Deanna, from outside of Tampa, Florida, could see in her youth that she didn't look like her adoptive family. In elementary school she discovered her name change documents under her parents bed which added to her desire to search for her birth family.

When Deanna found her birth mother, she cried repeatedly listening to the woman's voice and when her husband found her she told him, 'We have to go to her now'.

Unfortunately, her birth mother kept her vow of taking Deanna's birth father's name to the grave. But Deanna had her personal search network, her own patience and drive and God to thank for finding Mr. Greek.

This is Deanna's journey.

Florence Fisher, Advocate for Opening Adoption Records, Dies at 95

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224 - Totally Worthy To Be Found

Fisher started Alma in 1971, Which means she fought for open adoption records in her state for 49 years. Basically my entire life. And only got to see a victory from her tireless advocacy three years before she left us. I hope you'll join me in paying respect To adopt the advocacy pioneer Mrs. Florence Fisher, who died on October 1st, 2023 at the age of 95 years old. This is the last show of season 13 of the, who am I really podcast and [00:02:00] the 224th episode after this, I'm going to take a break and focus on some more writing Until spring when I'll bring you more adoption stories. As you know, it helps so much.

If you take a moment to leave a five star review in your podcast app or wherever you get your podcasts, Your ratings are truly impactful in helping others to discover this podcast too. Okay. I hope you're ready to do this one more time. Let's go.

Cold Cut Intro

Show Opening

Father's name to the grave. But Deanna had her personal search network, her own patience and drive and God to thank for finding Mr. Greek. This is Deanna's journey.

I asked Deanna to explain what she meant.

Live in the same way, or the best way I can describe it would be that she believed that the adoptive parents should always call the shots or make the decision. because she respected the adoptive parents of [00:05:00] her child, and so she felt, the adoptive parents, should make the decisions in this case too.

So, yeah, she definitely believed that the adults call the shots even after you're grown. that always

affected our relationsihip.

Well, let's do this. Why don't you continue? Tell me more about your childhood. And, and I'm sure it will come up. How about that?

That was not even a thing. Going to therapy, not even a thing. And in many cases, still isn't. And I guess that was really common. But it was difficult. We didn't have access to therapy or anything like that. And the environment we were raised in There was really no understanding of the need for it.

My adoptive parents ended up getting a divorce. Secrets and other issues made for A toxic environment that the marriage just couldn't withstand. It was only later when I became an active part of the adoptee community that I understand things like the baby scoop era. I hadn't even heard of that before I became a part of our community.

It's why when I completed my higher education, my focus was on undressed trauma. My parents were leaders. It was not addressed in their life at all things crumbled, and I'm a leader and I don't want to get it wrong, so I prioritized the help that I needed,

so I was the oldest child. In my adoptive family, my parents adopted another daughter four years after me.

So there are two of us. And my adoptive sister and I, her name is KIm, we're still very close today. And I think part of this is, and we often say it, we're all each other has. We often say we are all each other has. In understanding our unique life experience in our home, being in the same household, being in the same family structure And Kim and I have leaned on each other through the years with everything that we've gone through.

And it really didn't matter how accomplished I was in life or how great the family I had that I had established of my own, because this happened in my 20s, and I already had a couple children. When I went through this and the pain of that loss was so crushing, I can't even describe it looking back, sometimes you look at back of hard things you went through and how you were just so devastated at the time.

And then once you're through it, you go, well, maybe that wasn't really so bad after all. No, that was living hell. Going through that secondary rejection. I don't wish it on it. don't wish it on anyone. I mean, it's

They don't want to acknowledge you, and I want to get to that, and I'm sorry that you had to deal with that. Hell. But I want to go back for a while. Can you, let's talk a little bit more about your childhood. tell me about what life was like growing up how did you get along with your mom?

How'd you get along with your dad? Did you notice similarities or differences between you? Tell me about yourselves.

[00:09:58] Damon: How so?

Some of it [00:10:00] is almost like intrinsic. I don't even know how to describe it. The things that I'm so passionate about, like, maybe, it's not just looks. It's, I'm so passionate about No secrets and things like that and it just seems almost like my family that I grew up in is almost addicted to secrets.

It's crazy I'm very transparent. I'm very open. I'm not shallow in any regard I'll go deep into a conversation five minutes into it with and I hate shallow conversation hate it and I hate superficiality And, my relationship with my parents would have been very much we just tell you what to do and you just do it.

there's not any talking back. Now I know some of that is the generation we were raised in, but mine was kind of on steroids. We tell you what to do, you do it. There's no conversation here about it.

[00:10:53] Deanna: I was the compliant one out of, my sister and I. I am not, I definitely don't want to bash my sister at all. I love her, to [00:11:00] pieces. But I would have been the more compliant one. She was the one that would test the waters more. I was very compliant outwardly because I just knew, just like right now, I know what it takes in my job to succeed and even though I may not like everything I have to do for my job, well I just know what I need to do to, get results.

I just kind of knew growing up, you're just going to have to learn to get along. And so, I didn't, I may have done things behind the scenes that my family wouldn't have agreed with, but outwardly, I always complied. I was the compliant adoptee. And the achieving adoptee.

Deanna did have her areas of high performance as outlets.

I'm thinking, so many of us never did. We didn't feel like we could. I just intrinsically knew it was not okay to verbalize. what I was feeling.

Mm-Hmm? . What were you holding back that you didn't tell people?

I was convinced maybe it was somewhere in my roots as to how I could just listen to an album and then go to the keyboard and play what I just heard. I didn't understand where that came from, because nobody in my family does that that I grew up in. I Didn't understand so much about just different giftings that I had.

Certainly things seemed okay. She's a very congenial person on the outside. But at home, she was depressed or cried at different times, having nothing to do with me or my sister. I now know that some of that was the marriage. But, of course, later on when I found out that she's a baby scuba era birth mother, that just answers a whole lot of questions.

I just knew it's not okay to ask mom this or that, it's okay to say that we're adopted. We were told from the very beginning. I don't ever remember my parents telling me that I was adopted because they did it from the very beginning. That was one thing they definitely did right.

I don't understand so many things about my life or the way I feel or I, just have an intense need to know this. I just knew inside me that would have not been okay with particularly my mom. That would have not been okay. And I was right. it ended up in years later to be okay with my dad. That's good to know. But it wasn't okay with my mom.

[00:15:42] Deanna: Yes, because she could have children, but my father could not.

[00:16:01] Damon: what kinds of things did you think about throughout your days, sort of going to school as an adoptee? Did you know other adoptees? Did you talk about it with others? Did adoption come up in ways that were triggering for you at all?

Mainly just my sister and I. But I just remember having a lot of feelings inside myself. I'm a person of very deep feelings and always just so much, there's always so much going on in my inner world, always so many thoughts. And even as a very young child, I mean, every single time on my birthday or a holiday or anything like that, I would be thinking, I wonder if they're thinking about me.

There were so many thoughts I had that once I got into our community and you hear other people's thoughts, you're like, Oh my gosh, how I wish I would have had someone to process this with earlier in my life that I could have felt understood. But I always wondered, what are they doing right now? Are they thinking about me?

Do they ever think about me? My birthday was particularly a time when I would think about that. Or a holiday or mother's day or things like that. I would wonder about it. And I just knew it was not okay on mother's day to ever say anything about that. It just would have been devastating.

You've named almost every holiday on the calendar. I mean, you were really thinking about this, huh?

and my friends would see about my reunion and things like that. They would say things like, oh, I [00:18:00] remember when you told me that when we were about 12 years old. Or I remember back in elementary school you mentioned something to me about that, and so I did talk to various people. I usually didn't talk about it in my home.

But people that I felt safe with, I actually talked to a few teachers about it. I spoke to several friends about it. I spoke to several people like a youth leader in the church, people like that, I would mention something to if I felt safe with them.

[00:18:26] Deanna: Yes, we did in different ways. and I know this is a very charged phrase I'm about to use. Some people believe in it, some people don't. I understand that it can be really controversial, but I use the phrase like out of the fog. When I was still in the fog, we didn't discuss it the same way that we did once I was not anymore.

Like now, we just are totally open about it. It was a different type of conversation before we were out of the fog. Does that make sense?

You talk about adoption in a completely different way than once you have actually recognized. Oh, I was in another family, with two completely different parents and possibly no other siblings or ten other siblings. Like, it's just a whole different thing. And when you realize that you've been transplanted from one family to another.

You speak about it much differently than you do when you don't quite realize the gravity of what has transpired to place you in your family. So yeah, it's very, it's natural that that would be two different types of discussions, for sure.

[00:20:05] Damon: Deanna's first defining moment was when she was pregnant and then gave birth to her first child. Dustin. she said it was huge for her to make the realizations about who she is as an adoptee, and that she was about to bring another life into the world the same way another woman had done for her years prior. She just could not imagine how her birth mother even brought herself to execute her adoption. It was around that time that Deanna started searching wholeheartedly for her birth mother. She began attending meetings, held by adoptees Liberty movement, association, or Alma in Philadelphia, driving all the way down from her home in New Jersey.

Deanna says, whenever the movie is named, as she tells her story, critics quickly move the conversation to defending the movie itself, not focusing on her perspective as an adoptee.

Searching for her birth mother and reuniting and it seemed to me like people in the theater just thought that this was such a noble thing. Like they were all just taking this in in such a different way than I was. I was watching it and felt like I'm watching a horror movie. They're watching it and just feeling just so uplifted like isn't this a beautiful thing?

And I just, I, I was devastated. I was devastated. I was crying for a different reason than other people were crying. I was upset. As soon as we could get out of there, I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to go home. My husband wanted to go for ice cream. We went and we sat down in this ice cream place and he said to me, What is wrong?

Can you try to explain this to me? And I said, No, I, I can't right now. And he said, Why? And I said, Because I can't contain myself right now. If I start talking about this, and understand, Damon, I'm a person, I'm a leader, and I can usually be very well composed and contained, and I, I just know that's just what I need to do, but I knew in that moment I couldn't control myself.

He wanted to know, pushing me emotionally, just to say, please talk to me. I don't understand. And so I just started in on it and I began to just express myself in such a way. It was like he knew we have to get out of here and get to the car. It's like, I, I was like, okay, you want to know?

And I just started blurting it all out in this restaurant and it was obviously not appropriate for a public place and so we quickly went to the car and he says, Oh my God, what is wrong? And I said, this is what's wrong. And I just went into everything, everything that was wrong with that movie, how terrible it was, how terrible the message was, how terrible the people's response was to it, how deceived they are.

And he comes in and he says, What is wrong? I just don't get it. And I said, I need you to leave right now. I need you to just go out of the room right now. I just need to process this and I just laid there and cried for a while. I was crying because I was trying to come to grips with the fact that everybody out in the world is one thing, but the person I live with, the person I'm married to, the person I sleep with does not get this.

And that was so hard for me to come to grips with. I laid there for a while crying and then I reached over, grabbed my laptop, pulled it open and just Googled Adoptee and bam. A bunch of stuff came up, a bunch of websites came up, a bunch of blogs came up, a bunch of resources came up, and that night I wrote a few emails, posted on a few things, and just said, help, I need help.

It was, it was so amazing. And then slowly I began to expose my husband to those resources and to talk to him. In a way that he could understand what I was saying, I mean, he didn't understand it overnight, but over time, over a month's time, like I would give him this and that to read and I would tell him, look, Now I have the words to explain to you what I was feeling like millions of other people feel this way. Like, let me explain to you what I'm feeling and why. And then once I started doing research into things like The, just adoptee issues and the baby scuba bearer and stuff like that, when I was able to also explain all that to him, that took it to another level where we developed an understanding where he developed much greater understanding of why I felt the way I did and what I was going through and Why I believe the things I [00:26:00] believe and how I've come to this place of understanding and what this meant for me coming out of the fog.

And so now, we have an understanding of that in our relationship, but I think that was the hardest thing for me on that night of that movie was thinking, Oh, my God, the person I live with that I pledge my life to doesn't understand what I'm so upset about right now. And that hurt the worst.

And you said so much. I want to just go back on a couple of things. One, I think. It's great that you were able to finally find the language that allowed you to express yourself to him, and that came by virtue of the fact that when you sat down in this moment of deep despair, and confusion, and sort of feeling lost, You went straight online and looked for help and you said previously, I caught this phrase that you said, you said something along the lines of, I prioritize, the help I need or, or something that basically sounded very empowering, right?

That's, that's really powerful. And it's also interesting to think that, I just can't. I was sitting there imagining being you or someone else in the audience, you know, another adoptee who was sitting there watching that movie at the same time as you are, and just cringing at how far off the mark all of the audience members were.

That this is your life that so it's just really remarkable to think how Surrounded you probably felt by what could have felt like for lack of better words the enemy. You know what I mean?

There's certain circumstances it's okay to lie. There's certain circumstances it's okay to keep secrets. And just all of that was just so devastating and wrong for me, especially being a Christian. I felt like, how can you people think it is okay in any regard to lie or cover this up? Like, this is completely, completely [00:29:00] opposite of all we believe as Christians, or all that we say we believe.

The quote has resonated deeply with members of the adoptee community.

The quote reads.

Without this enriching knowledge, there's a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there's still a vacuum, an emptiness, and a most quieting loneliness."

So the techniques Deanna accumulated were old school search methods using city directories. Building family trees and doing research at the library. Deanna sheered with the almost searched supporters that she was going into a reunion program through her adoption agency. When she told the people in the back of the Alma meeting, What her plans were. she said they gave. her one piece of advice. She found incredibly valuable.

They didn't mean like if you meet [00:31:00] another adoptee, don't tell them what you know. But they meant if you go into that reunion program, and you sit in that chair in front of them, and they interview you, do not tell them what you already know. And the biggest thing they told me, I knew my birth name.

I had found my birth name. When I was a kid, I was playing a game with my sister. Yeah, my sister and I, to our recollection, we were playing hide and seek. And I slipped under my parents bed to hide. And I felt this large metal thing. And it was a, it was like a fire safe box. And I got out from under the bed, pulled out this black fire safe box, opened it up, and there on the top, Are my name change papers from when I was adopted and it had my old name and my new name and I knew it was me because it said Yannalyn Doss, which was my new name, but then it had my birth name there, which was Melanie Linnelli.

I read since before, I think it was even before kindergarten. So, I mean, I knew how to read for a super long time, but I opened those legal papers and immediately saw this was my name. And so that moment, I just, I just knew that was, and that even fueled the fire more to know who was Melanie Lynn Alley?

Who is Melanie Lynn Alley? Who is that? Like who, who, who are the Alleys? Who is that family? That's why I

So they said don't tell you any, don't tell people what you already know.[00:33:00]

So, I never ever told anybody that was in authority of any kind when I was searching. I just, they always told me, listen more than you talk, sit there and just let them talk. And then, the way that I was able to get valuable information in that first meeting with the reunion program, I never told them that I knew my name.

And the people in the search group gave me a list of questions. They said, if you can find out any of these answers, it's really gonna help you if they don't know that you already know your name. And so I asked a lot of things, including, can you tell me my mom's birthday? And they wouldn't have thought that was any big deal because they didn't know that I knew my name.

That would be so meaningful to me to know. Would you, would you mind telling me? And because they didn't know I knew anything else, they said, Oh, sure. And they told me what her birthday was. So at that point, I knew her Complete birthday, because I knew how old she was when she had me, and then I knew my, whole name, so that was a great help, even though, because I ended up having to find her on my own later on without the help of the reunion program, and so that information really helped me.

So what I learned in that Alma group really did totally help me in leading me to her.

the woman declined to meet.

I was in such a deep depression. I had just had my first child and we pretty quickly had another one. And I was pregnant with my second child when I went through. The secondary rejection and then he was born during that time and I was still very successful in life. Keeping all the plates spinning, keeping all the balls in the air, achieving.

My husband and I were pastors. But there were always, the way I can explain it is that there were always tears at the back of my throat. Getting ready to spill over that people never saw. I worked so hard. I was taking care of two little babies. They were just a year apart in age. I was working at a church.

And that went on for two years. And then I was at lunch one day with another pastor at our church Pastor Norma. And she was just a wonderful lady and an older lady, closer to like retirement age, and we were both on staff there at this church at the time, and she said something to me that was a total shock.

she said to me, have you prayed about what to do about this situation with your birth mother? And I'm like, what situation? There's nothing to pray about. And keep in mind, nobody in my church knew this was going on. I mean, Norma knew because we were good friends. And she was kind of like a, kind of like a spiritual mom to me.

And Norma said, I think you need to pray about it. And I, I just thought that was the craziest thing I had ever heard. And as we're sitting there in Bob Evans, eating lunch, she says to me, we're going back to the church after we, finish this lunch, and we're going into the sanctuary, and we're going to pray.

And I thought, this is crazy. Well, we did. We, we went back to the sanctuary and both of us were on either, side at the altar at the front and we just were praying. It was like on our own. And then we stood up after a while and she says to me, Did you sense anything?

So that day, I started what I call my second search, because my first search was when I was searching at Alma, and then I went to the reunion program. So that day, I started my second search. And utilizing everything I learned from that support group in Philly, as well as Joseph J. Culligan's book, it's called You Too Can Find Anyone, I found her pretty quickly, I found her in 1993.

And how old were you about that time? I found her pretty quickly. I found her when I was 27.

[00:38:31] Deanna: Oh, gosh. Well, honestly, I really was committed that if she looked me in the face and said, no, that was it, it was no.

And I knew it was going to be devastating, but I wanted to see her face to face. I thought that if I called she might say, and I would never even know what she looked like. I wouldn't know anything. I thought I want to just have one face to face with her and, I would like to ask her for a picture and that's it.

[00:39:06] Damon: Deanna went through a long process of locating her birth mother using all of the search techniques that the team at Alma had offered her. She said ultimately The government's death master file or the DMF was the key that unlocked the door to finding the woman. The DMF lists nearly 100 million wreck.

Recorded deaths that have been reported to the social security administration by tracing deceased relatives of the woman.

Deanna was able to find her name then with further research, she located her phone number. Back then you could simply dial four, one, one on your landline phone and get information about people all over the country. When Deanna called the woman's home for the first time, her voicemail answering machine picked up.

And my husband, I was home with my, my babies. My husband was out, and he was playing golf with a friend, and they came in, and my husband found me in this state, like, on the phone, listening and just weeping, and I hung up, and instantly when he saw me, I, I, he's never even characterized, like, why he thought this, but the moment he saw me, he knew what had happened.

[00:41:02] Damon: that was the same person that he saw the night where you said, don't push me. And all those other nights where you explained yourself. Yes. He could see the same person.

He just knew. And so his friend quickly left 'cause he could tell that I was really emotional. And this was really a moment just for. Larry and I, and so he quickly left and said he would contact us later, and I just said to Larry, I have to go to her, I have to go to her, and he says, okay, what do you want me to do?

I said, pack the car. Like, I instantly called our pastor, our boss, and I just said, We need a couple days off, Larry and I both. We just, we need, we need to leave town, and this is why. And he instantly said, go. So, I just said, start packing the car. We literally, that moment, started packing the car.

And she said, hello, and I hung up and I looked at my husband and I said, she's home, let's go. And we literally, I know when I, when people hear this, they're like, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard. I know, I know. we just got in the car, and we drove straight through, we drove straight through From Ohio to Virginia we went from Dayton, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia, and just put everything in the car and went with two little babies. so we get there and it's during the day, we drive all through the night and we get there and it's during a time where she would have been at work.

He was so tired. Him and the kids immediately went to sleep in this hotel as soon as we got there. I couldn't even sleep. I started sorting through everything, sorting through all my stuff, sorting through my suitcase, and sorting through all these outfits. Because I was like, what am I even going to wear?

What am I even going to wear when I meet her? I literally was showering and probably changing my clothes five times. Because I knew, as soon as she gets home from work and they wake up, I'm heading over there. So, I told my husband though, I need to have this conversation by myself. I don't want to have this conversation in front of anyone.

Like, my mother and I started out together and this was going to be just the two of us together. And I was going to say what I needed to say.

And since she figured this reunion meeting would never happen, the intermediary must have decided there was no harm in providing Deanna's name to.

humanize the possibility of their reunion.

That's not what it's about. And [00:45:00] it's not about, whether you're going to be proud of me or I'm going to be proud of you. Hey, we're just people and we've all made mistakes. I've made mistakes. Hey, Let's sit down and talk, but I wasn't allowed to do that. There were no letters allowed.

There was no communication allowed, And then at the end, she told her, your daughter's new name is Deanna. So she knew my name, but my first name. So I knew that. So, we drove over there. My husband and the kids stayed in the car, and I got out of the car. I walked up to the door.

I knocked on the door. And she opened it up, and I, I asked, if she was, I said her name, my birth mother's name, and I said, are you this person, and she said, yes, and I said, please don't be afraid, but my name is Deanna, and I think you know who I am, and we just stared at each other for what, I mean, it seemed like five or six minutes at least, but it was probably 30 seconds.

To sit down at her kitchen table, and I, I sat down, couldn't believe I was sitting there. I kept thinking, oh my god, I'm in her house. Like, I'm sitting here, I'm sitting in her house, like, this is crazy. And she started just flitting around from thing to thing. She was going from the sink, to the stove, to the table, to, to the microwave, to just all these things.

She was just flitting around, like, nervously. Like, her hands were shaking, and she was trying to make coffee, and she was just flittering around from thing to thing. And saying things like, I know you don't understand. I know you don't understand why I made the decisions I made. I know you don't understand why I placed you for adoption.

Say nothing. Sit here and say nothing. Let her fully exhaust everything she has to say before you say a word. So I sat there for probably 20 minutes. I didn't say a word. She was just flittering around nervously saying all, just pouring out all this. I've made mistakes, I've done this, I've done that, I made this mistake in life, I made that bad choice in life, I just got divorced, just on and on and on.

And then at the end of all that, she finally sat down in front of me. And finally, until she had nothing to say, absolutely nothing more to say, and then she wanted my response, and I said, Listen, I already knew that you felt you had made mistakes. I already knew from the confidential intermediary that you said you felt That you would be very proud of me, but I wouldn't be very proud of you.

I'm not perfect. I still went. To Helen back to find you and I would do it all again just to be sitting here with you and at that moment It was just like something broke and she stood up from her side of the table and she came across to me and Wrapped her arms around my head almost like in a headlock and she just had her face just buried in my hair And she was sobbing sobbing loudly like loudly from like like the pit of her stomach She was sobbing like that kind of sobbing And she just kept saying things like, You're beautiful.

[00:49:14] Damon: How did that feel?

what I felt in my heart that if I could just, writing is my main thing, and I just felt like if I could even just write her a letter saying everything that I had just said at that table, I just knew, I felt in my heart she would accept me, and I was right. I was right. And at that moment I realized, oh my gosh, this is really happening.

This is really happening. , You

Yes. Who is supporting your community and, and all of the people that you lead. And you don't even know this woman, but you've recognized I need to just let her confess, just say it all.

[00:50:52] Damon: And let it all flood out. That's right.

I'd like to be Once it aren't so real and so have I like we we're both human. We've both made mistakes let's just come together and love each other. And yes, it was amazing. so we were sitting there and She mentioned oh my gosh she named her her boyfriend at the time.

She says Bob's going to be calling and I said who's Bob. She says my boyfriend And I said, oh gosh, okay. And I thought for sure, okay, she's not gonna want this to be revealed. And she said, oh no, he knows who you are. He knows who you are. I've told him all about you from the beginning.

Wow. And he just hung up on her. And literally, about 5 10 minutes later, he comes walking through the door. He, he walks through the door, strides right over, wraps his arms around me and says, Thank you so much for coming. She's needed this. That's the first thing he said to me. Thank you so much for coming.

She's needed this. And, we were just fast friends right away. And then as we stood there talking, he said, Deanna, don't you have a family? I thought that the social worker said you have a family. I said, yes, I do. I have a husband and two, babies. And he said, where are they?

She was just, right away, this flash in, it was just a thought that flashed in her mind that my husband is going to hate her. And I said, Why in the world is he going to hate you? And she said, For everything I've put you through. And I said, Oh my gosh, no, he doesn't feel that way at all. no, no, you're, that's not true.

And again, she was just carrying all this guilt that I've made these bad decisions. I put her through this rejection. Two years ago, even though I had not said a word about that, she was just carrying that guilt. So, I went out to get them and they came in and right away my husband just embraced her and said, thank you so much for my wife.

So she was just overwhelmed. I mean, right then and there, she's meeting these grandkids. And we started, we sat down, and we were all talking. then she asked me, where, where do you want this to go from here? And I said, well, I said, I'm going to be totally honest with you.

As I always am, but I said, I'm just going to shoot straight with you. I said, this is going to go wherever you want it to go. I said, if you want this after you meet us tonight to be that you never see me again, okay. I said, if you want it to be where I'm a once a year Christmas card, it's okay. I said, if you want us to talk every once in a while, okay.

I said, I know that I would have to accept your decision because you have told me You told me personally, no, I said, I will respect it and never contact you again. But I would like a picture of you just to remember this day. And before she could say anything, Bob said, well, that's absolutely ridiculous.

We're all meeting for dinner tomorrow night. And I said, no, I said, that's so sweet of you, Bob. I said, so nice of you. I said, but this needs to be her decision. I said, this, this really needs to be her decision. And I will abide by it. And very quietly and just very emotionally, she says, No, that's fine. I want to meet for dinner tomorrow night.

I said, but we have our own space in case, anything becomes overwhelming for you. I just want you to have your own space. So she reluctantly agreed with that, but I didn't realize why she was asking this until we went out to the car. She and Bob walked us out to the car. And we got the babies in their car seats and my husband got into the driver's seat and I was standing over by the passenger seat and she came over and she asked me one more time, won't you just come back in the house?

And I said, no, really, I don't want to impose. I said, we've planned our own space so that I'm not overwhelming you. And she clung to me and sobbed and she said she didn't want me to leave. And I said, I promise you, I'm coming back here. And she said, I know, but the last time this happened, I didn't see you again for 27 years.

You're not prepared for this. I said, I swear to you, I'm coming back tomorrow. Okay. If you promise. If you promise. I understand. Okay. So, we went to the hotel. We had made plans to meet her and Bob for dinner at 5 o'clock. And, the next morning, the next morning, it was probably like 9 o'clock. A little bit after 9 o'clock, she called and said, what are you guys doing?

And I said, we're going to breakfast. And she goes, I'll meet you there. And I said, what is going on? And her and Bob met us at this breakfast place. And I said, what? What is happening? Because I knew she had work that day. She said, I went into work today and I told my co workers, there's something you don't know about me.

[00:58:11] Damon: That is unbelievable. Wow.

Really unbelievable.

Yes. It's, it's, it's unbelievable. It's, I still just am just amazed every time I, and there's so much more to it. I mean, it was honestly magical. It was like I had always imagined it being. We had 20 amazing years together

before she died.

And that must have been so hard for her to live like that for years, but then to have you show up at her door and just wash it all away. I mean, just, not that it was washed away in an instant, but, like, sit at her table and confirm for her, we are going to be okay if that is what you choose. That's unbelievable.

Really, really incredible. Wow.

[00:59:36] Damon: When Deanna met her birth mother, the woman cried as she hugged her daughter, Melanie. Now, Deanna, for the first time in 27 years. As Deanna said at the kitchen table with her mother

Crying and holding her head tightly, her birth mother said.

And at the time I had, Very long, curly, dark hair. And she says, oh [01:00:00] my god, same hair, you just have the same looks as your father. And then in the same sentence, she said, oh, I always called him my Greek god

[01:00:42] Deanna: Pretty much it devastated her in every way that a person could be devastated, she was shamed, she was kicked out of her home, she for all intents and purposes, she became homeless and she had nowhere to go.

We were kept separate, but we were both transported back to Richmond, I was in foster care for a while, and she visited me. Before she signed the papers and made the final decision because her family just did not support her. They said, if you bring that child home, you don't have a home, you have nothing.

And she wrestled with it for a while as I was in foster care, but then she finally signed the papers and that was it. And she didn't have any help. So a lot of it was that. She was abandoned by him and she had no help and she just could not stand even the thought of him. So she said, he didn't support me.

[01:02:01] Damon: So for their 20 years in reunion, Deanna tiptoed around the subject of her birth father. Her main goal was to keep a positive relationship with her birth mother and stay in her good graces. She just wanted to be a good adoptee and preserve her birth. Mother's reunion. Acceptance. Just like her birth mother had.

So emotionally divulged, Deanna also did not want to be separated again. She never pushed, but she always wanted to know more about the mystery Greek God. As Deanna danced around the question over the years, her birth mother assigned different age gaps to their relationship, possibly in an attempt to throw off her investigation. So Deanna deduced that he must be about 10 years older than her birth mother. 20 years into their relationship.

Deanna begged her birth mother to reveal who her birth father was.

I said, never? She said, no. She said, I'm gonna go to the grave with his name. And it was almost like a prophetic word. It was crazy because just weeks later, after she said that, weeks later, she was running up and down the stairs at home. She was perfectly fine, supposedly. She had just eaten some corn chips, and she got this terrible pain in her side.

And she told Bob I need to go to the ER. And they went, and they told her they thought she had pulled a muscle. And they gave her some cream. But a couple hours later, she told him to take her back, that it's, it's not a pulled muscle. And they went back, she thought maybe she ate something, maybe it was these corn chips, what is this?

And I said, well, I just wanted to ask you one more time. I wanted to be respectful before I took other steps. And she says, what are you talking about? There are no other steps. I'm the only one with this information. There's no other steps to take. And I said, well, actually there is.

She said, well, what? And I said, I'm going to do DNA testing. And, oh my God, she exploded. She totally lost it. Lost it. And it was a very tense couple weeks. And then, right then was when I found out that, I mean, it was just weeks later that she was diagnosed with cancer. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. And she knew I was DNA testing and, I mean, it just, it blew up, ending of things was not good.

buT I told her, I It was never my desire to hurt you in any way. I love you. I'm never, I would never for a moment be sorry for reuniting. That night at the table, she had said to me, one of her ending statements 20 years earlier at the table was, she said, you found nothing.

I mean that was it She really did die with the name

So Deanna focused on healing herself. Deanna had just submitted her DNA for analysis. Recently when her birth mother passed away on her maternal side, she found an overwhelming number of matches because her birth mother is [01:07:00] an American from Virginia, but her paternal side had only maybe Three to five, very distant matches because her birth father was 100% Greek. It was clear from Deanna's existence that the man had been in Virginia in 1965. But Deanna had no clue if he still lived in the states at the time of her search. She couldn't locate any meaningful paternal connections. Deanna decided to recruit additional help.

So she started a Facebook group called finding Mr. Greek. It was comprised of her supportive personal friends. Many of whom were in the adoptee community. Search angels Friends who were birth mothers and more. They took the little DNA search information that they had and dug in. One search angel had located hundreds of relative connections for other adoptees, but could not locate Deanna's birth father. That person said her case was one of the hardest ones they had ever seen. Deanna said she was devastated.

This is not just some kind of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, this is real stuff. During those 40 days,

I took three days and pretty much just prayed. And I just said, God, you got to tell me the name.

Like, I need you to tell me the name. And after about three days of this, I sensed, not an audible voice, a lot of people say, how do you hear God? They just think that, like, some voice comes out of somewhere. It's almost like a, it's just an inner voice, it's an inner knowing, you get to know that voice.

And I sensed the voice of God say to me, your father's name is Gus. And I just knew, I just knew. It's that same voice that spoke to me when I was seven years old and said you're supposed to be a minister. I mean, same voice, same voice. And so I instantly told people, I knew that some people would think I was crazy.

She said, what? I said, God told me my father's name. She says, what is it? I said, it's Gus.

She goes, how did that happen? I start talking to her about prayer and all of this, and She said, you know, I don't believe in this. She goes, I believe you. I believe what you're saying. I believe what you're saying is true, but that's what you believe and that's what you perceive. We probably believe it's the two different things that are happening, but nevertheless, you're my best friend and I believe you.

[01:10:02] Deanna: One friend who is an unbeliever said to me, I don't believe in God. I don't believe God speaks to people, and I don't believe in God, but I do believe in you.

You're my friend, so I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna do this. So I was really blessed that not one of my friends, even those who don't believe, said, you're crazy, you're a kook. This is nuts. I don't have time for this crap. I mean, I was just, I'm so blessed to have people that does really care and they searched, even though they might have in their minds believed Deanna's gone off the deep end,

After nearly a decade of searching. Deanna was on a leadership call one night with another pastor who was teaching the group. The pastor asked everyone on the zoom call to get out a piece of paper to write down one question to God. Deanna asked. when God was going to help her find her birth father. Her friend Christie, another pastor on the call had written the same [01:12:00] question. Everyone Deanna knew and trusted understood how important her search was to her. Deanna said when she tells people her. story, they ask, why would you ask God again for the answer pointing out the fact that she's prayed for this information for years with no results, Deanna answers with this.

And because that mattered to me, that mattered to my friend. And so it's really important that you surround yourself with people who support you. And of course that you support them too.

She was like the lead searcher along with my friend Gail on my search team. And Regina called me and she said, Deanna, I could not wait for you to get off of this Zoom call because this is the day, Deanna. This is it. The breakthrough is here. She said, within about an hour, we're going to know who your father is.

And I said, what? She said, yeah, while you were on your call, I went in, like I do on many days, to check your DNA sites. My friends that were on my team would check it. All during the week, just to see if we had a hit, we would all check it. And then, of course, there was a plan in place. The moment we get a hit, we're gonna start screenshotting everything we can find.

and we're building out the family tree. And then they suddenly realized that he was an X match, which it's my understanding if you have a high enough amount of centimorgans on an X match, you can definitively say that that match comes through that person's mother.

Well, he was a high X match, so he had to be, he had to be my cousin through his mother's side. And then I thought immediately, Oh God, please, please help his mother to not have a bunch of brothers. , so that we would immediately know who my father is. And almost instantly, Regina realized that his mother only has one brother.

And they look down on the tree and they see her brother's name is Gus. Wow. And they see his birthday. I'm thinking, well then how did we miss it? How did we miss it? Well, we look down on the tree and we see that , we missed it because of his age.

And within 24 hours, I was FaceTiming with my father. I was stunned to learn that my father was 91. He was still alive. He had never married. He had never had any children. I was his only child in the world. And he was all alone. He was living in a nursing home. In Richmond, Virginia, matter of fact, this is so crazy, Damon, four streets away from where my mom lived.

[01:15:41] Deanna: walking distance from my mom's house.

[01:15:44] Deanna: I know, he was living in a nursing home because several months earlier, he had fallen. And he didn't show up. for a doctor's appointment and his doctor was concerned and did a wellness check and he was found in very bad condition he was taken [01:16:00] by ambulance to the hospital and after several months he got strong enough and He was taken to a nursing home, I found him, and we FaceTimed that next day. And immediately he accepted me. He still, at his age. He didn't understand what DNA was all about. But he didn't accept me based upon DNA.

I knew nothing. I didn't know that he was this very strong, proud Greek man who was, pretty unemotional. I didn't know that. But when I talked to him the first time on FaceTime, he got pretty emotional. And I said to him, I knew all this time that I was [01:17:00] coming for you. I was chasing after you as hard as I could for all these years.

I was turning over every rock in the world to try to find you. I said, but you didn't know I was coming. You're in shock. I said, it's very evident that you're overwhelmed. I said, do you need a minute? I can call you back. And the next thing he said was, How soon can you get here?

Again, Damon, it was like I was living a magical, like, what is happening here? It was unbelievable. And So, I went and, oh my gosh, it was just, it was so amazing to be together.

When I say a while, I mean days. And then the last time that he ever kind of ranted about it, I said, well, Gus, you never supported her. What did you expect? And then he just, he never said anything about it again. Yeah. But it was a whirlwind of just, I realized, oh my gosh, I don't know how much time I'm going to have with my father.

He's 91. He's 91. It was just such a miracle that I found him. And pretty quickly we realized we don't want to waste any time. , we were kept apart this whole time. , I Not only talked to my mother, but I had talked to everybody in my maternal family that I possibly could.

And so we were kept from one another. Wait,

[01:19:18] Deanna: Okay, this is so, this is unbelievable. Okay, I had reached out to everybody in my maternal family to say, who's my father. So, I'm not sure, I'm sure that you're going to want to piece this together differently.

I just, I have to take it out of order because you've asked me the question. I ended up fighting to bring my father to Florida with me and I ended up winning that fight and I brought him to live out the rest of his days with me in Florida. Wow. And I took care of him until he died. Wow. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

And three weeks before he died, set up my phone, and just record us every day because I wanted to remember it for, , ever.

I mean, I ask him a lot, I ask him a ton of questions But I would ask him hard questions, too. And I said, what did you do about it? You said you thought about me all the time?

What did you do about it? And he just got this pained look on his face and he said there were roadblocks. There were roadblocks. And I, I knew he was telling the truth. I said, I, I know, I know. I understand. Now, I didn't know what he meant by that, but I sensed in my heart, he was telling the truth. And for years, I had been asking maternal family, , who is my father, and they would just shut me down.

And even in the previous year, I had asked, this one set of cousins, they were the ones to take my mother to the maternity home. I mean, honest to God, on a several hour drive to a maternity home, are you not even going to ask who the baby's father is?

And I said, what was said? Like, who is my father? And I was just shut down. And out of those three cousins, two of them massively shut me down. Like, the middle one would never even, and these are my first cousins, they would never even answer the phone, they wouldn't respond. And then the oldest one said, We don't know anything and don't ever contact us again.

And then pretty much blocked me on social media. And I'm thinking to myself, why do you need to block me if there's nothing there? If you don't know who my father is, if you have no clue who my father is, why do you need to get so upset about it? Why do you need to block me? Like, if you have no clue, obviously I knew.

[01:22:38] Damon: Wow, where's my child? He had documented pieces of his search for you? Yes. Wow.

What do you guys have to say about this now? And she said, well, you have to understand times were different back [01:23:00] then. And I said, yeah, I do understand times were different back then, but this is 2023 and you guys are still lying. That

[01:23:07] Deanna: Yeah, and I was really, really, really angry that day.

I was simultaneously that night, when I was holding that paper in my hand, I'm walking around my house, I'm angry as all get outs, at the lies, at the cover up, at the secrets. And at the same time, I'm crying happy tears, because my father, I believed him, but this is proof, he really did. He really did look and he was telling the truth.

So, I just had to go through a forgiveness process over all that, it, and I did, I just, I just released it. holding on to that. I've had people ask me, when they, when I tell them that they're like, why, how aren't you just burning down the world? , how aren't you so angry?

You're just burning down the world. And I say, I can't holding on to that. And all that anger just turns me into somebody I don't want to be.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean, he instantly accepted me. I was able to bring him home to Florida with me to take care of him until he passed. able to spend every we had been kept apart for so long that I didn't want to live a moment without him and I couldn't move I don't have a job where I can move, and so I said, I can't move there.

But can you move here? And he came here. He came home with me. And we had seven months together before he passed away.

Deanna was able to connect us with long lost friends from his past who visited him in his nursing home in Richmond before Deanna moved him Into her home in Florida.

[01:25:31] Damon: That is so beautiful. That's incredible, Deanna. I mean, just one, your dedication to be able to find him over the years, and then two, his pure acceptance, and then three, obviously, the validation that he had been searching for you is just really, really wonderful.

Yeah. That's so fulfilling. Really cool.

Like, this is the most amazing thing. I have so many videos that little just snippets that I've posted on social media of him sharing things like him saying, this is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. Like, these are some of the most amazing moments of my life. And I am more like my father than anyone else in my life. In fact, my husband, even though Gus has passed away, my husband always says, Gus is still here, babe. I look at him every day. And we're so much alike in looks. We're so much alike in actions.

everything just came together when I found my father. I'm just really understanding even myself as a person.

That's, and knowing [01:27:00] these connections, it's, it's really incredible. So thank you. It's so much for sharing your story. This has been really unbelievable. I mean, to have. Two positive reunions in the way that you did is incredible. And I generalize it in that way because the experience of meeting them were positive.

But I think a lot of times we will say something about a, a reunion and we'll generalize it like that positive or negative. But it does have it, they have their ups and downs in the middle and it's not even necessarily fair. I'm realizing as I say it, that. Your reunion with your birth mother was wonderful, but she withheld the secret of who your birth father was.

And your reunion with your birth father was amazing, but you then confirmed the secrets that had been held maternally. So I'm so happy for you that you were able to get this closure, and I really appreciate you being here Deanna. Thank you so much.

And can I just add one more thing?

[01:27:55] Deanna: I was going to say, I know that, as you mentioned, it's up and down. Sometimes [01:28:00] people can listen to the story about the reunion with my mother and the reunion with my father. And aside from the initial secondary rejection, they can think, boy, these were just two fairy tales.

But one thing to know, just for adoptees that might go, wow, well, she got literally everything she wanted in the end and there were no hiccups. Like, going after my father and refusing to just accept What was it did cost me relationships where there were there were people in my maternal family who basically said if you search For your father we're done, and so it did cost me some relationships But I wouldn't trade my decision for the world I would not trade knowing my mother and my father for anything and it was worth whatever Even though I don't want to lose anything.

Well, I guess you don't really care about me.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's well said, and I can't help thinking that it's the tradeoff that you make, right? I know what my goal is. It's to find him, and if you are in the way of that, then I will step aside and keep going. So, thank you, Deanna. I appreciate it so much.

This was really wonderful. I appreciate you. Of course. You take care then. All the best. Thanks for being here. Okay, Deanna. .

Bye bye.

Closing

She was on the trials of a long arduous search. Validation of deciding to be face-to-face with her birth mother. Vindication of [01:31:00] believing her birth father had searched for her. And of course her faith in God to give her the answer she needed. Deanna's is another unbelievable adoption journey. I'm Damon Davis, and I hope you found something Indiana's journey that inspired you. Validate your feelings about wanting to search or motivates you to have the strength along your journey to learn who am I really. If you would like to share the story of your adoption in your attempt to connect with your biological family, please visit. Who am I really podcast.com/share. You can follow me on Instagram at Damon L Davis and follow the podcast at w AI really. Now I'm off to take a much needed break. I'll be doing a lot of writing in the off season, but I'll look forward to sharing more adoptees stories with you in 2024 until then take care, stay safe and be well.

[01:32:06] Damon: gosh. You're so welcome. this is the project that I've always wanted to do.

And I'm so glad that it's meaningful to people. Oh, it's so helpful.