Shownotes
Steven, from Bainbridge Island, Washington—across the Puget Sound from Seattle—shared his that when he was a kid, it only took one incident to solidify his resolve never to ask his adoptive mother about his adoption.
In a maternal reunion, Stephen was confronted with the reality that, while his birth mother was not mentally capable of taking care of herself, she never forgot about her son.
On his maternal side, it was DNA testing that finally gave Steven the breakthrough he needed after decades of inquiry.
This is Steven's journey.
Who Am I Really?
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Transcripts
235 - The Lost Coin
[:Cold Cut Intro
[:[00:00:12] Stephen: I never forget that.
[:[:
[00:01:15] Damon: She never forgot about her son.
[:[00:01:27] Damon: Steven
[:[00:01:48] Damon: They are in Iowa, a predominantly white area. Stephen was the oldest in his family where his parents went on to conceive three other children after his adoption. I wondered how Stephen got along with his [00:02:00] adoptive parents when he was a kid and whether he noticed any differences between himself and them.
[:[00:02:25] 235 Stephen_Rowley-Damon_Davis: So I was really different that way. And I think somewhere probably in high school I began to realize, oh, I'm really different than they're,
[:[00:02:38] 235 Stephen_Rowley-Damon_Davis: no, I all alike. Although, I often got told that I look so much like my dad, which always struck both as a little funny. Now, my wife and I have a son who's adopted. We got him at age four and he is third, almost 35. And people tell us that we look a lot alike too. So I don't know, maybe it just goes with the territory.
[:[00:03:17] 235 Stephen_Rowley-Damon_Davis: So at that point, we really began to diverge.
[:[00:03:41] Damon: My dad and I were very gregarious, outgoing, smiley guys. And I suspect that was probably a connection that they saw, even though it wasn't an actual physical likeness, if you catch my drift, you
[:[00:04:18] 235 Stephen_Rowley-Damon_Davis: So it's a big issue. how well or poorly adoptees are paired with prospective parents. I mean, for some places, just whoever wants to pay is going to get what they want, but with no thought of culture or race or whatever. But others in my case, as I understood much later, not too long ago, that the adoption agency did a very thorough screening of the parents and tried to To match what they could tell it by testing at some age, six months what they could tell.
[:[00:05:01] 235 Stephen_Rowley-Damon_Davis: So it was really lucky in that way to have a really yeah. sophisticated adoption agency who , help make the match. Wasn't, wasn't just like the parents would walk in and go, well, that one's cute. We'll take him or her and off they go. It was, it was a more extensive than that.
[:[00:05:31] Stephen: Well,
[:[00:05:52] Stephen: Just go and have a happy life. Then I later understood that, yeah, the guy was doing, he and his team were doing a lot more than I ever had a clue about without him, the [00:06:00] second director, who also turned out to be the mayor of Ottumwa, Iowa. I wouldn't have known that, and he's actually, Tom Lazio is one of the heroes in my book.
[:[:
[00:06:46] Stephen: it was my first, ,
[:[00:06:51] Stephen: And there was no reason for her to flip out, but she did. And he said, what's, don't you think we're, we love you enough. Why do you [00:07:00] want to know anything? Aren't you happy? And so I got in a rage and ran up to my room, slammed the door and vowed, vowed that I'd never, ever talk to her again about my adoption.
[:[:
[00:07:33] Stephen: Well, I just said I wanted to know more. I didn't get. I didn't know enough to actually be more specific. I was still pretty young. I just indicated. I forget exactly what I said. she just didn't take kindly to the question, but it was, but that was , the pivotal moment for me where I vowed I was, then I knew I was on a search.
[:But stay with , your younger days for a minute because that was a traumatic moment for you. You've expressed some curiosity about something about yourself and it was not received well. As a matter of fact, it was. Shot down in an aggressive way, but the thought doesn't go away. As a matter of fact, it probably gets more intense because someone has thrown fuel on what was smoldering for you, and now it turns into big flames, right?
[:[00:08:52] Stephen: In all honesty, I can't, I don't think consciously I was lugging much of that stuff around. I'm a psychotherapist, and [00:09:00] so I have other kind of insight through that. What may have been going on with me unconsciously, I don't really know, but as I look at parts of my life, and I think there's this disconnection, The primal wound of separation of mother and child is a form of trauma, and it stays with us, not every adoptee, but many of us.
[:[00:09:41] Stephen: The room resonated with that. They're like, yeah, you're right. I mean, so that kind of, you see patterns because of the trauma of difficulty maintaining relationships, moving a lot never feeling quite stable to make lasting connections and always sort of like on the move, always trying to, on the look for something.
[:[00:10:25] Stephen: It doesn't or we certainly would be a tragedy. You could be caught in that. And some people do because if they are unable to resolve finding a birth parent or not finding a birth parent, and it leaves things hanging in the air, or it's not the person who thought it would be you can begin to kind of ratchet yourself into that victim mentality.
[:[:
[:
[00:12:02] Damon: Stephen was born in Missouri at the willows maternity Sanitarium. He wrote to Jackson county to get information, but back then, Steven didn't know enough to ask for his original birth certificate or OBC. He simply asked for his records. Stephen's first clue to his birth mother's identity was the receipt of some information that had the woman's name, her hometown in Iowa, and his birth father's name. Unfortunately, his birth father's name had been misspelled, which since Steven on a misguided search for the man for years, Coming back to his birth mother. Steven traveled to her hometown in the middle of the hot summer. After realizing the high school was closed for the summer.
[:[00:12:50] Damon: Standing before the small town librarian in his Hawaiian shirt flip-flops and long hair. He asked for a high school yearbook from [00:13:00] 1944.
[:[00:13:00] Stephen: the woman, of course, looked at me like I had three eyes. Like, why do you want that? But she gave it to me. And then, after looking, doing through the index, I found her picture.
[:[00:13:16] Damon: Really?
[:[00:13:24] Stephen: I was living in the Bay Area at the time, and I wrote everyone in the county that had the same last name being pretty oblique and just sort of saying, I'm looking for her name does any of you know her current location? Got no response for several weeks, nothing, nothing.
I must have sent out 30 of these. One day I got this small little, like a, size of a thank you card, little piece of paper in it, didn't say who it was from, said, hope this might help, had a name, it was a new married name, it was her original first name, last name, and then a new married name, and an address, and that's all I needed.
[:[00:14:20] Stephen: Whoa
[:[00:14:23] Stephen: She can have this letter. And then I wanted to explain, we have to have the approval of her psychiatrist. She's been in a halfway house for some time. And then later on the phone, I found out the whole story. She'd been wandering the streets, the variable bag lady with a shopping cart and
[:[00:14:39] Stephen: adult over the years, she had early signs of organic brain dysfunction, Alzheimer's.
[:[00:15:00] Stephen: And then So I flew to San Francisco, from San Francisco to this town back east. And then the middle part of the book is called the mother and child reunion, which is the whole characterization of what the book is.
[:[00:15:26] Stephen: Really? Wow. Tell me a little bit about this moment of revelation that your, it sounds like maternal half sister says, basically our mother has been homeless or a bag lady or roaming the street, whatever. What did, what did it evoke in you when you learned that your mother had been in this state?
[:[00:16:04] Stephen: I was so determined. I didn't, it was like, okay, so I'm still coming. I, whether she's living in the mansion or she's walking the streets at the time, which I knew when I got there, she was in a, State sponsored housing. She had a roommate who was also part of a state program who was schizophrenic or had schizophrenia.
[:[00:17:05] Stephen: a moment,
[:[00:17:05] Damon: you don't mind. I want to go back because there's a long process to get to this meeting. You're flying across the country. That's a lot of thinking time. You're going to probably meet, I assume, your half sister so that she can take you to this place. So guide me through this process of actually contemplating this meeting on this cross country flight, and then meeting the sister that I make the assumption didn't know that you existed, but end up.
[:[00:17:35] Stephen: By the time I got there, she did, and there was another house since we lived up. Not too far from the area that my birth mother was living, but I didn't meet her till the second day. So I would just say I was a bundle of nerves. I was probably, pitted out and just kind of going, what's going to happen?
[:[00:18:06] Stephen: And so she knocked on the door and it opened just a crack. So Patty goes, Mom, we're here. Steve's here. He's all here, all the way from California.
[:[00:18:39] Stephen: I didn't tell, I didn't give you my address. What makes you think you can show up at my, at my doorstep? So it was a little bit of a, I'm thinking in time, like breathe, breathe. I had a box, a long white box with long stem white roses I brought for her. And my sister, her, said, mom, are you kidding, open the door, he's here all the way, stop what you're [00:19:00] doing.
[:[00:19:13] Stephen: And she took the flowers a little gruffly. And I kind of humped and said, no one's ever given me flowers before. Well, that was just like a, that was just a dagger to the heart. Like my God, you've never had flowers. So we came into the kitchen. It was very barren, very Spartan. It was clean, but very worn down, all old for Micah and, tile and plastic chairs.
[:[00:19:55] Stephen: And it's like, Five or six hundred. Then the lightbulbs started to go off, [00:20:00] just like, oh, I'm coming out of an academic world, right? So I've got books all over the place. So, then I noticed just to our side of the wall, only decoration, if you can call it, was a poster from the National Gallery.
[:[00:20:27] Damon: Uh Huh,
[:[00:20:30] Stephen: She goes, yeah,
[:[00:20:33] Stephen: the only thing she said, Oh, that's a Kandinsky. Now this is about 1933. This is about the time that he moved, he immigrated from Russia into Switzerland or France, wherever he came from. In that particular period, he was experimenting with circles and this was kind of his expression of his spiritual essence and blah, da, da, da.
[:[00:21:17] Stephen: At that early stage of the race, and the Republicans had several, she told me about every one of them, and I just happened, praise the Lord, I had a Reagan joke, and I'm bad at jokes, I have a good sense of humor, I'm bad at jokes. I told my Reagan joke and she just exploded with laughter. Just, I mean, it filled the room.
[:I didn't say that at the [00:22:00] moment. Later, I said it to myself. This is why I came. This is why I came. This is beyond what I could have expected. And then, then to follow it, then, then was the thing I didn't need to ask really.
[:[00:22:28] Stephen: I never forget that.
[:[00:22:41] Stephen: So they kind of saved that place for me. And I think both physically and, in here. So, we spent the rest of that day, settled Walt Whitman saying we were together, I forget the rest. I mean, I had notes for that day and I lost those like an idiot. I don't know where they went to, so I have to rely on memory.
[:[00:23:20] Stephen: hopefully I've done a good job writing about just , that last moment. And how long we held each other. And then, it didn't last forever. So at that point, it's a one last, touch of the face, kiss in the forehead, and then I was out the door into the dark and the cold, and I never came back and I never saw
[:[00:23:38] Damon: Really? So this is, you're describing your last moment of sort of hugging her, touch of the face and saying goodbye, I assume at that moment, not knowing you weren't going to see her again. Is that correct?
[:[00:23:52] Stephen: think I thought yes or no. I knew she was in bad health. It was clear on both sides that she had no expectation that I was going to, [00:24:00] or an invitation to enter her life, nor did I have a notion that I was going to suddenly now I was going to be a permanent member of the family.
[:[00:24:27] Stephen: I knew she was in bad health I think we, I think we may have Written maybe one letter back and forth and it was just not, it didn't, it didn't have the same
[:[00:24:46] Stephen: And there's another, a boy, one of her boys, her only boy who I've never met, I think he lives in the Midwest. she had three, she had three kids with another man,
[:[00:24:57] Stephen: a disastrous marriage with that.
passing?
[:[00:25:00] Damon: Hmm. Tell me how it hit you when you learned of her passing.
[:[:
[00:25:36] Stephen: I kept her. Pictured by my, it's not here now, but from all, during the two years of both writing the book and going through all the publicity and I've kept it with me. And so I think that's symbolically, she's, I mean, she's right over there in the shelf picture of her when she's about 19 or so. Cute as can be, I liken her to kind of a young, young Jean Tyrion, 1940s movie star.
[:[00:26:19] Stephen: Really? Wow.
[:[00:26:22] Damon: it's
[:[00:26:47] Damon: And even in the biological sphere, you didn't know her, but you came from her and you know that you did. So inherently you, you felt probably that some kind of connection to another person out in the [00:27:00] universe. And now that connection is gone. That person's life is ended. And whether you had had one or 100 conversations with them, you still can never have another one.
[:[00:27:22] Stephen: I will say
[:[00:27:25] Stephen: Yeah.
[:[00:27:38] Stephen: When I finished it, I just felt like this ancestral presence behind me. That takes nothing away from who I, my adopted parents never thought of them that way. They're just my mom and dad. In fact, I think I, I honored them more now than I did, probably even growing up a bit, even though my dad died some years ago.
[:[00:28:18] Stephen: I was the oldest in the family, so. So it's, it's heightened my appreciation, I think, for all of that, so.
[:[00:28:38] Stephen: The willows Maternity Sanitarium, February 1949. And I went back there on my 75th birthday, at least not to, not to the Willows doesn't exist anymore, but the, but the place is still there. I mean, the building's not there, but I know where it is. So they put a big plaque up, but it was at the Kansas city library.
[:[00:29:25] Stephen: So they, there were 30, 000 of us that were born during those years. And Even there, the adopted daughter of the couple who started all that was still, she's still alive. She's only a couple years older than me. She was there to come. Carol Price is her name. but it's quite a thing because it was, the Willows was considered kind of the ultimate, was considered the worst.
[:[00:30:06] Stephen: You were expected to do all that. So it was like going to a school almost before up the time that you gave. And then, after, I think for many of us who, after in my case it was 10 days after I was born, then the arrangements were made and she signed the initial papers. And I dunno how I got from Kansas City to ot, Iowa. I departed at her her, I'm assuming it was her father drove her back to Midwest. He went, they went back to her small town and I went back to And she still had to sign off officially six months later, just before I was adopted. So I have to believe it was a wrenching, experience giving me up. I don't think she ever got over it.
[:[00:31:04] Damon: Is that right?
[:[00:31:31] Stephen: I can't remember, I just read it and I can't remember now how the date of adoptions versus abortions at that time, but nevertheless. There was no pill and so you get pregnant if you're not getting married then you're gonna have you're gonna choose one one of the Other you're gonna either adopt it.
[:[00:31:54] Stephen: Yeah.
[:[00:32:05] Damon: Stephen was among the first to join 23 and me years ago when the platform was first stood up. Where there are millions of users today, Stephen joined among the first 60,000 or so users. With that in mind, Stephen is used to receiving lots of notifications about second, third, and fourth cousins. After nearly 40 years of searching and making progress, then dealing with setbacks, like tracing the identity of a man with the wrong name. As he said before. Searching for his birth father.
[:[00:33:16] Stephen: So within a couple of days, there was a huge flurry of, of pictures and photos. They sent me a picture of what he looked like. He died in 1985. I will say that the, in those initial conversation, the guy that I talked to said something, well, I guess you shouldn't be too surprised.
[:[00:33:37] Stephen: oh boy.
[:[00:33:50] Stephen: So it's like, He was traveling. I think it's part of his job. And, she was certainly an attractive young woman. Easy for him. He was much older. He was going into the Navy. College [00:34:00] educated. I assume it was just a one night stand.
[:[00:34:21] Stephen: I thought, both, both of them were very good looking people. I mean, She was gorgeous. He looked like a year, literally a young 19 year older, just anyway. Very athletic. He majored in four sports at a major university in the Midwest. And, and but I, I think, but, but then they all settled with all four of the girls and his wife in Indiana.
[:[00:35:03] Stephen: So, so we we've corresponded. I've not met any of them in person. One may be out here this summer. But I, it was also part of my own. Understand. Also, it turned out they did tell me that there have been well, this would have been from the time this was going on a year before that or less. Another woman who lived in San Diego, who was roughly my age, maybe a year older, had contacted them and claimed that she was that she was the daughter of him love child.
[:[00:35:48] Stephen: I was a big surprise. And they read the book and they know a little about me and. A lot of my other deeper curiosity went cold a little. And I think at some point wanted to [00:36:00] know more, connect more deeply with them, just didn't, it didn't rise to the occasion. It was always way.
[:[00:36:21] Stephen: Wow. You are really rolling. Yeah, man, that's incredible. Fascinating.
[:[00:36:41] Stephen: I didn't care cause I knew I'd never find out. So put it away and then suddenly out of the blue one morning, bam, there it is. So it
[:[00:36:49] Stephen: Yeah. That's really cool. And it's interesting too, sometimes. One piece of the search and reunion actually does [00:37:00] satisfy enough of you that you don't feel you have to dig into the next piece. And if they had been more welcoming, maybe you would have, been more receptive to trying to go and see them.
[:[00:37:34] Stephen: It just,
[:[00:37:35] Stephen: no way, there was nowhere to go, but down from that amazing, incredible experience. And so I'm sensitive to what you're saying about having come face to face with your birth mother,
[:
[00:37:52] Stephen: It's
[:[00:37:57] Stephen: Fascinating. Really, really cool.
[:[00:38:00] Stephen: Wonderful.
[:[00:38:04] Stephen: Very good.
[:[00:38:15] Stephen: Now I can't claim that's. True for all adoptees. I have suspicion that is, but there's certain dynamics about what happens in early childhood when mothers , and their children are separated and whether they end up in a really happy home or not a very good home. Or whatever it happens to be, there's still that, that thing that happens to most of us.
[:[00:38:55] Stephen: So, and that's it. So that, that question is kind of runs through the book through the different phases of my [00:39:00] life. And so it's not just who our parents are. I talk about, who am I? But nevertheless, I realized, oh, I lucked out. I mean, I, I, my life wouldn't have been this way had I not been adopted.
[:[00:39:28] Stephen: It gave me a certain humility. I think that's shown proven true. I think of what I do, 40 years in education, eight years now in this, in this profession, my capacity to have empathy for all manner of folks. And I think the way I was raised by my dad and my grandparents, But everybody was like, in their eyes, I think everybody was the same, including people who were from the black part of town.
[:[00:40:11] Stephen: And frankly, I realized later after I was out of high school, a whole underground gay community and had no clue and realized only in retrospect how, how dark and how vicious it really was for a lot of young guys my age who were in my class who got kind of absconded, so to speak, by other, other men who were on the, who were predators and the things that happened at that.
[:Well, Steven, this has been wonderful. I, I loved hearing about your drive to find your birth mother in your thirties, right? You just said, this is the moment and you kind of went for it. And it's also interesting and unique. It's not a lot of people who find a birth parent and realize [00:41:00] that they are so far from what you potentially hoped that they were going to be.
[:[00:41:24] Damon: Yeah, yeah.
[:[00:41:27] Stephen: mean,
[:[00:41:41] Stephen: C. It wasn't like that at all. But on the inside was what I was more interested that that connection, that mother and child connection, that ineffable quality to connect and want to connect in a way that only she would understand. I don't expect anybody understand. I know other adoptees who have their own version of this.
[:[00:42:16] Stephen: But you, but nevertheless determination can win out. Not always, but if you're persistent enough, it can. In my case, was just, I was darn lucky. I was still
[:[00:42:33] Stephen: lost coin. I hope folks will find some level of insight power Strength or just some empathy for for your story. So thanks for
[:[00:42:48] Stephen: Take care Bye. Bye.
[:
[00:44:00] Damon: Please leave a comment too. I read them all and they helped me understand how the stories of other adoptees are helping the community. Your ratings and comments, help the algorithm to share the, who am I really podcast with others who may appreciate the show, the way that you do. Also stay tuned.
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