Rebecca always knew she was adopted, but she also recognized that she didn’t quite fit with her adopted family. While she loved them a lot, she noticed physical and personality differences between them. She was taller with a different skin tone than them. She’s an extrovert raised by introverts and she calls herself a circuitous thinker that was raised by linear thinkers.

When her own child was born, then got sick, Rebecca thought to herself “I’ve got to find these people” and began her reunion journey. But the laborious process to try to uncover identifying information in Washington, D.C. is closed adoption system seemed to be a daunting task, especially after her child got well.

Rebecca says that she wasn’t really looking for her relatives at the time reunion found her. A friend of hers, who is also an adoptee, had extra DNA test that she was sending off to people as part of her own search, so she gave Rebecca a spare test. After reading through her biological connections on AncesteryDNA she was able to find her biological mother’s online identity. Her mother maintained a blog and social media which Rebecca read through feeling like she could have written the content herself.

Rebecca has had several revelations about adoption and it’s impact on herself and her family. She says what she gained thru reunion is context about herself, her children, and her adopted family.

The post 018 – What I Gained Through Reunion Is Context appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Rebecca (00:03):

I don't begrudge her not telling her children either. I mean, how do you, how do you look at your kids and say to a child who's not gonna understand it? I gave away your sister.

Voices (00:20):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon (00:31):

This is Who Am I Really, a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members.

Damon (00:46):

Hey, I'm Damon Davis and on the show today I'm joined by Rebecca. She lives in Vermont, but grew up in Washington, D.C, completely comfortable with the fact that she was adopted. In her journey, Rebecca kind of searched here and there for clues about her biological identity, but the process seemed like it was going to be too challenging. But then reunion found her rather unexpectedly through DNA testing. On her journey, Rebecca gained a connection to her biological family and siblings who are just like her and a context for her life that she never had before. We pick up Rebecca's story when she was a child in the nation's Capitol. Rebecca says she always knew that she was adopted and she was given some non identifying information about her closed adoption that she clung to. She said that while she never felt stigmatized, she did notice differences between herself and her family. In some ways they're physically different, but she says she also noticed how they just kind of think differently too.

Rebecca (01:48):

Well, I mean, I didn't look like anyone the most basic level, which, um, you know, people love to tell you oh, that doesn't matter. It, it matters when you're the one that doesn't look like anybody. I would also say..

Damon (02:00):

You didn't look like anybody in your family? In your community? Where?

Rebecca (02:03):

In my immediate family, and I mean in some ways I guess I, I could pass. I'm not an interracial adoption. I'm not a trans racial, you know, I'm not from another country. So in one way, I guess the very base level, I'm a white kid, adopted to a white family, right? So I looked racially similar, but I tower over everybody. Um, my skin coloring is different. My eyes color different. I mean, I didn't, I don't look like them. And my temperament and my, my way of thinking and being and moving in the world, it is different. I was unable to relate that to being adopted until I was in reunion, however.

Damon (02:38):

Gotcha. What are some of the differences for you? Like is it temperament? Is it shorter fuse? Is it more excitable? What are, what are the differences between your family?

Rebecca (02:47):

I have described it this way that I am a circuitous thinker, um, and speaker, uh, what raised by linear thinkers, um, where, you know, a plus B equals C and for me it was like, well let's talk about a for a while, then we'll hop over to Z and then come back on. And also, um, massively extroverted and was raised by introverts. My adoptive father has some extroversion to him. He can speak to people that he liked. He liked everything orderly and buttoned up in a certain way. And this is how you do it. And just naturally that's just not at all who I am, who I was, my adoptive mother, I would call her introverted. She also can be very social, has lots of friends and speaks well and is out in the community. But I would say loves to be, gets refreshed by being alone. I just never had that. I always wanted to be surrounded by people.

Damon (03:38):

So fascinating So when did you have this desire to search? What sort of sprung you into action for wanting to look for your biological family?

Rebecca (03:47):

I mean, I've gone in and out of wanting to search my entire life. And you know, I certainly had fantasies about it when I was a kid growing up and envisioned, you know, who is the elusive mother, you know, mostly about a mother. You know, I would think about my bio dad sometimes, but it's all, I think it's usually tied up in the mom. Right. And so I always, I had fantasies about it and I would think, Oh, it would be this amazing reunion and it would be like coming home. And I looked at this feeling, you know, in my early years there was this woman just sitting out there waiting for me. Just biding time until we could be reunited, you know? And then I would say I, you know I turned 16, 17 around the age of when she gave birth to me and all of a sudden it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. Hold on a second. This is not the simple story I was told, I'm sure that because if I was pregnant right now, that's what I'm thinking. At 16, 17 I started to see the complexity of what the story like we was and what it might mean to want to find her.

Damon (04:47):

As time passed, Rebecca would take breaks from her search. She would haphazardly sign up for discovery registries here and there, but she never got any hits for people that were looking for her. Washington DC has very strict rules for opening adoption records and Rebecca had the impression she had a black line adoption. That is an adoption where the original record is literally redacted with black lines to prevent re identification of the family involved in the adoption plan, but as is the case sometimes with adoptees, a medical issue in her family reignited her desire to search for her biological family member.

Rebecca (05:20):

Then I had a child who was very, very sick and we thought she might need a bone marrow transplant.

Damon (05:24):

So that was a catalyst for you.

Rebecca (05:24):

Well that was about six years ago, seven years ago. And I said, all right, I got the paperwork from DC, I'm going to fill it out. I'm going to have to fight, I've got to find these people. But she got well before and then all of a sudden the process felt overwhelming to me again.

Damon (05:43):

Rebecca told me that reunion actually found her. One of her friends that's also an adoptee has been using DNA testing as her tool to locate her family. She had been sending DNA test kits to people that she thought might be related to her. Her friend had some extra tests. So she suggested Rebecca try the DNA testing route herself. So she sends you a test.

Rebecca (06:03):

And in three weeks I had found my family.

Damon (06:06):

Wow. So what happened? How did that go down?

Rebecca (06:10):

Well, first of all, let me say, you know, struggling with the massive adoptee guilt over the fact that she still hasn't found them and that it was just so easy for me. But so I took the test, I was expecting to get a result back in, they said six to eight weeks. It happened very, very quickly. Um, right before Christmas I got my results back and I was thinking I would just find out if my ethnic background was correct, which it wasn't. I knew I was Lithuanian, which is true. And I thought I had Jewish background, which is not true. And I am about half Irish and I had no idea that I was Irish, but my kids are all Irish step dancers. So I guess there's some genetic memory. So yeah. So I took the test, I got the results back really, really quick and I had some third cousins, but I also had a very close match and I knew by the age of this person online and the age of who my biological parents were, you know, I kind of added it up. It had to be an uncle and he had put about six, seven generations of history up on ancestry.com and so since both of my grandparents, his parents are deceased, I could see the names of my grandparents and they had six children and so I knew one of those six children was a parent. I didn't know if it was a mother or father and I started, I started Googling all their names and I found, I hit upon this one woman and I found her two blogs and I just knew that was my mother. I knew it was my mother.

Damon (07:39):

How did you know?

Rebecca (07:39):

Because if there was someone who was going to have a mother who was an Episcopalian priest, does standup comedy storytelling and writes blogs and with like kind of a crass but also reverent sense of humor, it's me like this is, that is me like that. It was so bizarre and I just knew it and my heart kind of went in all directions all at once. It became very, very real, very quickly.

Damon (08:04):

So you tracked her down online and you basically discovered her online identity without really ever connecting with her, but you just felt like that was it.

Rebecca (08:13):

I knew it. Absolutely. I read her writing. The way she writes is almost identical to the style. The way I use words. That was huge for me. You know, I was a theater major. I use words a lot. I write and to see that this woman is the way she was writing. I mean I just knew it. I could have written it and then through there I found my sister. I have three full siblings. I found my sister's blog and my sister's blog. I read the whole thing before she even knew I existed and that I was, I could have written that blog. It was so insane the way they think, the sense of humor, I don't even know how to explain it. I have never related to someone like that, and I hadn't even met them or talked to them yet.

Damon (08:57):

Wow. That must've been so cool. What an amazing feeling to sort of feel this connection to these people and have it resonated such a deep level that you felt like you could have written their own writing. Tell me about what happened next. How did you reach out to them? What did you decide to do?

Rebecca (09:11):

Well, I felt that I should go through my uncle since he's the one who put his information out, I felt it was probably better. I didn't want to freak out my birth mother or anyone else, you know? I figured, Hey, he put all this information out there, he can take responsibility for this. So I contacted him and I waited to hear back from him and I first I wrote like the email you're supposed to do, which is, you know, I want to be really respectful and I've had a really great life and you know, very low key. And then I started reading the blogs and then I said, forget it. I'm going to write how I write. Once I read their blogs, I