Shownotes
Ken grew up in a mixed home with both biological and adopted siblings. While Ken was loved and treated equally, when his son was born, he felt the urge to learn more about his birth mother. When he found the woman living nearby, she answered Ken's phone call with inspiring words, expressing her expectation of that moment finally happening for her one day. Ken said there was a moment with his birth mother when it felt like time was standing still.
With her, he finally feels like he can be himself without people-pleasing behavior. This is Ken's journey.
I Will See You Again, by K. R. DeStefano
Who Am I Really?
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Transcripts
236 - I Will See You Again
[:[00:00:00] Damon: Hey, it's Damon. I hope that you feel as I do that, the hundreds of interviews on the, who am I really podcast are a wealth of knowledge about the experiences of adopted people. Well, I'm working on book two. Based on what my guests have shared here on the show. I never thought I'd be writing another book, but it feels like the right thing to do.
[:[00:01:08] Damon: Really? podcast.com/book 2. And add your email address to my list, to stay up to date. I will share occasional updates on how writing is going and reach out to you with publishing plans, publicity events, discount codes, and other cool stuff. Again. I go to who am I?
[:[00:01:31] Damon: go.
Cold Cut Intro
[:[00:01:54] Ken: I don't know if it goes badly. This is something I need to do.
[:[00:02:57] Damon: And that with her, he finally feels like he can be [00:03:00] himself without people pleasing. behavior. This is Ken's journey.
Show Open
[:[00:03:34] Damon: times when he was curious about adoption, though.
[:[00:03:39] Ken: One of the things that kind of strikes me that is people have always told me from the youngest age I created this myth that my birth mother was a crossing guard that she needed to give me up So that she could help the kids go to school and take care of them And obviously she couldn't do that If she had to raise me and I think that's [00:04:00] very interesting because as a very young person Your first outside authority from your family is like the school crossing guard.
[:[00:04:21] Damon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The brain abhors a vacuum, right?
[:[00:04:42] Damon: That's fascinating.
So in terms of your family, you've named several siblings where some, did you say some were biological and some were adopted?
[:[00:04:55] Ken: brother five years older sister four years older.
[:[00:05:02] Ken: Yes, correct.
[:[00:05:03] Damon: Yes. Tell me about your family dynamic. How did everybody get along? Did you guys look alike? what were your similarities and differences?
[:[00:05:21] Ken: I'm Italian Irish genetically. So there was resemblance, but you know, going back, like I'll say right now, I can't look in a mirror, like to comb my hair and do stuff like that because I'm very uncomfortable with the way I look because I don't look, I didn't really even notice how it was happening when I was younger.
[:[00:05:54] Ken: So it, you know, my brother and sister, you know, now we're peers, but back then it was a pretty big [00:06:00] age gap. So loving good, but it wasn't like partners in crime, like when you're a little closer in age. And then when my brother came, that was much later. And it really, the five of us. We're so much older than him.
[:[00:06:21] Damon: Yeah, I know what you mean. In my own family, my two older children are the adoptees and the age difference between them and my son is about 11 years. You know, that's a whole generation.
[:[00:06:59] Ken: [00:07:00] I'll tell you theoretically I have this theory that as adoptees, we're born, we go to a family, and unlike a biological child, everything makes sense. You've heard the voices. You've seen the faces. Everything just makes sense. It's all familiar, but an adopted child from day one It doesn't make sense.
[:[00:07:37] Ken: So we're always trying to figure that out. You know, I've even said if you gave a baby infant five pound dumbbell curls and they did five pound curls, They'd be incredibly strong. That's what our minds did from the moment we were born. Now I don't want to ramble, but I'll tell you my example is there's in my family, there's birthdays and months.
[:[00:08:22] Ken: But that's just the way my mind works. It goes into things like that. And my family does that. They have very high intelligence in other regards, but that's just not the way they think.
[:[00:08:40] Ken: No, and whether it's biological or like I said, the adoption experience where you're trying to find things, it's interesting.
[:[00:08:59] Damon: I don't know. [00:09:00]
[:[00:09:00] Damon: Tell me about what you were into as a kid. Were you know, outdoorsy? Were you athletic? Were you academic? What kinds of things were you into as a kid?
[:[00:09:19] Ken: I was blessed by loving sports and cursed by not being good at them. So I absolutely love basketball. I'm 54. I still play. And, you know, God just made me terrible at it, you know, but that's okay. I still love it. Yeah. I played in high school team and pick up all through college and I still play, but I'm just terrible at it.
[:[00:09:43] Ken: What's interesting also is I played basketball for, you know, 45 years at this point. And then a couple of years ago, I was having trouble with my back. So I said, let me do something different. So I started swimming laps, jumped in the pool, swam a quarter mile.
[:[00:10:07] Damon: crazy. Wow. Oh, that's really interesting.
[:
said his parental relationships were great and they treated him just like one of their biological children. His parents were supportive and loving, showing up to all his basketball games, regardless of how well or poorly he played. but one of his random rules about his homework drove his mother crazy.
When Ken was a kid, he decided that if his homework could not be completed by the time he got off the school bus at home, Then it wasn't getting done. All young Ken wanted to do was shoot hoops. When he got home from school. Ken's family relationships in adoption were great. So there wasn't much at home that was pushing Ken to search for his biological family. But as things go for many of us, the birth of his son was a catalytic moment.
[:[00:11:30] Ken: And started making an itch that was very faint, stronger and stronger. and then I, as I started doing that, I started rethinking my life from the perspective of an adoptee starting to realize it probably made a bigger impact on my life than I thought, and it was a growing, slow process.
[:[00:12:13] Ken: I didn't understand it. it was a very slow process. I just, I wear glasses, which I'm not wearing right now, but your whole life, until I got them everything was blurry. And then you put the glasses on and it's clear, but then you realize, how did I never notice it was blurry before?
[:[00:13:05] Ken: In retrospect, I realized how hypersensitive it was to many of those things.
[:[00:13:23] Damon: in a more hypersensitive way than most people did. And I love the analogy that you gave about putting on glasses. I wear glasses too of the same age as you. And it's astonishing how, you know, your vision fades slowly, usually, and you don't really notice it. So you can kind of power through for a while.
[:[00:14:08] Damon: And then you started to analyze more and more a little bit about your life. That's a really wonderful analogy of the glasses that when you finally looked at your adoption from the perspective of. Being an adoptee, not just that it was a good thing, but that you were for all intents and purposes, an outsider in a different family, you know, no disrespect to your family.
[:[00:14:36] Ken: And Damon, what's so interesting is as that's happening, you know, you see it with your children being born and raising. And that's the exact moment when you, life goes to hell and I mean that in the best possible way when your children, it's all about the kids, I don't know your situation.
[:[00:15:16] Damon: Yeah, that's funny. And it's also comical to think that this person who has said they jumped in the pool with back problems and swam effortlessly is drowning in life. There's a funny kind of irony of that metaphor. So then this is you going through life with your kids looking like yourself.
[:
[00:16:22] Damon: the following January, Ken received his birth certificate..
[:[00:16:30] Ken: I found out when I was born, where I was born and the name. And from there, it just, I'll tell you, I was looking at the envelope before I opened it and saying to myself, I'm a very, I'm the type of person that I went to college because I went to high school. I did this because life expects, like you just take your next step because that's what life tells you to do.
[:[00:17:17] Ken: I don't know if it goes badly. This is something I need to do. So I made a conscious decision, and I got the name, and then there's this, as you and many adoptees know, there's a series of steps that you have to take until you get the reunion. And everyone knows I made the conscious decision. Do I want to take this next step?
[:[00:17:53] Damon: love the intentionality of every step because there's a lot to be lost [00:18:00] in just blasting forward.
[:[00:18:23] Damon: So what happens next? You've seen your birth mother's name. I would imagine that was very moving. Tell me the story of how you went from opening this envelope with intention to any level of trying to find your folks.
[:[00:18:42] Ken: Yeah, it seems to be taking off. It seems, I'm trying to get in on the ground floor. I just started Googling the name Googling, and finding, and It was so hard because, you know, back then records aren't what they are now.
[:
[00:18:57] Damon: Ken found some information indicating there was a [00:19:00] woman with his birth mother's name who could be about the right age Based on the 1963 elementary school year book information he found with her and her twin sister. Ken was able to find nearly everything about his birth mother except her phone number. Back then You could pay $25 to have someone's phone number exposed online.
[:[00:19:39] Ken: So I paid the money. I got the 25. I got her phone number and then becomes Damon.
[:[00:20:06] Ken: So I said, hello, I was born on this date in this hospital. Does that mean anything to you? And all I hear on the other end of the phone is an obviously older woman say, Oh my God, I always knew you'd find me. Oh my God. So, we had a little chat there, and then I actually think that made arrangements the next day for me to take her out to breakfast.
[:[00:20:36] Damon: Wow.
[:[00:20:38] Damon: Tell me about your chat. What, do you remember anything that you guys said to each other?
[:[00:20:51] Ken: I do know if you know, New Jersey at all, there's something called the Garden State Parkway and there's exits that are numbered based on mile marker. And I had to get [00:21:00] off exit 105 and I was going to meet her and she was five minutes from the exit. I've driven the parkway literally a thousand times. I drove past her exit just because my mind was just so non functional at that point.
[:[00:21:24] Damon: Yeah, when you go into this restaurant, set the scene for me.
[:[00:21:31] Ken: Well, I met her at her apartment and I rang the bell and she came to the door and she was dressed up nicely, not like formally but dressed nice and put together. And Damon, let me ask you Hi, nice to meet you. Shake hands. Like it's just weird.
[:[00:22:07] Ken: Okay. where I mentioned that before I went to law school, I was a bartender for many years. And she says, Oh, I was a bartender for many years also. So I'm like, okay, of course. And she goes, we started talking about drinking and I mentioned, which is true. I've never had a drink in my life. I had a drink. My, a sip of champagne at my wedding and a beer on my son's 21st birthday.
[:[00:22:45] Ken: And I'm like, all right, she goes. I cannot tell you how many problems alcohol has caused in this family, especially with the men. She said there's something, not all of them, but there's a lot of men in this family that [00:23:00] cannot shake the bottle, including my biological paternal grandfather and other people.
[:[00:23:13] Damon: Wow.
[:[00:23:28] Damon: That's amazing. Wow. It must have been such a relief for her to hear you say that you had not struggled with alcohol given what she knew about her own family and the men, you know, finding whatever, searching for whatever they were searching for in the bottle. That's, that must have been such a relief.
[:[00:23:47] Ken: Like you could feel the relief from her because you think, we think of it from our perspective. We think of things from the adopting parents perspective, but from the birth parent, they relinquish and then they have no idea. So [00:24:00] they, , your mind just often fills in the worst case scenarios. So she was thrilled with my adopting parents for having done such a supportive job, loving me and getting me to a place of a good place.
[:[00:24:18] Ken: We just agreed to stay in contact. Just, I have two biological sisters and a biological brother younger than me, all younger than me. They always knew about me. I was always referred to no, no secret there. She you know, she spoke about me openly.
[:[00:24:52] Damon: remote.
[:[00:25:01] Ken: Everybody was wonderful. But it was proof of Einstein's theory that time is relative. Because I think according to my watch, it lasted about an hour and a half. if you ask me to guess how long it was, I would say about 73 and a half hours because every moment was just so awkward and so uncomfortable and nobody said anything inappropriate and everybody was great but I just really literally felt like my soul was splitting because it was so tense within me.
[:[00:26:01] Damon: Yeah. And good on her for going through with it. Some people can't face that. It sounds like she knew you wanted it. it sounds like she was, thankful for, the son that you were and are and wanted to do it, even though that was going to be difficult for her. That's a powerful thing that she, Submitted to doing and I commend her for that as I'm sure you did as well.
[:[00:26:52] Ken: And to be fair, it must have been very difficult for her because she didn't see any of this coming. All those struggles that I was telling you about earlier, like a [00:27:00] wonderful adoptee son, I hated. So they had no idea.
[:[00:27:10] Damon: You started to examine mirroring. You started to think about this more. You didn't even tell your wife you were doing this. You went out and got a money order or whatever, so that your bank account wouldn't show this particular expenditure. You were hiding the search quite a bit. How did you broach this with your.
[:[00:27:33] Ken: Well, the three days was a metaphorical, a biblical three days. No, I'm sorry. When he, when the birth certificate came, at that point, I told my wife. So, at this point, I was starting to come out. And he inadvertently was divulged to my son, who was 18.
[:[00:28:14] Ken: So I was very upset that he knew not that he's not entitled anything, but just because now I couldn't control the message. in retrospect, I don't know what I've ever had the guts to tell my mom. I don't know because it was so difficult, but I had to. And that's what I ended up doing is telling her and, you know, slowly, you know, just little bits, some learning, I'm looking and things of that nature.
[:[00:28:45] Damon: Yeah, that's, it's so interesting when you contemplate how you're sometimes forced into a situation and then you, in reflection, you think to yourself, God, I'm, you sound almost like you're glad you were forced because you just don't know if you would have ever done [00:29:00] it.
[:/ Naturally Ken's curiosity turned to locating his birth father. He had seen his birth certificate, which had no identifying information about the man. But Ken had also met his birth mother Who divulged that she had been friends with Ken's birth father, but they did not maintain a relationship. After she got pregnant Ken's birth father went off to college away from home. This guy had a very common name. So Ken gathered what information he could and eventually tracked him down.
[:[00:29:40] Ken: And I don't know where you grew up, but there, there's certain families that just, everybody knows somebody by that name, because there's a lot of them. And it's oh, my older brother played baseball with them. Oh, my younger sister was on. It's just, oh, that was one of those families. So I called him up and again, [00:30:00] another very tough call and said, yeah, I want to talk to you about.
[:[00:30:23] Ken: And I'm curious what your feeling has been. I have recognized in myself less psychological churn about my biological father than I did about my biological mother. I'm curious, but it's not just psychological, the primal wound or the real trauma that is attached to the biological mother.
[:[00:30:46] Damon: When you just think quite literally of the word biological inherently means that you've come from this person genetically, but in the biological sense. We are so tied to our mothers. You grow in her [00:31:00] womb, you hear her heartbeat and voice. every single day. Everything that she does, you're doing with her.
[:[00:31:28] Damon: I think there's a significant skew towards birth mother searches, but it doesn't surprise me that you weren't super interested in finding and knowing this person, right? for my own story, when I learned from my birth mother, who she thought was my birth father, it turned out she had the wrong individual.
[:[00:32:04] Damon: Because for me, my thought process was I'm going to go my entire life never having been face to face with the man who was responsible for me being on this earth. And I wasn't really ready to reconcile that. I wasn't really ready to live with that. when she passed, I realized there was nothing I could do to hurt her feelings or drum up any bad memories for her because she was gone.
[:[00:32:48] Ken: And to me, that's part of the beauty of this process.
[:[00:33:14] Damon: Yeah. And you know, the other thing is you talked a little bit. In the early part of this discussion about how your life had its own priorities in it, right? And if this isn't a priority, there's no need to force it. You know what I mean? It's just, as you've said, you take things as they come. There's no real reason to push on this guy and his identity.
[:[00:33:58] Damon: You know what I'm saying? If [00:34:00] he's laid along and been like, Oh, I don't know. That sounds say, who was it? How do I know this person?
[:[00:34:15] Speaker 4: You
[:[00:34:23] Ken: And that circles back to what I was saying earlier about us being puzzle solvers. Like, when we're born, that was our entire universe. In my book, I call it the motherverse, right? That's the baby's entire universe. And all of a sudden, , there's no logic. The brain hasn't developed logic yet, and it's just ripped away.
[:[00:34:59] Damon: [00:35:00] Yeah.
[:[00:35:25] Damon: Immediate separation. If you were adopted at the time of birth and you were separated at birth, you've gone from your brain associating this, these rhythmic patterns of her life, her heartbeat, everything to a complete and total disruption of everything that you knew. So the. Placing of a child on the chest to create the skin to skin bond also has the effect of re Establishing the heartbeat in the baby's brain, right?
[:[00:36:17] Damon: And Dr. Perry was saying that in these early formative times of your life, The time, the duration of a trauma and the timing of it where it happens in your life is of critical importance, you know, points out that there's a significant difference between, you know, a traumatic breakup with a girlfriend when you're 17 and you've got processes for dealing with rejection versus the traumatic separation of an entrant from the mother.
[:[00:36:57] Ken: When you're one hour old, one [00:37:00] hour is 100 percent of your life. When you're 17 years old, it's, I'm not a math guy.
[:[00:37:11] Damon: That's a really good point.
[:[00:37:30] Ken: where she was living, she felt made it impossible to bring me home because of social pressures, Italian, Catholic, et cetera. And I'm told the only way they got her to sign was to, she had an uncle who was involved in law enforcement, really good guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who was Italian, who knew a guy.
[:[00:37:54] Damon: Oh, wow.
[:[00:38:08] Ken: And she had to fight to actually see me. Cause they didn't even want to connect with me because they didn't want to interfere with the process. So, you know, like many of us, I was floating out on an Island for a little while.
[:[00:38:24] Damon: So it was your understanding that you all saw each other a little bit during that 10 day period that you were both in the hospital.
[:[00:38:32] Damon: Wow.
[:[00:38:37] Damon: Yeah. But still that's the difference between a total severance of the relationship and like at least small sips of what could have been.
[:[00:39:06] Ken: The swimming, the bartending. Frankly, I grew up in a very good, but conservative, within the lines, Catholic family. She's much more irreverent. She has much bigger issues with boundaries. As do I. The humor goes places it shouldn't go. Truly cringeworthy stuff. There was a lot of that. You know, and she has joked, Oh, if I raised you, you'd be a mess.
[:[00:40:00] Damon: that's really cool. That's really cool. So how's your relationship now?
[:[00:40:17] Ken: I'll tell you what I was just thinking about in the pool yesterday, when she's probably the first person that I felt really comfortable not trying to please. if she asked me to do something and I don't want to do it, I just say no. And I don't feel like I have to find a way to say yes. If she says something, which she has, which all people do, that irritates me, I'll tell her that irritates me.
[:[00:40:59] Ken: And [00:41:00] that's part of how I'm part of, , The acceptance that what I always feared didn't happen actually happened, that there was unconditional love, that I wasn't going to be loved just because I behaved a certain way. I was loved because of what I was, which is almost empowering to be what you want to be.
[:[00:41:21] Damon: Yeah. Empowering to be what you want to be. That's really cool. Wow. Ken, what's the name of your book?
[:[00:41:49] Ken: And the other story is a man in his 50s and current day who has an itch and decides to ask for his birth certificate. So it's about how her life , possesses, how his search [00:42:00] goes towards ultimately finding her and then their UniFi reunification.
[:[00:42:08] Damon: I will see you again. Awesome. Really cool. Ken. Thanks for being here, man. I appreciate it so much.
[:[00:42:16] Damon: , of course. My pleasure. You take care, man. All right. You too. All right. All the best. Bye. Bye.
Closing
s birth mother. And I really [:Like time had uncontrollably slowed. But everyone made it through. And Ken learned that his people pleasing tendencies can be pushed aside and replaced with feelings of natural comfort when he is interacting with his birth mother. I'm Damon Davis, and I hope you found something in Ken's journey that inspired you. Validates your feelings about wanting to search or motivates you. to have this strength along your journey to learn who am I really.
