Shownotes
Curt, from in Las Vegas, Nevada, felt like something was off in his family when he was a kid, so he he set out to find his own way. As an adult, Curt got curious about locating his birth family, but chickened out on submitting a DNA sample to launch is search for reunion.
On his maternal side, Curt was finally able to meet his birth mother, but she seems to be keeping him at arm's length. Curt's birth father knew he had fathered a child, prepared his family to hear from Curt one day, and was more prepared to welcome him into his life than his birth mother.
This is Curt's Journey.
Who Am I Really?
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Transcripts
245 - Anybody Alive Is Off Limits
[:Cold Cut Intro
[:[00:00:51] Damon (2): I'm Damon Davis, and today you're going to meet Kurt. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. When Kurt was a kid, he could feel something was off in his [00:01:00] family, so he set out to find his own way. As an adult, Kurt got curious about locating his birth family, chickened out on DNA testing, into search and reunion.
[:[00:01:25] Damon (2): This is Kurt's Journey.
[:[00:01:37] Curt: My first memory, I don't even know if it was really a memory. It's more of a dream. But I remember something happened when I was a very small kid on some big government type steps. I don't know what that was, but all my life I've had that memory and it just felt like something bad happened.
[:[00:02:20] Curt: And so I had surgery, had tubes and add noise and inner ear stuff done. And some of the first memories was my father whispering to me after I came out of the operating room, and He said, rip, which was the name of our dog. And then about an hour later, when I was more conscious or whatever, he said, did you hear what I said earlier?
[:[00:03:06] Curt: We never really had a good relationship. She, we're just way different people. And, I, without getting on the pity pod, I always felt that she was just a favorite child and, I was just the tag along because my dad wanted a son. She was two years older than me.
[:[00:03:44] Curt: And then I just, my parents said I had a meltdown. I don't know if you would call it that, but I just basically told them, Hey, I don't feel like part of this family. I don't know why you guys adopted me. This isn't working. So they were like, what's wrong with this kid?
[:[00:04:18] Curt: And so I went to the psychologist. I don't know what he told them, but it was a one time visit, but that was the cracks that, that happened.
[:[00:04:37] Damon (2): Your dad thinks you're this hard headed kid that won't listen, but it's not that you won't, it's that you can't, right? And you said he was an authoritarian, and I'm sure that a lot of his authoritarian nature came out in sort of trying to get you to do stuff because You seemingly weren't listening.
[:[00:05:07] Curt: I don't, I can't really say that I did or I didn't. I'll add another caveat to that is both of my parents were alcoholics.
[:[00:05:39] Curt: Because I don't really have much memories of not being able to hear them
[:[00:06:00] Damon (2): Like
[:[00:06:20] Curt: , and, as a young kid and even as a, as an adolescent, I learned a lot about.
[:[00:06:46] Curt: And so I seen that how that altered other people's moods the ways that they acted and I'm sure that my parents were affected by that greatly, but I didn't have the experience. experience or their memory of having a [00:07:00] relationship with them before that.
[:[00:07:06] Damon (2): You've said that at around, this prepubescent stage, around 10 years old, you basically had this breakdown of this isn't working. You haven't really talked about your relationship with your mom. Can you describe how you and your mom got along or did not?
[:[00:07:28] Curt: And I'm sure we won't get to it. Cause we could talk about this for hours, but I always felt like my mom. Was there to be a mom, but we didn't really connect. I felt like, she was just really connected only to my sister. And at a young age, I just felt that I was second fiddle for her.
[:[00:08:11] Curt: After in a steady fashion, after I was 13.
[:[00:08:19] Curt: run away everywhere you can imagine? So I slept on every person's sofa that that I know I slept in the woods. And I lived almost like a homeless person. And but I don't want to, I don't want to sugar coat that there was a lot of people that enabled that and helped me during the way, they let me sit on their couch.
[:[00:08:55] Damon (2): Really interesting. So you're [00:09:00] running away at 13 years old. You didn't really live at home in a steady way after that. Did you continue to go to school?
[:[00:09:45] Curt: And so when I went to school in the 10th grade. I was working. I had to come to school after work, like two o'clock in the afternoon. And so I had a little bit of a, a lot of this. Now, in hindsight, it was everybody else's fault but mine. But it [00:10:00] was certainly a lot my own fault. But had some issues.
[:[00:10:25] Curt: I don't have time for this. This is too much trouble. And so I'll fast forward and a lot of things happen. But when my girlfriend got pregnant, we were both 16. And She had moved to Hawaii. Her parents were getting a divorce. We went through a lot of things just trying to get her to get back to Virginia.
[:[00:11:05] Damon (2): Right. Yeah. It's funny, you were smart, right?
[:[00:11:33] Damon (2): That's right. That's pretty smart.
[:[00:11:59] Curt: So [00:12:00] even at that
[:[00:12:08] Curt: Hell yeah,
[:[00:12:10] Curt: percent.
[:[00:12:11] Curt: And I mean, I'm not going to claim that that totally straightened up my act and I flew straight a hundred percent there, but it sure as heck helped move it in the right direction.
[:[00:12:35] Damon (2): Wow. Really cool. Yeah. That's fascinating.
[:[00:12:49] Damon (2): Right. Yeah.
[:[00:12:53] Damon (2): Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. So then. What was the [00:13:00] catalyst that made you decide you wanted to ever try to search for your biological family members? Where were you in your life? And why was that the time?
[:[00:13:12] Curt: And so they would always say, and they told, they told my sister and I pretty much our whole life. We always knew we were adopted. It was put out there that, hey, if you ever want to search, You want to find out something, no problem, we'll help you, but it was disingenuous. And you could feel the disingenuous nature of it.
[:[00:13:50] Curt: Why would they want to see you now? Why would you want to see them? And so that, even as a young child, That leaves a lasting impressions. But about the time that I had my [00:14:00] child, my sister had a child as well. About the exact same time. And she pursued finding her biological parents and it didn't turn out well.
[:[00:14:36] Curt: For that conversation. But I do know that she found her biological mother and was totally shunned. Her biological mother had never told anybody she was remarried and she pretty much told her, Hey, go away. I don't want to revisit this ever. And that reinforced that message to me that, Hey, I don't want to, I don't want to [00:15:00] deal with that and I'll fast forward through this about the time when I was 29, maybe another 10 years later.
[:[00:15:24] Curt: You need to go in the other room and get some rest or do something, but she wouldn't mean it in a bad way. Right. Just direct
[:[00:15:33] Curt: Absolutely. And so I mentioned to her that I was thinking about that, around that age and her response was, what are you going to do if you find out something terrible, what are you going to do if you find out that you were a product of.
[:[00:16:08] Curt: Aren't you better to not know? And, I'm like, well, I never, I honestly. Never even considered that. It's it struck me harder than she thought when she said that, cause I really thought about that. And I was like, yeah, I don't want to find that out that I don't think that's information I want to carry around every day thinking about, and so I just pushed it aside
[:[00:16:56] Damon (2): Kurt made the decision to sign up for a search and reunion [00:17:00] registry. starting his search and reunion process behind the scenes. at the time, he was living in Virginia.
[:So my wife and I go out there for Thanksgiving dinner. And we get talking about family affairs and this, that, and the other. And my daughter who is a very brilliant person, she, matter of fact, even when she was little, we we thought, man, did we get the wrong kid?
[:[00:17:56] Curt: And even back to the 1600s in Virginia, [00:18:00] and so I said, well, that is our family and those are our roots, but that isn't our genetics. That's not necessarily our bloodline. And I think it's important that you understand that. And it wasn't news to her because she knew I was adopted, right?
[:[00:18:24] Damon (2): so she had gotten on ancestry and started trees, but she was following trees that were associated with Your adoptive parents lines, not you hadn't actually done the DNA testing that created a trait.
[:[00:18:46] Curt: And so you're spot on because the next thing she says is, Dad, you have to do a DNA test. And I'm like, I don't think so. It's been almost 50 years. And I don't think that [00:19:00] I want to do that.
[:[00:19:21] Curt: And being our family nature, she's extremely stubborn. And so when I got home, so you did get the right kid. For sure. I get home and There's a DNA test on the mailbox, on the front porch from Amazon that she had sent, and then I started getting these calls and messages from her, Hey, have you taken the test yet?
[:[00:20:07] Curt: So we just started talking about adoption and she had never done a DNA. So we both had said, through messenger that we had been putting it off and so we made a pack like, okay, on this day, We're both gonna do it. Neither one of us did it. , you both chickened out. We both chickened out, but about about a month later, and I don't have any idea why, I will say one thing that may have interacted with it a little bit, and I think about this in retrospect.
[:[00:21:09] Curt: Yeah, what if I have a heart condition? What if I have this? What if I have that? And anyways, so that's in the back of my mind. So early in January, one morning, I get up and I just decided, you know what, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna spit in that tube. And so I got up in the morning, didn't drink anything, went straight to the kit, opened it, registered it, spit in the tube.
[:[00:21:50] Curt: So she was like, well, let me know when you get it back. And it came back really quick, like two weeks. Yeah, it's crazy. It is. And so [00:22:00] when I got it, I go home from work and I open it up and I see all these results. And I'm going to tell you that moment alone changed my life. And people would not understand where I'm coming from.
[:[00:22:38] Damon (2): Yeah. The vision I had when you described that it is, we talk about family trees.
[:[00:22:57] Curt: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great [00:23:00] description of how it actually happened.
[:[00:23:33] Curt: This person is so close to you that this person is a hundred percent either your mother. Are your daughter and considering that she's 19 years older than you. That's a hundred percent your mother. And these two people that are underneath her right here, her children is your brother and sister.
[:[00:24:42] Damon (2): They told Kurt to proceed with caution. Advice Kurt did not follow.
[:[00:24:49] Curt: I immediately that night sent a Message through ancestry to my mother. And basically I tried to keep it [00:25:00] really professional. I tried not to freak her out too much, but I just said, hi, my name is Kurt and I was born. October of 1968. I recently did an ancestry test and it looks like you and I are closely connected.
[:[00:25:36] Curt: What
[:[00:25:46] Curt: Well, I learned that she was an author. And and that was pretty much it. That's all I could really tell that, that she was an author and that she was really active in politics [00:26:00] in her, within our community.
[:[00:26:22] Curt: And, others are trying to tell me, to garner my expectations and understand that I might not ever get a response. Blah, blah, blah. But I started having a feeling that the message that I sent her was threatening. I don't think it was, and especially now, but I started thinking then that it felt like to me that I was saying, Hey, I'm this person, and you better, and I'm just reading that commanding
[:[00:26:46] Curt: inviting.
[:[00:27:15] Curt: Wow. then the response was after almost 52 years, I never expected to hear from you. And while this is extremely. Shocking to me. I don't really know how to process this information at this moment. So please give me a little bit of time. I do want to know about you and your family and your life, and I will share with you.
[:[00:28:08] Curt: But my Children do not. And I would appreciate if you could remove it until I can talk to them about this. And so I said, Let me see what I can do. And and so my friends back at search squad were like, Oh, my Lord, do not remove it or else you will never know who your father is. And they didn't mean it in a threatening way.
[:[00:28:52] Damon (2): Yeah.
[:[00:28:55] Curt: Right. And so we're recording, taking snapshots of all these trees and [00:29:00] what have you. And then About the same time that they told me, to be very cautious about this. I respond back to her and said, and this is true. And then she probably thought I was being cavalier, but I was like, I don't really know how to remove the match without completely closing my account.
[:[00:29:43] Curt: We don't know which brother is your father, but we know 100 percent that their parents are your grandparents. Wow. And so I was like, but she told me who the guy was right. And so. she said, Kurt [00:30:00] there's one thing before you reach out to this man that you should know. And that is he was married to another lady when you were born and he's still married to that lady.
[:[00:30:32] Damon (2): pause you for a moment here?
[:[00:30:58] Damon (2): Correct. Is it, [00:31:00] have you gotten her on the phone and you're having these conversations about who your birth father is, or you're still messaging her through Ancestry and that's where she's revealing your birth father's identity to you?
[:[00:31:15] Curt: So I don't wanna make it seem like, because I will tell you that the first year that we made connection, even though we didn't talk on the phone, we did talk on the phone. Maybe five times. We did have an email correspondence almost every day.
[:[00:31:43] Damon (2): Tread lightly here. This could be a serious secret in his background. That's really interesting. So you haven't even talked to her on the phone. You haven't seen her face to face or anything, and you've gotten this info from her.
[:[00:32:01] Curt: and she did start telling me about him. It does turn out. His story is very interesting and I know him very well. We have a very good relationship now, but at that time when I was born, he had been married before I was born to a woman and he told me the first time that I spoke with him, he's Kurt, I was the worst husband ever, he's and I wasn't married very long and my wife kicked me and I was separated to be divorced.
[:[00:32:54] Curt: He met another woman. She became pregnant at the same time. Matter of fact, I have a [00:33:00] sister. That was born premature and she was born one month after me. Unfortunately she passed away. She only lived about two days. But my father had gotten married in May of the year that I was born to another woman.
[:[00:33:29] Damon (2): Gotcha. So he was young and married in a band. Self proclaimed horrible husband kicked out, still with the band, meets your mom, presumably on the road, she gets pregnant. He's still in the band, still on the road, meets another woman.
[:[00:34:00] Damon (2): Kurtz said he first connected with his birth mother in January 2020, the beginning of the COVID pandemic. So the pair were forced to speak by phone instead of meeting in person. Speaking about his birth mother's experience, he said it closely resembled the myriad stories of women depicted In the revealing book, The Girls Who Went Away, by Ann Fessler.
[:[00:34:39] Damon (2): Kurt's birth was a traumatic experience for her. His birth mother said she only wanted to tell her story one time. Then, she did not want to discuss her story anymore.
[:[00:35:21] Curt: That she was bleeding a lot and they covered her up and basically knocked her out so she said she only seen me from afar very, groggy. But they, she wasn't allowed to, touch me, hold me, look at me or anything like that, that they just told her, no, you gave your child away.
[:[00:35:51] Curt: Yeah. And neither of us know what happened. Well, I know now a little bit, but I wasn't placed for adoption [00:36:00] until I was almost 10 months old.
[:[00:36:17] Curt: And, my parents were great. I love my parents and for all the faults that we all have. In retrospect, I'm grateful, right? I sound like the obedient adoptee, but I am. I'm grateful for that. Especially now looking back, but they were not necessarily the perfect parents. They were both alcoholics.
[:[00:37:04] Curt: And that's when she shared these things that, that explained the truth is that she really didn't trust or like men, and this is me psychoanalyzing her as if I have the ability to do that. But that's what I think, from her traumatic past. childhood, the things that had happened to her.
[:[00:37:29] Damon (2): That's really
[:[00:37:32] Damon (2): No, I can totally see that. That you go from whatever her experiences and I could make assumptions, but I won't do anything. But I understand where you're coming from. That. In raising a young man, you are reminded that this guy you're raising is going to turn into somebody that you had bad experiences with, like the same type, it's not a girl, it's a guy.
[:[00:38:11] Curt: And, I mean, and so I'll share to that a little bit more without oversharing her experience.
[:[00:38:52] Curt: Later. I mean, I never knew that, but so then she's just passed around the family after [00:39:00] that.
[:[00:39:14] Damon (2): In essence, she becomes a kinship adoptee by virtue of her being cared for throughout her own family. That is a very traumatic childhood. It
[:[00:39:37] Damon (2): Yeah.
[:[00:39:46] Curt: And so even with my father and I'll share a little bit of his his traumatic thing was his father and mother were at a Christmas party when he was like 12, they got into a big disagreement and something [00:40:00] happened on the way home and he run her over with the car and killed her.
[:[00:40:28] Damon (2): Yeah, I'm glad you, thank you for sharing these pieces because sometimes we can make assumptions about why someone turns to alcoholism or anything else to self medicate. And this is the color that we need to see about their lived experience prior to this moment where I'm ever meeting them for the first time through your voice.
[:[00:41:09] Damon (2): So I appreciate you sharing that about their stories. And I also appreciate you sharing that you love and appreciated the parenting that they tried to do, right. That they did. It sounds like the best they could with what they had. Right. And, as adoptees, we can always acknowledge there could have been several other outcomes for how our own lives went.
[:[00:41:39] Damon (2): Kurt and his birth mother eventually met in neutral territory for both of them.
[:[00:41:47] Damon (2): She had two other children, and a granddaughter who was in college in Virginia. so she was already planning a trip to the state for a visit.
[:[00:42:00] Curt: If I could do it all over, I would have recommended that we met somewhere a little more quiet, a little bit more easy to talk. We set on the York River at a very busy bar and grill restaurant and we had dinner. Her husband. myself and her and we had dinner and we were there an hour and a half.
[:[00:42:29] Damon (2): Can you tell me about your feelings going into that meeting? This is, sort of the day, the week before, and
[:[00:42:39] Curt: All over the place. I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't know if it was going to be a tearful hugs and sobbing and a conversation or if it was going to be standoffish. And, I just really didn't know what to expect. I had an inclination that she was going to say, Hey, we've met [00:43:00] now and this is great, we're going to go our separate ways from this, and I I had all of those thoughts and, looking back at it, I think at some point in time, It was emotional to her.
[:[00:43:38] Damon (2): it was superficial conversation. It sounds like
[:[00:43:56] Curt: But she was going to leave it up to them because I told her that, [00:44:00] when she said that she had told him, I didn't believe her. I didn't believe she had told him and I wasn't demanding that she told him. I just told her that I felt like now that I know, I don't want to have a call from either one of them 10 years from now saying, hey, you knew about this and you never even tried to, we didn't know.
[:[00:44:37] Curt: The brother has not responded only through his sister. He responded and he responded saying that he would like to have a relationship at some point in time, but right now it's not the right time for him.
[:[00:44:53] Damon (2): As a result of all he had been through, Kurt had become a bit of a detective, as we often do. [00:45:00] Searching for information about his birth father, Kurt found an email address for the man. He wrote a very similar note to the one he had sent to his birth mother, with the additional fact that DNA testing had shown that either he, or his brother, is closely connected to Kurt, because their parents are Kurt's grandparents. After mustering the guts to email the man, the message bounced back.
[:[00:45:39] Curt: And she's like, you're right. That is your father. And I'm like, yeah. So I sent him a LinkedIn message. I just copied and pasted the email and the next morning, cause he lives in the East coast and I was on the West the next morning, he sends me a note back and says.
[:[00:46:19] Curt: Myself independently before you do, but give me a day. And the very next day he calls and he said, apparently at some point in time when they were 13 or 14, we told him, and I don't remember telling them, but we told them about you.
[:[00:46:37] Curt: so his wife, she knew all along and now according to him, he thought.
[:[00:46:57] Damon (2): Oh, interesting. That's
[:[00:47:04] Curt: I finally did get in during COVID my non identifying information. only because of COVID the way that I got it because they were not working. I contacted this social worker with Virginia she seemed really willing to help more so than a couple of people I spoke to. And she says, there's something really odd about your, records is there's 93 pages.
[:[00:47:50] Curt: But anyways, I said, well, can I get a copy of that? And she's well, you have to come in, you have to do this. And she said, but because of COVID, I can [00:48:00] remove all of the pertinent information, send you a redacted file and and you can sign for it in a certified letter. And I was like, well, that's great.
[:[00:48:32] Curt: alcoholism. The social worker. Also, somebody reported my father for being an alcoholic right before they were given custody of me. And so that delayed the process a little bit. Then also I was I guess I was sickly. But what really turns out is I think the foster parents I had quite a few children.
[:[:
[00:49:43] Curt: I'm sure it was a little uncomfortable for him a little bit, just.
[:[00:49:51] Curt: he's been very welcoming and, he's been very interested in meeting my children, my grandchildren, [00:50:00] where that, that's some of the pullbacks that I've had with my mother. our relationship she doesn't want it to expand beyond her and I, but then she gets very defensive if her and I don't have a relationship.
[:[00:50:31] Curt: And she got really upset with me and she told me to just give it some space, but she was actually talking about the sister. But anyways, so I didn't email her or call her or anything for I don't know, 35, 40 days. then I get this email from her and she's just distraught. What's going on? I've been worried about you.
[:[00:51:11] Curt: While that might be disappointing, then I'll just let it go. And I won't beg or pursue or any of that. So that's been a little bit of a conflict between her and I all along. And I've shared with her that, that I'm disappointed that she's not more interested in my children and my family, and that she's not interested in telling basically, as my wife would say, anybody alive is off limits with her other than she's all about my family, my, background.
[:[00:51:59] Damon (2): [00:52:00] that right? That's fascinating. Yeah. And with a name like Kurt Russell, I was thinking to myself, please let him say Kurt Russell.
[:[00:52:32] Curt: And so she was amazing. And we actually formed a relationship and she shared with me a ton of the family history.
[:[00:52:46] Curt: and then I've also contacted tons of cousins or whatever and created some really good bonds and relationships with some family members that are cousins.
[:[00:53:09] Damon (2): That's amazing. Yeah, that's really cool when you find those cool connections.
[:[00:53:31] Damon (2): And now you've got genetic siblings that you can't have a relationship with. And that I can see why you have this hunger. You don't chase after people for a relationship, but this is one that you're super interested in. And I couldn't help thinking about what you said in terms of your mom, your birth mother, not really wanting to talk about you with anybody alive, only discuss those who are deceased.
[:[00:54:14] Damon (2): Recount the whole story, the whole trauma and everything. And that's, she doesn't sound like she doesn't want to do that.
[:[00:54:34] Curt: We. Exchange Christmas cards or what have you. And so she sent something to my house and I sent a small little crackers and meats and cheeses or whatever. And so I sent it to her home. Well, it arrived at the exact same time as my biological mother and her husband. Arrived for Christmas, and so the package arrived and [00:55:00] then it says it's from Kurt, and so they're all looking at one another and half the people don't know and half the people do know, so I'm sure Oh goodness, that probably caused some tension.
[:[00:55:32] Curt: She was here for a political conference. My sister. And so I've met every one of my siblings except for my sister who passed and then my brother, my half brother on my mother's side.
[:[00:56:08] Curt: That there's just something wrong with me that I don't listen and I just do whatever I want. And that, me having ADD or ADHD is just something that I was born with. I've never been formally diagnosed with that, but it turns out that my father and sisters and everybody else does in my.
[:[00:56:49] Curt: Wall or whatever. So it's what I said a minute ago. Okay. You don't want to be friends. No problem. I'm done with you forever. Right. And people don't understand how you [00:57:00] can cut them off so easy, but you just know, Hey, that's over and it's time to move on. Right. And people don't really understand.
[:[00:57:29] Damon (2): All you have to say is we're done. And I'm like, great, peace out. I don't have to continue to chase you after this. I've never really thought about that. About myself in the context of adoption. I just thought it was. Just a personality trait of my own. But as you say it, I realized that could possibly be related to adoption.
[:[00:58:06] Damon (2): It was fascinating to hear your childhood and that. Moment of saying, listen, I don't fit here. And you turning. Towards your own independence to make a course correction on your own life. But it sounds like it's worked out really well. And I'm glad that you were able to find these folks, that your daughter was able to convince you to do an ancestry DNA test.
[:[00:58:42] Damon (2): Say come on over. I've told my wife about you and let's sit down and talk and have, look at some pictures is really incredible. A lot of folks don't get that either. So good for you. Absolutely.
[:[00:58:52] Curt: I appreciate your work. And I appreciate you letting other adoptees share their experiences and, learn about the things that tie us [00:59:00] together.
[:[00:59:06] Damon (2): Yeah. Bye. All right. Bye bye.
[:
