Hey there, it's Melissa Brunetti and welcome to the Mind Your Own
Karma podcast. Hey there Karma crew.
Thanks for joining me on the 100th episode of Mind Your Own
Karma. As of the date of this
recording, Mind Your Own Karma has been listened to in 46
countries from all. Over the world.
My mission when starting Season 2 was to bring the adoption
subject to the world and educate the world about adoption.
And we are doing it. So thank you for your support,
thank you for listening, and thank you for continuing to
support me and this podcast. Now I'm going to jump right in
and tell you a little bit about my guest today, Paige.
Adam Strickland is a teacher and writer from Cincinnati, OH.
She is an adoptee in Reunion from the Baby Scoop era who
searched and found her biological family in the 1980s.
Paige has written books and film and play reviews on her
WordPress blog as a way to elevate the voices and talents
of members of the adoption constellation.
Her two memoirs about being adopted are akin to The Truth
and After the Truth. She has a work in progress with
the working title of Born, Adopted and Finding My Truth.
Born Adopted is geared toward teen and young adult readers.
She is married with two daughters, 3 grandchildren and
four spoiled rotten cats. Here is my interview with Paige
Strickland. We are welcoming Paige
Strickland to the show today. Hi, Paige.
Hi. I'm always super excited when
someone reaches out to me and wants to tell their story and
say me too, I want to tell my story.
So I just want to thank you for reaching out to me on Facebook,
and it's just so important for us to tell our stories.
Why do you want to tell your story?
I'm hoping it would be helpful to other people.
Other adopted people you never know about.
First parents, Birth parents, You know what they maybe would
want to know about what an adopted person might be
thinking? Anybody really.
I'm really hoping that like you said, that we are not only
educating and helping adoptees, but we're educating people who
are looking to adopt and even birth parents, right and helping
in their trauma and things like that too.
And if it dates somebody's feelings that they've always
questioned, are they normal? Or am I the only person that
thinks like this if it helps somebody to feel not so crazy
after all? Yes.
Or if we're all just the same, crazy.
Right. And it's funny because I didn't
really know that until, you know, a year and a half ago when
I really jumped into, you know, the Facebook groups and stuff
and, oh, that's kind of fun. I'll join an adoptee group.
And then I was just like, whoa. You know what is happening?
Like I was just so blown away. I didn't really know a lot of
adoptees growing up and we didn't talk about it, you know,
so. We were hiding out in the open.
Like, yeah, I mean, as far as I was aware growing up, I was the
only one in my world and circle of people and people my parents
knew and anybody in my school and.
Yeah, you just didn't talk about it.
You didn't talk about it. No.
Yeah, you don't talk about it cuz you'll get bullied.
Somebody will find a way to make fun of you about it.
So. Yeah.
Or you'll get in trouble or something.
Yeah. So tell us what the
circumstances were with your adoption.
What do you know? I pretty much know everything.
Oh, this is Lily, by the way. So good.
For watching on YouTube. So I was in foster care after
birth. Somewhere between when I left
the hospital and before my parents got me.
I was 13 months old when I was adopted.
I was born premature, somewhere around seven months ish, healthy
but underweight. So they had to keep me in the
hospital for a time. And then I got sent to foster
care. And then my parents, in the
meantime, were starting to family plan.
Just thinking about what to do. They were healthy but just
things weren't happening for them and so they decided to
adopt and they they knew somebody who'd adopted and so
that's they decided they would do that too.
And the people they knew moved out of town.
So it's not somebody where we could hang out and go, hey, I'm
adopted too, so again, nobody around me that, so that's pretty
much. They went to a foster care home.
I was there among a bunch of other kids and they weren't
really needing to adopt A newborn infant, so they were
okay with like a one year old baby.
You still look like a baby. Yeah.
So you were in the hospital till you were seven months?
I was in the hospital possibly one month a day OK for long it
would take a £5 or so ish baby to.
Gain a couple pounds. Not be considered premature by
weight. Maybe I was 4 point something.
And they don't have a weight. I don't have a weight.
There's nothing on any of my birth certificates about weight
or time of day, which I hate that I really hate.
It's like 2 little details. I would like to know a lot of
things about a lot of people because I learned everything I
could. But those are two things that,
poof, I guess I'll never know. So yeah, my parents were just
verbally told that I was underweight and had come early.
So. So why did it take so long for
them to adopt you out, do you know?
Well, here's what I found out after I found the family was
that we're just putting pieces together based on what we know.
I don't know if it's a spoiler to say or not, but my birth
mother was passed away. I couldn't go to a direct source
for any information but talking to her aunts.
Talking to I had a sister that she's 18 months older than I am
and basically she couldn't be single mom to two kids.
She was making it with one barely, but making it with one.
And she had health problems. So because of the health issues
still being single, my birth father just wasn't going to
marry her. And there's a story behind that.
He married someone else but. He was married.
No, he was the single guy, but he was seeing more than one
woman. Yeah.
And so she was left with no support.
Everybody was helping her out with the first kid.
And then it happened again, and it was Sorry about your luck.
Yeah, you know. So I don't believe she was
probably coerced the way a lot of birth mothers at that time
were. She had some legit reasons why
it wasn't going to work out for her, and even though I came
early, she already had the adoption plan.
It wasn't like after I was born and somebody said, now what are
you going to do because? She did not bring me home from
the hospital and she had to have heart surgery after I was born.
She had rheumatic fever as a kid that wasn't treated properly,
you know, living in the pills and hollers of Virginia, no
doctoring or not good doctoring, you know, things like that.
So she had heart valve problems and had to have some surgery
after I was born. So there was another reason she
couldn't take care of me. And an 18 month old and just.
Yeah, no backup. So is your sister the one that's
older than you? Are you full sisters or half?
We're halves. We're half.
And she found out about me because, you know, kids do these
things. She just sort of had this
feeling and one day when nobody was home, she got into a lock
box in the closet and snooped. And she was the only kid in the
house at the time. She was raised as an only for a
long time and got into this lock box and found papers and it was
the adoption papers or hospital record or something that my
birth mother had had copies of and she was 10 years old.
I. Was going to ask how she was.
Yeah. Wow.
And she said when she confronted her mother about it.
Well, I was going to tell you, I was just waiting for the right
time and. Okay, you know, is a 10 year old
the right time to tell? I don't know.
I think it would really kind of depend on the kid, but she got
told them when she was 10, so she, my sister, knew I existed.
Yeah, I feel like the younger you're told and you don't like
because I don't remember being told I was adopted because I was
new. Yeah.
So I always think that's better, you know, than waiting for a
certain time when you think they're going to be able to
comprehend it. Just tell them from the
beginning. Right, right.
Then it's kind of no big deal and you already know.
Yeah, but you know, didn't know what to do back then about the.
Yeah, I know. So did you have siblings growing
up? I did in the adopted family.
Yeah, I was raised with one brother.
He is biological. They did manage to conceive.
So he's six years younger than I am.
Yeah. How was that relationship?
Did you feel different since he was biological?
Yes. And I was old enough to know it
because I was six when he was born, so I knew where babies
came from. And so it's like, well, this
doesn't add up now. I don't remember.
I knew I was adopted. I don't remember when I was told
exactly or having some moment of or anything like that, but.
I knew, you know, when he was born, oh, this is how it was
supposed to go. This was what was supposed to
happen, kind of thing. This is what happens to
everybody else. But it didn't happen to me.
And so that was kind of disturbing.
But you know, when you're six, you don't know how to deal with
that and you don't know. Who to blame?
Or if there's somebody to blame or anything like that, you just
you're 6 and it's like, it's not fair, is what it feels like.
And being that he was a boy, I was a girl.
We were six years apart. It took a long time before we
had a lot of things in common. Finally, around the time he hit
junior high, we realized we like the same music.
At least there was that. And some of the same TV shows,
you know? But really before that he was
into his Speed Racer and his dirt bike and his guy things.
And yeah, it was, we just didn't have that much in common, you
know, We didn't have the same teachers in school.
I mean, we went through the same school district, but we just.
Was big enough, We just didn't have all the same.
Yeah, I feel like it's hard enough being the only kid for a
while, even in the biological family, and then having another
kid come along and, you know, kind of take some of that of
your attention away. But I think, you know, being an
adoptee, that just totally compounds it by 10.
Not having the birth story and not having the biology and the
mirror and, oh, you look like that and I don't.
And just so many things. Yeah, so many things.
So it sounds like you guys kind of made a relationship as you
got older, do you still have a relationship with your brother?
We kind of do. We still live in our own worlds
and our own stuff. He doesn't get that.
I'm into all the the adoption stuff.
He just doesn't understand. I don't expect him to understand
because it didn't happen to him, you know?
But we have different careers, Different again.
Music's about the only thing we can agree on, and we're both
kind of in a situation now. My our mom that raised us,
birthed him and raised both of us.
She's 93. She fell and broke her leg back
at Easter time. We're having to deal a lot
closer than we've had to for years because we have to start
making decisions on her behalf. And care decisions because she
can't live independently. So, you know, we're right coming
back around a little bit. Yeah, so he's still including
you and not making you feel like you're the outsider.
You're included in your mom's decisions and.
Right. So you said you always knew you
were adopted. How did they do that?
I mean, my parents kind of told me a story from when I was a
baby, you know, so I I knew. But do you know?
I have no idea. I have no idea how they told me
or if there was a story. We did not have that book that a
lot of people had, that chosen baby book or whatever.
Yeah, they just said it and that was it.
And you know, as I got a little bit older, they'd add on a
little bit, you know, whatever was age appropriate, of course,
really the factual information they had.
Was like next to 0 regardless. So there really wasn't anything
age inappropriate to tell me they were even told by the
agency and it was just Hamilton County Welfare.
This is not through Catholic Charities or any private place.
They were told that my birth parents were married.
Oh wow. It's a total lie.
Yeah. Yeah, I think.
That would make it even more confusing than why they give you
up if they were married. Yeah, it would marry people.
Yeah. And that he had a college
degree. Why would married people do
that, be in a situation where they had to do that?
Kind of didn't make sense. But I think maybe at the time,
you know, given that it was 1962, you know, and it made me.
It made them. I don't think they were lying to
you because they said it so many times.
I mean it's and agencies did falsify, you know it didn't have
to be religious ones that were doing it.
You know that the idea that oh then I'm not illegitimate.
Right, Yeah. You know that maybe that was
like a thing that encouraged adoption, You know, they thought
they aren't adopting a bastard child or?
Something who knows, knows what they've made-up, why they make
stuff up. I mean, yeah, yeah, who knows?
So growing up, did you consider yourself, or did you see
yourself as the compliant adoptee or the one that acted
out? I think I swung between both
ways, kind of depending on what the situation was.
If I really thought something was unfair or not right, or I
didn't understand it, I would act out and be mad about it.
But, you know, then there were other things.
Sure, fine, OK. Or I don't care.
Whatever. You know, it.
It just, I think it depended on the situation.
But yeah, I know, you know, if I felt like just something wasn't
right or something wasn't fair, even if I couldn't articulate it
or I couldn't do any better than go, you know, which nobody's
going to listen to a kid that does that.
But still, you know that's. Yeah.
So it sounds like you're pretty balanced.
You were one or the other because you were an adoptee.
I wasn't a kid that got in trouble.
I was terrified to get in trouble.
So I was very that way. Like, I am not going to smoke
and I'm not going to drink before I'm 21 or 18 when I was
18 when I was growing up. I'm not going to speed.
I am not going to. Yeah, yeah, all the.
Things. Yeah.
So many adoptees say they have trouble attaching in
relationships. Did you ever notice any
difficulties attaching growing up or even later in life?
Growing up, I didn't know any other way, so I couldn't compare
anyway. But I think I was more attached
to my grandmother's than I was to my parents.
I would say there is absolutely no trouble at all attaching to
my grandma's. My grandfathers were already
passed away. I never knew them but my 2
grandmas. My mom's mom, my dad's mom, I
was very attached to them and they were pretty much substitute
parents. And I think that was one of the
other reasons why I didn't get into trouble was because I knew
that would please them. I mean, who wouldn't it please
really. But you know that that was.
To be compliant, it would be for their sake, nothing else.
Right. So what about, you know, when
your teenage years or in relationship growing up, did you
see any problems there? Yeah, I mean, I had.
It took a lot to make friends and feel like I had a close
friend, like a bestie that took some doing and I kind of address
it a little bit in the books. That, you know, as soon as you
start making friends with somebody, that somebody's
parents up and get transferred and they move away or something
like that would happen or we'd make a life change, you know, So
it was hard and that way, you know.
What about romantic relationships?
I think, and especially by the time I knew better and I was old
enough. But growing up thinking she was
17 now again who's married to a college degree guy and you're
17. See.
None of that. Adding up.
Right. So yeah.
But he listening to this point. What?
Wait, what? Yeah, Thinking okay.
If this happens when you're 17 guys, that's scary business.
You know, it's Yeah, trying to trust a guy.
It was trust. It's not like I didn't want to
do things or hear about things, but.
I can see that. It was like.
It can't be me. Can't apply to me, right?
Yeah. So that was a very scary thing.
I mean, I met my husband. We actually grew up in the same
school system together, but we started dating in high school.
And it's like it's the only person I've ever trusted.
So one marriage then, for you. One marriage, one guy.
We're still together. And so yeah.
And you have two kids, right? I have two daughters.
Yeah, yeah. So what was it like having kids?
I know some adoptees have trouble connecting with their
babies because of adoption. Did you have any problems?
You connected right away. I think I was the opposite.
I was just like a nobody, taking you away from me there.
And no way I'm losing you there. You are not going out of my
sight. I don't know that I was a true
helicopter, but I was. I was a Mama bear.
Protective. Yeah.
And. Still can be, you know, Yeah, I
think somebody would do them wrong.
Yeah, I'm, I'm coming at you. Yeah.
So what was it like seeing someone biological, maybe for
the first time? I'm not.
We haven't gotten into your reunion story yet.
But what was that like, seeing your child?
It was just amazing and I hadn't seen my birth father, but yeah,
and I looked at my first daughter when she was born.
And I could see him in her face. Even in a newborn baby face, I
could see it was something in the mouth and something in the
upper left here, a little bit. The skin coloring it.
It's just I could see it. I could see it in her.
I knew where it came from. And that was so, so cool.
That was my other daughter. She came out looking like my
husband's people so. But it wasn't my birth people,
you know? And I could see myself.
And that was the other thing too, because we all have the
same eyes. And I see that now I've got 3
grandkids and all three grandkids.
I can see things both in myself. Yeah.
And my husband and my soninlaws, too.
But I can see things in my birth family and them.
Wow. Really cool.
Yeah. So did you ever think about your
biological family when you were growing up?
more than I admitted to at the time.
Growing up. I've decided I'm not going to be
adopted. I'm going to forget about this
whole thing. If we don't discuss it.
This is going to be a secret. I'm not sharing it with anybody
except the guy end up marrying, and I'm just going to unadapt
myself. Not going to happen And lie
through my teeth to just about everybody about it.
And yeah, and I I looked enough like the family I was raised in
that I could fake it. Nobody, nobody know, you know.
So yeah, just never said anything to anybody.
You know, you get in these discussions with people about
family history or traits or whatever, I could just sort of
BS alone, you know? And that's the way I did it.
So yes, I thought about him. I'd have moments popping up here
and there, but then I just sort of like like shoving stuff down
in a box on there and then putting a padlock.
On it, Yeah. Yeah.
So tell us about the search. Did you do DNA?
It was probably too early to do DNA.
I was old school. It was back in the 80s, okay.
So in Ohio. Let's back it up a little bit.
In Ohio, Ohio's records are basically open now, unless
there's a letter of rescission in your file.
But in the time I was born, if you were born before 1964, which
I fell into that category, my record was open.
Did not know that growing up. Wow.
My parents, I think, and this is one of those where people's you.
You hear what you want to hear, you think what you want to
think. If somebody doesn't tell you
otherwise, you make the assumption.
I don't believe they lied at all.
I believe they were just uneducated about the law.
They they didn't want to know, you know, and they believed if
it was a closed adoption that meant closed forever and not
closed but or closed until they didn't think about that part.
So all they ever said was it was a closed adoption.
So I grew up leaving that it was impossible to find them anyway.
There's another reason to kind of unadopt and just forget about
everything and happen. Because if it's impossible, you
know, I can either frustrate myself and be really pissed and
be that angry adoptee person or just we ain't dealing with it
and it didn't happen. So how did you find them?
We were watching ATV talk show one night, and it was about
adoption. It was a local talk show.
Nobody, anybody here would ever have heard of people here in
Cincinnati. And they had a panel and it was
all done very civilly. So it wasn't like watching Maury
or any of those guys. They weren't screaming and
crying. And it was sort of a point
counterpoint with the pros and cons of finding people and so
forth. And that's where they disclose
that. If you already don't know about
this House Bill 84 in Ohio says your records are open if you
were born before January 1st, 1964.
Wow. Husband and I looked at each
other and went what? That's not what my parents were
told, you know. And so that kind of was the
trigger spark that got the ball rolling.
So it was 1987 at the time, and we didn't have kids yet.
And I took down all the information.
Oh, the birth mother who was on there was a member of Cub,
Concerned United Birth Parents. And I didn't know.
They had a local chapter here in town at the time.
And it was open to everybody. It was not just for birth
parents because there was nothing for adopted people at
the time. Oh, but they were like they were
saying on this talk show, you know, anybody.
And at the time, the Triad, now the Constellation.
But, you know, anybody could go. So I decided I'm going to go to
the meetings, check it out. You walk into these meetings
with people and you're looking around like, could you be my
cousin? Could you be right?
Yeah. You know, you just that's how it
is. And I met two friends there.
One we're we're all friends to this day.
And so that's kind of cool. And first time I'd really been
in a room with a bunch of other adopted people and an adoptive
parent besides my own parents and with birth parents.
And yeah, I mean, it really got me thinking.
It really educated me and it was the best thing to do before
taking any other steps. So they told me, though, okay,
here's how you do it. You write to Columbus or your
state capital, send them the $20 certified check because they're
raised to their money and you know, they send you a packet
back. Whatever's in your file, it
might be a Xerox copy. It might not be the actual
documents because they still have to keep a file.
Yeah, I've often thought, Gee, I should do it again and see if
they send me the exact same papers, Right.
I may do that. Would that be something blow 20
bucks and yeah, yeah. So do they keep moving the date
now or is it still 1964? It's, yeah.
In 2015, I believe they opened it to everybody.
I went to the opening of that. It was very cool, very
historical, very. Yeah, it was nice just to go as
a support person for other people, right?
Because I'd already found my people.
And by that point I was getting involved with people online with
adoption. And that's how I found out about
that. Yeah.
Oh, cool. But that's only 90 minutes from
here, so. So I get my paperwork back.
That was in April. We had watched that show.
Maybe in March Got the paperwork back.
As fast? Wow.
Yeah. And then I teach and I've just
that point in the school year, it was like I can't do anything
about this till summer anyway. I don't have the time, but we'll
get the papers and see what the papers just say.
I've always kind of equated it to like when you open up a bag
of chips and you think you're going to eat one, the Pringle
chips, right. You just a couple out of there
and you think you're going to be good.
And then now you got to go back and get some more.
And he does. And then now you want more.
And so you go back again. And that's kind of what it was
like. It was like this addiction
building up. All of a sudden, the more I
knew, the more I wanted to know, wasn't more of a, oh, I hate
adoption. I'm going to make adoption go
away. That's never going to be a part
of my life. But then all of a sudden it was
like now I have some power that I didn't have.
So you got names and. And I got names, yeah.
So my birth mother's name, of course, was on there.
And what her profession was at the time, she was a waitress at
the time and where she was living at the time here in town,
all about 20 minutes away from where we live.
And I got lucky. I got extremely lucky and it's
extremely rare. My birth father's name was on
there also. And usually that never happens
because either it's sort of like a one night stand thing or they
don't even know who the guy is or that was a bad situation and
they didn't want to name a name or something.
But she and my birth father's name on there and she knew his
occupation. So it's like this was not a
stranger. Yeah, she knew to put on there
that. Yeah, it wasn't like something
was unknown. She knew what how to fill out or
provide the information to whoever filled it out and
everything was correct on there. So what was that like, seeing
something different than what you were told?
Right. And the other thing that was on
there was my birth name, but I would have been named had she
been able to keep me or even had he kept me.
So that was really revealing to me that would that was like.
Yeah, How does that feel? Because I I grew up hating my
name because it was, it would make fun of you for it.
Just people tease you. People spell it wrong.
People act stupid about your name.
And I just made me hate my name. And that's one thing I did know
growing up is that my parents that raised me picked my name.
So somehow, what did anybody call me before my parents who
raised me? Was I just, hey, you in the crib
or what? You know and.
I wonder that, too. Yeah, I was when I got old
enough to start processing. Enough to wonder, Gee, did I
have a different name before? What would it have been if I
did, you know? Yeah, I was wondering if the
foster parents named me something totally different, you
know, and called me something totally different.
Yeah, I have no idea about any of the foster part is a total
blank. Yeah, I saw that.
It was just mind blowing. But it was kind of good that I
didn't jump into it immediately to searching because it was so
much to take in just on this piece of paper.
And there was a decree of adoption with my dad who raised
me signature on it, you know, and the judge stamped of, you
know, of approval on it. There was a name change document
that changed my name from what it would have been to what it
became. Yeah.
And then the original birth certificate copy and a current
functional whatever you want to call it, legalized birth
certificate copy. Like, they obviously got the
right person there, didn't have the numbers mixed up or anything
like that. So that was just like.
And so when school let out, I pretty much hit the pavement and
just went downtown because everybody, everything on my
paperwork was totally local to here in Cincinnati.
That's where I start. So go down to downtown, go to
the courthouse, go to the Public Library, main branch, back and
forth between the two. And I spent June and July, just
nobody tracked steps then. But I can only imagine, well
from one end, then back to the other end and back here, then
back here. And that's what I did.
So did you find out from just doing that that your mother had
passed through not yet. Public records?
Okay I went through old between any public records that I could
find and then they used to have these things called Williams
Crisscross directories that would list a person's name, a
current address, a profession or at least field that a person
worked in if not the specific business.
Kind of built a timeline for each parent to track where they
had been and where they were going and just and she dropped
off the timeline around 19691970 and I couldn't find anything
more about her. I was able to find out that she
married but a different guy and it was my sister's dad and he
married a different lady and all of a sudden she dropped off the
timeline. So I kept continuing with him
and I periodically check and go, well you know, maybe they just
for some reason they just weren't listed one year.
So I keep checking Her husband reappeared in the directories
later on, but not with her. So that made me think.
But it's funny, growing up to that was another way I was
shutting out adoption going well, she's probably dead
anyway. Yeah, I just.
Kind of had that knowing maybe. Well, there's no point in
dealing with this because she's probably dead, so you know.
And I had that hunch all along, but I couldn't find a death
certificate so you should be able to find those too.
Is not able to locate one. And my parents that raised me
were actually married over in Northern Kentucky on the other
side of the river. So I I even went up across the
river to Kent County and went through their courthouse and
their library looking for things.
Could not find anything on my birth family.
So it's like well nothing happened there.
They were all in Cincinnati and I even Claremont County which is
1 county over to the east of Hamilton where I live.
Nothing over there. So they must have just stayed
right there in town. But I couldn't find anything on
her, but I found her the the guy, right?
So I wrote a letter to him, her husband or her.
Yeah, the address was there. There was no phone number, but
the address was there. And I had an address on my birth
father too. I actually had done a drive by
at his house, so I seen his car and knew that he worked for
General Motors because that's what the directory said.
And I also found out on the news that same summer General Motors
here in town was closing down. He was losing the job.
Not the time to contact this guy because he's losing his job and
though he was at an age, he could have taken early
retirement. But maybe he would do that.
You call it a day or maybe it'd be a I can't afford to early
retire. I got to keep working now or.
Maybe I'm going to move and then you'd lose the address, you
know? Right.
But I thought, I cannot contact
him here in the middle of July because he's losing his job and
that's devastating. That's another kind of loss.
After 20 years working somewhere to have that happen to you,
that's that's a loss, another kind of grief.
So because obviously he worked in the same place for so long,
he was dedicated and he stuck with things, right.
He was in the same home address all that time.
Not a guy does a bunch of changes tell that about him.
So okay, let's leave him alone for a little while.
I had the other guy's address and who my would be stepfather.
I had things work differently and wrote to him just saying and
the cub people said at the meeting just tell them you're
trying to find some family history information or you have
urgent family business with so and so and see what what the guy
tells you. So he wrote me back even though
I left a phone number. He wrote me back, but okay and
he said she passed away in Long Beach, CA in 1976.
So my gut was right and it explained why I couldn't find
anything about her because she left.
In fact, he'd left too. But he came back.
He moved back. They had found out the story
later from my sister. They had divorced here in town,
but we're kind of together and they all decided she and my
sister and her dad and the dad's brother and his wife and kids,
They all decided to pack up all their belongings, leave town
here and go to California. Start life over.
Reboot your life. So is your sister in California?
She had moved up to Portland OR by that, but she lived there for
a while. She went to high school there.
So the letter that he wrote you, was it?
He said. Was he gentle about telling you
or was he? Yeah, I mean, you know, and I
mean some of it, Yeah, it's just.
Did he know about you? He did.
But I didn't tell him who I was,
just that I was doing family research trying to find my birth
mother. Well, I didn't say I'm finding
my birth after I'm finding this person.
And so he said she died in Long Beach, CA.
He said sorry, signed his name and put his phone number on
there. Then I called him, figured out
what he ain't going to put his phone number on there if he
doesn't mind. So I talked to the the new wife
picked up the phone and then she passed it on to him.
He knew all about me, She had told him.
He invited me and my husband to come over and he had some
picture albums. So that Saturday we went over
there. Yeah, he gave me a picture and
did not know where to find his daughter.
I don't know who loses track of your kid, but didn't know where
she was. He didn't know if she was still
in California or she gone somewhere else.
But that's the last time he'd seen her.
That's where she was down in Long Beach, CA.
Oh, I had her maiden name. And then he told me that after
they'd gotten to California and remember they were divorced.
So she went off and met another guy and got married and had a
baby That there was a another sister out there and he knew the
name of the next husband who was the father of my other sister,
my younger sister. So he didn't have an address.
He didn't have a phone number. She got his real foggy on
memory, but he knew just enough to tell me just enough and it
meant I had to go back to hit directory assistance.
This was back in the day where if you made calls to directory
assistance over a certain number of calls within a month, they
started billing you. Yep, and we're talking 1980
Seven's money. I ran up a $300.00 phone bill.
Oh my God. Which I don't know what that
would have been today's money, but you know, that's what it
was. Probably at least 1000.
At least that's what I'm thinking.
Yeah, I figured it's still less than a detective, you know,
right? I wrote to the state of
California, got my birth mother's death certificate from
them, which had a home address on it.
Had her spouse at the time listed as the informant.
And so I had a little bit more information on her, knew where
to write to, hoping the guy hadn't moved and he hadn't.
He was there, so that letter came and what he did.
Then when he got that letter, my older sister, he he knew where
she was and how to contact her. He called my older sister, who
was living in the Portland, OR area and told her he got this
letter. What do you want me to do with
it? I know exactly who that is.
And so he gave her all the contact information that I'd
provided in the letter. And then one night in January of
1988, she called me. Wow.
And so you. Got it.
You got both sisters at the same time then?
Pretty much, yeah. Did they let you see your 13
year old sister or we did that following summer again, once I
was off work and could travel, we thought to it was sort of a
bucket list. Living here.
I've never been past Chicago. Let's let's take this really
cool trip. This is like better than a
honeymoon. Let's do this, you know?
And I flew out a week ahead of time, so I had about a week with
my older sister in Portland. We sightsaw, we hung out at the
house and just did house. Normal people every day, not
things you know, got pizza, you know that just you know hung out
with her kids and stuff like that.
So just had real lifetime which was great.
And then my husband came out on like a Friday or something
because he didn't have all that time off work like I had.
And then few more days together went picnicking and just hanging
out again. And then we got on a plane, went
to San Francisco for two nights just to hang out.
And just like, when are we going to get back here?
Yeah, just I'd see this be tourists.
Then we rented a car in San Francisco and drove down the
California coastline on Hwy. 1. Like, this is like something out
of the movies. See this on TV.
And like, it's real. Wow.
You know, I mean it was like from compared to being here, it
was like being on another planet.
Neither of us had seen that part of the country or the world
before. And we drove all the way down
into LA and then got it had a motel lined up in like South LA.
Then saw the other sister for the next like 6 days that we
were still there. So how did the reunions go with
your sisters then? Everything was beautiful, just
completely amazing. I mean, it was, and it was very
helpful that they knew about me all along.
So wasn't like some secret barging in on their lives they
were kind of prepared for and hoping for someday.
But being that they were in a position of being many thousands
of miles away and not really knowing what to do or how to do
it, and not nobody having the means to hire detectives, they
didn't know how to find me. Did you have any resemblances to
them or do you guys look alike at all?
Or my younger sister and I look a lot alike.
It's amazing. In fact, I've seen some pictures
ever on Facebook this morning looking at them and I I still
kind of go, Oh my God, yeah, yeah, this doesn't get old.
So you must must resemble your mom a little bit then?
Well, people say I do, I don't know, I can't tell.
And all the photos we have are either they're a little bit
blurry or they're just aged and you or black and white and from
so long ago. I can't tell, but maybe you
know. Did you see any physical
resemblances or like you know how you your personality or how
you move physically or anything like that?
Weird little quirky things that you saw again.
My younger sister and I a lot, Yeah.
I've got some pictures of us. When we first met, we were both
in khaki shorts and tan shirts, which that wasn't planned.
And we're sitting there on the couch looking at each other, but
we're kind of like sitting a little like this, like, don't
get too close here, but, you know, you know, because again,
I'm 20 something. She's the age of the kids I
teach, you know. So it's like, how do I approach
this? You know, I'm teacher, I'm her
sister. I've never, you know, I'm going
through. I had sisters before, you know.
How'd it go with your dad's side?
Did you meet your dad? I did.
I did In between all these things that went on.
So back it up to that July where his business, his work, closed
down and he lost his job. I waited until about September
and then I sent him a letter again.
He lived in town, but I didn't have a phone number because it
was unlisted. So I sent him a letter, sent him
copies of my papers. And so he would know I wasn't
like some con artists and just said, you know, here I am and
here's where I live and here's what I do for a living and hope
you're well. And I'd love to hear from you.
And. And I I think I did say in the
letter and by the way, you know, I tried to contact my birth
mother, but she's passed away because sometimes it's like if
the ones partner isn't there, then the other partner feels
freer maybe or less. I don't want to get involved
with that person again, you know?
Yeah. So it's like, yeah, you don't
have to deal with an X here. Right.
So I wanted him to know those things, that it's safe to
approach me because you're not going to have to deal with an
exgirlfriend or anything like that without saying it in those
exact words. He did.
It took him a week and then he contacted me back and we got
together in October, got together for dinner at a Denny's
restaurant. Then my husband went with me and
I could see the resemblance with him a lot more than I expected.
But of course he's sitting there going, you look just like her.
But yeah, I looked like you, but.
Okay. Everybody sees different things.
He saw what he was seeing. I saw what I was seeing and and
that's kind of that. And he said at the time his
family knew nothing about me. Was he still married to the, the
lady that he was married to? He hadn't told anybody.
So I'm OK. I was kind of.
The Yeah, they were. In fact, they were married 52
years and they picked the wrong life, I mean.
He said he said that I'm thinking that he did marry the
right person for him. Oh, he did?
Yeah, Yeah, So. And he said something that night
about I knew it wouldn't have worked out.
And when you get married, you marry not just person, but the
whole family, which is not, like, great advice.
Really. Yeah, like this first piece of
dad advice. Although I already do those
things but. Is he still around?
He passed away in 2015. Yeah, we had in a long time
anyway, he said. We'll get together again.
We agreed to meet like a week, week and a half later.
We were going to go to another restaurant and we got to the
restaurant. My husband and I got to the
restaurant and waited and waited and waited and didn't know if we
should order food or not because he wasn't coming.
And then he called the restaurant and said, you know,
and this is before cell phone, so they couldn't message us.
He called the restaurant and they brought me to the phone and
he said one of his kids had been in a car accident.
It wasn't serious, but he had to go pick his kid up and sorry,
couldn't come And he said I'll call you back, I'll call you
later. And the ball got dropped because
I felt like I shouldn't really pester him.
I didn't know how true you know, that's a stupid to lie about,
but still. Right now I knew that if they
didn't know about me that that's a risk.
I thought he'll call, he'll call and you know, and just time went
by and he never called and. I want to intrude.
I figured it just wasn't right to intrude.
He's got all the information. We're listed in the phone book.
We are the most findable people in the world, and especially now
with social media. But you know, we I always kind
of made myself findable for that reason, because you just never
know who might turn up. So did you guys never, never
meet? We did.
We did in 2002. I'd taken my mother and my
daughters and we went to see the Mama Mia play downtown.
And I don't know if you've seen it or seen the movie, but it's a
birth father story. Who knew right in there thinking
it's just going to be a bunch of fun ABBA music and we're all
going to go in dancing Queen, you know, and everything.
And we, I don't think the movie had come out yet.
Just the play was going around. So, you know, we just went to
that. It was Mother's Day weekend and
it was the Mother's Day present. And so we made a girls night,
went out to dinner with the play.
I'm sitting there in the play going, Oh my God, it's birth
father story. The bride is getting married and
she's not sure which of three guys is her biological father.
Oh my gosh. Right with her.
And that's, yeah, that's sort of the premise and then you find
out, but I won't spoil that, but.
Now I have to watch it. So I come home that night and
there's a message on the answering machine and the last
name, and it's his daughter who I knew about because I had
researched and found public records.
You had four kids, so I knew I had four more siblings on that
side of the. But I couldn't approach them
being a secret. I just felt that wasn't the
right way to do it. People will do that, especially
today. You see them on social media.
It's so it's so tempting, you know, you see and things like
that. But I felt like I couldn't
approach them because that would ruin everything.
It would just ruin all my chances, you know, their people
off and it was probably the right thing to do, although it
was a hell of a wait. I bet.
So how many years had gone by at that point?
So yeah, like what, 15 years or something had gone by?
I'll call you. And then 15, yeah.
And we had always speculated, well, we'll get a phone call
when he dies because he kept the papers I sent or something,
stuffed him in a software or whatever.
You know, somebody will find him when they have to clean out his
stuff. What did she call for?
He came clean. She had.
She and her husband had gone to a family funeral on her
husband's side of the family. They left their son with my
birth father and his wife's, the grandparents to be babysat while
they went to this thing. They come back.
She was like mom and dad. You're not going to guess what
happens. It's the craziest funeral I've
ever been to. His cousin came out of the
woodwork and nobody knows who he is, and he's claiming he's
related and people were just freaking out.
And that's when, apparently, over time, he had told his wife,
but he told his wife. Don't tell the kids, though.
She then knew about me, but she turned to him and kind of went
you. I've kept your secret long
enough, you need to fess up. Yeah, and then he did.
Oh wow. So how'd the sister feel about
him not saying anything all that time?
She was like, well, that sucks, but you know, we got now.
And that's, that's what you have to.
That's the way you have to look at it.
You know, can't get back that lost time.
It's no fault. After a certain point of time,
you can't blame anybody. It's just is what it is.
But you know, we got now and it's not like we're 80 years old
and can't do anything. So, you know, let's just live
life going forward. So she had no problem at all.
And she was like, hey, dad, didn't know you were so cool
back in the day. Everybody's doing it, you know,
Mom was on television and all these things, you know, So it
was more normalized and more expected.
And my siblings thought nothing of it.
It's just like everybody knows somebody from school that had a
baby, or everybody knows somebody now, but not back in
the 50s and early 60s. That was still like a sin.
Yeah, so did you meet all your siblings, then your relationship
with them again? We waited till school was out
because it was May and Mother's Day.
My kid was in a soccer tournament and we had we had all
this stuff going on and it's just like we can't get together
and do anything without high distractibility.
We can't have conversations yet. We're just, we got to get to the
end of the school year and then once all that settles down,
yeah, at first week out of school, man.
Yeah, let's do this. So we did.
I went over to their house and again, 20 minutes from my house,
that's all. And we growing up in the same
town, doing the same things and a lot of the same places all
this time, you know, you could talk about where a certain
restaurant was or where the mall was, and we all knew what we
were talking about. So that was kind of cool.
Did you ever growing up? Because you're adopted.
Because I always thought, what if I'm related to this person
that I'm dating? I mean, that's totally could
have happened to you. I think that, yeah, it literally
could have, you know, I think that was one of the things that
that scared me off of guys some because, yeah, I'm related.
You know, what are the odds? Cincinnati's not small and it's
even bigger than it ever was. But if you live in the same
places and you do the same things and you go to the same
places all the time and it's a possibility, yeah, it's
possible. You know, it could have been
summer camp. It could have been one girl from
their neighborhood who went to the same summer camp as me, and
that was as close as it got in that way.
But yeah, the first things my birth father said that first
night when we met at the Denny's, he looked at me and
said, I've seen you somewhere before.
And I said, well, it could have been a restaurant, It could have
been Kings Island. It could have been a movie
theater. It could have been a mall.
It could have been anywhere, anywhere.
Grocery store. Yeah, yeah.
Or he was seeing resemblance one or the other.
Yeah, so you've written a couple books.
You want to tell us about those? And then you have one in the
works too. So yeah, OK, the the first one I
wrote was akin to the truth. And I have to credit my husband
with the title. He thought that up.
That's cool and everything. So yeah, so this is about
growing up adopted and what that felt like.
It's kind of like being the only adopted kid in the world as far
as I know, you know, and what it was like at the time growing up
in the Sixties, 70s and 80s. And I have to kind of semi
credit my mom. She took the photo and then we
took it to a cover designer and they of course enhanced it.
And they actually reversed it and flipped it this way just
because it worked better. And but that's where that came
from. And so, yeah, this one's about
growing up, adopted and into adulthood.
It kind of cuts off with a small cliffhanger, but kind of had to
call time and end the the story at some point.
You know, I'm not writing War and Peace or anything like that.
And then this is the sequel to it, and it explains more about
adult life as an adopted person, how it affects my job, how it's
affected home life, parenting my kids, the reunion.
What life and reunion is like, what Even friendships, you know,
how it how it's affected everything people have told,
people have not told. Now I tell those are the two
books, The Two Siblings here, and then My Work in Progress,
which at this point the working title is Born, Adopted and
Finding My Truth. It's a more reader friendly,
young adult friendly book aimed more at like say 12 year olds on
up that they just aren't going to be up for reading.
You know, big long pros that looks like that they're going to
read something a little lighter but still gets the message out.
And I'm a big believer in we do a lot of talking amongst
ourselves and educating ourselves, which we need to keep
doing because just when you think you know everything,
there's something you don't learn because there is.
That's the way it is, way there, every subject and but adoptions.
Part of that. It is a real challenge and very
frustrating to try to educate, say the generation ahead of us,
whoever's left and even people just slightly older than we are
that still grew up with different values or just have a
different thinking about the narratives of things and
educating the kids, bringing them into the situation.
And it's a little different today because adoptions are more
open, it's more normalized or mainstream than it used to be.
Many blended families and so many kids that they don't live
with the mom and the dad, they live with grandparents or they.
It's kinship that I had a kid for a while.
That he was adopted by his grandparents because the mom
couldn't take care of her kid. And.
But he was not estranged from his mother.
Yeah. And they actually stayed
together. And, you know, now everybody's
adults and it doesn't matter anymore.
But yeah, things like that that go on, that used to never go on
at all. This is where it's come from and
here's where we are now. So that's why I thought, OK,
yeah, this I'm in education. Let's educate.
Great, I love it. And you also have a blog too, So
tell us how we find you and all your books and stuff.
We'll have the links in the show notes, yeah.
But I have a WordPress blog. It's called Akin to the Truth.
And I do a lot of book play, movie reviews that are adoption
themed that are there. Currently I'm reading one that
is, in theory not about adoption, but I'm waiting.
I'm waiting for the missing relative to turn up because.
They always do, yeah. Well, I really enjoyed the
conversation today. Page, thanks for just being open
and telling your story and helping educate the world about
adoption. And we'll have all your links in
the show, notes how to find you and the links to your books and
all those things. So thanks for coming on today.
Thanks, Melissa. It just amazes me how each
adoptee story is different, but in every story I can find
similarities as well. And I have to say, on this 100th
episode of Mind Your Own Karma, the adoption chronicles how
honored I feel for every person that has come on this podcast
and told their story. I am just so honored to hear
their stories, to be the one interviewing them and being the
1:00 to bring their story to the world to help educate and
validate. Other adoptees and others in the
constellation. So if you are one of those that
have been brave enough to come on and tell your story on this
podcast, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I
consider each and every one of you a friend.
I have poured my heart and soul and countless hours into making
this podcast a reality. But if I have helped.
One adoptee not feel so alone. It was all worth it.
And if this podcast has touched you in any way, I would ask that
you go on your listening platform and rate and review the
podcast. That could be your gift to me
and this podcast on our 100th episode celebration.
It's free. It takes one minute of your
time, and it really does help get the word out about this
podcast. Thanks for listening today.
And as always, take what you need and leave what you don't
and cheers to 100 episodes. Oh yes, and always remember to
mind your own karma. I'll see you next time.