054 – I Just Want To Sit And Be At Peace

After 52 years in adoption, Mary never had a desire to locate her birth family. Her feeling was they had given her up, so she didn’t really want to share how well she turned out. Still, Mary obtained her non-identifying information in 1999, to satisfy medical history curiosity. On Christmas eve 2017 she emailed her birth mother who replied within hours, and the two were connected. The only thing left was to reach out to her birth father, who didn’t know she was alive.

The post 054 – I Just Want To Sit And Be At Peace appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Mary (00:04):

I can tell you that the relationship that I'm developing with her is beyond what I ever thought it would be. And it's almost like I just want to sit and be at peace with this before I open up something else.

Damon (00:28):

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 today Mary shares her story. She called me from sunny, South Florida, North Palm beach. Mary says she had one adopted brother growing up and she was interested in the details of his adoption story because her family had nearly no details about her own. At the time we spoke, she had connected with her birth mother and was engaged in a slow methodical process of introducing herself to the woman. Simultaneously her birth mother was encouraging Mary to reach out to her birth father because she heard he was ill. Mary talks about her disenchantment with her adopted and birth names and her hopeful excitement about getting to know her half siblings. One day, this is Mary's journey.

Damon (01:33):

Mary was born in Cleveland, Ohio adopted into an idyllic childhood days after her birth. She and her brother also adopted were the children of slightly older parents who got married late. Their mother was a social worker who mostly focused on the needs of unwed mothers. Their father was a NASA engineer and they had a great life as children.

Mary (01:55):

My parents gave my brother and me the best life that I could've ever expected.

Damon (02:00):

Really. In what ways?

Mary (02:02):

I mean, we did all the things, sports and, um, and dance and both my brother and I play instruments. And I just feel like my parents were so committed to sharing their lives, but also, you know, making, making sure that we were, um, well cared for and loved. And my mom had, um, as a social worker, she had a ton of women, friends that were also in social work and, um, they would have these parties and all of those people, although they were so much older than my brother and me, they always invited us to their parties.

Mary (02:42):

And you know, it was, it was so nice because I really felt like my parents' friends really cared about us just as much as my parents did.

Damon (02:53):

That's awesome. Wow.

Mary (02:54):

Yeah. Yes. My childhood was great. I have no problems with my childhood.

Damon (03:00):

That's good. Did you and your brother ever talk about your adoptions at all?

Mary (03:06):

My brother and I don't have a very good relationship and growing up, it just, he, he and I never really clicked when I look at my friends and their brothers and sisters. I always longed for that kind of relationship because I didn't have it with my brother. So I would say that I never talked about being adopted with my brother,

Damon (03:30):

Recognizing her parents had more details about her brother's story than her own adoption. Mary talked to her mother occasionally about his journey, perhaps hearing details about his adoption served as a surrogate to satisfy her curiosity about her own story. He was the fourth child born to a married couple who knew they couldn't provide for him. So he was placed in adoption. All she knew was that her birth mother didn't even live in Cleveland in 1999, Mary obtained her non identifying information, but only in an attempt to learn some medical history. What she got was much more valuable still. She sat on the information she received. So in total, for nearly 50 years of her life, she had no interest in finding her birth parents. And she didn't look for relatives. Naturally. I asked why she never wanted to search and, and what motivated her change of heart?

Mary (04:24):

I think that very few people knew I was adopted. Um, and the people that I did tell sooner or later, they would get to the point where they would say, well, why aren't you looking for your parents? If it were me, I would be looking for my birth parents. And I would always say, you have no idea. I mean, you know, they did it out of love and they did it out of their own curiosity. But for me, I just never wanted to find my birth parents. I think I've thought about that a lot. And I think the answer is because I, I never really want, they, they gave me up and I never really wanted them to know how great I turned out, which seems backwards, but I don't know. I don't know. I just, I didn't want them, I wanted them to be okay with giving me up for adoption, but I didn't want to actually show them what I turned out to be it's.

Mary (05:24):

Yeah. So I think as I've gotten older and more people have come into my circle, um, and they keep saying, well, why don't you, you know, try and locate these people. I think the impetus for it was that in 1999, I had gotten my non-identifying paperwork from the adoption agency. And in that paperwork, they described in quite detail, um, who my parents were, personality wise, um, what interests they had. And it revealed a lot of my story, of course not names or anything like that. And so I sat with that information, I mean, 1999 to now, and I didn't, I didn't do anything more with it, but in that non identifying information, it indicated that my grandparents on both sides were German. And I had always been told I was Irish. So yeah. So when DNA came about, I, you know, took a few years or whatever. And I finally said, well, maybe I'd like to determine what my origins, my ethnicity is.

Damon (06:36):

I'd love for you to go back for a minute and just talk about a little bit of what you saw in your non-identifying information. What did you learn? Because if you held it for so long, it seems like it's satiated something within you for a while.

Mary (