059 – I’m Heather 1

Vonni learned from the neighbor’s child that she was adopted, but she was too young to know what it really meant. In her teen years, the yearning to understand her adoption led her on a journey an hour away to the adoption agency for her non-identifying information. It contained a horrible terrible story, that seemed to be questionable according to the social worker who documented her adoption. In the years that followed, Vonni continued to drive a long way to search the yearbook archives for her birth mother, only to be linked with her birth father first. When she found him he wasn’t interested in knowing Vonni, until his fond memories of her birth mother kicked in and they figured out she was a different daughter than he thought. He identified Vonni’s biological mother, and within months Vonni had met both parents.

Read Full TranscriptVonnie: 00:05 I was, I was having such a great relationship with my dad, my bio dad that I, and I told him too. I said, you know, I found her and I said, I don’t even know if I’m going to call her because after meeting him it was enough. I didn’t feel like I needed her anymore.

Damon: 00:29 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 Vonnie. She called me from Lincoln, Nebraska, where she shared her story of life and adoption as a teenager. Vonnie ventured in our, from her home to the adoption agency that placed her to try to understand more about herself in her non identifying information. She learned a terrible story that seemed to be questionable according to the social worker in the years that followed, she continued to drive a long way to search the yearbook archives for her birth mother. When she found her birth father, he wasn’t interested in knowing her until his fond memories of her birth mother kicked in. He identified the woman and within months Vonnie had met them both. This is Vonnie’s journey.

Damon: 01:34 Vonnie and her younger brother were both adopted, but they’re not biological to one another, so she grew up fairly comfortable with the notion of adoption. Interestingly, she found out that she was adopted by accident when she was four years old, but she didn’t quite know what it meant.

Vonnie: 01:50 My little neighbor friend next door who was six, we moved into the neighborhood about a year before my parents built the house and we were playing one day and he said, “you’re adopted”. And I was like, no, I didn’t know what it meant. And I was just like, okay. And then I didn’t think anything of it and a couple of hours later he came back over and crying and he said, “I’m sorry, I said you were adopted.” So he must have gone home and told his mom, you know what he said, and she said, you can’t say that or whatever. She said. And he came back and apologized and I just remember thinking that’s okay. Still not knowing what it meant.

Damon: 02:37 Vonnie has a vague memory of her mother reading a children’s book about how special adoptees are, but it wasn’t until Vonnie was a teenager that her ankle and self-awareness shook things up. She started thinking about her biological family and whom she might have looked like among them as she developed her own opinions and began to express herself. She also started butting heads with her adopted Vonnie was coming into her own as her thoughts expanded about who she was as a person.

Damon: 03:05 What did you think about. What did you imagine as you thought about your this other family? As you thought about yourself as an adoptee, what kinds of things did you think of?

Vonnie: 03:13 Well, I knew certain things because my parents got non identifying information about my birth mother and my mom couldn’t remember everything by the time I was asking, but she told me a few things and that there was no father listed or no information about the father. And My mother was 16 and that was all she knew. And so I imagined that the 16 year old girl was like, whew, thank God I got rid of this, I don’t have to deal with this baby. And probably went on to have this crazy life and was probably a waitress living in a trailer. That’s what I imagined because she was so young and you know, I never thought, oh, she’s a rich, you know, princess somewhere. I, I just thought not very positive things about her because I knew that she knew I had been adopted obviously, and where I had come from and that if she ever wanted to contact me, she would know where I was and she never did. So I had bad feelings about her.

Damon: 04:24 When she turned 17, Vonnie went to the adoption agency for herself traveling an hour away from her home to obtain the sum of her non identifying information. It gave physical descriptions of both of her biological parents. Her mother is five foot two and blonde while her father is tall with dark hair according to the records. Vonnie identified with her father’s traits the most.

Vonnie: 04:48 Then I spend this whole thing in my head. Like I’m just like him, I’m just like my father, whoever he is and I’ll never know who he is. So just not looking like anybody in the family is really, it’s really hard and people that look like their family members don’t appreciate that I don’t think.

Damon: 05:08 Yeah, I could see that. And tell me a little bit about your opinion of your father. It sounds like you kind of identified with him, but I didn’t necessarily hear the...