Katelyn followed her older adopted sister into rebellion against their adopted mother’s rule. Years later her husband suggested they do DNA tests when she got pregnant. Seeing relationships online she hadn’t considered before, she searched for her birth parents, uncovering family secrets and helping other adoptees in the family tree find theirs. At times, the search left Katelyn very puzzled, even totally dejected. She found her birth mother and sisters happy to meet her, and her birth father in prison.

Read Full TranscriptKatelyn:                       00:05               I was never asked about my adoption in any depth it was mentioned, but I always feel like my therapies were like, how do we fix Katelyn now, to make her okay with her environment or how do we fix her so that she can go home and her parents can manage her? It was never like, what’s going on with you? How were you feeling? What can we do to make your life better?

Voices:                        00:35               Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am? Who am I?

Damon:                       00:47               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 Katelyn. When I spoke to her, she was living in New York City planning a move to northern Virginia. Well, what you’re about to hear is her story of rebellion against her mother’s rule when they lived in Pennsylvania and her eventual investigation into her roots in Florida and South Carolina. At times the search left, Katelyn very puzzled and even totally dejected. After an intensive search, she found her birth mother and sisters and her birth father in prison. I hope you’ll forgive the audio on this episode. This is Katelyn’s journey. The first five years of Katelyn’s life were picture perfect. Her parents had been married for quite a while and struggled with infertility when they decided to adopt through Catholic charities. Katelyn had an older adopted sister, but she wasn’t nearly as curious about adoption as Katelyn. Unfortunately, Katelyn’s parents divorced when she was about six.

Katelyn:                       01:59               around the age of eight or so. My mom gave me an envelope. I had my non identifying information in it. I think I was about eight, yeah. My sister adoption was with a lawyer and her mother was a teenager. That’s literally all that we know, but my mother was older, and put in a lot of information apparently. Of course, you never know if that information is true or false. There was something that gave me a sense of what was possible. It was fairly detail.

Damon:                       02:33               Do you know why? Why she gave it to you at the age of eight? Was it because you had been that inquisitive up until that point?

Katelyn:                       02:40               I think it was to kind of shut me up because she, I would, I would pick her brain and even to this day I still asked her certain questions.

Damon:                       02:49               Those pages were full of health information and a lot of background about her maternal side, but very little about her paternal side. One section described her birth mother as light complected and Katelyn’s caseworker told her adopted mother at the time that she and the birth mother resembled one another. Katelyn describes herself as having very curly hair. She says her skin tans very easily and her boyfriend growing up now, husband speculated that perhaps she was Puerto Rican. A best friend even asserted that her birth father was probably black, but Katelyn never knew for herself. She said during those early years, her parents began to fight. Their divorce was imminent, and even as a little girl, she could feel the tension between them. Katelyn, her mother and her sister had moved to central Pennsylvania back then and her maternal grandparents moved there too from the Midwest in order to help their daughter raise Katelyn and her older sister. Her mother studied in night school. So Katelyn spent the evenings at her grandparents and they got very attached to one another,

Katelyn:                       03:58               I ended up spending a lot of time with them, I was very outgoing and active and my mother, you know my adopted mother, was under a lot stress and I don’t think she was prepared. She raised two girls on her own, Dad was still in the picture, but he was a pharmacist, he worked a lot, we only saw them every other weekend, so pretty much she had full responsibility for us. Living with my grandparents I developed an extraordinarily close relationship with my grandfather. Probably the only true father figure I had growing up. He’s my best friend. He was a quiet man, but he, one thing he always told me, is you’re not gonna learn anything if you don’t ask questions. My mom tried to raise me as being seen and not heard, and yet my grandpa, my grandfather, and my adopted aunt, my mom’s sister in law, they kind of embraced my personality and my, you know, my, my story, I guess

Damon:                       04:54               Katelyn believes her adoptive mother was deeply impacted by her inability to have children naturally. She was raised on a pathway that would make her a good wife and mother. So when she couldn’t have children, she may have felt like she wasn’t good enough. Katelyn says her adoptive mother was very controlling and they’re opposing personalities, made their home life challenging

Katelyn:                       05:17               from a very early age. I remember she, she controlled everything. Even down to the toys I played with. Like I had no choice in my own self expression. And I’m someone who, I’m someone who is artistic and musical and I don’t ever shut up. Very active and she’s just the complete opposite of all of that.

Damon:                       05:42               So that must have been stressful to be held back in that way.

Katelyn:                       05:46               Yeah. And that turned me into a quote unquote problem child because she didn’t understand I guess what I needed and the, my adopted sister, she was quiet and kind of mousy and just kept to herself and likes to read books and you know, she was more like what I guess my mother expected out of a child. We were too and I think it was also hard for my sister growing up because I, I tended to get more attention or at least demand more attention, but yeah, no, it was definitely difficult. And then I was also raised in a really strict church and my mother being a divorced mom, the church kind of did look down on her and I just started seeing really weird things that didn’t feel right to me when I was at a fairly young age. It was just uncomfortable to me. And I remember my grandfather telling her that he felt that she believes that the church was basically causes like a cult and I remember him, you know, kind of just having her, there was not a good thing for us young kids to kind of be around that it was too intense. I kind of, I’ve, I’ve suffered from some pretty severe anxiety as of late and now reflecting back now I do realize that I had some pretty major anxiety.

Damon:                       07:03               A lot of her anxiety stems from her mother

Katelyn:                       07:05               threatening if I didn’t behave that I was going to burn in hell and to get my heart right with the Lord because if God comes back, I’m going to be left here on earth alone. A young child like, just horrible things, horrible things.

Damon:                       07:18               Now, as a mother herself, she finds that she’s lost in her ability to guide her son spiritually to underscore how traumatic her young life was with religion. Katelyn shared that her mother used to read the book of revelations to her at bedtime. I’m not a spiritual person myself, so I took a few moments to read a little bit about it for myself to understand what that experience might be like for a child. I learned that revelation speaks of apocalypse, eternal hell and false prophets being cast into a lake of fire

Katelyn:                       07:51               like you might as well put on a horror movie for a little kid.

Damon:                       07:56               Kateyln’s older sister really rebelled when she became a teenager hanging out with boys and doing drugs. Her antics made Katelyn closer to her mother because her older sister was out of the house, leaving her mother less stressed in the house. They went antiquing and horseback riding together, bonding with one another, but as Kateyln grew up, her mother tried to hold her back, attempting to preserve her as a little girl. She tried to shelter Katelyn, never talking to her about boys. Then she rebelled in her teen years, too.

Katelyn:                       08:30               Freshman Year of high school I moved out of her house.

Damon:                       08:33               Wow. That’s early.

Katelyn:                       08:36               Yeah I was young. My sister was actually in placement, you know, she had to go live in like a group home due to criminal things… underaged drinking, things like that. We grew up in a small town, there’s not much to do. So when you’re a teenager and you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd, you’re probably gonna get in trouble. So I also followed that path. I was getting in trouble and I was institutionalized twice as a teenager.

Damon:                       09:03               Institutionalized how?

Katelyn:                       09:05               um, I got, I got, I got some underage drinking charges in my freshman year of high school. I did get caught with marijuana, I got put on probation. Yeah, then what put me into like a group home or juvenile detention is, um, I got in an argument with my father because the thing was my adopted father and he never really intervened. Even back when he was still married to my mom would never argue about anything. He would never say what he thought was best for us. He kinda just went along with everything, until things came to a head, he was very well, okay, whatever, you know, whatever you girls want to do, there was never really any structure or guidance or fathering. It was like, yes, he’s these are my kids and I’m financially responsible for them, but that was pretty much the extent of it,

Damon:                       09:56               so he and your mother were complete opposites in terms of their parenting style, she was a controller, and he was completely open and just whatever you say is fine with me. Katelyn’s adopted dad is also older than her mother, so he was more of a hippie and her adoptive mother grew up pretty conservative. Further painting the picture of how opposite her...