Shownotes
In Kenneth’s family all of siblings were adoptees, each fostered in their parents home before their adoption were made final. That scenario worked out great for Kenneth, but not so much so for his oldest sister who never bonded with their mother. Seeking reunion, Kenneth carefully approached his half-sister and learned the truth about his brith mother’s institutionalization which led to his sister’s adoption, and his own conception.
Kenneth was still seeking answers as to his birth father’s identity at the time of our interview… for now at least he knows more about where he came from.
Kenneth: 00:00 Yeah. You know, and it’s kind of funny in being the adopee, I think it was a lot tougher on my sister. My sister would visit my mother there and my mother had electroshock therapy and all that kind of stuff and it’s like I didn’t have to experience it myself, but my sister did.
Voices: 00:25 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
Damon: 00:36 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 Kenneth. He called me from Cole City, Illinois. His family of siblings were all adoptees, each fostered in their parents’ home before their adoptions. That scenario worked out great for Kenneth, but not so much for his oldest sister. Seeking reunion, he bonded with his half sister and learned the truth about his birth mother’s institutionalization, which led to his sister’s adoption and Kenneth’s conception. He’s still seeking answers as to his birth father’s identity, but for now at least he knows more about where he came from. This is Kenneth’s journey. Kenneth was the youngest of four adoptees in the suburbs of Chicago. He had two older sisters and a brother. So I’m sure you can imagine adoption was an integral part of their lives, but that doesn’t mean it was entirely a great thing for all of them. Listen to the stories Kenneth tells about his siblings start in their home
Kenneth: 01:44 and it’s kind of funny now that I look back on it and I hear other people’s adoption stories, I see how unique in one sense my situation was, my parents became foster parents solely for the, um, to be able to adopt and they figured, well if we start out as foster parents then we’ll have the in that would allow us to, um, be given children. And they were, they got four children and I’m not exactly sure that was the best idea for them because what ended up happening is, is my oldest sister was a foster child to start and they got her at 10 months old and she wasn’t adopted until she was like almost four. And at that point you really don’t have any much bonding that my, my mom and my mom especially. I don’t sense she could totally give her heart to my sister because she never knew if she was going to get her or not and so and and my sister would have visitations with her biological family and when she was three there, my sister can vaguely remember the goodbye to her biological family where everybody’s crying while they were going to be giving her up and I don’t think my sister bonded well with my mom because my mom didn’t know whether she was going to have my sister forever or whether she was going to have to give her up.
Kenneth: 03:09 And I think that happened in several, with my oldest sister, definitely my second eldest sister was a foster child until she was eight years old. And that situation was actually opposite. My oldest sister, my second oldest sister, she was used to my mom being her mom, her adoptive mom. But she would visit her biological family and didn’t want to visit. And then they ended up getting into a court fight at the end because the biological family wanted her back at like eight. But they were sensing that they wanted her back so that they could take care of the invalid mother. So there was a court battle. And so my parents ultimately won. And so in this situation, I was constantly growing up in an adopted situation with case workers and social workers around. My brother, my older brother, he actually, they got him and they had a little bit of complication with him, because they were going to allow my parents to adopt him but then they discovered he was deaf. And then there was question marks about whether, you know, should, you know, would they be able to give him the need that they needed? And my parents had to beg and beg them to give give them the chance. And so you’ll notice there’s a lot of turmoil with my parents getting to be able to adopt the three eldest children. With me, it was very simple. My mother was this, my biological mother was a schizophrenia and she was in a mental institution and they knew I was never going to be, she was never going to be coming out. So, I was the first child my parents got and they got me at four months and it was like they knew they were going to have me.
Kenneth: 04:51 So I think my mom bonded with me really quickly because there was none of this well we’re fostering and we don’t know whether we’re going to be able to keep this child. I was the only child they knew right off the bat they were going to keep. And I bonded. So my adoption situation was really wonderful. All rosy. I, you know, I loved my parents. I Love My, my dad and my mom and I could see within our, my family, there’s a different, a different way each of us children took adoption. I was the rosiest and my eldest sister, she never took with my mom.
Damon: 05:26 Wow. That is really fascinating. You know, I’ve as you know, have heard so many stories, but I’ve never heard this perspective on foster to adoption where because the child was being fostered and was in such a tenuous situation that they might not get to stay with the foster parents who intend to adopt them, that it created this false barrier, and actually a very real barrier. Honestly. That’s really interesting. I’ve never experienced that. Kenneth’s adoption situation was really wonderful for him. He said that since he was brought into his parent’s home as a foster child first, his parents were given way more information about him than a parent who is adopting straightaway gets in a child’s non identifying information, but since his parents were fostering, he got pretty used to seeing social workers come in and out of their home and was generally used to the culture of adoption and fostering
Kenneth: 06:24 and my mom would turn and say, Oh yeah, you, you’ve got a sister somewhere and she’s about 16 and your mother was very, very sick. My mom really wanted to stress that I was wanted. It’s like your biological mother couldn’t take care of you. That’s why you’re here with us. But um, so she’d be telling me know, you know your, we know what your last name is. And so I grew up knowing a lot about, you know, especially having a sister. I was told it at about the age of five or six that I had a half sister out there. And that played on my mind for years because it’s like, you know, I go through life and it’s like I wonder if I’m ever going to see my sister. Is she somewhere around here? But then eventually I got to the point where I just, I resigned with the fact that adoption was closed. I was never going to know anything in this life. I always presented the fact that, you know, there are family members in my life that are out there somewhere and I could not ever be told who they were. And I could not have my birth certificate that just drove me up a wall. It’s like somewhere, somewhere in some office in Illinois. There’s a, a file that’s closed and has real big information on it for me and I can’t get it. And so, but I just figured, hey, it’s, it’s a closed thing. There’s nothing that can be done about it.
Damon: 07:43 Yeah. Wow. That’s, that’s unbelievable. Um, cause you’ve also said that basically being raised in foster care allowed you earlier access to this. You know, most, a lot of adoptees will say they’re in the fog. They don’t know enough to know that adoption is a thing, that they are disconnected from those whom they’re biologically related to. But you grew up in an environment where the entire culture of the house was, was, was penetrated by this whole process of moving children from one family to the next. And the legalities of it and the, and the visitations of it and the emotion that is involved with it yet still, it doesn’t give you any solace to know that there’s someone out there whom you’re never potentially going to meet. That’s really fascinating. Kenneth’s family life sounded really interesting to me. I was so curious about what life was like in a home with children of different ages in different fostering statuses with a variety of needs and even differing levels of family connections. Kenneth said every child had a very different experience at their house. His parents brought him when he was four months old and he bonded with their mother and felt like they were all just one big happy family. His adopted siblings were just his brothers and sisters and it was all good for Kenneth. When we talked about what compelled him to search for his birth family, he described his initial position that he didn’t want to search because he felt it would be disloyal to his parents.
Kenneth: 09:17 I think I was lying to myself, but I’d say, I don’t care. I really don’t care. You know, I don’t need to find anybody else. And um, as a matter of fact, when I first met my wife, um, I told her I was adopted and she says, oh, well do you ever wonder where your parents are? And I told her, well, my parents are at, and I, you know, I said, they’re at home, they’re, you know, right down the street
Damon: 09:42 after he turned 18 in 1983 at his adopted mother’s suggestion, Kenneth went to Catholic charities to get his non identifying information. His mother was similarly interested in his paternal heritage. Kenneth’s adopted father died in 1991 and his adopted mother later in 2005. Before their deaths, Kenneth had always been told his mother’s heritage was Polish and Swedish, but he had no idea what his paternal heritage was. Much later in 2017, at 51 years old, Kenneth’s wife bought him a 23 and me DNA test because they were both really curious about the entirety of Kenneth DNA genetic makeup.
Kenneth: 10:22 What I discovered was the first ethnicity that came up that I was 30% African American and I did not know that I was African-American at that point.
Damon: 10:35 Fascinating.
Kenneth: 10:35 And, which is kind of interesting because, you know, I grew up in, as I say, in a, in a, in a white suburb of Chicago and everybody in my class were white. I, and I, the thought of me being biracial never occurred to me, but I did notice when I started going to college. Um, I would start interacting with African Americans and they would tell me that I was African American and I was like, you know, being an adoptee, I didn’t know. And it’s like, yeah, I’m not sure.
Damon: 11:11 You’re naive. Right? If you, you know, you’ve grown up in a predominantly white neighborhood, gone to Oh, you know, school that you probably had a bunch of white friends and never really contemplated it before until this cadre of others of African American descent can recognize things in you that you probably hadn’t seen in yourself. That’s really interesting.
Kenneth: 11:32 I, I can remember the day clearly. I was at Northern Illinois University and I was sitting down and one of the, one of the African American girls who was sitting next to me, she looked at me and she, she included me in the African Community. She said, well, you know what, it’s like, you know, you know, being black. And I’m like, no. And she gave me a look. She looked at me and I said, no, I’m, I’m, yeah, I’m white. And she’s like, I don’t know if she thought I was trying to pass for something, but she looked at me and she made that look, and she’s like, you may not know who you are, but I know you’re African. But being an adoptee, I, you know, I, you know, I scratched my head and said, well, she could be right, but I, how do I know? But when the 23 and me, uh, results came back, uh, you know, there was 30% African American and it’s like, wow. Or, you know, it’s all well sub subsaharan African. And it’s like, wow. And, uh, and you know, I had hints that you, there were people that I think people suspected but nobody, uh, would talk to me about it.
Damon:
