042 – This Little Voice Said, “You Gotta Do Something”

Right before Sharon left for college, her parents sat her down to say she was of age to start looking for her birthparents. She had never contemplated that possibility before, so it took years for her to act on her desire to learn more about herself. In the late 1980s, she went through Catholic Charities to help retrace the path back to her biological family. But her assigned intermediary maintained tight control over the family’s communications, stifling their connection. For five years Sharon and her birth mother communicated laboriously through their intermediary before her mother closed the door. After years of silence in her reunion attempt, Sharon decided to try just one more time to break through her birth mother’s resistance, and she was glad she did. Her birth mother apologized for everything she had put Sharon through.

The post 042 – This Little Voice Said, “You Gotta Do Something” appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Sharon (00:02):

I tried to convey to Colleen, this is important to me. This is this the stuff about me that I've always wondered where it came from. And I don't know that she really understood. I think she had a lot of sorrow because she turned to me one time when we were visiting and said, I am just so sorry for what I put you through.

Damon (00:30):

Who am I? 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 on today's show is Sharon. She spoke with me from Houston, Texas. She was adopted through Catholic charities there in the late 1960s. Sharon was the older of two adoptees in her family. Her younger brother challenging her parents a lot along the way. In her twenties she found her biological relatives, but the decision was made for Sharon that there would be no meeting. When she finally made contact with her birth mother, a Catholic charities, intermediary maintain tight control over the communication stream. Frustrating everyone involved after years of silence in her reunion attempt, Sharon decided to try just one more time. And she was glad she did her birth mother apologized for everything she had put Sharon through. This is Sharon's journey. Sharon was born in 1967 in Houston. Her parents were unable to conceive children. So they adopted children. They were active in their local community. Her father with the fire department, her mother was a school nurse and they were a part of the church.

Sharon (01:58):

My father, my adoptive father had some chronic illness problems and just wasn't able to conceive. And, and, um, it was never really discussed, but it was just, you know, the understanding was is they just, they were infertile. So they wanted to adopt, you know, in the Catholic church, you know, the, the emphasis is on family. So if you aren't able to make a family go find one. So they, they adopted me. And, um, I was raised in Houston. I, uh, we lived in Houston. Then when I got to be a school age, my parents decided they didn't like the school district they're in Houston. So they found a community West in the West of Richmond. And we settled there and I started grade school and we were there all the way through high school.

Damon (02:48):

Sharon says she's always known. She was adopted and was made to feel comfortable in their family. For years after her adoption, her parents adopted a boy unrelated to Sharon. I asked how she got along with her brother.

Sharon (03:04):

Um, you know, as, as, as an older sister, I would look after him, but he pretty early on, he let it be known that he, he didn't jive with the rest of us. And he had his own ideas about things. And he was a boy and I was a girl and it was just, we tolerated each other.

Damon (03:22):

Yeah. You kind of allowed one another to go. Your separate ways

Sharon (03:25):

we got along. And there were times that, you know, we just really would rather have not have thought about, you know, just, and then when he got to be teenager, he was, I hate using this analogy, but it's, it was true. Especially after I started reading the primal wound, uh, and the books on adoptees, I was the good adoptee and he was the bad adoptee, so to speak. Um, I was the one that I wasn't necessarily interested in conforming, but I wasn't interested in rebelling. I wasn't interested in rejecting my adoptive parents. I wasn't interested in rejecting them. And I pretty much followed the rules, whatever rules were laid down, Robert, my brother, he, he, uh, he kept going in with the wrong crowd and ended up fighting with my parents a lot and causing a lot of problems for them.

Damon (04:14):

You know, it sounds like you were on a track with your parents to be very comfortable in your family. Very loved. And it sounds like to me, if, if I were in that family, I can see how I would be constantly reminded of my adoption because of this other child who was, you know, combative or yeah, yeah. An acquired taste in the family. Yeah.

Sharon (04:43):

Yes. Because my brother, he very different. I wanted to go to college. He couldn't have cared less.

Damon (04:50):

Her brother got jealous of the attention and resources. Sharon was getting, when she went away to college, he joined the military, which seemed like it could lead to his success, but he undermined that success. Like he had done with so many other positive trajectories he had been on. But Sharon says that now that she's explored her own adoption as an adult, she realizes some of what her brother may have been going through.

Sharon (05:13):

And it wasn't until much later when I started exploring my own adoption, you know, my own, um, being an adoptee that I realized what my brother had been going through. And, and the, the thing that leaves the bitter taste in my mouth is even in an idyllic family where everything is good and everyone seems to be happy. There's still issues of identity and, uh, feeling like things aren't quite right. And when I read primal wound and really started looking into the community and realizing some things about being an adoptee, it just kills me to think that if only people who had been more educated, more aware of what the problems and what the issues would be, or what might be going through the adoptees mind,

Damon (06:13):

Sharon says her parents were very smart and really good people who seem to have a solid grasp on how to handle Sharon's need for support. When the time came for her to want to get questions about herself answered, she says, she wished they knew then what she knows now, because it would have helped them to parent her and understand things more deeply.

Sharon (06:33):

I look back on this stuff and I wish...