Shownotes
Kyle tells the story of growing up, towering over his mother and sister and looking very different from them, but being loved. Locating his birth mother he was amazed to see someone he looked like but struggled to get along with as she battled her own pain. In the end, he was able to truly connect to his Native American heritage while discovering the pain that was deep within him. His experience inspired him to write two songs.
Kyle: 00:03 And that’s the thing is she’s a great person. It was just very hard towards the end to have the relationship because I think she felt she wanted to be my mom. I just period and she couldn’t be. She didn’t raise me and it was a very tough thing for her. And I think it’s just the trauma, you know, it’s easy to get wrapped up in my own trauma, but you know, that can’t be easy… Giving up a baby, especially when you don’t want to.
Voices: 00:35 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
Damon: 00:47 This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and my guest on the show today is Kyle. He called me from Seattle, Washington. Kyle tells the story of growing up, towering over his mother and sister and looking very different from them, but being loved, locating his birth mother. He was amazed to see someone he looked like, but struggled to get along with as she battled her own pain. In the end, he was able to truly connect to his native American heritage and the experience inspired him to write two songs. Here’s part of one of them called the saddest song and did this is Kyle’s journey
Kyle Singing: 02:15 [Music] See all of me. I’m there before you. You’re In my dreams, but I don’t know you.
Damon: 02:33 Kyle said that he had a good childhood, but they didn’t really talk about adoption still. He felt like everyone in the family knew he was adopted and some folks were a little nicer to him in his extended family while some folks were less so within Kyle’s nuclear family. His mother told him the story of how she had several babies to choose from, but she picked him and he liked that his dad was engaged, cracking jokes, and he was a fun Dad, but his parents separated when he was young, so the challenges of switching between houses made things a little tougher. He acknowledges that he did feel kind of different.
Kyle: 03:10 Really good childhood. I think I always felt a little different, but when you’re a child you don’t really know why. I just thought I was very shy, so I think I attributed a feeling different. Just that I wasn’t outgoing. My sister is very outgoing and so I thought, well, it’s just because I’m really shy that people don’t notice me as much or you know, I feel different. Yeah, we’d go to my grandparents’ house. They have a farm in North Dakota and go there as children for the summer and my grandmother did the opposite. I was the youngest, so a lot of times the older kids didn’t want to play with me so she would take me under her wing and teach me things and my grandfather would take me with him and he, you know, fix farm equipment. And so that was a, that was actually some of the best memories I’ve had in my life was growing up on the farm.
Damon: 04:05 Those were great because Kyle could just tag along as his grandmother baked and did other things around the farm. She taught him a little about how to play piano and told him stories about when his father was younger or when she first met Kyle’s mother. His grandmother knew he was shy and she needed to reach out to connect with him. She even attempted to connect him with his heritage.
Kyle: 04:29 They always knew that I had some native American blood, but they didn’t know what tribe or anything else, but I remember when I was really young that my grandmother took me by myself all the way up into Canada to go to a powwow and at the time I didn’t really know. Yeah, I didn’t think it through. I just thought, oh, this is kind of cool. Or by herself and, but looking back he was trying to show me things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Um, my family is very scandinavian, so that was a very, a very interesting.
Damon: 05:05 You appreciate that. She did that or like, what’s your feeling about that?
Kyle: 05:09 I think she, she knew of my birth heritage and just thought I’m going to, I’m going to take him up there and expose him to cultures that may be like, you know, some of his ancestors. I also remember she would tell me ,well, When she was little, it was still in a lot of places to kind of the wild west, you know, so she remembers a chief that would come into town and trade for things when she was a little kid, so she told me about him all the time and how he was really tall and proud and so I think she, yes, she used her, her real experiences also to connect with me in ways that I didn’t even fully. I mean I appreciate them, but I appreciate them more now.
Damon: 05:52 Kyle paints a picture of his grandmother as a very kind person you may have picked up on. Kyle’s mentioned of his sister. She was born after his mother had two miscarriages. After her birth, his mother’s physician told her she could not have another child naturally or it might kill her. So Kyle was adopted. Remember now he’s already said his family is very scandinavian. His sister, is blue eyed and blonde haired. I’m sure you can imagine that Kyle’s descent from native Americans gave him dark brown eyes, black hair, and to add to their differentiation, he’s six foot three, much taller than his family. Kyle and his sister battled like any sibling pair would as children, but they’re much closer now as adults. Sadly, his father passed away when he was 11 years old, making the challenge of raising two children much harder for their mother still. She was a great mother, so he didn’t feel much desire to seek out his birth. Mother, Kyle said it wasn’t until his mid twenties that he really decided he wanted to search. He said the urge just hit him one day.
Kyle: 07:01 It comes a an awakening, I guess, where you realize that you want to just know, and I guess I had been married really young. I had a child. I got divorced so I had to kind of a new life and I think that’s when I started realizing that I, I want to know more. I wasn’t putting my energy into my marriage anymore and I think that also kind of… I was a little bit depressed, so I think that made me think more of longing and things that might make my life better or things that are kind of in the back of my mind,
Damon: 07:36 Kyle was wondering what his birth mother looked like and what bits of the information the social worker had given his family were right. His mother found some notes from the social worker from the time prior to his adoption. The documents said that Kyle was a plump little baby with chubby cheeks and his birth mother was very young. She also noted to her social worker back then that his birth father was a truck driver and Kyle is a black crow Indian. Reading that for himself, Kyle was left to imagine whether his birth mother wanted him or if she was forced to give him up. Did she try to keep him or did she hand him over easily because he was a mistake. He had lots of unanswered questions, but I know that for many people actually reading your true heritage instead of just hearing rumors from family members can be a bit of a moment. I asked Kyle about that moment for him.
Kyle: 08:29 That really hit me because it, it kind of reinforced the identity. I already know. You kind of identify yourself as different things. It made me realize I wasn’t know. I wouldn’t say like living a lie, but you kind of wonder. There’s a lot of family things that people say they turned out not to be true. So I always wonder, am I really, you know, I have black hair and everything, but I am more pale skin, so I’m thinking maybe I’m just, you know, what if it turns out I’m Italian and I’m tall from, you know, or whatever. So it felt good. It felt good to, to be told something for so long and then have it be real. It made me feel a little bit of a little piece to me. I was missing, you know, made me. Yeah. Made me a little bit more whole. I think
Damon: 09:21 I can see how that’s true. If all of your life, you’re told that you’re generally native American, then you learn your true tribal identity. Anyway, the letterhead was from children’s home society. He called them and they said he could go in to have a conversation that same day,
Kyle: 09:38 and I told him who I was, what my, what I wanted to find out, and they said, well, your birth mother sent a letter this week, which was just crazy. She sent a letter to let them know that if I contacted them that she wants them to let me contact her back and had her address. So
Damon: 10:04 The same week that you walked in there, She sent a letter?
Kyle: 10:07 Yeah, she’d sent it. It gotten there a couple days before I stood in the office. I mean it was still in her desk, in a file drawer that she probably just put in a couple of days before that just waiting in the off chance that eventually someone might come in and I was yet literally there within days. So
Damon: 10:27 That’s unreal, wow. That’s incredible.
Kyle: 10:29 Yeah, it was an amazing. It’s like we both had the same idea just like I got to make sure he can find me and I’m like, I need to find her. And then Bam, every word.
Damon: 10:41 Kyle said he was 28 when that remarkable simultaneous search for each other started. I told him I thought that their timing was really interesting because it wasn’t like he was 18 or 21 landmark ears in a person’s life when their birth parent might say to themselves, okay, he’s legal or now he’s old enough. Twenty eight was a fairly odd year to my mind and after I said it to Kyle, he agreed, but he said it was actually a great time for her to reach out because he knew more about who he was and he was more comfortable in his skin. He was an angry guy in his early twenties, but after his divorce and the birth of his son, he had really settled down. Kyle felt a bond to his boy and try to imagine what it would be like if someone took his son away. A lot of adoptees say they’re hugely impacted by the birth of their children, so I asked him how it was for him.
Kyle:
