Right before Sharon left for college, her parents sat her down to say she was of age to start looking for her birthparents. She had never contemplated that possibility before, so it took years for her to act on her desire to learn more about herself. In the late 1980s, she went through Catholic Charities to help retrace the path back to her biological family. But her assigned intermediary maintained tight control over the family’s communications, stifling their connection. For five years Sharon and her birth mother communicated laboriously through their intermediary before her mother closed the door. After years of silence in her reunion attempt, Sharon decided to try just one more time to break through her birth mother’s resistance, and she was glad she did. Her birth mother apologized for everything she had put Sharon through.

The post 042 – This Little Voice Said, “You Gotta Do Something” appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Sharon (00:02):

I tried to convey to Colleen, this is important to me. This is this the stuff about me that I've always wondered where it came from. And I don't know that she really understood. I think she had a lot of sorrow because she turned to me one time when we were visiting and said, I am just so sorry for what I put you through.

Damon (00:30):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? 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 on today's show is Sharon. She spoke with me from Houston, Texas. She was adopted through Catholic charities there in the late 1960s. Sharon was the older of two adoptees in her family. Her younger brother challenging her parents a lot along the way. In her twenties she found her biological relatives, but the decision was made for Sharon that there would be no meeting. When she finally made contact with her birth mother, a Catholic charities, intermediary maintain tight control over the communication stream. Frustrating everyone involved after years of silence in her reunion attempt, Sharon decided to try just one more time. And she was glad she did her birth mother apologized for everything she had put Sharon through. This is Sharon's journey. Sharon was born in 1967 in Houston. Her parents were unable to conceive children. So they adopted children. They were active in their local community. Her father with the fire department, her mother was a school nurse and they were a part of the church.

Sharon (01:58):

My father, my adoptive father had some chronic illness problems and just wasn't able to conceive. And, and, um, it was never really discussed, but it was just, you know, the understanding was is they just, they were infertile. So they wanted to adopt, you know, in the Catholic church, you know, the, the emphasis is on family. So if you aren't able to make a family go find one. So they, they adopted me. And, um, I was raised in Houston. I, uh, we lived in Houston. Then when I got to be a school age, my parents decided they didn't like the school district they're in Houston. So they found a community West in the West of Richmond. And we settled there and I started grade school and we were there all the way through high school.

Damon (02:48):

Sharon says she's always known. She was adopted and was made to feel comfortable in their family. For years after her adoption, her parents adopted a boy unrelated to Sharon. I asked how she got along with her brother.

Sharon (03:04):

Um, you know, as, as, as an older sister, I would look after him, but he pretty early on, he let it be known that he, he didn't jive with the rest of us. And he had his own ideas about things. And he was a boy and I was a girl and it was just, we tolerated each other.

Damon (03:22):

Yeah. You kind of allowed one another to go. Your separate ways

Sharon (03:25):

we got along. And there were times that, you know, we just really would rather have not have thought about, you know, just, and then when he got to be teenager, he was, I hate using this analogy, but it's, it was true. Especially after I started reading the primal wound, uh, and the books on adoptees, I was the good adoptee and he was the bad adoptee, so to speak. Um, I was the one that I wasn't necessarily interested in conforming, but I wasn't interested in rebelling. I wasn't interested in rejecting my adoptive parents. I wasn't interested in rejecting them. And I pretty much followed the rules, whatever rules were laid down, Robert, my brother, he, he, uh, he kept going in with the wrong crowd and ended up fighting with my parents a lot and causing a lot of problems for them.

Damon (04:14):

You know, it sounds like you were on a track with your parents to be very comfortable in your family. Very loved. And it sounds like to me, if, if I were in that family, I can see how I would be constantly reminded of my adoption because of this other child who was, you know, combative or yeah, yeah. An acquired taste in the family. Yeah.

Sharon (04:43):

Yes. Because my brother, he very different. I wanted to go to college. He couldn't have cared less.

Damon (04:50):

Her brother got jealous of the attention and resources. Sharon was getting, when she went away to college, he joined the military, which seemed like it could lead to his success, but he undermined that success. Like he had done with so many other positive trajectories he had been on. But Sharon says that now that she's explored her own adoption as an adult, she realizes some of what her brother may have been going through.

Sharon (05:13):

And it wasn't until much later when I started exploring my own adoption, you know, my own, um, being an adoptee that I realized what my brother had been going through. And, and the, the thing that leaves the bitter taste in my mouth is even in an idyllic family where everything is good and everyone seems to be happy. There's still issues of identity and, uh, feeling like things aren't quite right. And when I read primal wound and really started looking into the community and realizing some things about being an adoptee, it just kills me to think that if only people who had been more educated, more aware of what the problems and what the issues would be, or what might be going through the adoptees mind,

Damon (06:13):

Sharon says her parents were very smart and really good people who seem to have a solid grasp on how to handle Sharon's need for support. When the time came for her to want to get questions about herself answered, she says, she wished they knew then what she knows now, because it would have helped them to parent her and understand things more deeply.

Sharon (06:33):

I look back on this stuff and I wish that they'd been able to acquire this information and have the support as adoptive parents, because I wasn't easy as a child. I had a lot of anger, things that I would get angry about and they'd go, what is your, what is wrong? What are you? So I wouldn't be able to express it. I wouldn't be able to put words to it. I wouldn't be able to describe what I was feeling. Even though I knew I was angry or frustrated, or there was this stuff going on in my chest that I couldn't get out. That's why when I read the primal wound, it finally gave labels. I know a lot of other people's well, I hate labels as this. This is a language that I can use. It may not be the perfect language. It may not be the most concise language, but it's something that has helped so much in my own journey. Being able to say, this is where it is. It makes me feel more human. At that point, I just felt like I was this freak, this oddball that couldn't, couldn't quite get with the rest of humanity. And therefore I'm, I'm damaged goods. So therefore I'm not as human or as, as the capable of, uh, emotional maturity. And it's been very frustrated. It's taken me 50 years to reach that point.

Damon (07:56):

When her parents found out from Catholic charities, that an infant was ready to be picked up for their adoption, they were completely unprepared to have a baby.

Sharon (08:04):

After they picked me up, they had to stop by the grocery store to get diapers and, you know, food and things like that. And so my mom left me in the car with my adoptive father. The minute she shut the door, my father told me I started screaming at the top of my lungs and wouldn't stop. I, you know, and it was funny growing up. But after reading the problem, I was like, Oh no, that's what that was really. It was a separation thing. It was a, you know, I'm with strangers. I don't belong to these people. And it had echoes into my own parenting experience. When I had my daughter long story short, she was born a premature baby and had to stay in the neonatal unit for a couple of months. And so finally came the day when we were able to bring her home. And I told my husband, I'm sitting in the back because if she starts crying, I want to be able to comfort her. Never cried a single thing. Not even, I'm not even a hint of a little whimper. She was like looking at me the whole time. But I, that was my fear that she would end up doing the same thing, you know, getting so scared and angry that she would scream all the levels. And it just, it had such resonance for me when I was reading the Prama wound, how all of that, that was my story.

Damon (09:35):

Sharon learned at 15 years old, that searching for her birth parents was something she could actually do. It was an option she had never considered before, but it started to make sense.

Sharon (09:46):

It didn't even occur to me to go looking. It just, you know, it was just, Oh, I'm adopted. I'm not, didn't, you know, I came from another family, but it was 15 years old. I was upset about something at school it had to do with theater. And that was when my mom told me, well, you do know, or I forget how she put it. You do know that, um, your birth parents were in the arts and I'm like, no, you didn't never tell me that. And she goes, yes, we were given non identifying information. And your mother was a music major or was into music. And your father was in theater. And which explained all of the artistic endeavors that I had done all my life. I attempted ballet. I liked to draw. I liked crafts. I liked to sing. I have a pretty good voice. And I was very much interested in becoming a writer. So all these artistic, creative endeavors completely at odds with the way my birth, my adoptive parents were who my dad was an accountant in. Mom was a nurse. And the family came from the teachers and nurses and CPAs and pragmatic, creative child arts and creative volatile type of person. They didn't know what to do with me.

Damon (11:05):

Sensing Sharon's teenage angst. Her parents sat her down when she was 18 years old and said you're of legal age to go searching. But it took Sharon a few years to finally decide to do so when the time came, her parents were very supportive and she got the genuine sense that they truly wanted to help. Her father had always been into history and people's heritage. So he understood the importance of what Sharon wanted to accomplish. Her mother stood strong and her support to pushing down her own anxiety about the results of the search. We talked for a moment about how important it is for adoptive parents to learn as much as they can about supporting an adoptee's desire to search, because if they don't offer their genuine support so that they may be included, then they'll find themselves left out.

Sharon (11:52):

My one wish to see in the future is that any reform will include the adoptive parents. I don't know what they could go through, but just helping them understand that it's okay to help them support their search and their issues that they need to be aware of. And it would actually help them if they actually explored it, they would have a better understanding of their child, um, and, and help them out if they're genuinely interested in helping the child, then that that's the best way to deal with it.

Damon (12:28):

Yeah. And you know, another piece of that too, is, you know, in, in any classic parent child situation, regardless of how the, the family is set up, you know, the, in an instance where a parent says you can't do something, the first thing that the child does, no matter what age is, go do it. So this is the kind of thing that you should openly embrace upfront so that you can be a part of it as opposed to being excluded from it, because that can make it even that much more challenging is if you're not included, then you're, you are missing out on some really momentous things in your child's life. And there's no way to recreate that.

Sharon (13:09):

Yeah. And I was adopted in an era where it was the blank slate era. Oh, you know, the baby doesn't need anything more than your love, right? A baby is a blank slate. My adopted mother has even said that to me a couple of years ago. And I just looked at her cause I love you, mom. That was the generation she came from. It was a, you know, a blank slate. Baby's a blank slate. You can do anything. And I proved them wrong. And it just, it sets people up for disappointment thinking that they can exert a particular will over a child, you know, especially the will over nature. Nurturing is one thing. I mean, you, you've got to, as a parent exert, some kind of will in order to guide the child. But when it comes to their basic nature, there's nothing, you, you, you accept them as they are and you learn to appreciate them the way they are and you learn to love them the way they are. And I really think, uh, all of the reforms that need to go on and, and, and adoption will, will, should be towards that.

Damon (14:13):

When Sharon was in college in the 1980s, her parents contacted Catholic charities to launch the search process. It took eight months for the charity to find Sharon's first relative, but Sharon's decisions were being made for her. And she didn't have the support networks online. Like we do today to reach out for advice from others on how she should proceed.

Sharon (14:33):

They contacted me and said, we found your grandmother and she wants to meet you. And I was like, Oh, I didn't imagine that would happen. I would thought they would try to get ahold of the mother. And they said, well, they didn't want to do anything until they get a hold of the mother. And that took a little longer, but they got a hold of...