After 52 years in adoption, Mary never had a desire to locate her birth family. Her feeling was they had given her up, so she didn’t really want to share how well she turned out. Still, Mary obtained her non-identifying information in 1999, to satisfy medical history curiosity. On Christmas eve 2017 she emailed her birth mother who replied within hours, and the two were connected. The only thing left was to reach out to her birth father, who didn’t know she was alive.

The post 054 – I Just Want To Sit And Be At Peace appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Mary (00:04):

I can tell you that the relationship that I'm developing with her is beyond what I ever thought it would be. And it's almost like I just want to sit and be at peace with this before I open up something else.

Damon (00:28):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? 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 today Mary shares her story. She called me from sunny, South Florida, North Palm beach. Mary says she had one adopted brother growing up and she was interested in the details of his adoption story because her family had nearly no details about her own. At the time we spoke, she had connected with her birth mother and was engaged in a slow methodical process of introducing herself to the woman. Simultaneously her birth mother was encouraging Mary to reach out to her birth father because she heard he was ill. Mary talks about her disenchantment with her adopted and birth names and her hopeful excitement about getting to know her half siblings. One day, this is Mary's journey.

Damon (01:33):

Mary was born in Cleveland, Ohio adopted into an idyllic childhood days after her birth. She and her brother also adopted were the children of slightly older parents who got married late. Their mother was a social worker who mostly focused on the needs of unwed mothers. Their father was a NASA engineer and they had a great life as children.

Mary (01:55):

My parents gave my brother and me the best life that I could've ever expected.

Damon (02:00):

Really. In what ways?

Mary (02:02):

I mean, we did all the things, sports and, um, and dance and both my brother and I play instruments. And I just feel like my parents were so committed to sharing their lives, but also, you know, making, making sure that we were, um, well cared for and loved. And my mom had, um, as a social worker, she had a ton of women, friends that were also in social work and, um, they would have these parties and all of those people, although they were so much older than my brother and me, they always invited us to their parties.

Mary (02:42):

And you know, it was, it was so nice because I really felt like my parents' friends really cared about us just as much as my parents did.

Damon (02:53):

That's awesome. Wow.

Mary (02:54):

Yeah. Yes. My childhood was great. I have no problems with my childhood.

Damon (03:00):

That's good. Did you and your brother ever talk about your adoptions at all?

Mary (03:06):

My brother and I don't have a very good relationship and growing up, it just, he, he and I never really clicked when I look at my friends and their brothers and sisters. I always longed for that kind of relationship because I didn't have it with my brother. So I would say that I never talked about being adopted with my brother,

Damon (03:30):

Recognizing her parents had more details about her brother's story than her own adoption. Mary talked to her mother occasionally about his journey, perhaps hearing details about his adoption served as a surrogate to satisfy her curiosity about her own story. He was the fourth child born to a married couple who knew they couldn't provide for him. So he was placed in adoption. All she knew was that her birth mother didn't even live in Cleveland in 1999, Mary obtained her non identifying information, but only in an attempt to learn some medical history. What she got was much more valuable still. She sat on the information she received. So in total, for nearly 50 years of her life, she had no interest in finding her birth parents. And she didn't look for relatives. Naturally. I asked why she never wanted to search and, and what motivated her change of heart?

Mary (04:24):

I think that very few people knew I was adopted. Um, and the people that I did tell sooner or later, they would get to the point where they would say, well, why aren't you looking for your parents? If it were me, I would be looking for my birth parents. And I would always say, you have no idea. I mean, you know, they did it out of love and they did it out of their own curiosity. But for me, I just never wanted to find my birth parents. I think I've thought about that a lot. And I think the answer is because I, I never really want, they, they gave me up and I never really wanted them to know how great I turned out, which seems backwards, but I don't know. I don't know. I just, I didn't want them, I wanted them to be okay with giving me up for adoption, but I didn't want to actually show them what I turned out to be it's.

Mary (05:24):

Yeah. So I think as I've gotten older and more people have come into my circle, um, and they keep saying, well, why don't you, you know, try and locate these people. I think the impetus for it was that in 1999, I had gotten my non-identifying paperwork from the adoption agency. And in that paperwork, they described in quite detail, um, who my parents were, personality wise, um, what interests they had. And it revealed a lot of my story, of course not names or anything like that. And so I sat with that information, I mean, 1999 to now, and I didn't, I didn't do anything more with it, but in that non identifying information, it indicated that my grandparents on both sides were German. And I had always been told I was Irish. So yeah. So when DNA came about, I, you know, took a few years or whatever. And I finally said, well, maybe I'd like to determine what my origins, my ethnicity is.

Damon (06:36):

I'd love for you to go back for a minute and just talk about a little bit of what you saw in your non-identifying information. What did you learn? Because if you held it for so long, it seems like it's satiated something within you for a while.

Mary (06:50):

Yeah. So when I got my non identifying information, it was because I thought that maybe there would be some medical history in that. And there was a little just about, you know, whether or not my grandparents were still alive. If they had died of a heart attack or some sort of cancer. What I, what I found in that information was a description of myself. Um, because my mother was described to a T what I am really, uh, well, her hair color and her eye color are the same. Um, her height and weight would have been the same at the same age. She, she gave birth to me when she was 20, she was described as like gregarious. And I think that those are what people might describe me as. So when I read that, it just, it comforted me. Um, it didn't make me curious.

Mary (07:53):

It just was like, Oh, of course I would look like my mother or my personality would be like my mother. But what was more interesting to me was the description of my father. They described that my father was into horses. It described his father as being a horseman. And for whatever reason, that really clicked with me. And at the time when I got that paperwork, I was more interested in finding him than her. I mean, I didn't, I didn't take any action to do that. But when I read through that paperwork, it was reassuring that I looked like my mother, but the curiosity about who my dad was, was more interesting.

Damon (08:41):

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Mary (08:43):

I haven't found, I haven't actually contacted my father yet, which, which I think is also interesting because he was, he was the character in my mind that I was more interested in finding

Damon (08:57):

Four years. Mary imagined her birth father talking about him more than her birth mother, when friends and family asked about her adoption or her birth family, she admits, she imagined a Sandy blonde blue eyed cowboy. It wasn't until 2017, nearly 20 years after obtaining her a non identifying information that Mary resorted to ancestry DNA testing her results confirmed that she did have some Irish heritage, but her DNA was mostly German and Eastern European. She dug into the heritage features on Ancestry's platform and it was satisfying to learn those facts since the main reason for her inquiry, understanding her heritage had been satisfied. Mary didn't even think to drill down, to see who she was actually related to in Mary's mind. She had assumed for decades that she would never meet any blood relatives. So it didn't click for her to actually look a few months later in October, 2017, Mary logged in again, just for grins. And she realized she actually had a small group of people that she had a close relation to. She took a few days to message a man on her list, who was either an uncle or a cousin, Mary didn't tell him she was adopted.

Mary (10:10):

And he came back with an appropriate question, which was well, who are your parents? And who are your grandparents? And I thought, well, of course that's what people would ask, but I have no idea.

Damon (10:21):

Mary decided to look for help from her friends on Facebook, in the DNA detectives group.

Mary (10:26):

The same day that I corresponded with this guy is when somebody on that DNA detective page reached out to me and asked me if I needed help. And I said, you know, I asked a bunch of questions and this woman was nice enough to say, well, you're going to have to share your DNA with me. And I wasn't so sure I really wanted to do that. But then I thought, okay, you're on here. You're trying to find out at this point who you might be related to, she can't help you unless you do that. So I kind of took a leap of faith and I shared my DNA with this woman. In the meantime, the person that I was corresponding with that shared a lot of DNA. We had figured out from the fact that I said my birth father is into horses and he's from Milwaukee.

Mary (11:19):

That guy said, that's my cousin. Wow. And it turned out that the woman who was helping me on DNA detectives also triangulated to the same person all in one day. So, uh, it turned out in the end that I actually had contact information, um, to my birth father first. Um, and this, this first cousin of my birth father, um, wanted me to call him. And at that time, and even still to this day, I just don't feel comfortable doing that. But he really, yeah, well, no calling, even this cousin of his, um, so we've emailed back many times actually. And, um, he's given me a little bit of information about my birth father. And then of course, I've done a lot of digging on the internet and I've found out that my birth father was married and his wife died in 2012. But more importantly, I have two half-brothers

Damon (12:33):

Wow what do you think is preventing you from starting a conversation with your cousin. Do you feel like you want to talk to your father first?

Mary (12:39):

Yeah. Um, yes, because the more information that I found out, I don't know if he knows I exist. So I feel like the only way that I could really approach my birth father is to write him a letter, which I've done. I just need to mail it.

Damon (12:59):

I wondered if Mary had the courage to mail the letter. And she said yes, because her birth mother was encouraging her to move forward. Mary had pieced together some information about her paternal side of the family. As a reminder, she was born in Ohio where original birth certificates were made available to adopt these in the spring of 2015.

Mary (13:18):

So I sent them 20 bucks and they sent me back, um, not only the adoption decree, which I had never seen before, but also my original birth certificate. And that's how I found my mother. My mother did not put my birth father's name on the birth certificate. She left it blank and I found her second, but I would have had to use the internet to find him.

Damon (13:45):

Um Found her second but you connected with her first.

Mary (13:46):

yeah. And so I started to, once I found out her name, I started to do a little internet digging on her. And a lot of things were coming back that she had recently died.

Damon (14:04):

Some of Mary's girlfriends were pushing her to reach out to her birth father. If she really thought her birth mother had passed away, but she didn't follow their advice. And she kept digging online. Mary found an email address for her birth mother. So around Christmas time, 2017, she sent an introductory email to her.

Mary (