066 – I’ve Had A Lot Thrown At Me, But I’m A Happy Human Being

Rick’s birthmother relinquished him into foster care where he was terrorized as a toddler. He was eventually adopted around age 6 but always felt like an outsider. At 16 years old he reunited with his maternal family who informed him his mother was institutionalized for paranoid schizophrenia. Their reunion didn’t go at all how he had hoped. When he found his birth father, the man was incarcerated but welcoming. Eventually, Rick distanced himself from his birth father and when he tried to reconnect, it was too late.

Read Full TranscriptRick: 00:03 Like this was part of her schizophrenia, you know, so she believes that she had another child. I’m an only child. She believed that she had a girl that was taken away from her too. So this is a lot for a 16 year old boy just to take in, you know, I’ve never been around anybody mentally ill. I’ve never experienced this. And now this was my…. This is my mom.

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

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 Rick. He called me from Central Illinois. Rick tells the story of being terrorized in foster care as a toddler and challenges in childhood, connecting with his adopted family. Those early issues drove his desire to find his birth mother, but when he did, her mental state wouldn’t allow them to connect. Rick hadn’t focused on finding his birth father at all, but when he did, the man was surprisingly receptive. They had a falling out and Rick tried to reconnect later, but he learned it was too late, but that news wasn’t even the worst news of that day. Rick’s doing just fine now, but he’s been through a lot. This is Rick’s journey… Rick says, adoption was never really talked about in his house growing up, but even before his adoption, he says he spent the first years of his life with his mother and grandmother.

Rick: 01:50 I have kind of a unique experience. I wasn’t adopted as an infant. I was actually with my mother and grandmother for about the first year of my life and then was placed into foster care. And so my earliest memories are not of my adopted family or my biological family, but a foster family. Um, and those weren’t very good memories at all. Um, and so these things fester throughout life and, uh, just kinda came up and got triggered and you know, it was one of those things I needed to talk about but didn’t really feel like I could talk about my adopted parents pretty much, you know, just wanted me to pretend like they were my parents. And always was that way and there was no reason to believe that it ever wasn’t.

Damon: 02:38 I wonder if you could take me back just to your memories of foster care. Do you mind just sharing a little bit about what, what was so traumatic about it?

Rick: 02:47 Uh, sure. My earliest memories that the most traumatic thing for me, I had a bed wetting problem as a kid, which I was in foster care. I would have been too, you know, so, um, so I don’t really think of bedwetting problem at two is really an issue, um, but it, it was to them. So it was, there’s a lot of shaming around that and there were times I was locked in rooms and they were pounding on the door and saying, this is the Boogie man and, you know, just really trying to scare me and put a lot of fear into me. And I just, I never understood why or how somebody could treat a child that way. You know what I mean? The worst experience was, uh, around the bed wedding. They, uh, they pretended like they removed my penis with a toy chainsaw and told me it wasn’t a little boy anymore and that, um, I wouldn’t be able to wet the bed anymore because I didn’t have a penis.

Damon: 03:51 Oh my gosh.

Rick: 03:53 So yeah, this is acceptable and material for your podcast or not. But this is a, this is my life as it is.

Damon: 04:02 No, man. These are real stories we learned. This isn’t about filtering for, you know, people’s feelings. This is the reality of what happens to people throughout their lives. So you say whatever you have to say. This is your, your journey.

Damon: 04:16 Rick said he was in foster care from August 1978 to July of 1980. He has no recollection of the first foster home, but the second one is seared in his memory. They terrorized Rick while he was in their care at about three years old. He buried those memories for a long time until they were randomly triggered one day. Rick did some research into his own bed wetting issues which continued after he left foster care.

Rick: 04:43 I didn’t know. This is actually how I started getting into the adoptee community. I had a hunch one day I’m like, you know what? I got the bedwetting