really have any family in the truest sense. I feel constantly in families. And I find myself in that position a lot of the time. I kind of bounce back and forth between all of those modes of thinking about family. And yeah, so for that reason, yeah, that's why when. That's why when somebody asks me, what should I do? I say, whatever you do is right. Because because you have the freedom and unfortunately the terrible, it's on you to decide to kind of invent this. Yeah. If I could add to that, what I would say too, is I think you have to do an equation which is really difficult to do, but it's an equation that you can probably that's very personal and individualistic, right? Which is, does the risk outweigh the reward or vice versa, right? Like so in other words, if you take the worst case scenario, like in your situation, if your dad's you know, you make the attempt and he completely rejects you, says he wants nothing to do with you or, you know, gets. Gets angry about it, like my mom did, or at least that's my interpretation, actually, I think under the anger is fear, but anyway, if it turns out to be nasty. Are you OK with that, right? Like, so if you if you do the math on it and like not doing anything and wondering and never knowing or having a resolution about which side of the fence it would fall on, like if that's. OK with you, or that's worse than you sort of know that risk reward calculation, right? Yeah, and that's how it that's how it was for me after that happened with my mom. It kind of was the worst case scenario for me personally. And then at that point, I thought, Well, if I do the same thing with my dad and the same thing happens, it can't get any worse. I'm already sort of been to hell and back. And so, you know what? You know, W2s, let's go for it. You know, and so and then it it worked out. But like that was the math equation for me because really, truly the not knowing was was killing me like I. My mind just wandered and it wouldn't stop wandering. And I, I explain it like this, that I truly couldn't live in the present until I reconciled the past. It just needed to know I needed answers. And now that I do have answers, even though some of the answers are negative, not exactly what I dreamed about. I have this amazing feeling of closure that I can move forward. You know, I don't think I'm ever going to get through. It, but I've learned to dance with it, and I've learned to like even doing this podcast is so therapeutic, so healing for me to help other people to warn them, give them a heads up, you know? But on that lifejacket, buckle up. But the helmet on. Prepare for that class four rapids that's coming, you know, around the bend. That's even, you know, very fulfilling for me. And that's why, for me, this podcast is so necessary to talk it out. But I appreciate you weighing in on that. I love the I love the image of the dance. Have you used that before? And talking about it, I've noticed. And it's absolutely right. Closure? Yes. Closure in the sense of finally finally having that information, I know that you don't. Obviously, the state of California is not in a position yet where they're going to give you that document, right? I have the documents. So that for me, was it really it? It just felt like a key that fit in the lock. Finally, and that was that was big for me. I don't know that that people who aren't adopted understand the torment of having this document that's called the birth certificate, which is fake. It's like these people were not involved in my birth at all. And it's called a certificate of live birth. And they they weren't in the room. They had nothing to do with it. It just feels it feels infantilizing. And and it's like a little like a Kafka story where you've given this document that's just lies to your face about it. So for me, yeah, the closure, the big closure was getting that finally and seeing the real thing. Yes. And it it really burns me up with anger that there are so many of us who don't have it, who don't have that. The other the and and and yes, I'm I am. I am very, very, very thankful that I have a good relationship with my with my birth mother and her siblings. It's wonderful and I and I've been able to share that with my children. They just she's just their grandmother and and that's just how they're going to grow up and live their lives knowing it. And for me, that's so important. But you're right, and it is very much a dance dealing with these issues, as I've already indicated with my adoptive family. I lost my adoptive mother in 1995 when I was a junior in college. I don't know that I even would have searched if she had still been alive. Honestly, I think that it would have. I if I think that if it, I think that it probably would have broken her spirit if I had really tried to make make those kinds of moves while she was alive. So hard. So yeah, so it really is very much a dance and you constantly. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You're constantly renegotiating what is this? What does this mean? How far can I take? It is, is this family relationship real? There are those moments where I think, you know, my birth mother is now she's in my life, but wasn't until I was 30, until I was nearly 40 years old. It almost still even eight years on after reunion. It almost still feels like it could end at any moment. Or it's it's, you know, it's not legitimate. It could. It could vanish. I could be rejected again, adoptees, you know, have that feeling. Yeah, yeah. It's always in motion. It is a dance. Yeah. And you sort of alluded that you have a strained relationship with your adoptive dad, can you talk about that? Yeah, we will. We're in a good place as father and son, I'll have to say, and it hasn't, it hasn't been that way for a while. I did tell him that I had searched for and found my birth mother, and that came that came as hard news for him. He was hurt. He was wounded, especially when I referred to my birth mother as my mom because and he told me that that was a phrase that he never thought I would ever apply to anyone other than my adoptive mother. And so that for him, that was I think it felt like a dagger in his back. Somehow, for me to use the then that's another great kinship language for us adoptees is very treacherous. But although we don't talk about it, you know, some things have happened in his life and in my life that have kind of brought us together again and and we're in a good place. You know, I love him and. And I'm glad that that we're in each other's lives. But at this point in our lives, yes, everything that pertains to my birth family and and my reunion is we just discreetly keep it off stage. Yeah. So maybe we can impart some advice to you because I've had the same experience. I'm not close with my adoptive mother, haven't been for the last 25 years. It's very strained. I had to create boundaries. It really is for self-preservation. She's not a bad person. She's just extremely insecure and very passive aggressive. And again, it's for self-preservation issues. I had to create those boundaries between us. But so let's impart some advice about how how we can approach the subject with our adoptive parents because I do feel like I can understand their point of view. It's like they've invested all this time blood, sweat, tears, probably money, too, although that's probably not part of it. You know their thought process, but it's like there's a big investment. And then here you are, you know, betraying their their love. You know, after all, Tony wasn't our love enough for you. Like, didn't we give you everything? And now you know you're you're leaving us. And I had to explain to my mom, This is not about you, actually. So don't make it about you. This is about me and my quest to find out all the things that I've ever wondered about. You know, I know that your family comes from Wales, but I've never been from Wales. It's just been the the history that has been placed on me, you know, and I, I don't have any part of it that I've not invested in and I've never felt part of it. So I want to find out what the real story is. What advice can we give to telling our parents? Yeah, I think that certainly part of it is going to have to be tailored to the individual circumstances. So in my case, what I wish that I could do given that I am in reunion with my with my birth family is I would like to be able to say to my father, You know, if if you're if you're upset about this, I just think it would be great if you could just to understand to understand what kind of need this meets. If you could just kind of see my my birth family and just see that, you know, that I look like them, I, you know, it turns out that, you know, I like our life. Stories are in such uncanny ways, similar that, you know, I am the first person in my adoptive family to second person, my adoptive family to graduate college, first person, my adoptive family to go to graduate school. Then I discovered that two of my birth mother siblings have PhDs. Another one has a master's degree and taught college in high school English. They're they're bookworms. It's like, that's that's the first thing is to understand that this is not amount a matter of reject. It's and even, I guess in a way, even putting it this way sounds like I'm rejecting my my adoptive family, but I'm just saying. But it's not. It's a matter of saying, Look, these biological connections are really they really do go in certain ways, deep and in knowing the kind of the tree of which I'm a branch has enabled me to understand myself a lot better. And wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't you dad want that for me? That's that's a good thing. That doesn't that that this is not, you know, to resort to a cliché. Love multiplies, it doesn't divide. It's like getting in getting this, this kind of connection to my biological family. It's I'm not taking anything out of my relationship with my adoptive family at all. The the most for me, the most joyful words that I've heard was from my was was from my father, my adoptive father, sister, who said, I'm so glad you did this. I'm so glad you finally found your birth family to get that kind of validation from my adoptive family for having made the decision I did. Meant the world to me. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's I guess that that's that's what I would want to emphasize, which is that this is not a matter of withdrawing. This is this is additive. It is not subtractive. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's such an opportunity for adoptive parents and families to become the champion of the child who's searching to say, I got your back. You know, I'm a I'm a safety net. If you fall. I got you. I'm here. If you need me, do you want me to come along with you? Do you need support? You know, it's such an opportunity for them to reinforce their relationship as the caregiver, the parents, you know, the people that raised you. And and so often I think parents are so afraid, insecure that they might lose. And there's there's a lot of psychological reasons that are baked into that reaction. I know I'm not a doctor, but you know, you could sort of use logic and figure that out. Another thing you touched on that was so interesting and important, I think, is I read this book Primal Wound, which talks a lot about nature and nurture. It was so enlightening for me, and I highly recommend that book, especially to adoptive parents to read, write, because yeah, you don't realize how. And I'm only just realizing a little bit at a time as I meet my biological family, how much we are alike, whether it's my looks or these mannerisms or propensities, you know, to do certain things the way I do this to my hair, the way you know, the order in which we get dressed, you know, pants, first shirts saying it sucks second, third, whatever it is like that, it's a lot of that is in the hard wiring and it's just remarkable and fascinating. And everyone should have the right to know that and embrace that right. And yeah, anyway, I think adoptive parents have an incredible opportunity to be the champion of their child or adult child at any stage. I agree. I agree. You know, in my own case, I know that I was adopted because of fertility problems with my adoptive parents. Right? Very common, obviously. Common cause, cause for it. To me, the danger of that. Is that the adoptive parents view adoption as having a child by another, by another method? And it's not because it's bringing a person. Not into the world, but taking a person out of the world in a certain sense and fashioning a new world. And and so the risk is that adoptive parents again going back to what we've talked about, that that that adoptive parents see the legal severance as a more total kind of severance. And that doesn't it's not going to help them. It's not good for the relationship with their child. It's not good for the child. It's not good for anyone. Right. They see it as a way to protect the child, in fact, I think they a lot of people use that excuses. Here we are protecting the child and you know, in some cases that may apply. My friend and his wife have adopted four kids over, you know, a period of a decade, maybe 12 years. And I happen to know that one of the biological fathers of one of their adoptive sons is a criminal. He's a bad person. You know, it's it's a very bad situation and and he is truly better off never knowing his biological dad. And that's fine. And there are circumstances like that. But majority of the cases we should know are back story. We should know our history. We should have the right to choose that. And unfortunately, in a lot of cases, it's not. It's not an option for us, and I think that's why we get frustrated. I can speak for myself why I felt like. You know, my rights are being violated in many, many regards with the ability to just find fundamental basic information like, you know, am I am I Scottish? Yes, I am, actually, it turns out. Am I Jewish? Yes, I am. It turns out I'm 50 50, basically, you know. And in fact, it's as if you know the prince in the proper story. I have been able to do my genealogy on my mom's side because it's apparently all readily available and been done back, you know, literally a thousand years. I am Tony, as it turns out, actual royalty. I am a direct descendant of the king and Queen of Scotland. So maybe, you know, if this were 500 years ago, I'd have a castle someplace because I am of royal blood. So ironic. That's wonderful. Congratulations. Congratulations. I don't know if I'm descended from royalty, but if I am, it would probably be Polish royalty, perhaps. Definitely straight polish on my father's side and and also Central European on my mother's, but more kind of in Czech Republic. As always, thanks for listening. Don't forget to leave a review and as many stars as you think the show deserves, it helps more people find us and join the community. I mean, I want to hear from you. What do you want to know about adoption and how can I help? Are you a parent who has given up a child and and you're wondering, you know, how to find that child or whether or not you should reach out to contact them? Are you an adoptee like me and you want to know how to go about it? There's resources out there I can point you to. Are you? Are you thinking about adopting a child or bringing in a child from foster care? Leave me a note or message. Reach out to me. Somehow, you can leave me a question via speak pipe. It's a speak pipe dot com forward slash adoption land. You could do it privately or anonymously. And I'll do my best to answer your question on one of the next episodes, but I appreciate you listening. I love you guys. This is therapeutic for me. I hope it's helpful and healing for you, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Thanks very much.
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