078 – I’m In Recovery, I’m In A Good Place

Megan grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago and was comfortable with her adoption, but curious about her start in life. After pregnancy, “I struggled with mental health problems and became addicted to narcotics and anti-anxiety meds.” When she met her maternal relatives, things went well until her aunt shunned her for her addiction recovery. On her paternal side, that same news, being in recovery, was met with acceptance, because we all have our challenges. More than anything, Megan is thankful to finally have a sister, and it’s someone listeners already know. (http://www.whoamireallypodcast.com/071-i-would-give-anything-to-hear-his-voice/)

Read Full TranscriptMegan: 00:03 Am I opening up my heart to this woman who is just gonna stomp on it? Do I let myself accept the love that’s coming at me and just take it at face value and so that’s what I decided to do, but I was not going to make, you know, midnight pilgrimage to Chicago to meet them. Because I’ve been hurt. You know what I mean? I’ve been really hurt by my birth mother’s side of the family.

Voices: 00:35 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon: 00:47 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 Megan. She called me from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Megan grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago and was comfortable with her adoption but curious about her start in life. When she met her maternal relatives, things went well until her aunt shunned her for her addiction recovery. On her paternal side, that same news was met with acceptance because we all have our challenges, but more than anything, Megan is thankful to finally have a sister and it’s someone listeners already know. This is Megan’s journey

Damon: 01:34 Megan grew up in Beverly, an affluent neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. She’s the oldest of three children in her family, all adopted, raised strict Irish Catholic. Megan says she was told she was adopted from as far back as she can remember and it was something to be proud of.

Megan: 01:50 I remember my mom, um, telling stories to my younger brothers and myself about how she had prayed to God and God blessed her with three beautiful children and it sticks in my head. The neighborhood I grew up in, there were a lot of adopted children, so we knew, we knew and initially we knew we were different because it was brought up to us. Oh, they’re not your real parents. And as we kind of figured out the other children who are adopted, we kind of realized we weren’t different we were special, you know, our parents loved us so much that they prayed for us. And, and you know, we were chosen to be in this family.

Damon: 02:37 Megan was adopted through an adoption agency called The Cradle. So was her middle brother and a lot of the children in her community. Her father was a lawyer, her mother was a stay at home mom and the children didn’t want for anything. But ultimately the longing Megan felt was for her greater understanding of herself. For example, she wanted to know things about herself, like who she got her physical features from,

Megan: 03:00 those types of questions came up in college. I was an RA in, at college in my first two years of college I went to St Louis University. And that’s a private Jesuit College Catholic. And um, one of the girls on the unit was an RA and she became pregnant. And that kind of brought up a lot of questions because she made her decision, which was her decision. It’s her body, her choice, the whole nine yards. But I started thinking about my birth mother and you know, this was, I was born in 74. So this was, you know, this was right around Roe vs Wade and you know, she could have made a different decision. She didn’t have to put me up for adoption. And so I just started wondering about who this person was and I kind of, I kind of built her up in my head. She was this great, wonderful selfless person who, you know, got pregnant unexpectedly and wanted the best for me and decided to put me up for adoption.

Damon: 04:07 So in 1994, Megan was watching an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show where she talked about an adoptee’s legal entitlement to obtain non identifying information. Mentioning that Illinois is one of those states where that’s possible. Megan wrote a letter to The Cradle, identifying herself, her parents, and requesting information on her birth mother. They mailed back a packet of information to her home during the summer of 1994. When Megan got home from work one day her parents were sitting together in the living room awaiting her arrival.

Megan: 04:37 And my dad said, Megan is there something you want to tell me, something you want to ask me? And I’m like, oh my God, what did I do?

Damon: 04:44 Her father pulled out the envelope and asked again if there was anything she wanted to ask them. She really felt like she was in deep trouble because she didn’t tell her parents that she was launching a search.

Megan: 04:55 I didn’t tell them that I was doing this. This was, this was something I did and I didn’t...