Shownotes
Steve, from London, Ontario, Canada shares his story of being adopted after his mother lost a child. Steve and his mother never connected, in fact, she stifled his social development and seemed to be holding him back because he didn’t look like their family, and didn’t fit in. As a teen, Steve was out on his own in the streets when he learned that he had fathered a child – that’s when he became a single father.
In reunion, he found a connection to his birth mother, but her empty promises ended with rejection that surprised him.
Damon: 00:00 Hey there. I just wanted to take a sec to let you know that in between producing the show, chasing my son Seth around and generally living life, I took time to write a book about my own adoption journey. It’s called Who Am I Really? Of course. If you’d like to pre order a copy, go to WhoAmIReallypodcast.com and click shop, where you will be redirected to the publishers bookstore. I hope to make it to your reading list. Okay, here’s this week’s show.
Steve: 00:33 My birth mother tells her, look, I’m not allowed to have contact with him. The kids have his contact information. If they want to contact him, they’re welcome to. I’ve given them, you know what I mean? Everyone’s aware and man, that felt like a knife through the gut, and I don’t know why. Like I guess in that moment I just, I felt orphaned.
Voices: 01:02 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
Damon: 01:13 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 Steve. He called me from London, Ontario, Canada. Steve shares his story of being adopted after his mother lost a child, but Steve and his mother never connected. In fact, she stifled his social development and seemed to be holding him back because he didn’t look like their family and didn’t fit in. As a teen, Steve was out on his own in the streets when he learned that he had fathered a child, that’s when he became a single father. In reunion, he found the connection to his birth mother, but empty promises ended with rejection and that surprised him. This is Steve’s journey. Steve doesn’t recall being told he was adopted. He just always knew it, but he doesn’t know how he knew that fact. By his description, his parents were typical adoptive parents in the 1970s who wanted the dreams of family many parents aspire to back then, but his adoption came about out of adversity.
Steve: 02:19 They wanted their 2.3 kids in a white picket fence. They had a girl. Then they had a, a baby who was stillborn and they were told that they would never be able to conceive again. And so at that point, um, they pursued other options and, and ended up adopting me. A year and a half after that, my mom got pregnant, so my little brother was born as sort of the miracle baby. And I think that sequence of events affected me and my life in a number of ways, that I didn’t really understand until, until much later. So here I am and I’m in this family. This is a Norwegian family. Everyone in my family is over six feet tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. They get a sun burden walking under a light bulb. And I am not like that at all. You know, I am, I am on a shorter side. I’m five, seven now, fully grown. I got black curly hair. Well, it’s gray now. Yeah, just didn’t look anything like them. And it’s very obvious, you know, in the family pictures and whatnot. So I think I always felt different. Also, I have a really unique surname. Uh, you’ve never heard it before. And so when people comment on the surname, they say, oh, that’s, and I still get this often. Oh, that’s a nice name. Um, and then I have to explain that I’m Norwegian and uh, I am obviously not Norwegian.
Damon: 03:52 Hmm. Interesting. So you have to explain something that people can see in your surname as unique and different, but they don’t know how unique and different it is because in fact, you are not even of that surname.
Steve: 04:06 Right Yeah. And I just, uh, yeah, I mean the truth is, uh, yeah, my name is, is an anglicized version of a Norwegian name that a grandfather, I guess changed it when he came over here. Regardless of that, I don’t, I don’t bother explaining it any more, now. People say, oh, that’s a nice name. I’m like, yeah, I didn’t pick it, but thank you.
Damon: 04:26 Steve has had time to explore his lack of connection with his adopted mother and his research has helped him understand why the creation of a family through adoption doesn’t always follow the script for parents and children to connect.
Steve: 04:39 But I’m still sort of trying to sort this out. So I had a decent child life. I have a childhood. I don’t really have anything to complain about. My needs were looked after, but I wouldn’t say it was a, I wasn’t happy. And I always, honestly, I just felt like my mom in particular, she just didn’t like me. But I think, and so like I’ve come to some understandings much, much later after going sort of through my reunion thing and starting to read some books and do some research and I’m coming to understand that, you know, a lady who’s grieving the loss of a, of a baby was handed another baby who was 11 months old and, and told, this’ll take all your grief away. You know, and then there’s a baby that’s been ripped away from a parent handed to another lady and you know, they’re convinced that lady’s going to take all the babies grief away. And there’s two people who, you know, needed something from each other and didn’t get it. And I, and I think that kind of explains, you know, that that’s where the relationship started and it just, it never really got better. Does that makes sense?
Damon: 05:57 Yeah, no, it absolutely does. I mean, this is one of the things that I think often is lost in the discussion of adoption and adoption trauma is these very stark facts about how the family is created. It’s that in, in your instance, your mother was suffering loss and her own grief that she had to get over. And then here you show up as basically, you know, a potential bandaid for that grief and a place to sort of dump her emotions. But at the same time you have been taken from another place, placed into her arms and there’s the separation that you feel. This is, I had a guest recently tell me that one of the big challenges in his family was his adopted mother hated his aunt and they never could, He never could figure out why. And it wasn’t until he met his biological mother that he realized his bio mom had the same exact voice as his aunt. This is the voice he would have heard, you know? So there is that separation. It’s really hard.
Steve: 07:01 You know, I’ve now come to recognize that it’s not her fault. This is what people believed at the time. This is what social work was telling people was a, you know, a baby doesn’t know the difference between its natural mother and it’s adoptive mother.
Damon: 07:15 Can you give me an example of, you said that you basically felt like your mom didn’t like you or you know, tell me a little bit about that tension in your family. Where did you start to see that or feel it
Steve: 07:28 to begin with, I guess I was a, a cranky, crabby baby. So I have, you know, I’ve got some notes from a doctor, you know, that I found in my dad’s files where, you know, they say I’ve got some crankiness and crabbiness, although at other times in, uh, you know, especially in company it says I’m very active and lively and I think this crankiness and crabbiness that probably just came as, as a result of, like I said, two people adjusting to a new, was considered to be a problem. And so I was sent to doctors and to psychologists and stuff from a very young age to try to figure out why I wasn’t happy like the other two babies I guess. And they never figured that out. But you know, it’s interesting again in retrospect looking and saying like they saw that, but the doctor and the letter acknowledges that the crankiness might be attributed to adoption, but it was, it’s interesting how as a child, you know, I had what were perceived to be these behavior problems even as a baby and all they were trying to do is fix me and not recognize that, you know, does that make, you know what I’m saying?
Damon: 08:50 That’s right. Yeah. It was, uh, there’s a problem with this child, not a systemic at all of the things that this child is enduring, that the family is inflicting or, or withholding or whatever. Right. It’s just, uh, the problem manifests itself in how agitated the child is, but it’s not a broader examination of the environment in which the child is in or has come from or what have you. I totally get you
Damon: 09:17 that note about Steve’s adoption being a possible cause for his crankiness was just one line at the end of the doctors letter written in the 1960s. Steve’s mother stayed at home with the children while their father worked as an executive at a local community college. Steve said that as his primary caregiver, their mother had no patience for him. He said when he left home at 15 he had never been to a sleepover at a friend’s house, had never kissed a girl, nor been to a school dance. He wasn’t allowed to do anything
Steve: 09:48 Then I was convinced I was bad. You know, and I’ve just looked back recently said, man, I wasn’t, I wasn’t that bad. I mean, I did shit like any other kid did, but you know, I wasn’t as bad as I was convinced. But it’s like my mother did not want me to leave the house. You know, they would, my brother and sister would go spend a week with grandparents in Toronto. I never once did that. Never went on a school trip, but they did. You know, and I’m not sure the, the reasoning behind it, but it was, I just felt like I was in the way, I guess I was an inconvenience.
Damon: 10:23 Did you feel like you were being hidden? I mean, from an outsider’s perspective, the way that you’re describing your, um, your intended withdrawal, your intentional withholding from social and interactive things with family, with, with friends. It sounds like they were, they were hiding you almost.
Steve: 10:46 Maybe I haven’t thought about it like that. So that’s something I’ll have to reflect on a little bit. But yes, quite possible. I think, I mean, I guess it did occur to me that I think they were a bit ashamed of me. They didn’t like answering the questions either. Introducing the family,
Damon: 11:03 Steve was led to believe that he couldn’t be trusted to behave appropriately and that’s why he wasn’t allowed to participate in anything ever. It was all unfounded. Steve described himself as a witty ham it up kind of kid, versus his much more reserved siblings. He says he doesn’t have a lot of childhood memories, but he does recall two things that happened very clearly. Brace herself for these triggers.
Steve: 11:28 And you know, some parents talk about adoptees I guess as though they’re special. And so one clear memory I have is my father telling me, the thing that makes adoptees special is that you have to keep your natural kids but you can return an adoptee.
