Pam, from Emeryville, CA, told me her desire to search started when she was a kid, but it was Oregon’s laws that changed everything for her search. When she met her birthmother she encountered a woman who couldn’t relay the details of her past, leaving Pam with only her paternal side of the story. He says that what is alleged against him is not true, but Pam is having a hard time forgiving the man. This is Pam’s journey.

Pam (00:04):

So I thought that from the time I was 19, until I started meeting people in my mid thirties, that was part of my trying to identify what it meant to be alive. Even it's like, Oh, and then I thought, gosh, my mom might not want me to come find her because maybe I'm a traumatic thing. She wants to forget.

Damon (00:32):

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 Pamela. She called me from Emeryville, California. Pam told me her desire to search started when she was a kid, but it was Oregon's laws that changed everything for her. When she met her birth mother, she encountered a woman who couldn't relay the details of her past leaving Pam with only her paternal side of the story. He says that what was alleged against him is not true, but Pam is having a hard time forgiving the man. This is Pam's journey. Pam grew up in a suburb of Portland, Oregon called Milwaukee and in Redmond, Washington and Pamela's family. They didn't ask about adoption when she was four or five. Her parents took time to convey that she was loved, chosen and special in her experience. She had everything a child could want and everything that came with what she called a privileged white, upper middle class upbringing and upbringing, devoid of emotion. I asked Pam what she meant by that.

Pam (02:06):

I was discouraged from being an expressive child. They were very sort of stoic people. And so if I were to express some bright emotion, it would be tamped down somehow I would be told I was being hysterical or you know, these kinds of things. So it was just, I think we were really mismatched with each other. I'm a very warm emotive person and they were very cool unemotive. People.

Damon (02:37):

It sounded like her passion and fervor for life were not at all meant by her parents' personalities. She said, she always felt very odd and out of place. Pamela has one older brother non-biological to herself and her parents conceived one biological son as well. She's sandwiched between her brothers and they're all only about 16 months apart in age, she said in her toddler pictures, when you look at her adoptive mom, you can see she's expecting their younger brother. I was curious about how the siblings got along, especially since she and her older brother share an adoption kinship. I wondered if it drew them closer.

Pam (03:15):

Actually, not really. No. My brothers are very close with each other and I'm kind of the, the black sheep person in the family. My oldest brother was adopted at birth and I was adopted later. Um, I was five months old and kind of came to my parents as a, uh, a special case. This child has been hard to place. Can you please take her kind of a thing? And so they did, and I didn't get returned, but I think as a traumatized infant, I think my mom just didn't really know how to address my emotional needs. There was no training for parents about how traumatic it is to be separated from your, your birth mother in this sort of thing. I mean, I just know it just didn't get discussed. And that the paradigm at that time was that, Oh, these children are a blank slate and they will never know any different.

Damon (04:18):

Pam said she was a very rebellious teenager. She ran away from home. She even stole the family car and drove to Canada with her friends.

Pam (04:27):

I was pretty awful to them. I think that, uh, I had issues that I didn't have words for. So I acted out and it was hard for them or they just, they didn't know how to address my needs.

Damon (04:43):

I asked Pam what the catalyst was for her search. She said her parents sparked the flame that would burn within her when she was about eight years old.

Pam (04:52):

When my parents explained to me about adoption and that I was adopted, they told me that I had parents who couldn't take care of me because they already had five children. So I thought, what, there's five siblings out there somewhere. And I thought, gosh, maybe, maybe some of those are sisters. Cause I had brothers didn't have a sister. So that was super compelling for me as a child that I had sisters out there or maybe had sisters out there. So that was always super compelling for me. And I knew the minute I could find anything and I could look, I was going to do it.

Damon (05:35):

She remembers being inquisitive about her adoption, but she sensed her mother's unwillingness to discuss the topic further. So she didn't broach the topic very often. Pam bided, her time listening to conversations between grownups waiting for them to divulge clues that she could hold on to. She said her mother had a baby book upstairs in her closet, but she didn't make it available to Pam. She seemed to believe it truly belonged to her. And it was not to be shared with Pam, even though it was all about her,

Pam (06:07):

But I would go in there and sneak it down sometimes and look for clues, trying to figure stuff out, looking at pictures. And I remember at one point finding a letter that looked like it might've been from a previous care giver. I don't know who this person was, but I was obviously in their home. So I don't know if it was a foster home or if it was one of the placements that didn't work out. I'm not exactly sure. Um, but, um, I, I would just always be looking, looking for stuff

Damon (06:39):

That letter from the caregiver or social worker or whatever, had some juicy stuff in it. And she was glad she found it. But Pam didn't try to search until the internet began to blossom as an information resource. She didn't know enough to search before then. So her efforts like signing up on adoption reunion, registries were purely shots in the dark at an unknown target. Pam decided to go into museum studies with the goal of being trained as a researcher, knowing that skill set would be really helpful in her search for answers about herself. But she said her search really began when the state of Oregon opened its adoption records in 1998, she went online, filled out the forms and sent in the application with her $25 fee. One summer afternoon in 2000 of very plain looking envelope from the state of Oregon showed up in the mail and she knew exactly what it was her unamended birth certificate.

Pam (07:39):

And I thought, bingo, here we go. I'm going to have names now. Now I can really search. So I get this document. Oh my gosh. So I take it out and I look at it. I looked down at her name and her last name is Jones.

Damon (08:00):

As Pam got older, her adoptive mother shared more details about her adoption that weren't appropriate for her as a child. She divulged that her birth father was not her birth mother's husband. So when Pam got her birth certificate, she was really surprised to see a man's name on it and happy to see that his last name was far less common. So she keyed her search on him, on her laptop. She went to Yahoo people, search where you used to be able to get all kinds of background information on an individual that you have to pay for access to today. She didn't find the man, but she found a woman with his unique, last name, Pam figured they had to be related. So she called the woman.

Pam (08:42):

I said, I'm looking for this person. And she said, Oh, that's my cousin. Here's his number?

Damon (08:48):

The next call was to the man whose name appeared on her own birth certificate.

Pam (08:53):

And I said, I don't, I don't know if you know who I am, but you're named on my birth certificate and I'm looking for my siblings. And he says, well, honey, I'm not your father. I was married to your mom and your siblings have been looking for you.

Damon (09:13):

Whoa, what'd you think when you heard that?

Pam (09:17):

I was so happy. I was really, it hadn't occurred to me that I might be a secret, but I was really happy to know that they knew

Damon (09:29):

The man put Pam in touch with her sisters. And they had lots of multiple hour telephone conversations. In July of 2000. Her sister, Margaret closest in age to Pam flew out West from Arkansas to stay with her.

Pam (09:43):

Oh my gosh, we just, it sounds really silly, but we couldn't keep our hands off each other. We were braiding each other's hair and brushing each other's hair and hugging and holding hands. And we were just so delighted to be together. And she delighted in my kids and her son was a charming boy. And we went on little excursions together and saw the sites. And it was really fun.

Damon (10:07):

Margaret shared quite a bit about the family and the family members. Pam would meet in Arkansas. She described some family issues with drug physical and sexual abuse, sharing some horrific stories about her own childhood in the fall of 2000 Pam and her husband left their kids behind protecting them from potential harm to make the voyage to Arkansas, to suss out the situation for themselves. She and her husband flew into little rock. Then drove the hour South to star city.

Pam (10:39):

My birth mother was still living at that time, but she'd had a series of strokes and she couldn't speak. I couldn't really have a conversation with her. Um, her husband was still able to care for her at that point. And um, we went and visited with her, um, spent an afternoon there and really, I just sat next to her and held her hand and my siblings and I kind of talk to each other while she could just sit and listen to us, you know? And she understood who I was. And she was so happy and delighted. She could say, I love you. Which was a lovely thing to hear. She could say she, she could say yes. And she could say, no, you could ask her yes or no questions, but sometimes she'd say no. When she meant yes. And vice versa, it wasn't any way to have any kind of meaningful conversation or what happened or anything like that. So a lot of those questions I don't have answers for, but it was good to meet her.

Damon (11:49):

Do you look like her?

Pam (11:52):

Yes. Just like her.

Damon (11:57):

What was that like?

Pam (11:57):

I couldn't really see it when I met her. I couldn't really see how I looked like any of them when I was there. And it didn't really become clear to me that I look like them until I saw pictures of them from varying times in their lives. When we did resemble each other more, not ever growing up around people that you look like, you don't really understand how people sort of morph. And sometimes they look like their mom is sometimes they look like their dad and you know, it, they, you change a lot as you age. And so it wasn't obvious to me until I stopped pictures. So it wasn't obvious to me when I saw her. And then after you've had a stroke, sometimes your, it changes your face because you can't control your muscles. So it couldn't really see myself. I saw pictures of her as a younger woman. I thought, Oh my God, I do. I was just like her. And now that I'm older, I definitely look like her.

Damon (12:53):

So the guy on Pam's birth certificate was not her biological father, but her sisters knew who the correct person was. And they gave her his identity. He was a man who lived in the sisters area. They always knew who he was. And he was always in their lives.

Pam (13:10):

He was their father's cousin. So the man on my birth certificate, my father is his cousin.

Damon (13:20):

Oh, so she was with her husband's cousin?

Pam (13:26):

Yes.

Damon (13:29):

Oh. Are the other five siblings? All the product of their marriage?

Pam (13:36):

Yes.

Damon (13:38):

So you were an outside child.

Pam (