Shownotes
Ashley shares her story growing up in adoption and having a positive outlook on her life because she felt she was placed for a reason, living life according to God’s plan. Ashley had two sisters, one adopted, one genetic to her parents but she bonded most over adoption with her lifelong school friend, also an adoptee. She searched off and on for 19 years with periodic focus, but it was a quick lunch break internet search that changed everything. The name she had for her birth mother was one of many aliases. She learned that her birth mother had been violently taken from their family, and her aunt was looking for her in the aftermath.
Ashley: 00:06 It’s a wonderful thing that I’ve met them, but then I will never hear her voice. I will never get to touch her. I never get to see her. I will never get to have that experience and I think that hurt, it hurt from this world, prematurely and You know why? Why did you have to do that? Why did you have to murder her. Like, what was the point?
Voices: 00:34 Who am I? Who am I? Am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I ?
Damon: 00:45 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 Ashley. She called me from New Jersey, but she grew up in Portland, Oregon. Ashley shares her story growing up in adoption and having a positive outlook on her life because she felt like she was placed for a reason. She searched off and on for years and with periodic focus, but it was a quick lunch break, Internet search that changed everything. Ashley learned that her birth mother had been violently taken from their family and her aunt was looking for her and the aftermath. This is Ashley’s journey.
Damon: 01:30 Ashley was adopted at the age of two. Her father was a social worker, so he was friends with the social worker on Ashley’s adoption case who told him that there was a cute little girl he might want to adopt. Ashley grew up mostly with her mother because her parents divorced when she was seven years old. She had two sisters, one who was also adopted. The other who was biological to their parents. Ashley found out she was adopted at eight years old
Ashley: 01:57 from what I remember, we were in her room on her bed and she just was like, you’re adopted, and I don’t quite remember My sister’s reaction but mine was like, no, I’m not. I’m your daughter you know there’s no way I could possibly be adopted. I’m your daughter stop playin, cuz you know I thought she was joking. Cuz you know how people do that. Sometimes, you’re adopted. But she was like, no, no. You’re really adopted and I think in my eight year old brain, I couldn’t quite comprehend what that meant. I just knew that I wasn’t my mother’s daughter, but that’s really the level I. I comprehend it.
Damon: 02:33 Wow. So you’re a little eight year old brains like, Nah, this can’t. That’s not right.
Ashley: 02:37 Right. Because I don’t think I was exposed to the word adoption and really understood what it was. Maybe I saw it on tv, but really didn’t understand what that meant.
Damon: 02:46 What did you do? Did you ask questions of your parents about it? Did you ask your friends about it? Do you recall anything about how you sort of reacted to this sort of bewildering news?
Ashley: 02:59 I think at the moment I was hurt, confused. I didn’t really ask too many questions to my mother because I, I think I was in such a state of shock that I didn’t know what to ask and how to ask. Now when I went to school, we were talking about different kinds of families and my teacher mentioned, you know, one time of family is adoption, like you know, the children are adopted into the family, the parents chose the children and I was like, wait a minute, I recognize that word because my mom said that word to me and I raised my hand. I was like, well, I’m adopted. And my teacher was like, really?, you know, she didn’t really go into it. She was like, you know, that’s wonderful. You know, your parents got to choose you and made it very comfortable for me. I didn’t feel out of place or uncomfortable but me saying that in my classroom, I had a friend that came up to me now we’re still lifelong friends and she came up to me and we became best friends because she’s adopted as well. So in saying that I gained from it.
Damon: 04:03 Ashley was thankful for her new friend, also an adoptee because she had someone to bond with over adoption. I asked her if she and her younger sister spoke of their adoptions, but she said no, not until they were adults. She felt like they left the topic alone in their house because they were unsure how their mother would react. When Ashley got to Middle School, she said she admitted her adoption to friends more freely and with maturity. She developed a positive outlook on it even though she didn’t know what her story was. She told herself there must have been a reason she was placed with her parents and her faith told her that God had done this for that reason. When I asked Ashley what catalyzed her interest in searching for her birth relatives, she told me that when she reached high school, her mother showed her a collection of personal items.
Ashley: 04:51 My birth mother left me a box of things. I had a ring, a spoon with my zodiac sign on it. A picture of her and a diaper pin. Wow. And so my mother let me see that. And so once I saw that, that sparked my interest and interest in finding information
Damon: 05:17 at that moment, her adoption was tangible. There were artifacts from her earlier life and a photo of her birth mother made it all real. Ashley also saw a polaroid instant picture of herself as a little kid in foster care. She said she thought the picture was really cute, but she also noticed that words had been whited out on the border of the photo. She scraped away the white out
Ashley: 05:40 and that’s when I found out what my birth name, what it was on the picture.
Damon: 05:45 Really. That’s really interesting. What did you think when you saw that?
Ashley: 05:53 I was like really? So many different motions, like really that’s my name? do I look like that kind of like really? I don’t know if that fits me now Because I’ve been actually, since I can remember,
Damon: 06:02 we agreed it can be kind of trippy to learn your birth name or even to see a picture of yourself from a time before every other photo you’ve ever known. Ashley had a copy of her birth certificate, which had her birth name, her birth mother’s name, but not her birth father’s identity. It was the late 1990d, so she searched online for her birth mother, but her name was so common. It was too hard to distinguish her birth mother from the other women. She found. She narrowed her search to a combination of the woman’s name and the state of Louisiana where her birth mother was from, but there was still too many hits. Ashley’s stopped looking for awhile and she was a little discouraged and frustrated. She checked online from time to time for 19 years checking social media and search engines. It wasn’t until Ashley was 35 years old and she was at work one day when she found the information she needed completely by accident.
Ashley: 06:57 My coworker and I were talking about starting a nonprofit. She was like, well, why don’t you start a nonprofit helping people find their birth families? And I was like, how am I going to do that if I haven’t found my own birth family? Well, I can’t put myself out there like I know what I’m doing if I hadn’t done what I need to do. So I was like you know what, let me just sit down on this computer and I’m going to show you how I don’t know what I’m doing. And I googled, what I thought was my mother’s name. And on Google it has, you know, keywords that it finds on different articles or magazines or whatever. So her name actually was in the article and I was like, well here’s this article, but the name I thought was my mother’s name was clearly not her name. The article had just had her name that had names that I thought was a name in the article, but it wasn’t the title of the article at all.
Ashley: 07:48 So let me read the article down until I see her name, My mother, anytime to ask questions. When I was older she would tell me little things like she would visit me, her, my birth thought I would visit me. They lived in Oregon for a while. I know what hospital I was born in. I know what county I was born in, so those little things I read and I knew that she had a record because the picture I have of her is actually a mug shot. I know she was booked in Portland a couple times. So I was like, okay, well she lives in Portland. I know that much and I know she was a prostitute. And in the article it’s spoke about her being a prostitute in, so I just kept reading article house to me, similarities, but I was like, but the name doesn’t match. That’s what really shook me up. The name never matched
Damon: 08:41 the name Ashley had for her mother was sherry. But the article kept referring to a woman named Rita. Ashley did an Internet search for Rita.
Ashley: 08:50 A picture popped up. I was like, okay, that picture what I have. It’s not the same picture, but it looks like it could possibly be her. Now I saved the picture into my email. Just, I don’t know why I just saved it. So I pulled the picture up on my email and I can put it up to the computer screen and I compared the pictures and I was like, oh my gosh. I called my coworker over. I was like, if I the same person to you. And she just started crying, So I was like wait, that doesn’t really answer my question. I was like do you think?.. and She’s like, that’s her. That is her. And I was like, okay. So I read the article and it was a cold case file on her was what the article was and they were trying to find who she was because she was murdered in [inaudible] 88 and they to find her body until 89 and they were looking for any family members that she may have just to identify the body and you know, so they could try to solve this mystery.
Damon: 09:53 Ashley read that article dated 2014 where she learned that none of the aliases she knew so far where her mother’s real identity, her birth mother’s name was Celia. Ashley...
