How does one navigate life with not just one, but three mothers from very different backgrounds and beliefs?

This episode tackles the universal theme of maternal influence, exploring how different maternal figures can shape one's identity, beliefs, and life choices. It addresses a common curiosity: How do the women who raise us influence who we become, especially when they come from diverse backgrounds?

My Adoptive Mother, Stepmother and Birth Mother

Benefits Listeners Will Gain:

1. Insights into the Impact of Maternal Figures: Discover the profound influence of Kendall's adoptive mom, stepmom, and birth mother on his life, providing a broader understanding of maternal impact.
2. Exploration of Family Acceptance and Identity: Gain perspectives on navigating family acceptance within conservative settings, especially concerning LGBTQ+ identities, offering listeners a deeper empathy and understanding of their own family dynamics.
3. Discussion on Openness and Secrecy in Adoption: Hear Kendall's personal experiences with openness and secrecy in adoption, and how these dynamics affect relationships and self-understanding.

Listen to this compelling episode to uncover how Kendall's relationships with his three mothers shaped his journey of self-acceptance and family reconciliation!

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Welcome to Family Twist, a podcast about relatively unusual stories of long lost families, adoption, and lots of drama. I'm Corey. And I'm Kendall, and we've been partners for over 16 years. This episode, we're going to talk about Kendall's three mothers, his adopted mom, Betty, his stepmother, Joyce, and his birth mother. We thought it would be kind of interesting to share some of their similarities and differences just to kind of get an idea about these three.

interesting women. I think the first similarity kind of would be like their religious background, right? For sure. It's interesting. I mean, of course, all the information I have about my birth mother is secondhand, you know, from my sisters and my birth mother's sister. From what I can tell, everybody was raised. All three of my moms were raised very conservative Christian. You know, it's interesting to me that they all have that.

background, I think it probably should be expected just because they're all three were southern women. It's interesting. I mean, the common theme, it seems with the three of them is that they're all kind people, extremely kind people, it sounds like. Again, you know, using my references to my birth mother, but I know that my mom, Betty and my stepmother, Joyce, were just the kindest people you could ever meet growing up.

It's interesting, I think that, you know, that you turned out to be gay and coming from families with, you know, very strict, you know, Christian religious background, you know, and growing up in the 70s, obviously, there was a lot of people were a little bit more conservative about the LGBTQ plus community. I mean, back then, it was just pretty much gay and lesbian. We didn't have all the letters that we're using now. And I think it's probably fair to say that.

Joyce and and your birth mother aren't going to be marching in any pride parades. Is that fair to say? I think that is fair. I mean, Joyce, my stepmother, has always treated me kindly, but and she's not if she's judgmental, she's not the type of person who is going to say it to me. In other words, like she knows me well enough to know that.

When I came out of the closet, my stepsister says I knocked it off, knocked the door off its hinges. Um, and my stepmother, you know, was surprised, I guess, because I was kind of one of these militant people when I first came out. And I think that rubbed her the wrong way and probably would with a lot of people, but she also wasn't the type to tell me how she was feeling about it. So I just sensed it and.

I've continued to sense it all these years later. And from what I understand about my birth mother, I think that one of the reasons that she and I aren't close or haven't ever spoken has to do with the fact that I'm gay. So, you know, and again, nobody wants to really say that to me, but it just seems like that's the case. That's a difference really between the two of them and my adoptive mother, Betty, who

raised me until I was 10 because she was not, she was super religious, um, a conservative Christian, but she was very open, uh, about the gay community. I mean, you know, my, my mom, Betty was very accepting of the gay community. And it to this day bothers me because people will say, after I came out, people would say to me, Oh gosh, what would your mom?

And dad say if they knew you were gay and I used to laugh and say they kind of thought I was way back then. I have vivid memories of my mother saying to me when I was six, seven, eight years old that I could love whoever I wanted to love when I grew up. I don't know if she thought that I might be gay, you know, but I yeah, in retrospect, yeah, I think she did think it at least that it was a possibility. I often.

have told the story about one reference that makes it true is that she and I and my dad, they put in a swimming pool when I was seven. And it was difficult because my father was working so much, trying to work really kind of two jobs because my mother wasn't able to work during that period. She was so ill. And so we had, after the pool was put in, we had a...

a guy that came over and cleaned it. And my mother was, of course, very friendly, you know, to him in general, just she was friendly to everybody. But she would always, you know, take him lemonade when he was out, you know, working on the pool. And she and I would kind of, you know, watch him through the window. Sometimes I would go and help him sometimes. But my mom would say things to me like, oh, he's so cute. And then I would say back to her, yes, he is. And.

You know, for an eight year old boy, probably I get, I don't know if she was surprised or wasn't, but she never flinched. She never acted like I shouldn't say that. She never, you know, chastised me at all. It annoyed me after she passed away when all of her conservative Christian female friends would say to me, oh, she'd be, you know, so they use the word disgusted, but you know, that's what they were trying to get at that, that you've

know, come out as gay. And I just laugh at them and say, hey, don't tell me what my mother who's dead would think. And secondly, I know that she didn't feel that way. She told me she didn't feel that way. So I've just stopped. I've stopped trying to have those conversations with these people that were just touting their own beliefs and trying to make me believe that my mother felt something that she didn't feel. I mean, I've heard you talk about your mother, you know, for

the last 16 plus years and you've never ever spoken of her with an unkind word. I mean, it's everything's been super, super positive. I mean, it's a bummer that I never got to meet her. But, you know, I think she definitely did a great job with raising you those first 10 years. So you've also spoken about, you know, your dad, of course, obviously was, you know, Southern Baptist, but he converted for your mother, right? He did. He did.

much to his family's dismay, but it's so interesting to me how even if you're only converting from one conservative Christian denomination to another back home in Arkansas, that was a big deal. My father was raised Nazarene, and I don't hear about that denomination very often, but it is still pretty large, I think, in the U .S. It wasn't really common around my hometown.

But my father's parents were both, you know, born and raised into that denomination and were devout. And it was a big deal that he wanted to stop going to the Nazarene Church and start going to the Southern Baptist Church. You know, when really, if you look at their doctrines, they're pretty, pretty similar. It's very, it always is strange to me that that was a big deal. But the funny thing I thought is that when I would...

was a teenager and would complain about having to go to church as often as we did and the length of our services. My dad would say, oh, you know, it was even more conservative when I was growing up as an ass ring. So, you know, sort of like count your blessings and shut up, Kendall, which I get, you know, but in retrospect, it's like, oh, I don't know how much more he could have stood if he had to go more often than we did. So it's you've always spoken about.

both of your adoptive parents not being judgmental about people at all, which is great. I think because as you said, you know, your mother told you that you could love whoever you wanted to love when you grew up. And I think maybe that just had them being so open and accepting of people might have made your coming out easier, even though it happened after they passed. If they weren't as open and accepting and were talking, you know, as when you were a kid about, you know,

hometown, you know, I would I would go back and think about, you know, my mom and dad and how they wouldn't be upset. And that did help me, I believe. And it made me think, you know, if they would have still continued to love me, then that's what matters. I did find some solace in that approach. What are your earliest memories of her when you were just a little guy? It's funny when I close my eyes and think about.

being super young, I always go back to my parents had a cabin on Lake Norfolk in North Central Arkansas, and we would go over a lot on the weekends and with friends and they were avid water skiers, my parents and their friends. And it was just they were just really positive, happy times. You know, I just have so many fond memories of sitting around campfire.

talking, you know, just socializing how fun it was to have friends that were my, you know, closer to my same, the same age that I was at the time. And it was, they were really, really positive memories. And it's interesting when I, I don't think about my family home that much when I think about my earliest memories, but maybe because going to the lake was a break from, you know, your normal activities, maybe that's why that really sticks with me.

because my family home is, you know, not on a lake. It's it's very it's very flat and ugly and in the middle of crop fields. So it's it's very different. So maybe that's why it sticks out so so well in my mind. Let's talk a little bit about Joyce, your stepmother and a woman who helped raise you after your parents died.

I've met Joyce and we've communicated over the phone and she's been nothing but sweet to me. So I appreciate that. And after we got our domestic partnership and you changed your last name, she started addressing the Christmas cards to us at that last name. So I thought that was really nice. I mean, that's something that you asked her to do. That's just something she did on her own. So I thought that was pretty cool. But talk about why you decided to call Joyce mother.

instead of mom. If listeners might remember that we kind of already told the story that Joyce, I'd always known Joyce. She's been a family friend since before I was born. And she and she and her first husband used to hang out with my mom and dad. And so growing up, I called her Aunt Joyce. So that alone was one reason that.

It was going to always feel weird to me to call her mom because, you know, I never thought of her that way. And there was a little strange part of me that never wanted to call anybody. But my mom, Betty, mom, I didn't want to I didn't want to use that term for anybody else. So Joyce and dad got married. She was like, well, I probably shouldn't still be called Aunt Joyce because that's weird. Right. Since you're I'm now married your father. And I was like, yeah, I don't want to.

I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to call her Joyce. I would never as a proper southern boy, I would never have called her by her first name. I just wouldn't. And so that's something I've never let go of. But anyway, I just said, you know, how would you feel if I called you mother? And she's just I mean, we just both sort of burst out laughing. And she said, it sounds so formal. And I said, well, I think that's what that's what it's going to be.

I was like, I don't know if she liked it or not. And she was fine with it. And it's funny because all of my life until my father died when I was 16, I called him daddy. I know that sounds crazy, but that was just the term that stuck. And my step sister ended up calling my dad daddy after she got, you know, after our parents got married.

But see, she had never really used that term. She always called her dad, dad. So again, we kind of both were using that same logic, right? She, you know, she used to call my dad, Uncle Rube before, you know, dad and Joyce got married and she wasn't going to call him uncle anything anymore. So it was the same logic that she and I both used and it really worked. So my step sister Darla started calling her own mother that she called mom all her life.

She started calling her mother as well. So it's interesting how we both just kind of started using this uniform terminology for our parents. But it was fun and unique, I thought. This is one of my favorite stories that Kendall tells, and I've asked him to tell it several people over the years because it just tickles me. So can you tell the story about when you came back home to visit Joyce when you were away at college? I used to go home.

from college, which is about an hour and a half from my hometown. I used to drive home on the weekends selfishly to do laundry. And then I started working in my hometown on the weekends. So I really needed to go right. So I so I loved seeing my stepmother. I love doing my laundry for free. I loved making some extra money by working at the pizza restaurant. And so I often.

came home and I started getting to the habit later in that first year of doing it every weekend. But at the beginning, I was only just coming sporadically. I hadn't really picked up as many hours with the pizza restaurant at that point. So my stepmother, I would always just call her and tell her, like, hey, I'm going to be home for the weekend. And I would just always give her the heads up. And I needed to do that because she had a lock.

on the front door that was only accessible from the inside of the house. So if she knew I was coming home for the weekend, she would not let that lock them. Right. So she even if I got home super late and she was already in bed, she'd be expecting. So one Friday night or Friday, I did not call her. I did not tell her I was coming home and.

my friends and I had gone out for like pizza after leaving class and we, I didn't get home until super late. And as I'm driving in the driveway at my house, uh, at my mom's house, I was like, Oh, I never called her to tell her that I was coming home. Now this is, you know, this is years before cell phones, right? So there was no option for me to whip out my phone and give her a call, you know, what I should have done.

is driven back into town to a pay phone because they were still around at that point in time and I could have given her a call and and but that was not what my 18 year old brain was was thinking. I go and come into the driveway and even where I parked was kind of beside the garage. And so my car wouldn't even have been visible to her if she looked out the front window. Right. So again.

should not have done that, should not have pulled my car up alongside of the house where she would never be able to see it. But again, wasn't really thinking like that. And I jump out and I think, okay, I know where to how to get into the house, right? Because again, I had my key, but knowing that that lock on the front door would prevent me from coming in the front door, I thought I've got to find that secret key that we have stashed out in the yard.

So I go find it. I go unlock the side garage door. I go back and put the key back like a good kid. And in this whole process, I had woken up my stepmother and I didn't realize I had because I didn't want to bang on the door. I didn't want to, you know, scare her or say. But so I go into the garage and.

I have to find the second key that gets me into the house. So I go find a second key. I get I lock the door. I go put the key back. I turn the knob on the door to the den. And which is on the on the opposite end of the house, where my from where my mother's bedroom was. And I reach in the door and I reach to turn on the light for the room. And I hear.

I hear my stepmother talking the gun and I flipped the light on as I was saying mother and she and I burst into tears because she said she could see my my silhouette of my of my body and of course she didn't assume it that it was I who had come home and she was about to shoot me and she's a

really good shot. So I do not think I'd be sitting here today. If if you know, if I had maybe come in one second later into that room, kids who are listening who come home from college, please let your parents know if that's your agreement, please let them know that that you're coming. It was it was terrifying and

Um, she knew she'd be alone and she had already, you know, she had taken gun safety training courses and did all the, the, the training where she went to firing ranges and she's just a very, very good shot. So it was terrifying to me and her both. And I don't know why that makes Cory laugh as much as it does, but it always does. He's laughing right now and I don't find it funny still to this day. It was scary to me, but.

Oh, well, that lived through it. I have a sick sense of humor. I don't know that story just tickles me for some reason. Let's let's move on to she who will not be named. We've we've touched on this in past episodes a little bit, but not too much. So it's been four plus years now since Kendall found his birth family, you know, on his dad's side and his birth mother's side. But.

He has yet to have any direct contact, phone call, email, letter through the mail with his birth mother. And I know that's weighed heavy on your mind these last four years, probably continues to this day. So talk a little bit about your feelings about that. You know, it's funny. You're right. It's still weighs heavily on my mind. And I still want to have a conversation with her one.

conversation at the very least before either, you know, something happens to either her or me. And we're both I think we're both well, I don't think that anything is imminent. It's this overarching desire that I have. I don't know who wouldn't want to have at least one conversation with the birth parents. But I will say with that being said, now, four years later, I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that it might never happen.

Um, I don't feel like that's fair. Um, I'm just putting that out there. I've talked to so many women and not necessarily women her age, but women who have told me that I should be as forgiving as I can be that she hasn't spoken to me and that I can never know what it's like as a mother specifically to give up a child. I,

I hear all of that. I really try to have some grace when it comes to the way I feel about it. But I also feel like she might regret if something happened to me tomorrow and I died suddenly. I worry that she would also feel like she'd missed an opportunity to meet me. So.

I feel like it could only be a positive thing for us to have at least one conversation. And God bless my siblings, her other children. It sounds like they've all all three have really, you know, tried to impress upon her what I just said that that fact. And they've all encouraged her. You know, they've all said that I seem like a nice person and that I don't want anything from her. I'd love to hear from her.

her. And I'm getting some of this same content probably from her sister. But I'd love to hear stories about my grandparents, you know, about the extended family from her perspective. You know, I feel like that can be interesting, not that it isn't interesting when my auntie and I talk about those things. It is. And when my sisters tell me how wonderful my grandmother was, and my grandfather was, and you know,

That's right. That is wonderful. But there's just something I think that could be special for me hearing it from my birth mother. But, you know, right now I'm living vicariously through my siblings and it's all good. And my cousins and my auntie and, you know, it's it's still wonderful. I have no regrets about finding, you know, the family. I think, though, that I never dreamt never.

in a hundred years did I think that I would not have spoken to my birth mother four years later. I wanted to speak to her the day I found her. You know, I had no reservations. I had no and I didn't know anything about her at that moment. I didn't, you know, I didn't know that she wasn't a serial killer. I just I just assumed the best and and thought, well, no matter who she is, no matter what she's done, I still wanted.

this person. And I think that's only I feel like it's only natural. I hear from other adoptees that it isn't for them. Some people don't care. Some people don't care about meeting them about knowing who they are about meeting them about getting to know them. But I do. I might to Corey's previous point, I might feel differently if my

either of my adoptive parents were living. I don't think so because I'm kind of an inquisitive person and I love family connections. So I feel like it wouldn't matter whether Betty and Ruth were living or not. And especially since I know that they were in favor of my search for my birth family. So.

I feel like it wouldn't change. I feel like I would always want to to meet my birth mother and her husband and that other side of the family that I'm really not related to at all. You know, but they've been part of my birth mother's life and my siblings lives, you know, forever. So I just feel like there's a whole family that I'm not really getting to experience on my mother's side.

Kendall has a really good relationship with my mom, but we're also close with some of my friends from growing up mothers as well. And, you know, there's three that come to mind that pretty much think of me and Kendall as their, you know, their kids in quotation marks, you know, not their they didn't give birth to us, but, you know, we're we're part of the family. So I really hope to get them on the podcast as well, especially because one of them ties directly to the.

journey of finding Kendall's family. So we'll definitely share that story in another episode. I'm also excited that we're starting to hear about other people's found families and outrageous family stories just as we've been talking with people about doing this podcast. So we're going to start reaching out to those folks and see if they would like to come on and be guests because we want to share their stories too. I mean, one of the points of this podcast is to kind of help people on their journey. Be it, you know,

adoption journey, found family journey, difficult family situations, what have you. We've been through some crazy stuff and I'm sure there's things that we can learn from others. And so I'm really excited about getting to talk to and share other people's stories. But we are also trying to get in touch with Jennifer, a girl that Kendall dated in the seventh grade, who was also adopted because we think that might be a good addition to the podcast as well. We definitely want to get some good adoption stories in here.

So there's there's quite a few people from Pendle's past who helped shape who he is and his journey. His best friend, Jimmy, who would be hysterical on his own podcast because he is just insane. He's going to take part in this soon. And it's I promise you, it's going to be hilarious. Just one more thing to look forward to in future episodes of Family Twist. We will see you soon. Thanks for joining us today in this edition of Family Twist. We'll be back with you soon.

This is the Family Twist Podcast hosted by Kendall and Corey Stulce with original music by Cosmic Afterthoughts and produced by Outpost Productions and presented by Sahuafair Marketing Communications. Have a story you want to share? Visit Family Twist Podcast dot com. All our social media links are there as well.