Shownotes
Lynn retains a New York accent, but she called me from North Carolina. As a young girl, Lynn should have been a carefree time in Lynn's life, but her home was a chaotic place. She said characterizing her home life as having a few challenges will be like saying Noah's Ark experienced a little rain. Instead of being a carefree kid. Lynn told me that she felt a responsibility for her younger siblings who experienced the same chaos she lived through at home. She was searching for a place where she would matter to someone at a young, vulnerable time in her life.
Pregnant with nowhere to turn, she placed her daughter for adoption, the hardest thing she's ever been forced to do.
In reunion, Lynn was stunned to receive her daughter's call out of the blue. She was thankful at how quickly they were able to see each other but is disappointed that the relationship has not gotten deeper.
Lynn is a first mother, and this is her journey.
SURVEY: Preliminary Exploration Into Adoption & Reunion
Who Am I Really?
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Transcripts
237 - Loved From The Moment She Was Conceived
[:Cold Cut Intro
[:[00:00:19] Lynn: Yeah, like 40, 50 years, right? Yeah, I think it might.
[:[00:01:04] Damon: She placed her daughter for adoption. The hardest thing she's ever been forced to do. In reunion, Lynn was stunned to receive her. Daughter's call out of the blue. Was thankful at how quickly they were able to see each other, but is disappointed That the relationship has not gotten deeper.
[:Opening
[:
[00:01:48] Lynn: You're not pregnant at 14 because, you live in a wonderful life, right? my mother was a, active alcoholic. she actually lost custody of her children. So that kind of throws a [00:02:00] description of what the family life was, right?
[:[00:02:07] Damon: How many, may I ask how many of you were there and she lost custody of you and your siblings?
[:[00:02:19] Lynn: I have an older sister and a younger brother and a sister. My mother didn't lose custody of us until I was already 17. My older sister then was not in the removal, I guess you could say, because she was over 18. My, brother and sister and I, then when we were removed from my mother, we were, we didn't go into the system or anything.
[:[00:03:00] Lynn: Most of mothers who find themselves in a similar situation, they're not there because they had the love and the attention and the care that they needed, right?
[:[00:03:26] Lynn: Oh, well, there was a fair amount of putting your hands through the doors, right? I'd be in an argument with somebody and I would close the door and, My father would put his fist through the door saying, don't close the door on me. Police came to the house pretty regularly.
[:[00:04:04] Lynn: But things were thrown and hit and I don't want to get in, the gory details, my mother tried to strangle me with a an electrical cord. I mean, those kinds of things. It's, it seems like gory details, but it was turbulent, right? There was a lot of yelling, screaming, pushing, fighting.
[:[00:04:42] Damon: For the child. And so I, I apologize. I don't mean to make you go through
[:[00:05:01] Lynn: So you're absolutely right that there are lots of ways to be turbulent. And mine was that there was a certain amount of aggression and there was a certain amount of, the emotional abuse So, but you're right. Everybody's different.
[:[00:05:22] Damon: What were you doing? Were you seeking? What were you seeking outside of your home, perhaps, to validate your existence? Or tell me a little bit about your mentality and what kinds of things you were into.
[:[00:05:40] Lynn: Or who, I was probably looking for love, right? I mean, what do kids need, right? They need to be loved.
[:[00:06:04] Damon: Is that kind of what was happening for you?
[:[00:06:12] Damon: And were you, so you got pregnant at 14 years old. Was this a boyfriend, a longterm? Tell me a little bit about the circumstances for your conception.
[:[00:06:35] Lynn: Is that she may not have been conceived in love, but she was loved the minute she was conceived.
[:[00:06:50] Lynn: That means the minute I found out that I was pregnant. I stopped smoking All right, I start I stopped [00:07:00] Smoking all sorts of things. I immediately knew that I wanted to care for her
[:[00:07:07] Lynn: I would've. But 1976, well, I was pregnant in 75. I had her in 76 in, in 1975. I was told directly that she couldn't come home. Right. That I wasn't coming home with a baby. Right. What do you do in you're 14 in 1975 and you're told you can't come home?
[:[00:07:31] Damon: Who told you that? I
[:[00:07:35] Damon: so what then happened for you? You're now pregnant. You have revealed this to your family. Your father has told you, you cannot come home. With a baby. What happens between conception and delivery? Are you allowed to be in the house? Were you asked to leave the house and don't come back?
[:[00:07:58] Lynn: So, that's kind of [00:08:00] interesting. home for a while. And uh, it was 1975, right? So, abortion had just become legal. Okay? Abortion had just become legal.
[:[00:08:25] Lynn: and the sentiment was, I'm so proud of you to go on upstairs because somebody is coming, you don't want to be seen. So, but then afterwards around I guess I was probably six, seven months pregnant. I was sent away. I was sent away to a family home as opposed to one of the homes, right?
[:[00:08:56] Damon: Was this home that you were sent to, was it someone that you [00:09:00] knew? Or was this Oh,
[:[00:09:06] Lynn: So, like many, I went to I went to Catholic Charities. And it was an arrangement that they had.
[:[00:09:13] Lynn: With the, with family, yeah.
[:[00:09:23] Damon: When a person is born and goes into adoption, there's an interim place that they go that is arranged. So this sounds like a, basically a foster home for birth mothers.
[:[00:09:35] Damon: And how was your experience there? You've been now separated from your family.
[:[00:09:52] Damon: Yeah.
[:[00:10:12] Damon: Oh, that's fascinating. Wow.
[:[00:10:30] Lynn: I was like, what? She said, make sure you close your blinds when you get changed. It was interesting. I guess she thought that I was going to flash her neighbors or something, I don't know. wayward women, we don't know what we're going to do.
[:[00:10:52] Lynn: right, yeah.
[:[00:11:01] Damon: You were together. What did you do to nurture yourself during that time? You said you quit smoking. You obviously, I mean, I assume you were drinking and smoking and hanging out, not getting enough sleep before you got pregnant. Tell me about nurturing yourself when you got pregnant.
[:[00:11:22] Lynn: I don't know what, I don't think I did anything other than that. I mean. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. Yeah. I yeah. In the beginning, I was going to school, right? I was a 14 year old. I was going to ninth grade. Yeah, so it's not much nurturing that a 14 year old does, right? I don't know.
[:[00:11:48] Damon: Yeah, I guess, this is a question that comes out of, today. We are so much more conscious of health related Care, like just, I mean, we think about [00:12:00] diet and supplements and exercise and and mental health and it's just a different environment from the 70s.
[:[00:12:16] Lynn: no. I had one friend who knew I was pregnant, but. But that was it.
[:[00:12:39] Lynn: Who knows who believes it and who doesn't believe it, right? Yeah, you didn't say anything. Are you kidding me? Did I tell my friends? No, you don't tell anybody.
[:[00:12:49] Lynn: i've told the story before. Yeah, I have a my younger brother is seven years younger than me when I was reunited with my daughter I called up my brother and I said do you know that I [00:13:00] had a baby when I was 15?
[:[00:13:04] Damon: Really? So you didn't reveal to him? Oh my gosh, until reunion, that's unbelievable.
[:[00:13:20] Lynn: And so, I didn't tell my brother.
[:[00:13:34] Lynn: absolutely. And you say, can I describe my turmoil, he has his own turmoil that, yeah.
[:
[:
[00:14:49] Damon: This repetitive stream of unknown people were asking her questions about the most private parts of herself.
[:[00:14:56] Lynn: these guys are coming up to say, oh, so how dilated [00:15:00] are you? I don't even know what the word dilated means, kind of deal. So I eventually Go into labor. I, again I don't know what's going on. So, I'm telling all these people, I got to go to the bathroom.
[:[00:15:47] Lynn: Who are mothers, right? Who, right? and so afterwards I go to the maternity ward to try to see my daughter and they won't let me. They won't let me see her. So I kind of go back to my room.
[:[00:16:13] Lynn: With my father. So I saw her then and I once snuck back and saw her again by myself. It was like, so I got to see her twice and I saw her, right? She was amazing. She had my face. She had my lips. She didn't have my hair but she had my face.
[:[00:16:47] Lynn: Full of all sorts of emotion and cause you're like, oh, well I know the difference, right? Do all babies look alike or something along that line, who knows what you think. But I knew what my daughter looked like.
[:[00:17:05] Lynn: I could imagine. It must have been so emotional. It must have been so emotional too, to Have been denied access to her, right? You have to carry this child in your body for months, endured all kinds of discomfort and tried to care for yourself so that she can come out healthy.
[:[00:17:30] Lynn: it's,
[:[00:17:39] Lynn: There's a sacred bond. And it was broken. And it shouldn't have been.
[:[00:18:05] Lynn: My father, there were a lot of complications, right? There was a lot of complications and said that my father did abuse my older sister he I don't want to, I don't want to paint him as an, as, a villain, right? He wasn't a villain. I think he was a product of his time, right?
[:[00:18:33] Lynn: It absolutely does.
[:[00:18:39] Lynn: But he did he made sure that I got to see her and if he hadn't, I wouldn't have, if he hadn't, if he hadn't intervened, I would have never seen her.
[:
[00:19:04] Lynn: Who remembers that stuff?
[:[00:19:20] Lynn: Recollection of coming back into my life. It's very shoddy. The information that's there.
[:
[00:19:27] Damon: glad you said that though, the, the notion that a traumatized brain will block out things, because this is one of the challenges that adoptees have in, Trying to accumulate facts from the stories of our birth mothers is, many times by the time we find you, we have done such an exhaustive investigation and try to learn as many details as possible that our assumption can be, we have accumulated the facts.
[:[00:20:18] Damon: It's a, it's literally a mechanism for survival. And you've absolutely outlined that. So while you kind of chuckled at the fact that You couldn't remember. It's actually an important part of the trauma that you two went through. And we often in the adoptive community talk about adoption as trauma.
[:[00:20:51] Damon: It never goes that way. It's always, there's a backstory. That has some level of a trauma associated with it and you've absolutely [00:21:00] outlined that so I just wanted to make sure to underscore that your inability to remember that transition back to your life is not born out of your desire to forget as much as your to survive yourself and get on with your life.
[:[00:21:17] Lynn: yeah,
[:[00:21:39] Lynn: I was supposed to go back to 10th grade. I was supposed to worry about, I was about to say biology, and then I decided I wanted to use a different subject, right? You know, I'm supposed to go back to, to be worried about, world history. Are you kidding me? impossible.
[:[00:22:27] Lynn: Yeah, like 40, 50 years, right? I guess it's going to take you a little longer to get over this. Yeah, I think it might. I think it might take a little bit longer. And I do want to, I kind of started off before we kind of probably hit the record button. I'm my daughter's mother, right? I'm her first mother. The term birth mother, I think, denies my role in her life, I didn't just give birth to her, but I mothered her, right? I was her first mother and [00:23:00] I cared for her as much as I could. And I think language also sets a mindset, right? And I think First Mother, it kind of honors my role. And also, It makes sense, right? There's a first mother and a second mother, right?
[:[00:23:39] Lynn: And I know that there are times that he wishes his first wife was here, right? I have a stepdaughter, so when she got married, he would have liked his first wife to be there, When she had kids, he would have liked his first wife to be there. And if I can support that, if I can support him wanting to have a relationship with his [00:24:00] first wife, I think it supports him better, and it makes our relationship stronger also, right?
[:[00:24:26] Lynn: Just that acknowledgment, I think it would go a long way to help ease some of the tension. that adoptees have with this duality of first mother and second mother and so on.
[:[00:24:44] Lynn: And I'm really glad that you raised that because. language is important. The way we express ourselves and how we articulate the things that we're going through and the roles of people in our lives is incredibly valuable and it can [00:25:00] be an indicator of how you feel about a person. And so for the adopted person who knows that their
[:[00:25:28] Lynn: So you nurtured your body and yourself in order to give her the birth that would make her healthy. And in that role, you very much are her first mother, that you had every intention of making her life good and that you set yourself up and her to be as healthy as possible. And so you think of yourself as a mother and I'm with you a hundred percent.
[:[00:26:07] Lynn: Right, and it doesn't take away, like I don't feel less loved by my husband because I'm his second wife.
[:[00:26:15] Lynn: It's we have our first loves, right? That doesn't take away, that doesn't mean that we can only have our first love and then that's it, right? Otherwise, we'd all be married when we were 12, right?
[:[00:26:30] Lynn: right? Have to be comfortable. Sometimes my husband will say something like, well, my wife and I went to X, Y, or Z. And, the, the little insecure part of me says, oh, I don't remember going there.
[:[00:26:56] Lynn: Afterwards, you know after I [00:27:00] lost my daughter, right?
[:[00:27:15] Lynn: I sent off her for, at the time it was, you swapped yourself or something and you got on the list. And, I prayed for her. I prayed for her adoptive mother that she could be the best mother that she could for her. So, you know, it's, it's not quite as simple as that.
[:[00:27:35] Damon: Yeah,
[:[00:27:44] Damon: Adoptive parents who had ended up having biological children as well themselves as a couple And they
[:[00:28:02] Damon: when you had you know,
[:[00:28:07] Damon: You've got enough love that you wanted to have another child. The same thing is true for me. I can have had you as my parents and love you and have enough Love in my heart to go back and try to locate the first mother that brought me into this world. And so, there's a complimentary adopting component to the, the moniker of being first.
[:[00:28:49] Lynn: I've
[:[00:29:15] Lynn: my feet couldn't stay still, so I was always driven to do something, right? Whenever I stopped, she was there. I've used this analogy before. I was an amputee, right? It was like I'd lost, I lost a leg, right? But I had a, prosthetic and I worked that prosthetic, right? But I had pants on, so nobody knew that I had a prosthetic and I worked it.
[:[00:29:52] Lynn: I, I've heard Adoptee saying, did she think of me? I have stretch marks. I have stretch marks. Every [00:30:00] time I take a shower, She's there. I couldn't take a shower. Without seeing the physical reminders that she was with me.
[:[00:30:10] Damon: same is true for my yeah, I was born via cesarean section So my birth mother had a scar on her body same as the stretch marks on your own. There's a physical representation that you Have an appendage that was clipped from your life.
[:[00:30:44] Damon: Lynn earned a position teaching at a university and near the end of the school year, she was closing out her work and cleaning up her office. As she sat at her desk at 2:00 PM on the Thursday afternoon. Lynn was looking forward to getting out of the office and heading [00:31:00] home. As if she needed one more thing to do her phone rang. Annoyed that someone was probably adding something to her to do list. Lynn answered, barely paying attention to the c distracted by her desire to hit the road. The voice on the other end was being cryptic When they asked to verify Lynn's home address. Confused Lynn asked what the color was inquiring about. The caller said they wanted to mail her a letter and they just wanted to make sure they had the correct mailing address. Lynn asked what this odd call was about.
[:[00:31:36] Lynn: And
[:[00:31:46] Lynn: And she said, the date. And I was like, what date? And she said the date. And I just, the tears started fall. And I started to try to explain my life [00:32:00] and, and what happened, and I, I once talked to my daughter about this conversation, and she said you were like a kid who got their hands caught in the cookie jar, because I guess I was trying to apologize, and explain and all of these kinds of issues about what was going on and I, Probably rambled for five minutes and then I stopped and I said well You've probably been thinking about this for a while I'm gonna stop and let you talk and she said well, I was just going to mail you this letter And she was like, I could read you the letter and I was like, okay, that sounds like a good idea and so we talked and During the conversation.
[:[00:32:52] Lynn: And so I said, well, what are you doing tonight for dinner? And we met that night. She lives an eight hour drive [00:33:00] from me now. And so we met at a hotel four hours in between the two of us. so we met and it was amazing. The same
[:[00:33:13] Lynn: I couldn't get that
[:[00:33:15] Lynn: So what was it like? Tell me about the moment that you go to this hotel. Tell me about your drive. You've got a four hour drive. Did you go by yourself? And what was your mindset? Yeah.
[:[00:33:33] Lynn: And I was like, no. at the time, my mother in law was living with me, and now my husband, so let me just say, my husband had known about my daughter, but nobody else did, right? I had, I have two other children and he has I have a stepdaughter and nobody else knew about my daughter and so, my husband said, should I, tell, my mother and I was like no.
[:[00:34:26] Lynn: when I hugged her,
[:[00:34:51] Lynn: And it was a physical reaction. It was a physical reaction. It really was as if, I [00:35:00] was 15 and I was able to hold my child. I was, I was in my 50s, right? When this all happened, right? When I got reconnected, I've held a lot of people, right?
[:[00:35:31] Lynn: God, that sounds like an unbelievable moment. I'm a mess over here right now.
[:[00:35:41] Lynn: It was.
[:[00:35:48] Lynn: Reattachment. Yeah it's, it's like the, it's like the rubber band kind of came back together. Right? Like the bond is always there.
[:[00:36:02] Lynn: Right. That's a good analogy. Wow. It just snapped back.
[:[00:36:19] Lynn: But now this is the full grown version of the person that you gave birth to. So many years ago, what did you see in her, and what did you guys do for the rest of the night?
[:[00:36:52] Lynn: I just want to, I actually said this to her. I'll just watch you sleep. You go to sleep. I'll just watch you sleep. And she's no, that's, no, you don't have to do that. [00:37:00] You can go back to your room because, it was just a little bit creepy for somebody to say, I just want to watch you sleep.
[:[00:37:21] Lynn: I'm, You know what? 'cause she's of me, right? I mean, she's me. I know what she's thinking because. Because that's what I'm thinking. Right? Right? I, I can, I know that there's a lot of discussion about this issue about this idea about unconditional love and all that kind of stuff.
[:[00:37:47] Lynn: That is true. And I want to go back to something you said. You said you want to just watch her sleep and you said it felt creepy, but this is two adults.
[:[00:38:16] Lynn: And this is, I just want to make sure people recognize that this is something that you've never got with her. So while it might sound creepy as adults in this first moment of reunion, quite literally you've already said, I felt like that 15 year old girl again, in which case, of course, you would have had these feelings of wanting to get back some of the things that you never got to do with her, whether you even could have articulated it or not.
[:[00:38:43] Lynn: And I think that in lies some of the problems that existed, after, I think that for me, I was like that new mother who just wanted to be with her baby, right? so I think that I was, Maybe too [00:39:00] present, right?
[:[00:39:39] Lynn: absolutely does.
[:[00:39:42] Lynn: I'm looking for all of it back. I didn't want you to take it in the first place. And so when I get it back, I want it all back. But unfortunately, you can't get it all back. I think early on I didn't understand that. I think I, I just wanted it all back because in my mind, [00:40:00] it's yours.
[:[00:40:15] Lynn: And so I think that I think I could have overwhelmed her at first, And still some, right? And still some. So. I'm sorry I don't know where that came from. That, that, you must have said something that triggered that discussion.
[:[00:40:32] Lynn: This is whatever you want to say and how you want to express it, so.
[:[00:40:36] Lynn: just ask you two final questions. The first is, how is your relationship now?
[:[00:41:07] Lynn: It's not where I want it to be, let's just put it that way. But I know some, where there isn't any communication at all, so I am, fortunate, That, she still wants to communicate with me.
[:[00:41:22] Lynn: And the same thing is true for adoptees, right?
[:[00:41:42] Lynn: But as with any relationship, it takes work. And so it's important when we do feel that someone is thinking about us and reaches out and stuff.
[:[00:42:11] Lynn: Yeah, I understand. The other thing I want to ask you about is your current body of work. You are doing a survey about the adoption experience. Can you just share for folks what your is, what the intent is, and how people can find it so that they can be participants in your work?
[:[00:42:34] Lynn: when my interaction with my daughter started to slow down, started to pull back I started to Say, I wonder why , right. And I had some questions, And so I created, and so as I mentioned earlier, I did get a PhD, So I'm a university professor and I went to what do we do, right?
[:[00:43:27] Lynn: And if you do that, that's going to happen. So, I created this survey and the survey is called Preliminary Exploration into Adoption Reunions. And my goal of this survey was kind of to see if we can't come up with a roadmap about how to do these things, right? What should be done and what shouldn't be done.
[:[00:44:45] Lynn: And that does come directly from you. We had a conversation and I said, I was looking at the longevity of Right? Because from what I hear from other people and what I've noticed is that [00:45:00] death rate of birth moms tend to be much lower than the average population. and we looked at the survey and I had a question there about whether or not your mother was alive or not. And you're like, who cares? Right. And I said we talked and I said that I had the sense that birth mothers or first mothers die at an earlier rate.
[:[00:45:43] Lynn: Drug abuse, and alcohol abuse, and physical, self harm, and hypersexuality. And I listed attempted suicide. And, I know that the prevailing rate that people talk about, right, is that adoptees are four times more [00:46:00] likely to attempt suicide, right? You've heard that, right? That's the prevailing sentiment.
[:[00:46:27] Lynn: But they didn't ask the adopting. They had asked the parents. Or children of the adoptees, whether or not they had attempted suicide or not. And they did the same for those who are non adopted. And that's where they get the four times more likely, asking the loved ones of somebody.
[:[00:47:09] Lynn: And for first mothers. Well,
[:[00:47:29] Lynn: Okay, the survey has a Facebook page, and the Facebook page is called Preliminary Exploration Survey.
[:[00:47:58] Lynn: So, it's a [00:48:00] sanction study. It's not just a it's not a go pull me kind of study it, it follows the standards for pure empirical results. . And if you go to that page, you'll find out more. About study and you can read on it and I have periodically put updates of, where we stand right now.
[:[00:48:40] Lynn: Because other people are creating our narratives, and having real numbers will help in your life. Provide society with a real understanding of the complications
[:[00:48:53] Lynn: aftermath.
[:[00:48:54] Lynn: Lynn, I appreciate the fact that you're putting research rigor behind this, because you're absolutely right. We get [00:49:00] these anecdotal stories told about us for us The narrative is created by other people who are not necessarily living these experiences and you're absolutely right that we have to tell our own stories And so I just want to thank you one for The research that you're doing to bring light to the reality of the adoption experience.
[:[00:49:46] Lynn: And I appreciate you. I really think that your input made the survey made this so much better. Excellent. I'm glad to hear it. And I really think that the mental health.
[:[00:50:06] Lynn: to send me some links to the survey. Okay. So when you're so we make sure that people get involved. All right.
[:[00:50:12] Lynn: Sounds good, Lynn. Thanks so much. Take care. All the best to you. Okay.
[:[00:50:15] Lynn: You too. Bye bye.
Closing
[:[00:52:00] Lynn: And to hope you've found something in Lynn's journey that inspired you. Validates your feelings about wanting to search Or motivates you to have this strength Along your journey to learn who am I really. If you would like to share your story of adoption and your attempt to connect with your biological family, please visit who am I? Really? podcast.com/share. Also Quick reminder to sign up, to receive updates about my second book. The work in progress is going nicely.
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